An Hypothesis of Hope

Today is the first Sunday of Advent and a good time to remember that Christmas is not a season for merriment. All the happy noise which starts its crass and brassy bruiting today is a perversion of what Advent is about.

The season has been hijacked by heathen and hucksters — anti-Christians who delude people with glitter and the narcosis of false hopes.

I am not simply chafing against commercialism, although the stampede to buy and sell is so rampant the season might as well be called Shopmass.  No. I am complaining as well about those well-meaning pagans who see in the season a time to light candles as a challenge to darkness.

Now, lighting bonfires in the cold of night is such a natural thing to do that it would be the ultimate in Scroogeness to cavil against it.  The problem I have with bonfires is that they too easily tie into notions of either making merry or resolving to be good, both of which, in my view, miss the point of Christmas.

It goes without saying that, in formless multi-cultural societies, no one is obligated to celebrate the end year in a Christian manner. If they want to beat drums and run about with torches or light candles or set their cheque books afire that is their business.  But, as the name might suggest, Christmas is a christian holiday and this brief article will attempt to explain what that commemoration is about.

This explanation will obviously be made in the context of the Gospel narrative. But although that may be the shell, I believe the kernel of the message is something that might be of interest to heathen, apostates, infidels and stiff-necks as well.

Advent is indeed a penitential season. (Shock and Surprise!) But while there is nothing wrong with taking stock of one’s imperfections,  I believe the focus is wrong.  The penitence at issue is penitence for our existential darkness.   Today’s lectionary begins,

We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.   (Is. 64:6)

Isaiah is far more irredentist than a mere moralist; for it is, he says, our righteous deeds which are a filthy cloth.  If all our righteousness amounts to no more than a filthy cloth, what is the point in resolving to be righteous?

Quid sum miser tunc dicturus?  Cum vix justus sit securus?
What shall I, frail man, be pleading? When the just are mercy needing? (Dies Irae)

The darkness of the Advent season is not a mere stumbling or falling short but an all-encompassing hopelessness.  We can rectify nothing; we are and can only become a vexation to ourselves. (St. Augstine, Confessions.) We are utterly hopeless.

But so too the world.

The fact is that when we look objectively at the world, it is nasty and brutish. It too is a vexation. 

How can the rich and powerful be allowed their fame and comforts while a little boy in Iraq has both his arms blown off at their command?

Where is goodness to the little fish who gets swallowed up or to the fawn who gets taken down in the tiger’s maw?  Where is justice to the little mousie with his upturnéd housie? 

“I’m truly sorry Man's dominion; Has broken Nature's social union.”   But Nature’s union is itself hard and cruel.  What we call the beauty of Creation is simply ignorance of its nastier half.

Every where we turn, we see more than enough evil and injustice and failure and pointlessness to fill us with the emptiness of despair. 

Le silence eternel m’effraie. (Pascal) A cruel god has created harsh world and everywhere a deaf god has forsaken us. This is the winter of our solitude.

And so we can but regret. We regret our existence and are sorry in a hard and brutish world.  Today’s lectionary continues,

After [all] that suffering, the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light,  and the stars will be falling from heaven,  

Even at this moment, galaxies are being swallowed up whole into pinholes of infinite darkness. 

Light a candle?  Oh, please...

To this, the priest will answer that there is hope at the end of the tunnel — a hope symbolized by the birth of innocence and powerlessness in a rough hewn stable.

Some say it is the hope of rebirth, of continuity of those things which are fresh and new and full of hope, like a baby.

Others will say that it is the hope of powerlessness and the overcoming of might by weakness.  Thus, St. Luke,

He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.  He hath put down the mighty from their seat : and hath exalted the humble and meek. He hath filled the hungry with good things : and the rich he hath sent empty away.  (Luke 1:46)

Still others will say that is the hope to be found in simplicity or in dedication to others

Perhaps. But all these exhortations are merely a hope.  Hope is not a good in the hand.  It is an aspiration,  a breathing in, little else.   In the end hope itself is vanity.  Chanting in the dark may be sonorous but it is still chanting in the dark.

So then, if darkness swallows all, if injustice overcomes all and if hope is merely a distracting sigh, we might just as well indulge in vulgar merrymaking, for what difference does it make?  (1 Corinthians 15:32.)

It is here,  I think, where the true faith of Christianity shines through. This true faith consists in the assertion that, in spite of everything to the contrary, there really and truly is a joyous light force in the world.  Its existence allows us an hypothesis of hope .

Let us begin with the fact that behind the manger looms the Cross.  We know now that the story which begins with Jesus in Mary’s arms ends with Christ’s arms outstretched on wood.  A knowing Christian cannot but see in birth a future death. 

We are fooling ourselves if we think it otherwise; if we close our eyes and are just insipidly happy for a moment.

Let us hew to realism.  Today’s cutsie babie is tomorrow’s Pontius Pilate. Tomorrow’s Moral Example ends up cast into the pit on the day after.  Explaining hope in terms of natural or moral regeneration leads nowhere but in a circle. We remain trapped in a world that is ultimately and infinitely dark and pointless, ruled over by a deaf and impotent god who is best at forsaking those whom most he loves.

We are looking in the wrong place.  Contrary to artists’ best and most beautiful impressions, the light spoken of in the Gospels does not emanate from the newborn in swaddling clothes but from above. At most, it lit upon the the manger, although more appreciably what it illuminated was the sheep.

In the gospel narrations, this light next appears when Jesus is transfigured on the mountain top and it appears one last time when Jesus is resurrected into Heaven.

Thus, within the story, the star which comes over the shepherds on the field is a foretelling of the light that can fully fill our being and which overcomes after death.

In sum, the Gospels tell a story of a Light which shines on, shines through and ultimately swallows up.

The Transfiguration (Monastery of St. Catherine, Sinai)

Now it is at this point that the Moral Regenerists fall into error; for they interpret the light as a metaphor for good behaviour and a sense of maximized well being... or however they quite want to put it.  They do this because they can’t really and truly accept that the Light is actual and real.  It does exist in eternity eternally.  

The Gospel’s account of the Light is not the same as its account of Jesus’ life.  It  runs parallel to the history of Jesus’ ministry.  It is the ergon behind the logos of the drama.
 

This living force in the story is its own self-sufficient good.  Without this bright light, which makes its appearance at the three junctures mentioned, the logos of Jesus’s life and ministry is just another moral example — another good guy who got it in the neck in the end.  It is the Light which gives another substance to the tale and, doing so, is something more than a simile for Jesus.  This extra substance is what Christian theologians have in mind when they insist on the “historical reality” of the Resurrection.

Now, there is a certain amount of controversy attending the Resurrection and there are some that even go so far as to deny it ever took place.  The fable of the Resurrection, they say, was just an attempt to explain away the utter futility and pointlessness of Christ’s life. 

This criticism also looks in the wrong direction.  The issue is not whether asserting the Resurrection is an Act of Denial, but rather on what basis the such denial is made.  Or, stated obversely  on what grounds does today's lectionary assert that,

Then they will see 'the Son of Man coming in clouds' with great power and glory? (Mark, 13:26)

Let it be assumed that the so-called Resurrection is just an inference.  On what basis is the inference made?   In terms of the story, on the antecedent transfiguration and on the still previous star shining on the field.  Ah well....   But these appearances of light in the Gospel stories are just a manner of speaking. What the accounts are saying, at bottom, is that there is a transcendental, joyous life force which really does exist; and, although we may only glimpse it or hear it for a flash  of a second, it gives us a reliance which changes the way we live and die.

Too much useless theological effort has been expended, in my view, on whether Jesus is the light or is of the light or became the light. Certainly there is an association of Jesus with light and one can make of this association what one will.  But for modern man the key is that the gospels attest to the existence of a light in and of itself.  It shines, it comes down, it takes up.  But it is.  

And its existence is what makes Christianity possible. There were early “Christians” who did not believe in the Resurrection.  They were, in fact, simply sectarian Jews who had had the experience of a particular teacher.  For them, Jesus was another moral example, another candle lit against the dark.

When St. Paul argued that “if Christ be not risen again, then is our preaching vain, your faith is vain and you are still in your sins” (1 Cor. 15:14)  what he was saying was that if this light, which swallowed Jesus up, did not truly exist as a reality -- and not as a metaphor -- then it was all pointless and one was no different from pagans and Jews.  We were, in the end, left to our own epicurean or moral devices in a dark and hopeless world.   If the dead are not raised, "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die."

In so admonishing, Paul was attesting to the existence of a light-force that shines on, permeates and eventually takes up everything, “in a flash, in the twinkling of any eye, at the last trumpet.... The dead shall be raised and we will be clothed with immortality.”  (1 Cor. 15:52.)

Our righteousness will no longer be a filthy rag, but we shall be changed into another kind of body altogether.
 

Many reduce this hope to the forecast of a better world tomorrow or a metaphor for the self-realization of a better, maximized, simpler self.   I see nothing of account in such an interpretation.

Others seek to interpret the hope as the gift of some cosmic redress which supposedly forever erased the debt of our sin which somehow keeps cropping up requiring ever more blank cheques on Sunday.  I see no basis in the Nicene Creed for this exertion in theological accounting.

Such geometries do not get us very far.  Paul was not offering a logos but stating a dynamic mystery and the mystery was, to repeat, that there exists in the world a light which by the mere fact of its existence changes everything for us in that it allows for an hypothesis of hope
.

Let us return to our initial observation that, objectively speaking, life sucks big time.  There simply is no accounting for the manifold injustices and cruelties of the world and the endless failures by mice and men in their best efforts.  In the end, we cannot do anything about it.  Anyone who thinks otherwise is being a stupid Pangloss.

A world where the grass is not trod underfoot, where the ant is not heedlessly stepped upon, where the fish is not swallowed, where the fawn is not taken down where man does not despair and weep amid his misfortunes and upturned endeavours is not the world we know and love.

Love?

The one single question, says Jung, is whether we choose to affirm or deny.  There is, he says, no reason for choosing one over the other, but everything else follows from the choice we make. 

In other words, the question is not why a deaf and impotent god allows the worst of evil to triumph.  The question is not why there is injustice or whether there is good in the world.  The question is not why am I blessed with happiness or cursed with unhappiness.  The world is what it is in all its harsh and unfair perplexity.  The question is: do we affirm or deny?  Do we say, after all and at the end of our days, it is good?  All of it.   Or do we not.

The Christian reply to Jung is that there actually is a light the mysterious existence of which gives us a reason to deny that the world is hopelessly pointless.  This light is not a “stand-in” for Jesus’s moral example and it is not a simile for our best earthly Happy Moments ... whatever they may stupidly be.

The emphasis on spatial resurrection in Christian theology is misplaced.  The truth of the Resurrection is simply the truth of a light-force in the universe.  For reasons we will never understand this light appeared conjoined with Jesus.  At least that is the attestation.  From what was seen in him, the light appears to be transfigurative.

For Christians, the personification of the light in Jesus, is a critical focus.  But that personification (and the theologies that flow from it) obscure the more simple and universal truth that, in and of itself, there is a light in the immensity universe the mere existence of which allows us to assert that all is not darkness.  That may be a slim reed, but it's all we've really got.

Permit me to duck an imputation of mumbo jumbo.   Nihil in mente nisi prius in sensu.  That such a joyful light should exist in a cold and harsh universe is a mystery, but that it does exist is a question of factual perception.  On what basis is such a perception attested to? St Paul confesses that his eyesight is weak (“We see now as through a glass darkly") but what he asserts is a seeing not an abstraction.

In the end, all our perceptions are subjective, even those on which science is based.  What makes scientific perceptions  “objective” is  that they exist as an empirical lowest common denominator among men. Their universality endows them with a corresponding credibility.   Conversely things which are not commonly seen are deemed incredulous, the product of inflamed imaginations or neurological defects. 

But not all men or all creatures are endowed with the same perceptive capacities.   Dogs hear high pitches which men do not; but do those pitches not exist?  Birds, insect and aphakic people see the ultra violet spectrum which most men do not.  Does that energy not exist?  If one imposes a lowest common sensory denominator as the pre-requisite for any and all credibility, then talk of a "light" is nonsense.   It is otherwise if one is willing to entertain the attestations of others and to consider their motives and the circumstances of their perception with an open mind. 

We may see it for a moment now, as if a flash in the dark. We may only hear of it from others we trust who attest to having seen it.   But the existence of this light which was seen in the transfiguration and in the resurrection and which was prequelled in the manger  gives us a hope that ...somehow... there is a surpassing and perhaps all embracing goodness in the world which allows us to rejoice and say... if we choose to say it... hallelujah. 



©Woodchipgazette, 2014

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A Fat Man's Game

Several years ago, an erstwhile friend announced that he was going to practice gratitude by finding at least one thing a day to be thankful for.  I was instantly appalled.   My friend, who was one of the most fortunate people I knew, had  plenty to be grateful for and hardly needed to practice very hard.  But his blessed circumstances made his announced intention appear indistinguishable from that of a wealthy man gratefully counting his coins.  It never occurred to my friend that what he ought to recite was the domine non sum dignus.

Since then I have pondered the concept of gratitude (and its correlative, forgiveness) and have become less and less at ease with either.

The basic act of gratitude is an expression of some glee at having received a desirable thing.  Whether the manifestation takes the form of a clap or a squeal it is a “joyful noise” of some sort.  This, it seems to me, is a natural response to the presence of a desirable thing.  It is that irritation we call “excitement”.

The difficulty arises from what lawyers call the mens rea — the “thought of the matter” or how the mind process the glee.  Every conscious act has an accompanying thought (duh) and the thought that accompanies a good-thing excitement is called gratefulness. 

Gratefulness consist in attributing to some external locus the causality of bringing the good thing to one’s self.  It makes no difference whether this external cause is called “God” or “Fortune” the point is that it is something external to self. 

This part of the mens rea, is an acknowledgement that one’s self is, ultimately, incapable of causing anything. God may help those who help themselves but, whether he does so or not, we ourselves are ultimately incapable of bringing about what we desire no matter how much we labour to that end.  I have no problem with this part of the mental equation.  Non nobis domine.

The difficulty comes with the “to me” part. There is no way that gratefulness can avoid exalting the ego because the self, as happy recipient of a good thing, is the co-focus of the thought.  Howsoever much one may attribute the good luck to some external causality, one cannot avoid the effect on self of that cause.  Gratefulness is a Thou-Me sort of thing, and the “me” is as integral to the thought as the Thou.

Thank you, Lord, for giving me....   We praise you, Lord, for providing us....   Oh Lord, thank you for allowing me...   Me ... Me.... Me...  Me....  It’s obnoxious and the only function the “Thou, Oh Lord” part really serves is to drape a mantel of spurious outwardness over ME.

God helps those...  But what of the many times when he doesn’t?  Does the man whose efforts have come to naught give thanks?  Did Christ give thanks from the Cross? 

No he did not.  He submitted to God’s will and according to one account he forgave his nailers; but he did not give thanks and, in the first account at least, rather expressed his uncomprehending sense of betrayal by that God who more often than not betrays his own.

Gratitude it seems to me is a typically Protestant concept; one that, in essence, rewards oneself for one’s good fortune while, rather cavalierly, discounting the ill fortune endured by most others.

How is it possible to thank God for receiving a good thing without being thankful for that very circumstance the other side of which entails not affording a good thing to another?  Or does God spread his providence around equally to all?

To every intonation of gratitude for the good things we have been provided there is a coda which says “....and not like those whom Thou, Oh Lord, in thy Unsurpassing Goodness, have deemed unworthy of dust!”

What shall I be pleading

When the Just are mercy needing?

That mens rea which acknowledges one’s complete unworthiness for whatever good thing one has encountered in life is a different species of consciousness.  But the more I have contemplated it, the more Thanksgiving appears to me to be rather vile.  It is a fat man’s game.

External Locus of Danger -- Dipsomania as Policy

We Chipsters have never liked “Winnie” Churchill.  Not that it matters but we have always considered him to be nothing but a belligerent drunk; and that was very much the prevailing opinion of him at the time by more sober members of the British Establishment, at least until wartime propaganda metamorphosed him into the doughty Saviour of Civilization.

It now turns out, as per secret FBI archives, that following the defeat of Nazi Germany, Churchill was on the warpath again jaw-jawing U.S. senators in a gambit to get President Truman to “nuke the Kremlin.”

Once again, Churchill pulled out his hoarse and raspy stops stating that “ the only salvation for the civilisation of the world would be if the President of the United States would declare Russia to be imperilling world peace and attack Russia’.  It this were not done, Churchill intoned, “civilisation will be wiped out or set back many years."

Where have we heard this crap before?  And if we have heard the song before what does that tell us about the before?

Churchill was a warmongering psychopath whose life juices (“blood” is too sober a word) flowed only when inventing and charging at some direful enemy be it the Boers, “savages” in the Sudan, minions of darkness in Berlin and, now, Bolshevik Belzebubs in Moscow. 

Thomas Maier, author of the upcoming book Lions Roar, in which the disclosure is made, makes excuses for the alcoholic monster explaining  “I think he saw a nuclear strike as just another progression of conventional warfare, until he realised there was a lot more devastation with nuclear weapons.”

HUH?  Was Churchill talking to pink elephants in August of 1945?  The statements at issue were made in 1947, well two years after anyone who might not have anticipated the effects of nuclear weapons could not longer be in the dark about them.

The plain fact is that Churchill was a genocidal monster who thought nothing of wiping out millions.  Just as he was an early proponent of area bombing of civilians and just as he had urged the “extermination” and “annihilation” of the German people so too, it turns out, he advocated nuking “the Kremlin” making it “a very easy problem to handle the balance of Russia, which would be without direction."

The interesting thing for current purposes is that the same dire language of projecting one’s own intents onto an external locus of danger perdures in the Newspeak of the American Establishment.

0 and 1

It was reported earlier in the week, in a tittering sort of way, that Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, sometimes wondered if God were really there.  Oh my.

 Infinity

Welby explained that, "The other day I was praying over something while I was running and I ended up saying to God, 'this is all very well, but isn't it about time you did something, if you're there,' which is not probably what the Archbishop of Canterbury should say...."

The bishop prays to God while jogging?  Only in the Church of England is such a thing possible.

To be fair, though, Welby wasn’t really praying but rather chatting with himself during which he entertained doubts as to God’s existence, presence or love. 

Le silence eternal de ces espaces infinis m’effraie. (Pascal) It is hardly a new question and anyone who has not doubted is not human.  The archbishop understands this, for he explicitly cited Psalms 22, 44 and 88, those great cries of the doubting heart and despair

Wherefore hidest thou thy face, and forgettest our affliction and our oppression?

But Welby resolved the despair with a trite and blatant recourse to an external locus of control,

"The extraordinary thing about being a Christian, is that God is faithful even when we are not.  ... So  there may be people here whose life is a complete havoc and they know they've really messed up and God doesn't say, 'once you're out of the mess we'll move on together', he says, 'I'm right here, let's start dealing with this together'."

The extraordinary thing is that is exactly what Psalm 44 does not say, 

Thou hast cast off, and put us to shame; yet have we not forgotten thee, neither have we dealt falsely in thy covenant, although thou hast sore broken us in the place of dragons, and covered us with the shadow of death

Who is doing the forgetting here?

Welby is skirting the issue with happy talk.  It is one thing to say that faith is not a resolution but a commitment — a determination to act as if the Great Tomorrow were here.   But it is childish to invert and externalize that formula into an assertion that He is here, even if we don’t know it or feel it or see any evidence of any good that comes from it.

It seems to me that Welby is simply supplying noise to the silence and fattening his flock with the thickness self-importance.

It all boils down to 0 or 1; either you work on loosing your ego or on building it.  You are either a rope or you pass through the eye of a needle.

Building ego proceeds on the assumption that the “I” is worth maximizing or perfecting.  The assumption is that one can be more, do more and have more.  Even when one is “weeding” out imperfections, resisting bad propensities, overcoming sin or "centering," one is doing so not to become less, but to maximize what are conceived to be the strengths and potentials of self-hood.  Even when the ego is conceived of as being perfected through usefulness or service to others, it is still given importance in so far as it is assumed that it can effect things of importance.

True selflessness, the zero, is just the opposite.  It begins with the realization that one has achieved nothing, has acquired nothing and is nothing to anyone .. even to God.   This is an absolute.  It is not an exercise in order to then be something; it is a permanent realization. I am dust; the end.

One can imagine that one is nothing by looking at photographs of mass assemblies and realizing that every minuscule dot in the picture was once its own universe of importances, just as one’s self, and that the dot is now nothing, nowhere.  That dot, that individual face, felt cold and heat, the urge to dump and the urge to fuck, the glow of triumph, the confusion and sorrow of defeat, the fear of loss and the joy of love and procreation.   One can imagine one’s insignificance by pondering upon all the generations of hands that crafted the pyramids, the skyscrapers, the great ships and marvelous machines or by thinking upon all the generations of men which have been mowed like grass in bloody conflicts. Vanity of vanities; all are all nothing, nowhere.

But these imaginings do little more than frighten us... that is, our ego.  They are an induced “low” which is no better than an induced “high”.

The true zero is achieved only on the cross, after a via crucis, when one hangs naked, useless, failed, forsaken and forgotten.

True zero is not given to all, but only to those who still living have been reduced to living dust — those who are homeless, friendless, childless and of no account to anyone.

This is what the Crucifixion represents: to be strung up,  forgotten and then tossed into the pit, dead meat for mangy dogs.  

But surely there follows a resurrection?   This is surely what the one wants to believe.  But to believe as much is simply to turn a zero into a one.  It is a disbelief which stands for a refusal to accept that one is nothing. It is a negation which seeks to turn the via crucis into a technique of self potentializing. 

When you mean nothing to any one, endowing yourself with significance is simply an act of pure ego.

Is there life after zero?  I suspect not.  This is the question Welby is too trite to answer.   What one thinks of the hereafter depends on one’s opinion of one’s self.

At the end of the day, the ego hopes to be taken up in burst of joyous light.  Whether it is forever or a momentary contact with the forever it is an ascent into laughter and light.  

At the end of the day, the zero is content that darkness is pulled over all, that strife and life and pain are at an end, and that nothing follows upon nothing. 

 Dust

The poor inherit the kingdom of heaven because there is nothing there.

Lord,   day and night I cry out to you.


2    May my prayer come before you;
  turn your ear to my cry.

3    I am overwhelmed with troubles
  and my life draws near to death.


4    I am counted among those who go down to the pit;
  I am like one without strength.


5   I am set apart with the dead,
  like the slain who lie in the grave,
whom you remember no more,
  who are cut off from your care.

6   You have put me in the lowest pit,
  in the darkest depths.


7   Your wrath lies heavily on me;
  you have overwhelmed me with all your waves.


8   You have taken from me my closest friends
  and have made me repulsive to them.
  I am confined and cannot escape;


9   My eyes are dim with grief.  I call to you, Lord, every day;
  I spread out my hands to you.


10   Do you show your wonders to the dead?
   Do their spirits rise up and praise you?


11   Is your love declared in the grave,
    your faithfulness in Destruction?


12   Are your wonders known in the place of darkness,
  or your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion?

13   But I cry to you for help, Lord;  in the morning my prayer comes before you.


14   Why, Lord, do you reject me
  and hide your face from me?

15  From my youth I have suffered and been close to death;
  I have borne your terrors and am in despair.


16  Your wrath has swept over me;
  your terrors have destroyed me.


17   All day long they surround me like a flood;
  they have completely engulfed me.


18   You have taken from me friend and neighbor—
  darkness is my closest friend.

To Invoke and Pervert

Needless to say, Obama’s peroration before the General Assembly  was all that we expected it to be.  Predictably enough, after acknowledging the slight imperfections in our inherent goodness, he launched forward with Babies to the Fire, denouncing the unspeakable, yet depicted, horrors and evils of the Satanic Caliphate.

"But in this century, we have faced a more lethal and ideological brand of terrorists who have perverted one of the world’s great religions. With access to technology that allows small groups to do great harm, they have embraced a nightmarish vision that would divide the world into adherents and infidels – killing as many innocent civilians as possible; and employing the most brutal methods to intimidate people within their communities.

Casting of the Innocents (Alexander Nevsky, 1938, Eisenstein)

"First, the terrorist group known as ISIL must be degraded, and ultimately destroyed.  This group has terrorized all who they come across in Iraq and Syria. Mothers, sisters and daughters have been subjected to rape as a weapon of war. Innocent children have been gunned down. Bodies have been dumped in mass graves. Religious minorities have been starved to death. In the most horrific crimes imaginable, innocent human beings have been beheaded, with videos of the atrocity distributed to shock the conscience of the world."

The only surprise was that he did not resurrect the kadaververwertungsanstalt.  Otherwise, Obama sounded entirely like Pope Urban II,

"From the confines of Jerusalem and the city of Constantinople a horrible tale has gone forth and very frequently has been brought to our ears, namely, that a race from the kingdom of the Persians, an accursed race, a race utterly alienated from God, a generation forsooth which has not directed its heart and has not entrusted its spirit to God, has invaded the lands of those Christians and has depopulated them by the sword, pillage and fire; it has led away a part of the captives into its own country, and a part it has destroyed by cruel tortures; it has either entirely destroyed the churches of God or appropriated them for the rites of its own religion. They destroy the altars, after having defiled them with their uncleanness. They circumcise the Christians, and the blood of the circumcision they either spread upon the altars or pour into the vases of the baptismal font. When they wish to torture people by a base death, they perforate their navels, and dragging forth the extremity of the intestines, bind it to a stake; then with flogging they lead the victim around until the viscera having gushed forth the victim falls prostrate upon the ground. Others they bind to a post and pierce with arrows. Others they compel to extend their necks and then, attacking them with naked swords, attempt to cut through the neck with a single blow. What shall I say of the abominable rape of the women? To speak of it is worse than to be silent. "  [1] 

So, here we are, on the anniversary of 9/11, once again sounding the trumpet for another crusade, although this time the bluster is hedged about with demurrers.  Not for Obama the unapologetic bluster of a Bush; rather the honeyed poison of an Urban. 

But the man who applies this salt should be prudent, provident, modest, learned, peaceable, watchful, pious, just, equitable, and pure. For how can the ignorant teach others? How can the licentious make others modest? And how can the impure make others pure?  ...  first correct yourselves, in order that, free from blame , you may be able to correct those who are subject to you. If you wish to be the friends of God, gladly do the things which you know will please Him.   .. Let therefore hatred depart from among you, let your quarrels end, let wars cease, and let all dissensions and controversies slumber. Enter upon the road to the Holy Sepulchre; wrest that land from the wicked race, and subject it to yourselves

 And so Obama,

"We have not invested adequately in the public health capacity of developing countries. Too often, we have failed to enforce international norms when it’s inconvenient to do so. And we have not confronted forcefully enough the intolerance, sectarianism, and hopelessness that feeds violent extremism in too many parts of the globe.  . . .

"We reject fatalism or cynicism when it comes to human affairs; we choose to work for the world as it should be, as our children deserve it to be.  ....  We believe that right makes might – that bigger nations should not be able to bully smaller ones; that people should be able to choose their own future. ...  America is committed to a development agenda that eradicates extreme poverty by 2030.  ...  I realize that America’s critics will be quick to point out that at times we too have failed to live up to our ideals; that America has plenty of problems within our own borders.  .  . .

"I know the world also took notice of the small American city of Ferguson, Missouri – where a young man was killed, and a community was divided. So yes, we have our own racial and ethnic tensions. And like every country, we continually wrestle with how to reconcile the vast changes wrought by globalization and greater diversity with the traditions that we hold dear.   . . .

"But we welcome the scrutiny of the world – because what you see in America is a country that has steadily worked to address our problems and make our union more perfec ...  We are heirs to a proud legacy of freedom, and we are prepared to do what is necessary to secure that legacy for generations to come. Join us in this common mission, for today’s children and tomorrow’s.

But true to pattern, as Urban II had invoked the will of God, so too Obama sought to clothe his war on ISIS in the mantel of just necessity.  After deploring the rape of virgins and the slaughter of innocents, Obama intoned,

No God condones this terror. No grievance justifies these actions. There can be no reasoning – no negotiation – with this brand of evil. The only language understood by killers like this is the language of force. So the United States of America will work with a broad coalition to dismantle this network of death.

The significance of this statement is apt to be overlooked until one takes note of the conditions the Church places on the invocation of the Just War Doctrine, viz:

 

 [The] Just War doctrine gives certain conditions for the legitimate exercise of force, all of which must be met:

1. the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain; 

2. all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective; 

3. there must be serious prospects of success; 

4. the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition" [Catech. Cath. Church § 2309].  [2]

The Church’s just war doctrine, while reinforced by the example of Christ, derives in major part from Cicero who is generally credited with being the first to enunciate pre-conditions for just war,

Then, too, in the case of a state in its external relations, the rights of war must be strictly observed. For since there are two ways of settling a dispute: first, by discussion; second, by physical force; and since the former is characteristic of man, the latter of the brute, we must resort to force only in case we may not avail ourselves of discussion.  ( Cicero, De officiis (On Moral Duties), 1.11.33-1.13.41.)

For Cato as for the Church, the essence of a just war is necessity — necessity, not expedience.  The Church’s preconditions nail down what Cato had left a tad fuzzy: necessity must be demonstrated not merely argued.  

The second condition of a just war is explicit and clear to anyone who understands English, viz:  all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective.

 “Must have been shown”  is not the same as “There can be no reasoning – no negotiation.” The second precondition requires that non violent attempts at resolution be made and, having been made, be shown to be fruitless.   Hypothetically asserting that it would be pointless to engage in negations is not a demonstration of anything.  It is a mere assertion.  If necessity is left to mere assertion then the entire construct collapses into a heap of rhetorical amour-propre.

Thus, the Church’s doctrine prescribes a mode of conduct not a mode of argument.   At no time did Obama claim to have attempted negotiations with ISIS.  Instead he supplanted the requirement of necessity with an ipse dixit of hypothetical impossibility.

The speech delivered this morning was trademark Obama.   It contained all the usual nods to humanitarian ideals and progressive goals.  It feigned a humble acknowledgement of our own imperfections. It held out the “hope” of a more just and equitable world.    But all this, as usual, was the cotton candy fluff around the big stick of “diplomacy by force”.

We chipsters are not persuaded that the doctrine of just war is itself justifiable.  Contrary to oft-asserted mistake the doctrine is not found in either St. Augustine or St. Anselm.  The passage usually cited from Augustine’s City of God, is a literal aside wrenched out of context from a discussion of the Roman Empire’s linguistic and cultural homogeneity.

Early Christians (like Augustine) were quite familiar with Cato’s moral teaching and were equally adamant that there could be no appeasement of violence.  By that they meant exactly the opposite of what we mean today.  They did not mean that we had to fight violence but rather that we needed not to hand ourselves over to violence — that we had to suffer it instead of giving in to it.

"A Christian must not become a soldier, unless he is compelled by a chief bearing the sword. He is not to burden himself with the sin of blood. But if he has shed blood, he is not to partake of the mysteries, unless he is purified by a punishment, tears, and wailing. He is not to come forward deceitfully but in the fear of God.” (Apostolic Canons of St. Hippolytus XII-XVI)

“The safety of the City of God, however, is of such a kind that it can be possessed, or rather acquired, only with faith and through faith; and when faith is lost, no one can attain to that safety.” (Augustine, City of God, Book 22, ch. 6.)

Thus, Clement of Alexandria described the Church as “an army which sheds no blood.”

"If you enroll as one of God’s people, heaven is your country and God your lawgiver. And what are His laws? You shall not kill, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Protrepticus 11, 116)

The evidence is overwhelming that the early Church did not espouse a just war doctrine but rather forbade a resort to violence in all cases.  Period.

But the apple of self-preservation is too tempting.  The rationale for a resort to violence was first enunciated by St. Constantine-Cyril in 851 when those pesky Muslims were besieging Constantinople.   During a diplomatic parlay in 851, Caliph Mutawakki’s negotiating team opened up with quotes from the Gospel of Mathew,

"Your God is Christ. He commanded you to pray for your enemies, to do good to those who hate and persecute you, and to offer the other cheek to those who hit you. But what do you actually do? If anyone offends you, you sharpen your sword and go into battle and kill. Why do you not obey your Christ?" (The Orthodox Church and Society VIII.2)

To which St. Constantine-Cyril responded

"Christ is our God Who ordered us to pray for our offenders and to do good to them. He also said that no one of us can show greater love in life than he who gives his life for his friends That is why we generously endure offences caused us as private people. But in company we defend one another and give our lives in battle for our neighbors, so that you, having taken our companions as prisoners, could not imprison their souls together with their bodies by forcing them into renouncing their faith."

It was unalloyed Greek sophistry which quick-switched from referencing the collective we to talking about the we as individuals.   Nay! Nay! We are not defending ourselves.  Perish the thought.  We are defending our neighbor — the old, the weak, the virgin, the innocent; each of us defending the other — like Christ — laying our lives down for others.  No greater love hath man than this: than to bash the skull and pierce the gut of his adversary for the sake of his fellow man.   All of which ignored the salient fact that Christ laid down his life by suffering violence, not indulging it.

We mention these things not with any expectation that the United States (or even, for that matter France) will espouse Christian pacifism, but to illustrate how far Obama has fallen from any semblance justness.

The Church’s doctrine of just war is a compromise — an appeasement of violence.  It forgoes the gold and goes for the brass, seeking restrict violence to cases of last and necessary resort.

It is not an unreasonable rule but it is little better than Cato and falls short of Socrates.  Obama does not even touch Cato’s toga.  His speech before the U.N. General Assembly was more of the same high sounding, self-inflated exceptionalism for which he and his countrymen are renown.

Bleh.

But surely, it will be said, ISIS is a bunch of brutal barbarians who cannot be allowed to mow a path of blood with the Crescents of their scythes!

Like others we were appalled by the images of the beheadings and at least like some others have tried to fathom the mind behind the hand in such deeds.

Our quandary was put into perspective by a Canadian — a rather Tory type at that — who responded to a comment on how slow and sadistic the beheadings were by remarking that they were at least quicker than executions in Missouri.

Where was the incredulous outrage when,  in 2006, U.S. soldiers strung up and beat a 21 year old Afghan cab driver for four days running until, as the coroner put it, his legs were, pulpified.   

Is death by “pulpification” any less brutal?  At the time, we called this matter to the attention of several senators and not one bothered with a reply.   After all, it is not brutal when we, the exceptional Murkans, do it.

This is not to condone violence by a specious tu quoque but rather to point out the wages of violence when one gives in to it.

Humans whether American, German or Russian, whether Jewish, Muslim or Shinto, do terrible things, without exception, when they resort to violence.  ISIS should not be held to an arbitrarily higher standard.  It is par for the course. 

Dilawar’s pulpified body was never broadcast on the nightly news; nor are we treated to images of the collateral death inflicted on wedding guests by our drones; and, when Israel, reduces neighborhoods to rubble and children to limp and charred flesh it is called a “justified reprisal.”

Reprisal in Gaza

Which perhaps sheds some light on ISL’s dark motives. 

There is a controversial rule of war which allows belligerents to take reprisals against the opposing party.  Reprisals refer to acts which are illegal if taken alone, but become legal when adopted by one state in retaliation for the commission of an earlier illegal act by another state.

Reprisals are (or have been) allowed against non-combatants in retaliation against acts of sabotage or killings by partisans and other non-official combatants. 

Needless to say, much misinformation and propaganda surrounds this murky and unhappy aspect of international and customary law.  All countries — including the exceptional United States — have engaged in reprisals.  Most of the German reprisals during the second world war were illegal not in principle but because they were excessive. 

Nevertheless, despite the volumes of arcana and hair-splitting, the law of reprisal ends up being an attempt to put a reasonable face on all hell and its minions.  Riddled with conditions and exceptions, no real sense can be imposed upon eruptions of chaos.

There is thus a trend in international law toward outlawing all reprisals (and certainly all reprisals against non-combatants), but this is counterbalanced by an equal and opposite tendency to accept routine and predictable collateral damage as legitimate. In other words, when the "non-reprisal" is done impersonally and with banality.

Pondering these things, it seems to us that ISL’s notorious beheadings are conceived by them as forms of reprisal; and they have, in fact, usually been accompanied by some sort of retaliatory justification.

What this indicates is that ISL’s conduct (to the extent that a unitary control purpose can be supposed) is not animated by pure and arbitrary sado-barbarism, as Obama has claimed, but rather by the more conventional cruelty in pursuit of a geo-political purpose. 

It is a significant distinction.  There was no negotiating with the U.S. thugs who pulpified Dilawar because their conduct was no less and no more than indulgence in sadism for the sheer pleasure of it.  They were not trying to achieve anything other than to inflict pain on Dilawar and thus there was nothing to negotiate or bargain.

But when cruelty is retaliatory and is used as a means of attaining some military or geo-political alternative, then (despite the sordid distaste) there is something which can be achieved by negotiation.

The people who control U.S. policy understand this.  They (more than the rest of us) know what a disgusting enterprise the making of sausages is.  They have been, are and will always be disposed to negotiating with cads of the lowest order if they think something can be gained thereby.  A few beheadings will not stop America in her tracks!

The spectre of arbitrary and sadistic brutality is invoked merely to buttress the a priori argument that there could be no point in trying to negotiate with such inhuman beasts and therefore a resort to violence is justified.

The only thing demonstrated on Wednesday is that is the shameless hypocrisy of U.S. policy.

Urbama I

©WCG, 2014

Auld Lang Syne

Ian Black has written a long and delectable article in The Guardian in which mourns the loss of "Britishness" which, he thinks, Scottish Independence will ring out. ... or is it "in"?

The Kings Own

Black's article begins, actually, in Injia at the close of The Raj, and with a discussion of Nirad Chaudhuri's  The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian,  in the course of which Black observes that
 

"his love of Britain sometimes seemed one of the few unconfected aspects of his persona, and though it came with its share of wilful mannerisms and maxims (such as his belief that British food could only be truly enjoyed if the eater wore British clothes), his appreciation of the country’s history, literature and landscape was profound. ....

Only in Britain could it be said that "clothes make the food." 

One might very well begin a comment in the FRENCH manner, by observing, indirectly and tangentially that the article, wonderfully, begins in just that way: with Indian observations a propos Scotland. Are we not tired of “direct and to the point” Americanisms?

This is one of the better stuffs the Guardian has rolled out in recent memory, and the stuff rather proves itself (that is to say, “its point”) : there is something known as Britishness.

That said, I think the article overlooks the historicity that is taking place (or at least kicking in the womb) and that is: the death of the nation state.

Nation states and empires arose primarily from material and economic motives The word “nation” was originally used to refer to a network of Genovese banker/merchants.   In 1788, Spain's Count of Aranda put it this way: “...the new form of government will call forth laborers and artisans from all nations, because men go where they think fortune will smile.... Thus aggrandized, we should foresee that this Anglo-American power.....” He meant, of course, the United States and was prophesying that it would become a strong, unitary, nation on account of the material motives and emotive hopes for which it provided both the opportunity and the form.

But the nation state -- which gave rise to the Spanish, French, British and American empires-- no longer exists except as an empty shell.  As far back as 1994, Le Monde published a series of articles on how nation states had lost control over their own political economies and, thus, over their own destinies.  Twenty years on and it is evident that the UK and the US in particular have become mere agencies of a new political-economic cluster: the corporation, a form of feudalism which is instrumentalizing and at the same time breaking down the nation state.  History has seen this before.

This may seem absurd as the United States bombastically flexes its muscles around the world. But bombast is all that is really left. The nation no longer meets the material fortunes of individuals or reflects their collective sense of — usness... or in the UK’s case of ushness.

Britain has become the province of “the financial sector” which seeks to privatize the country. The Scots see this and wish not to break away, but actually to create a new and revived sense of Britishness, closely apart.

Definitely worth the Uniform

©

The Bright Side of Darkness

Chipsters were chatting among themselves the other day about our political leadership when someone remarked that, in his opinion, Obama had not wasted any time in going back on his campaign promises the day after he was sworn in.

That was hardly surprising, we replied.  Just because Obama was a Black man did not mean that he wasn’t ambitious.

Of course not.

And, it seemed to us, he had carefully set his sights and tacked his course, early on in college, so as to always compromise his position to a safe point of view.

Yes...

Is there any politician in the the United States who does not know on which side his bread is buttered?

I doubt it...


Every one of them knows who and what forces rule the country, do they not?

For sure.

And that means that their political existence and purpose consists in serving those interests?

No doubt.

Then all the rest is simply variations of bullshit politicians use to appeal to and bamboozle their constituents.  If Mitch McConnell were to move to California and Barbara Boxer to Kentucky, they would simply switch their bullshit so as to conform to whatever sold in their new electoral location.

That’s depressing.

Depression shall make you free. 

©