This is a species of idolatry, which is what you get when you forget what is real, and what the purpose of your activity actually is. Swords have their uses.
Obama wants this economy. I say give it to him. Given the extent of our borrowing, the taxes won’t make a dent, but Obama can’t blame 10% joblessness in two years on anyone but himself IF we give him what he wants.
In many cases, this will likely fall on deaf ears, but that is my feeling. The American people want to be lied to, and only suffering will make them listen to anyone but the Pied Piper.
And I was standing on a ladder today, thinking of Woody Allen and George Bernard Shaw, both warped, awful human beings in their own ways, but also gifted with a talent for wit, and psychological insight. We speak of Shavian Wit. Allen has been a steady feature of our cultural landscape for, what, 40 years? Both are intelligent. Both understand people.
But both have (had) something deep inside of them that drives them, that is unnamed, unacknowledged, hidden. When we see Woody Allen being neurotic, what we need to see is someone who goes through the motions of caring about others, who goes through the motions of emotions, but who in my view is really quite cold and calculating at the core of his being. So, too, was Shaw, who called for the invention of a poison gas to kill undesirables, all while smiling genteelly.
Constant abstraction, perhaps, is often a smoke concealing a fire.
I will add, actually, that I had a dream some time ago, in which I climbed down a ladder, into an underground area, where Noam Chomsky was cajoling people to jump off a cliff into a pool far below, saying “the water’s fine”. Many jumped.
My interpretation then was that he was convincing people to lower qualitative levels, to lower, less desirable emotional and intellectual states, which I certainly believe he did and does. But now, when I apply the idea that ALL parts of every dream contain an element of me, I see that he symbolized for me the state of concealing abstraction. He symbolized for me the power to avoid emoting through thinking, and in so doing reducing myself, lowering myself.
This is interesting to me, at least. If your existence is the thorn which pricks you, what do you become when it disappears?
A coherent, non-decadent society depends first and foremost on duties, on everyone carrying their share. The core contention of socialists is that no matter how lazy and stupid you are, you deserve to be cared for, and it is the DUTY of SOMEONE ELSE to do it.
Quite literally, the only duty they demand of those who support them is that they vote for them, and campaign for them. That’s it.
Decadence, though, is when you think first and foremost about yourself, and only secondarily about others, the society as a whole.
And I want to reiterate that Capitalism–if we ignore the Monetary Mercantilists–is a system in which greed can ONLY be satisfied by providing something people want at a price they are willing to pay, and doing it earlier and/or better than anyone else. The only exceptions are when government steps in to protect monopolies, when it uses taxpayer money to buy political support, and in cases of outright graft and fraud, which are both illegal, and which WOULD be prosecuted by a non-corrupt government.
I was looking at my bookshelves this morning. I purge them from time to time, but I still have at least 500 books, many of which I have not read [this is off topic, but some are what I call “eternity” books, by which I mean that I would read them if time were endless, but which I can’t justify reading now, when I have so many projects that–rightly or wrongly–I feel warrant my attention and execution].
What I was thinking is that all of them are portals, gateways, to something else. They have no meaning in themselves, except in terms of what they do to you, to how you think, how you feel, how you interact with OUT THERE. Books are not and should not be an end to themselves. They are meant to support action, doing, daring, feeling, discovering, failing, succeeding.
I think the failure to understand this is perhaps one of the root failures of our intelligentsia. Far better the carpenter who reads to relax than the academic who does nothing else. The latter quite literally sucks intelligence out of the room, since he has abandoned the project of improving the world, outside of the politics he attaches to himself as an ersatz conscience.
When you look at “writers” like Jacques Derrida, the text is literally and specifically made the end. He reveled in his very uselessness.
A true Liberal Arts curriculum would support businessmen, politicians, and manual laborers in guiding our nation into the future. What we have is systematic deception, intellectual corruption, and systematic failures in synchrony between thought and action.
I was dreaming yesterday of a time ten years from now, or so, when thousands of men and women would converge somewhere to build a literal old style stone cathedral to Goodness, to a renewed sense of national–global–identity, purpose, and wholeness (which again in my iteration includes countless room for individual expression). We would have to relearn stonemasonry. We could use doctors and lawyers, and academics. It would be a grand adventure.
I am likely ridiculous, but so too was the person who dreamt up Notre Dame. Castles in the mind become castles in the sky become roofs and steeples that shelter one from the rain.
It seems to me likely that cell phones would have been used in the coordination of the Benghazi attack. What did we capture? What did we know? Would the calls not have started long before the stinky mobs in bathrobes started showing up? This is a question worth asking.
Is it possible that we were allowing Libyan Intelligence–perhaps with CIA supervision–to operate torture chambers in the back of the Embassy, without telling Christopher Stevens, that he found out, and that he was killed because he was going to tell people? It sure seems like nobody in Obama’s inner circle was concerned about his death. It also seems likely that Obama and Clinton would have been willing to do nearly anything to make their Libya policy a success, or at least seem that way.
Most Christians are taught social conformity through a sort of Pavlovian conditioning. In many Protestant sects they are taught to fear hell, and learn to more or less behave through fear and social reinforcement. Catholics are simply born into a community, and if you want to remain in that community, you do what everyone else is doing.
Many Christians remember the fate of the Sodomites, but not “judge not lest ye be judged”, and “take no thought for the morrow; sufficient unto the day is the evil therein”.
This article is interesting, and I will quote bit of it at length:
Many years ago, a team of researchers at the department of
anthropology at the University of Minnesota decided to put this
association to the test. They studied certain fringe religious groups,
such as fundamentalist Baptists, Pentecostalists and the snake-handlers
of West Virginia, to see if they showed the particular type of
psychopathology associated with mental illness. Members of mainstream
Protestant churches from a similar social and financial background
provided a good control group for comparison. Some of the wilder
fundamentalists prayed with what can only be described as great and
transcendental ecstasy, but there was no obvious sign of any particular
psychopathology among most of the people studied. After further
analysis, however, there appeared a tendency to what can only be
described as mental instability in one particular group. The study was
blinded, so that most of the research team involved with questionnaires
did not have access to the final data. When they were asked which group
they thought would show the most disturbed psychopathology, the whole
team identified the snake-handlers. But when the data were revealed, the
reverse was true: there was more mental illness among the conventional
Protestant churchgoers – the “extrinsically” religious – than among the
fervently committed.A Harvard psychologist named Gordon Allport
did some key research in the 1950s on various kinds of human prejudice
and came up with a definition of religiosity that is still in use today.
He suggested that there were two types of religious commitment –
extrinsic and intrinsic. Extrinsic religiosity he defined as religious
self-centredness. Such a person goes to church or synagogue as a means
to an end – for what they can get out of it. They might go to church to
be seen, because it is the social norm in their society, conferring
respectability or social advancement. Going to church (or synagogue)
becomes a social convention.Allport thought that intrinsic
religiosity was different. He identified a group of people who were
intrinsically religious, seeing their religion as an end in itself. They
tended to be more deeply committed; religion became the organising
principle of their lives, a central and personal experience. In support
of his research, Allport found that prejudice was more common in those
individuals who scored highly for extrinsic religion.
The evidence
generally is that intrinsic religiosity seems to be associated with
lower levels of anxiety and stress, freedom from guilt, better
adjustment in society and less depression. On the other hand, extrinsic
religious feelings – where religion is used as a way to belong to and
prosper within a group – seem to be associated with increased tendencies
to guilt, worry and anxiety.
To my way of thinking “religion”, which comes from a root word meaning “to bind”, is unhealthy. It is too monolithic, too large, to impersonal, too inaccessible. I have tried to come up with new words, but the best I have at this point is “Wholotropic Telearchy”, which is unwieldy. “That” would be a good substitute, when referring to something existing and organic. Names are only needed outside the circle.
I think a proper spiritual unit is about the size of a classroom, roughly 24 people. 24 people can know one another well.
What the goal is, though, is shared understanding, shared commitments, to one another, and to everyone else.
As I think about it, somebody came up with the word “holons”, which I will spell “Wholons’. That is not bad. I have proposed “bohannon” for reasons which frankly are opaque even to me.
What I would propose is the obvious thought that what is ALIVE, MOVES. Things that don’t move, that don’t grow, that don’t interact with the world at least through a need for food and oxygen, are not alive.
Something driven down into the ground with a stake, and to which an endless array of ropes is attached, is not alive, not spiritual, not Good.
I am moving. Interesting things may be on the way.
1 Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven.
2 Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
3 But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth:
4 That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly.
5 And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the
hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in
the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say
unto you, They have their reward.
6 But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet,
and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in
secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.
7 But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.
8 Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.
9 After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.
10 Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven.
11 Give us this day our daily bread.
12 And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.
14 For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you:
15 But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
16 Moreover when ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
17 But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thine head, and wash thy face;
18 That thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in secret: and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly.
19 Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:
20 But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:
21 For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
22 The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.
23 But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!
24 No man can serve two masters: for either he will
hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and
despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
25 Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?
26 Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not,
neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father
feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?
27 Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?
28 And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:
29 And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
30 Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?
31 Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?
32 (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.
33 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.
34 Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for
the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto
the day is the evil thereof.
I woke up this morning thinking “seek ye first the kingdom of God”, and started crying. I don’t know why. My detractors (sundry) will likely term me whiny, or mentally unbalanced, or [does it really matter?]. I try to tell the truth on this blog. God only knows how rare full sincerity is in on this Earth. People are like hardened Earth, having forgotten rain. I certainly don’t tell all, but what I tell is my truth, relatively unfiltered. And it helps that while I don’t exactly hide my name, I don’t put it out there either.
Heaven is on Earth. Heaven is a state of mind. It is an openness to experience, an emotional strength that enables you to persists in the face of grief, heartache and disappointment. None of those things is real, in the end. All of us are granted access to infinite light at the end of our days if we just soldier on as well as we can.
I watched “Cold Mountain” last night for the second time, and after having forgotten some of the plot twists. What I had not forgotten was the old lady in the woods, who even while loving her goat slit its throat because someone needed to eat to live. She did not harden her heart, or engage in useless sentimentality because it pleased her. She did what had to be done because it had to be done.
If you ponder the whole of the plotline, there is a theme of destiny, not less weak than in Forest Gump (which is in many respects as profound a meditation on love as any I’ve seen). As Maddy put it:
See, I think there’s a plan. There’s a design for each and every one of
us. You look at nature. Bird flies somewhere, picks up a seed, shits the
seed out, plant grows. Bird’s got a job, shit’s got a job, seed’s got a
job. And you’ve got a job.
The Kingdom of Heaven is your job, your duty–your dharma, as the Hindus would put it, and as the Buddhists would put it with a slightly different meaning. It is accepting whatever hand you were dealt with grace and even pride. That is all God wants, in my view, all He needs: your destiny.
Work hard and be well. Perhaps that is the whole creed. And when that doesn’t work, repeat.
And with respect to the verses above, is it not obvious that if you are simply erecting a facade, it will blow over in any wind? Build something worth building.
And if you place your trust in work and sincerity and in a desire to be good, this does not mean you will be fed. It does not mean you will be clothed. It means you can ACCEPT this. Is it not better to be poor in sober self respect, than the richest man on Earth who hates himself?
The things that matter cannot be weighed or laid next to a ruler. Death is no end, unless it starts in your heart; and it continues until you remember life.
Drink and be well, You say.
“Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.” William Ellery Channing.
“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little”. Edmund Burke
“Remember, a person who wins success may have been counted out many times before. He wins because he refused to give up.” Kemmons Wilson
“It is the character of a brave and resolute man not to be ruffled by adversity and not to desert his post.” Cicero.
“Believe it is possible to solve your problems. Tremendous things happen to the believer. So believe the answer will come, It will.” Norman Vincent Peale.
“Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die; and none are fit to die who have shrunk from the joy of life and the duty of life. Both life and death are parts of the same Great Adventure.” TR
“A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral”. Antoine de Saint-Exupery
“Real difficulties can be overcome; it is only the imaginary ones that are unconquerable.” Theodore N. Vail.