Equipment plundered from dozens of sites in Saddam Hussein's vast complex for manufacturing weapons is beginning to surface in open markets in Iraq's major cities and at border crossings.Well, I guess we can say that before the invasion, ordinary Iraqis were denied their right to bear arms; or arm bears; or to sell spare parts bac to us for our invastion. Or something. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em, huh?
Looters stormed the sites two years ago when Mr. Hussein's government fell, and the fate of much of the equipment has remained a mystery.
But on a recent day near the Iranian border, resting in great chunks on a weedy lot in front of an Iraqi Border Patrol warehouse, were pieces of machine tools, some weighing as much as a car, that investigators say formed the heart of a factory that made artillery shells near Baghdad. Military equipment, including parts for obscure armaments used by Mr. Hussein's army, is also turning up in Baghdad and Mosul in the north, they say.
...
Interviews with people who identified themselves as arms dealers or members of the resistance in Baghdad, Falluja and other Iraqi cities indicate that a parallel black market operates in the explosives looted from some of the same sites. In fact, sketchy descriptions by members of the Iraqi resistance suggest that the arms market is also a highly developed enterprise with brokers, buyers and looters who have stockpiled their products, including artillery shells, mortar rounds and Kalashnikov rifles. One former Iraqi army officer who said that he had joined the mujahedeen said that in Sadr City, for example, a few trusted brokers would take prospective buyers to weapons caches that ranged in size from a few rounds buried in a garden to whole rooms of ordnance. If the broker and the buyers agreed on a price, the buyers would arrive a day or two later with a vehicle to drive their purchases away. The broker and the stockpilers would have worked out their respective cuts in advance.
Witnesses described looters of varying degrees of sophistication, from local people who stormed the sites in search of precious metals after Mr. Hussein's security forces fled to highly organized operations that arrived with cranes and semitrailer trucks. Some of the most organized groups arrived earliest and drove away with largely intact equipment.
When it comes to buying run-of-the-mill equipment and spare parts that were obviously looted in the past, the American military appears to have adopted some version of a don't-ask, don't-tell policy concerning where the materials originated. The materials, after all, are now being sold openly in street markets. So the Americans appear resigned to buying the equipment back rather than seizing it.
Saturday, April 16, 2005
Bringing the Free Market to Iraq
They aren't even trying to hide it now:
Tradition is the living faith of the dead-Jarislav Pelican
Every year, my local church has a symposium in the spring called At the Table and in Conversation. A topic is selected of relevance to our community at the time and we explore together our understanding of in the context of a worshipping community. The first such symposium concerned homosexuality and the church, so these are not issues such as how the roofing fund is being spent. These issues are ones that go to the heart of how we see ourselves, how we understand our calling as Christians and how we are in relationship within our community and with the world. We’ve addressed issues such as institutional and individual racism, Christians and the political process, war, and covenential relationships. This year, the topic is "The Good Book," and the subject is the use and abuse of Scripture. More specifically, it concerns our understanding of ourselves as a church that is "bible believing," what that is, and how it is enacted.
We are pretty liberal on the scale of United Methodist Churches, but there is a wide range of individual thought and belief within our church family. One year, we explored our faith in light of personal belief, using the "Belief-O-Matic," found at Beleifnet.com, to ascertain where each of us stand personally in our beliefs on a continuum that ranged from extremely fundamentalist to atheistic. Only one person from our entire group had no problems with the resurrection and virgin birth. We are a congregation of, well, liberal elitists, and damn proud of it, as a general rule.
I’ve found it interesting that this year’s topic has generated more interest and response than any since our first on homosexuality in the church. To a participant, they are pissed off at how they see Scripture being highjacked and are interested in "reclaiming," them from those who would use them as a weapon of exclusion or oppression. I maintain, of course, that we have nothing to reclaim. We’ve had it all along and just didn't see the necessity of screaming about it.
The first session examined in some detail what authority is, and how the bible can be seen, or should be seen as an "authority." We determined that there are several questions that must be asked of anyone who says that they "believe" in the bible: 1) What kind of authority does the bible have? 2) For what is this authority used? 3) How is this authority used? 4) Why is this authority used? We broke into small groups to consider these questions, as well as to discuss which aspect of authority the bible should hold for Christians, or, at least, held for us.
There are two types of authority mainly associated with the bible. The one most commonly articulated is that of executive authority, that the bible has the capacity to guide us or direct us because of some inherent understanding that deepens our own. This is also known as canonical or normative authority. The other authority is causative authority, that the bible makes things happen to us and in us by some virtue of bringing us beyond the text and leading to a new understanding.
The dangers of considering the bible to have authority lie in understanding the authority to be a property of the text, or that the bible personifies authority in some way. This effectively eliminates an entire tradition of biblical interpretation and study. It is a sacred text, but one that is accessible to reason and open to examination. "Bible believing" churches claim to be returning to an earlier (therefore meaning closer to Jesus’ intent) tradition of understanding the bible as the literal word of God, or, at the very least, that the writers of these texts were divinely inspired to the point of being stenographers to the Deity. In fact, there has never been a period prior to the 1800’s wherein the tradition of biblical scholarship assumed any inherent innerrancy in the text, or that some sort of authority was attached without question to any literal understanding of the text. It’s just not there for them to "re-discover."
The bible is more a library than a book. It is an unruly collection of writings representing many different voices. The texts live when they are interpreted within the context of community and tradition, bearing in mind the quote form Jarislav Pelican used in my header. For Christians, the bible has authority when God is involved in the life long process of understanding and celebrating it. God uses our uses of the bible.
To say that there is a definitive understanding of the bible that everyone can and should know makes as much sense as saying everyone should know God in exactly the same way. Those who claim it to be so should consider the other quote Jarislav Pelican was want to throw around:
"Conventional wisdom is the dead faith of the living."
We are pretty liberal on the scale of United Methodist Churches, but there is a wide range of individual thought and belief within our church family. One year, we explored our faith in light of personal belief, using the "Belief-O-Matic," found at Beleifnet.com, to ascertain where each of us stand personally in our beliefs on a continuum that ranged from extremely fundamentalist to atheistic. Only one person from our entire group had no problems with the resurrection and virgin birth. We are a congregation of, well, liberal elitists, and damn proud of it, as a general rule.
I’ve found it interesting that this year’s topic has generated more interest and response than any since our first on homosexuality in the church. To a participant, they are pissed off at how they see Scripture being highjacked and are interested in "reclaiming," them from those who would use them as a weapon of exclusion or oppression. I maintain, of course, that we have nothing to reclaim. We’ve had it all along and just didn't see the necessity of screaming about it.
The first session examined in some detail what authority is, and how the bible can be seen, or should be seen as an "authority." We determined that there are several questions that must be asked of anyone who says that they "believe" in the bible: 1) What kind of authority does the bible have? 2) For what is this authority used? 3) How is this authority used? 4) Why is this authority used? We broke into small groups to consider these questions, as well as to discuss which aspect of authority the bible should hold for Christians, or, at least, held for us.
There are two types of authority mainly associated with the bible. The one most commonly articulated is that of executive authority, that the bible has the capacity to guide us or direct us because of some inherent understanding that deepens our own. This is also known as canonical or normative authority. The other authority is causative authority, that the bible makes things happen to us and in us by some virtue of bringing us beyond the text and leading to a new understanding.
The dangers of considering the bible to have authority lie in understanding the authority to be a property of the text, or that the bible personifies authority in some way. This effectively eliminates an entire tradition of biblical interpretation and study. It is a sacred text, but one that is accessible to reason and open to examination. "Bible believing" churches claim to be returning to an earlier (therefore meaning closer to Jesus’ intent) tradition of understanding the bible as the literal word of God, or, at the very least, that the writers of these texts were divinely inspired to the point of being stenographers to the Deity. In fact, there has never been a period prior to the 1800’s wherein the tradition of biblical scholarship assumed any inherent innerrancy in the text, or that some sort of authority was attached without question to any literal understanding of the text. It’s just not there for them to "re-discover."
The bible is more a library than a book. It is an unruly collection of writings representing many different voices. The texts live when they are interpreted within the context of community and tradition, bearing in mind the quote form Jarislav Pelican used in my header. For Christians, the bible has authority when God is involved in the life long process of understanding and celebrating it. God uses our uses of the bible.
To say that there is a definitive understanding of the bible that everyone can and should know makes as much sense as saying everyone should know God in exactly the same way. Those who claim it to be so should consider the other quote Jarislav Pelican was want to throw around:
"Conventional wisdom is the dead faith of the living."
Friday, April 15, 2005
Power is the new Golden Calf
Dr. Frederick Hertzog was a long time systematic theology professor at Duke Divinity School and is one of the first to advocate and help define "Liberation Theology." To Hertzog, theology itself needed to "move away from the needs of the anxious middle class person to the needs of the wretched of the earth as starting point of theology. The first issue of theology…is not the bourgeois question, ‘I am anxious, what’s the answer?’ but God’s question, "Your neighbor is oppressed, what’s your responsibility?" (Theology from the Belly of the Whale-A Frederick Hertzog Reader, pg. 170-171).
I hear cries from deep within people of faith, and from those who profess no faith, who desperately want to address the political maneuverings, which threaten to destroy us all. As we struggle today with the poisoned atmosphere in our communities and our nation, it might be worth hearing Hertzog’s words in a previously unpublished letter to Jurgen Moltmann (please forgive the lack of umlauts), June 22, 1976.
Is Socialism still a dirty word? Could we get away with it if we call it "a return to the ideals of Christ?" Probably not. Nevertheless, disengaging religion from capitalism would be a good place to start. Hertzog draws on the example of Europe’s experience to frame a starting point for discussion.
The "religious right" needs to be called what it is- a political ideology and rank idolatry. Ideologies come and go, be it capitalism or socialism. Idolatry, when those who claim to worship God place their faith in something else, does not go over well in God’s reality. I refer you to the Prophets, major and minor, for the details.
They need to be reminded that it’s really quite simple. "The Lord has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love mercy, and walk humbly with your God." (Micah 6:8)
I hear cries from deep within people of faith, and from those who profess no faith, who desperately want to address the political maneuverings, which threaten to destroy us all. As we struggle today with the poisoned atmosphere in our communities and our nation, it might be worth hearing Hertzog’s words in a previously unpublished letter to Jurgen Moltmann (please forgive the lack of umlauts), June 22, 1976.
For countless people in the United States, democracy and capitalism are still indistinguishable. I cherish the civil liberties of democracy, and will defend them tooth and nail. But on the level of ideas the first thing that needs to be done is to disengage democracy from capitalism. A complicating factor is civil religion as ideological undergirding of the fusion between capitalism and democracy. The disengagement of capitalism from democracy on the level of ideas, however, will not go very far unless we get deep into the nitty gritty of party politics. I read the New Testament—and compared with our socioeconomic system the clash is absolute. The first thing we still need to work on is opening our eyes to the difference between the gospel of Jesus and the gospel of profit. Jesus’ gospel dare no longer be used to legitimize our socioeconomic and sociopolitical systems. It involves a radical change in theological education and the use of money by the churches. Rejection of capitalism implies for theology commitment to a new socioeconomic and sociopolitical rationality (ibid,pg. 175).Perhaps you can tell where he is headed with this. "Being liberated to a new rationality we has better first of all develop alternative futures. But within the perimeter of this rationality I need to commit myself to a political base which includes scientific socialism (pg. 176)."
Is Socialism still a dirty word? Could we get away with it if we call it "a return to the ideals of Christ?" Probably not. Nevertheless, disengaging religion from capitalism would be a good place to start. Hertzog draws on the example of Europe’s experience to frame a starting point for discussion.
1) How does one at least in principle define the connection of theology with the people? 2) How do we avoid abusing the gospel for legitimizing socialism rather than capitalism, and instead make the choice for socialism as the more humane economic and political system on rational grounds (pg. 176)?Hertzog was observing the same thing we are now in America almost thirty years ago. This is not a recent phenomenon, and addressing it will take time and concerted effort. Hertzog seems to think the place to start was with the theologians and the academy. Maybe if this had really taken hold thirty years ago, things might be different today. Or maybe not.
The "religious right" needs to be called what it is- a political ideology and rank idolatry. Ideologies come and go, be it capitalism or socialism. Idolatry, when those who claim to worship God place their faith in something else, does not go over well in God’s reality. I refer you to the Prophets, major and minor, for the details.
They need to be reminded that it’s really quite simple. "The Lord has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love mercy, and walk humbly with your God." (Micah 6:8)
It is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the morning paper....
Just to back up what left rev. said:
As the Senate heads toward a showdown over the rules governing judicial confirmations, Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, has agreed to join a handful of prominent Christian conservatives in a telecast portraying Democrats as "against people of faith" for blocking President Bush's nominees.But even Frist is not entirely comfortable with this line, nor should he be:
Fliers for the telecast, organized by the Family Research Council and scheduled to originate at a Kentucky megachurch the evening of April 24, call the day "Justice Sunday" and depict a young man holding a Bible in one hand and a gavel in the other. The flier does not name participants, but under the heading "the filibuster against people of faith," it reads: "The filibuster was once abused to protect racial bias, and it is now being used against people of faith."
The telecast, however, will put Dr. Frist in a very different context. Asked about Dr. Frist's participation in an event describing the filibuster "as against people of faith," his spokesman, Bob Stevenson, did not answer the question directly.And maybe this is why:
"Senator Frist is doing everything he can to ensure judicial nominees are treated fairly and that every senator has the opportunity to give the president their advice and consent through an up or down vote," Mr. Stevenson said, adding, "He has spoken to groups all across the nation to press that point, and as long as a minority of Democrats continue to block a vote, he will continue to do so."
"As the liberal, anti-Christian dogma of the left has been repudiated in almost every recent election, the courts have become the last great bastion for liberalism," Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council and organizer of the telecast, wrote in a message on the group's Web site. "For years activist courts, aided by liberal interest groups like the A.C.L.U., have been quietly working under the veil of the judiciary, like thieves in the night, to rob us of our Christian heritage and our religious freedoms."Time to take back Jesus, and our religious freedoms, and our religious heritage. Because these people represent none of that, and are destroying all of it, in the name of power and control, which has nothing to do with the God of Abraham, Isaac, or Jesus.
...
"What they have done is, they have targeted people for reasons of their faith or moral position," he said, referring to Democratic criticisms of nominees over their views of cases about abortion rights or public religious expressions.
"The issue of the judiciary is really something that has been veiled by this 'judicial mystique' so our folks don't really understand it, but they are beginning to connect the dots," Mr. Perkins said in an interview, reciting a string of court decisions about prayer or displays of religion.
"They were all brought about by the courts," he said.
"An Atom Smasher for the Mind"
To pick up on a thought that got started in the comments. (BTW--you can't imagine how much fun it is to open this blog and see something I didn't put there. It's kinda like Christmas! Anyway....)
From ProfWombat:
And no, Godel did not think he'd added to the uncertainty of the world; he was a devoted Platonist, but, as Goldstein is at pains to point out, the Platonism preceded the logic (Yourgrau, in a separate book, seems to think the reverse is true, but Goldstein makes a compelling case that Godel's theorem proceeded from his Platonism, and not the reverse). And I'm not sure he did, either; nor do I mean to imply he did. My interest is the limits of epistemology. In fact, my interest is in boundaries, altogether.
Yourgrau, in fact, uses a metaphor that is apt here: an "atom smasher for the mind." He writes:
Classical theology (thanks to Luther) admits of a "negative theology," of that about God which we cannot know, or claim to know, or even speak of. It is an acceptance to the limits of our knowledge, and the basis for Kierkegaard's famous "offense," the "absolute paradox:" that eternal God could also become temporal, that that which is both the basis of existence and has no limits, could come into existence and be limited in time, subject to the limitations of mortality, which are of course beginning and end, birth and death. This we simply cannot comprehend. Does that mean it is beyond our abilities? Or that it is false? How do we determine?
One answer is to decide, or not be able to decide, the existence of God. But Kierkegaard meets us there, too. That, he says, is "the ultimate paradox of thought: to want to discover something that thought itself cannot think." Johannes Climacus (Soren Kierkegaard), Philosophical Fragments, tr. Howard H. Hong and Edna V. Hong (Princeteon University Press: Princeton, New Jersey 1985, p. 40) But does the inability to think it necessarily negate the existence of anything? No; nor does it establish it. As Johannes Climacus goes on to point out, we never reason in conclusion to existence, but rather in conclusion from existence. So any attempt to prove the existence of God presupposes the existence of God; and any attempt to disprove the existence of God presupposes the non-existence. Which makes both attempts tautological, in the end, and not really establishing anything.
And we're back up against the question of the limits of our knowledge. Unfairly, I admit; but all I can do here is poke the issues around, rather like stirring a fire to keep it going through the night. (And I never even got back to the question of consciousness!)
From ProfWombat:
Well, no, human thought isn't so limited, and therefore requires additional physical explanations than have so far been offered. That's Penrose's and Searle's point. The human mind, whatever it is, they say (and I agree) isn't a digital computer. Further, it demonstrably can do things a digital computer can't. Marvin Minsky once gave a 'trivial' problem to a graduate student: to have a robot do some fairly rudimentary takss of pattern recognition and manipulation. No success yet.I'm inclined to say "No, of course human thought isn't so limited," but then, how do we know? Is our thought axiomatic, or isn't it? It's a question of proof, not just of assertion. And this raises the real question of robots (i.e, machines that can mimic humans): if they acted like us, would they imitate our violence, too? That seems to be the basis of the robots in the new "Battlestar Galactica," and it's a fascinating idea. They have religion (ours; or at least a recognizably human one); and while they may think axiomatically (as a computer must; that's not what Turing established, by the way, but what his logic lead to: the use of axiomatic programming, algorithms, to make computer programming function), do they realize that's what they are doing? In fact, are they violent, or simply following their axioms? Since they can't "think" beyond them, to us their actions seem rather, well, one-sided. But are ours any less simplistic to, say, dolphins? Or to "god." For if there is an entity that does not think axiomatically at all, we would call it "god." At least, unless we can establish conclusively that we don't think axiomatically. (That quote from Wang below, BTW, citing Godel, is not "new age," but a fellow mathematician and close colleague in the later years of the logician's life).
A computer can't go beyond its axioms (essentially what Turing proved).
Ray Kurzweill famously described a thermostat as having some degree of consciousness. Doesn't pass the Potter Stewart test: I know consciousness when I see it, or, at least, I think I do, and my 120 lb fluffy white Pyrenees dog has consciousness, and a thermostat doesn't.
Goldstein makes the case well, I think, that Godel placed limits, not on human thought, but on axiomatic reasoning; that Godel felt not that he'd added to the uncertainty of the world but that he'd established a Platonist reality. Not the 'new age' (with due respect--no snark) take on Godel at all.
And no, Godel did not think he'd added to the uncertainty of the world; he was a devoted Platonist, but, as Goldstein is at pains to point out, the Platonism preceded the logic (Yourgrau, in a separate book, seems to think the reverse is true, but Goldstein makes a compelling case that Godel's theorem proceeded from his Platonism, and not the reverse). And I'm not sure he did, either; nor do I mean to imply he did. My interest is the limits of epistemology. In fact, my interest is in boundaries, altogether.
Yourgrau, in fact, uses a metaphor that is apt here: an "atom smasher for the mind." He writes:
In subatomic physics, one can submit particles to the extreme forces of an accelerator, or "atom smasher," which results in particles that are indistinguishable under less-extreme conditions revealing themselves as distinct. Godel would devise a method for subjecting the concept of space-time to similarly extreme conditions-in this case, geometrically, not dynamically, extreme-so that invisible differences between the two concepts would become manifest. This too was a continuation of a methodology G6del had employed in his incompleteness theorem. The method consists in creating what can be called limit cases, formal constructions that by design are so extreme that they limit, mathematically, the possible intuitive interpretations they will admit. For his incompleteness theorem, Godel devised a formal system together with a series of ingenious definitions and cooordinations for which it could be demonstrated that the concept of formal proof, as it appeared in the system, could not, on pain of contradiction, be interpreted as representing intuitive mathematical truth. He did this by constructing a formula that was provably unprovable, but intuitively true. Palle Yourgrau, A World Without Time (New York: Basic Books 2005, pp. 114-15)This is the level of proof I'm talking about. Not all questions, obviously, can be subjected to that level of scrutiny. But here again, we're up against an epistemolgical question: how do we know what we cannot know?
Classical theology (thanks to Luther) admits of a "negative theology," of that about God which we cannot know, or claim to know, or even speak of. It is an acceptance to the limits of our knowledge, and the basis for Kierkegaard's famous "offense," the "absolute paradox:" that eternal God could also become temporal, that that which is both the basis of existence and has no limits, could come into existence and be limited in time, subject to the limitations of mortality, which are of course beginning and end, birth and death. This we simply cannot comprehend. Does that mean it is beyond our abilities? Or that it is false? How do we determine?
One answer is to decide, or not be able to decide, the existence of God. But Kierkegaard meets us there, too. That, he says, is "the ultimate paradox of thought: to want to discover something that thought itself cannot think." Johannes Climacus (Soren Kierkegaard), Philosophical Fragments, tr. Howard H. Hong and Edna V. Hong (Princeteon University Press: Princeton, New Jersey 1985, p. 40) But does the inability to think it necessarily negate the existence of anything? No; nor does it establish it. As Johannes Climacus goes on to point out, we never reason in conclusion to existence, but rather in conclusion from existence. So any attempt to prove the existence of God presupposes the existence of God; and any attempt to disprove the existence of God presupposes the non-existence. Which makes both attempts tautological, in the end, and not really establishing anything.
And we're back up against the question of the limits of our knowledge. Unfairly, I admit; but all I can do here is poke the issues around, rather like stirring a fire to keep it going through the night. (And I never even got back to the question of consciousness!)
Thursday, April 14, 2005
Lets get Jesus back
I may have a few more Eckhart posts floating around in the upper stories, but I thought I'd bring this article in the United Methodist Reporter to your attention. www.reporterinteractive.org/news/040605/cm040605.htm
The United Methodist Church has always had a strong voice in social justice and a liberal attitude towards doctrine. Its one of the main reason I'm where I'm at-enduring the ordination process. There are some voices in the Methodist Church, getting a tad shrill I'm afraid, who call for a return to "Scriptural Authority." This means, of course, tightening the understanding of scriptural authority (another post for another time-don't worry; I'll get there) and the role it plays in the doctrine and polity of the church. I won't go into our internecine issues here, but suffice it to say, like most mainstream Protestant churches, we have voices from all over the spectrum. I hope some of the more shrill voices take a listen to Bill Moyers and join the body politic to re-examine our priorities.
Here's a little taste of Mr. Moyers:
The United Methodist Church has always had a strong voice in social justice and a liberal attitude towards doctrine. Its one of the main reason I'm where I'm at-enduring the ordination process. There are some voices in the Methodist Church, getting a tad shrill I'm afraid, who call for a return to "Scriptural Authority." This means, of course, tightening the understanding of scriptural authority (another post for another time-don't worry; I'll get there) and the role it plays in the doctrine and polity of the church. I won't go into our internecine issues here, but suffice it to say, like most mainstream Protestant churches, we have voices from all over the spectrum. I hope some of the more shrill voices take a listen to Bill Moyers and join the body politic to re-examine our priorities.
Here's a little taste of Mr. Moyers:
Over the past few years, as the poor got poorer, the health care crisis
worsened, wealth and media became more and more concentrated, and our political
system was bought out from under us, prophetic faith lost its voice. The
religious right drowned everyone else out.
And they hijacked Jesus. The very
Jesus who stood in Nazareth and proclaimed, "The Lord has anointed me to preach
the good news to the poor." The very Jesus who told 5,000 hungry people that all
of you will be fed, not just some of you. The very Jesus who challenged the
religious orthodoxy of the day by feeding the hungry on the Sabbath, who offered
kindness to the prostitute and hospitality to the outcast, who said the kingdom
of heaven belongs to little children, raised the status of women, and treated
even the tax collector like a child of God. The very Jesus who drove the money
changers from the temple. This Jesus has been hijacked and turned from a
champion of the disposed into a guardian of the privileged. Hijacked, he was
made over into a militarist, a hedonist, and a lobbyist ... sent prowling the
halls of Congress in Guccis, seeking tax breaks and loopholes for the powerful,
costly new weapon systems that don't work, and punitive public
policies.
Let's get Jesus back.
In the words of Bugs Bunny:
"Of course you know, this means war!"
This should be interesting.
Deflecting all questions about his ethical conduct and political future, Representative Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, on Wednesday stepped up his crusade against judges, announcing that he had instructed the Judiciary Committee to investigate federal court decisions in the Terri Schiavo case and to recommend possible legislation.Why do I think this will garner about as much popular support as the intervention in the Schiavo case.? On the other hand, it may have the salutary effect of reminding the American public why we have a "separation of powers" doctrine.
....
Mr. DeLay was not specific about what legislative changes, if any, he would like to see emerge from the Judiciary Committee's review. But in announcing that he had asked Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., a Wisconsin Republican and the committee chairman, to examine the actions of federal judges in the Schiavo case, Mr. DeLay said the House had previously passed legislation limiting the jurisdiction of the courts and breaking up the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, a bill that died in the Senate.
"We set the jurisdiction of the courts," Mr. DeLay said. "We set up the courts. We can unset the courts."
This should be interesting.
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
Creation: A Flowing Out, But Remaining Within
It is an amazing thing that something flows forth and nonetheless remains
within. Words flow forth and yet remain within-that is certainly amazing! All
creatures flow outward and nonetheless remain within-that is extremely amazing.
What God has given and what God promises to give-that is amazing, inconceivable,
and unbelievable. And that is as it should be, for if it were comprehensible and
believable things would not be right. God is in all things. The more he is in
things, the more he is outside of things. The more he is within, all the more is
he without. I have often said God is creating this entire world full and entire
in this present now. Everything God created six thousand years ago-and even
more-as he made the world, God creates now all at once.
Is Meister Eckhart of Hochheim (c. 1260-c.1329) a spiritual theologian whose time has come? The magisterium of his milieu certainly didn’t think so, as he was posthumously condemned by papal decree soon after his death, which occurred after he had traveled to Avignon to defend himself against charges of heresy, which he did vigorously. He was greatly influenced by the theology of another Dominican, Thomas Aquinas, and influenced a broad range of people from Martin Luther to Roger Fox, up to Thomas Merton and Annie Dillard today.
An interesting exchange over RMJ’s post on dualism prompted my re-examination of Eckhart. My own Creation Theology is not very well developed, and I began to wonder why. So I dug out my copy of Breakthrough: Meister Eckhart’s Creation Spirituality in New Translation, and began to look at it again. As the passage I just quoted indicates, Eckhart is "chewy," and must be mulled over a bit. Nevertheless, I was taken aback by his claim that "God is creating this entire world full and entire in this present now." I was taken aback because I rarely think of Creation Theology as anything but a one-off event, and as something to bicker about with those individuals who refuse to consider that six days and six thousand years could be anything other than a literal truth and scientific fact. Whenever I think of the continuing action of God, I think of Providence and Sanctification, not necessarily Creation. Eckhart gets even better:
God is in everything, but to the extent that God is Godly and to the extentGod creates us as creative activity and God creates creation in us, in our innermost depths. Why? So we can perhaps know God in both the within and the without, and learn that these are separate places only to us, and not to God? And if Eckhart had his way, two ways of thinking (God and creature) would become one (God). We would hear creation and listen to the Creator at the same time. Dualism need not apply.
that he is intelligible, God is nowhere as much as he is in the soul and also,
if you wish, in the angels. He dwells in the innermost dimension of the soul and
in the highest aspect of the soul…There where time never penetrates, where no
image shines in, in the innermost and highest aspect of the soul God creates the
entire cosmos. Everything which God created six thousand years ago and
everything that will be created by God after thousands of years-if the world
lasts that long-God is creating all of that in the innermost and highest realms
of the soul. Everything which is past and everything which is future God creates
in the innermost realm of the soul.
And perhaps that’s why we, as humans who can comprehend of God and participate, or not as we choose, in God’s reality, are so determined to retain a lingering sense of duality that sets ourselves apart from creation. There are many aspects of Eckhart’s theology and spirituality that I haven’t begun to address, but one thing you will never find there are barriers between creation and a divine Creator. If we can conceive of no barriers between Creation and the Divine, than how could it be possible to conceive of barriers between ourselves and the rest of Creation? We feel safer behind the barriers we erect. We feel in control behind the barriers we erect. We make an identity by throwing up a barrier and keeping others outside of it.
We don’t want to give up our barriers and our dualism, even if the result is an understanding of our own divinity, the Creator/Creation in our innermost being.
Hmmm. Scary stuff.
"Because it is bitter, and because it is my heart"
Why "do" theology?
Why bother with this welter of words, this declaration of definitions, this cascade of concepts and avalanche of ideas? Is it all just "mental masturbation" after all, full of sound and fury and signifying nothing?
Enter lectio divina.
Not the practice, but the concept; the focus on the word. What are words, anyway? Sounds? Phemes? Morphemes? Ideas, abstractions, signs pointing toward signifieds? Symbols of reason?
"In the beginning was the logos...." Christianity is one of the three great religions "of the Book." What is a book, but words? and what are words? The organizing principle of the universe? Was there, then, chaos, upon which order was imposed, and that order was the logos, the sign and signifier of reason, which connects us directly to God? And if not, what is? How do we concieve of it?
"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." Funny thing about the first Creation story of Genesis: from a culture a world away from Hellenistic Greece, the originating principle of the world is still speech, is still intimately connected to words: "God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light." The very act of creation is a speech-act. The speech of God is itself creative. God does not command light into creation, or direct someone else to carry out the task (not even light itself has that burden): the act of speech itself is the act of Creation. So the opening hymn of John's gospel is right: in the beginning was the word.
Words, then, are how we know God. We learn about God from hymns, prayers, psalms, worship, other people. God is idea, first. The experience may come to us prior to anything else, but understanding and appreciating that idea comes through words: through questions and answers we put to friends and family; through scripture and study and reading and even praying. Sometimes our sighs are too deep for words, but words are always the gateway and the pathway toward understanding what those sighs mean, where they originate and what they portend. the goal of the mystic communion of a Christian may be the "Cloud of Unknowing," but the way there, and the way back, and the explanation of what the way is, are all bound up with words. Words are our most intimate connection with the creation, which us itself idea beyond splendor and even beyond reality. Why, then, do they seem to alienate us from Creation? Made in our Creator's image, why are we not as our Creator in what we say?
Are words, then, the purpose, the goal? Julian of Norwich had her visions early in her life; then spent the rest of her life arranging and re-arranging just the right words to express them. Without the words, the visions would have remained hers alone, and we would have lost them. St. Thomas Aquinas reportedly said that God had blessed him to understand everything he had ever read (a great blessing indeed!); and then, after a controversy, he stopped writing. When his friend Reginald (as G.K. Chesterton records it) asked him to return to writing, Aquinas simply replied: " 'I can write no more.' There seems to have been a silence; after which Reginald again ventured to approach the subject; and Thomas answered him with even greater vigour, 'I can write no more. I have seen things which make all my writings like straw.' " And he didn't. Chesterton records that, at his death, "we may be sure that the great philosopher had entirely forgotten philosophy."*
Why do we do theology? Because it is faith seeking understanding; and understanding, seeking faith. And sometimes, because it is bitter; and sometimes, because it is our heart. And perhaps the point of theology is simply to climb the ladder, until we can kick it away.
G.K. Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas, 'The Dumb Ox,' New York: Doubleday 1956, pp. 141-42
Why bother with this welter of words, this declaration of definitions, this cascade of concepts and avalanche of ideas? Is it all just "mental masturbation" after all, full of sound and fury and signifying nothing?
Enter lectio divina.
Not the practice, but the concept; the focus on the word. What are words, anyway? Sounds? Phemes? Morphemes? Ideas, abstractions, signs pointing toward signifieds? Symbols of reason?
"In the beginning was the logos...." Christianity is one of the three great religions "of the Book." What is a book, but words? and what are words? The organizing principle of the universe? Was there, then, chaos, upon which order was imposed, and that order was the logos, the sign and signifier of reason, which connects us directly to God? And if not, what is? How do we concieve of it?
"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." Funny thing about the first Creation story of Genesis: from a culture a world away from Hellenistic Greece, the originating principle of the world is still speech, is still intimately connected to words: "God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light." The very act of creation is a speech-act. The speech of God is itself creative. God does not command light into creation, or direct someone else to carry out the task (not even light itself has that burden): the act of speech itself is the act of Creation. So the opening hymn of John's gospel is right: in the beginning was the word.
Words, then, are how we know God. We learn about God from hymns, prayers, psalms, worship, other people. God is idea, first. The experience may come to us prior to anything else, but understanding and appreciating that idea comes through words: through questions and answers we put to friends and family; through scripture and study and reading and even praying. Sometimes our sighs are too deep for words, but words are always the gateway and the pathway toward understanding what those sighs mean, where they originate and what they portend. the goal of the mystic communion of a Christian may be the "Cloud of Unknowing," but the way there, and the way back, and the explanation of what the way is, are all bound up with words. Words are our most intimate connection with the creation, which us itself idea beyond splendor and even beyond reality. Why, then, do they seem to alienate us from Creation? Made in our Creator's image, why are we not as our Creator in what we say?
Are words, then, the purpose, the goal? Julian of Norwich had her visions early in her life; then spent the rest of her life arranging and re-arranging just the right words to express them. Without the words, the visions would have remained hers alone, and we would have lost them. St. Thomas Aquinas reportedly said that God had blessed him to understand everything he had ever read (a great blessing indeed!); and then, after a controversy, he stopped writing. When his friend Reginald (as G.K. Chesterton records it) asked him to return to writing, Aquinas simply replied: " 'I can write no more.' There seems to have been a silence; after which Reginald again ventured to approach the subject; and Thomas answered him with even greater vigour, 'I can write no more. I have seen things which make all my writings like straw.' " And he didn't. Chesterton records that, at his death, "we may be sure that the great philosopher had entirely forgotten philosophy."*
Why do we do theology? Because it is faith seeking understanding; and understanding, seeking faith. And sometimes, because it is bitter; and sometimes, because it is our heart. And perhaps the point of theology is simply to climb the ladder, until we can kick it away.
G.K. Chesterton, St. Thomas Aquinas, 'The Dumb Ox,' New York: Doubleday 1956, pp. 141-42
Tuesday, April 12, 2005
Let Us Now Praise Canada
No, seriously.
Dragged out an old Linda Ronstadt album, "Heart Like A Wheel" (don't tell NYMary, she'll think I'm poaching her territory!), which reminded me of all my Kate and Anna McGarrigle albums, and all their songs that Ronstadt performed, and then Leonard Cohen and his albums, and all his songs that Judy Collins performed....(and yes, I have all of these, recorded on one medium or another).
Any country that can produce Cohen and the McGarrigle sisters is deserving of a ranking with Ireland, England, and Greece for great literary artists. Although producing either one would be sufficient.
Dragged out an old Linda Ronstadt album, "Heart Like A Wheel" (don't tell NYMary, she'll think I'm poaching her territory!), which reminded me of all my Kate and Anna McGarrigle albums, and all their songs that Ronstadt performed, and then Leonard Cohen and his albums, and all his songs that Judy Collins performed....(and yes, I have all of these, recorded on one medium or another).
Any country that can produce Cohen and the McGarrigle sisters is deserving of a ranking with Ireland, England, and Greece for great literary artists. Although producing either one would be sufficient.
"And it's only love, and it's only love/That can wreck a human being and turn him inside out."
Radix einem omnium malorum est cupiditas
This confirms my longheld opinion that the attacks on 9/11 were not made because "they hate our freedom:"
Who is calling the tune, and now demanding payment for our evening's entertainment. I'm glad these attacks were thwarted; but let's not delude ourselves about what prompts them.
Three men have been indicted on charges they targeted for attack financial institutions in New York, New Jersey and Washington, federal law enforcement officials said Tuesday.Better, of course, to describe the cause as something abstract, rather than something concrete. In this sense we are indeed culpable for the attacks on 9/11, and any made after: not because we are the rape victim who entices our assailant, but because we refuse to acknowledge the fact that our foreign policy now serves the interest of capital alone. And that is truly an unholy arrangement, one that can only be called a deal with the devil.
The three men, whom authorities have not yet identified, already are in custody in England. They had been picked up there last year in a separate investigation that yielded evidence they scouted the New York Stock Exchange and Citicorp Building in New York, the Prudential Building in Newark, N.J., and the International Monetary Fund in Washington, said two officials who discussed the case at this sensitive juncture only on grounds they not be publicly identified.
Who is calling the tune, and now demanding payment for our evening's entertainment. I'm glad these attacks were thwarted; but let's not delude ourselves about what prompts them.
Consulo, ergo sum?
I used to use the movie AI in my Intro Philosophy course, to introduce the question of the self and the issue of the Cartesian split. The movie raises fascinating questions of what it means to be human, especially in its implicit acceptance that true "human" thought requires emotional responses as well as "intellectual" ones. The clear implications of the film are that rules alone do not define human intelligence. In fact, it is the lack of "emotional rules" (which the film assumes are a learned, not a defined, response) that sets the story in motion.
"Cogito, ergo sum," is the touchstone for modern philosophy thinking about what is the self, or even what is human, and I used the film to zero in on that issue. Descartes distinguished "rational" thought (which he considered the foundation of the "self") from emotions (which he considered "bodily" functions); but he was not just thinking about thought itself with his cogito. He was speaking of the consciousness of thought. Turing's famous "test" of AI is valid if the question is only the appearance of thought. Descartes' very statement, the one that turned his skepticism into certainty, is a statement of awareness of being aware. It is a "meta" statement about the process of thought itself. And it is on this point that the incompleteness theorem of Kurt Gödel enters the discussion.
Gödel's theorem, put simply, is that formal systems are incomplete, because the axioms upon which they are founded do not lead to a system powerful enough to eliminate the generation of propositions that are not both true and formally undecidable within the terms of the system. In other words, any formal system can generate a statement which it cannot establish as true within the terms of that system. The truth of the statement, if it can be established, must be established through recourse to terms from outside the system. That is, within a formal system such as mathematics, certain statements can be generated which cannot be established as true within mathematics. The truth of these statements can only be decided outside of mathematics, or meta-mathematically.
It's important to understand this fully before going further, because the easy answer here is: "Well, of course we can't decide all truths within any one system." The critical point here is that the system can generate the statement, so the statement itself does not come from wholly outside the system. It comes, in fact, from the axioms of the formal system itself. But the system, built upon those very axioms, cannot decide within the terms of that system, the validity or truth of the statement. It is, therefore, formally undecidable, and any decision on it must be made by appeal to source wholly outside the system.
As a matter of logic, in other words, no formal system of thought, being one founded on axioms which in turn generate the system of thought, is complete. It is, despite its rigor or complexity, essentially incomplete. Which brings us back to artifical intelligence.
Human thought is a complex subject. Is emotion, for example, a component of it? A complement to it? An obstruction that blocks it? Is thought only equivalent to reason? And does reason occur in spite of emotion? What, then, of curiousity? Is that an emotion? Could be build a curious machine? These are not idle questions: they challenge the notion that thought is simply a rules process, and that human thought can be replicated in computer software when enough of the rules are understood and anticipated to be reproducible as tools for a progam. (This idea is leveled as a criticism against Wittgenstein's concept of "language games," that he merely tries to reduce language to a set of acquired rules, and each "game" plays according to a different rule book.) But Godel's theorem challenges that very notion. Palle Yourgrau puts it this way:
Which reminds us that Descartes settled upon his 'cogito' because he placed an artifical limit to his thinking. Skepticism, as Kierkegaard after him also understood, is an acid that will destroy everything eventually, including itself.
All of which leaves us still with the question of the self, and the question of reason in pursuing the question of the self. Does reason, rigorously applied, lead us to the limits of our knowledge? Or the limits of our reason? Are the two coterminous? And is it because we think, that we know we have being? Or because we question, because we can ask, and discover answers?
"Cogito, ergo sum," is the touchstone for modern philosophy thinking about what is the self, or even what is human, and I used the film to zero in on that issue. Descartes distinguished "rational" thought (which he considered the foundation of the "self") from emotions (which he considered "bodily" functions); but he was not just thinking about thought itself with his cogito. He was speaking of the consciousness of thought. Turing's famous "test" of AI is valid if the question is only the appearance of thought. Descartes' very statement, the one that turned his skepticism into certainty, is a statement of awareness of being aware. It is a "meta" statement about the process of thought itself. And it is on this point that the incompleteness theorem of Kurt Gödel enters the discussion.
Gödel's theorem, put simply, is that formal systems are incomplete, because the axioms upon which they are founded do not lead to a system powerful enough to eliminate the generation of propositions that are not both true and formally undecidable within the terms of the system. In other words, any formal system can generate a statement which it cannot establish as true within the terms of that system. The truth of the statement, if it can be established, must be established through recourse to terms from outside the system. That is, within a formal system such as mathematics, certain statements can be generated which cannot be established as true within mathematics. The truth of these statements can only be decided outside of mathematics, or meta-mathematically.
It's important to understand this fully before going further, because the easy answer here is: "Well, of course we can't decide all truths within any one system." The critical point here is that the system can generate the statement, so the statement itself does not come from wholly outside the system. It comes, in fact, from the axioms of the formal system itself. But the system, built upon those very axioms, cannot decide within the terms of that system, the validity or truth of the statement. It is, therefore, formally undecidable, and any decision on it must be made by appeal to source wholly outside the system.
As a matter of logic, in other words, no formal system of thought, being one founded on axioms which in turn generate the system of thought, is complete. It is, despite its rigor or complexity, essentially incomplete. Which brings us back to artifical intelligence.
Human thought is a complex subject. Is emotion, for example, a component of it? A complement to it? An obstruction that blocks it? Is thought only equivalent to reason? And does reason occur in spite of emotion? What, then, of curiousity? Is that an emotion? Could be build a curious machine? These are not idle questions: they challenge the notion that thought is simply a rules process, and that human thought can be replicated in computer software when enough of the rules are understood and anticipated to be reproducible as tools for a progam. (This idea is leveled as a criticism against Wittgenstein's concept of "language games," that he merely tries to reduce language to a set of acquired rules, and each "game" plays according to a different rule book.) But Godel's theorem challenges that very notion. Palle Yourgrau puts it this way:
The complete set of mathematical truths will never be captured by any finite or recursive list of axioms that is fully formla. Thus, no mechanical device, no computer, will ever be able to exhaust the truths of mathematics. It follows immediately, as Godel was quick to point out, that if we are able somehow to grasp the complete truth of this domain, then we, or our minds, ar enot machines or computers. (Enthusiasts of artificial intelligence were not amused.) A World Without Time, Palle Yourgrau (New York: Basic Books 2005) p. 3However, Rebecca Goldstein brings us to a slightly different conclusion:
According to Wang, Godel believed that what had been rig-orously proved, presumably on the basis of the incomplete-ness theorem, is: "Either the human mind surpasses all machines (to be more precise it can decide more number the-oretical questions than any machine) or else there exist num-ber theoretical questions undecidable for the human mind."
What exactly did Gödel have in mind with this second dis-junct? I think that what he is considering here is the possibil-ity that we are indeed machines-that is, that all of our thinking is mechanical, determined by hard-wired rules-but that we are under the delusion that we have access to unfor-malizable mathematical truth. We could possibly be machines who suffer from delusions of mathematical grandeur. What follows from his theorem, he seems to be suggesting, is that just so long as we are not delusional as regards our grasp of mathematical truths, just so long as we do have the intuitions that we think we have, then we are not machines. If indeed we truly have the intuitions that we do, then it is impossible for us to formalize (or mechanize) all of our mathematical intu-itions, which means that we truly are not machines. Of course there is no proof that we know all that we think we know, since all that we think we know can't be formalized; that, after all, is incompleteness. This is why we can't rigorously prove that we're not machines. The incompleteness theorem, by showing the limits of formalization, both suggests that our minds transcend machines and makes it impossible to prove that our minds transcend machines. Again, an almost-paradox. Incompleteness, Rebecca Goldstein (New York: W.W. Norton 2005), p. 203
Which reminds us that Descartes settled upon his 'cogito' because he placed an artifical limit to his thinking. Skepticism, as Kierkegaard after him also understood, is an acid that will destroy everything eventually, including itself.
All of which leaves us still with the question of the self, and the question of reason in pursuing the question of the self. Does reason, rigorously applied, lead us to the limits of our knowledge? Or the limits of our reason? Are the two coterminous? And is it because we think, that we know we have being? Or because we question, because we can ask, and discover answers?
Monday, April 11, 2005
"Much study is a vexation."
Philalethes passes this to me, and I don't really know what to do with it.
You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?
I'll get back to you on that one.
(Humming: "Proust in his first book wrote about, wrote about...Proust in his first book wrote about, he wrote about...!")
Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
Yes. Thursday Next, from the series by Jasper Fforde. And Jennifer Government, from the eponymous novel by Max Barry.
But alas, it wasn't meant to be.
The last book you bought is:
I'll have to go look. I'll get back to you on that, too.
The last book you read:
Zorro, by Isabelle Allende. And Dante's Inferno. Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel, by Rebecca Goldstein. I never read one book at a time.
What are you currently reading?
The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, by Umberto Eco. Given Time, by Jacques Derrida. For Self-Examination, by Kierkegaard. Re-reading Fear and Trembling, too. And one of the new books, but I don't remember which one. Let me check.
Five books you would take to a deserted island:
Big ones. Starting with the Annotated Sherlock Holmes. And the complete Shakespeare. Upholding Mystery, I think, which is a wonderful volume of poetry. Time to get serious, the ship sails soon. Hmmmm....The Dark Knight Returns, by Frank Miller. One more? Holy the Firm, by Annie Dillard. Or...no, I'll stick with that.
Although I'd sneak in Ten Ever-Lovin' Blue Eyed Years with Pogo. And the Last Whole Earth Catolog. They're the same size, almost, no one would notice. And scratch Upholding Mystery, replace it with Thomas Merton's Wisdom of the Desert Fathers.
Okay, I'm ready to sail now.
Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons)? And Why?
You assume I have three friends. With blogs. I'm afraid that buck may stop here.
If I come up with anyone, I'll let you know.
Oh, getting back to the Fahrenheit 451 question: tough to decide. Either The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury. Or A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeline L'Engle. Or A Day with Wilbur Robinson, by William Joyce (though it's not the same without the pictures). Or probably, Montag's choice: Ecclesiastes.
After all, all is vanity. And of the making of books there is no end.
P.S. Last book(s) I bought: The Hermeneutics of the Subject, by Michel Foucault. Two Worlds are Ours: An Introduction to Christian Mysticism, by John Macquarrie, and A World Without Time: The Forgotten Legacy of Gödel and Einstein, by Palle Yourgrau.
Returning to the scene of the crime, or: Concluding Unscientific Postscript:
Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons)? And Why?
Athenae, at First Draft.
Rexroth's Daughter, at Dharma Bums.
Watertiger, at Dependable Renegade.
And Why?
Because it is bitter, and because it is my heart.
No, wait, that's not the right answer. What was the question again?
Oh, yeah. Because I think the answers would be fascinating. And because Thersites pulled rank on me and already chose NYMary (and I'm not telling who the substitute is!).
And because I think the answers would be fascinating. And I have hopes they will come by and see they have been selected.
Now when do I get my $10.00?
You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451, which book do you want to be?
I'll get back to you on that one.
(Humming: "Proust in his first book wrote about, wrote about...Proust in his first book wrote about, he wrote about...!")
Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
Yes. Thursday Next, from the series by Jasper Fforde. And Jennifer Government, from the eponymous novel by Max Barry.
But alas, it wasn't meant to be.
The last book you bought is:
I'll have to go look. I'll get back to you on that, too.
The last book you read:
Zorro, by Isabelle Allende. And Dante's Inferno. Incompleteness: The Proof and Paradox of Kurt Gödel, by Rebecca Goldstein. I never read one book at a time.
What are you currently reading?
The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, by Umberto Eco. Given Time, by Jacques Derrida. For Self-Examination, by Kierkegaard. Re-reading Fear and Trembling, too. And one of the new books, but I don't remember which one. Let me check.
Five books you would take to a deserted island:
Big ones. Starting with the Annotated Sherlock Holmes. And the complete Shakespeare. Upholding Mystery, I think, which is a wonderful volume of poetry. Time to get serious, the ship sails soon. Hmmmm....The Dark Knight Returns, by Frank Miller. One more? Holy the Firm, by Annie Dillard. Or...no, I'll stick with that.
Although I'd sneak in Ten Ever-Lovin' Blue Eyed Years with Pogo. And the Last Whole Earth Catolog. They're the same size, almost, no one would notice. And scratch Upholding Mystery, replace it with Thomas Merton's Wisdom of the Desert Fathers.
Okay, I'm ready to sail now.
Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons)? And Why?
You assume I have three friends. With blogs. I'm afraid that buck may stop here.
If I come up with anyone, I'll let you know.
Oh, getting back to the Fahrenheit 451 question: tough to decide. Either The Martian Chronicles, by Ray Bradbury. Or A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeline L'Engle. Or A Day with Wilbur Robinson, by William Joyce (though it's not the same without the pictures). Or probably, Montag's choice: Ecclesiastes.
After all, all is vanity. And of the making of books there is no end.
P.S. Last book(s) I bought: The Hermeneutics of the Subject, by Michel Foucault. Two Worlds are Ours: An Introduction to Christian Mysticism, by John Macquarrie, and A World Without Time: The Forgotten Legacy of Gödel and Einstein, by Palle Yourgrau.
Returning to the scene of the crime, or: Concluding Unscientific Postscript:
Who are you going to pass this stick to (3 persons)? And Why?
Athenae, at First Draft.
Rexroth's Daughter, at Dharma Bums.
Watertiger, at Dependable Renegade.
And Why?
Because it is bitter, and because it is my heart.
No, wait, that's not the right answer. What was the question again?
Oh, yeah. Because I think the answers would be fascinating. And because Thersites pulled rank on me and already chose NYMary (and I'm not telling who the substitute is!).
And because I think the answers would be fascinating. And I have hopes they will come by and see they have been selected.
Now when do I get my $10.00?
Woolgathering
"The sense of the world must lie outside the world....in it no value exists..."Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, §6.41.
"A man may sing a song with expression and without expression. Then why not leave out the song--could you have the expression then?"--Ludwig Wittgenstein, Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief*
The problem of trying to "escape" the world, is that we can't think except in terms supplied to us by the world. On the other hand, we can think, or experience, matters that are not explicable in terms that can codify and capture all meanings identifiable merely as objects or relationships of the world. To do so is to engage in a reductio ad absurdum. "Selfish gene" theory, for example, may provide an "objective" explanation as to why I love my child. But it cannot explain why, having provided me with a child (from the gene theory point of view), I continue to love my wife. In fact, there is no adequate "objective" explanation for love, without subjecting that experience to a reductio argument.
Which brings us back around to Wittgenstein, and "language games." Wittgenstein actually makes two uses of the concep: one derives from Hume, the other from what can only be called common sense.
The idea derived from the empiricism of Hume is that we really cannot talk about anything, because our words are ultimately betrayed by the fact they have no essential connection to reality. Hume explained this by reversing the analytic/synthetic distinction that had held sway in Western philosophy.
An analytic proposition is one made a priori, that is, prior to observation. But Hume said such observations were in fact based on a posteriori knowledge, that is, precisely on the experience of the observation. That is, we encounter bodies in our experience (physical objects with mass), find them to be heavy, and from that synthesize the idea that all bodies are heavy, which we then generalize into a "truth." There is analytical knowledge for Hume, but it is of the nature of "2 + 2 = 4." True a priori, but a statement only of relations of ideas, with no real effect on the world. (You may object that mathematical relationships reflect reality, but only very partially. In biology, for example, 1 + 1 =3, at a minimum; and perhaps more. In fact, if it didn't, there would be no biology). Analytic propositions, then, are pointless in the examination of reality (the subject of empricism), and synthetic propositions are either true or false. But if true, they are virtually meaningless, because no exception to them can be found; and if false, well, obviously they are meaningless. If they cannot be proven, then they are pointless (a much reduced way of introducing Hume's "proof" against the existence of God.). Which leaves us, obviously, with not much to say about anything of importance, such as, well, reality.
This lead, through various steps, to a turn toward language: "What do we mean when we say....?;" to the field of semiotics, of signifiers and signified; and logical positivism, and Wittgenstein's eventual concern that all philosophy was caught up in "language games," which produce a plethora of confusions because language is not, ulimately a formal system such as logic, or even dependent on a formal system, like scientific inquiry.
But this doesn't mean language doesn't get used in useful ways.
Or that was, in part, Wittgenstein's concern. He thought for example, that paradox, that beloved concept of Kierkegaard ("the thinker without the paradox is like the lover without passion," says Anti-Climacus) was nothing more than a confusion of language. The essence of the question is: does language "point to" anything, or is it merely a formal system we use for certain purposes, and one which is so central to our thinking that we confuse it with reality?
Certainly it has been confused with reality. To "spell" is both to correctly arrange letters of the alphabet into a word, and to "cast" a "spell," or perform magic. What is magic, in the popular imagination, except an exertion of power of an object (thing or person, both are objects for the purpose)? To "spell" was once considered a magical act (in a world of illiterate people that's easily understood), because it gave you power over the word, and the word defined the essence, in fact was the essence, of the object (one reason no one can know, pronounce, or even spell, the name of the God of Abraham).
But can we escape the world that provides language to us? Certainly every child, as Augustine recognized, learns language first in relationship to objects, and only later in connection with abstractions (which, after all, and this was the basis of Hume's critique, consist entirely of language). Or rather, can we use language to provide us with a higher view, or at least experience, of the world?
Enter lectio divina.
In a marvelous "X-Files" episode, a writer interviews Scully about a story of a young couple who think they've been captured by aliens. The story gets stranger and stranger as the writer reveals the contents of other interviews he's done surrounding the incident, and at one point he and Scully discuss hypnosis in the context of recovering memories (a key part of the story). And he mentions the amazing power of hypnosis: how simply words, nothing more than sounds, can so control the human mind. This is, in a nutshell, one of the central conundrums of modern philosophy: how much of what we know, of even who we are, is caught up with words? What is language, that it should have such a power over us?
Enter lectio divina.
Lectio is an ancient Christian meditative practice. It involves reading scripture, and then allowing one word from that scripture to capture the consciousness, and then meditating on that word, allowing it to do whatever it will in a contemplative state of mind. Adepts at the practice say it brings them into the presence of God, even into mystical states of being. Now, from an empirical or positivistic point of view, this of course establishes nothing. How, indeed, can you establish anything of importance from mere words and subjective experience?
But, as Kierkegaard points out, how can you claim to establish anything outside of words and subjective experience? That puts you in the position of the thinker who so concentrated on cultivating an objective point of view that he awoke one morning to find he no longer existed! As Wittgenstein would say: "If you say this, the contradiction already lies in this."
(*edited by Cyril Barrett, Berkeley, University of California Press,)
"A man may sing a song with expression and without expression. Then why not leave out the song--could you have the expression then?"--Ludwig Wittgenstein, Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief*
The problem of trying to "escape" the world, is that we can't think except in terms supplied to us by the world. On the other hand, we can think, or experience, matters that are not explicable in terms that can codify and capture all meanings identifiable merely as objects or relationships of the world. To do so is to engage in a reductio ad absurdum. "Selfish gene" theory, for example, may provide an "objective" explanation as to why I love my child. But it cannot explain why, having provided me with a child (from the gene theory point of view), I continue to love my wife. In fact, there is no adequate "objective" explanation for love, without subjecting that experience to a reductio argument.
Which brings us back around to Wittgenstein, and "language games." Wittgenstein actually makes two uses of the concep: one derives from Hume, the other from what can only be called common sense.
The idea derived from the empiricism of Hume is that we really cannot talk about anything, because our words are ultimately betrayed by the fact they have no essential connection to reality. Hume explained this by reversing the analytic/synthetic distinction that had held sway in Western philosophy.
An analytic proposition is one made a priori, that is, prior to observation. But Hume said such observations were in fact based on a posteriori knowledge, that is, precisely on the experience of the observation. That is, we encounter bodies in our experience (physical objects with mass), find them to be heavy, and from that synthesize the idea that all bodies are heavy, which we then generalize into a "truth." There is analytical knowledge for Hume, but it is of the nature of "2 + 2 = 4." True a priori, but a statement only of relations of ideas, with no real effect on the world. (You may object that mathematical relationships reflect reality, but only very partially. In biology, for example, 1 + 1 =3, at a minimum; and perhaps more. In fact, if it didn't, there would be no biology). Analytic propositions, then, are pointless in the examination of reality (the subject of empricism), and synthetic propositions are either true or false. But if true, they are virtually meaningless, because no exception to them can be found; and if false, well, obviously they are meaningless. If they cannot be proven, then they are pointless (a much reduced way of introducing Hume's "proof" against the existence of God.). Which leaves us, obviously, with not much to say about anything of importance, such as, well, reality.
This lead, through various steps, to a turn toward language: "What do we mean when we say....?;" to the field of semiotics, of signifiers and signified; and logical positivism, and Wittgenstein's eventual concern that all philosophy was caught up in "language games," which produce a plethora of confusions because language is not, ulimately a formal system such as logic, or even dependent on a formal system, like scientific inquiry.
But this doesn't mean language doesn't get used in useful ways.
Suppose I say that the body will rot, and another says "No. ParticlesMost modern philosophy today betrays a fascination with language, from Wittgenstein to deconstructionism. Semiotics, for example, plays a big role in Biblical hermeneutics, especially in exegeting the Gospel of John, where the miracles of Jesus are uniformly called "semeia," the Greek word for "signs." Scholars even posit that the author of John had a separate "signs gospel" which contained all the miracle stories. However, the author of John doesn't use them to point toward the divinity of the Christ, but as something of a test: if you believe because of the signs, you are not a "true believer" (think of Jesus telling Thomas "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe!," which is in John's gospel). Of course, it isn't that simple in John's gospel, but the ambiguity of relationship between sign and signified is already there. But the focus on words, like the focus on the signs, tends to be misleading: it directs our attention away from the signified and onto the signifier.
will rejoin in a thousand years, and there will be a Resurrection of you."
If some said: "Wittgenstein, do you believe in this?" I'd
say: "No." "Do you contradict the man?" I'd say:
"No."
...
Suppose someone were a believer and said: "I believe in a Last
Judgment," and I said: "Well, I'm not so sure. Possibly." You
would say that there is an enormous gulf between us. If he said "There is
a German aeroplane overhead," and I said "Possibly I'm not so sure," you'd
say we were fairly near.
It isn't a question of my being anywhere near him, but on an entirely
different plane, which you could express by saying: "You mean
something altogether different, Wittgenstein."
...
Whether something is a blunder or not--it is a blunder in a particular
system. Just as something is a blunder in a particular game and not in
another.
Or that was, in part, Wittgenstein's concern. He thought for example, that paradox, that beloved concept of Kierkegaard ("the thinker without the paradox is like the lover without passion," says Anti-Climacus) was nothing more than a confusion of language. The essence of the question is: does language "point to" anything, or is it merely a formal system we use for certain purposes, and one which is so central to our thinking that we confuse it with reality?
Certainly it has been confused with reality. To "spell" is both to correctly arrange letters of the alphabet into a word, and to "cast" a "spell," or perform magic. What is magic, in the popular imagination, except an exertion of power of an object (thing or person, both are objects for the purpose)? To "spell" was once considered a magical act (in a world of illiterate people that's easily understood), because it gave you power over the word, and the word defined the essence, in fact was the essence, of the object (one reason no one can know, pronounce, or even spell, the name of the God of Abraham).
But can we escape the world that provides language to us? Certainly every child, as Augustine recognized, learns language first in relationship to objects, and only later in connection with abstractions (which, after all, and this was the basis of Hume's critique, consist entirely of language). Or rather, can we use language to provide us with a higher view, or at least experience, of the world?
Enter lectio divina.
In a marvelous "X-Files" episode, a writer interviews Scully about a story of a young couple who think they've been captured by aliens. The story gets stranger and stranger as the writer reveals the contents of other interviews he's done surrounding the incident, and at one point he and Scully discuss hypnosis in the context of recovering memories (a key part of the story). And he mentions the amazing power of hypnosis: how simply words, nothing more than sounds, can so control the human mind. This is, in a nutshell, one of the central conundrums of modern philosophy: how much of what we know, of even who we are, is caught up with words? What is language, that it should have such a power over us?
Enter lectio divina.
Lectio is an ancient Christian meditative practice. It involves reading scripture, and then allowing one word from that scripture to capture the consciousness, and then meditating on that word, allowing it to do whatever it will in a contemplative state of mind. Adepts at the practice say it brings them into the presence of God, even into mystical states of being. Now, from an empirical or positivistic point of view, this of course establishes nothing. How, indeed, can you establish anything of importance from mere words and subjective experience?
But, as Kierkegaard points out, how can you claim to establish anything outside of words and subjective experience? That puts you in the position of the thinker who so concentrated on cultivating an objective point of view that he awoke one morning to find he no longer existed! As Wittgenstein would say: "If you say this, the contradiction already lies in this."
(*edited by Cyril Barrett, Berkeley, University of California Press,)
"Send in the Clowns
There ought to be clowns."
We have, it seems, reached a landmark of sorts.
Since February, when the Site Meter was installed, Adventus has recorded just over 5000 visitors, and well over 7600 page views.
Which means a lot of people have almost as much time to waste as I do. Or find cable TV isn't all that interesting, after all. Or something.
5000 visitors in just over 2 months. And such a small car, too. I don't know what to say.
Except: "Thank you."
I'll have my Sally Fields moment in private. You can enjoy the Sondheim/Judy Collins moment (two of my favorites) here.
We have, it seems, reached a landmark of sorts.
Since February, when the Site Meter was installed, Adventus has recorded just over 5000 visitors, and well over 7600 page views.
Which means a lot of people have almost as much time to waste as I do. Or find cable TV isn't all that interesting, after all. Or something.
5000 visitors in just over 2 months. And such a small car, too. I don't know what to say.
Except: "Thank you."
I'll have my Sally Fields moment in private. You can enjoy the Sondheim/Judy Collins moment (two of my favorites) here.
Sunday, April 10, 2005
"There will be coffee and cookies in the Gandhi Room after the revolution. "
Sarah Deere was kind enough to include this link in the comments to the post below. Since I used her comment at Eschaton to start a conversation, I can use her comment here to keep it going in a good direction.
Of Cupidity and cupiditas
It's probably the places I hang out, but getting hounded about not being "Christian" because I don't lead the charge to put a cork in the mouth of James Dobson or Jerry Falwell or Randall Terry (and I choose that link only as this morning's example) gets tiresome. But it also led me to a reflection on my chilhood.
The major problem of James Dobson or Randall Terry, is that they have literally put their money where their mouth is. This is supposed to be the highest and best good in America; but the road to hell is paved not just with good intentions, but also with definitions of the "highest and best good." Their money is there, but that leaves no trace for any kind of Christianity. "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your mind, and all your soul, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself." Jesus calls these the great commandments, on which hang all the law and the prophets. No room for money, there; or at least, not for the love of money.
"The love of money," the letter writer says in 1 Timothy 6:10, "is the root of all evil." I grew up on that verse, and the older I get, the more wisdom I see in it. Its wisdom was quite limited when I was young. Good, well-educated, well meaning people, with absolutely no background in biblical exegesis or hermeneutics or even koine Greek (including my own father), assured me that the original said "cupiditas," and the "cupiditas" was to be distinguished from "agape" and "philos." There were, they assured me, types of love: agape was the "pure" love one had for God; "philos" the love one had for a brother; and of course, eros, of which no one wanted to speak to teenage boys and girls. Cupiditas was, compared to these, a minor love, one that could easily go astray, like young love that becomes foolish obsession. So what 1 Timothy condemned was not the love of money, but the excessive love of money.
There were only two problems with this explanation: (1) cupiditas is Latin, not Greek; it comes from the Latin translation of the Greek New Testamnt; (2) the original Greek word is "philarguria." You can see the root "philo-" in it, the same root as in "philosophy," the lover of "sofia," or wisdom. Philaguria, then, means love of money. Covetousness. Greed.
Perhaps that is the "excessive love" of money. But the fineness of the distinction is an attempt, perhaps even an honest one, to let love of money stand side by side with love of God. And yet, as the commandment makes clear, there is no room for that.
No room for love of position, either, or doctrine, or creed. No room for anything in the commandments Jesus praised above all others, except for love of God, and love of neighbor. Even when your neighbor is Randall Terry, or James Dobson.
Which makes it hard for me to condemn them. Because I am also reminded that it reflects the beam in my eye.
The major problem of James Dobson or Randall Terry, is that they have literally put their money where their mouth is. This is supposed to be the highest and best good in America; but the road to hell is paved not just with good intentions, but also with definitions of the "highest and best good." Their money is there, but that leaves no trace for any kind of Christianity. "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your mind, and all your soul, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself." Jesus calls these the great commandments, on which hang all the law and the prophets. No room for money, there; or at least, not for the love of money.
"The love of money," the letter writer says in 1 Timothy 6:10, "is the root of all evil." I grew up on that verse, and the older I get, the more wisdom I see in it. Its wisdom was quite limited when I was young. Good, well-educated, well meaning people, with absolutely no background in biblical exegesis or hermeneutics or even koine Greek (including my own father), assured me that the original said "cupiditas," and the "cupiditas" was to be distinguished from "agape" and "philos." There were, they assured me, types of love: agape was the "pure" love one had for God; "philos" the love one had for a brother; and of course, eros, of which no one wanted to speak to teenage boys and girls. Cupiditas was, compared to these, a minor love, one that could easily go astray, like young love that becomes foolish obsession. So what 1 Timothy condemned was not the love of money, but the excessive love of money.
There were only two problems with this explanation: (1) cupiditas is Latin, not Greek; it comes from the Latin translation of the Greek New Testamnt; (2) the original Greek word is "philarguria." You can see the root "philo-" in it, the same root as in "philosophy," the lover of "sofia," or wisdom. Philaguria, then, means love of money. Covetousness. Greed.
Perhaps that is the "excessive love" of money. But the fineness of the distinction is an attempt, perhaps even an honest one, to let love of money stand side by side with love of God. And yet, as the commandment makes clear, there is no room for that.
No room for love of position, either, or doctrine, or creed. No room for anything in the commandments Jesus praised above all others, except for love of God, and love of neighbor. Even when your neighbor is Randall Terry, or James Dobson.
Which makes it hard for me to condemn them. Because I am also reminded that it reflects the beam in my eye.
Jerusalem, by William Blake
AND did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic mills?
Bring me my bow of burning gold:
Bring me my arrows of desire:
Bring me my spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire.
I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.
The Christian supremacist model based on nationalist identity is neither uniquely American, nor unique to 20th century fundamentalists.
The struggle with God is from everlasting to everlasting. It is, in fact, that struggle which should define us.
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among these dark Satanic mills?
Bring me my bow of burning gold:
Bring me my arrows of desire:
Bring me my spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my chariot of fire.
I will not cease from mental fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green and pleasant land.
The Christian supremacist model based on nationalist identity is neither uniquely American, nor unique to 20th century fundamentalists.
The struggle with God is from everlasting to everlasting. It is, in fact, that struggle which should define us.
Third Sunday in Easter
Psalm 116
I love the LORD, because he hath heard my voice and my supplications.
2. Because he hath inclined his ear unto me, therefore will I call upon him as long as I live.
3. The sorrows of death compassed me, and the pains of hell gat hold upon me: I found trouble and sorrow.
4. Then called I upon the name of the LORD; 0 LORD, I beseech thee, deliver my soul.
5. Gracious is the LORD, and righteous; yea, our God is merciful.
6. The LORD preserveth the simple: I was brought low, and he helped me.
7. Return unto thy rest, 0 my soul; for the LORD hath dealt bountifully with thee.
8. For thou hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling.
9. I will walk before the LORD in the land of the living.
10. I believed, therefore have I spoken: I was greatly afflicted:
11. I said in my haste, All men are liars.
12. What shall I render unto the LORD for all his benefits toward me?
13. I will take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the LORD.
14. I will pay my vows unto the LORD now in the presence of all his people.
15. Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints.
16. 0 LORD, truly I am thy servant; I am thy servant, and the son of thine handmaid: thou hast loosed my bonds.
17. I will offer to thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving, and will call upon the name of the LORD.
18. I will pay my vows unto the LORD now in the presence of all his people,
19. In the courts of the LORD'S house, in the midst of thee, 0 Jerusalem. Praise ye the LORD.
I love the LORD, because he hath heard my voice and my supplications.
2. Because he hath inclined his ear unto me, therefore will I call upon him as long as I live.
3. The sorrows of death compassed me, and the pains of hell gat hold upon me: I found trouble and sorrow.
4. Then called I upon the name of the LORD; 0 LORD, I beseech thee, deliver my soul.
5. Gracious is the LORD, and righteous; yea, our God is merciful.
6. The LORD preserveth the simple: I was brought low, and he helped me.
7. Return unto thy rest, 0 my soul; for the LORD hath dealt bountifully with thee.
8. For thou hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling.
9. I will walk before the LORD in the land of the living.
10. I believed, therefore have I spoken: I was greatly afflicted:
11. I said in my haste, All men are liars.
12. What shall I render unto the LORD for all his benefits toward me?
13. I will take the cup of salvation, and call upon the name of the LORD.
14. I will pay my vows unto the LORD now in the presence of all his people.
15. Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints.
16. 0 LORD, truly I am thy servant; I am thy servant, and the son of thine handmaid: thou hast loosed my bonds.
17. I will offer to thee the sacrifice of thanksgiving, and will call upon the name of the LORD.
18. I will pay my vows unto the LORD now in the presence of all his people,
19. In the courts of the LORD'S house, in the midst of thee, 0 Jerusalem. Praise ye the LORD.
Saturday, April 09, 2005
The Long Emergency
Sometime back, I mentioned that I'd seen the write up on this book. Now I find an excerpt from it at Rolling Stone. It's making the rounds now (I found the link at Wolcott's blog), and it raises an interesting question for me.
The thesis of The Long Emergency is that life as we know it, at least in the "First World," is impossible without cheap energy. Moreover, this cheap energy has shifted our thinking about life in ways the Industrial Revolution couldn't imagine (and no, the computer has not been the most important vanguard of that shift). In brief, as cheap energy runs out, so does the way we live. Food shipped in not just from South America, but from other parts of the country, will become prohibitively expensive, if not impossible. Agro-industrial farming itself will collapse, and with it will go cities that chew up farm land and cover it with concrete and asphalt (like much of Houston where I live, where neighborhoods now were farmland as recently as 50 years ago). Development, highway construction, urban sprawl, all will obviously be affected, but so will "simpler" things like electricity consumption. As Kunstler puts it: "Imagine Phoenix without air conditioning." Or Houston, for that matter.
I practically grew up on "doomsday" scenarios in the 60's and 70's: nuclear war; overpopulation; food shortages; water shortages, etc., etc. But when you think about it, the very way we live, the way we think about life, is based almost wholly on cheap, plentiful fuel. Fuel to transport goods to us; fuel to run power plants; petroleum to make the ubiquitous plastics of our daily life. It is not like this for many parts of the world. It won't be like this for us, much longer; especially as China and India decide they have the capacity and the right to consume as much fuel as they can pay for. The discovery and use of petroleum has literally changed the way we live and the way we relate to each other. It has certainly made Houston, Texas the fourth largest city in the country.
It's easy to look back and see how we let this happen. Now, literally right now, we have to start looking forward, and think about how we respond to it. Kunstler is pessimistic, perhaps with good reason. But does it have to be difficult? Do we have to respond to every crisis with violence and civic unrest? Do we have to allow things to unfold as if they were pre-ordained? There are clearly other ways available to human beings. Spain in the aftermath of the Madrid bombings comes to mind. A social philosophy, a social theology, will be desperately required. To not even try to have one, it to abdicate all responsibility to the irresponsible.
I mentioned the "interesting question." That question is this: have we really fundamentally changed since Spindletop? Did humanity fundamentally change after the Industrial Revolution, or did we just shift our perspective? Two views came up side by side in the upheaval: Romanticism, and what we call today "market capitalism," identified on a spectrum from the "invisible hand" to "neo-liberal economics" to Social Darwinism. What's coming now? Phenomenology? Deconstruction? A new theology or social philosophy? If history is any guide, the seeds are already sprouting. Which plants will we cultivate?
The thesis of The Long Emergency is that life as we know it, at least in the "First World," is impossible without cheap energy. Moreover, this cheap energy has shifted our thinking about life in ways the Industrial Revolution couldn't imagine (and no, the computer has not been the most important vanguard of that shift). In brief, as cheap energy runs out, so does the way we live. Food shipped in not just from South America, but from other parts of the country, will become prohibitively expensive, if not impossible. Agro-industrial farming itself will collapse, and with it will go cities that chew up farm land and cover it with concrete and asphalt (like much of Houston where I live, where neighborhoods now were farmland as recently as 50 years ago). Development, highway construction, urban sprawl, all will obviously be affected, but so will "simpler" things like electricity consumption. As Kunstler puts it: "Imagine Phoenix without air conditioning." Or Houston, for that matter.
I practically grew up on "doomsday" scenarios in the 60's and 70's: nuclear war; overpopulation; food shortages; water shortages, etc., etc. But when you think about it, the very way we live, the way we think about life, is based almost wholly on cheap, plentiful fuel. Fuel to transport goods to us; fuel to run power plants; petroleum to make the ubiquitous plastics of our daily life. It is not like this for many parts of the world. It won't be like this for us, much longer; especially as China and India decide they have the capacity and the right to consume as much fuel as they can pay for. The discovery and use of petroleum has literally changed the way we live and the way we relate to each other. It has certainly made Houston, Texas the fourth largest city in the country.
It's easy to look back and see how we let this happen. Now, literally right now, we have to start looking forward, and think about how we respond to it. Kunstler is pessimistic, perhaps with good reason. But does it have to be difficult? Do we have to respond to every crisis with violence and civic unrest? Do we have to allow things to unfold as if they were pre-ordained? There are clearly other ways available to human beings. Spain in the aftermath of the Madrid bombings comes to mind. A social philosophy, a social theology, will be desperately required. To not even try to have one, it to abdicate all responsibility to the irresponsible.
I mentioned the "interesting question." That question is this: have we really fundamentally changed since Spindletop? Did humanity fundamentally change after the Industrial Revolution, or did we just shift our perspective? Two views came up side by side in the upheaval: Romanticism, and what we call today "market capitalism," identified on a spectrum from the "invisible hand" to "neo-liberal economics" to Social Darwinism. What's coming now? Phenomenology? Deconstruction? A new theology or social philosophy? If history is any guide, the seeds are already sprouting. Which plants will we cultivate?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)