Nov 2007
More on Nonviolence
A few quotes from Kurlansky’s book:
“The early Christians are the earliest known group that renounced warfare in all its forms and rejected all its institutions.”
“For 284 years… Christians remained an antiwar cult. Christian writers emphasized the incompatibility of warfare with Christian teachings.”
“Active practitioners of nonviolence are always seen as a threat, a direct menace, to the state.”
“…once the state embraces a religion, the nature of that religions changes radically. It loses its nonviolent component and becomes a force for war rather than peace. The state must make war, because without war it would have to drop its power politics and renege on its mission to seek advantage over other nations, enhancing itself at the expense of others. And so a religions that is in the service of a state is a religion that not only accepts war, but prays for victory. From Constantine to the Crusaders to the contemporary American Christian right, people who call themselves Christians have betrayed the teachings of Jesus while using His name in the pursuit of political power.”
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Nonviolence
I am reading an excellent book by Mark Kurlansky entitled Nonviolence. Kurlansky writes, “The first clue… on the subject of nonviolence, is that there is no word for it…. while every major language has a word for violence, there is no word to express the idea of nonviolence except that it is not another idea, it is not violence.” There is, essentially, no ideological embodiment of nonviolence in language. Even the idea of peace is not the same as nonviolence, but it can suffice for this example. Imagine a world where instead of having war, we had ‘nonpeace’.Kurlansky is quick to point out that nonviolence is not the same as pacifism, which is associated with being passive. Nonviolence is a political means to an end, just as violence is, but it refuses to dehumanize others. Essentially, it tries to take seriously every great religions’ teaching of love your neighbor. If you do love your neighbor you will not invade, you will not wage war, you will not steal or cheat. The reason that we do invade, steal, bomb, kill is because we love ourselves more than our neighbors.The counter argument is an argument of justice. If you truly wish to love your neighbor then you must reveal the consequences of their actions. Thus when Iraq invaded Kuwait, we were loving not only Kuwait but showing Iraq tough love by invading. This is identified as the myth of redemptive violence: that performing a violent action can bring about nonviolent results.It is interesting that the first Christians never used the symbol of the cross, the symbol of violence against Jesus. They used the fish. That was their understanding of what Christianity was: following a fisherman, which often meant going to a cross. Now we follow the Christ of the cross, with few of us (in the West) ever going to one ourselves.
The American Dream
11/13/07 08:12 Categories: Politics
There is a study recently completed which suggests that the American Dream is not so easily come by as thought. More importantly, it reveals some of the lingering racism in our country. I don’t mean to simplify such a complex issue, but at the same time thee is some truth in the claim: we still suffer from racial divide.
Alain Badiou
I’m just getting into Alain Badiou’s Ethics. Here are some quotes from Badiou:
“A Truth is the subjective development of that which is at once both new and universal. New: that which is unforeseen by the order of creation. Universal: that which can interest, rightly, every human individual, according to his pure humanity.”
“Evil is the interruption of a truth by the pressure of particular or individual interests.”
“Evil is the moment when I lack the strength to be true to the Good that compels me.”
“Liberal capitalism is not at all the Good of humanity. Quite the contrary; it is the vehicle of savage, destructive nihilism.”
“Our democracy is not perfect. But it’s better than the bloody dictatorships. Capitalism is unjust. But it’s not criminal like Stalinism. We let millions of Africans die of AIDS, but we don’t make racist nationalist declarations like Milosevic. We kill Iraqis with our airplanes, but we don’t cut their throats with machetes like they do in Rwanda, etc.”
“It is necessary to examine, in a detailed way, the contemporary theory of Evil, the ideology of human rights, the concept of democracy. It is necessary to show that nothing there leads in the direction of the real emancipation of humanity. It is necessary to reconstruct rights, in everyday life as in politics, of Truth and of the Good. Our ability to once again have real ideas and real projects depends on it.”
“The ethics of Truth always returns, in precise circumstances, to fighting for the True against the four fundamentals forms of Evil: obscurantism, commercial academicism, the politics of profit and inequality, and sexual barbarism.”
“Evil is the interruption of a truth by the pressure of particular or individual interests.”
“Evil is the moment when I lack the strength to be true to the Good that compels me.”
“Liberal capitalism is not at all the Good of humanity. Quite the contrary; it is the vehicle of savage, destructive nihilism.”
“Our democracy is not perfect. But it’s better than the bloody dictatorships. Capitalism is unjust. But it’s not criminal like Stalinism. We let millions of Africans die of AIDS, but we don’t make racist nationalist declarations like Milosevic. We kill Iraqis with our airplanes, but we don’t cut their throats with machetes like they do in Rwanda, etc.”
“It is necessary to examine, in a detailed way, the contemporary theory of Evil, the ideology of human rights, the concept of democracy. It is necessary to show that nothing there leads in the direction of the real emancipation of humanity. It is necessary to reconstruct rights, in everyday life as in politics, of Truth and of the Good. Our ability to once again have real ideas and real projects depends on it.”
“The ethics of Truth always returns, in precise circumstances, to fighting for the True against the four fundamentals forms of Evil: obscurantism, commercial academicism, the politics of profit and inequality, and sexual barbarism.”
The Ambiguous
11/06/07 11:34 Categories: Theology | Philosophy
It came to represent everything that postmodernity is. Theologically, the feminist, womanist, black, liberation and other theological movements have sought to treat the Bible like it is one of these pictures - it is wholly possible to read it and see a whole new aspect or picture depending on what lines you choose are dominant. As far as praxis goes, I really only have a couple things to say: on one level, this ambiguity downright sucks. It makes for arguments, it reduces everything from clearcut to unsettling, it can be a deep cause of doubt and uncertainty. At the same time, life would be miserable otherwise. How could we trade disagreements for uniformity? Rather, we must learn to separate the disagreement from the relationship - something that I am horrible at. It is completely possible, and necessary, to learn how to love, befriend and care for those that we completely disagree with and even dislike. Essentially, we become truly people of compassion when we are able to love those who are our enemies. We become people of love when we cannot only tolerate, but enjoy and engage with those who frustrate, annoy, and would try to make us hate. Moreover, then we truly become a light to the world - not only because our example is so wonderful, but we are showing another way of living which is akin to the way that Jesus lives.
International Justice and War (or Why Every Country Should Invade the United States)
11/05/07 10:41 Categories: Politics
I have a hard time with the Iraq war. I know that many people do. The cost alone scares me. The claims that we are making those folks lives better, or saving them from an evil regime seem preposterous. Reports that Hussein had offered to leave the country into exile are scary. These things seem to iterate the United States’ supremacist view of itself as the holy protector of the world. We consider our way the best way, the only way (we do allow countries with a parliamentary system to be our friends too). This sort of pride is alarming and cannot be easily fixed. In a minor plug, I feel like Obama would be the best next leader of our country, with a proper amount of humility and compassion for others to counter our current trend.
My real point here, though, is this fellow and the international actions against him:
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Ahmadinejad is the leader of Iran, and a fairly foolish man. He hates the Jewish people, as many conservative Muslims do, and he is currently trying to get nuclear power, and probably nukes, for his country. The International community is doing everything possible to stop him. It is interesting that the international community consists of countries who all have nukes, and who all can very easily wipe out ahmadinejad’s country without a second thought. The United States have about 7500 active nuclear weapons - ranged all over the world on subs, in the United States, and in a few select bases overseas.
Moreover, we have recently attacked a country on the suspicion of weapons of mass destruction. I do not support Ahmadinejad’s ideology, but the injustice of his situation is interesting. My solution is not to enable him to get nukes. My suggestion is that we get rid of more of ours, both as a sign of good will to all of life and also as a means of reducing our inherent threat to countries without nukes. Lastly, in order to gain respect on the world stage and close attention from the United States and other economic superpowers like the EU and China, a country needs to get nukes or move in that direction. We would be completely ignoring Iran right now if not for the nuclear situation.
However, to contradict myself, I am not sure what gives us, the United States, the right to nuclear technology and knowledge and not others. It seems that part of the inalienable rights that we give to ourselves (or claim to give to ourselves) we deny to others. It is also interesting that in the midst of global warming, etc., we should probably be helping others attain the cleaner resource of nuclear power. (On the subject of its disposal, I continue to suggest sending it to the sun, where ‘nuclear waste’ is constantly being generated and destroyed. There is about 148,000,000 kg of nuclear waste on earth.)
So, what is my point? That our hypocrisy is reaching new and disturbing levels. Instead of setting the example, both internationally and for the common good, we are attempting to mandate actiions by others and rely upon our ever weakening economy.
Belief and Unbelief
11/01/07 10:42 Categories: Theology
Sometimes it is really hard to believe in God - at least intellectually. I look around and I have a hard time thinking that there is other than my eyes can see, my senses can detect, my experiments can discern. I know that is a fallacy - we are not able to detect everything that we think exists, so why shouldn’t God be like that? But what really trips me out is that this God, who I may at the time be struggling to intellectually affirm, would really, actually do something crazy like love us enough to come down and die. God came down and died. What the hell? That is not how this God business should work. If God is really God, his will should rule and so if he wants something, like saving us, that shouldn’t cost him everything. But it does. It really leads me to one conclusion: my view of power, how it works, what it means, and how it runs must be very different from how I think it runs and from how it seems to run in the world. Here those with power and wealth distance themselves from pain if possible. God embraced it! What a mind blowing reality! Evidently how I think must continue to change.