Dancing Towards Nihilism: First Sketch

  • To do right is to do that which is admirable (to me).  That which I find admirable is sharing abundant life with others.  Thus, being life-giving is right in my eyes.
  • To do wrong is to do that which is despicable (to me).  That which I find despicable is taking life from others or barring others from abundant life.  Thus, being death-dealing is wrong in my eyes.
  • Apart from these two things, nothing else matters (i.e. is of significance to me).  Or, rather, it is only in the context of these two things, that anything matters (i.e. is of significance to me).  Any belief, any value, any moral, any law, any story or text, any ideology, any construction of meaning or of identity–none of these things have any intrinsic significance (in my eyes).  They are only significant as far as they are life-giving or death-dealing and their significance carries no farther than that (but it does carry that far).
  • Here, what is of foremost importance (to me),  are one’s actions.  Again: beliefs, values, constructions of meaning–these are only significant to the extent they they impact one’s actions in relation to that which is life-giving or death-dealing.  Beliefs, values, and constructions of meaning, do not matter (to me) in and of themselves.  Their sole significance (to me) is the way in which they influence what we do.

 

A Response to Viewing "Beyond the Blues: Child and Youth Depression"

[Tonight, I sat on a panel of three respondents at the (ongoing) Sarnia Justice Film Festival.  The film being discussed was Beyond the Blues: Child and Youth Depression.  The other two speakers were psychiatrists, pretty firmly rooted in the medical model of care, and so I was a bit of the odd-person-out.  This is an extended version of what I said.]
Within his history of madness, Michel Foucault argues that madness, or mental illness, is not a natural and constant phenomenon throughout human history but is, instead, a construct that arises within a given society based upon various cultural, socioeconomic, political, and intellectual structures. Countering political, scientific and psychiatric narrative that posit an ongoing history of discovery and progress – a narrative which assert that we have simply gotten better and better at diagnosing and treating an unchanging historical constant – Foucault argues that societies construct their own unique experiences of madness.
I was thinking about Foucault’s analysis while watching this documentary.
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October Books

Kinda busy… proofreading to follow later… hopefully… apologies for sparse reviews.
1-2. The Plains of Aamjiwnaang and Ways of Our Grandfathers: Our Traditions and Culture by David D. Plain.
These two short books were written by a member of the Ahnishenahbek at Aamjiwnaang.  That is to say, they were written by a member of the First Nations people who live on the land where I now also live.  Given that I am keen to become involved with the First Nations community here, I was very pleased to discover these educational texts by a local author.  In fact, I’m not just keen to become involved, what is going on in their community — essentially, they are being murdered, especially their children, by chemical pollutants released from industrial plants that surround them; a few documentaries like Toxic Trespass, The Beloved Community, The Disappearing Male, and Waterlife cover this in some detail and I highly recommend them, not only for locals, but for any who want to get a sense for both the environmental destruction and the colonial project of genocide against indigenous people that continues to occur not just in the two-thirds world, but here in Canada.  Just to get a sense for the damage the pollutants cause the community, while male to female birth rates are generally sitting at 51% males born to 49% females, the birth rate in the community is 67% female and the rates at which pregnancies are lost are about three times higher than the national average.  This is because pollutants related to the plants here disrupt the endocrine system.  Speaking of pollutants, 21% of the greenhouse gas emissions in Ontario come from these plants.  According to the World Health Organization, this town has the worst air quality in Canada.  The folks who live close to the hazardous waste processing plant, called “Clean Harbors” (the largest in North America) have to be evacuated from their homes on a semi-regular basis.  Think something along the lines of Delillo’s “airborne toxic event” (people usually know it’s time to go when nausea, migraines and fainting spells set in, although this also happens elsewhere in the city depending on what and how much the plants are releasing)… only that has occurred more than half a dozen times over the last two months.  This is just the tip of the iceberg, I could go on and on… apparently something like 80% of the oil-based products used in the industrial world are somehow connected with this chemical valley (all the oil giants are here or were here)… maybe in a future post…
Anyway, back to the books.  In the first book, The Plains of Aamjiwnaang, David Plain recounts the history of the Ahnishenahbek in the Aaamjiwnaang region and beyond from the late fifteenth century til the mid-twentieth century.  He focuses upon his own lineage, the Plain family, who include a number of historical chiefs (both civil and war chiefs).  Personally, I found the history to be both fascinating and useful.  I never knew the historical significance of this region, nor did I know of the battles fought in this area (one hears a lot about battle grounds in Europe but we don’t know the history of our own regions).  Not surprisingly, one of the things that comes through pretty clearly is just how dishonest and brutal the Settlers were in their actions toward First Nations people.  Broken promises, theft of lands, betrayals, manipulation of peoples by trying to create internal divides and create powerful parties who are interested more in themselves than in the good of the community… all that happened in this location, just as it happened everywhere else colonialism goes.
The second book, Ways of Our Grandfathers, was also a useful read for me as I get situated here. While the first book explores events and people, this book examines cultural practices, religious beliefs, political and economic structures, and healing practices (including a list of regional plants, how they were prepared, and what they were used to heal).  All in all, recommended reading for any local folks.
3.  A Second Birthday: A Personal Confrontation with Illness, Pain, and Death by William Stringfellow.
Many thanks to the folks at Wipf and Stock for this complimentary copy.
This is the second book in Stringfellow’s autobiographical trilogy (my review of the first volume is here).  I can’t say that I enjoyed it as much as the first.  Having witnessed some very close friends and family members deal with serious illnesses or lifelong pain, I was hoping for a more sustained reflection upon that subject (as the book is roughly structured around the time in Stringfellow’s life when he became very sick and almost died until a last-ditch-effort surgery saved his life).  However, the book was more of a rambling series of tangents about a wide variety of subjects.  Much of it did not seem as exciting as some of his other reflections, although some of the sections were quite good — his criticisms of nostalgic American family television shows and his reflection on the dangers of simply going with the “default” option one has in society were especially good (but too short!).  Also, his section on why he despised being relegated to the role of a “theological gadfly” and why he began to cease given lectures in contexts where he was perceived that way is worth quoting:

Too often the difficulty with that task, I found, was that the ecclesiastical authorities, bureaucrats, and flunkies whom I addressed actually relished criticism as a means of further avoiding reformation or renewal.  They were flagellants, morbidly enjoying punishment for misbehavior in which they fully intended to persevere.  My involvement as “gadfly” or whatever-you-call-it was becoming a charade.
I would drop out of it.  And I did.

I have had very similar experiences when it comes to speaking in Christian contexts (from churches, to universities, to conferences) about matters related to poverty, restitution, and oppression, and these experiences have also made me question the whole process and look to other angles of action beyond the written word (I’m beginning to wonder if the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that the pen is mightier than the sword).
Anyway, all that to say, this book was quick and easy and mostly pleasant reading with a few bright moments but not nearly as inspiring as other things written by Stringfellow.  The groupies will like it, the others could skip it without much loss.
4.  The Epic of Gilgamesh (Penguin Classics edition).
Found this in an old box of books my wife brought from her mom’s farm and thought I would give it a read.  I reckon that I’ve probably read the whole epic in bits and pieces over the years but it was good to sit down and read the whole thing.  I find it absolutely fascinating to read literature that was written thousands of years ago… I love reading old stories (even if they’re not all that exciting on the surface).  It blows my mind to think that such things have endured over the years and that I am now reading, in the year 2011, a text that was originally recited in ancient Mesopotamia.  I definitely want to prioritize other such texts as I look for reading material next year
5.  Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke.
I had read a number of beautiful quotations from these letters, so when I saw the collection in a used book shop for a few bucks, I was happy to pick it up.  The letters are enjoyable — some good reflections on creativity, writing, love, and loneliness — but don’t come close to matching some of Rilke’s poetry.
6.  Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison.
Some time back, Brad Johnson recommended this book when I asked him to list some of his favourite novels, and so I finally got around to reading it.  I’m very glad that I did.  It’s a great story about how one person — in this case, an unnamed black male who moves from the South to New York in the early twentieth century — constructs his own identity in light, especially, of the ways in which a wide variety of others, construct his identity in other ways (i.e. in ways that don’t really see him, hence the title).  Recommended reading.
Bonus Crazy Christian Book: Love and Sex Are Not Enough by Charles P. de Santo.
So, I was visiting with a friend who passed this book onto me.  I sort of have a thing for reading wacko Christian books from previous decades.  I think they offer a different way of reading a lot of contemporary Christian books — i.e. they may be just as wacko — and I think this is particularly true in relation to the subjects at hand in this work: love, sex, and marriage (also, reading books like these is an amusing way of killing time on the can).  Of course, like most Conservative Christian books about how to live life, this one is full of lines about how we cannot permit our culture to dictate our values (Christians need to espouse to traditional, universal values) and then it goes on to embrace a slew of culturally-conditioned values from hetero-normativity to patriarchy to the Protestant work ethic and the spirit of capitalism.  Now, what makes this particular book stand out, is the way in which it employs an appeal to sociology in order to affirm both racism and classism.  Essentially, the authors central point boils down to the fact that “love and sex are not enough” to make a good marriage.  Furthermore, it’s not enough to also share the same religious outlook as a prospective partner.  Rather, one has the best odds of producing a good marriage if one also dates within one’s class (poor people are especially bad marriage prospects, according to De Santo, as are atheists), and within one’s race (I quote: “While it is not immoral to marry outside one’s race, it probably is unwise).  Again, it bears repeating that it may be easy to unveil the absurdity of pretty much all of this book, but the point then is to turn the critical lenses on any present day Christian texts that address these matters and ask if they will not be considered equally absurd in a few years.

The Poverty Industry and the Early Assemblies of Jesus-Followers: Seven Provocative Contrasts

[What follows is a transcript of a lecture I presented at a course a friend of mine is teaching to Christian Social Service workers in Toronto’s Yonge Street Mission (YSM) — one of the most respected and oldest Christian charities engaging homeless and street-involved folks in that city (and also a former employer of mine).  It was interesting that, immediately prior to me delivering this lecture, the President of GM Canada spoke in the room next door to a group of homeless and street-involved teens.  He presented a tale of how he worked his way up from nothing and spoke about North America as the land of the free.  In such a free space, all that limits what a person can be (according to this fellow’s talk) is how hard a person is willing to work and what choices they make.  He spoke about how he chose to be a businessman because he knew they were important people who could do a lot of good things.  Basically, what he presented was the ideology of freedom, choice, and capitalism-with-a-human-face… thereby providing a perfect illustration of the sort of things I criticize in my own presentation.  I would love feedback from any who take the time to read this (sadly, I didn’t find the time to make this as tight, polished and as well-argued at points, as I wanted it to be), as I will be revising this lecture for a course I’m helping to teach next summer.]

The Poverty Industry and the Early Assemblies of Jesus-Followers: Seven Provocative Contrasts

Introduction: Questioning the Relationship of “Charity” to “Justice”
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#OccupyCorinth

I was talking with Gallio the other day about some of the latest rumours that are spreading throughout the Empire. Strangely enough, there seems to be some sort of “movement” establishing occupations in various central cities in the Eastern provinces. However, it seems that some of the members of the movement are objecting to the language of “occupation” – they seem to think that the land is already undergoing an occupation by us, the Roman people, which is pretty laughable left-wing nutbar material if you ask me – we are the agents of peace and security, salvation, civilization, prosperity and the Golden Age, how can we be viewed as some sort of negative occupation?
Anyway, as far as I can tell, this “movment” started in the Middle East in the Spring with #OccupyJerusalem, and then spread to all sorts of other places – #OccupyAntioch, #OccupyTessalonika, #OccupyGalatia (although people are uncertain if that is happening in the North or South of the province) and so on. There are even rumours that one of the more active members of this movement is hoping to set up an occupation (or perhaps help develop an occupation that has already taken place unbeknownst to us?) in Rome itself before moving on to the Western provinces.
Anyway, my curiosity got the better of me and so I thought I would go and check out the occupation that is taking place here in Corinth. After all, the rumours suggest that these people want some sort of “revolution” and they seem to be claiming that some fellow who died as a state-executed terrorist is actually the agent of peace and security and salvation—they seem to want to refer to this person in the same way as we refer to our Lord, Caesar (blessed be) and they seem to think this fellow established some sort of economy that runs counter to our own. How mad… and maddening, really. Don’t these people know what a gift we have given them with our law and order? For, as the divine Augustus once said: the slave-based economy of Roman imperialism is the worst of all the possible options… except for all the other ones! Besides, our economists know that slavery is a necessary growing pain of any recently developed economy and, really, its a far better option than a good many of the choices available to those barbarians. Ungrateful bastards—when the tide rises, all boats rise (and the divine Caesars are, of course, lords of the sea, ever since Pompey liberated the world from pirates).
So, perhaps there would be some money in it for me if I went to visit #OccupyCorinth. If there really was anything seditious going on there, I might make some money by being the first to turn them over to the authorities.
You can’t imagine my disappointment when I got there. What a joke of a “movement.” I couldn’t even make out what their objectives are. They are incoherent and divided. Various factions have arisen. I could identify those of Paul, of Apollos, of Cephas, and of someone called Christ, and, as far as I can tell, they all have different models by which they seek to pursue some sort of change.
This is all pretty humourous for a movement that claims to be leaderless – or, rather, claims that their leader is some immaterial Spirit and some poor dead, uneducated Jew who they think underwent an apotheosis (more like an apocolocyntosis… I should tell Seneca about that play on words, he would appreciate it, I think). Of course, even these supposed “leaders” of “the leaderless” appear to be the dregs of all things. I saw one of them speaking at their General Assembly (they meet weekly for this and so for the civic administration has turned a blind eye to this, even though it is illegal for them to assemble in this way). He was poorly clothed, apparently homeless, seemed to have marks from beatings, coarse hands from hard work (how shameful!) and appeared to be hungry, foolish, weak, disreputable and altogether rubbish. I mean, who can take people who look like this seriously?
They make their own clothes (if you even want to call those eclectic rags “clothes”)? Egad. What do they have to tell us about anything?
Not only that, but they appear to be a profoundly immoral group. While visiting the occupation, I learned that one fellow is having sex with his father’s wife! Can you imagine! Even the most licentious of us Romans would never consider such a thing. Of course, the supporters of #OccupyCorinth have tried to tell me that such a person is a rare exception to the rule – and that we should not judge a whole movement based upon one bad apple – but I think we all know that they are just trying to hide the fact that they are all probably incestuous.
Not only incestuous, but also atheists. They reject our gods – the very same gods who gave us our economic values, who raised the standard of living of all throughout the empire, and provided us with the family values we admire and protect (the divine Augustus worked harder than any other to restore the dignity of the family, did he not?). So, while they claim to talk in some sort of religious language, we should not be fooled: these are atheists and, literally, motherfuckers.
Things only became even more of a joke, when I learned that some of the occupiers were using our legal and judicial system in order to resolve conflicts that occurred within the occupation. These people claim to be embodying some sort of alternative kingdom, centred around the Spirit of new life and the revaluation of values but as soon as the going gets tough, they appeal right back to systems that any true revolutionary would see as opposed to their goals. What a bunch of poseurs and hypocrites.
I could go on and on, but I’ll just mention three more things. First, the occupation can’t even figure out their eating arrangements. Some are meat-eaters, some are vegans, some only eat “free range” meat or something like that (is that what “kosher” means?), and they can’t sort out how to address everybody’s needs without getting into fights with each other. How pathetic. Not only that, but for all their talk about being a new society of brothers and sisters, when they do get together to eat, it seems like those who have higher status (which, let’s be honest, is only relatively higher status, since they are all a bunch of beggars and inbreds) appear to be taking the better portions of food and eating more than others. So much for loving one another in new ways. This isn’t the sort of concrete and material mutualism that we Romans practice with our siblings.
Second, they seem to be permitting women to run around acting in roles that should only be reserved for men. I would feel entirely emasculated if a woman told me what to do, yet there are some women who seem to be acting as “leaders” (in a “leaderless” movement). Now, obviously we Romans value women, but everybody knows that they are to play a different role in society. I would never follow a leader I could beat in a fight (something Senator Marcus Driscolius once said about those barbarians who were revolting up north under the authority of a woman). Women, obviously, are made to bear children and care for the home. This does not mean they are any less human than men, but it means their role is different.
Third, a good portion of those at #OccupyCorinth appear to be either high or in psychosis. Some are walking around speaking in tongues that nobody can recognize, some claim to be able to heal the sick with alternative medicine (or simply by touching them while speaking certain words!), some claim to be able to prophesy the future, and some even claim to be able perform vaguely defined “works of power.” What a bunch of crazies. Seriously, I would expect this sort of madness from the Gauls and other barbarians (damn tribal people, they would probably have drum circles… yuck!) but I expect more from Greeks.
That said, despite their obvious beggarly nature, despite their juvenile behaviour, despite their immorality, incompetence, and incoherence, there still were some very troubling and destructive messages being proclaimed. If anybody started taking them seriously, we could be in trouble – indeed, given the way this Occupy Together thing is spreading, the Empire itself could be in trouble. Not because something better is coming along, but because these people seem to proponents of chaos and anarchy and ways of structuring life together that are proven failures.
For example, one of their leaders-but-not-really-leaders, is trying to encourage them to share their resources and money with one another in some sort of “Collection,” and is trying to network the occupations throughout the Empire so that, even though they are all poor, there will always be enough for everybody. This sort of utopian economic theory is the sort of thing we might expect from the barbarians in East Germania and beyond, but it has obviously proven false and was thoroughly refuted at the fall of wall of Alesia (and the defeat of Vercingetorix). Not only is it wrong from an economic angle, it is wrong from a moral angle. It refuses to respect the divine laws of private property and disregards the fact that people have earned what they have and deserve to keep it (whether that be a little or a lot). Yet, these atheists refer to these divine laws as idolatry. Perhaps we have spoiled our colonies a little too much and now some are responding by acting like ungrateful children. Spare the fasces, spoil the child.
Not only that but, as an aside, we should note that it probably isn’t good for the Empire to have various members of vanquished nations interacting with each other in this way, apart from some sort of Roman intermediary. Given that this movement likes to imitate our political ways of structuring life together – both by forming local assemblies (“occupations”), establishing its own law courts (and claiming that they are beyond or above the law because of grace and love – a fuller expression of anarchy has never been heard before!), and using political metaphors (referring to their groups as a single body, when really we know that the political community is the true body) – we should note how this might end up creating a transnational alternative to what we offer… that is, if these incompetent, immoral fools can get their act together.
There are other heretical and seditious views proclaimed by some members of this “movement.” Thus, perhaps in a moment of megalomania, I heard one of them proclaim that: “God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are.” I might be tempted to respond: “Okay, buddy. Keep telling yourself that and living in your fantasy land,” but this is a dangerous fantasy. I heard the same person say, that the “rulers of this age are doomed to perish,” in part, I think, because they are said to have “crucified the Lord of glory.” This same Lord will, supposedly, hand our empire over to his God who will “destroy every ruler and every authority and every power” and will put “all his enemies [including us, I suppose, since we crucified their “Lord”] under his feet.”
This is rebellious talk and should not be tolerated. We all know that crucifixion is a form of death reserved only for the worst members of society. Thus, to say that some crucified person is Lord, while proclaiming doom upon the rulers, is an offense that should not go unpunished… and should be punished severely. Of course, this same fellow who said those words, also described our judicial system as “unrighteous” and “unjust” so there may be no hope of reforming him (given the scars on his body, he may not have been hyperbolic when he described himself as “sentenced to death” and being “in danger every hour”).
I went back to Gallio and told him about these things but he said I’m getting a little worked up over nothing. Obviously, we are dealing with a bunch of juvenile, immoral (probably high), ignorant, and hypocritical wannabes who like to throw around some provocative rhetoric but who won’t make it through the first winter. Gallio assured me that, while they are monitoring the situation, the main thing to do is to present a benevolent face to the public. Lord Caesar knows, it wasn’t that long ago that we completely destroyed Corinth so, even though these people are beyond ungrateful for the grace we have shown them since then, violence might not be the answer yet. These people will implode upon themselves or fall apart before they can offer anything serious to the city. In a year, I reckon that this “movement” will be completely dead and gone.
Yours,
A Roman Citizen and friend of Liberty, Property, and the Rule of Law

Worst Title Ever?

I recently found this amongst donations in a church library.  I challenge anybody to come up with a better title and cover page for a Christian book (in other news, I think Ratzinger distributed this one to priests throughout his empire).

September Books

1. Texts of Terror: Literary-Feminist Readings of Biblical Narratives by Phyllis Trible.
This is one of those books you read about in a lot of places and so, coming across it in a friend’s library this last week, I thought I would give it a read.  For those who know the literature around OT scholarship or feminist-critical readings of the B.I.B.L.E. there probably isn’t that much new here — so many people have picked up and ran with what Trible wrote since this book was published that a lot of people have probably pretty much read this book already.
However, that doesn’t take away from any of its significance.  More than most I know, Texts of Terror is the sustained work of exegesis that absolutely damns any superficial understanding of the Bible as the plain and simple, divinely inspired Word of God.  In exploring the stories of four women — Hagar, Tamar, the unnamed raped, murdered and dismembered concubine of a Levite, and the daughter of Jephthah — Trible demonstrates not only the atrocities and violence performed by the human characters within the stories but also of the narrators and of God as God is portrayed in those stories.  Any acritical approach to the the biblical stories is pretty much impossible after one encounters Trible’s text.  And thank God for that.
2. Time Regained (Vol 6 of “In Search of Lost Time”) by Marcel Proust.
I’ve gotta say that, after Vols 4 & 5, I was pretty nervous to get into the conclusion of In Search of Lost Time.  Those contributions were so disappointing that I was worried the story would continue its downward slide and end in disappointment.  Thankfully, however, this volume really does rise up to meet the expectations set by the first two (maybe three) volumes.  Once again, the sort of insight Proust demonstrated earlier surfaces and some of his descriptive moments put into words things that we take for granted but perhaps would never know how to actually express (here Proust lives up to the role of the writer as he describes it in this volume: “The function and the task of a writer are those of a translator”).
I very much enjoyed this volume and, all in all, am glad that I undertook the reading of this story. I very much enjoyed Proust’s reflections not just on time but on the ways in which people move through time, the ways in which people construct their identities, and the ways in which each individual person is, in fact, a whole host of beings — (each one a multitude that signals: “I am legion” to borrow from Hardt and Negri’s borrowing from the Gospels).  Thus, we are, all of us, constantly in the process of creating and recreating ourselves and others and, at any given moment, who we are is rather different depending on who describes us (and who is to say whether one person’s description of us is more accurate than any other person’s description or our own?  Are we not, rather, all at once, everything we are taken to be?).  To share simply one quote from this volume in this regard:

As I made my way home, I reflected upon the speed with which conscience ceases to be a partner in our habits, which she allows to develop freely without bothering herself about them, and upon the astonishing picture which may consequently present itself to us if we observe simply from without, and in the belief that they engage the whole of the individual, the actions of men whose moral or intellectual virtues may at the same time be developing independently in an entirely different direction.

Consequently, Proust sets out to explore the “notion of Time embodied, of years past but not separate from us.”  In this regard, memory is also an ongoing theme throughout the book as, for example, demonstrated in this passage:

I understood that the reason why life may be judged to be trivial although at certain moments it seems to us so beautiful is that we form our judgment, ordinarily, on the evidence not of life itself but of those quite different images which preserve nothing of life–and therefore we judge it disparagingly.  At most I noticed cursorily that the differences which exist between every one of our real impressions–differences which explain why a uniform depiction of life cannot bear much resemblance to the reality–derive probably from the following cause: the slightest word that we have said, the most insignificant action that we have performed at any one epoch of our life was surrounded by, and coloured by the reflexion of, things which logically had no connexion with it and which later have been separated from it by our intellect which could make nothing of them for its own rational purposes, things, however, in the midst of which… the simplest act or gesture remains immured as within a thousand sealed vessels, each one of them filled with things of a colour,k a scent, a temperature that are absolutely different one from another, vessels, moreover, which being disposed over the whole range of our years, during which we have never ceased to change if only in our dreams and our thoughts, are situated at the most various moral altitudes and give us the sensation of extraordinarily diverse atmospheres.

To close things out, here are a few final references and quotations.
First, of all, on a somewhat interesting trivia note, I found it interesting that Proust refers to the air battles fought over Paris during WWI with several references to Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries.”  Of course, Francis Ford Coppola ended up using that same piece of music for what might be the most famous scene in Apocalypse Now–when the American helicopters fly in and assault a Vietnamese village.  The parallels are pretty striking and I reckon he must have borrowed this from Proust.
Secondly, in this volume, characters reflect in more than one instance about the role that media plays in the formation of perceptions that people than internalize and take to be their own.  To quote M. de Charlus: “”What is astonishing,” he said, “is that this public which judges the men and events of the war solely from the newspaper, is persuaded that it forms its own opinion.”  I reckon the same is true of people today, although the nature of the media has changed — instead of newspapers, people rely on sources like twitter, facebook, and wikipedia in order to discover their own opinions.
M. de Charlus also as some good things to say about war:

The creation of the world did not take place once and for all, you said, it is, of necessity taking place every day… ‘Now that Germany has determined on war, the die is cast,’ the truth is that every morning war is declared afresh.  And the men who wish to continue it are as guilty as the men who began it, more guilty perhaps, for the latter perhaps did not foresee all its horrors.

Something that we should keep in mind today both as we sustain old wars and create new ones (pardon the overlap with our contemporary context but, as Proust also observes in this volume: “In reality every reader is, while he is reading, the reader of his own self.  The writer’s work is merely a kind of optical instrument which he offers to the reader to enable him to discern what, without this book, he would perhaps never have perceived in himself”).
Moving on to a related theme, I also enjoyed the following passage on love, wherein Proust quotes Jean de La Bruyère:  “Men often want to love where they cannot hope to succeed; they seek their own undoing without being able to compass it, and, if I may put it thus, they are forced against their will to remain free.”  Although, some pages later, Proust slightly alters what this may mean in his own reflections on love: “to the woman whom we have loved most in our life we are not so faithful as we are to ourself, and sooner or alter we forget her in order… to be able to begin to love again.”  This, quite a bit later, leads to further reflections upon love in relation to the ways in which we construct our selves:

In the past the fear of being no longer myself was something that had terrified me, and this had made me dread the end of each new love that I had experienced (for Gilberte, for Albertine), because I could not bear the idea that the “I” who loved them would one day cease to exist, since this in itself would be a kind of death.  But by dint of repetition this fear had gradually been transformed into a calm confidence.  So that if in those early days, as we have seen, the idea of death had cast a shadow over my loves, for a long time now the remembrance of love had helped me not to fear death.  For I realised that dying was not something new, but that on the contrary since my childhood I had died many times.

So, anyway, I hope that you all get a glimpse of Proust’s ability to write well and also see the ways in which he anticipates many of the themes that arise in twentieth-century social theory, philosophy, and hermeneutics.  Really it is quite incredible and I am glad that I undertook the task of reading this book.
3. The Man Who Was Thursday: A Nightmare by G. K. Chesterton.
Not that long ago, I read an essay by Žižek reflecting on this story by Chesterton.  So, seeing it sitting on a friend’s shelf, I sat down and read it the other day.  I can’t say I found it all that exciting.  In fact, I found it mostly mildly annoying.
On the meta- level, Chesterton is reflecting upon questions about good and evil and how such things can exist in the company of a God who is both powerful and loving.  He does this by writing a story about secret police officers (who belong to the special “thought police” section of the force) who are on the tail of an international anarchist conspiracy.  Neither level of the story plays out all that well.  In relation to matters of evil, this isn’t entirely Chesterton’s fault.  As far as I can tell, nobody can offer a satisfactory answer to that issue.  Chesterton’s proposal is that when we focus in on evil and suffering and pain, we are basically seeing the back of God — or of the world — which appears monstrous, but our encounter with the face of God makes everything seem beautiful and playful and makes the monstrous stuff appear as some sort of joke just awaiting its final revelation.  So, for those who are desperate for some sort of romantic ideological overcoding of life, I suppose this might sound nice… but, for myself, it just sounds like the sort of story told by people who don’t want much to do with suffering.
Moving to the details of the story, Chesterton shows (a) an obvious love of law-and-order and (b) a total lack of comprehension about anything related to anarchism as a political philosophy or as something that has inspired people to try and act on behalf of life-giving change in the world.  Really, he ends up sounding like one of the “good old boys” who seems to think that British imperialism is essentially a benevolent force for good in the world (speaking of being a good old boy, Chesterton’s story also lacks any significant female presence — just one woman shows up for a few pages at the start and then is mentioned again at the very end — all the other main characters and speaking parts are male; plus, a lot of the story seems like a school boy’s fantasy about running around saving the world from bad guys [like “anarchists”] and wearing flashy clothes and carrying a sword will sitting on a throne or a horse… yippee).
Of course, Chesterton realizes that just doing what you’re told to do seems less flashy and exciting than being involved in some sort of revolutionary action, and so that’s why the God in his story goes around creating a plot that adds a whole lot more excitement to the lives of those who both follow and enforce the laws of society.  “I was just following orders… and, boy, was it exciting!”  Unfortunately for Chesterton, this line of thinking is about as accurate as R. R. Reno’s recent assertion that the true way to demonstrate a preferential option for the poor is to wear a tie and not watch trashy TV.
Not really recommended reading.  Also not really something that makes me interested in reading much of anything else Chesterton wrote.
4. Soldier X by Don Wulffson.
This book is the story of a German soldier who fought on the Russian front during WWII.  I enjoyed it quite a bit because it brings a human face to people — German soldiers/Nazis — who are generally treated as animals or as those who deserved to die, in our more culturally dominant reflections upon that war.  This story is written as fiction, but the author claims that what occurred accurately reflects the experiences of two people.  I don’t want to say too much about the plot because there are some very interesting twists that make this story a little different than other war memoirs I have read… and because the book is so small that you could sit down and read it in a few hours to find out for yourself what it says.  All I can say is that war is fucking hell, I have no ability to imagine what it is like to live through something like that, and I hope I never find out.
5. Hey Nostradamus! by Douglas Coupland.
Coupland tends to have a bit of a cult following up here in Canada and Hey Nostradamus! has probably become his most highly praised novel (prior to that, I think it was Life After God).  Some of my friends really love this guy and can offer pretty captivating readings of his books, but I’ve always had a bit of trouble connecting with Coupland’s writing.  This book wasn’t really that different than his others in terms of the impact I felt from it.  It was… good… not great or stunning.  There were moments when it began to verge on something more exciting and the writing started to feel like it was rising to another level, but those came and went quickly and mostly it remained in the realm of… good.  Enough to keep you turning the pages and feel interested, but that’s about it (the story, by the way, centres upon a high-school shooting that occurs in the ’80s and the impact that has upon four related characters over the years).

A Response to Craig Carter

[Craig Carter wrote a response to the recent events at Tyndale that ended up resulting in the apparent cancellation of a fund-raiser involving George W. Bush.  It’s pretty much on par with every other post on his blog (check it out and draw your own conclusions about that).  In the past, I have found Craig to be impossible to engage in dialogue because of his refusal to engage with the substance of what people say and his preference for simply repeating what was already said or writing in response to something that was not said.  However, I decided to write a comment in reply to him and thought I would cross-post it here, in case he decided to delete what I said.  I did not include links to our website on his post because he said that he did not want to link to our site but I have added them here.]
For the sake of others who read this post, it may be worth correcting a few of the more blatant errors in Craig’s post.
(1) You state that we hate “George Bush because he is not a socialist. That is the fundamental reason they attack him.” First, of all, I don’t “hate” Bush, nor do I know others involved in this campaign who “hate” him (more on that later). Secondly, this is an absurd statement. I am not a socialist, nor do I know anybody else involved in this process who is. Why, then, would we want Bush to be a socialist?
In actuality, the reasons why we oppose Bush are very clearly stated on our website (cf. the post on the practices of Bush vs. the values of Tyndale). You ignore this altogether.
(2) Nobody on our website has said anything to praise Obama. In fact, in a note in one of my posts, I suggest that he is just as bad or worse than Bush. However, Obama is not discussed because he was not the one invited to speak. Had he been, I would have opposed him coming just as strongly (would you still be talking about “the noble Western tradition of free speech and open debate” if that were the case?)
(3) There has been no forgetting that Bush is a human being and a human being who should be loved. However, as I address in my post about love, this does not mean we refuse to hold Bush accountable. Instead of just trotting out lines that contradict the evidence on our website, you could try writing a substantial refutation of my argument about why what we are doing is a way of loving Bush. As my post makes clear, I am very NOT turning Bush into “the devil incarnate.”
Ya know, Craig, you say “let’s have a debate” but I posted more than one substantial post (take the one on Bush’s practices vs. Tyndale’s values or the one on love within the context of oppression) and you are pretending they don’t exist.
(4) As for your remarks about Bush’s assistance in relation to AIDS in Africa, well, you may want to balance the picture:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/aug/30/usa.aids
Refusing to provide funding for condoms or those who distributed condoms actually made the crisis worse.
(5) You write that “[y]ou can believe the president of Tyndale did not handle this well but we all should remember that we lack knowledge that might put his actions in a different light” but it is worth remembering that the only reason why we lack this knowledge is because the President, or any other official representative or authority, have steadfastly refused to respond to any queries or questions about this matter (as you state earlier in your post).
Anyway, Craig, you’re been around the academy for awhile. If you want to debate (as you say you do) then engage the substance of what was written. Don’t just make things up or pretend nothing was said. That other faculty members, Masson and Davis — folks who also should be able to engage things in an academic manner — have affirmed this post makes me wonder what in the world passes as academic endeavours at Tyndale these days.