Searching for God #12

 In the last piece in this space, the notion of ‘being seen’ in our uniqueness (acorn), through the ‘how’ of whatever it is that we do was introduced. Hillman applies the word ‘soul’ to that invisible visible. And he advocates for evidence the personal, first person experience of each of us, uncluttered, and obscured by any sociological, or even medical or academic classification, type, class, demographic or diagnosis.

Ironically, as a first step in any search for God, we might begin by stripping all the ‘type’ words that have been deployed in the personnel files, the medical files, the academic files, the political files, and try to recover, uncover, the bare, naked, unflattering and even embarrassing words that attempt to display and depict the ‘truth’ of our identity and our experience. And, while the question is rhetorical, it is one begging to be posed: “Does any of this “being deeply and fully seen” happen in your experience of being a member or an adherent of a church?” Does it actually seem paradoxical that ‘in the presence of God’ as we describe our sanctuaries, we restrain our truth for our private conversations with God, while judiciously and studiously avoiding sharing even the most cursory and social conversation from each other. (I have witnessed parishioners leaving their parish church ‘because the sermon touched on conversations that took place in that community earlier in that week,’ without the mention of any names.)

Of course, private indiscretions, misdemeanours and ‘sins’ are expected inside the penitential, as an integral component of that liturgical ritual. What about the search ‘to be seen’ in a way different from the many superficial ways one is encountered and described in the secular environment? And, is Hillman’ s premise that relationships benefit from various parties in the community ‘actually seeing’ others in and through an imaginative ‘eye’ that looks not for the obvious personality traits, (friendly, shy, energetic, curious, detached,) and considers the option of looking differently into the darknesses, the oblique statements, the incomplete sentences, and facial expressions, the darting, or penetrating, the languid or cold eyes, not in order to find power and superiority over another, but to begin a different approach to appreciating their hidden identity, applicable to the church community?

Or is it another social, politically correct, quasi-business, quasi-welcoming the visitor, (the stranger wehom we are exhorted to ‘welcome’)?i

In other places here, I have made reference to the little book entitled, “Why I Do Not Tell You Who I Am,” by the Jesuit John Powell. And in his answer he says, (approximately recalled) “I don’t tell you who I am because that is all I have, and you might reject me!” The cogent and penetrating truth of Powell’s insight is arresting and a warning both socially and spiritually. Is our identity (not our ideology, or our gender, or our race, or our ethnicity, or our religion) not what comprises the sine qua non? And is it just possible that, in our quasi-pseudo-relational culture we have obliterated, obscured, denied, dismissed, disdained, and suffered from our shared blindness to that essence? I-It relationships are convenient, detached, disengaged, basically ‘thing-to-thing’…and off we go!

And add into the mix the (ironically) high priority we give to hierarchy, to organizational charts, to professional specialties, and to ‘business transactions’ in which we are either supplier or consumer of goods and/or services for a price. It is not merely an accident that we have lost touch with ourselves and with each other. We each participate in a jargon, perception and isolation/alienation of objectivity, detachment and a kind of ‘blindness’ to the ‘other’ daily, hourly.  Another complex  clouding coagulant to the clarity of phenomenology is the competitive instinct of every human being we have all encountered. If competition is rooted in our gestalt of all relationships, then, of course, we are going to be obsessively discreet, private and non-disclosing….and even those non-disclosures are evidence of ….what? nervousness, anxiety, avoidance, distraction.

It must be noted and emphatically underscored that religious and faith communities are replete with the incursion of every social and cultural ‘habit and expectation’ including the language used to enter into conversation with another. Numbers of bums in pews, dollars in collection plates, redecorating contracts, furnace repairs, organ repairs, bulletin production, secretarial and administrative services…all of them naturally adhering to the latest ‘labour standards’ of the respective jurisdiction…and the method of decision-making….including lobbying, private negotiations, politicking, and hierarchical power imbalances (between veterans and new-comers, between rich and poor, between educated and less, reflects, endorses and sustains the corporate business model.

Think for a moment about the difference in how one experiences the corporate culture of negotiations, transactions, budget assessments and the very notion of being ‘seen’ as a unique ‘soul’ ….even before the non-obligatory question of ‘belief’ or the other non-obligatory question of ‘how are you going to supplement and complement our community?’ There is a divide with a canyon of difference?

Emotions, reactions, even distractions are invariably disclosed in facial and body movements. And yet, in ministerial preparation, little if any of that ‘body literacy’ is even mentioned. It is saved for the pastoral counselling room, if at all. And, ‘body literacy’ need not be framed as a ‘girlie or woke’ concern. Indeed, if both men and women were familiar with body language, they would ‘know’ and appreciate their kids more fully, their families in a more nuanced  manner, and themselves, especially, in and through  a far more subtle, complex and imaginative lens. “Sure,” I hear critics cry, so if they/we were familiar with legitimate interpretations of body language, they/we would all fall entrapped into that hated drudge of being ‘psychoanalyzed’ by another amateur shrink!”

What does all this have to do with God?

For some, everything; for others, nothing. For this scribe, much!

First, any faith in God has the apparently inherent and implicit potential, echoing Merton from yesterday, of drawing out my/your/our most personal, private, and person-extensions of both fears and aspirations, courage and retreats. And I respond with both my words and my body mind and spirit. What I do and how is expressive of not only my character but also my ‘relationship’ with God. And that includes whatever ‘acorn’ might be inherited. Discovery of one’s being is, however, a life-long flowing river of experiences, including ‘all that I have met’…(not only the static arch of Ulysses). And, one cannot exclude one’s private visions, aspirations, dreams, anxieties, fears and doubts from that river.

Every relationship is inherently inclusive of both what ‘formal expectations’ one has of the ‘other’ as well as what one seeks to dedicate to the other. And the reading and interpretation of those ‘expectations’ and ‘dedications’ will naturally be a summation of what one has been told, what one has witnessed, what one intuits, and what one envisions or imagines. Released and unbounded expectations and dedications are by definition, inherent in any authentic relationship, especially one with God. And, rather than backing oneself into a corner of victimhood, either through an exaggerated application of the sin of the Original Fall, or a sainthood of exaggerated application of ‘healing the world’ one can potentially tend to resonate on the continuum between expectations and dedications in a community of trust and safety.

It is axiomatic to say or think or even believe, whether consciously or not, that we feel safe in our relationship with God…..or is that a bridge too far? Indeed, is it just possible, perhaps even likely, that if we have some doubt about our relationship with God, that doubt comes directly (perhaps unconsciously) from our inner voice whisp ering, ‘I am not now, and never will be good enough for God!’ All faiths can borrow from the Buddhist notion that our greatest enemy is our own mind….From Buddhismnow.com, in a piece by the Dalai Lama, entitled, The Real Enemy by Dalai Lama, November 10, 2019, we read:

It is very important for a practitioner of compassion to first of all see the destructive nature of delusion, and the faults that delusions lead to. In the chapter on Conscientiousness …Shantideva explains that delusions such as hatred, desire, anger and jealousy are within our own minds and are our own enemies. They do not have legs or bodies and so on, nor do they hold weapons in their hands, but they reside within our minds, control us from within, and make us their servants. The text explains that we do not realise that there delusions are our enemies, even though they reside within our minds, controlling and inflicting harm on us. So we never confront them or challenge them…Now these negative thoughts trick us. When desire and attachment appear, they seem to be as friend, as very beautiful and very dear to us. Then anger and hatred (negative thoughts) appear in our minds and they can seem to be like some kind of bodyguard—someone is about to hurt us and anger appears as a protector which gives us a kind of strength.

A brief anecdote from Facebook might help to contextualize this idea of ‘seeing’ the other, from a lonely septaguinarian named Peter sitting in a booth at a coffee shop:

(Seeing a tired nurse counting change)

‘Your scrubs say ICU but your eyes say, ‘I carried someone today. Rest well!’ She cried in her coffee. Told Millie the waitress, ‘This is the first time anyone looked at me, not just through me all week.’ ( Can’t pass the irony and the not-so-hidden message on those scrubs, “ICU”….is that evocative of “I see you?”)

Compassion, empathy, and seeing the body language that even the nurse might still have been unconscious about ‘showing’….kudo’s to Peter.

And also, we do not have to exhibit exhaustion or desperation or flaccid hollowness to be ‘seen’….indeed, it is to identify, cultivate, nurture, and endorse the incipient habit of even looking with a different eye. It has been said that we do not really listen to another, given that we are too busy preparing our reply. With ‘seeing’ our unconscious response is often barely noted, as we pass by. The loneliness of the 21^st century is, I think we might agree, deeper, more infectious and more disease-like than those in previous decades and centuries.

Providing ‘activities’ and ‘busy schedules’ for our young children, in imitation of those many parents are already slaves to, is another of the nefarious implications of a culture gone obsessive over business, transactions, efficiencies, networking and ambitious climbing some ladder or other. When the dental hygienist asks, at the end of an appointment, “Well, what have you got planned for the weekend?” as if I must have something important on my schedule. If I answer, ‘I will attempt to enter and to engage in each moment with those who matter,’ no doubt I will be greeted by a quizzical if not idiotic smirk that says, ‘What planet are you living on?’

Please dear reader,   on reflection try to consider these notes as invitations, not mandatory commandments…to a beginning of open, fearless, authentic, insightful and even imaginative opportunities to see, not only the altruism or kindness in those few people in the pews, but also sometimes even their ‘essence’ that may well still be unclear and unfamiliar to them, after decades of performing at a very high level. Dedication to self-acceptance, tolerance and esteem, like so many other learnings, as part of our reality, (without the cloud of sin and evil as foundational) can emerge from the mirror of the other’s actually ‘seeing’ us.

Uttering the words ‘God is Love’ has so many important meanings and opportunities, without attempting to rescue, or even heal another.

To be continued.......

 

Searching for God #11

 There is no such thing as God because God is neither a ‘what’ or a ‘thing’ but a pure ‘Who’. He is the Thou before whom our inmost ‘I’ springs into awareness. He is the I am before whom with our most personal and inalienable voice we echo ‘I am’. (Thomas Merton*)

*Thomas Merton (1915-1968) was an American Trappist monk, writer, theologian, mystic, poet, social activist, and scholar of comparative religion.

In the Merton quote above, there are echoes of words used by Martin Buber in his work “I-Thou”.

I-Thou, theological doctrine of the full, direct, mutual relation between beings, as conceived by Martin Buber….the basic and purest form of this relation is that between man and God (the Eternal Thou), which is the model for and makes possible I-Thou relations between human beings. The relation between man and God, however, is always an I-Thou one, whereas that between man and man is very frequently an I-It one, in which the other being is treated as an object of thought or action…..Buber’s manifold activities were inspired by his philosophy of encounter- of man’s meeting with other beings. An early mystical period culminated in Daniel (1913) five dialogues on orientation and realization, man’s two basic stances toward the world. Orientation takes the world as a static state of affairs governed by comprehensible laws, It is a receptive, analytical, or systematizing attitude. Realization, on the other hand, is a creative, participative attitude that realizes the possibilities in things, experiencing through one’s own full reality of the world. It operates within an open horizon of possibilities. (From Britannica.com)

What does it mean to ‘see’ someone else? And how have we collectively fallen into a sociological categorization of ‘class, gender, type, ethnicity. Adding to that model, we also categorize others by psychological diagnoses: dyslexia, hyperactivity, attention deficit disorder. And in that process we seem to be both condoning and justifying these classifications, while perhaps, if we read Hillman thoroughly, missing the other’s ‘soul’…Types of any sort obscure uniqueness. James Hillman, The Soul’s Code, p. 124)

There is some evidence that suggests Hillman criticized Buber for being too philosophical, and abstract. Indeed, these sentences might have been significant for Hillman:

Daniel (1913) five dialogues on orientation and realization, man’s two basic stances toward the world. Orientation takes the world as a static state of affairs governed by comprehensible laws, It is a receptive, analytical, or systematizing attitude. Realization, on the other hand, is a creative, participative attitude that realizes the possibilities in things, experiencing through one’s own full reality of the world. It operates within an open horizon of possibilities.(From Britannica.com)

Orientation and realization: orientation is like a still photo, receptive, analytical, systematizing while realization is like an interactive exchange open to possibilities.

Reading Hillman, nevertheless, provides an oscillating pattern between ‘still’ photos of orientation to the anima mundi, (as if it were in therapy) and a realization of the human ‘acorn’ that dynamic ‘essence’ of the other. This acorn, or soul or psyche, is one of the more abstract, and yet mystical and poetic notions I have encountered. In a culture steeped in the literal, empirical (and may I add, functional, and performative) mind-set and appropriation of reality, attempting to ‘see’ not only the skill of another, but the more deeper, more instinctive, and more personal ‘acorn’ as the ‘how’ of the other’s displaying a talent is extremely challenging.

‘Most people cannot ‘say’ what the person before them is like, but being unable to ‘say’ does not imply that one is unable to see,’ writes the philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset. So many words are available once we close the psychology book and open a novel, a travel diary, even a cookbook. Or a movie, in which we can watch adjectives and adverbs alive and well composed into images moving across the screen. ‘O for a Life of Sensations rather than of thoughts,’ wrote Keats. To see the acorn requires an eye for the image, and eve for the show, and the language to say what we see. Failures in  our loves, friendships, and families often come down to failures of imaginative perspective. When we are not looking with the eye of the heart, love is indeed blind, for then we are failing to see the other person as bearer of an acorn of imaginative truth. A feeling may be there but not the sight; and, as the vision clouds, so do sympathy and interest. We feel only annoyed, and we resort to diagnostic and typological concepts. But your husband is not ‘mother-bound’; he whines and expects and is often paralyzed. Your wife is not ‘animus-ridden’; she is peremptory, argues logically, and can’t let go. How they are is who they are, and not what they are said to be by types and classes. (Hillman, The Soul’s Code, pps. 124-125)

And let’s not forget that whatever might be that invisible visible is not merely positive, light and another reinforcement of the preferred cultural perception of the talented, and the pleasurable and the applause-worthy. It will also include a dark side.

“And what is the first question we ask about the inward state of being of any person we meet? ‘How are you?’ You are how you are, just as you are, in the saddle-back of the present moment, on parade. Your being, maybe all Being, is precisely ‘how’ it appears to be, the how of just-so Sein*, declaring who and what and where each event is. How it is says what it is. This is how it is; its gestures, style, colorings, motions, speech, expression—in short, the actual complications of the image—tell exactly how it is….For all this insistence of the phenomenal I do not mean there are no reserves, no shadows; I do not mean that an event is but a persona, the front it puts up, mere showcasing. Reserves and shadows are not invisible. They show in the reticence, in circumlocutions and euphemisms, in shaded, averted eyes, in slips, in hesitancies of gestures, second thoughts avoidances. There is nothing plain about a face, or simply about a surface. The supposedly concealed is also on view and subject to keen sight, making up part of what any event afford to a good looker. The image that a mentor spots in a pupil or apprentice is neither all front nor what’s hidden behind, neither a false self nor a true one; there is no real you other than the reality of you in your image. The mentor perceives the folds of complexity, those convex-concave, topsy-turvy curves of implication that are the truth of all imagination, allowing us to define an image as the complete how or a presentation. Here I am right before your eyes. Do you read me? (The Soul’s Code, p122-123)

(*Sein The German infinitive of the verb ‘to be’.)

If this invisible visible is there in the ‘how’ another behaves and may be, most likely is, hidden from the person him or herself, as well as from most, if not all within his/her circle, and if Hillman’s suggestion of the imagination of perception as the lens through which to even prospect for or even ‘imagine’ its presence, is this psychological and poetic notion not a potential arrow in the quiver of anyone searching for God. That is not to say, or imply, that the acorn is a special connection to God, (any God); only that it’s invisible visibility is analogous to whatever we might say or think or imagine about God (any God).

More from Hillman:

Sometimes this invisible visible is referred to as the spirit of a place, the quality of a thing, the soul of a person, the mood of a scene, the style of an art. We like to take hold of it by accounting for it as context, as formal structure, or as an unclosed gestalt that draws us into it. Neither the concepts nor the eye that looks be means of them has been trained enough in imagination, in the perceptive art of reading images. We are not able to see how any one is when we try to see by means of types, categories, classes diagnostics. Types of any sort obscure uniquenesses. The eye of the heart sees ‘eaches’ and is affected by eachness, to borrow a term from William James. The heart’s affections pick out particulars. (TSC, p. 124)

Is that ‘eachness’ the same as, or evocative of, that inmost I, that most personal and most inalienable voice’ to which Merton referred above? Or, perhaps is the awakened ‘soul’ within each of us that part of us that deeply and often desperately seeks to be ‘seen’?

The concept of phenomenology, an expression of lived experience, from the first person point of view seems basic to everything we express about our experience. The notion of concepts, types, classifications, categories, and diagnoses, on the other hand, all  qualify as intellectual, cognitive, and attributed lenses through which we speak and write about our experiences, especially about our experiences of God.

Miracles, for instance, and birth, even death, the universe, the underworld, are images both containing mystery and unknowing, as well as, remember Jung, both awe and wonder, on the one hand and fear and trembling on the other. Included in our attempts to ‘describe and understand’ (as if they were the definition of each other) extend to the limits in both ‘directions’….the question of the ways in which opposites relate is one that has occupied minds and hearts and imaginations for centuries. And that relationship is no more cogent and compelling between man and God, and man and the universe, than it is between man and himself.

Just as yin and yang are considered two opposing and yet complementary forces, into such a frame we could include male and female, conscious and unconscious, as well as visible and invisible. And if the search for God, among other things, is also about the search for truth, then how will we know that we might have had a glimpse of truth. And, is truth still in the mystery of the unknown, (where God is and will always be!) and does our relationship to that ‘mystery’ say as much about our religion and faith as anything else about us. If we start from the ‘Fall’ and the implicit ‘evil’ within, from which we must be redeemed, forgiven and for which we must atone, (and there are many Christian churches that operate from this premise, and call it scriptural, supported by the Holy Word of God), we have a pre-ordained prescription and path for our faith journey, especially, with faith having been ‘privatized’ (as Gregory Baum reminds us). And if, on the other hand, we start from a comfortable perspective of awe, wonder, amazement, and a diligent pilgrimage toward God, in search of all the truths to which we have hitherto been blind, then we have a very different path and in and for our faith and religion.

Is it possible, given that all of the many words that have been committed to ink about God by humans, including these in this space, must be recognized as speculative, imaginative and part of an intimate, yet integrous, search, that the concept of ‘imaginative perception’ as depicted by Hillman (see above), could be instrumental in both our own investigation of our ‘identity’ (visible and invisible)?

We are each much more than our profession, or our marital or political rank or role; we are also much more than any of the specific, and even well-intentioned, categories, classes and types to which we have been assigned by others. And those others, even with the best of intentions have also ‘missed’ something ‘deeply personal’ and ‘deeply mysterious’ in and about us, that, from the perspective of this scribe, is not and will not be unknown to any God.

Resisting the depersonalizing and disconnecting ‘objectifying’ of each of us by all of us, including resisting the colonializing of a ‘faith dogma, a faith denomination, an ethnicity, and a cultural identity, which can only partially describe each of us, reminds me of the spiritual biography of Sister Mary Jo Leddy, the title of which is ‘We say to the Darkness, We Beg to Differ!

That begging to differ is not merely to a kind of moral law or code, nor a religious empire’s expectations, nor a reductionism of identity as ‘function’, or ‘role’ or ‘demographic’ or diagnosis.

Is it just possible and within the realm of a vibrant imagination that we, each of us, are as unknown to ourselves and to each other, as well as, as amazing and complex and nuanced and subtle as the intimate ‘how’s’ in and by which we live, are either or both unknown or disregarded by our most intimate circles.

And if in our religions and in our search for God we are willing to embrace, without hubris, and without competition with others, and with the humility that the soul feeds on, the psyche/soul as something personal, intimate, known to and embraced and loved by God, then our ‘numbers’ in a conversion and revival ritual will be insignificant and irrelevant.

To be continued………

Searching for God #10

 What is the difference, if any that might be significant, between the Christian exhortation in James to ‘good works’ and Tolstoy’s ‘Resist all evil!’ from Matthew?

This is not a subject I have heard or read about, it seems, in well over eight decades.

And, while there may even be some overlap, there is a very different mind-set, aspiration, vision and certainly motivation between the two.

There is so much to commend good works, including the benefits for the recipient of the beneficence, the public acclaim and both awards and rewards that follow. There are even tax breaks for many of the ‘good works’ that occur outside the defined roles of various specific occupational roles. Doctors do ‘good works’ every hour and day in their offices, clinics, and emergency and operating rooms. Similarly lawyers, in the offices, court rooms, board rooms, and all situations in which they are advocating for the voiceless, in any conflictual predicament. Teachers, nurses, social workers, engineers, research scientists, bankers, sales and marketing professionals, manufacturers and their executives. Even, dare I say, politicians, (at least a few of those who come to mind, epically disqualifying others whose names also come to mind) are to a degree motivated to do ‘good works’ as they often define those works, in a manner that seems to focus on their vision and foresight and imagination, even if it is both long overdue and minimal by any reasonable measure.

And then there are the churches.

Missionaries, and both sisters and brothers of the church, of many various orders, are dedicated to ‘worshipping God, in and through the discipline of their vows and orders, as well as in and through the ‘good works’ they offer to the homeless, the refugees, the indigent, the hungry, and the prisoners, through the prison chaplaincies. Similarly, ordained and lay clergy visit patients in hospital rooms nursing homes, long-term care homes, as well as those prisoners too, and in catechetical sessions, confirmation training sessions, and liturgical rituals such as baptisms, marriages, funerals and the penitential. Of course there are also the weekly eucharists, sometimes more frequent, to which few and fewer people are congregating.

Sometimes, and apparently increasingly, politicians, in their efforts to legislate and protect the public from dangers for which the integrous, and scientific research demonstrates the need for legislation, the public will rise up in anger and make the public figure who sponsors such legislation the object of threats, slander, character defamation and worse. This dynamic while growing, can and will also decline as public literacy and confidence in the use of words as carriers of political and civil discourse grows. (English and all language teachers, please take note!) Generally, and without specific sociological research as support, those engaged in good works experience a preponderance of awards, rewards and gratitude.

Those who conscientiously, and deliberately, openly and thoughtfully, both contemplate and undertake acts that ‘resist all evil’ face a very different kind of public recognition. While it may be redundant and inappropriate to refer to his words again in this context. Martin Luther King’s quote still rings both true and provocative:

The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.

The same idea rings slightly differently when put in reverse:

The silence of the good people is more dangerous than the brutality of the bad people.

Taking offence at injustice(s) for many is a discernment and decision that brings with it an instant ‘foot-on-the-brake’ response. It says, in that quiet private inner voice, ‘What will X think, if I do or say that?’ We all have an inner critical parent whose voice may be a mélange of mother/father, sister/brother, teacher/principal, or even priest/athletic coach, or some unique cocktail whose origins and flavour shift depending on the situation. Additionally, there is so much, on so many fronts, in so many different ‘theatres of public information and action’ that, for anyone even to contemplate ‘resisting even one evil’ poses a significant question: Which evil? And Why that specific one?

Social custom and convention disavow criticism of an injustice, especially one still unfamiliar to those gathered…..that is until everyone eventually considers it a problem. And at that point, everyone in a chorus of unison voices, declares, “That’s is just so horrible…and I simply do not have any idea how to counteract that!’

Shoulder shrugs ripple across the room in agreement, everyone takes another sip of their drink, and someone, triggering a collective sigh, mutters something like: ‘How are the Blue Jays doing these days? At which point, everyone drops both the injustice and whatever might even be discussed in order to push back recognizing that the social decorum that attends this ‘moment’ and ‘occasion’ frees everyone from guilt, and the option of engagement. “Keeping it light” is the phrase that both guides and sanctions the public event (some call it small talk, as a way of both making new friends and avoiding alienating others). We all want to make a good impression; it reinforces our own self-esteem, and confidence. It also generates interest from especially lonely and ambitious, if also somewhat tentative, men and women seeking to ‘network’ as another of the basic business and relationship skills taught and expected by those mentoring the incipient managerial and executive ‘class’ of this generation. “No one succeeds alone” is one epithet that echoes in popular culture; another is ‘we are all hard wired to be social’ (borrowed from David Brooks)….And also, ‘there is no “I” in team’!

And then there is something insightful attributed to Hunter S. Thompson*:

We are all alone, born alone, die alone, and-in spite of True romance magazines—we shall some day look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company we were alone the whole way. I do not say lonely—at least not all the time—but essentially, and finally alone. This is what makes your self-respect so important, and I don’t see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness.

(*Hunter S. Thompson, American journalist, and author, author of Hell’s Angels (1967), for which he lived one year among that group. He also helped establish a subgenre of New Journalism  (he called it Gonzo)  in which the writer becomes central to and a participant in the narrative.)

Alone, and deeply within a social group, attempting to tease out a comparison between ‘good works’ and ‘resist all evil’…all the while, attempting to make a living, raise a family, pay the bills, climb the ladder of ‘success’ and ‘victory’ and trying to stay both healthy and happy….not a small order!

Back to the ‘resist all evils’ notion….and, well, I can let that issue be addressed by those much more familiar and better equipped to fix it. If it is law enforcement that is needed, we have that. If it is arson, we have a fire department. If it is domestic violence, both police and social workers can and do handle those threats. If it is injustice in the classroom, there are teachers and principals and superintendents for that. And if it is racism, or ageism or sexism or homophobia?? Oh, I guess that belongs to all of us….so I might do my part if and when I seem to have no other choice, without seeming to set myself as superior to those engaged in racial epithets. “I never do that!” and “I find it despicable when I hear those attitudes!” and “of course I am indignant, but what do you expect me to do, punch the guy out who is racist?”…..

Resisting all evils need not be an invitation to further violence, although that is definitely a possibility. No one takes kindly to someone who appears to be setting himself up as some ‘critical parent’ of the society and culture to which “I” belong. We each have that critical parent voice rumbling around in our head. And we all cling, almost involuntarily and unconsciously to the traditions, habits and customs of our ‘family, tribe, town, and both region and province and nation.

Furthermore, all the evidence that we have about those who ‘risk’ resisting all evil is that those in power, the establishment, are both the usual suspects of whatever injustice we are confronting, as well as those who will attempt to silence any who might be so bold, so arrogant, and so presumptuous as to challenge the established order, the status quo.

So, just as in the case of double jeopardy, when a victim of a crime is subjected to a viscious and nefarious interrogation in order to check whether h/she instigated that crime, those who resist evil in the face of the power structure that either created or generated the original injustice, are taking a double risk: first to identify and to make public the injustice, in a manner that attracts the attention of others like the media, and then  to face the retributions that are inevitably about to descend.

Double jeopardy is clearly neither an invitation nor an encouragement to resist all evils. Indeed, it may well be an apparent justification for silence, complicity and buried resentment.

So….where does all this lead? Three things come to mind: first, any of us who undertake contemplating ‘resist all evil’s have to gather several basket of detailed information: about ourselves, the support of those near us, the evidence that unequivocally and indisputably proves the injustice, the identity of the perpetrator(s) (and this might be very difficult to discern clearly, given the history of the injustice), our capacity and skill and talent and confidence to mount any form of resistance, and also a clear concise, comprehensive and cogent preparation of the ‘case’ and the method and means of presentation.

A second is the ‘strengths, weaknesses, supports and strengths of the forces that will be mounted against any such resistance. And these will have to be identified in as intricately and as detailed a manner as feasible. The depth of commitment of those forces to the injustice, and the recipients and victims of the injustice. Recipients may be as dangerous to the exposure as those perpetrating the injustice, especially if they are benefitting profoundly from it.

A third, although linked deeply with the first, is the degree of commitment and the among of energy, resources and dedication I wish to make to execute this resistance. And that may well be a first question to face and to answer.

Lest any of us think that we have no role models, think Mandela, King, Rosa Parks, Vaclav Havel, Bonhoeffer, Gandhi, Tiananmen Square citizen lying in front of that tank, Women in France, Germany and Holland who resisted the Nazis, John Lewis and manym others.

And while Tolstoy and Gandhi may have been the more prominent voices in the history of this non-violent resistance to injustice, Jay Alison, in his book, The Joy of Being Wrong, posits another.

The act of the willing, sacrificial victim of the injustice underlying the Crucifixion, a death for which there was simply no wrong committed by the subject amid the mob’s cry for his death, serves as exemplar of the qualities, values and discipline which underly and even seed all human relationships. Resisting violence, without seeking fame, or revenge, or intimidation or honours or medals, can still be revisited even today. Of course, we walk on the shoulders of others who have caught a glimpse of this paradoxical and ironic insight, that can and does cross the boundaries of nations, religions, ethnicities and periods of history.

And, today, for men, especially, this model, when put adjacent to  the ‘alpha male’ of domination, entitlement, insouciance, hubris, racism, sexism, anti-intellectualism and raw exercise of power with self-declared impunity and immunity, seems especially worthy of reflective consideration.

To be continued…..

 

 

Searching for God #9

 From Patheos.com:

If our religion is based on salvation, our chief emotions will be fear and trembling. If our religion is based on wonder, our chief emotion will be gratitude. (Carl Jung)

Yesterday three different perspectives, Roman Catholic, Reform Judaism, and  Gandhi’s personal reflection appeared here…The tension between various faith communities oscillates depending on a number of factors:

a)    the above-noted question of ‘salvation’ versus ‘wonder’

b)    the degree of relevance of dogma, church tradition and personal experience

c)    the period of history in which religion is examined

d)    the culture of the region, tribe, nation in which the religion is manifest

e)    the exegetical reading of whatever holy text is prevalent..(literal, historical, metaphorical, prophetic, mythical)

f)     the relation of the ‘state’ to the religion(s) dominant in that state

It is not that each of these, and other, factors provide a continuum for ‘liberal and conservative’ perspectives within each community; however, those political terms do have a religious relevance.

Similarly, apophatic, and cataphatic ideas about God, have a somewhat obscure application, given that few lay people have heard of the difference.

From Britannica.com, under apophatic theology, we read:

Christian Mysticism, the negative approach to God…describing what God is ‘not’

In Christian: Eastern Christianity: Through a gradual process of ascension from material things to spiritual realities and an eventual stripping away of all created beings in’ unknowing,’ the soul arrives at ‘union with Him who transcends all being and all knowledge.’

Cataphatic theology speaks about God using positive, affirmative and descriptive language, affirming God’s attributes and actions, emphasizes what God has revealed about Himself in scripture, nature, and through religious experience.

Many religions seek some form of balance between these approaches to God, another of the many ‘seemingly unreachable, unattainable and unknowable’ aspects of the process of searching for God. If and when the approaches have to compete with each other, in a zero-sum dialectic, however, the dialogue reaches a dead-end. And, for each of us, the significance of ‘positivism’ itself, has a direct application to our search for God. Just as Karl Marx argued that a society in which the people were no longer subject to a ‘debased, enslaved, abandoned, despicable essence,’ the idea of God would simply wither away. (Karl Marx, Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, in Jarolsav Pelikan, ed. Modern Religious Thought, p. 80, from Karen Armstrong, The Case for God, p.242)

Armstrong continues: (p.242)

Others were beginning to argue that it was science, which for so long had been its willing handmaid, that would eliminate religion. In his six-volume Cours de philosophie positive (1830-42), the French philosopher Auguste Comte (1798-1857) presented the history of humanity in three stages. In its primitive theological phase, people had seen gods as the ultimate causes of events; then these supernatural beings had been transformed into metaphysical abstractions; and in the final and most advanced ‘positivist’ or scientific phase, the mind no longer dwelled on the inner essences of things, which could not be tested empirically, but focused only on facts. Western culture was about to enter this third, positivist phase. There was no way back.

A culture deeply steeped in, if not drowning in, positivism, is almost without doubt, very uncomfortable speaking about God in anything other than ‘positive’ terms…..And the elision from that perspective to an almost didactic approach whereby these people wish to introduce their God to others, in their ‘sharing’ and evangelizing, is both short and swift. In America, especially, where everything is viewed from a positivist perspective, and where little if anything is even recognized as unconscious, or beyond comprehension, or escaping cognition, God has become another ‘commodity’ to be both ‘consumed’ (by worship, ritual and prosletyzing). I was once accosted by a devout Episcopalian in America who told me, “Jesus was the world’s best salesman!” to which my jaw dropped in shock. “Really?” I muttered, confused, and almost appalled at her conviction.

Perhaps it was my then unconscious preference for the apophatic approach, depicting what God is not, in deference to the incomprehensibility and the ‘unknowing’ of God, at least from my little world.

This ‘positivism’ has other implications. Interventions, in imitation of the Good Samaritan, in a culture overflowing with people in various stages of significant personal need, offers both opportunities and for philanthropic and other social and health care services, as well as considerable hope for recipients. What is less evident in America is a more modest, less self-assured, and far less domineering approach to many of both society’s wounds. ON the surface, that last sentence reads as if it comes from a ‘right-wing’ users manual, among those who firmly believe in less government, less of what they call the ‘nanny state’….so that people will be obliged, from their perspective, to ‘pick themselves up by the boot-straps’ in  order to escape their desperate situation….whether it is poverty, hunger, ill health, lack of education or hopelessness in all of its many forms, (addictions, gangs, domestic violence, crime, terrorism). And those conditions are so interwoven as to be almost unable to be separated.

However, this is not a screed for right-wing either small ‘c’ or Capital “C” conservatism! It is rather a different look at the separation of church and state. Rather than engage on a battlefield of issues like prayer in the schools, or the Decalogue on school bulletin boards, or programs like abstinence versus condoms in high school health and sex educations classes, this space is dedicated to a different way of both thinking and perceiving and relating to God….

Borrowing, as is the habit and preference here, from others, whose thoughts and words and examples have found their way into the lives of many others, and seem to have been excluded or lost from many others, I intuit an intersection of some social and political and cultural issues with a reductionism of religion, faith and God, irrespective of how that deity is depicted in each faith community. The cultural ethos of positivism, empiricism, and a reduction of most observations to the literal, extends to how we each define both ourselves and others. And in that light, the issue lies at the heart of relationships, relationality, and the intersection of relationships and meaning and purpose.

In another life, I found that public schools and religious schools, (in Ontario that means Roman Catholic separate schools) offered different messages to their prospective parents and students. And the public relations initiatives came first from the separate school boards. ‘We teach the whole child’ was their ‘sell line in their advertising, implying and inferring that public schools taught only ‘subject matter’ rather than focusing on the development of the individual student. A similar public discourse occurred around the difference between elementary and secondary schools, as iterated especially among elementary school teachers and the federations. On the separate v public school debate, the inclusion of religion, teaching the church teachings, festivals, rituals, including prayer, and Mass, a segment of the curriculum missing from the public schools, by studious avoidance offered a kind of ‘moral safety net’ from the perspective of parents who were concerned about their child’s moral influences. The perception that without specific moral education, under the guidance of the church, the student would be more vulnerable to negative social influences of both individuals and specific activities. Needless to say, morals, without a specific religious flavour or influence were regarded as significant among both public elementary and secondary schools. For a while, there was some evidence that parents even of non-Roman Catholic persuasion were enrolling their children in the separate schools, in order to take advantage of what they saw as a moral/spiritual/religious curriculum.

Make no mistake, the question of the morals and ethics of a society are among the highest aspirations of many parents enrolling their children in elementary and secondary schools. A prescribed curriculum, whether ordained and sanctioned by a religious institution, is one path, like a kind of insurance policy, for some parents, Intervention, with specific curricular segments, based on the teachings of a church, have the aura and the public image of a higher moral expectation than that offered by a public institution where neither religion nor morality are located on the formal syllabus.

Undoubtedly, too, those in the separate school system, most of them loyal and sincere members of the Roman Catholic church, believe that they are acting in the best interests of both their church and their students and parents. The intersection of religious instruction and the issue of the relationship between humans and God lies at the heart of both the education systems, in the West, as well as the perception and definition of the role of faith in the community.

The tradition of reciting and memorizing the Ten Commandments, for example, as is being reconsidered in some southern states, primarily as a way to wrap board and officials in the ‘alb of self-righteousness’ and sanctimony, imitative of the current occupant of the Oval Office, is reprehensible both for the ecclesial institution as well as for the parents and the students who are being subjected to this form of ‘oppression’ in the name of God.

And here is the CAPITAL RUB!

Whenever public institutions attempt to wrap themselves in the faux-religiosity of carrying Bibles for photo-ops, or of hanging the Ten Commandments on the walls of classrooms for young children, or making complete and accessible health care for women in all the various stages of birthing out of reach and out of bounds, and even illegal and resulting in their own death, for lack of medical care, it is not rocket science to discern and determine that they are a long way from God. So too are they a long way from God when they propose that they are ‘bringing the Kingdom of God to America now’!

The arrogance, presumption, hubris, and ignorance (in the not-knowing sense of that word), consume both their efforts and their self-imposed delusions. And there are religious institutions fully in league with these despicable aspirations and visions. And, for readers who consider the last sentence as indisputable evidence of he arrogange, presumption hubris and ignorance of this escribe, let me try to relieve your conviction.

Partly in congruence with the Jung quote that opened this piece, partly in congruence with the apophatic (describing what God is not) and partly from an affinity with those faith communities which disavow evangelism and prosletyzing in all of its many forms, (God is not for sale! Religion is not for sale! And faith convictions and beliefs are not amenable to imposition, propaganda and forceful ingestion or adoption.

If we start with the last line in Leo Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God is Within You, from Luke 17: 20,21:

The kingdom of God cometh not with outward show; neither shall they say, Lo, her! Or, Lo there! For behold, the kingdom of God is within you. (p.368)

And from the Forward to that work by Martin Green:

Dogmata, such as that God is both three and one, meant nothing to Tolstoy. He dismissed the sacraments as ‘savage customs,’ suited to an earlier phase of civilization….(p.ix)

In 1884, he finished My Religion, in which he described himself as having behind him five mature years of faith in Christ and thirty-five years of nihilism, or faith in nothing. He presented himself to the reader as one of the robbers at Christ’s crucifixion, come down form the cross to preach. His conversion had occurred when he realized that ‘Resist no evil!’ (Matthew 5: 39) meant what it said. This was a revelation to one who had always been taught that Christ’s laws sere not practical, and so must be interpreted—in effect, circumvented…..I was taught to judge and punish. Then I was taught to make war; that is to resist evil men with murder, and the military caste, of which I was a member, was called the Christ-loving military, and their activity was sanctified by a Christian blessing. (p.ix-x)

To be continued………

Searching for God #8

 In his insightful and incisive work, Religion and Alienation, Gregory Baum, writes:

This…reflection on sin as personal-and-social corresponds to the dialectical relationship between consciousness and society,…The privatizing trend, overlooking the reciprocal relationship between personal transgression and social contradiction, has therefore a hidden political meaning. It makes people think that the dreadful things that happen in the world are due to the evil deed of single individuals and that there is no need to examine the social institutions to which they belong. The privatizing trend in the Christian religion supported by the dominant culture, lets society off the hook-…and hence protects institutional power and privilege. In other words, the privatizing of the gospel is ideological….For if Christian teachers present sin as those acts and attitudes that undermine the values and the authority of the dominant groups, they make the support of the present social order a duty of religion. If they prefer obedience to disobedience, conformity to criticism, modesty to public controversy, patience to impatient longing for justice, then they make the gospel a symbolic language for the defense of the dominant forces in society. Another kind of Christian preaching indicts as sin conformity and compliance with the world. Sin here is the uncritical surrender to the norms of society and the authority of the inherited institutions. This trend is strongly represented in the New Testament….The preaching of Jesus, in a trend amplified by his followers, accused the ‘world’—that is the dominant structures and the received norms—as the principle of evil….

In the Catholic Church the privatizing of sin eventually led to the denial that the church as church could be sinful. Since all sin was private it was unnecessary to engage in critical reflection on the church’s corporate life. Bishops and popes admitted, of course, that they were personally sinners and in need of divine mercy, but they did not acknowledge that their collective life embodied in ecclesiastical organizations, was marked by sin and hence in need of an ongoing critique. Systematic criticism of the institution was regarded as disloyal. When people, individual or in groups, left the church, fault was found with them: they were unfaithful, they had betrayed their heritage. What remained unexamined was to what extent the contradictions in the ecclesiastical institution had contributed to this exodus……(A) church’s unwillingness to subject its corporate life to a systematic and principled critique is the great barrier that prevents it from proclaiming the gospel with power….Unless we move in the direction of deprivatizing the notion of sin, we are in danger of making the Christian faith a protection against injustices in church and world and thus transforming the religion of Jesus into an ideology. (Baum, p.206-207-208)

First, let it be stated clearly and unequivocally, that, from the perspective of this scribe, it is certainly not only the Roman Catholic church that warrants and wears those Baum critical insights, especially about the privatizing of sin, and the impunity and immunity from self-critical, principled evaluations of the institutions. Indeed, the public and lay adherents will often claim ‘hypocrisy’ as the cardinal ‘sin’ of the church.

In a corporate, capitalist culture, dominant as it is in North America, and has been for the better part of the last century, the individual is considered the cornerstone of the culture. We stress individual accomplishment and failure in the home, in the school, and in the workplace as well as in the multiple organizations, both governmental and social, based on several cultural templates that have lingered as tradition, heritage, convention and normalcy. Clearly, the privatizing of sin endorses, sustains and isolates the public, conventional society, even if such enmeshment is never mentioned publicly.

Laws, including criminal laws, are written to depict individual acts for which specific charges, convictions and punishments, are detailed. Patients, in the medical offices and hospitals, too, are considered through the perceptual lens of the ‘body’ and the ‘mind’ and the ‘spirit’ or ‘psyche’ of the individual. Contextually, medical case histories will ask about whether family members have exhibited similar symptoms or illnesses, as a way to ascertain whether or not there might be a genetic relationship. Businesses, including entrepreneurships, are operated by hierarchies of power and authority, within which, the performance of each individual is scored, ranked, rewarded and/or sanctioned, as determined by corporate policy and practice. In the U.S. a law has been passed that defines the corporation, for legal purposes, as equivalent to an individual person.

Congruent with this organizational structure, (and theological/moral/ethical model) of sustaining social order, only individuals are culpable, and even if the organization is proven corrupt, the legal process operates under the premise that it too is an individual person. The operating template on which practically all interactions, engagements, contracts, and transactions are judged is a function of the interaction of individuals and fault, expressed as sin and immorality, is considered obsessively and compulsively as the magnetic focus.

Even a political policy that is resisted by a group of citizens is invariably identified with the name of the individual who proposed it. The idea may have been the shared opinion of a group of cabinet members, or a corporate board, in the case of the corporation, and yet, the ‘individual’ on whose name the policy ‘hangs’ is about to be judged, favourably or not, depending on what is perceived to be the relative ‘success’ of the policy.

Sociology and social psychology are interested in the anatomy and the physiology of groups, and conduct studies in order to better inform decision makers in both government and corporations as to whether a planned proposal might be well received or not. As consumers, we monitor the story and timeline of a government, for example, as part of our calculations when considering whether or not to vote for them next time.

Nevertheless, fundamental questions of church dogmatic teaching, for example, on birth control, or abortion, or celibate clergy, or female ordinations, or divorce and remarriage, or LGBTQ+ clergy, or even membership and access to the eucharist, while the subject of ecclesial debate, remain fixed in traditional church teachings, on the arguably tenuous strength of literal biblical injunctions and exegesis. Each Christian church denomination has struggled with many of these public and social issues, some of them to their ultimate division and demise.

Privatizing sin, however, does not really acknowledge the larger problem of the problem of evil, as depicted in the apparent incompatibility of a belief in a loving, forgiving God and the existence of so much obvious and unending and imponderable evil everywhere. Flawed human beings, especially, as former President Biden frequently opinion, ‘compared with the Almighty’ (“Compare me with my opponent not with the Almighty!”), includes each of us. And the Judeo-Christian embedded archetype of the original sin, and the Fall of Adam and Eve, hang over everyone since. (We have already noted the role of Augustine in how this archetype has been seeded and flourished in the last two millenia.)

With ‘free will’ as posited by much Christian theology, the separation of God from nature including human nature is assumed.

And yet, whether or not we all , not only Christians or Buddhists, or Muslims, or Jews, or ostensibly of no specific faith community, acknowledge it, there is a kind of universal ‘consciousness’ of what some call our ‘better angels’ and, conversely, an intimate knowledge of what some call our ‘darker angels’…..and most of us acknowledge a divided self, detailed in Romans 15: What I want to do I do not, but what I hate I do.

The theologians are far better equipped than this scribe to wrestle with the ‘problem of a perceived incongruity between a loving and forgiving God and the depth and range of evil in the world.

Here, our focus is on what and how an individual is conceptualizing, internalizing and integrating the authority of God, in his or her personal life, and whether, the cultural ‘thumb on the scale’ in favour of ‘privatized sin’ is not, paradoxically, and tragically, a contributing factor in the prevalence of evil acts. On a literal level, the notion of free will, central to the Christian perception of a relation to God, seems to be the faith community’s way of separating God from the evil that men (all humans) commingt. On an unconscious level, on the other hand, even if we believe that we are free, autonomous and self-regulating individuals, ‘in charge of our lives and the choices we make,’ nevertheless, however we might wish to orient ourselves to it, the truth is that Paul’s words, Romans 15: What I want to do I do not, but what I hate I do, have universal application.

 Each of us rides on the edge of a cliff, between want to do, and hate to do, and find that they often merge into situations for which explanations we seek in vain. Any striving for exclusive and unequivocal and final separation between the two, is a recipe for disaster, although the church experiences to which I have been subjected, have never ventured into that field fraught with underbrush, thorns, paradoxes, ironies and incompatibilities. Indeed, preaching and teaching the ‘either-or’ of ‘free will dedicated to God’s will, or narcissistically deferring to self-indulgence, and failing to openly embrace doubt, paradox, uncertainty, is, by definition, a reductionistic portrayal of any human existence, whether one searches for God or not.

For centuries, humans have searched for, articulated some conceptually, and deferred from, any attempt to link God and man, as inherently related, occupying the same psychic, spiritual, intellectual and emotional terrain. The notion of a creator as ‘watchmaker’ who/which/that created the watch, human existence, and then left it to run on its own course, has had salience in some circles. Not so here.

The notion of trying to imagine the ‘mind of God’ has occupied generations of men and women, of all faiths, and, in this aspect, the Jews have adopted what seems to be a highly worthy, humble, and tolerable approach (not only ethically and morally) but also cosmically, and metaphysically, that humans can never ‘know’ the mind of God….

Here are the words of a Jewish Rabbi, Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, from ReformJudaism.org:

Often I am asked, Rabbi, how do I connect with God?” And I have long struggled with my answer. The obvious place to begin is with personal or communal prayer, but I have come to realize that, for many seekers, prayer is too alien even to contemplate.

And so, I suggest: Begin with a new openness to the world around you. Reawaken your capacity for wonderment. Makw room for the sense of awe you felt as a child when you first beheld the beauty and the mystery of the natural world. These are Divine sparks. Allow yourself to experience them….Turn next to the sacred texts of our tradition. In carefully studying how others navigated this course, you can find reassurance, inspiration and guidance. Remember too that God is not only a noun but a verb-not only a presence but a process. We may not know precisely what God is, but our tradition clearly tells us what God does: heals the sick, clothes the naked, houses the homeless, and pursues peace…..Finally I encourage you to experiment with religious rituals, including those you may have discarded. Rituals help us cultivate a sense of the sacred within ourselves and in our midst. Rituals are also instrument of sacred reenactment, a means for us to relive momentous encounters with God—the Exodus, the revelation at Sinai—that shaped our people’s religious lives.

From mkgandhi.org, we read the great man’s words:

In a piece entitled Truth is God:

There is an indefinable mysterious presence that pervades everything. I feel it, though I do not see it. It is the unseen Power which makes itself felt and yet defies all proof, because it is so unlike all that I perceive through my senses. It transcends the senses. But it is possible to reason out the existence of God to a limited extent. I do dimly perceive that whilst everything around me is ever changing, ever-dying, there is underlying all that change a Living Power that is changeless, that holds all together, that creates, dissolves, and recreates. That informing Power or Spirit is God. And since nothing else I see merely through the senses can or will persist, He alone is. And is this Power benevolent or malevolent? I see it as purely benevolent. For I can see, that in the midst of death life persists, in the midst of untruth truth persists, in the midst of darkness, light persists. Hence I gather that God is Life, Truth, Light. He is Love. He is the Supreme Good. I confess …that I have no argument to convince…. Through… reason, Faith transcends reason. All I can advise…is not to attempt the impossible. I cannot account for the existence of evil by any rational method. To want to do so is to be co-equal with God. I am, therefore, to recognize evil as such, and I call God long0suffering and patient precisely because He permits evil in the world. I know that He has no evil in Him and yet, if there is evil, He is the author of it and yet untouched by it.

To be continued……

The other half of 'cults....'great men'

 In this space yesterday, we explored a premise of conjoined cults, around three despicable, dangerous, and deleterious tyrants: Trump, Putin, and Netanyahu, with the addendum of Kim Jung Un.

Cults by definition imply a surrender and projection of individuals and their wills, their hopes and dreams, as well as their fears onto a ‘strong man’ of some sort. And, given that strong men are the sine qua non of all cults, today we intend to explore the concept of the strong man.

The names of Thomas Carlyle and Friedrich Nietszche and Leo Tolstoy have been linked to the concept of the great man theory of history.

In a series of Lectures in 1840. Thomas Carlyle focused on various examples of  great men:

LECTURE I. THE HERO AS DIVINITY. ODIN. PAGANISM: SCANDINAVIAN MYTHOLOGY.

LECTURE II. THE HERO AS PROPHET. MAHOMET: ISLAM.

LECTURE III. THE HERO AS POET. DANTE: SHAKSPEARE.

LECTURE IV. THE HERO AS PRIEST. LUTHER; REFORMATION: KNOX; PURITANISM.

LECTURE V. THE HERO AS MAN OF LETTERS. JOHNSON, ROUSSEAU, BURNS.

LECTURE VI. THE HERO AS KING. CROMWELL, NAPOLEON: MODERN REVOLUTIONISM.

What in such a time as ours it requires a Prophet or Poet to teach us, namely, the stripping-off of those poor undevout wrappages, nomenclatures and scientific hearsays,—this, the ancient earnest soul, as yet unencumbered with these things, did for itself. The world, which is now divine only to the gifted, was then divine to whosoever would turn his eye upon it. He stood bare before it face to face. "All was Godlike or God:" (From Lecture I, ON HEROES, HERO-WORSHIP,
AND THE HEROIC IN HISTORY from the Gutenberg Project By Thomas Carlyle

And from Lecture VI, May 22, 1840

We come now to the last form of Heroism; that which we call Kingship. The Commander over Men; he to whose will our wills are to be subordinated, and loyally surrender themselves, and find their welfare in doing so, may be reckoned the most important of Great Men. He is practically the summary for us of all the various figures of Heroism; Priest, Teacher, whatsoever of earthly or of spiritual dignity we can fancy to reside in a man, embodies itself here, to command over us, to furnish us with constant practical teaching, to tell us for the day and hour what we are to do. He is called Rex, Regulator, Roi: our own name is still better; King, Konning, which means Can-ning, Able-man.

And also:

Internet Modern History Sourcebook;Thomas Carlyle:

The Great Man Theory of History (1840), excerpts from Lectures on HeroesUniversal

 History, the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here. They were the leaders of men, these great ones; the modellers, patterns, and in a wide sense creators, of whatsoever the general mass of men contrived to do or to attain; all things that we see standing accomplished in the world are properly the outer material result, the practical realization and embodiment, of Thoughts that dwelt in the Great Men sent into the world: the soul of the whole world's history, it may justly be considered, were the history of these.

... We cannot look, however imperfectly, upon a great man, without gaining something by him. He is the living light-fountain, which it is good and pleasant to be near. The light which enlightens, which has enlightened the darkness of the world; and this not as a kindled lamp only, but rather as a natural luminary shining by the gift of Heaven; a flowing light-fountain, as I say, of native original insight, of manhood and heroic nobleness;—in whose radiance all souls feel that it is well with them. On any terms whatsoever, you will not grudge to wander in such neighborhood for a while. These Six classes of Heroes, chosen out of widely distant countries and epochs, and in mere external figure differing altogether, ought, if we look faithfully at them, to illustrate several things for us. Could we see them well, we should get some glimpses into the very marrow of the world's history. How happy, could I but, in any measure, in such times as these, make manifest to you the meanings of Heroism; the divine relation (for I may well call it such) which in all times unites a Great Man to other men; and thus, as it were, not exhaust my subject, but so much as break ground on it. (https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/1840Carlyle-greatman.asp#:~:text)

In a piece entitled, “What is Great Man Theory?” By Hannah Hamill, MA History, University of Edinburgh, 01.11.2023, in Perlago.com we read:

…(D)iscussions of heroism can be traced back to ancient civilizations, such as Greece. Ferrario* explains that a great man in the Greek tradition is a ‘maker of history’ and an ‘individual inscribed in permanent memory’ (2014) In ancient Greece, the responsibility for historic events rested on participants involved in the events who were highly visible to the public, like political or military men….The ‘great man’ interpreted by the Hellenistic age and beyond was neither the cultural result of an isolated, striking biography not the literary invention of a single intellectual. Rather he was the evolutionary product of complex historical and social developments during the late archaic and classical periods. His story can be told in particular detail in Athens, but it was by no means confined there. (Ferrario, Historical Agency and the Great Man in Classical Greece Cambridge University Press. https://www.perlego.com/book/3546322/historical-agency-and-the-great-man-in-classical-greece-pdf

Of course there were, and continue to be, opponents to this theory, umbrelled under the rubric, ‘the social theory of history’ which focuses on the social as opposed to the personal agents of historic events.

From the piece by Hamill:

(Herbert) Spencer believed that great men are created from their environments. A well-balanced social self-consciousness, like a well-balanced individual self-consciousness, is the accompaniment of a high evolution. (Spencer, quoted by John Offer in Herbert Spencer and Social History (2010)https://www.perlego.com/book/3546322/historical-agency-and-the-great-man-in-classical-greece-pdf

Also from Hamill:

Nietszche indicates that to be a man is to be enough. For Nietszche, a man does not have to possess divine qualities or be Christlike; a man does not have to possess superpowers to be valued. Rather he can have value by overcoming hardships and embracing the challenges that human beings must face in their day to day lives.

Whether we consider it a flaw in their character that these tyrants (Putin, Trump, Netanyahu) consider themselves to be great men, or whether they are attempting to re-enact history from ancient times, it is obvious that their self-definition is both beyond reproach and beyond the grasp and comprehension of the rest of us ‘unknowns’ or ‘dummies’ in their eyes. They clearly hold their vision of their own role in the history of humanity to be sacrosanct, prophetic, visionary, and. from the perspective of application, despotic.

Beyond psychology, too, there are some potential archetypal roots for this ‘identity’ which may in the final analysis be merely a mask (Jung’s persona)…Jewish people, from time immemorial, have considered themselves ‘chosen by God’….and their Torah is replete with this phrase. The very phrase itself evokes perceptions and attitudes of difference, (if not superiority) in comparison to others.

From myjewishlearning.com, in a piece entitled, Are Jews the Chosen People?, we read:

The covenant between God and the freed Israelite slaves at Mount Sinai is central to the idea of being chosen. The covenant concretized Jewish closeness by establishing that the Israelites would abide by the Torah in return for special divine protection. Though God chose the Jews for this purpose, an amazing rabbinic course claims that the Jews were, in fact, God’s last choice.

After two thousand years, many escapes from exile, ostracism, alienation, and the holocaust, it is little wonder that, fearing a repeat of the extermination of some six million Jews in the gas chambers at the hands of Hitler’s assassins, they might want a place to call their own free from outside incursions and interference. As a relatively small population number (14 million?), their influence has been astounding in every field of human endeavour. Jewish pride is both highly valued and also highly warranted, given the degree to which each Jew strives to be the best at whatever his/her chosen field might be. Jealousy, envy, revenge, exclusion, and antisemitism hangs like a cloud over much of western world history. And Neyanyahu’s hold on power, the longest of any Prime Minister in Israel’s history, along with his determination to avoid criminal conviction, might include a personal psychic image of the great man.

Putin, too, although a nominal adherent to the  Russian Orthodox Church, (enjoying the support of his church for his war in Ukraine….who would have even considered such a reality?), nevertheless views himself as a modern version of the ‘great men’ of history. Power held, (even if abused) by previous lauded and infamous Russian Czar’s and other leaders, of both military and political stature, often the former leading to and sustaining the latter, offers a national historic legacy of ‘powerful great men’ at the head of the Russian state. Donning that mantel, while removing his shirt while riding his horse, Putin strides the range of Russian public consciousness like a colossus….seeking to portray himself as invincible, invulnerable, and essentially untouchable.

And then there is Trump, the Messiah sent by God to an essentially protestant, fundamentalist cult of religious nationalists, who are intent (according to their own public utterances) to bring about the Kingdom of God on earth within their time in power in the United States. As a former real-estate-mogul, in New York who has demonstrably defrauded many clients, suppliers, and anyone who attempted to restrain his ambition and ego, not to mention his self-inflated personally defined identity, as ‘great man’….I alone can fix it! I am your retribution! I will end this war on the first day I take office!.....and the list of bravado-megaphoned pronouncements of his own ‘accomplishments’ are really a testament to the vacuity of his authenticity.

In all three cases, however, there are still people, who from fear of reprisals including death or imprisonment, from perhaps even some misplaced adulation given the boldness and the bravado of the claims and the ambitions of these men, continue to ‘stand aside,’ or ‘hold their nose and vote’ or agree to serve under them, or who write cheques to fund them, or who, upon the promise of loyalty, seek and are rewarded with political sinecure posts, ambassadorships, ‘secretary-ships’ in the cabinet or whatever.

It may not be that history is the result of the achievements of great men, who, let’s not forget, throughout history have either written, or had written the laudable and honorific accounts of their accomplishments, for posterity. It may be that some whose risk-taking ‘gene’ impelled them to take great risks, (think John F. Kennedy Jr.) and who lept into the deep end of whatever “pool” those chose to dive into, and who found themselves sitting on a ‘peak’ of power, whether warranted or not, whether honestly sought and achieved or not, and whether compatible with their talents or not….and the rode off tilting at windmills of their own mind, irrespective of the implications of their nefariousness, their hubris or their own emptiness, and their insatiable appetite for power and control.

There is a pendulum, both in academic circles, as well as in the public discourse, between the individual and the society, as influences, similar to the continuum between nature and nurture….and history tends to slide, glide, fight for, or surrender various places on that timeline at various periods.

We can only hope that, having allowed much influence to shift into the hands of irresponsible and reprehensible men together we can and will wake up and start a shift back to the centre….not ideologically only but also pragmatically.