tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-48496462150101826862024-03-15T10:04:49.845-04:00acorncentreblog.coma progressive Canadian lens on contemporary issues...add new section from "cell 913"
acorncentreblog.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17885551385913360444noreply@blogger.comBlogger2870125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4849646215010182686.post-77108359121719099562024-03-15T10:02:00.004-04:002024-03-15T10:02:43.955-04:00cell913blog.com #37<p> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">History traditionally has been both executed and
documented by men, from a masculine perspective. Nevertheless, there is another
aspect to the history of each man’s biography, that cannot be reduced to those
archaic words, ‘help-mate’…the woman or women in his life. March 8, this week,
the world celebrated International Women’s Day, and at the risk of being
accused of tokenism, this piece is an attempt to identify and to elaborate the
significant contribution of women, especially to the lives of Mandela, Gandhi
and Tutu. We start with Mandela.</span></p><p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">Clearly, the longest and most impacting relationship
with a woman in Mandela’s life was with the woman the world knows as Winnie whose
full name was Nomzamo Winnifred Madikezela, a graduate in Social Work from the
Jan Hofmeyr School of Social Work. And while the relationship began prior to
his divorce from Evelyn, his first wife, Mandela writes about their courtship:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I was both courting her and politicizing
her. As a student, Winnie had been attracted to the Non-European Unity
Movement, for she had a brother who was involved with that party. ….After
(their first lunch), I took her for a drive to an area between Johannesburg and
Evaton, an open field veld <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>just past
Eldorado Park. We walked on the grass, grass so similar to that of the Transkei
where had both been raised. I told her of my hopes and of the difficulties of
the Treason Trial*. I knew right there that I wanted to marry her –and I told
her so. Her spirit, her passion, her youth, her courage her willfulness---I
felt all of these things the moment I first saw her…..The Treason Trial was in
its second year and uit put a suffocating weight on our law practice. Mandela
and Tambo (Law Firm) was falling apart as we could not be there, and both
Oliver (law partner) and I were experiencing grave financial difficulties…..We had gone from a bustling practice that turned people away to one that was begging
for clients. I could not even afford to pay the fifty-pound balance still owing
on the <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>plot of land that I had purchased
in Umtata, and had to give it up. I explained all this to Winnie. I told her it
was more than likely that we would have to live on her small salary as a social
worker. Winnie understood and said she was prepared to take the risk and throw
her lot in with mine. I never promised her gold and diamonds and I was never
able to give them to her. </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">(Mandela, LWTF, p 214-215)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">At the wedding reception, Winnie’s father put the
relationship into perspective, as the father of the bride:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">He took note, as did everyone, that among
the uninvited guests at the wedding were a number of security police. He spoke
of his love for his daughter, my commitment to the country, and my dangerous career
as a politician. When Winnie had first told him of the marriage, he had exclaimed,
‘But you are marrying a jailbird!’ At the wedding, he said he was not
optimistic about the future, and that such a marriage, in such difficult times,
would be unremittingly tested. He told Winnie she was marrying a man who was
already married to the struggle. He bade his daughter good luck and ended his
speech by saying, ‘If your man is a wizard, you must become a witch!’ It was
his way of saying that you must follow your man on whatever path he takes.</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">
(LWTF, p.216)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Mandela writes a kind of confessional, on the days
following the wedding:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">There was no time or money for a honeymoon,
and life quickly settled into a routine dominated by the trial. We woke very
early in the morning, usually at about four. Winnie prepared breakfast before I
left. I would then take the bus to the trial, or make an early morning visit to
my office. As much as possible, afternoons and evenings were spent at my office
attempting to keep our practice going and to earn some money. Evenings were
often taken up with political work and meetings. The wife of a freedom fighter
is often like a widow, even when her husband is not in prison. Though I was on
trial for treason, Winnie have me cause for hope. I felt as though I had a new
a second chance at life. My love for her gave me added strength for the struggles
that lay ahead.</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> (LWTF, p. 217)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Never one to be surprised by the opinions and determination
(stubbornness) of another, Mandela recounts Winnie’s response to the proposal
to give their daughter, <i>Zenani (‘What have you brought to the world’?) a
Xhosa baptism by calling in an </i>inyanga<i>, a tribal healer, to give the
baby a traditional herbal bath. But Winnie was adamantly opposed, thinking it unhealthy
and outdated, and instead smeared Zenani with olive oil, plastered her little
bod with Johnson’s Baby Powder, and filled her stomach with shark oil. </i>(LWTF,
p 226)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">A similar kind of narrative unfolded when Nelson
attempted to teach Winnie how to drive.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Driving, in those days, was a man’s business;
very few women, especially African women, were to be seen in the driver’s seat.
But Winnie was independent-minded and intent on learning, and it would be
useful because I was gone so much of the time and could not drive her places
myself. Perhaps I am an impatient teacher or perhaps I had a headstrong pupil,
but when I attempted to give Winnie lessons along a relatively flat and quiet Orlando
road, we could not seem to shift gears without quarreling, Finally, after she
had ignored one too many of my suggestions, I stormed out of the car and walked
home. Winnie seemed to do better without my tutelage than with it, for she
proceeded to drive around the township on her own for the next hour. By that
time, we were ready to make up, and it is a story we subsequently laughed
about.</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> (LWTF, p. 226)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Nevertheless, throughout his trials, imprisonments,
and detentions, Winnie was always ready to visit, to comfort and to support and
sustain her husband, until near the end.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">On April 13, 1992, at a press conference in
Johannesburg….I announced my separation from my wife. ….I read the following
statement.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The relationship between myself and my
wife, Comrade Nomzamo Winnie Mandela, has become the subject of much media
speculation. I am issuing this statement to clarify the position and in the
hope that it will bring an end to further conjecture….Comrade Nomzamo and myself
contracted our marriage at a crucial time in the struggle for liberation in our
country. Owing to pressures of our shared commitment to the ANC and the
struggle to end apartheid, we were unable to enjoy a normal family life. Despite
these pressures, our love for each other and our devotion to our marriage grew
and intensified…During the two decades I spent on Robben Island she was an indispensable
pillar of support and comfort to myself personally…Comrade Nomzamo accepted the
onerous burden of raising our children on her own…She endured the persecutions
heaped upon her by the Government with exemplary fortitude and never wavered
from her commitment to the freedom struggle. Her tenacity reinforced my
personal respect, love and growing affection. It also attracted the admiration of
the world at large. My love for her remains undiminished…However, in view of
the tensions that have arisen owing to differences between ourselves on a
number of issues in recent months, we have mutually agreed that a separation would
be best for each of us. My action was not prompted by the current allegations
begin made against her in the media…Comrade Nomzamo has and can continue to
rely of my unstinting support during these trying moments in her life. I shall
never regret to life Comrade Nomzamo and I tried to share together. Circumstances
beyond our control however dictated it should be otherwise. I part from my wife
with no recriminations. I embrace her with all the love and affection I have
nursed of her inside and outside prison for the moment I first met her. Ladies
and gentlemen, I hope you will appreciate the pain I have gone through.</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">
(LWTF, p 599-600)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In the words that following the transcript of his
public statement, however, tell a deeper and more personal story:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Perhaps I was blinded to certain things
because of the pain I gelt for not being able to fulfill my role as a husband
to my wife and a father to my children. But just as I am convinced that my wife’s
life while I was in prison was more difficult that mine, my own return was also
more difficult for her than it was for me. She married a man who soon left her:
that man became a myth; and then that myth returned home and proved to be just
a man after all…s I said later at my daughter Zindzi’s wedding, it seems to be the
destiny of freedom fighters to have unstable personal lives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When your life is the struggle, as mine was,
there is little room left for family. That has always been my greatest regret, and
the most painful aspect of the choice I made. </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">(LWTF,
p. 600)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Is it reasonable to conjecture that our public
acclaim, achievements and accolades can and will never either erase or even
outshine our most profound regrets? Our public lives, however exemplary,
honourable, and even admirable to some extent, are always profoundly
compromised by those ‘inner’ caves of regret, depression, anxiety and feelings
of worthlessness and emptiness. And whether our struggles are political or
psychological, those struggles consume the vast proportion of our time, energy
and even our identity…whether or not we are conscious of that consumption in
the process. Indeed, it may well be a that a paradox of ‘over-achievement’ is a
mask that both covers and helps us to avoid, deny and take responsibility for
our other ‘responsibilities’.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Especially as men, we are indoctrinated to go away on
our ‘adventure’ of discovery. And the ‘hero’ option, irrespective of its
specific domain, narrative structure or outcome, comes with the ‘territory’ of
being an ambitious, self-respecting and courageous man. Mandela, while his ‘heroic’
story is considered epic, globally, nevertheless bears all the hallmarks of the
profound price he paid.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">*in 1956, the whole executive of the ANC
were arrested, along with some one hundred plus, all of whom were being arrested
on charges of high treason and an alleged conspiracy to overthrow the state. LWTF,
p. 200<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Next, we plan to take a look at the contribution to
his life that women made to Gandhi.<o:p></o:p></span></p>acorncentreblog.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17885551385913360444noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4849646215010182686.post-58629010662846743192024-03-13T10:08:00.004-04:002024-03-13T10:08:56.992-04:00cell913blog.com #36<p> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">To some whose eyes have passed over these spaces
lately, it must seem that a kind of idolatry of three men is both the motive
for and the result of these scribblings. And while I acknowledge that the kind of
story that the lives of these men tell is highly inspiring, and motivating, it
is not to idolize nor to fail to note that these men, for all of their
honourable traits and continuing global influence, were and remain basically
ordinary, and yet uncovered and deployed their best instincts, learnings, mind,
body and spirit in the service of their people. And yet, to reduce their lives
to ‘altruism’ or even heroic altruism would be such a reduction as to dishonour
them and their legacies.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Far from writing a cheque, or holding a protest march,
or writing letters to the editor and even editorials themselves, or even joining
a religious organization determined to ‘minister’ to the needs of a
neighbourhood, or even a town or city, the lives of these men, while continually
beset with threats, hatred, criminal charges and time served in both courts and
prison, as well as attempting to evade, deceive, confront and ultimately endure
in order to dismantle various edifices of oppression, and the reconciliation
that needed to follow wrote their own public historic and psychic histories,
while they carried the hopes and dreams of their people on their shoulders. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Indeed, history, supported and sustained by the public
dialogue, the media, the education superstructure, and even the professions is
contained within a framework of ‘literal,’ ‘empirical’ and formerly agreed-upon
data. And while there is a ‘kind of reality and truth’ to the data, such as
birthdate, birthplace, income numbers and sources, address, academic degrees or
certificates, number of children, number of marriages, titles and ranks,
memberships, and other informational evidence of one’s biography, there is
another dimension to each of us. None of us can either be summarized or even
characterized by a biography. Of course, we look for adjectives, usually from
acquaintances, family members, enemies to help us fill in the gaps behind the literal,
empirical data. Our medical and legal fraternities depend heavily on the configuration
of the lines that connect the dots of our physical ‘condition’ or ‘action’
(depending whether it is a medical diagnosis or a legal defense that is needed).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Churches, too, as well as political parties, attempt
to imbue adherents with a set of principles, or perhaps even creeds, to which
submission and commitment determine admission and the privileges that accompany
membershccip. And while all of these ‘normal’ depictions of an individual are
going on, there is another dynamic at play, within the person. It is to depth
psychology that we have turned, in looking into ‘souls’ in extreme circumstances
where they/we find the <i>suffering and abnormal and fantastic conditions of
psyche. Our souls in private to ourselves, in close communion with another, and
even in public, exhibit psychopathologies. Each soul at some time or another
demonstrates illusions and depressions, overvalued ideas, manic flights and rages,
anxieties, compulsions and perversions. Perhaps our psychopathology has an
intimate connection with our individuality, so that our fear of being what we
really are is partly because we fear the psychopathological aspect of
individuality. For we are each peculiar; we have symptoms; we fail, and cannot
see why we go wrong or even where, despite high hopes and good intentions. We
are unable to set matters right, to understand what is taking place or be
understood by those who would try. Our minds, feelings, wills, and behaviors
deviate from normal ways. Our insights are important, or none come at all. Our
feelings disappear in apathy; we worry and also don’t care. Destruction seeps
out of us autonomously and we cannot redeem the broken trusts, hopes, loves….The
study of lives and the care of souls means above all a prolonged encounter with
what destroys and is destroyed, with what is broken and hurts—that is, with
psychopathology. Between the lines of each biography and in the lines of each
face we may read a struggle with alcohol, with suicidal despair, with dreadful
anxiety, with lascivious sexual obsessions, cruelties at close quarters, secret
hallucinations or paranoic spiritualisms. Ageing brings moments of soul,
moments of acute psychic pain, and haunting remembrances as memory disintegrates.
The night world in which we dream shows the soul split into antagonisms; night
after night we are fearful, aggressive, guilty, and failed…These are the
actualities—the concrete mess of psychological existence as it is
phenomenologically, subjectively, and individually…</i>(James Hillman, Re-Visioning
Psychology, pps.55-56)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">These observations, without the benefit of clinical
assessment and diagnosis, attended the lives of Mandela, Gandhi and Tutu, in
various degrees. These men were engaged in an epic struggle to destroy an evil,
degrading, racist, bigoted and hateful attitude, and the laws and systems that instilled
and sustained it. And the resistance to their efforts proved both their
justification and eventually, with its own demise, their modest and complicated
achievements. Nevertheless, all these decades later, vestiges of racism,
imperialism and the abuse of power persist and seem to be finding new voices to
retake their heinous ascendency.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The self-reflection,
prayer, humility, fasting (for Gandhi) and laser honesty of these men, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>with their assessment and diagnosis of their personal
and the larger circumstances, the purpose of their dedication to liberating
their people shines through even in the darkest and most dangerous circumstances.
Mandela’s account of his view of deploying a hunger strike, while in prison,
provides evidence of his clarity of mind, under extreme duress. Following a food
boycott by the warders in Robben Island, who demanded better food and improved
living conditions, after prisoners in ‘F’ and ‘G’ sections had been on a hunger
strike, Mandela’ section followed the next day. However, in Mandela’s own words:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">For me, hunger strikes were altogether too
passive. We who were already suffering were threatening our health, even courting
death. I have always favored a more active, militant style of protest such as
work-strikes, go-slow strikes, or refusing to clear up; actions that punished
the authorities, not ourselves. They wanted gravel and we produced no gravel.
They wanted the prison yard clean and it was untidy. This kind of behavior
distressed and exasperated them, where I think they secretly enjoyed watching
us go hungry. …But when it came to a decision, I was often outvoted. My colleagues
even jokingly accused me of not wanting to miss a meal. The proponents of
hunger strikes argued that it was a traditionally accepted form of protest that
had been waged all over the world by such prominent leaders as Mahatma Gandhi.
Once the decision was taken, however, I would support it as wholeheartedly as
any of its advocates. In fact, during the strikes I was often in the position
of remonstrating with some of my more wayward colleagues who did not want to
abide by our agreement. ‘Madiba, I want my food,’ I remember one man saying. ’I
don’t see why I should go without. I have served the struggle for many years.’
(Mandela, LWTF, p.423)<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">From <i>mkgandhi.org</i>, we read the words of Gandhi
on fasting:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h2><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: normal;">When human ingenuity fails, the votary fasts. This fasting quickens
the spirit of prayer, that is to say, the fasting is a spiritual act, and
therefore, addressed to God. The effect of such action on the life of the people
is that, where the person fasting is all known to them, their sleeping conscience
is awakened. But there is the danger that the people through mistaken sympathy
may act against their will in order to save the life of the loved one. This
danger has got to be faced. One ought not to be deterred from right action when
one is sure of the rightness. It can best promote circumspection. Such a fast
is undertaken in obedience to the dictates of the inner voice and, therefore,
prevents haste.</span> <span style="font-weight: normal;">(H,21-12-1947, p.476)<o:p></o:p></span></span></h2>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">Writing to celebrate Archbishop Tutu’s 80th birthday,
on </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">TimesLIVE.co.za,</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> on October 06, 2011, in a piece entitled, </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">Tutu and
the curse of self-doubt, in Ideas By Brendan Boyle:</i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">It is easy today to forget how much white
South Africa hated the little bishop who went around the world campaigning for
sanctions against his own country. He was denigrated in dinner table
conversation then in much the same way that Julius Malema </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">(founder
of the Economic Freedom Fighters, a populist far-left political party)<i> is
now…Graffiti on suburban walls urged him to emigrate, criticized his modest
wealth and called sometimes for physical harm to be done to him</i>…..(On Tutu’s
anger at Jacob Zulu)<i> It might be an <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>important moment if it finds somewhere within
the party machine that quality which, for me, has always set Tutu apart from Mandela-the
curse of self-doubt. Mandela has seemed always to me to have the perfect pitch
of a political prodigy. He instinctively knows that right thing to do, the
appropriate response to wring the best from an opportunity or to rescue a
situation as dangerous as the assassination of Chris Hani </i>(fierce opponent
of apartheid, assassinated by Janusz Walus, a Polish immigrant and sympathiser
of the Conservative opposition on April 10, 1993)<i>,. Tutu pits his wits
against the challenges that come his way, prays to his God for guidance,
worries about the possible consequences and then plays a hand he sometimes
regrets. Travelling with him for a few days in 1986 to research a profile for United
Press International, I saw him snap at a middle-aged woman who was asking for assurance
about some aspect of being a white person in an apartheid state. She cried as
he stalked off. Hours later, in the car heading back to Port Elizabeth, he
broke his own call for silence and said, almost to himself, ‘I shouldn’t have
done that.’ Once his chaplain had discovered what he was talking about, they
started working out how to find the woman and apologise. I don’t know if he
managed, but was visibly bruised by his own mistake. If more of us could have
Tutu’s courage to do what we think is right and yet to think it possible that
we might be wrong, surely ours would be a better world.<o:p></o:p></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Political and personal strength, courage, activism and
accomplishments are hallmarks of history. They are, rarely, if ever, accounted
for through a deep and penetrating examination of the ‘inner voice’ the ‘inner life’
the ‘inner self-talk’ and the psychic sinews of vulnerability, self-doubt, self-effacement
and withdrawal. Indeed, while we live in a primarily masculine-defined and designed
culture and psychic superstructure, such attributes are perpetually disdained,
denigrated, and even dismissed. Heroes are ‘birthed and celebrated on the
merits of their literal, visible, measurable and demonstrated ‘achievements.’ Regrets,
self-doubt, failures, and even inexcusable errors in judgement are deployed by
enemies as evidence of moral depravity, ‘gutlessness,’ ‘weakness,’ and justification
for alienation, separation, and even isolation. Let’s not forget, the solitary
confinement imprisonment cell was devised and designed by Quakers, the most ‘passive’
and peace-seeking among Christian faith groups. Mandela regarded this as the
most heinous of all possible treatments of offenders. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">From NARCAT.org, National Religious Campaign Against
Torture, we read: <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Dr. Benjamin Rush and Benjamin Franklin
and several Quaker leaders first instituted solitary confinement at Walnut
Street Jail in Philadelphia in the late 18<sup>th</sup> century, believing that
total isolation and silence would lead to penitence, hence the term ‘penitentiary’
was coined. That led to the building of the Southeastern Pennsylvania
Penitentiary in 1829, which only had solitary confinement cells. However,
instead of becoming penitent, the prisoners developed serious mental health
problems. The Quakers recognized that solitary confinement cause severe
psychological harm and apologized for their use of solitary confinement.
Unfortunately, the U.S. has let history repeat. In the 20<sup>th</sup> century,
some U.S. prisons had a limited number of solitary confinement control units
within their facilities; however, in 1983, Marion prison in Illinois instituted
a permanent ‘lock down’ of their entire facility, in which inmates were confined
alone in their cells for 23 hours per day. The use of solitary confinement has
increased dramatically since then.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">From<i> policyoptions.irpp.org, </i>January 18, 2022,
in a piece entitled<i>, ‘<b>The use of solitary confinement continues in Canada</b>,’
we read:<o:p></o:p></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">According to the Canadian government,
November 30<sup>th</sup> 2019, marked the end of solitary confinement in Canada.
Yet, people in prison continue to be placed in solitary confinement in a
variety of ways, in contravention of their Charter Rights…..Reports released by
researchers Jane Sprott, Anthony Doob, and Adelina Iftene as well as the Office
of Correctional Investigator—in addition to our own experience monitoring the
conditions of confinement in the federal prisons designated for women—make it clear
that solitary confinement is a form of punishment that is disproportionately
used against Black people, Indigenous people and people with mental illness.
This is yet another violation of section 15 of the Charter.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The cliché that nothing worthwhile is ever accomplished
without sacrifice, while warranted, tends to gloss over the details of
suffering, threats and self-doubt that accompany these three men, and all of
us, daily, hourly, and over our life-time. It is our fixation with the ‘light’
in our multiple historic and psychic and cultural landscapes, to the avoidance
and denial of the ‘darkness,’ that we do and will continue to owe our repeating
oscillation around the serious issues we are challenged to face. Suffering,
pain, depression, anxiety, and even desperation are all an integral part of each
of our lives, And these men were certainly not immune from their scars.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>acorncentreblog.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17885551385913360444noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4849646215010182686.post-53583068026549318812024-03-11T10:24:00.009-04:002024-03-11T10:26:55.246-04:00cell913blog.com #34<p><i> </i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"><i>He who loves the bristle of bayonets only sees in the
glitter what beforehand he feels in his heart. It is avarice and hatred; it is
that quivering lip, that cold, hating eye, which built magazines and
powder-houses.</i> (Ralph Waldo Emerson from </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">vaps.org</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> The Virginia Center
for Public Safety)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">There is a radioactive paradox that has been rumbling
around in my head for some time. While reading and reflecting on the lives, the
thoughts and inheritances of men such as Nelson Mandela, Gandhi, Archbishop
Desmond Tutu, and their commitment to and honouring of nonviolence in the
conduct of their epic struggles to end the oppression of their people, their
impact on their time and people, as well as on the world generally, I am struck
by the headlines of war, insurrection, terrorism, revenge and retribution,
domestic violence and mass murders. Much of the violence in the world has to be
laid at the feet of men. And, it is both clear and disconcerting to note that the
disconnect between these two polarities cannot be lost or avoided by men of the
twenty-first century. Living in the ‘middle’ of these poles, one is prompted to
reflect on several questions.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Is the deeply embedded seed of faith and a
religious discipline an essential for men to embrace fully a commitment to
non-violence, and to an abstention of the abuse of power in all of its many
forms and faces?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Are the male leaders (Mandela, Gandhi,
Tutt, and King among others) of a special genetic or psychological nature that
sets them apart from the rest of us?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Were these men so committed to a cause to
which they dedicated their lives, that the strategy and tactic of non-violence
became and remained essential for their ultimate success in dismantling, or at
least remediating, apartheid, imperialism, racism?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Has the way we have ‘done’ history,
through the factual, literal, date-filled documentation of the events,
encounters, speeches, writings and their ‘heroic’ accomplishments either
shielded or passed over the ‘inner lives’ of such men, and the daimon that
‘moved’ them?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Is there a divide, based on evidence, and
transmitted through popular culture that separates the pursuit of high ideals
(such as the dismantling of apartheid and imperialism and racism) from the
work-a-day perspective, language and attitudes of the mechanic and the
carpenter and the plumber all of whom must make a living with their hands?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Is there also a divide between these ‘epic
heroes’ and the theoretical scholars whose books and philosophies, principles
and experiments have filled the stacks of university libraries and lecture and
seminar rooms on one hand, and on the other hand, those ‘blue-collar labourers’
on whose hands and brains and morals we place our trust?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Have we so elevated, glorified,
pedestalled, and virtually ‘worshipped’ the ideals and the accomplishments of
men like Mandela, Gandhi, Tutu, and King, (and others) that we have lost sight
of the reality of their vulnerabilities, their dark sides and their
often-monumental screw-ups?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 18pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Men of all political,
economic, academic, professional, political, theological, philosophical,
geographical and psychological strains and strata have been, and continue to be
in search of their identity, their purpose, their modus operandi. And, for
many, if not most men, the resume, or curriculum vitae summarizes their
‘identity’ for the purpose of attempting to identify ‘ourselves’ to a
prospective employer. Such a document, regardless of how detailed,
comprehensive or ‘personal’ it might be, is a seriously reduced and simplified
depiction and description of who we are. And while it is also reductionistic to
reduce the purpose of the resume to a catalogue of skills, it is also true that
we present ourselves as a “role-player, function, in the design and strategy
and purpose of some piece of “work” whether that be for an employer, as an
entrepreneur, or even as an artist or professional. Performing actions to
accomplish an end goal is the frame and lens in and through which we
conceptualize our lives, especially as men. Even as fathers, we see ourselves
as ‘bread-winners’ and ‘husbands,’ and ‘role models’ and advocates/protectors
of our children and family. “Doing” is our way of relating, and comparing is
our way of assessing our relative “place” and “value” in our circle. “Extrinsics,”
those literal, empirical, measurable pieces of data of our existence are
listed, highlighted and valued both by the one presenting to an
employer/examiner/admission officer and hopefully also by the assessor. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 18pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">As James Hillman writes
in The Soul’s Code, a premise that grounds much of his thinking about
contemporary (American) culture:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<i><span style="font-size: medium;">At the outset we need to make clear that today’s main paradigm for understanding human life, the interplay of genetics and environment, omits something essential—the particularity you feel to be you. By accepting the idea that I am the effect of a subtle buffeting between hereditary and societal forces, I reduce myself to as result. The more my life is accounted for by what already occurred in my chromosomes, by what my parents did or didn’t do, and by my early years now long past, the more my biography is the story of a victim. I am living a plot written by my genetic code, ancestral heredity, traumatic occasions, parental unconsciousness, societal accidents…..We are victims primarily of theories before they are put into practice. The current American identity as victim is the tail side of the coin whose head brightly displays the opposite identity: the heroic self-made ‘man,’ carving out destiny alone and with unflagging will. Victim is the flip-side of hero. More deeply, however, we are victims of academic, scientistic, and even therapeutic psychology, whose paradigms do not sufficiently account for or engage with, and therefore ignore, the sense of calling, that essential mystery at the heart of each human life…..We dull our lives by the way we conceive them. We have stopped imagining them with any sort of romance, any fictional flare. (p. 5-6)</span></i>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 18pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">What kind of hero, then,
is a question that has beset generations of men for centuries.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 18pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">“From Hercules through
St, George to the hero role in Freud and Jung we have had a hero archetype
moving us, the ego. We believe the ego should be strong and just and overcome
death, depression and decay and stand for culture and civilization’. (Dick
Russell, <i>The Life and Ideas of James Hillman, Vol. 2, Revisioning
Psychology,</i> Hillman’s notes on lectures at the Jung Institute, 1971, p. 94)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 18pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Indeed, contemporary
vernacular is replete with the word and notion of ‘self’ (as if self and ego
were identical). <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 18pt;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">The New Oxford English
Dictionary—the shorter edition!—gives ten columns in its small print to
compound of ‘self’: ‘self-satisfaction,’ ‘self-control,’ ‘self-defeating,’
‘self-approval,’ ‘self-contempt,’ ‘self-satisfied,’ and maybe five hundred more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">(Hillman, The Soul’s
Code, p. 257)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 18pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Against and in place of
the self and the ego, dominating both our language and our perception of human
identity, Hillman poses a different lens through which to open the door and
window to identity: the daimon---<i>calling, fate, character, innate image ….together
they make up the ‘acorn theory’ which holds that each person bears a uniqueness
that asks to be lived and that is already present before it can be lived</i>
(TSC p.6<i>)….Daimon as genius and then (in) more modern terms such as ‘angel,’
‘soul,’ paradigm,’ ‘image,’ ‘fate,’ ‘inner twin,’ ‘acorn,’ ‘life companion,’
‘guardian,’ ‘heart’s calling,’</i> <i>….Among native peoples on the North
American continent, we find a parade of terms for the acorn as an independent
spirit-soul: yega (Coyukon): and owl (Kwakiutl); ‘agate man’ (Navaho); nagual
(Central American/southern Mexico); tsayotyeni (Santa Ana Pueblo), sicom
(Dakota)…these beings accompany guide, protect, warn. </i>(TSC, p. 257)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 18pt;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">A daimon in the ancient
world was a figure from somewhere else, neither human nor divine, something in
between the two belonging to a ‘middle region,’ (metaxu) to which the soul
belonged. The daimon was more an intimate psychic reality than a god; it was a
figure who might visit in a dream of send signals as an omen, a hunch, or an
erotic urge. </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">(TSC p 258)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 18pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Contemporary history is
filled with the biographic details of Mandela, Gandhi, Tutu, as well as details
of the kernels of their respective faith and/or belief systems. Common to all
three is the well-documented and oft-repeated adjective, ‘selfless’. And in a
period in history in which the alpha male (‘ego’ and ‘might’ and ‘power’ and
‘strength’) is on display in political and journalistic rhetoric, as if those
details were the prime causes and motivators of whatever current political and
military actors are doing, the concept of selflessness remains, in the
vernacular, an epic indication of weakness. Unfortunately, we have a parade of
what Hillman might call ‘titanism’ a human trait he considers worse than
narcissism.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 18pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">In the preface to his
monumental work, <i>Re-Visioning Psychology</i>, James Hillman writes: <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">I would not encourage Titanism, a menace
far greater than Narcissism, which presents only a pensive pretty-boy compared
with the titanic grandiosity of Self. …..Self can be defined only from within
itself by its own representations. Principal among these are the irrefutable
truth of personal experience and the inflating feelings of personal
significance. Utterly self-referent, it knows no God greater than itself. Now
most psychology takes all this quite literally, so that behind psychology’s
devotion to the personal stands neither humanism nor individualism, but rather
a literalism of Self like an invisible nonexistent God absolutely believed in.
Absolutism is either fundamentalism, delusion, or literalism—or all of the
Above. Perhaps it’s right then to say there is no greater literalism in
psychology than its idea of Self, a literalism that converts our supposedly
investigative field into a branch of mystic fundamentalism. This leads me
further to think that our culture’s omnipotent and omniscient Godhead who
supposedly replaced the mutually limiting pagan beings on myth is none other
that a Titan returned from Tartaros </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">(the infernal region of
ancient Greek mythology, the underworld)<i> to a too high place, and, worse,
all alone. </i>(p. xii)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">It was the ‘cause’ the purpose, and the calling of Mandela,
Gandhi, Tutu, and not their personal ‘ego’ that drove their lives….and not
their own self-aggrandizement. Indeed, all three suffered considerably, at
times almost inexplicably and tragically, in order to sustain the cause of
their efforts. They, likely without a single second dedicated to the notion of
what the history books would say about them, submitted themselves to the
movement of alleviating oppression of their people. And, to those of us
reflecting backward on their lives, we can readily see a ‘calling’ a ‘genius’
and an ‘angel’ that both came from within and drew them onward, without even
flinching or failing insofar as they had both energy and consciousness.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">There was nothing ‘fundamental’ or absolute about
their methods, their relationships, and their perspective on themselves as well
as on their ‘situation’. They sought and deployed multiple options in
strategies, tactics and human supports. They spent hours in deep reflection,
not merely in strategizing and planning, but also in learning, remembering, tolerating
others and indeed in supporting others of a similar commitment to their
respective cause. There was no delusion, and certainly no minimalist literalism
to their perspective, the ideology or their discernment of their respective
roles and histories. Lacking almost completely in inflated feelings of personal
significance, it was their dedication to nonviolence, to reconciliation, and to
the freedom of their people in their pursuit of the almost insurmountable and
epic outcomes.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Today, by contrast, we have a culture drowning in
images of ‘self’ as if personal significance, expressed in the latest
microscopically parsed ‘word’ or phrase, indelibly inked into the public
consciousness, as a convicting piece of evidence of some psychic or genetic
abnormality and justification for ‘unworthiness’ for office. Not only are the
actors on the stage under highly inflated moral, ethical and psychological and
religious microscopes, so too are the messengers. And both groups have lost
sight of the shared responsibility not merely to preserve democracy, but to
deploy its strengths to enhance the lives of their people, through the
reduction of those things than enshackle them: fear, alienation, anxiety,
homelessness, statelessness, war, terrorism, famine and existential
environmental threats.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Just because the “oppression” is not so narrowly
defined, and just because the oppression is not confined (nor confineable) to a
single nation or region, and because everyone on the planet is aware, in real
time, of the ravages and the murders and the rapes and the bombed hospitals,
schools, apartment complexes and city squares, not the mention the nuclear
reactors on the verge of meltdown…the kind of selflessness, and ‘calling’ that
lay in the hearts and minds of at least the three men in our view, is more
needed and more absent, than at any time in the lifetime of this scribe.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Were these men, and others, legitimately and authentically,
‘ahead of their time’ in the sense that they saw beyond the immediate, the
literal, the egocentric to the ‘vision’ as an integral part of their own ‘daimon,’
or ‘inner angel’….<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Joseph Campbell, in his work, Myth and Meaning, (202)
writes about the time we are in:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">We’re in a period, in terms of history, of
the end of national and tribal consciousness. The only consciousness that is
proper to contemporary life is global. Nevertheless, all popular thinking is in
terms of loyalties to the local communities to which all are members. Such
thinking is not out of date.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">What we face is a challenge to recognize
one community on this earth, and what we find in the face of this challenge is
everybody pulling back into his own group. I don’t want to name the in-groups,
but we all know pretty well what they are. In our country (the U.S.), we call
them pressure groups. They are racial groups, class groups, religious groups,
economic groups, and they are all tangling with each other.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">For any people to say, ‘We are it and the
others are ‘other—these are dangerous people. And there are religions still
doing this. The new thing that is very difficult for people to realize I sour
society is the human race. And out little suburb is the globe. Spaceship Earth.’</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">
(<a href="https://www,jcf,org/product-page/myth-and-meaning-conversations-on-mythology-and">https://www,jcf,org/product-page/myth-and-meaning-conversations-on-mythology-and</a>
life-ebook) <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Such a perspective, whether or not actually read and studied
by Mandela, Gandhi and Tutt (and others), would have easily compiled, even
sustained the work to which these men dedicated their lives. There seems to
have been a connecting ‘bridge’ between their ‘daimon’ and their moment in
history. The sophomoric question of whether history makes the man, or the
reverse, the man makes history, notwithstanding, there has to be an intimate,
sentient, sensitive and imaginatively courageous perspective both of the identity
of the individual and the inherent and seemingly natural ‘integration’ of the
man and his moment that defies science, and perhaps theology.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">The capacity to withstand the onslaught of continual
pressure, continual betrayal, continual defiance, and misinterpretation of both
personal identity and motive, of ideology, morality and ethic, of a determined resistance
to defend, at all costs, the ‘it’ and to make them (and their comrades) ‘the
other’ is a theme which has defined much of western history. In the case of
South Africa, the ‘it’ comprised the apartheid system of white supremacy, and the
‘other’ were the blacks, and coloureds and Indians. In the case of India, the ‘it’
were the British imperialists, while the ‘other’ were the Indian people. Campbell’s
insight that ‘in-groups’ define the manner in which the political and cultural
systems are being manipulated, can apply internally to each nation, as well as
to the geo-political stage. In each and every town, school, college,
university, and corporation, there is a dominant “it” and a recessive “other”
so defined and determined and sustained by the power of the will of the ‘it’.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">And, from one perspective, these men, Mandela, Gandhi,
Tutu, all considered themselves intimately connected to ‘other’ and determined
to oppose the granite establishment of the ‘it’. Doubtless, they would all argue
that their perspective was not what defined them, so much as how they were
determined and enabled to enact their beliefs, principles, values and both
strategies and tactics with others of like mind and determination. And in the
course of their ‘living out’ their work, they adopted the principles of ‘nonviolence’
and respect for the ‘other that was missing from those who considered
themselves the ‘it’.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">We do know, for example, that one of these men,
Mandela, regularly recited the poem Invictus during his imprisonment (Charle
LaMonica,<i> Invictus</i>…<i> <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A poem frequently
recited by Nelson Mandela,</i> from worldview.unc.org). Invictus, meaning
unconquerable or undefeated in Latin, was written in 1875 by William Ernest
Henley.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Out of the night that<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">covers me,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Black as the pit from ‘<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">pole to pole<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">I thank whatever gods <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">may be<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">For my unconquerable <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">soul.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">In the fell clutch of<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">circumstance<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">I have not winced nor<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">cried aloud.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Under the bludgeonings<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">of chance<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My head is
bloody, but<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">unbowed.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Beyond this place of <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">wrath and tears<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Looms but the Horror of <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">the Shade,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">And yet the menace of<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">the years<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Finds and shall find me’<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">unafraid.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">It matters not how strait<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">the gate,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">How charged with <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">punishments the scroll,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">I am the master of my <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">fate<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">I am the captain of my <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">soul.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Indefatigable, selfless, deeply committed, not only to
the ‘cause’ but also to a deep and profound awareness of the limits to one’s
power and influence, and a determination to exercise a discipline on himself, …..clearly
these attributes apply to all three.<o:p></o:p></span></p>acorncentreblog.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17885551385913360444noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4849646215010182686.post-61611580389110635202024-03-06T10:48:00.000-05:002024-03-06T10:48:09.543-05:00cell913blog.com #33<p> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">Influenced by his father’s tribal priesthood, his
mother’s conversion to the Methodist faith, the regent whose tutelage and home
were his for a period, his attendance in Methodist-operated educational facilities
and also by the writings and teachings of Gandhi, Mandela seemed destined for a
significant role in the evolution of South Africa throughout his life.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">And his activism, along with his colleagues in the ANC,
was clearly echoed, reverberated and trumpeted by the man to came to chair the
Truth and Reconciliation Committee following the demise of apartheid.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Stories that Tutu ‘was not officially invited to
Mandela’s funeral’ notwithstanding, (some report that in South Africa,
invitations are not issued for funerals), the two men have left an indelible
imprint not only on the men and women with whom they worked and fought, but
also on the government and its policies in South Africa. Indeed, their circle
of influence extends in various ripples across the globe.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
(Personal note: I had the opportunity to attend an event at which Archbishop Tutu was the keynote speaker, in the then “Pepsi” Centre in Denver Colorado. Invited to support the work of those engaged in youth projects, the event featured a stage filled with church leaders from almost all denominations, sadly excluding the Episcopal Bishop of Colorado, whose absence was noted by many. Immediately following the event, like a young boy at a rock concert wanting to ‘meet’ and shake hands with the Archbishop, I found my way through the maze of hallways in the arena to the loading dock where the venerable Archbishop was already seated in the rear seat of a van. His eyes, as always it seemed, sparkled, his smile beamed, his hand stretched out as I breathlessly blurted, “Archbishop, I bring greetings from “A.W!” (New Testament Professor who had previously worked in Africa and knew the Archbishop personally.) I had been surprised and grateful that the opportunity to listen to him speak and even more energized that I might meet him face to face. Words to be spoken, unrehearsed, were the last thing in my mind as I raced through the concrete halls. Only the moment, if possible, seemed important! And, these three decades later, the moment remains etched in memory, in indelible ‘ink’.)
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">Both Mandela and Tutu were born of Xhosa parents, and
were educated in mission schools, Tutu in those where his father taught, Mandela
in Methodist mission schools. Tutu </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">though he wanted a medical career…was
unable to afford training and instead became a schoolteacher. Ordained an
Anglican priest in 1961, he obtained an M.A. from King’s College London (and)
from 1972 to 1975 he served as associate director for the World Council of
Churches. He was appointed dean of St. Mary’s Cathedral in Johannesburg in 1975
the first Black South African to hold that position. From 1976 to 1978 Tutu served
as Bishop of Lesotho. In 1978 Tutu accepted an appointment as the general
secretary of the South African Council of Churches and became a leading spokesman
for the rights of black South Africans. During the 1980’s he played an
unrivaled role in drawing national and international attention to the
inequities of apartheid. He emphasized nonviolent means of protest and encouraged
the application of economic pressure by countries dealing with South Africa. The
award of the 1984 </i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">Nobel<i> Prize
for Peace sent a significant message to South African Pres. P.W. Botha’s
administration. In 1985, at the height of the township rebellions in South Africa,
Tutu was installed as Johannesburg’s first Black Anglican bishop, and in 1986
he was elected the first Black Archbishop of Cape Town, thus becoming the
primate of South Africa’s 1.6 million-member Anglican church. In 1988 Tutu took
a position as chancellor of the University of the Western Cape in Bellville,
South Africa. During South Africa’s moves to democracy in the early 1990’s,
Tutu propagated the idea of South Africa as ‘the Rainbow Nation,’…In 1995,
Nelson Mandela appointed Tutu head of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission,
which investigated allegations of human rights abuses during the apartheid era.</i></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">
(from britannica.com)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Here is a quote from Tutu’s <i>Rainbow People of God</i>
(p.121) that expresses his theology:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h2><b><i><span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">If we could but recognize our common humanity, that we do belong
together, that our destinies are bound up with one another’s, that we can be free
only together, that we can survive only together, that we can be human only
together, then the glorious South Africa would come into being where all of us lived
harmoniously together as members of one family, the human family, God’s family.
In truth a transfiguration would have taken place.</span></i></b> <span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">(from Denison Journal of Religion Volume 7, 2007, in a piece
entitled</span>, <i>Desmond Tutu: A theological Model for Justice in the Context of
Apartheid</i>, <span style="font-weight: normal;">by Tracy Riggle, Denison</span></span><span style="font-weight: normal;"> <span style="color: windowtext; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">University)</span></span>
<o:p></o:p></h2>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">Such thoughts and aspirations may not have reached
Mandela directly while in the crucible of the crisis of his fight to dismantle
apartheid. He would, however, have been somewhat familiar with Methodist
teaching, thinking and theology, from a very early age. Not only was his mother
a member, and his schools operated under the Methodist ‘banner,’ but the
theology would have been inculcated deeply into his mind, heart and body.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">From <i>resourceumc.org </i>(resource United Methodist
Church), we read:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">United Methodists believe in actualizing
their faith in community---actions speak louder than words. The three simple
rules are: ‘Do no harm. Do good. Stay in love with God.’….United Methodists
serve the world over, showing Christ’s love through tangible meant. From
sustainable water systems, to health care, micro-lending, advocacy and helping
eliminate malaria deaths….Ums believe: ‘The gospel of Christ knows no religion
but social.’ United Methodists believe: ‘All creation is God’s, and we are responsible
for the ways we use and abuse it. ‘United Methodists believe: Christ hosts
Communion and all are <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>welcomed by him.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">And from <i>umc.org, </i>under the title, Our Mission
in the World, we read:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">‘As servants of Christ we are sent in to
the world to engage in the struggle for justice and reconciliation. We seek to
reveal the love of God for men, women, and children of all ethnic, racial,
cultural, and national backgrounds and to demonstrate the healing power of the
gospel with those who suffer.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Imagine being reared in the ethos of such thoughts, aspirations,
prayers, hymns and role models!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">There is a cogent and insightfully reflective piece
about Tutu’s legacy, from Notre Dame, (modernities.nd.edu) that sheds light
back on the life and legacy of Mandela’s South African peer, friend and colleague (Tutu):<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><i>While perhaps most remembered for his work fighting against
apartheid in South Africa, and following its dismantling his leadership of (the)
country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Tutu’s advocacy for the
marginalized was not limited to his home. Indeed, he addressed issues of
injustice in contexts across Africa, in Israel/Palestine, and in Northern
Ireland. In this series of posts, which were first presented at the 2022 Academy
of<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Religion Annual Conference in Denver
Colorado, scholars across religious and geographic difference grapple with Tut’s
legacy in the international arena, focusing especially on<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Israel/Palestine. Together, they suggest that
Tutu’s voice remains a prophetic one that is needed now as we navigate the rise
of religious nationalism populism, and demagoguery….In these reflections,
Hilary Rantisi draws on her own experiences growing up as a Palestinian under
Israeli apartheid to illustrate the impact of Tutu’s work o both her and her
community.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She argues that Tutu was a
joyous yet fierce warrior in the Palestinian cause, and that his theology
guided him to stand up to those who were marginalized not only in his own
community but in communities around the world.</i> In these reflections (also),
Farid Esack, under the title, <i>Desmond Tutu: A Much-loved, Deeply Disturbed,
and Offensive Prophet</i>, writes: (Quoting Mandela) ‘<i>Sometimes strident,
often tender, never afraid and seldom without humour, Desmond Tutu’s voice will
always be the voice of the voiceless.’</i> And (quoting Tutu himself) ‘<i>This
God did not just talk. He showed Himself to be a doing God. Perhaps we might
add another point about God. He takes sides. HE is not a neutral God. He took
the side of the enslaved, the oppressed, and the victims. He is still the same
even today. He sides with the poor, the oppressed and the victims of injustice.</i>
(From Sparks and Tutu, 73)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">And Esack who worked with Tutu, writing in his own words:
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Tutu was a Christian, a mensch, and a
prophet. I use the word prophet in the sense given to it by liberation theology
as someone desperate to challenge power and <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>injustice.</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> (Referencing Tutu’s
work, <i>God is Not a Christian, </i>Esack offers a quote from a Tutu interview
with Allister Sparks:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I am a Christian, but the books <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>that we hold to provide for how we should be
thinking about God…I mean, right at the beginning, the gospel of John tells
about ‘the light that lightens everyone’: it does not say ‘the light that<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>lightens those who become Christians’; it
says ‘everyone who comes into the world.’ </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">(113) And from another
Tutu interview with Sparks, on June 16, 2020, Tutu is quoted as saying during a
conference of interfaith leaders:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><i>Don’t insult people of other faiths by saying, ‘Oh,
actually our God is your God too; You are a Christian too without knowing it.
Don’t insult people by reducing their faith to that.’</i> (313<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Esack continues: <i>While the God that Tutu worshiped
was decidedly not a Christian, Tutu certainly was one, as demonstrated in his
love for and agonized relationship with the Anglican Church. He was concerned
with all its Anglo ceremonial and hierarchical trappings and doctrine and
sustained a relentless critique of its positions on the ordination of women and
the recognition of gay rights among others…..Sometimes we would spend many
hours debating the wisdom of marching to Parliament, starting from St. Georges
Cathedral in the Cape Town city centre, literally a stone’s throw away from Parliament.
We were fully aware that we would be confronting the police and end up being
arrested if we did. On a few occasions just before the march, Tutu, who was
never a signed-up comrade of any of our political formations, would go to his
sanctuary to pray for guidance, only to emerge from there saying something to
the effect that this is not what he was moved to do by the spirit!<o:p></o:p></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Although the two men were born some fifteen years
apart, (Mandela in 1918, and Tutu in 1931) their lives not only intersected
over apartheid, but doubtless, enhanced and supported the work each was doing
throughout their shared time on the South African political/cultural/religious/social
justice stage.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Theology, the teachings of the churches, not only its
theory but also its praxis, has been a heated topic of consideration among
political leaders, both practitioners and theorists, for many years, The dynamic
of one’s personal theology, called by many names including the search for and relationship
with God (in whatever name), and one’s political and philosophic views are two
intersecting dynamics whose separate identities are rarely, if ever, disentangled.
Indeed, there is a substantial argument/case to be made that they are unable and
unwilling to be dis-engaged from each other. We exist in a world in which we
can all see, as well as experience, injustice, whether of a legal, or an
ethical or a professional or even on a social level. Certainly, it is feasible and
perhaps even necessary to begin to unpack the potential and extant links
between all forms of injustice with the politics and the current ethos (anima mundi)
in which those politics are being practiced. Institutional churches, of
whatever faith, continue as the reservoir, the tablet, the sanctuary, the
rituals, the hymnody, the dogma and the promise, the prayers and the history
and tradition of each of those deeply embedded traditions. Tutu’s ‘God is not a
Christian’ rings harmoniously for some, as a profound dissonance, even heresy,
for others.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Anyone who has been accompanying this blog-pilgrimage
will already intuit that I stand with Tutu, and many others, in the non-denominational,
and non-creedal and non-institutional notion of God. And while this notion
leaves out the specific faith community that holds to a specific set of
beliefs, it also affords a perspective that remains open to striving to embrace
and to support and to foster all efforts, images and art that point towards a
different and more just world. Mandela and Tutu are two of the many male role
models, not merely in their actions but also in their thought, prayer, theology,
struggles in their personal crucible as well as in the public sphere, for the
effective, challenging and almost impossible option of marrying one’s life and
actions to one’s theology.<o:p></o:p></span></p>acorncentreblog.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17885551385913360444noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4849646215010182686.post-29529999334386223762024-03-04T10:39:00.050-05:002024-03-05T09:16:38.588-05:00cell913blog.com #32<p><span style="font-size: medium;"> Readers in this space may recall a reference to Nelson
Mandela as “selfless” in that he paid the utmost attention to every person with
whom he engaged, including his enemies. He frequently, and also somewhat
surprisingly, deferred to his colleagues, in the event that his ‘view’ seemed
unable to gain traction after his direct and clear advocacy. He sincerely
lauded all of his colleagues and their respective skills, talents, fortitude,
resilience, intelligence, grace under fire, and, as we have learned, even tipped
his hat to de Klerk in his Nobel acceptance address, for recognizing the need
to end apartheid.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">Readers here will also recall the strong and lasting
influence of Mohandas Gandhi on Mandela and the ANC in their long-standing and
even longer-suffering struggle to bring about a democratic, non-racial, society
where every person has a vote and all persons ‘count’ equally. In the headlines
in the west the link to Gandhi centres around ‘non-violence’ and Mandela’s
resistance to the use of violence for decades, until all other measures,
strategies and tactics had been exhausted without effect.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Gandhi’s family practiced a kind of Vaishnavism, one of
the major traditions within Hinduism, that waw inflected through the morally rigorous
tenets of Jainism—and Indian faith for which concepts like asceticism and
nonviolence are important. Many of the beliefs that Characterized Gandhi’s
spiritual outlook later in life may have originated in his upbringing. However,
his understanding of faith was constantly evolving as he encountered new belief
systems. Leo Tolstoy’s analysis of Christian theology, for example, came to
bear heavily on Gandhi’s conception of spirituality as did texts such as the
Bible and the Qu’ran, and he first read the Bhagavadgita—a Hindu epic—in it
English translation while living in Britain. </i>(britainnica.com)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">Tolstoy’s Letter to a Hindu, reads in part:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>The aim of the sinless One consists in acting without
causing sorrow to others, although he could attain to great power by ignoring
their feelings. The aim of the sinless One lies in not doing evil unto those
who have done evil unto him. If a man causes suffering even to those who hate
him without any reason, he will ultimately have grief not to be overcome. The
punishment of evil doers consists in making them feel ashamed of themselves by
doing them a great kindness. Of what use is superior knowledge in the one, if
he does not endeavor to relive his neighbor’s want and mush as his own. If, in
the morning, a man wishes to do evil unto another, in the evening the evil will
return to him.</i> (marxists.org)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">On <i>livemint.com</i>, Payal Seth, in a piece entitled,
Gandhi and the Gits: The Art of Selfless living and dying, writes:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>Gandhi’s love for the Gita: The Bhagwad Gita is a sacred
poem in the form of a conversation between Krishna and his disciple
Arjuna…Mahatma Gandhi referred to the Bhagwad Gita as the Gospel of Selfless
Action and was often said that it offered him solace in the darkest hours. He
referred to the Gita as his ‘eternal mother’, placing it at a position superior
to his earthly mother…..Gandhi’s Gita-A gospel of selfless action: The Gita,
according to Gandhi, teaches us that while man might be embroiled in running
after futile material desires (like fame, money, relationships, etc.), the only
desire worth having is to realize that we are the self (or the soul), aspire to
become like Him (God) (i.e. gain his supreme qualities 0 and gain eternal
peace. This is the process of self-realization, which entails understanding
that we are the soul (not the body and mind) and are caught in the endless
cycles of life and death due to our karma. Karma simply means that any thought,
speech, or action undertaken upon others will have a corresponding result in
our lives. Usually, the result from karma do not ripen instantly, and when they
do at some distant point in the future, we are unable to connect them0 with the
cause (out actions). Any unripened karma becomes the cause of future life
births. So how does one gain freedom from the endless cycle of birth and death?
Giving up action and hence accumulation of karma? No. The Gita acknowledged
that the world to continue running, action (whether mental or physical) needs
to be taken. Then how does one free oneself from the bondagsh of karma? The
Gita says, ‘Do your allotted work—have no desire for reward and work.’
Renunciation of the fruits of one’s actions is the central message in the Gita.
Renunciation does not mean indifference to results. But a renouncer is one who
performs his duty with cheerfulness and thoroughness and remains desireless of
the fruit of the action. That is he remains equanimous whether the result is
favourable or unfavourable. Gandhi believed that when one enforces the Gita’s
central teaching in life, one is bound to follow Ahimsa and Truth. Nonviolence
of Ahimsa as per Gandhi Ji is described as the state to do no harm in thoughts,
words and actions to all living beings. It is not just refraining from violent
action but also a whole way of life. Sinc e it extends to all living organisms,
it encompasses consuming vegetarian food, a sustainable lifestyle, and the
protection of the environment. Because when there is no desire for fruit, there
is no temptation for untruth or himsa (violence). The cause of any untruth or
himsa will be rooted in the fulfillment of attaining a desire fuelled by ego.
For instance, sins like murder, theft etc. cannot be performed without
attachment. But the one who knows that he is the Self (soul) residing in the
body and that this Soul is a part of the supreme Soul (God), he will dedicate
everything to Him and be freed of ego and the cycle of karmas. Finally, Gandhi
untiringly adhered to another message int eh Gita: We should serve God through
the service of mankind. To this, he elucidated how the soul’s natural progress
is towards selflessness and purity. This is why he was able to dedicate his
whole lifer to the freedom and betterment of the lives of the people of India.</i><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">In her exhaustive and insightful work entitled The Lost Art of
Scripure, Karen Armstrong writes:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>The Bhagavad Gita….challenges the radical separation of
humanity and divinity, since in the person of Krishna, God is as aspect of the human.
Indeed, the scripture contrasts the humanisation of God with the inhumanity of
war. The Gita acquired its high status in India relatively recently. It is in
many respects a ‘colonial text,’ because it spoke directly to the predicament of
the people of India during the period leading up to their struggle for independence
of British colonial rule. While it functioned as a foundational text for
anti-colonial politics, it also addressed the problems of any post-colonial society.
By putting the issue of war squarely at the centre of a debate about India’s
future, the Gita forced Hindus to face up to the unwelcome realisation that
they would have to fight the British…..The Gita was also a revelation to
Western people, because it challenged the Orientalist paradigm of the ‘passive
spirituality of the East,’ often patronisingly contrasted with the ‘active
ethos’ of the Protestant, rational West. It dealt squarely with the problems of
violence, the individual’s duty to society and its limits, and the tension
between the individual and fate. It therefore challenged Locke’s separation of
religion and politics</i>…. (Armstrong, The Lost Art of Scripture, p.429)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">Not only was Mandela influenced by the teaching and writing and
reflections of Gandhi and his honouring of The Gita, he was also impacted by
his own religious experience in the Methodist faith. First, though, his father <i>remained
aloof from Christianity and instead reserved his own faith for the great spirit
of the Xhosas, Qamata, the God of his fathers. My father was an unofficial priest
and presided over ritual slaughtering of goats and calves and officiated at
local traditional rites concerning planting, harvest, birth, marriage,
initiative ceremonies, and funerals. He did not need to be ordained, for the
traditional religion of the Xhosas is characterized by a cosmic wholeness, so
that there is little distinction between the sacred and the secular, between the
natural and the supernatural….While the faith of the Mbekela brothers
(Christian) did not rub off on my father, it did inspire my mother, who became
a Christian. In fact Fanny was literally her Christian name, for she had been
given it in church. It was due to the influence of the Mbekela brothers that I
myself was baptized into the Methodist, or Wesleyan Chruch as it was then
known, and sent to school. </i>(LWTF, p.13)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">He was a student at <i>Mqhekezweni, a mission station of the
Methodist Church and far more up-to-date and Westernized than Qunu. People
dressed in modern clothes. The men wore suits and the women affected the severe
Protestant style of the missionaries: thick long skirts and high-necked blouses,
with a blanket draped over the shoulder and a scarf wound elegantly around the
head…..The Two principles that governed my life at Mqhekeweni were chieftaincy
and the Church. These two doctrines existed in uneasy harmony, although I did
not then see them as antagonistic. For me, Christianity was not so much a
system of beliefs as it was the powerful creed of a single man: Reverend
Matyolo. For me, his powerful presence embodied all that was alluring in Christianity.
He was a popular and beloved as the regent (the central force in the world of
Mqhekezweni), and the fact that he was the regent’s superior in spiritual
matters made a strong impression of me. But the Church was as concerned with this
world as the next: I saw that virtually all of the achievements of Africans seemed
to have come about through the missionary work of the Church. The mission
schools trained the clerks, the interpreters, and the policemen, who at the
time represented the height of African aspirations</i>. (LWTF p. 18-19) ….<i>At
Qunu, the only time I had ever attended church was on the day that I was baptized.
Religion was a ritual that I indulged in for my mother’s sake and to which I
attached no meaning. But at Mqhekezweni, religion was a part of the fabric of
life and I attended church each Sunday along with the regent and his wife. The
regent took his religion very seriously, In fact the only time I was ever given
a hiding by him was when I dodged a Sunday service to take part in a fight
against boys from another village, a transgression I never committed again.</i>
(LWTF p. 20)<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">From the World Council of Churches, we learn:</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;"><i>The MCSA (Methodist Church of South Africa) rejected the apartheid ideology from the beginning adn was a vocal critic fo government policy throughout the nationalist supremacy. Faced by governmnet pressure to divide along racial lines, the 1958 conference declared its 'conviction that it is the will of God for the Methodist Church that it should be one and undicvided, trusting to the leadering of God to brin gthis ideal to ultimaate fruition.' Six years later the first African to serve as president of conference was elected. The life of the MCSA reflects the strains and tensions of an apartheid society. In spite of this, the conference connexional executive and synods have long since been non-racial. The ideal of a one adn undivided church has still to be realized at the congregational level. </i>(from<i> </i>oikoumeme.org)</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">Mandela had to have felt and appreciated the support and guidance of his affiliation with the Methodist Church of South Africa, throughout his life.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">It is not surprising, nor is it far beyond the obvious that
both men, Mandela and Gandhi, were imbued with an intense, life-long commitment
to ‘free’ their respective ‘people’ from bonds and shackles of oppressors. It
is also clear that both men were inculcated in faith ‘systems’ of different
names and sources. And yet, the convergence of their ‘personal identities’ and the
personal ‘fires’ that burned in their minds, their hearts and their souls seem
to have been birthed from a similar, if not the precisely “same” match….The
light from those fires, of idealism,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>of
endurance and persistence, of courage in the face of deeply threatening and powerful
opponents, and of personal conviction and sacrifice, continues to light the
paths of many decades later.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">What must not pass unnoticed or unnoted, is the sham of the
kind of ‘radioactive’ passion that infuses many among the so-called Christian
right, the Dominionists, the Seven Mountainists, and those who are committed to
birthing and generating a theocracy in the United States, analogous to the ‘caliphate’
that is envisioned by many Muslims. Even to conceive of and then to begin to enact
a movement determined to ‘save’ the liberal democracy of the United States (and
likely beyond) in the name of the Christian God, and then to prosletyze, under
the deceptive ruse that trump has been chosen by God to ‘free the American
people’ from the ravages of evil, is a proposition and a project that both
Mandela and Gandhi would have trashed.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">Their (Mandela’s and Gandhi’s) independent yet comingled vision,
imagination, education, formation and discipline, in the service of destroying
what were real, factual, historic and legal, if tragic, forms of oppression,
depression, dis-empowerment and alienation, in pursuit of the authentic
freedom, equality, and equity of their respective people, so eclipses and denigrates
and defies everything that the current ‘Christian nationalists’ are about.
Indeed, the comparison is an insult to both men!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">Nevertheless, the Speaker of the House of Representatives
has declared himself to be embodying the image of Moses, as the liberator of
the people of Israel.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: medium;">As vice-presidential candidate Lloyd Benson remarked to his Republican
opponent, Dan Quayle, who in a debate in 1988 compared himself to President Kennedy,
“Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy, Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine,
Senator you are no Jack Kennedy!...so too, can the sentient, conscious, thinking
and reflective men and women of the world, especially within the United States,
retort to the Dominionists and the Seven Mountainists, and to the Speaker of
the House of Representatives, “You are not, and never will be worthy of the
name Moses!”</span><o:p></o:p></p>acorncentreblog.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17885551385913360444noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4849646215010182686.post-28040212315656638402024-03-02T14:30:00.003-05:002024-03-02T14:30:48.246-05:00cell913blog.com #31<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">For the last two-dozen-plus pieces in this space, the
focal point has been the character, life, exploits and identification with the story
and the mythology that has grown up following the life and death of Nelson
Mandela. Born and raised in the Methodist faith, while deeply imbued and
indoctrinated in the tribal rituals, customs, myths and legends of the Zulu
tribes in the Transkei, highly respectful of the role models of elders like his
father, his mentors, and his many African peers, including even his political
opponents, Mandela is a bright ‘light’ of courage, reason, and especially both
modesty and compassion, especially for relieving or perhaps terminating the
apartheid system which enshackled his people. Never did Mandela even once,
assume the mantle of working and struggling and fighting as a “God warrior”.
His own mantra was as a ‘freedom fighter’ and his methods, both strategies and tactics
were legal, political, rhetorical, deception and subversion, as well as leadership,
even to the point of studying the works of Marx and Lenin, in order to better understand
the communist allies, while continually disavowing any personal membership in
the communist party. He, reluctantly, after decades of struggle without any
significant impact in ameliorating the oppression of South Africans, finally
agreed to engage in violence, and went off to learn military leadership,
strategies and tactics, in order to provide more effective leadership.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Apartheid, the system generated and legally enforced
by the white supremacy government of various leaders, was a system wholly
seeded and operated by while men. Mandela’s life was dedicated and committed to
the removal of chains of oppression imposed by other men. In it essence,
Mandela’s was an historic and political, a philosophic and
psychological/sociological conflict.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">For months, if not years, in 2024, the world has been
engaged in a political/rhetorical/philosophic/ideological/economic and obviously
moral conflict between government systems (and leaders) considered on the one
hand, ‘autocratic’ or ‘despotic’ or ‘tyrannical’ or ‘oligarchic’ versus on the
other hand, government systems and leaders generally considered ‘democratic’.
And while the western media has been deeply focused on this ‘battle-field’ as
if it were the crucial and pivotal confrontation of our age, another ‘war’ has
been going on at a different level of both public acknowledgment and intelligence,
as well as appealing to a far different psychological/spiritual and sociological
target.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">After 2001, and the bombing of the twin towers, on 9/11,
we began to hear about the radical Muslim terrorist movement, under titles like
Al Qaeda, Isis, Al Shabab, and others. While engaged in the ‘elimination’ of
terrorists cells dedicated to advancing the cause of a caliphate, we also learned
about the apparent divide between Sunni and Shia Muslims, and the respective
countries in which each sect dominated the population and the government.
Implicitly connected, as well as explicitly related to this conflict, is the relationship
of Israel and her most prominent advocate and protector the United States. We
could hardly even consider the Sunni/Shia conflict without also being aware of
the shadow of deep and profound anti-Israeli sentiment, even contempt for the
state of Israel.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">It has not been the religious conflict that we know
exists in the Middle East, and in Africa, alone, that has occupied both
religious scholars and thinkers. There has been another growing conflict within
the so-called Christian religious communities. We have, for decades, if not centuries,
known about a tension between what are called ‘conservative’ Christians and ‘liberal’
Christians’…defined primarily by a different ‘reading’ and interpretation of
scripture…the former being generally more ‘literal’ and authoritative, while
the latter is considered more ‘metaphoric,’ and ‘mythic’ and guiding rather
than legally binding. And while that tension has beset the Christian churches
for centuries, with various applications, creeds, rituals, idols, and
figure-heads in opposition, in person and through their writings, another
profoundly disturbing conflict has opened up in the last few years, rearing its
ugly head more recently in various quarters, including the United States,
Australia, Canada.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The question of how a revivified Mandela would regard
this conflict inspires what follows.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Writing in <i>independentaustralian.net</i>, on May 25,
2022, Bilal Cleland, we find:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The Pentecostal Chruch’s Seven Mountains
Mandate is an affront to democracy and a danger to society….A branch of
dominionism, which sees adherents of their variety of Christianity as entitled
to dominion over the Earth, interprets the Seven Mountains as aspects of human
society. The Seven Mountains over which they claim dominion are education,
religion, family, business, government and the military, arts and entertainment
and the media. This is an important part of American evangelical Christianity.
It is widely supported by adherents of the collection of churches known as
Pentecostal…..Amn article on Christianity.com reveals: ‘According to the New
York Times some four million Americans belong to classical Pentecostalism….Roger
E Olson, professor of theology at George W Truett Theological Seminary of Baylor
University in Waco Texas writes:<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The fourth aspect of Pentecostalism’s dark
side is its tendency to emphasise the spiritual over the physical in terms of
the Kingdom of God’s ‘alreadyness’. The Kingdom of God is often viewed as
present where there is much manifestation of the supernatural gifts of the Holy
Spirit and many people being spiritually converted and filled with the Holy Spirit—the
to the neglect of social justice. For most of its history, the Pentecostal
movement in the U.S. was obsessed with anti-communism and its main form of
social activism. Racial equality was not a major focus of Pentecostalism and,
in general, Pentecostals have been complacent about segregation—even among
themselves…..According to Philip Almond, Emeritus Professor of Religious
Thought at the University of Queensland…(points out) that Morrison’s (Australian
Prime Minister) ‘have a go’ philosophy ‘sits squarely within Pentecostal
prosperity theology.’ This is the view that belief in God leads to material
wealth. Professor Almond adds: the godly become wealthy and the wealthy are godly.
And, unfortunately, the ungodly become poor and the poor are ungodly. Only
those who have been saved by Jesus (generally
those who have had a personal experience of being ‘born again’…) have any hope
of attaining eternal life in heaven….Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, atheists, and
non-born-again Christians are doomed to spend an eternity in the torments of
hell….Steve Davies warns about one extreme aspect of the Seven Mountains
Mandate, the Extreme World Makeover: ‘No the whole deal is, again, he has told
Satan I am going to do this great thing with my sons and daughters. They are
going to awake; they ae going to arise and they will begin to shine. And they
will operate my light in my authority and my power and they will change
everything. I will not have to exert my own direct muscle. They will carry my
muscle. They will crush you…..The subjugation of society to such an
interpretation of Christina scripture would destroy any notion of participatory
democracy, multiculturalism or religious freedom. It is basically medieval
totalitarianism.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">(Bilal Cleland is a retired secondary teacher and was
Secretary of the Islamic Council of Victoria, Chairman of the Muslim Welfare
Board Victoria and the Secretary of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils.)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">On npr.org, Odette Yousef, December 5, 2023, in a
piece entitled, “Speaker Mike Johnson draws scrutiny for ties to far right
Christian movements’…<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">in a transcript of a conversation quotes Ari Shapiro,
Host, <i>House speaker Mike Johnson is the keynote speaker at an event fort the
National Association of Lawmakers tonight. The group is working to take conservative
Christian control at every level of government.<o:p></o:p></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Quoting Ailsa Chang, Host: <i>Now, their views go
further than abolishing abortion nationwide or walking back same-sex marital
rights. At a group held earlier this year,
one speaker defended the idea of the death penalty for gay people. Johnson’s
ties to far-right Christian movements are unprecedented for a lawmaker in such
a high position of authority.</i><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Quoting Fred Clarkson, from Political Research
Associates, a non-profit that tracks the far right, who has followed the Christian far right for many years: <i>I’ve
seen a tremendous uptick in the rhetoric of violence among prominent Christian
right leaders…..Dominionist sorts of the New Apostolic Reformation in
particular where they’re predicting civil war and they’re clear the need(ing)
to take out God’s enemies in the end times.<o:p></o:p></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Youseff: (But<i>) the movement has also seen in recent
years that there is another path to power, and that path was the presidency.
Andrew Whitehead of Indiana University-Purdue University says Donald Trump was
actually a perfect test of the power of
Christian nationalism</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Removing any mantle of Mandela, and delving into my
own personal experience with the far-right Christian evangelical fundamentalists,
I have a long record of direct confrontation, protest, public denunciation, and
their vengeful push-back.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">One of their number public dubbed my homilies, “heretical”
while another left a phone message on my answering machine ‘You are the
Anti-Christ”….Another called titles to which I had been introduced in theology
school, such as “People of the Lie” and “The Road Less Travelled,” heretical…and
the phrase ‘new age’ was generally deployed in discussion of the homilies I
prepared and delivered.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In the spirit, courage, defiance, and determination of
men like Mandela, I join others whose determination is to detour and to defeat
these various theocratic movements to transform western liberal society into a
Christian nationalist compound, a la Waco itself.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">And the first test at the ballot box to express determined
opposition to the New Apostolic Reformation and to the Seven Mountain Mandate
is to defeat all of those candidates who subscribe (formally, informally,
secretly, or openly) to this religious scourge that knows no limits to its
self-proclaimed self-righteousness.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">And we call on responsible, thoughtful and courageous
church leaders to speak out about this nefarious attempt to take over any
government at any level, municipal, state/province, federal/national.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">For God’s sake, this
movement from the radical elements of any and all religions has no place in our
world!</span> </p>acorncentreblog.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17885551385913360444noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4849646215010182686.post-85765998052400333732024-02-29T10:27:00.003-05:002024-02-29T10:27:55.548-05:00cell913blog.com #30<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Eulogizing Nelson Mandela, on the day of his State
Funeral, December 15, 2013, President Jacob Zuma quoted from two of Mandela’s
statements made in court, one in 1964, the other in 1962:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Zuma: We will always remember you as a man of
integrity who embodied the values and principles that your organization, the
ANC promotes. These are: unity, selflessness, sacrifice, collective leadership,
humility, honesty disciplines, hard work and mutual respect. We will promote
these values and practise them, in order to build the type of society you
wanted. That society is outlined in the ideals you espoused, the ideals you
lived for and which you were4 prepared to die for. These ideals define your
organization the ANC. You summarised them in your statement in court in 1964.
You said:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Mandela: <b><i>During my lifetime I had dedicated
myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white
domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the
ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in
harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for
and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.<o:p></o:p></i></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Zuma: You taught is to embrace one another as
compatriots, regardless of race, ethnicity, religion or creed. You did this
because you hated racism. In your first court statement in October 1962, where
you objected to being a black man in a white man’s court, being tried by a
white court which was enforcing laws you had had no hand in making, you had
also spoken out strongly against racism. You said:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Mandela: <b><i>I hate race discrimination most
intensely and all its manifestations. I have fought it all during my life; I
fight it now, and will do so until the end of my days.<o:p></o:p></i></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">From obamawhiteouse archives.gov, we read the words of
President Barack Obama at the Memorial Service for Former South African
President Nelson Mandela, at First National Bank Stadium, Johannesburg, South
Africa:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">(I)t is a singular honor to be with you
today, to celebrate a life like no other. To the people of South Africa
–(applause)—people of every race and walk of life-=-the world thanks you for
sharing Nelson Mandela with us. His struggle was your struggle. His triumph was
your triumph. Your dignity and your hope found expression in his life. And your
freedom, your democracy is his cherished legacy. It is hard to eulogize any
man—to capture in words not just the facts and the dates that make a life, but
the essential truth of a person—their private joys and sorrows; the quiet
moments and unique qualities that illuminate someone’s soul. How much harder to
do so for a giant of history, who moved a nation toward justice, and in the
process moved billions around the world. Born during World War I, far from the
corridors of power, a boy raised herding cattle and tutored by the elders of
his Thembu tribe, Madiba would emerge as the last great liberator of the 20<sup>th</sup>
century. Like Ghandi, he would lead a resistance movement—a movement that at
its start had little prospect for success. Like Dr. King, he would give potent
voice to the claims of the oppressed and the moral necessity of racial justice.
He would endure brutal imprisonment that began in the time of Kennedy and
Khrushchev, and reached the final days of the Cold War. Emerging from prison,
without the force of arms, he would—like Abraham Lincoln—hold his country
together when it threatened to break apart. And like America’s Founding Fathers,
he would erect a constitutional order to preserve freedom for future
generations—a commitment to democracy and rule of law ratified not only by his
election, but by his willingness to step down from power after only one term.
Given the sweep of his life, the scope of his accomplishments, the adoration
that he so rightly earned, it’s tempting I think to remember Nelson Mandela as
an icon, smiling and serene, detached from the tawdry affairs of lesser men.
But Madiba himself strongly resisted such a lifeless portrait. (Applause)
Instead, Madiba insisted on sharing with us his doubts and his fears; his
miscalculations along with his victories. ‘I am not a saint,’ he said, ‘unless
you think of a saint as a sinner who keeps trying.’ It was precisely because he
could admit to imperfection—because he could be so full of good humor, even
mischief, despite the heavy burdens he carried—that we love him so. He was not
a bust of marble: he was a man of flesh and blood—a son and a husband, a father
and a friend. And that’s why we learned so much from him, and that’s why we can
learn from him still. For nothing he achieved was inevitable. In the arc of his
life, we see a man who earned his place in history through struggle and
shrewdness, and persistence and faith. He tells us what is possible not just in
the pages of history books, but in our own lives as well….Perhaps Madiba was
right that he inherited, ‘ a proud rebelliousness, a stubborn sense of fairness;’
from his father. And we know he shared with millions of black and coloured
South Africans the anger born of ‘a thousand slights, a thousand indignities, a
thousand unremembered moments—a desire to fight a system that imprisoned my
people,’ he said.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">He was not a bust of marble: he was a man
of flesh and blood…</span></i></b><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">(from the Obama eulogy above)<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The stark comparison/contrast/foil of the marble bust
and the man of flesh and blood evoke the insights of James Hillman in
distinguishing between what is in professional, medical, legal and historic
studies as a ‘case history’ as compared with what Hillman dubs a ‘soul
history.’ The autobiography Long Walk to Freedom, details the incidents,
relationships, tensions, conflicts, strategies and tactics Mandela used and
experienced in his fight for freedom. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Hillman writes:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Case history reports on the achievements
and failures of life with the world of facts. But the soul has neither achieved
nor failed in the same way because the soul has not worked in the same way. Its
material is experience and its realizations are accomplished not just by
efforts of will. The soul images and plays—and play is not chronicled by
report. What remains of the years of our childhood play that could be set down
in a case history? Children, and so-called ‘primitive peoples,’ have no
history; they have instead the residue of their play crystallized in myth and
symbol—language and art, and in a style of life. Taking a soul history means
capturing emotions, fantasies and images by entering the game and dreaming the myth
along with the patient. Taking a soul history means becoming part of the other
person‘s fate. Where a case history presents a sequence of facts leading to
diagnosis, soul history shows rather a concentric helter-skelter pointing
always beyond itself. Its facts and symbols are paradoxes. Taking a soul
history calls for the intuitive in sight of the old-fashioned diagnostician and
imaginative understanding of a lifestyle that cannot be replaced by data
accumulation and explanation through case history. We cannot get a soul history
through a case history. But we can get a case history by prolonged exploration
in soul history which is nothing other than analysis itself. </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">(James
Hillman, Suicide and the Soul, p.64)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In the West, we struggle with ‘cardboard cutout’
images of heroes. Listing achievements, wars won, enemies destroyed, mountains
surmounted, trophies, contracts and scholarships won….election victories won or
lost. Notable and worthy of study are these role models, especially from the
perspective of modelling for young men and women ‘to walk in the footsteps of
their hero/heroine. Another, less obvious, far more inscrutable, mysterious and
mystical perspective on a human being is to begin the process of considering
how a ‘soul history’ might be imagined, intuited, sketched, coloured, and
‘unfolding’ in a never-ending yet layered set of images. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Hillman has set for his readers, a task of bringing
psychology, the search for and the making of soul, into the street, whereby all
people would engage, not so much in a process of clinical diagnosis, naming the
illness, or the pathology, but rather seeing the individual through a lens of
potential mythic voices, images and stories.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Mandela, in addressing the court, as the first
accused, in 1964, recorded this tribal (mythical?) connection with his people
of the Transkei. He was directly refuting <i>the suggestion made by the state
in its opening that the struggle in South Africa is under the influence of foreigners
or Communists is wholly incorrect. I have done whatever I did, both as an
individual and as a leader of my people, because of my experience in South
Africa, and my own proudly felt African background, and not because of what any
outside might have said.<o:p></o:p></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In my youth in the Transkei,
I listened to the elders of my tribe telling stories of the old days. Amongst
the tales they related to me were those of wars fought by our ancestors in
defense of the fatherland. The names of Dingane and Bambatha (both Zulu leaders
in their fight against the British imperialists), Hintso and Makanna, Squngthi
and Dalaile, Moshoeshoe and Sekhukhuni, were praised and the pride and glory of
the entire African nation. I hoped then that my life might offer me the
opportunity to serve my people and make my own humble contribution to their
freedom struggle. This is what has motivated me in all that I have done in
relation to the charges made against me in this case</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">.
(LWTF) p. 364)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">And while there is a
tribal heritage of names of heroes deeply embedded in both the culture and in Mandela’s
personal memory, there is another profound influence on this man, Mahatma
Gandhi and his deep link with the concept of non-violence. And here is a
potential illustration of the Hillman notion of
the profound connection between a human life and one or more
mythological voices that play out in that life.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Interestingly, and
somewhat ironically, the biggest myth about non-violent action is that Gandhi
invented it and he is often called ‘the father of non-violence’. <i>Well he did
raise ahimsa action to a level never achieved before him, but he was not its author
or inventor. Ahimsa has bee part of the Indian religious tradition for
centuries—Hindy, Jain, and Buddhist, Gandhi too the religious principles of ahimsa
common to Buddhism, Hinduism and pianism and turned it into a non-violent tool
(‘Satyagrapha which means ‘Truth-Force) for mass action. He used it to fight
not only colonial rule but social evils such as racial discrimination and
untouchability as well.</i> (the statesman.com)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In his speeches and in his writings, Gandhi constantly
referred to incidents from Mythology….Writing about Satyagraha, Gandhi writes: ‘If
the political gain the upper hand, there will be no Raj in Rajkot. Ram Raj means
renunciation all along the line. It means discipline imposed by the people…Writing
about the World War, Gandhi writes: If the Nazis come to India Congress will
give them the same fight that it has given to Great Britain. I do not underrate
the power of satyagraha…<i>Personally I think the end of this giant war will be
what happened in the fabled</i> Ma<i>habharata war. The Mahabharata has been aptly
described by a Travancorean as the permanent history of man. What is described
in that great epic is happening today before our very eyes, The warring nations
are destroying themselves with such fury and ferocity that the end will be
mutual exhaustion. The victor will share the same fate that awaited surviving
Pandavas. The mighty warrior Arjuna was looted in broad daylight by a petty
robber. And out of this holocaust must arise a new order for which the exploited
millions of toilers have so long thirsted. The prayers of peace-lovers cannot
go in vain. Satyagraha is itself an unmistakable mute prayer of an agonised
soul….(Elsewhere he writes) The whole world is on trial today. No on can escape
from the war. Whilst the Ramayana and the Mahabharata are the products of poets’
imagination, their authors were not mere rhymesters. They were seers. What they
depicted is happening before our very eyes. Ravanas* are warring with each
other. They are showing matchless strength. They throw their deadly weapons
from the ais. No deed of bravery in the battlefield is beyond their capacity of
imagination.</i> (from mallikaravikumar.com)<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">*</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Ravana is a multi-headed
king of the island of Lanka, chief antagonist in the Hindu epic Ramayana. In
the Ramayana, Ravana is described as the eldest son of sage Vishrava and
Kaikasi. (Wikipedia.org)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">It is not incidental the Mandela’s life story, and freedom
fight, that Gandhi lived in South Africa for the better part of a quarter
century. Often called the Gandhi of South Africa, Mandela too inspiration from Gandhi.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">‘While Nelson Mandela is the father of
South Africa, Mahatma Gandhi is our grandfather,’ Harris Majeke, South Africa’s
ambassador to India said…Mandela was inspired by the Satyagraha campaign led by
Gandhi. It was a compelling act of passive protest against oppression. This
would later inspire the formation of the African National Congress and strengthen
Mandela’s belief in our shared humanity. ‘The African National Congress, which
in 1952 launched the first mass movement against apartheid under the leadership
of Dr. Albert Luthuli, had been founded in 1912 on the model of the Natal Indian
Congress, with which Gandhi has been closely associated, writes Claude
Markovits in ‘The Un-Gandhian Gandi: The Life and Afterlife of the Mahatma.’
The link was continued when Gandhi asked his second son, Manilal, to stay in
South Africa and continue his work. It gets more complicated from there.
Manilal was present at a crucial meeting of the ANC in 1949, where he pressed
the party to unconditionally adopt nonviolence, but with little success. The
attitude of the party toward Gandhianism in subsequent years was best
summarized by Mandela. ‘Nonviolent passive resistance is effective as long as
your opposition adheres to the same rules as you do,’ Mandela states in his
autobiography, unfavourably comparing the dominant Afrikaner minority in his
country to British imperialists. ‘But if peaceful protest is met with violence,
its efficacy is at an end. For me, nonviolence was not a moral principle but a
strategy.’….’Violence and nonviolence ae not mutually exclusive; it is the
predominance of the one or the other that labels a struggle,’ Mandela said….And
Mandela learned from Gandhi the essential virtues of forgive ness and compassion,
values that served him and his country very well on his assumption to power. </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">(Amitabh
Pal, July 2, 2013 on <i>progressive.org</i>)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<h2 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium; font-weight: normal;"><br />In quantum physics, when two particles are entangled, the state of one particle is correlated with the state of the other particle, even if they are separated by a large distance. This correlation can be described mathematically by a shared wave function. Clearly, Gandhi and Mandela ‘shared a metaphoric wave function.<br /> Separated by time and distance, both lawyers were enjoined by the force of Satyagrapha, (Truth-Force) and the principle of nonviolence in pursuit of the lifting of the chains of oppression, whether they were dubbed British imperialism or South African apartheid. Both men fed on the nourishment of both history and mythology, were empowered by the inheritances of both their fellow patriots and the epic figures of mythology. They also shared a profound and insightful imagination in their capacity to make ‘connecting the dots’ not merely an exercise of the reason, but of the whole mind, especially of both intuition and imagination. Gandhi rejected the epithet Mahatma, an adaptation of the Sanskrit word ‘mahatman, which literally meant, ‘great-souled’ and when he was speaking on the occasion of Mandela’ death, then Secretary General of the United Nations, BanKi-moon, uttered some memorable words:</span></h2><p><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">When I praised him for his lifelong contribution
to end apartheid he said, ‘<b>It is not only me, but hundreds and hundreds of
known and unknown people that contributed.</b>’ That has stuck with me ever
since</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">.(news.un.org)</span> </p>acorncentreblog.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17885551385913360444noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4849646215010182686.post-5154464153195524992024-02-23T11:15:00.003-05:002024-02-23T12:58:30.867-05:00cell913blog.com #29<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Post-modernism and critical race theory, by themselves,
do not fill either the vocabulary or the political ethos in which we find
ourselves attempting to survive. Making sense, sorting through the turbulent
intellectual, cultural, and especially religious ‘winds,’ some of them more
forceful and overpowering than others, is a task or even an ambition only for ‘fools’
like this scribe, just another octogenarian flooded with views, data and a curiosity
that refuses to be satiated.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Peeling onions, or layers of bark from a birch tree,
or mythic sources of images that simply ‘move into’ the unconscious, or sifting
through the cognitive, theoretical, dogmatic and political detritus, the loose
material resulting from disintegration, is a process fraught with the
inevitable failure to arrive at a ‘destination’ of statis, foundation, and
another dogma or ideology. In a time of ‘disintegration’ in what Hillman calls
the <b>anima mundi,*</b> we refer to his, and the archetypal psychologist’s
perspective that <i>the world too is a patient in need of attention. When our
fantasy of the world deprives it of personality and soul, we tend to treat this
inanimate world badly. We place all our psychological attention on interior events
and intimate relationships, withdrawing that attention from the world. But if
the world has subjectivity, we have to have a relationship with it. Therefore,
as Hillman says, we can be in the world through the heart rather than the head.
We can feel our congenital ties to the things of nature and of culture, discovering
our actual attachments and thereby developing new intimacies with what has been
previously dismissed as dead throwaway matter. …Hillman refuses to see
personality in the world of things as projections of our own fantasies. While
it is true that we perceive the world’s soul through a refined and strong
imagination, that doesn’t mean that the world is alive only through our fantasy
of it. Nature, architecture, politics, economics and even city transportation
are filled with fantasy that lies beyond our projections. Archetypal psychology
tries to unveil that imagery. The point is not to dissect the world’s soul for
the mere pleasure of analysis and understanding, but to remember the world’s
body so that we become more aware of how it affects us and relate to it as
person to person. We might also find in that relationship, as we would with a human
patient, areas of suffering in need of special attention. Here, Hillman’s point
it that therapy on our own souls is ultimately ineffective without equal
attention to the world soul…..Returning soul to the world not only attends to
the world, it offers more opportunity to engage in the work of soul ourselves. </i>(Thomas
More, editor of A Blue Fire, pps. 95-96)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">One of the more perplexing fogs in the collective mind
(unconscious, psyche, soul) is the equating of two words that have confounded
humans for centuries, soul and spirit. From catholic.com, we read: <i>‘a soul,
on its most basic level is the ‘life principle’ or ‘animating principle’ of a
body. In other world, all living bodies have a soul. While plants, animals and anything
living contains a soul, the human soul is unique….In other words, man is the
only bodily being whose soul is a spirit (animals are not spiritual) and the
only spirit which is a soul (angels do not have a body and therefore no soul. Only
in humans do we find both soul and spirit.<o:p></o:p></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Hillman writes, in a chapter entitled, Polytheistic
Psychology or a Psychology with Gods, Is Not a Religion, in his Re-visioning
Psychology: <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">The psyche itself keeps psychology and religion
bound to each other. Therefore our talk of Gods is not merely a trespass; nor
is it merely the use of personified hyperbole for heightening the values of the
archetypes,….(W)e speak of Gods because we are working toward a </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">nonagonistic
<i>psychology, a psychology which does not have to operate in the hollow left
from the separation of Sunday and weekday, church and interior state of mind…Religion
in our culture derives from spirit rather than from soul, and so our culture does
not a have a religion that reflects psychology or is mainly concerned with soul
making. Instead we have a psychology that reflection religion,. Since the religion
in our culture has been monotheistic, our psychologies are monotheistic. As we
have seen, he prejudices against fragmentation, self-division, and animism are
religious in their fanatical intensity. Always psychological thought enjoins
the plethora of psychic phenomena to follow the laws of unified models. The monotheistic
model may be overtly religious, as is Jung’s self, or disguised, as in Freud’s
attempt at a comprehensive system. Organicism, holism, unified field theory,
monistic materialism and other psychologies express their fundamental monism
through insistence upon clarity, cohesion, or wholes. </i>(Hillman, Re-visioning
Psychology, p167-168)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">All of this ‘set-up’ to begin the process of unpacking
the kind of fanatical intensity of what is today raging through the corridors
of power in the United States and perhaps elsewhere as well. Dominionism, based
on natural law, a phenomenon of intense clarity, cohesion and a unified theory,
(whose)<i> public face is on display in the House of Representatives. This
ideology,…..calls for the eradication of social ‘deviants,’ beginning with gay
men and lesbians, whose sexual orientation, those in the movement say, is a
curse and an illness, contaminating the American family and the country. Once
these ‘deviants’ are removed, other ‘deviants,’ including Muslims, liberals
feminists, intellectuals, left-wing activists, undocumented workers, poor
African-Americans and those dismissed as ‘nominal’ Christians-meaning Christians
who do not embrace this peculiar interpretation of the Bible—will also be
ruthlessly repressed. The ‘deviant’ government bureaucrats, the ‘deviant’
media, the ‘deviant’ schools and the ‘deviant’ churches, all agents of Satan,
will be crushed or radically reformed. The rights of these ‘deviants’ will be
annulled. “Christian values’ and ‘family values’ will, in the new state, be
propagated by all institutions. Education and social welfare will be handed
over to the church, Facts and self-criticism will be replaced with relentless
indoctrination…This ideology known as Dominionism or Christian Reconstructionism…calls
on anointed ‘Christian’ leaders to take over the state and make the goals and
laws of the nation ‘biblical.’ It seeks to reduce government to organizing
little more than defense, internal security and the protection of property
rights. It fuses with the Christian religion the iconography and language of
American imperialism and nationalism, along with the cruelest aspects of
corporate capitalism. The intellectual and moral hollowness of the ideology,
its flagrant distortion and misuse of the Bible, the contradictions that abound
within it- its leaders champion small government and a large military as if the
military is not part of government -and its laughable pseudoscience are
impervious to reason and fact. And that is why the movement is dangerous.</i>
(Chris Hedges, truthdig.com)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">It is not an accident that in the midst of
disintegration and chaos, warring and mutually exclusive propagation of ‘information’
(alternative facts’) and a strong-man ‘addiction’ to the saviour archetype, finds
a penetrating pen and mind in the person of Ruth Ben-Ghiat, professor of
history at New York University, who writes in a piece in the Washington Post, October
26, 2021:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">What is driving democratic decline in
America? Disinformation, election subversion, Donald Trump’s authoritarian
leader cult and institutionalized racism leap out at you, But there’s another
factor all the more dangerous because it’s part of our everyday reality:
civilian access to lethal weapons and the mass death that enables. The scale
and scope of gun violence in America doesn’t just desensitize us to violence. It
also cheapens the value of life. It fosters political, social and psychological
conditions that are propitious for autocracy. The omission of gun law reform
from discussion of democracy protection is symptomatic of our normalization of
this tragic situation….For decades we have shot each other, with Americans
causing fellow Americans more harm than any foreign enemy. More than 1.5
million died of gunshots in the past 50 years vs. 1.2 million in all the wars
in the country’s history. This year alone (2021) mass shooting have killed or
injured more than 1,800.</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"> “More than in any other years on
record, according to the latest available statistics from the Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). (from the Pew Research Centre, on pewresearch.org)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Does it not make sense, from an intuitive, imaginative
and soul-making perspective to note the role of personal, communal, regional,
religious, and geo-political FEAR that underlies the sum of the stories, the
data and the organic nature of the culture, desperately in need of attention.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">And not the kind of attention that the Dominionists, nor
the Trump-Bannon cultists would and are giving it!!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Just this week, Bannon was hailed as a ‘prophet’ at
the CPAC convention, predicting that MAGA could rule for fifty years. <i>The 70-year-old
former Hollywood scriptwriter-turned-political-spin doctor was given a rockstar’s
reception as he entered the room packed with supporters—some of whom had
travelled from as far away as Romania…Bannon-mania was in full force among his
supporters. One speaker compared hum to a ‘prophet,’ while another attendee
described how he had been ‘right about everything.’….By far the biggest cheer
came when Bannon asked the crowd, ‘Can we start off by saying, Trump won?’</i>(Anthony
Blair, from the-sun.com, February 21, 2024)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Adopting the perspective of the empathic,
compassionate, and detached observer/mentor/coach, what does one ‘say’ to such
a nationally and internationally troubled ‘soul’?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Throwing up one’s arms leaves the field free and clear
for these forces of authoritarianism, autocracy, Dominionism and the cult that
has been seduced into it. Screaming ‘foul’ as if there has been a missed or a
flagrantly omitted foul in a hockey or basketball game, only reverberates into
the bleachers. Adopting a pedagogical perspective, is presumptuous in the extreme,
and would be dismissed out of hand. Who are ‘we’ anyone from outside the United
States, especially from Canada, that little ‘socialist’ northern Vermont under
the ‘red’ leader Trudeau (as many have called us), even to consider observing
how disintegrated, discombobulated, dysfunctional, and self-sabotaging is the
United States of America, at the moment, and for the foreseeable future?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Well, we are sentient! We are not stupid or dumb, as
you might have yourselves believe! And we are not disinterested dispassionate
northern cousins living in our igloos! <br />
What and how and with whom you choose to operate your nation, whether you like
it or not, or whether you wish to withdraw into your fabricated silo of
nationalism and isolationism or not, has ramifications everywhere people live
on the planet. Ukrainians, yes and Jews and Palestinians, yes, but also the
people of Taiwan, the people living under the NATO umbrella (that includes
Canada by the way!), and everyone one on the planet who breathes, drinks water
to survive, eats food and attempts to raise a family….is now reconsidering not
only whether the United States is a trustworthy partner. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">The world is actively considering that the model of
nationhood, the devolution of the political process, the triumph of the gun and
‘christian’ power systems and the insistence of the money moguls on inexhaustible
funding for these forces…needs not only a total reformation (not in the Bannon vision)
from top to bottom. And that reconsideration is not being conducted as much in
anger and disappointment as in sadness and empathy for the delusion and denial and
avoidance that have contributed to this moment.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Hillman’s organic vision of the ‘soul’ of everything,
including a nation, warrants more perspectives than any single one. However,
from this ‘owl’s perch,’ the operative depiction of this ‘national personality’
is frightened, even terrified not so much by the outsider-prompted terrorist
incursion, but from the complete volcanic eruption of the historically
legendary repressed American Shadow. And, the only way ‘out’ of this disintegration
is to acknowledge the layers of soot, cob-webs, cluttered and unkempt
basements, and dark caves of memory that were so painful and so horrendous and so
traumatic that only decades, even centuries later, could they be uncovered.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">Nevertheless, although it will take more time that
many of us have left, the American authentic and unalloyed ‘gold’ will emerge
for all the world to see and to celebrate providing the patience and the
diligence of suffering is allowed without self-immolation.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">Hopefully this gold will include a release from psychological monotheism (separating religion and psycholoty) and the strictures of a developmental trajectory toward a 'more perfect union.' Such a release could offer an open receptivity of and to the multiple mythic voices, that have the country in their grasp, especially in moments like these. Being willing to release the clinging fingers of the nation to such a highly elevated expectation and demand of the personal and the national ego may help to remove much of the taut and dysfunctional ambition in favour of a more mature, less neurotic (psychotic?) self-image.</span></p><p><span style="font-size: medium;">And the world would welcome any hints of these 'releases'!</span></p>acorncentreblog.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17885551385913360444noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4849646215010182686.post-28901255208433827742024-02-22T10:07:00.008-05:002024-02-22T10:13:55.213-05:00cell913blog.com #28<p> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">Some readers may be wondering it these pieces are
dedicated to some kind of harmonious, universal awakening, on a spiritual
level, as if the world were suddenly imagining a climb to the top of some
mythical, mysterious mountain in order to come face to face with visions ‘meeting
‘God’ who there is about to inject ‘peace, harmony, tolerance, the release of
all notions of bigotry and racism, ageism, sexism, and some kind of release of
the ‘power motive’. Some salvific awesome incandescent moment of transcendence,
some kind of entry into the personal alchemy of transformation, as the resolution
of all of the existential crises we all face is not only demonstrably unlikely,
but actually specious in the extreme.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">In 2005, James Hillman debated Depak Chopra at Emory
University, one a subject whose title was, “War, Peace, and the American
Imagination”. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">“Early in the dialogue, Hillman noted that
‘unfortunately we have images of peace that are passive, nothing happening, no
trouble, white doves, olive branches’…What Chopra was defining as peace in the
Eastern tradition, as he put it, ‘the transcendence of opposing energies that
allows one to dwell in the state of pure consciousness’….Hillman basically found
‘bloody boring'…Peace where there is something to fight for or stand to or
resist or believe in or find work in (is)not simply the absence of war, that’s
the incorporation of war in something.’ <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">When Chopra sought to draw comparisons
from Buddhist traditions to the Jungian idea of psyche and ‘the sphere that
differentiates into the archetypes and then into the personal development,’ <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Hillman responded that he would ‘like to go
back to the diabolic imagination. I’d like to come </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">down<i>.
How do we account in our culture for the fertility of a diabolical imagination?...When
the imagination has lost its cultural archetypal roots, when it is no longer
fed with value…then it becomes a kind of self-destructive fantasy.’ This could
be seen in the video war games, and the</i> real<i> ‘war games’ as well.<o:p></o:p></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Later, after Chopra spoke of the
importance of shifting ‘our allegiance to the feminine archetypes,’ (he named
Hera, Demeter, Athena, Persephone, and Aphrodite) so that we might ‘begin to
tell ourselves these new stories…we will see the emergence of a new culture and
use of language.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Hillman responded: I said we were addicted
to innocence we’re also addicted to newness. Every bloody thing in Amerca has
to be new, why? Why are we talking about emergence, evolution…Why are we
talking about what’s </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">coming<i>. We don’t know what the hell’s
coming, let’s face </i>that <i>right off the bat. We know what’s</i> here<i>,
and it’s pretty bloody serious…we are </i>in<i> a very serious destructive phase,
and it doesn’t do us any good to be wishful and hopeful, it does us a lot more
good to be</i> faithful<i> to what is, what really is, and to struggle with it.
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>(<i>D</i>ick Russell, <i>The Life and
Ideas of James Hillman, </i>Vol. 1, <i>The Making of a Psychologist</i>, 2013, Helois
Press, New York, pps. 358-359) <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Doubtless, these exchanges will be read by some as an
anti-feminist retort. Nothing could be further from the truth. It was the
prospect that any single pathway into ‘euphoria’ and ‘new culture’ would be
considered an avoidance of being faithful to the facts on the ground, as they
exist that seems intended. Reading Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, (LRTF), one can turn to almost
any single page, to find the writer deeply immersed in the ‘what is’ and ‘struggling
with it’. While he never loses either hope or his optimism that, somehow,
sometime, however, and whenever, the dismantling of apartheid will take place and
the envisioned democratic state of South Africa will take its place, he is never
fantasizing over the utopia of some never-never land.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">His address to the court, ‘in answer to a question as
to whether democracy could be achieved through gradual reforms, I suggested it
could.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">We demand universal adult franchise and we
are prepared to exert economic pressure to attain our demands. We will launch
defiance campaigns, stay-at-homes, either singly or together, until the
Government should say, ‘Gentlemen, we cannot have this state of affairs, laws
being defied, and this whole situation created by stay-at-homes. Let’s talk.’
In my own view I would say, ‘Yes, let us talk’ and the Government would say, ‘We
thing that the Europeans at present are not ready for a type of government
where they might be dominated by non-Europeans. We think we should give you 60
seats.The African population to elect 60 Africans to represent them in Parliament.
We will leave the matter over for five years and we will review it at the end
of five years.’ In my view, that would be a victory, My Lords; we would have
taken a significant step toward the attainment of universal adult suffrage for
Africans, and we would then for the five years, say, We will suspend civil disobedience.
</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">(Mandela,
LWTF), p. 251.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Grounded, confrontational with respect, and committed
to an epic cause…<i> Peace where there is something to fight for or stand to or
resist or believe in or find work in (is)not simply the absence of war, that’s
the incorporation of war in something….When the imagination has lost its
cultural archetypal roots, when it is no longer fed with value…then it becomes
a kind of self-destructive fantasy.’ This could be seen in the video war games,
and the</i> real<i> ‘war games’ as well...</i>(Hillman from above)<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></p>
<span style="font-size: medium;"><br /> It is not to suggest or to argue that innocence and diabolical imagination are twin poles of a polarity here. Rather it is to suggest that we become ensnared in rhetorical jousting that has ‘no value’….as if to move into a delusional kind of political vacuum. The American presidential election, for instance, is highly significant for the next months and years of global existence, and potentially survival. Nevertheless, the political ‘war games’ like those video war games, exude a vacuity of authenticity, integrity and ‘value’. The ‘war game’ of the election contest is empty of what Hillman might call ‘the cultural archetypal roots’ of America’s deep-rooted historical and generic roots: racism, expansionism, international engagement/isolation, modernity, rebellion against oppressive abuse of power, wealth distribution, and creative innovation. Each of these archetypes warrant legitimate, reasoned, researched and fact-based debate. <br />None of that is happening. In their place, we have a pseudo-war-game around the personality of a treacherous, and dangerous former president, his legal entanglements, and the ‘age’ of his opponent. The discussion, reporting, analysis and far more insidious than what previously were dubbed ‘horse-race’ coverages, have all devolved into what kids in the 1950’s referred to a ‘fake fighting’ when the wrestlers came to the local arena. The question of whether or not the populace has lost the critical capacity or the will to differentiate ‘fake’ from ‘authentic’ or whether that question applies equally or more appropriately to the political class will fill doctoral theses for decades, if not centuries.</span>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">If the standard of public grasp of both the persons
for whom they will vote and the depiction of the issues proffered as ‘serious
and real’ has slid into what becomes ‘anyone’s alternative facts’…in order to
appease this demonstrable false prophet….then his marketing savvy, deception,
lies, pre-pubescent intellect and vocabulary, will continue to seduce millions.
And his ‘cause’ has a chorus of leaders elsewhere, who have recognized the ‘political
trading value’ of this kind of phoney, hollow, delusional and seductive rhetoric.
Frightened people, for any number of reasons/causes/signs/attitudes/perceptions/beliefs…are
among the most vulnerable and malleable and compliant of populaces. And to
generate more fear and more fear, as if to add signatures to the existential
threats, without doing anything to address, confront and ameliorate their
threat, is the essence of a valueless ‘war game’. And we see it playing out all
around us.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">This kind of wave of ‘straw-men-and-women’ shouting
under banners of ‘christian nationalism,’ or ‘denazifying Ukraine,’ or ‘eliminating
Hamas,’ or, as in El Salvador, under a newly ‘elected leader,’ <i>Nayib Bukele,
who ‘has won a Congressional supermajority (and)…will control a staggering 54
of 60 seats in the Central American country’s legislature, empowering him to do
whatever he likes….He’s already jailed nearly 2% of the adult population as
part of a ferocious crackdown on gang violence, and he already got a friendly
court to rule he could flout term limits. His allies even say eh aims to ‘dismantle’
democracy. And…his success at slashing the murder rate to pieces has made him
incredibly popular. That’s true not 0only at home but also abroad, where some
in other violence-wracked Latin American countries_-Mexico, Columbia. Ecuador,
Chile—are increasingly enamored of Bukele. </i>(GZero Daily, February 21, 2024)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">The word ‘deconstruction’ has been closely aligned
with the philosophical notion of postmodernism, <i>‘largely a reaction against
the intellectual assumptions and values of the modern period in the history of
Western philosophy (roughly, the 17<sup>th</sup> through the 19<sup>th</sup>
century)….Postmodernists dismiss (the) “idea of objective reality, a reality
whose existence and properties are logically independent on human beings- of
their minds, their societies, their social practices or their investigative
techniques. Postmodernists dismiss this idea, as a kind of naïve realism. Such
reality as there is, according to postmodernists, is a conceptual construct, an
artifact of scientific practice and language. This point also applies to the
investigation of past events, by historians and to the description of social
institutions, structures, or practices by social scientists. (</i>Also, as to
the descriptive and statements of explanatory<i> </i>scientists and historians
can, in principle, be objectively true or false)<i> The postmodern denial of
this viewpoint-which follows from the rejection of an objective natural reality-
is sometimes expressed by saying that there is no such thing as Truth.(</i>Similarly
as for the notion that)<i> Through the use of reason and logic, and with the more
specialized tools provided by science and technology, human begins are likely
to change themselves and their societies for the better. It is reasonable to
expect that future societies will be more humane, more just, more enlightened and
more prosperous that they are now. Postmodernists deny this Enlightenment faith
in science and technology as instruments of human progress. Indeed, many
postmodernists hold that the misguided (or unguided) pursuit of scientific and
technological knowledge led to the development of technologies for killing on a
massive scale in World War II. Some go as far as to say that science and technology---and
even reason and logic—are inherently destructive and oppressive, because they
have been used by evil people, especially during the 20<sup>th</sup> century to
destroy and oppress others. </i>(britannica.com)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">In a blatantly bi-polar, black-and-white, abuse of this
kind of nuanced, thoughtful, introspective, critical thought, we find “anti-woke’
political rhetoric, for example, over such matters as Critical Race Theory.
Defined by Britannica, CRT (is<i>) an intellectual and social movement and loosely
organized framework or legal analysis based on the premise that race is not a
natural, biologically grounded feature of physically distinct subgroups of
human beings but a socially constructed (culturally invented) category that is
used to oppress and exploit people of colour. Critical race theorists hold that
racism is inherent in the law and legal institutions of the United States
insofar as they function to create and maintain social, economic and political
inequalities between whites and nonwhites, especially African Americans.
Critical race theorists are generally dedicated to applying their understanding
of the institutional or structural nature of racism to the concrete (if
distant) goal of eliminating all race-based and other unjust hierarchies.<o:p></o:p></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">In the social and political vortex of postmodernism
and such theories as CRT, among a populace that is familiar with neither perspective,
and intellectually withdrawn from the kind of debates and discussions that take
place in graduate school seminars and lectures, leaders who espouse chaos,
carnage, devastation and mayhem (even yesterday communism and fascism, from
trump), will achieve a decibel rating that far outreaches the decibel rating of
a mere moderate, modest, humble and introspective mediator of ideas, arguments,
fiscal options, legal options and the stability of the nation. And such a
decibel rating, stampeding over the airwaves in pursuit of advertising dollars and
the equivalent of ‘click-views’ will generate much ‘heat and very little ‘light’
as the vernacular goes.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Indeed, generating ‘heat’ (call it hate, anger, contempt,
revenge, pay-back, elimination of enemies, or euphemistically, political
rhetoric and campaigning) among confused, alienated, under-educated, under-paid,
and perhaps even under-employed is a primary propaganda technique that plays
into the hearts and mind of the alienated. They think, believe, act as if, they
have found their saviour. Ironically, tragically, and potentially dangerously,
in such a political climate, even the thought of a potential second term of
this monster makes the capitals of the world quake, not to mention the ordinary
streets and towns where ordinary people live.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Mandela’s mind and heart must be pounding with
apprehension given his clear-minded, determined, disciplined and truth-based fight
for freedom…a freedom that, to many including this scribe, seems farther away
in the first quarter of the twenty-first century that it did in the last
quarter of the twentieth century.<o:p></o:p></span></p>acorncentreblog.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17885551385913360444noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4849646215010182686.post-86225197292668826112024-02-20T11:05:00.000-05:002024-02-20T11:05:05.181-05:00cell913blog.com #27<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In an historic
speech to more than 20,000 Londoners in Trafalger
Square, Nelson Mandela uttered these words:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Like slavery and
apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated
by the actions of human beings</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">!...<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">And also: <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">As long as poverty
injustice and gross inequality persist in our world, none of us can truly rest.
</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">(both
quotes from freetheslaves.net)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In celebrating Nelson
Mandela Day, 18, July 2020, in a piece on UN Chronical, Njabulo S. Ndebele,
chairman of the Nelson Mandela Foundations, writes on July 17, 2020:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoTitle"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">When
Nelson Mandela was on trial in 1962 for leaving the country illegally and for inciting
a workers’ strike, he donned the traditional dress of Thembu polities, declined
legal representation and argued that he was a black man in a white man’s court.
Insisting on the illegitimacy of the process, he used the platform to amplify
the voice of a movement rather than to defend himself. He was clear that white
supremacy was a system and that his struggle was all about dismantling it. Fifteen
years later, Mandela wrote from prison a long reflection on the Black
Consciousness Movement, in the course of which he said, ‘Those who help to perpetuate
white supremacy are the enemies of the people irrespective of their colour. In
1997, while serving as President of a newly democratic South Africa and
confronting the resilience of apartheid and colonial patterning, Mandela said, ‘We
have not fallen from heaven into this new South Africa; we all come crawling
from the mud of a deeply racially divided past. And as we go towards that
brighter future and stumble on the way, it is incumbent upon each of us to pick
the other up and mutually cleanse ourselves.’ He was signalling that oppressive
systems are not manifested exclusively in the formal instruments of power, and
warning that oppressive pasts will live on unless they are reckoned with
tirelessly and consciously. Slavery lives on in the United States in the form
of racialized predictive policing, the mass incarceration of African American
men, the killing of George Floyd and many others by law enforcement officers
over the years, the disproportionate vulnerability of African American
communities to COVID-19, and so on. White supremacy is alive and well in the United
States. It is also alive and well in South Africa. Apartheid lives on in the
form of black lives not mattering to representatives and structures of the
State, deepening inequality, the killing of Collins Kloza and others by law
enforcement officers, the tolerance of a reality in which one in four black
six-year-olds suffer from malnutrition and stunting, and so on. Racism is that
apparatus of power which excludes and in other ways oppressed black people and
people of colour. It is an apparatus that takes many forms; it is fluid and adaptive;
it is everywhere and nowhere; it can be wielded consciously or unconsciously; and
as Mandela argued, it can also be perpetuated by black people. Is so many ways,
South African society8 is still crawling in the mud. The fact that the Black
Lives Matter movement has found power resonances in many parts of the world in
the wake of George Floyd’s killing indicates that we are not alone. The mud is
ubiquitous. White supremacy is a global phenomenon and is to be found at work
in every human society. The task at hand is to recognize it and find more
effective ways of dismantling it, all the while, to paraphrase Mandela, picking
each other up and cleansing one another. <o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Racism and poverty are so intertwined, that it is not
only feasible, but almost imperceptible to many, that to concentrate on the
distribution of wealth is and can forever be separated from racism. Those who
make tax policies, or land use policies, or health care policies, or even
education policies, can and do bury racist attitudes, beliefs and bigotry under
their ‘euphemistic’ and highly ‘intellectual’ strategies and tactics. Malcolm Gladwell
has pointed out that many Americans claimed to be free of racist attitudes,
following their casting a vote for Barack Obama, when, in fact, such a single
act merely ‘masked’ and denied a deep and profound racism that has been a
hallmark (original sin) of America from the inception of the nation. Canada, for
its part, is certainly neither oblivious to nor innocent of deep and profound racism
at all levels of government and the prevailing culture, including its faith
institutions.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Today, in his Substack essay, entitled, ‘The poster
child for the perils of dynastic wealth,’ Robert Reich, former Labour Secretary
in the Clinton Administration connects the dots in the theme of the relation
between trump’s potential victory in November and the richest Americans alive
in 1920.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Reich’s words:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I am talking about the Pittsburgh banker
and industrialist Andrew Mellon, who as treasury secretary for Warren G.
Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover, changed the U.S. tax code in ways
that allowed—more than a century later—part of her personal fortune to bankroll
Donald Trump’s re-election campaign. Andrew’s grandson, Timothy has so far
contributed $20 million to Trump’s MAGA Inc. super PAC. Since 2018, Timothy
Mellon has also donated $30 million to the House Republicans’ super PAC for
electing Republicans to the House. In 2020, he gave $30 million to the Senate
Republicans’ super PAC. Timothy has so far donated $15 million to Robert F.
Kennedy Junior’s super PAC—showing just how important RFK Junior’s candidacy is
to Trump’s strategy6 of siphoning votes from Biden. Timothy is also responsible
for nearly all the donations to Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s $54 million border
wall fund. Forbes estimated Timothy Mellon to be worth almost $1 billion in
2014, and in 2024, the magazine estimated the Mellon family was worth $14.1
billion. But Timothy didn’t earn his money. He inherited it. The money trail
spans four generations. IT began with Thomas Mellon, who started his own bank
in Pittsburgh in 1869. Thomas’ bank attracted the deposits of robber barons
like Andrew Carnegie and Henry Frick, and within a relatively short time it
became the largest private bank between New York and Chicago. Steeped in social
Darwinism, Thomas Mellon promoted suicide as decency: If criminals were
sufficiently public-spirited, he argued, they would ‘manfully rid the world of
their presence, and society of the expense and trouble of their trial and punishment.’
Thomas viewed the acquisition of wealth as a mark of merit and poverty as a
failure of character. Thomas wrote in his autobiography that voting rights were
responsible for many of society’s ills, driving higher spending, borrowing and taxes.
After the Civil War, Thoman toured the South, where he was disgusted to see Louisiana’s
Legislature captured by what he called ‘stolid, stupid, rude and awkward field
negroes, lolling on the seats or crunching peanuts.’ He wrote that these
representatives were puppets of white Northerners who were using ‘corrupt
schemes to rob the property owners and taxpayers.’…Andrew knew how to use his
wealth for political advantage. He supplied such a large portion of the
campaign dollars that helped Warren G. Harding become president in 1920 that
Harding made Andrew secretary of the treasury. Andrew held the position for the
next 11 years, from 1921 to 1932—longer than anyone in the history of the
country (or as Nebraska Senator George Norris once acidly put it, ‘three presidents
served under Mellon.’) Andrew was intent on cutting taxes. He was an early prophet
of ‘trickle-down’ economics, arguing that lowering taxes on companies and the
wealthiest would spur investment that would lead to prosperity for the nation. ‘Taxex
which area inherently excessive are not paid,’ Andrew wrote in a book on
taxation published which he was treasury secretary. Andrew especially hated the
estate tax. ‘The social necessity for breaking up large fortunes in this
country does not exist,’ he wrote. Andrew ended up cutting the estate tax by
half. He also whittled down the top income tax rate from 73 percent to 25
percent and eliminated the gift tax. These changes enabled Andrew to shift much
of his personal fortune—estimated to be $600 million, or about $9 billion today—tax-free
to his heirs…..Timothy Mellon, the fourth generation….like his forebears (and
like Donald Trump)Timothy Mellon rages against only handouts that go to those
born without silver spoons. In his self-published autobiography, Timothy argues
that expanded social programs have only made Black people ‘ever more belligerent’.
‘For delivering their votes in the Federal Elections, they are awarded with yet
more and more freebies; food stamps, cell phones, WIC payments, Obamacare, and on,
and on, and on. The largess is funded by hardworking folks, fewer and fewer in
number, who are too honest or too proud to allow themselves to sink more into
this morass.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Whatever the dynastic,
white, rich, supremacist ‘system’ and structure are called; whether it is
Social Darwinism, or trickle-down economics, or apartheid, or ‘the reservation
treaty system’ or the ‘indigenous school system, or the land-grab, or…or…or…economic
dispossession…the effect is still racism, inequality, inequity, bigotry and the
abuse of power. And these conditions, while inherent to apartheid in South
Africa, as well as to the slavery and ensuing racism, (policies, laws,
practices, attitudes and segregations) in the United States, as well as Canada,
continue to pervade, infest, infect and inhibit the evolution of societies and cultures
that not merely tolerate difference, but actually promote welcome. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The narratives underlying
both the policies and the names of the actors in each jurisdiction may be
different; yet the impact, whether it is on Jews, Palestinians, Ukrainians,
Indigenous, Blacks, Asians, (name your victim, and claim your perpetrator, by
looking in the mirror!). The abuse of power, seemingly inherent to the human
psyche, needs others to be ‘less than’ especially in a time when ‘less than’ is
so easily recognized, (and growing in clear view on our streets, and in our
families without access to medical care, or in those whose access to education,
clean water, safety and security from law enforcement has either vanished or
never appeared). <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">We simply cannot afford,
or even tolerate, the many ruses, euphemisms, sophistications, rationalizations,
and excuses, mostly designed and imposed by majorities, or representatives of
majorities, in their (our) shared pursuit of our own personal, family, corporate
or national ‘security’….We are not only living in an ethos in which denial,
avoidance, sugar-coating, and deception for the purpose of dominance and control,
are engineered and then fostered and encouraged by parents, schools and teachers,
churches and clergy, and eminently and highly successfully by both political class
and media, for their own narcissistic purposes we are also aiding and abetting
through both conscious and unconscious complicity. The conflict(s) among ourselves
and between “us” and our “enemies” are both fashioned and founded on premises
that are potentially impermanent and changeable.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">To think and to believe
that the foundational principles of capitalism, white supremacy, the ‘superior’
race, religion, language, culture, are ‘baked into the cake’ is to willfully
put on a thick blinder both to the illusion of the immutability of those
principles, and to the illusion that ‘as a single man or woman, I cannot really
accomplish any meaningful change’…We are complicit in thinking, believing and especially
in acting as if the “powers that be” are there because ‘they know best’ or because
‘they have all the money, the connections and the pathways to securing power’….<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Apartheid, while formally
extinguished, nevertheless, remains in the dark corners of South African society.
Similarly, racial segregation and slavery have officially been removed from the
law books and the official persona of the United States. The national official
positions, however, cannot and will not provide adequate camouflage to offer
intellectual, ethical, moral or even pragmatic ‘cover’ for the white supremacists,
(whether they are in Budapest, Moscow, Tel Aviv, Pyongyang, Bejing, Washington,
Ottawa, London, Paris, Berlin or Rome).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Clean air, free of both chemical
toxins as well as military missiles, drones and bombs, as well as access to
health care, clean water, education and personal safety and security, as well
as a legitimate roof over the head, and sanitary facilities…these are not only
reasonable minimal expectations of each human being on the planet….and although
both reasonable and justifiable, and aspirationally attainable and beneficial
to all individuals as well as all governments irrespective of the political
ideology, will for the foreseeable future require the kind of political
courage, conviction and community that birthed, nurtured and supported the work
of Nelson Mandela for the people of his country.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">We are all part of a human
community, and our differences, while notable and worthy of respect, cannot and
must not prevent our collaboration, co-operation and defiance of the power structures
and the persons desperately clinging to those power levers. If took defiance,
defiance, and the refusal to deny the oppression of his people to both motivate
Mandela and to commit him and his colleagues to their shared objectives.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The removal of all of the
chicaneries, deceptions, denials and avoidances that block the urgent work of
dismantling the people and the structures of oppression (under any ruse) is a
task that beset the whole human species. And it will take the whole human
species to come together to remove the names, the systems and the phoney rationales
that hold the abusive power structures in place.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Zaporizhzhya NPP, the nuclear
plant in Ukraine, formerly operated by 1100 Ukrainian technicians, is now under
Russian control, with only 400 personnel to operate it. The electric power
needed to cool the reactors, formerly from four sources, now has only one source,
and it is hanging on by a thread. The chair of the IAEA (International Atomic
Energy Agency) says that Zporizhzhya is the single most dangerous ‘red flag’ on
his watch. Should the plant suffer a melt-down, millions of people, as far as Istanbul,
will be impacted for at least one hundred years.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">Is it a pipe-dream to
envision Zaporizhzhya as the most urgent canary in our shared coal-mine, in
order to bring about the needed end of the war in Ukraine, and the beginning of
further negotiations on Gaza, and the urgent global need to confront our shared
‘spectre’ of the equivalent of intubation, should we succumb to the convergence
of environmental, political and ethical/moral somnambulance and the insouciance
that enables it?</span> </p>acorncentreblog.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17885551385913360444noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4849646215010182686.post-27002084928418708472024-02-16T10:42:00.001-05:002024-02-16T10:42:18.427-05:00cell913blog.com #26<p> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">Throughout his autobiography, Nelson Mandela
demonstrated a highly nuanced, yet extremely forthright consciousness and conviction
of when to set boundaries. Although he never lost sight of the over-arching
purpose (far beyond the image of a “goal”) of demolishing forever the cancer of
apartheid, and of freeing his people and establishing a one-person-one-vote
democracy in which all South Africans would have not a token voice, but a full
participating voice in the decisions of the government.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Many times, in the last three-quarters of a century,
we have all heard the model, the image and the name of Winston Churchill
whenever leaders, not only military leaders and quasi-military leaders, but
also corporate and academic and social service agency leaders, and especially
parents, evoke Churchill’s name as a model of courage, decisiveness, inspiring
men and women to take up the challenge of both fighting and of supporting and
resisting and of hunkering down in the face of the Nazi threat from the Third
Reich. Clear-headed, dispassionate, apparently fearless and resonating in
balanced phrases, sentences, epithets and what today we would call ‘bumper-stickers,’
The British bull-dog is revered perhaps more today as a twentieth century mythological
hero who led the fight to preserve democracy, freedom, and to defeat the Nazi
juggernaut<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">His, and the West’s, enemy was the Nazi Germany under
Adolf Hitler and his SS troops. Blatant, unabashed determination to rule the
whole of Europe, not only represented by the various nations but also by the
millions of people, and especially those people who did not conform to the alien-race-depiction
of the best and the brightest, the Jews and those whom today we would include in
the LGBTQT+ demographic. Racist-motivated tyranny had a demonic face and leader,
a thwarted artist who exuded what today we call charisma and the capacity to
hold hundreds of thousands’ attention and awe in personal appearances, and millions
more through radio and reputation. Much of political propaganda theory and practice
was birthed by the Nazis. Disinformation, deception, trickery, schmoozing and manipulation
of men like Chamberlain, for one, and thousands, if not millions of others,
worked so well that the American military juggernaut had to be dragged into the
war on the side of the allies following the attack by the Japanese at Pearl Harbour.
Anyone who has watched Reni Riefenstahl’s movie, <i>Triumph of the Will</i>,
can attest to the magnitude and magnificence of the Fuhrer’s captivation of his
troops in the square in Nuremburg in 1934. The shadow of the plane carrying the
Fuhrer into the city, as the opening scene is both haunting and horrendous,
especially given the tortuous and deadly impact of the regime.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">This brief and incomplete depiction of the challenges
facing Churchill, including having to twist the arm of both FDR and his American
isolationist people, like the giant iceberg that felled the Titanic, marks the
twentieth century’s ‘story’ and the implications in its ripples henceforth,
right up to today. A ship ‘that could and would not sink’ and a ‘West’ ‘that
could and would not yield’ to Fascism, the former a tragedy, the latter a
triumph. Both chapters of twentieth century history serve today, and forever, as
graphic relief of each other, having left their indelible imprint on the psyche
of the world, and especially on the West, in all military academies,
governments and especially on the people and the Bundestag of Germany and the
people and government of Japan. The vernacular adage, bandied about in North America,
that ‘the Pentagon is forever fighting the last war,’ while cliché, is inescapable.
None of us wonder at the inordinate popularity of both films, <i>The Titanic</i>
and <i>Oppenheimer</i>, another pair of book-ends on the twentieth century
myth.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In another twentieth-century coliseum of conflict and foment,
on a scale that also foreshadows latter developments in <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the public consciousness of human rights, a
profound refinement on ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’ from fascist government, Mandela
and the ANC were busy designing, executing, re-designing, re-evaluating and
re-executing their various strategies and tactics to fight and defeat a more ‘contained’
and more focused, yet no less determined enemy, the apartheid, white supremacy
governments of South Africa. Comparisons of Mandela and Churchill have pointed
to significant differences in both the scope of the conflicts as well as the
leadership ‘styles’ of both men.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The African Journal of Emerging Issues (<i>ajoejournals.org</i>),
carries a piece by Joyce J.C. Kiplimo, entitled, A Comparative Analysis of
Winston Churchill and Nelson Mandela’s Self-Leadership Styles: Impact on their
Nations and the World. In this highly articulate and timely piece, we read:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The study found that both Winston
Churchill and Nelson Mandela practiced self-leadership to varying degrees.
Churchill was more of a traditional leader who relied on his charisma and willpower
to motivate his followers. However, he also demonstrated self-leadership skills
such as self-awareness, goal-setting, and adaptability. Mandela, on the other
hand, was a more transformational leader who focused on inspiring and
empowering his followers. He also demonstrated strong self-leadership skills,
such as self-awareness, goal-setting, and emotional intelligence.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Defeating a military enemy, whose determination is to
run roughshod over Europe and a very different, both qualitatively and quantitatively,
engagement and demands a very different kind of leadership. Also, traditional
leadership of the alpha-male variety, in the Herculean archetype, is a very
different chapter of western history, as compared with a Protean (Proteus, Greek
God of change and transformation) archetype. Although transformation in the
Proteus model involves the god himself changing from one animal image to another,
from <i>study.com, </i>we read:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Proteus was said to have been able to see
the past, present and future. However, this was an ability he did his best to
keep to himself. He would only reveal his prophecies to people once they had
bound him, and this was incredibly difficult to do because of his ability to
shapeshift into many different forms….Proteus’ ability to shapeshift and his
role as a shepherd of seals are explored in Homer’s Odyssey…He is also notable
because of his relationship with Poseidon. His name and ability to shapeshift
have given rise to the English word protean, which refers to someone or
something that changes easily. This ability to shapeshift could tell about the
Greek’s beliefs about the sea. The sea changes constantly and can make objects
look different as they sink and waves appear. This is similar to the ways in
which the Old Man of the Sea, Proteus, could change shapes.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Traditional as compared with transformational, while
not seeking to capture the whole comparison of these two historic heroes, leads
to a very different posture for the former than the latter. The positions of
both men, Churchill and Mandela, were, for a start, very different. Churchill
represented His/Her Majesty’s Government as Prime Minister, while Mandela was not
elected until after the defeat of de Klerk’s apartheid. The ‘job description’
for Churchill demanded a rigorous and tenacious adherence to both tradition and
protocol. He spoke for the government and people of Great Britain, whereas
Mandela spoke as a member of the leadership of the ANC, often under arrest,
incarceration, in criminal court as defendant, ‘on the ground’ in his own
country without an elector mandate of any kind. Churchill’s ability to
establish a highly profiled military general/rhetorician, crafter of highly sophisticated
prose was integral to his appeal and his capacity to convey and to share
confidence and conviction to the British people, especially in the Blitz on
London. His ‘cast’ of wartime leaders included the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth.
Mandela, on the other hand, was surrounded by a shifting band of freedom fighters,
lawyers, thinkers, representatives of multiple demographics and tribes and varying
interests in how to proceed. The barrage of Third Reich bombs as compared with
the eruption of police shootings and arrests, imprisonments, paint very
different landscapes, ethos and mood and impact. Mandela was a man of the same
nation as his political/legal/ethical/moral enemy and also of the same ordinary
suppressed, repressed and enslaved native people of South Africa. Churchill, as
compared with Chamberlain, was a “Brit” in a fight with a Germany and a German
leader, whose shadow on his nation, the German people have been attempting to
shed for decades.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The violence of the third Reich’s attacks negated any
discussion or consideration of the question of method of defence. Of course,
Britain and the Allies would use military combat techniques, strategies and tactics.
Mandela’s and the ANC’s campaign resisted vehemently the urge to engage in violence,
and only after it appeared that all other less invasive and destructive
measures had fallen on deaf ears, did the ANC revert to violent tactics and strategies.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The ‘fight’ against the Third Reich, for Britain and
for Churchill provided a singular, historic, ‘echo’ of a previous conflict in
1914-18, also with Germany. War tactics, strategies, and public support in so
many ways were the focus of Churchill’s leadership. Negotiating with FDR, Stalin
and other allied leaders provided cohesion and support for the allied cause. In
South Africa, on the other hand, the oppression of blacks, Afrikaners, Indians,
and Coloureds had been going on for decades, if not centuries. In this case the
‘enemy’ was a system, not a national enemy with a highly charismatic and
demented leader. Although geographically bounded, while WWII was an
international conflict, the fight to oppose and to dismantle the apartheid
system, along with the attitudes and denial of human rights that embodied that
system, was less a military conflict than a social, political, ethical, moral
and human rights conflict.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Essentially, the dismantling of apartheid through the
efforts of the ANC and eventually the international community, was a
foreshadowing of the social conflicts over human rights that has dominated the
last half of the twentieth century and the first quarter of the twenty-first
century. Human rights, <i>inherent to all human beings, irrespective of race, gender,
nationality, ethnicity, religion, language or any other status, include the
right to life and liberty, freedom from slavery and torture, freedom of opinion
and expression, the right to work and education and many more. International
human rights law lays down the obligations of Governments to act in certain ways
or refrain from certain acts, in order to promote and protect human rights and fundamental
freedoms of individuals or groups….One of the great achievements of the United
Nations is he creation of a comprehensive body of human rights law-a universal
and internationally protected code to which all nations can subscribe and all
people aspire…..The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) is a milestone
document in the history of human rights. Drafted by representatives with different
legal and cultural backgrounds from all regions of the world, the Declaration
was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris on December 10
1948…It sets out, for the first time, fundamental human rights to be
universally protected and is has been translated into over ews500 languages. </i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(un.org)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">It is not incidental to note the <i>“Declaration of Human
Rights of 1948 did not specifically refer to prisoners, although the rights it
laid out-including the prohibition of torture, the right to a fair trial and
the presumption of innocence-implicitly covered them. Sever years later, in
1955, the first United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the
Treatment of Offenders adopted the Standard minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners.
This was an important start and in 2015, the United Nations General Assembly adopted
expanded rules known as the “Nelson Mandela Rules,” in honour of arguably the
most celebrated prisoner of the twentieth century. (The) Mandela Rules provide
States with detailed guidelines for protecting the rights of persons deprived
of their liberty from pre-trial detainees to sentenced prisoners….The Rules
restrict the use of solitary confinement as a measure of last resort, to be used
only in exceptional circumstances. Mandela found solitary confinement to be ‘the
most forbidding aspect of prison life. There was no end and no beginning; there’s
only one’s own mind which can begin to play tricks.’ At the Robben Island
prison in South Africa, Mandela led a movement of civil disobedience that led
to better conditions for inmates. His autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom,
described how the food improved, short trousers were replaced with long ones, newspapers
were permitted and manual labour was discontinued. The Nelson Mandela Rules
emphasize that the provision of health care for prisoners is a state responsibility,
and that the relationship between health-care professionals and prisoners is
governed by the same ethifcal and professional standards as those applicable to
patients in the community. Moreover, the Rules oblige prison health-care
services to evaluate and care fort eh physical and mental health of prisoners,
including those with special needs. ‘The minimum requirements contained in the Nelson
Mandela Rules are more relevant today than ever.</i> ((UN Chronical, un.org)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Clearly, on this sixteenth day of February, when the
world has just learned of the death of Alexei Novalny, in a Siberian prison,
the Kremlin, and Putin and his cohorts have either never read or never subscribed
to, or have read and totally avoided any responsibility for adhering to, the
Nelson Mandela Rules.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Honouring Mandela, as these posts are attempting to
do, and as the United Nations has also already attempted to do in so many ways,
has not resulted in what might be expected as compliance with the Rules, in the
case of the most celebrated political prisoner on today’s world news. Navalny’s
death is not only a testament to the cruelty-with-impunity-modus-operandi in
which Putin operates, it is a shot over the bow of ‘state’ for the world that
demonstrates the risks of the current geopolitical climate, ethos and apparent
negligence of all the world powers and their leaders. The security agreement
signed today between Ukrainian President Zelenskyy and German Chancellor Sholtz,
while necessary and offering a glint of solidarity in the Ukrainian efforts to
withstand the Putin juggernaut, nevertheless demonstrates the far too high
level of national autonomy and impunity that permits nations to default on what
are obviously clear and present responsibilities (read especially the U.S.
Republicans in the House of Representatives).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Mandela’s cause and that of the people of South Africa,
would not have been resolved without the world’s taking notice, supportive
sanctions and ultimately United Nations endorsement. The international world
needs, today, even more international collaboration and co-operation in
confronting demonic initiatives in both Gaza and Ukraine. Words alone do not and
will not ‘cut it.’<o:p></o:p></span></p>acorncentreblog.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17885551385913360444noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4849646215010182686.post-2365971581567223712024-02-13T10:15:00.001-05:002024-02-13T10:15:07.358-05:00cell913blog.com #25<p> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">There are complex and competing forces working in the
South Africa that greeted Nelson Mandela on his release from prison, after
twenty-seven years. The government, for its part, wanted to delay negotiations
with the ANC; </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">‘they were counting on the euphoria that greeted my release to
die down. They wanted time to allow for me to fall on my face and show that the
former prisoner hailed as a savior was a highly fallible man who had lost touch
with the present situation…Despite his seemingly progressive actions, Mr. De
Klerk was by no means the great emancipator. He was a gradualist, a careful
pragmatist. He did not make any of his reforms with the intentions of putting
himself out of power. He made them for precisely the opposite reason: to ensure
power for the Afrikaner in a dew dispensation. He was not yet prepared to
negotiate the end of white rule….His goal was to create a system of
power-sharing based on group rights, which would preserve a modified form of
minority power in Sough Africa. He was decidedly o0pposed to majority rule, or
‘simple majoritarianism’ as he sometimes called it, because that would end
white domination in a single stroke. We knew early on that the government was
fiercely opposed top a winner-takes-all Westminster parliamentary system, and advocated instead a system of proportional
representation with built-in structural guaranteed for the white minority.
Although he was prepared to allow the black majority to vote and create
legislation, he wanted to retain a minority veto. From the start, I would have
no truck with this plan, I described it to Mr. de Klerk as apartheid in
disguise, a ‘loser-takes-all’ system.</i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The Nationalists long-term strategy to
overcome our strength was to build an anti-ANC alliance with the Inkatha
Freedom Party and to lure the Coloured Afrikaans-speaking voters of the Cape to
a new National Party. From the moment of my release, they began wooing both
Buthelezi and the Coloured voters of the Cape. The government attempted to
scare the Coloured population into thinking the ANC was anti-Coloured. They
supported Chief Buthelezi’s desire to retain Zulu power and identity in a new
Sought Africa by preaching to him the doctrine of group rights and federalism. </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">(Mandela,
Long Walk to Freedom, pp. 577-578)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">This set of dynamics followed a series of violent
incidents in which the Inkatha Freedom Party, with the support both materially
and philosophically, of the South African police forces, had slaughtered dozens
of ANC members after each of which horrendous incidents, de Klerk’s government
and the Prime Minister personally remained silent, confirming the suspicion of
their collaboration. Insights into the fullness of the complexity of the
situation facing the ANC, and in particular Mr. Mandela, ostensibly peel the
onion(s) of the duplicity of his opponents, viewed from the outside of their
actions and the inferred motivations. Mandela’s ‘depth perception’ married to
his forceful advocacy for the cause of the removal of apartheid, and has
clear-eyed resilience in the face of both overt violence from what could
legitimately be considered the ‘inside’ of the African anti-apartheid movement.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Led by Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi (who) was <i>‘descended
from the great Zulu king Cetawayo, who had defeated the British at the Battle
of Isandhlwana in 1879. As a young man, he attended Fort Hare and then joined
the ANC Youth League. I saw him as one of the movement’s up-coming young
leaders. He had become chief minister of the KwaZulu homeland with the tacit
support of the ANC, and even his launching of Inkatha as a Zulu cultural
organization was un-opposed by the organization. But over the years, Chief
Buthelezi drifted away from the ANC. Though he resolutely opposed apartheid and
refused to allow KwaZulu to become an ‘independent’ homeland as the government
wished, he was a thorn in the side of the democratic movement. He opposed the
armed struggle. He criticized the 1976b Soweto uprising. He campaigned against international
sanctions. He challenged the idea of a unitary state of South Africa. Yet.
Chief Buthelezi had consistently called for my release and refused to negotiate
with the government until I hand other political prisoners were liberated.</i>
(LWTF, p. 575)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">While Mandela was attempting to develop a relationship
with the Zulu king, separated from Buthelezi, <i>Natal became a killing ground.
Heavily armed Inkatha supporters had in effect declared war on ANC strongholds
across the Natal Midlands region and around Pietermaritzburg. Entire villages
were set alight, dozens of people were killed, hundreds were wounded, and
thousands became refugees. In March 1990 alone, 230 people lost their lives in
this internecine violence. In Natal, Zulu was murdering Zulu, for Inkatha
members and ANC partisans are Zulus. In February, only two weeks after my
release, I went to Durban and spoke to a crowd of over 100,000 people at King’s
Park, almost all of whom were Zulus. I pleaded with them to lay down their
arms, to take each other’s hands in peace: ‘Take your guns, your knives, and
your pangas, and throw them into the sea! Close down these death factories. End
this war now!’ But my call fell on deaf ears. The fighting and dying continued.</i>
(LWTF. P 576)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The ‘big’ picture, attempting to get<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the official government of South Africa to refrain
from both arresting and imprisoning ANC leadership, as well as confronting the
government’s under the table support for the Inkatha Freedom Party, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>designed to erode ANC solidarity, while
negotiating some kind of agreement with Buthelezi, after at least three such
signed ententes failed to bring about an end to the violence…in addition to
discerning the private motives, moves and goals of both de Klerk and men like
Buthelezi, not to mention their associates like the cabinet ministers in de Klerk’s
government…even just listing these complex and competing forces and energies is
both exhausting and confusing…amounts to a monumental job description. And yet
not only did Mandela navigate his and the ANC’s path forward, and recount the
drama(s) in excruciating detail, not only is his writing style not flamboyant,
so too is his personal demeanour, in a word, unflappable.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Too often, those who are interested in the history of
some period of time in a foreign land, even if they have read and studied the
biographies of leaders in specific historic transformations, are familiar with
a scattering of specifics, and a broad and general sketch of the kind of
leaders whose names epitomize their historic accomplishments. Perhaps that
observation is especially relevant to this scribe, who, after re-reading the
Long Walk to Freedom, became a fervent and committed student of Mandela. Call
it heroism, or call it a private search for something to renew hope in a world
seemingly hurling headlong to the edge of a very deep, dark and unforgiving chasm
of senseless, hopeless doom.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The grist and sinew of Mandela’s being, the struggles
and commitment to endure, to forge on especially when the clouds of weariness,
exhaustion, desperation, alienation, isolation and scepticism of his comrades
would and could have withered Mandela’s commitment are, at least in the view of
this scribe, nothing short of epic.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Heroes are the stuff on which we can and must hang our
hopes on. We live in a time when popularity, wealth, public high profiles, and
a culture of both meanness and vengeance seem to haunt our public discourse.
Not only are we oppressed by the ethos of the public arena, but we are losing
(or have lost) trust and confidence in the leaders who remain on the public
stage. We are a restive, impatient, dissatisfied and obstreperous populace. We
are frightened, anxious, irritable, and depressed, as a general depiction of
the ‘times’. We watch those whose ambition for power eclipses their motives to address
the issues confronting ordinary men and women. We listen as hollow words of
domination, elimination of Hamas, for example, ‘removal of fascism’ from
Ukraine, and acts of both intransigent deprival of education, of food, of homes,
of welcome of refugees, of the ravages of rising temperatures are wantonly
either ignored or assuaged<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>in
‘newspeak’… We seemed to have outlived and gone beyond the dangers envisioned
by Orwell in his 1984, and what was once considered stable, legitimate and
ordered among nations is dissolving into what appears like chaos. This week,
former Secretary of Labour in the Clinton administration, Robert Reich, in his Substack
post exposing the vacuity and danger of Robert F. Kennedy Junior, discloses a
cancerous financial tumor in the Kennedy campaign for the presidency:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Robert F. Kennedy Junior has apologized to
relatives after his Super Bowl ad last Sunday, which mirrored an ad broadcast
by his uncle John F. Kennedy’s campaign in 1960. The Super Bowl ad included
images of RFK Jr. spiced into the original 1960 ad and a jaunty jingle that
repeated the Kennedy surname 15 times in 30 seconds. RFK Junior said the ad was
the work of his SuperPAC and he had nothing to do with it. Rubbish. Junior
placed the ad at the top of his X feed, and it remained there Monday. The ad
cost $7 million. Timothy Mellon—grandson of Andrew Mellon and heir to the Mello
banking fortune- gave RFK Junior’s SuperPAC $156 million. Hmmm. Mellon is also
a major donor to PACs supporting Trump. RFK Junior’s candidacy is backed by a
PAC that also funds Majorie Taylor Green. No one should doubt that Trump and
Trump donors are behind RFK Junior’s campaign, with the goal of siphoning off
enough votes from Biden to ensure a Trump victory.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Reich ends his piece this way<i>: If Junior had any
respect for the principles his father fought and ultimately died for, he would
withdraw his candidacy immediately.<o:p></o:p></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Lies about vaccines causing autism, others about Fauci
performing ‘genocidal experiments,’ others about COVID vaccine killing more
than it saved…and the list goes on, all of them originating from the RFK Junior
campaign cannot be discounted or trivialized. However, the very fact that he is
eagerly allowing his name to be suckered into the Trump campaign and orbit
signify his unworthiness for the Oval Office. We already know that his indirect
benefactor (and direct beneficiary), Trump, must never be permitted even close
to the Oval Office again, borrowing a sentiment from ousted Republican Liz
Cheney.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">It is not reasonable or even worthy of imagining that
any single leader, such as a Mandela, could confront the multiple forces of
destruction, embedded in the narcissism and desperate need for power of the
most weak and heinous who seek public office, in too many quarters. It is in
his spirit, commitment, courage, integrity, authenticity, perspective,
attitude, beliefs and tolerance of the others, many of whom he did not agree
with on deep issues, that we might take some inspiration, some motivation, some
courage to begin to seek out the ways we might, individually, without
headlines, without personal gain, and without the assurance that we will
eventually succeed completely in eradicating those forces that would gladly and
glibly surgically remove what human rights we have attained. We are never going
to be able to achieve the singular, demonstrable and measurable victory over
those forces that would and do seek to dominate, to tyrannize, to terrorize and
to rule.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="color: red; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The only thing necessary for the
triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing (Edmund Burke)<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="color: red; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The world will not be destroyed
by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything
(Einstein).<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="color: red; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The ultimate tragedy is not the
oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by good
people. (Martin Luther King)<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Jut this morning, on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, former
Chairman of the Republican National Committed, Michael Steel, used profanity
twice in his attempt to awaken both his former party and the people of America,
(and by extension the people of the West) to the serious dangers and threat that
are embodied in the Republican Party’s isolation, nationalism and in the most
recent nefarious comment by the disgraced former president to the effect that
he would encourage Russia to attack any and all NATO members who had paid their
2% of GDP into NATO. His determination to destroy NATO, and thereby give free reign
to Putin’s expansionism into the rest of Europe is an existential threat not
only to the people of Western Europe but also to democracy, and the principles
of an old and<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>hackneyed phrase, “peaceful
co-existence,” long ago out of favour in diplomatic circles. <o:p></o:p></span></p>acorncentreblog.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17885551385913360444noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4849646215010182686.post-24075911939040730052024-02-09T11:17:00.004-05:002024-02-09T11:17:57.490-05:00cell913blog.com #24 <p> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">There is not only a triumphal and heroic public
reporting of the struggles of Nelson Mandela and the ANC to replace apartheid
with a democratic South Africa in which racial equality prevailed. There is a ‘backstory’
that has received less public attention and acclaim in the manner in which Mandela
consistently assessed whatever proposals, offers, attempts to divide and conquer
the ‘freedom movement’ and to respond to the repeated drumming of the deception
drum beat of the government.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">One of the incarceration locations in which Mandela
was held, after Robben Island, was called Pollsmoor Maximum Security Prison. In
his own words:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The prison itself is set amidst the
strikingly beautiful scenery of the Cape, between the mountains of Constantiaberge
to the north and hundreds of acres of vineyards to the south. But this natural beauty
was invisible to us behind Poolsmore’s high concrete walls. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At Pollsmore I first understood the truth of
Oscar Wilde’s haunting line about the tent of blue that prisoners call the sky.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Pollsmore had a modern face but a primitive
heart. The buildings, particularly the ones for the prison staff, were clean and
contemporary: but the housing for the prisoners was archaic and dirty. With the
exception of ourselves, all men at Pollsmore were common-law prisoners, and their
treatment was backward. We were kept separately from them and treated
differently, </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">(Mandela, Long Walk To Freedom, p.513)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Not incidentally, Mandela’s keen and poetic
observation, “Pollsmore had a modern face and a primitive heart,’ shines
throughout his autobiography, and gives evidence of what James Hillman calls
the ‘soul’ of a building, from the perspective of a highly insightful,
creative, intuitive and imaginative prisoner. His creative imagination, especially
one that is and has undergone profound abuse, illegitimate charges, reputational
defamation, state and government violence on himself and his family, and
essentially lives in a state of trauma, without succumbing to its tyranny, sees
and “appreciates” (from a critical perspective) the ‘primitive heart’ even of a
prison. Appearances versus reality, and the insightful and nuanced perception
both to ‘see’ and to ‘discern’ the chasm between, served Mandela well, although
this was certainly not his only unique talent.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Knowing if and when to ‘confront’ authorities, in a
manner that did, and could only, generate respect from the authorities at least
for his ‘cool’ under fire. With the conflict between the ANC and the government
heating up, while he was in Pollsmore, Mandela writes about the government
strategy:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Both the government and the ANC were working
on two tracks: military and political. On the political front, the government
was pursuing its standard divide-and-rule strategy in attempting to separate Africans
from Coloured and Indians. In a referendum of November 1983, the white electorate
endorsed P.W. Botha’s plan to create a so-called tricameral Parliament, with
Indian and Coloured chambers in addition to the white Parliament. This was an
effort to lure Indians and Coloured into the system, and divide them from
Africans. But the offer was a ‘toy telephone,’ as all parliamentary action by
Indians and Coloureds was subject to a white veto. It was also a way of fooling
the outside world into thinking that the government was reforming apartheid. Botha’s
ruse did not fool the people, as more than 80 percent of eligible Indian and Coloured
voters boycotted the election to the new houses of Parliament in 1984</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">.
(Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, p.518-519)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">A documentation of a similar ruse comes from the
government’s ‘<i>efforts to persuade me to move to the Transkei. These were not
efforts to negotiate, but attempts to isolate me from my organization. On several
occasions, Kruger (government minister) said tome: ‘Mandela, we can work with
you, but not your colleagues. Be reasonable.’ Although I did not respond to
these overtures, the mere fact that they were talking rather than attacking
could be seen as a prelude to genuine negotiations. (LWTF, p. 519) <o:p></o:p></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">About this time Mandela received visits from British
statesmen<i>, Lord Bethell of the House of Lords and Samuel Dash, professor of
Law at Georgetown University and former counsel to the U.S. Senate Watergate
Committee. Both visits were authorized by the new minister of justice, Kobie
Coetsee, who appeared to be a new sort of Afrikan leader….Bethell was a jovial,
rotund man and when I first met him, I teased his about his stoutness, ‘You
look like you are related to Winston Churchill,’ I said as we both shook hands,
and he laughed. Lord Bethell wanted to know about our conditions at Pollsmore
and I told him. We discussed the armed struggle and I explained to his it was
not up to us to renounce violence, but the government. I reaffirmed that e
aimed for hard military targets, not people. ‘I would not want our men to
assassinate, for instance, the major here,’ I said, pointing to Major Fritz van
Sittert, who was monitoring the talks. Van Sittert was a good-natured fellow
who did not say much, but he started at my remark.<o:p></o:p></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In my visit with Professor Dash,… I laid
out what I saw as the minimum for a future nonracial South Africa: a unitary
state without homelands; nonracial elections for the central Parliament; and
one-person-one-vote. Professor Dash asked me whether I took any encouragement
from the government’s stated intention of repealing the mixed-marriage laws and
certain other apartheid statues. ‘This is a pinprick,’ I said. ‘It is not my
ambition to marry a white woman or swim in a white pool. It is political equality
that we want.’ I told Dash quite candidly that at the moment we could not
defeat the government on the battlefield, but could make governing difficult for
them.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I had a not-so-pleasant visit from two
Americans, editors of the conservative newspaper the Washington Times. They
seemed less intent on finding out my views than on proving that I was a
Communist and a terrorist. All of their questions were slanted in that direction
and when I reiterated that I was neither a Communist nor a terrorist, they attempted
to show that I was not Christian either by asserting that the Reverend Martin Luther
King never resorted to violence. I told them that the conditions in which Martin
Luther King struggle were totally different from my own: the United States was
a democracy with constitutional guarantees of equal rights that protected
nonviolent protest (though there was still prejudice against blacks); South
Africa was a police state with a constitution that enshrined inequality and an
army that responded to nonviolence with force. I told them that I was a
Christian and had always been a Christian. Even Christ, I said, when he was
left with no alternative, used force to expel the moneylenders from the temple.
He was not a man of violence, but had no choice but to use force against evil.
I do not think I persuaded them.(LWTF, p 520-521)<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Prime Minster Botha, in Parliament, offered Mandela
his freedom, in a <i>tepid halfway measure,…if I unconditionally rejected
violence as a political instrument’ <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></i>on
January 31,1985<i>. This offer was extended to all political prisoners. Then,
as if he were staking me to a public challenge, he added, ‘It is therefore not
the South Africa government which now stands in the way of Mr. Mandel’s freedom.
It is he himself…..By my reckoning, it was the sixth conditional offer the
government had made for me release in the past ten years…..Botha wanted the onus
of violence to rest on my shoulders and I wanted to reaffirm to the world that
we were only responding to the violence done to us. I intended to make it clear
that if I emerged from prison into the same circumstances in which I was arrested,
I would be forced to resume the same activities for which I was arrested. </i>(LWTF,
p.521-522)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Mandela’s sense of humour, even under extreme duress and
also while visiting with foreign dignitaries, his laser-focused intellect and perception,
his balance of noticing a ‘good fellow’ as his warder and his incisive clarity
around both the motives and the methods of the government, leave no doubt that
he instilled deep and profound and lasting trust in his colleagues, as well as
his enemies. And he did all this in a manner and a spirit of almost detached nonchalance,
or at least self-possession.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Courage, confidence, integrity, steadfastness to both
his people and the cause of removing apartheid, are all deeply embedded in the
speech his daughter, Zindzi, delivered in his (incarcerated) absence, at a UDF
(United Democratic Front) rally, in Soweto’s Jabulani Stadium on Sunday
February 10, 1985:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I am a member of the African National
Congress. I have always been a member of the African National Congress and I
will remain a member of the African National Congress until the day I die.
Oliver Tambo is more than a brother to me. He is my greatest friend and comrade
for nearly fifty years. If there is one amongst you who cherishes my freedom,
Oliver Tambo cherishes it more, and I know that he would give his life to see
me free…<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I am surprised at the conditions that the government
wants to impose on me..I am not a violent man….It was only then, when all other
forms of resistance were no longer open to us, that we turned to armed struggle.
Let Botha show that he is different to Malan, Strijdom and Verwoerd. Let him
renounce violence. Let him say that he will dismantle apartheid. Let him unban
the people’s organisation, the African National Congress. Let him free all who
have been imprisoned, banished or exiled for their opposition to apartheid. Let
him guarantee free political activity so that people may decide who will govern
them.<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I cherish my own freedom dearly, but I
care even more for your freedom. Too many have died since I went to prison. Too
many have suffered for the love of freedom. I owe it to their widows, to their
orphans, to their mothers, and to their fathers who have grieved and wept for
them. Not only have I suffered during these long, lonely, wasted years. I am
not less life-loving than you are. But I cannot sell my birthright, nor am I prepared
to sell the birthright of the people to be free…<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">What freedom am I being offered while the organization
of the people remains banned? What freedom am I being offered when I may be
arrested on a pass offence? What freedom am I being offered to live in life as
a family with my dear wife who remains in banishment in Brandfort? What freedom
am I being offered when I must ask for permission to live in an urban area?....What
freedom am I being offered when my very South African citizenship is </span></i></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">not<b><i>
respected?<o:p></o:p></i></b></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Only free men can negotiate. Prisoners
cannot enter into contracts…I cannot and will not give any undertaking at a
time when I and you, the people, are not free. Your freedom and mine cannot be
separated. I will return.<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Some documents in history, while they have a life and
a meaning at the moment of their utterance or their signing, have enduring
energy that continues to ripple throughout the ensuing decades, if not
centuries. This highly personal, highly provocative, highly arresting and even
more highly courageous and embracing speech, delivered also in a tragically
epic manner and forum by his adult daughter, continues to resound in the mind
and the imagination and in the ears of those who encounter it nearly a half-century
later.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Of course, it has repercussions and implications for
the Western world today when we watch the sweep of lies, distortions,
disinformation, deception and outright manipulations of ordinary and generally
respected men and women in various parts of the world whose words from Mandela
sound the notes of a different, and wholly authentic kind of political,
cultural, ethical, and revolutionary leader.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Can the words and the actions, the beliefs and the
attitudes and the perceptions and the imaginative and aspirational beacon of
light penetrate the darkness that is descending over the waters of state in
many quarters? Can the insight, to see through the chicanery, the ruses, the trickeries,
the tyrannies and the autocracies of the majority of people in America, in Europe,
in China, in North Korea, in Chile and Hungary and in Russia? Can the courage
of Mandela be injected into the minds, the hearts and the bodies of millions of
men and women in order that his light not merely inspires them to confront the
lies and the hatred and the manipulations, but to overcome a force that is at
least equal to, if not even more destructive and deceptive than both apartheid
the governments that clung to it?<o:p></o:p></span></p>acorncentreblog.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17885551385913360444noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4849646215010182686.post-59593826224972395792024-02-08T10:45:00.000-05:002024-02-08T10:45:06.284-05:00cell913blog. #23<p> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">Early on in the campaign to eliminate apartheid from South
Africa, Mandela struggled over his relationship to communism, especially given
that several members of the ANC (African National Congress) were affiliated
with the communist party and were dedicated to and prepared to sacrifice for
the cause for which the ANC had been created.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">He describes his explorative narrative into his own prejudice:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">(In 1950<i>) ‘I was far more certain in those days of
what I was against than what I was for. My long-standing opposition to
communism was breaking down. Moises Kotane, the general secretary of the party
and a member of the executive of the ANS, often came to my house late at night
and we would debate until morning. Clear-thinking and self-taught, Kotane was
the son of peasant farmers in the Transvaal. ‘Nelson,’ he would say, ‘what do you
have against us? We are all fighting the same enemy. We do not seek to dominate
the ANC; we are working within the context5 of African nationalism,’ In the
end, I had no good response to his arguments.<o:p></o:p></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Because of my friendships with Kotane,
Ismail Meer, and Ruth First, and my observation of their own sacrifices, I was
finding it more and more difficult to justify prejudice against the party.
Within the ANC. Party members J.S. marks, Edwin Mofutsanyana, Don Tloome, and David
Bopape, among others, were devoted and hardworking, and left nothing to gainsay
as freedom fighters. Dr. Dadoo, one of the leaders of the 1946 resistance, was
a well-known Marxist whose role as a fighter for human rights had made him a
hero to all groups. I could not, and no longer did, question the bona fides of
such men and women.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">If I could not challenge their dedication,
I could still question the philosophical and practical underpinnings of
Marxism. But I had no knowledge ot Marxism, and in political discussions with
my Communist, I found myself handicapped by my ignorance of Marxist philosophy.
I decided to remedy this.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I acquired the complete works of Marx and Engels,
Lenin, Stalin Mao Tse-tung, and others and probed into the philosophy of
dialectical and historical materialism. I had little time to study these works
properly. While I was stimulated by the Communist Manifesto, I was exhausted by
Das Kapital. But I found myself strongly drawn to the idea of a classless
society, which, to my mind, was similar to traditional African culture where
life was shared and communal. I subscribed to Marx’s dictum, which has the
simplicity and generosity the Golden Rule: ‘From each according to his ability,
to each according to his needs.’<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Dialectical materialism seemed to offer both
a searchlight illuminating the dark night of racial oppression and a tool that
could be used to end it. It helped me to see the situation other than through
the prism of black and white relations. I was attracted to the scientific underpinnings
of dialectical materialism, for I am always inclined to trust what I can verify.
Its materialist analysis of economics rang true to me. The idea of the value of
goods was based on the amount of labor that went into them seemed particularly
appropriate for South Africa. The ruling class paid African labor a subsistence
wage and then added value to the cost of the goods, which they retained for themselves.
<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Marxism’s call to revolutionary action was
music to the ears of a freedom fighter. The idea that history progresses
through struggle and change occurs in revolutionary jumps was similarly
appealing. In my reading of Marxist works, I found a great deal of information
that bore on the type of problems that face a practical politician. Marxists gave
serious attention to national liberation movements and the Soviet Union in
particular supported the national struggles of many colonial peoples. This was another
reason why I amended my view of Communists and accepted the ANC position of
welcoming Marxists into its ranks. </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">(Nelson Mandela, Long Walk
to Freedom, pps. 119, 120, 121)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Pragmatism is only part of the motive to challenge his
prejudice. Curiosity, responsibility, full acknowledgement of his own lack of
understanding and a commitment to address such a deficit, as well as the
obvious need to reconcile himself with the ‘on-the-ground’ need for all the
support for the liberation of his people the ANC could find and deploy, seem to
weave a pattern of personal responsibility, not merely to the cause and to the
ANC organization and its principles, but also to his own need to ‘learn’ and to
‘understand’ and to accept both responsibility for that need and to take action
to address it. He acted similarly, while on Robben Island, in not only
advocating for fellow prisoners in their disputes with the prison wardens, but
in also enrolling and in completing his studies in Law from the University of
London. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">From the <i>london.ac.uk</i> website, we read: <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">When Nelson came of age, he enrolled at
the University College of Fort Hare on studies for a Bachelor of Arts degree,
but was expelled for participating in a student protest before he could
complete his degree. Nelson relocated to Johannesburg, and completed his BA
through the University of South Africa, after which he went back to Fort Hare
for his graduation in 1943. After taking his articles of clerkship with a firm
of attorneys-Witkin, Eidelman and Sidelshy-Nelson too up studies at the University8
of Witwatersrand. Growing tired of Witwatersrand, he took his qualifying
examination so that he could being to practice law. He resumed his LLB studies
with the University of London during his imprisonment in 1962….His dedication
to education is truly astonishing, when one considers that he was undergoing
long, gruelling hours of manual labour each day. Fellow prisoners recall that,
when Nelson had free time, he wrote his autobiography in secret. Although the
manuscript was discreetly smuggled to London, wardens found several stray pages
and banned Nelson from his law education for four years.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Continuous life-long learning, continuous life-long commitment
to what he calls the ‘struggle of my life’ and the patience and endurance to
confront his own and his nation’s blindness, ignorance, and the poverty of
response that such blindness wreaked, this man so far outstrips many of those
in the political arena/theatre, that in addition to the chaos and turbulence we
all witness each day, we are also deeply aware of the dearth of character in
those who are charged with responsibility for public affairs. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Wars based on lies and deception, without
any moral, ethical, political or even historic justification for their eruption!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Mass media, traditionally charged with
public information competes with the social media machine that far outstrips
the traditional media outlets in both audience penetration and manipulation of
the audience!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Political leadership that has fallen prey
to the seductive and both ‘life-and political-life-threatening’ hostage taking
of men like for former president of the United States….<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Public institutions, like the United
Nations, their many ‘advisory’ institutions, all of them withering under the
weight of either vetoes or funding denials, or worse, the collapsed reputation
of UNWRA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) some of whose workers have
been shown to have participated in the October 7<sup>th</sup> invasion of
Israel), <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;"><span style="mso-list: Ignore;">·<span style="font: 7.0pt "Times New Roman";">
</span></span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The Republican Party’s complicity in the
Putin war against the Ukraine, by failing/refusing/resisting/denying American
aid to the struggling Ukrainians who have withstood the Russian onslaught for
two years, while also holding the southern border of the U.S. hostage to the
presidential election of November 2024….<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">These are only a few of the more obvious challenges we
all face, and underlying the moment is a warranted, profound and seemingly unrelenting
malaise of confidence, hope and release from the darkness we are living in.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Of course, in specifics, and in terms of lifestyle,
our burden fades in comparison with the burden of black Africans under
apartheid.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">So to does our burden fade when compared with the
burdens of indigenous Canadians and Americans who still struggle for equality and
equity.*<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Currently, the force of the conservative, autocratic, right-leaning,
isolationist, nationalist, racist, homophobic, “pro-life,” anti-woke, immigrant-and-refugee-rejecting,
anti-intellectual, human-rights-denying energies are seemingly blowing hurricane
winds across much of the political landscape. Their names, offices,
nationalities, languages, geographies and public polling numbers vary; their
obvious capacity to form a force-field of impact, both aggressively and passively-aggressively,
has and continues to undermine the very institutional framework under which the
global political structure has attempted to operate for more than a half-century.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Models of Masculinity, too, are legitimately under
fire, for the very reasons that most men dominate, orchestrate, arm, and
propagandize the current tornado of repression, oppression, denial of global warming
and climate change. These mostly men also have deep and nefarious connections
with deep reservoirs of capital, most of it coming from those determined to
preserve their ‘privilege’ and top-of-totem status in a political and social hierarchy
that literally and metaphorically worships at the altar of the golden calf.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Capitalism, nationalism, parochialism, racism, sexism,
isolationism and intransigent absolute certainty in the self-righteousness of
their positions seem to converge in a confluence of influences, often aided and
abetted by religious zealots who themselves, have a unique fire in their belly,
that seems resistant to any kind of retardant.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">What would Nelson Mandela, and his colleagues in the
ANC, and those around the world who supported their cause, including the imposition
of sanctions on the government of South Africa, do in the face of the current furnace
of multiple literal and metaphoric fires, before they become consuming lava
over which we have no control?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Some preliminary responses to that question come relatively
forthrightly. Study all of the many forces pressing in on our current shared malaise.
Depersonalize the issues without failing to acknowledge that dangerous men must
be reined in by institutional levers on whose arms many hands pull. Apartheid
is one form of specific tyranny. Clearly the world faces a multi-headed monster
of tyrannies and the previously small-l liberal institutional traditions of
moderation, trust and verify, test and regulate, investigate and prosecute are
all now showing the cracks of not only erosion, but actual collapse. <br />
A kind of dialogue of the deaf is occurring in a fire-storm of verbiage and as
we watch, listen, cogitate, ruminate and reflect, we are like the sacrificial animals
in the Roman amphitheatres, being used as pawns in an epic game of ‘chicken’
over which we seem to have little to no influence or impact.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Are there others, from all nations, all languages, all
faith communities, and all ethnicities and genders, social and intellectual
classes, business and non-profits….educators and investors, communicators and inventors…whose
vision embraces the darkness and sees through and beyond to a different, and perhaps
even more democratic, and collaborative and selfless, following in the mind and
spirit of Mandela?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">One can only hope, pray and keep on tapping these
keys!<o:p></o:p></span></p>acorncentreblog.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17885551385913360444noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4849646215010182686.post-63690170087731523132024-02-07T11:14:00.005-05:002024-02-07T11:14:35.818-05:00cell913blog.com #22<p> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">Fortunately, we all walk on the shoulders of those who
have gone before, have touched our lives directly, have written and spoken and been
printed and recorded so that their contributions would continue to live on
after their departure. Sometimes a neighbourhood friend does or says something
that ‘sticks’ in our memory, and then lingers for decades. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">A first dance, for example, or a first kiss, a
first goal at the rink, or a first trophy for some achievement….these are all
moments of demarcation in the scrapbook of our lives.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Some of us recall a mentor counselling a career, perhaps
in law, as my friend Bill offered, over a period of three decades. Another mentor
recommended a similar path from the perspective of a fraternity brother and
fellow student councillor. And then there are those moments when we encounter a
phrase, for example from a novel or a poem that, whether required as ‘memory
work’ or not, has taken up residence in our little lexicon of thoughts that,
like that burr in our shoe, continues to perturb. For this scribe, one such
phrase comes from Thomas Hardy, in The Mayor of Casterbridge, “Happiness is an occasional
episode in the general drama of pain!”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">A more complete context of the quote comes from the
character Elizabeth-Jane who decides to honor Henchard’s last wishes as best
she can. She does not mourn him or plant flowers on his grave. She does,
however, come close to honoring him inwardly, when she reflects here on the unfair
distribution of happiness, which she considers the most valuable human
currency. (sparknotes.com)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">“Her experience had been of a kind to
teach her, rightly, that the doubtful honour of a brief transit through a sorry
world hardly called for effusiveness, even when the path was suddenly
irradiated at some half-way point by daybeams rich as hers. But her strong
sense that neither she nor any human deserved less than was given, did not
blind her to the fact that there were others receiving less who had deserved
much more. And in being forced to class herself among the fortunate she did not
cease to wonder at the persistence of the unforeseen, when the one to whom such
unbroken tranquillity had been accorded in the adult stage was she whose youth
had seemed to teach that happiness was but the occasional episode in a general
drama of pain.” </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">(The Mayor of Casterbridge, Thomas Hardy)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The words of others, especially those renowned for
their lasting relevance and enlightenment, continue to comprise a kind of ‘flower-pot’
of thoughts, that linger, challenge, inform, inspire and often haunt those
whose paths they have crossed. Not to be relegated to those ‘plastic flowers,
or even those silk flowers, neither of which need tending, special insights
captured in pithy, pungent and memorable images by men and women whose gift, whether
through poetry or drama or rhetoric or scholarship, remain alive through the
reflections of those who have collected and curated their words as part of the
river of thought, ideas, images and memories in which we all swim.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">“Ask not what your country can do for you; ask rather
what you can do for your country” is another such epithet.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In the last piece in this space, several words of
others were repeated as an introduction to the notion of how certainty is not
always a sound foundation for either further exploration or penetration of the
more profound truth.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">This morning, from the Paris Institute for Critical
Thinking (PICT), a quote from Susan Sontag caught my eye:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">We live in a culture in which intelligence
is denied relevance altogether, in a search for radical innocence, or is defended
as an instrument of authority and repression. In my view, the only intelligence
worth defending is critical, dialectical, skeptical, desimplifying.<o:p></o:p></span></i></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">One can hardly read those words without recalling the
business dogma of <b>KISS</b>, Keep It Simply Stupid, as a guiding mantra for
both thought and all communication. As adolescents begin their exploration of
language and thought, English teachers, too, would often counsel ‘simplicity’
as a path to clarity in order for the words of the incipient writer to reach
the reader. A culture, however, which defers inordinately to denial of
intelligence or deploying it abusively, is hoisted on its own petard. One of
the implications of Sontag’s insight is that two poles of approach and attitude
attend the notion of what she calls ‘intelligence’…denial or deployment in
defence of authority/repression (and we might add <b><i>certainty</i></b>).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">These spaces, recently, have attempted to highlight
the work, life and character of Nelson Mandela, in the perception that his life
inspires for more reasons that the abolishment of apartheid. It was the ‘way’
in which Mandela approached each challenge that spoke then, and continues to
speak to us today.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">After his receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize, in which he
paid tribute to ‘my fellow laureate, Mr. F. W. de Klerk in these words:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">He had the courage to admit that a
terrible wrong had been done to our country and people through the imposition
of the system of apartheid. He had the foresight to understand and accept that
all people of South Africa must, through negotiations and as equal participants
in the process, together determine what they want to make of their future</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">.
(Mandela A Long Walk to Freedom, p. 612)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">As evidence of his follow-through on the notion of full
participation of the people of South Africa, he writes these words, in
detailing the first election campaign strategy and tactics for the national
assembly, and the operative position and perspective he adopted:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The first stage of our election efforts was
what was known as People’s Forums. ANC candidates would travel all over the
country and hold meeting in towns and villages in order to listen to the hopes and
fears, the ideas and complaints, of our people. The People’s Forums were
similar to the town meetings that candidate Bill Clinton held in America on his
way to the presidency. The forums were parliaments of the people, not unlike
the meetings of chiefs at the Great Place that I witnessed as a boy. <o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I reveled in the People’s Forums. I began
in Natal in November, and then went to the PWV area, the northern Transvaal, and
the Orange Free State. I attended as many as three or four forums in a day. The
people themselves enjoyed them immensely. No one had ever come to solicit their
opinion on what should be done in their own country. <o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">After incorporating the suggestions from
the forums, we traveled the country delivering our message to the people. Some in
the ANC wanted to make the campaign simply a liberation election, and tell the
people: Vote for us because we set you free. We decided instead to offer them a
vision of the South Africa we hoped to create. We wanted people to vote for the
ANC not just because we had fought apartheid for eighty years, but because we
were best qualified to bring about the kind of South Africa they hoped to live
in. I felt that our campaign should be about the future, not the past. </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">(Mandela,
p. 613)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The nuanced, insightful, creative and confident, and
yet not facile or simple, the Mandela position about the future, without
resting in the eighty years of ‘laurels’ points to a number of implications: he
loved the free-flow of ideas and the premise of listening to people who had
never been asked about their feelings; he also ‘revelled’ in the encounters,
and then, after the listening tours, he espoused a position that challenged
both the voter and the ANC itself, to envision a future together, based on his
incontrovertible and persistent optimism that the people were more than ready
and eager to join.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Certainty, anti-intelligence, dogmatism, authority and
repression are the instruments not only of the weak and fearful; they are also
the signature of papier-mache heroes who begin from the premise of ‘knowing’ and
then dispensing their ‘wisdom’ to those ‘innocence’ and even worse, as Sontag
reminds us, <i>a radical innocence</i>, that some might attribute to the permanent
image of the puer aeternus or the puella aeterna.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In 1945, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a
Canadian Poet wrote a pithy piece entitled, Canada: Case History.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">This is the case of a high-school land,<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">deadest in adolescence, <o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">loud treble laughs and sudden fists,<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">bright cheeks, the gangling presence. <o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">This boy is wonderful at sports<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">and physically quite healthy;<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">he’s taken to church on Sunday still<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">and keeps his prurience stealthy.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">He doesn’t like books except about bears,<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">collects new coins and model planes,<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">and never refuses a dare.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">His uncle spoils him with candy, of
course,<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">Yet shouts him down when he talks at
table.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">You will note he’s got some of his French
mother’s looks<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">though he’s not so witty and no more
stable.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">He’s really much more like his father and
yet<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">if you say so he’ll pull a great face<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">He wants to be different from everyone
else<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">and daydreams of winning the global race.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">Parents unmarried and living abroad,<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">Relatives keen to bag the estate, <o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">Schizophrenia not excluded,<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">will he learn to grow up before it’s too
late?<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">Somewhat dated especially given the large
contribution of immigrant and refugee new Canadians over the last century, yet still
guarding its ‘estate’ and still struggling to ‘talk at table’ without being ‘shouted
down’ the piece depicts a youthful nation emerging from the Second World War. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">In the succeeding 80 years, the Sontag
insight, likely applied specifically to the United States, in pursuit of a
radical innocence and/or denial/repression of intelligence, highlights an even
more obsessive pursuit of simplification, anti-intellectualism, and radical ‘bigoted’
and prejudicial parochialism.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">Business tycoons, billionaires, star-athletes,
star-entertainers, and military prestige and power, have become the jewels in
the American (and Canadian and other nations) national crown. We are fed
bromide headlines that target a grade six intellectual comprehension, as only
one of the many conventional insults proferred by the media. We are fed
simplified formulas of new pharmaceuticals (without full quality control hoops)
to fix all personal discomforts. We are told democracy is under threat, and we
all know that those threats are at least as real and dangerous from ‘within’
than from ‘without’ in terms of geopolitics. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">The simplified and racist, ‘they are taking
over’ epithet often repeated in reference to new black and brown faces among a
formerly predominantly white population, in Canada and the United States (as
well as countries in Europe), begs the retort, “Have you taken a look at the faces
of those white supremacists who want to tear down all of our institutions
lately?” The radical ‘innocence’ of a Michigan mother, yesterday, in a court
room, following<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>the shooting of his
peers by her adolescent son resulted in four counts of second degree manslaughter
for her part in failing to recognize her son’s mental health struggles.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">And the radical, repressive, simplified presentation
of the compromise bill designed to fund Ukraine, fund Israel, protect the border,
that is <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">‘Dead on Arrival’ in the House of
Representatives, because it fails to protect the border, exposes the fault
lines, not only of division but also of integrity within the Republican Party itself,
given that conservative Republicans who know what the bill offers (in the $118
billion package) is more effective than anything previously tried. Only the ‘t-dirge’
himself, and his inordinate control and manipulation of his sycophant acolytes now
has his hands in the levers of government in the United States.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt;">They’re drowning in Vodka in the Kremlin and
in Bejing!<o:p></o:p></span></p>acorncentreblog.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17885551385913360444noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4849646215010182686.post-1077505104783879382024-02-06T10:40:00.002-05:002024-02-06T10:40:42.815-05:00cell913blog.com #21 <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The very desire to be certain, to be secure is the
beginning of bondage. It’s only when the mind is not caught in the net of
certainty, and is not seeking certainty, that it is in a state of discovery. (Jiddu
Krishnamurti) <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning.
Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers. …Creativity
requires the courage to let go of certainties.(Erich Fromm)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but
th4e sight of the stars makes me dream. (Vincent Van Gogh)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Hope is not the conviction that something will turn
out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it
turns out. (Vaclav Havel)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is
absurd. (Voltaire)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The only certainty is that nothing is certain. (Pliny
the Elder)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I tore myself away from the safe comfort of
certainties through my love for truth and truth rewarded me. (Simone de Beauvoir)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The language of judicial decision is mainly the language
of logic. And the logical method and form flatter that<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> longing for certainty
and for repose which is in every human mind. But certainty generally is
illusion, and repose is not the destiny of man. (Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">If I am a fool, it is, at least, a doubting one; and I
envy no one the certainty of his self-approved wisdom. (Lord Byron)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The novelist teaches the reader to comprehend the
world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude. In a world
built of sacrosanct certainties the novel is dead. (Milan Kundera,1929-2023,
Czech and French novelist, best known work, The Unbearable Lightness of Being)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Why the litany of quotes embracing the tension between
creativity and tolerance on the one hand and certainty on the other?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">We are listening, daily if not hourly, to and reading
about the clash, not merely of ideologies, belief systems, moralities, facts v
opinions, and the competing interests of advocates/enemies/nations/religions/and
“isms” like globalism v nationalism, autocracy v democracy. Almost all of the
verbiage in each of these combats has a kind of certainty, absolute-ness,
conviction and rigidity that not merely disavows other views, but seems
determined to obliterate/deny/explode/destroy those ‘other’ views, and along
with that, obliterate those who espouse ‘other’ views. I recently heard one
professional deeply immersed in the ‘probabilities’ of the future opine that, ‘the
next fifty years could bring about circumstances the world has never faced.’
Underlying the words and unmistakably weighing not only on the speaker, but also
on those in proximity, was the general fear and anxiety of uncertainty,
apprehension, disorientation and in some cases, hopelessness. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In previous pieces in this space, we have glimpsed at
the ‘certainty’ of the evangelical, fundamentalist religious movement
(Dominionism, as noted by Chris Hedges) and the inference of fascism whose spectre
is raising both angst and protests in many quarters. And while no dictum or epithet,
or dogma, or even perceptual lens offers the whole truth to any situation or
circumstance, there can be little doubt to the notion that, if we are to ‘start’
in any exploration of an idea, or an introduction to a person, or an
investigation of a group or activity, from the point of ‘exclusion’ or absolute
embrace, in certainty, we will have either avoided any encounter, or sabotaged
any integration. The former amounts to denial, the latter to unbridled
exuberance and naivety.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">There is a veneer, albeit very thin, even analogous to
the mascara of the mask, of confidence, that accompanies perceptions that we
consider ‘certain’ and indisputable and demonstrably absolute. Such a perception
and the opinion that the perception births, is so prevalent among the political
class, as if to shout from the largest and most powerful megaphone, that, only
in and through their conviction of certainties, can and will they ‘attract’ and
secure votes (and voters, and dollars, and volunteers and victory) in the next
election campaign. Corporate advertising, too, is replete with certainties of ‘friends
and fun’ from the alcohol corporates, ‘pure skin without wrinkles’ from the cosmetic
industry, ‘relaxation and restoration’ from the travel sector, and ‘economy and
safety’ from some segments of the auto industry, and of course, ‘relaxation and
calmness’ from the ‘weed’ sector. Religions, too, have their own corner on promises
of ‘an afterlife in heaven’ for ‘converts’ and ‘doing God’s will in ‘pro-life’
campaigns, and ‘forgiveness’ from evil, for those fully engaged in confession
and absolution. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Authority systems, by definition, generate words,
policies, practices, enforcements and compliance with ‘certainty’ of at least
the ‘administration’ of the ‘laws’ they are charged with enforcing. As one
former lawyer put it within hearing range, ‘We have a legal system, but not a
justice system’ (if you want justice, turn to a juror or jurors)’…..and such a
perception, based on the fullness of life experience, has the capacity to warn,
and to moderate any pre-conceived notions of justice and law being identifiable
and/or equal. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">It is not only in the immediate, literal sense that
certainty is a block on creativity, tolerance, and transformation in a personal
sense. It is also arguably a deeply embedded, and haunting ghost of what many
call the patriarchy….this notion of the power of the alpha male, and the authority
that is both emitted from such ‘certainty’ but also the charisma and adulation
such certainty attracts and even seduces. We can be relatively ‘certain’ that
today, February 6, 2024, is Tuesday on most calendars in the West. However, we
cannot be certain that our world will accept and act upon the glaring
challenges of climate change and global warming, military conflict and authoritarianism.
Nor can we be certain that, from that single encounter with another human being
that prompted some ill-ease in us is altogether the ‘responsibility’ and ‘result’
of that other person. What did we contribute to that ‘feeling’ of unease? Who
is that person, as a surrogate for someone else in my past life? What is the aspect
of that other person that seems to find an ‘itch’ in me that I can never seem
to be able to cease or avoid scratching? What is it about that voice, that facial
expression, that body posture that evokes images in my mind that seem to
somehow take me back to somewhere else, long ago forgotten, or even never even
experienced, in a documented, literal, empirical sense? <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Most of us likely feel certain that we identify with
the assessment of the currently proposed immigration-Ukraine-Israel-border-protection
bill that is about to be aborted by the House of Representatives on the
Republican side who cower in the face of the trump vengeance. There is a kind
of consensus, among many in the middle of the political spectrum, that Ukraine
must not fall to Putin, that Gaza must not fall to Netanyahu or Hamas, that
Taiwan will not fall to Bejing, and that temperatures globally will not rise
above 1.5 or at worst 2 degrees centigrade. Those ‘certainties,’ however, are
more preferences, hopefuls, wish-fulfillments, and not necessarily either
scientifically supported or supportable. Images of conventional ‘visions’ of a ‘better
world’ inhabit those recesses of our imagination, as do those images of what
the world might become if our ‘visions’ of hope and clean air, water, and land
are thwarted. And we all “know” if that were to happen, ‘who’ those who oppose
our ‘vision’ are: the fossil fuel companies, the right-wing political class,
the authoritarian wannabe’s, and those who actually believe that global warming
and climate change are a hoax, or a figment of some scientists’ imagination.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">“China flu” was a vicious epithet hurled by the former
president at COVID-19, when he irresponsibly recommended dangerous chemical
treatments while stone-walling on ramping up procurement of medical equipment
like ventilators, masks, and social-distancing guidelines. And, we are still,
years later, waiting for a complete accounting of the ‘source’ of that
pandemic. Likely our wait will become almost interminable, in that disclosure
of the relevant facts will also be so countered as ‘lies’ fabrications,
distortions and international interferences. Even those last two sentences are
little more than ‘perceptions,’ ‘views,’ and tentative observations based on what
we heard, read, consumed and shared during and following that horrible health scourge.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">We each ‘inhabit’ both a space in our offices, cars,
kitchens, gyms, arenas, sanctuaries and forests and beaches and coffee-shoppes,
in a physical sense, primarily exercising some function as worker, driver,
cook, diner, body-conditioner, team player, worshipper, wanderer, swimmer….continuously
engaged in some kind of ‘activity’. At the same time, we also inhabit another space,
within our mind/imagination/memory/nervous system, in which space considerable ‘activity’
of a different sort is continuously moving. Images, as in a film or dream, are
peeking, hovering, haunting, elevating, depressing, setting, releasing,
exacerbating, exciting, worrying and even ‘painting’ their colours on the
screens of our psyches. A social creatures, we have language and permission to
use that language to detail some of those activities we share with others, or
even those aspects of our ‘private moments’ that we feel safe and comfortable
to share with those we ‘trust’….another of those ‘variables’ that, like most ‘abstractions’
we act as if we ‘know’ whom to trust, so that we can and do build walk-ways,
connections, ‘friends’ and colleagues.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">And, aligning with trust is our ever-present ‘scepticism’
or doubt, both about our capacity to trust, and the ‘other’s’ capacity and willingness
to reciprocate our trust. Trust/scepticism, two-headed eyes, ears, mind and body
of our complex humanness….and even those ‘names’ are themselves surrogates for similar
notions like safety and fear. And, although we all act and react to those ‘inner’
messages, almost every moment, with some degree of ‘certainty’ and ‘doubt,’ we would
prefer our world to be generally safe, receptive, welcoming, affirming, and
supporting and sustaining….as, in our own imagination, we would also prefer to
offer the same ‘quality’ and certainty of experiences to those we encounter.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Truth, nevertheless, has a way of paying little or no
attention to our preferences…and often, as one man put it, “I got a slap on the
side of my head, from someone, that I only realized I needed, long after the
relationship had ended! At the time, I was thoroughly pissed! The certainty of
the moment, after reflection and distance, and the hurt had dissipated, gave
way to a very different ‘truth’ and reality.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">So, not only are we experiencing both an inner and an
outer (intrinsic and extrinsic) combinations of experiences, in all of our
senses, emotions, imaginings, perceptions and beliefs and attitudes, we are
also part of an ever-flowing river of a family, a workplace, a town or village
or city and country…all of in a period of time…that is, itself, never static.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Still photographs, on the other hand, put a ‘stop’ to
that confluence of images in a deliberate and often highly creative composition
of a nano-second of time and space, both of which, themselves do not exist except
as ‘notions’ or ‘ideas’ or ‘abstractions’ to which we pay considerable
attention as if they really were ‘literally empirically and tangibly ‘real.’ <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Our Western thought foundations, as we are
increasingly aware, emerged from mostly male minds, through the experiences of
mostly male actors, soldiers, lovers, writers, theologians, scholars and
inventors and engineers. This is a perception that is, for some, more than a
little frustrating if not actually angering. For them, mostly men, to have to
bear the responsibility today for those thousands of years of attitudes, beliefs,
perceptions and theories, as if they were all conceived and delivered as a way to
‘oppress and abuse’ others, seems a little unbalanced. Nevertheless, we live
with the remains of centuries of male dominance, no matter how we ‘see’ that
dominance. And it is not only women who have endured that dominance; men to
have been the perpetrators of dominance over other men, as a ‘way’ of being and
of inscribing our laws, our ethics, our faiths, our cultures and our medical
health establishment.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Science, the physical world, interpreted and studied and
curated from a literal, empirical, nominal perspective, is a dominant legacy of
conventional Western life. Not that this approach is totally flawed and totally
unworthy of support and study. However, the ‘right brain’ activity, the imagination
and the longer-term view, that seeks relationships, connecting the dots, and is
far less dependent on competition as a modus operandi, has experienced a decline
in social acknowledgment as well as in the professions, and especially in the institutional
planning and building enterprises. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Scenarios in which fathers are house-husbands, single
parents, co-equals with their wives in all aspects of parenting, domestic activities,
and extending into the expression of a highly taut imagination are no longer
rare or strange. Indeed, each of us, we are learning and accepting, has elements
of both genders within our psyche…and while that piece of ‘information’ may seem
counter-intuitive to many, its gift awaits its discovery by each of us.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">And, fortunately, that notion of androgyny, a gift
from Jung and his disciples, is another of those ‘images’ that, if acknowledged
and accepted and embraced, can and will only ‘free’ both men and women from any
intransigent determination to compete with the opposite gender. And even that
last sentence, itself, is a proposition, a proposal, a vision of a different
kind of relationship between men and women, in a culture and time when such
issues have found a prominent place in public discourse and thought.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">It is admirable to consider an individualistic
tolerance and appreciation of every person’s right to embrace a faith both in
content and in process, unique to each. It is even more honourable to support and
sustain the commitment to live and to work and to worship in such an ethos of
love and tolerance. And, the model of that unique, individual path to spiritual
fulfilment, tolerated and embraced and sustained by others, is a beacon a kind
of ‘light-house’ blinking in the dark of the cloudy, stormy, threatening and endangering
kind of ‘existential’ night many of us seem to envision and even to fear that
our ‘ship is already rolling, pitching and yawing, surging and heaving in
turbulent waters. And that light of stepping back from our ‘certainties’ and
our intransigent convictions and dogmas, is fragile, flickering, running out of
fuel and needing tender care and protection.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In his recent “On Being conversation’ with Krista Tippett.
David Whyte reads his meditation on vulnerability:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Vulnerability if not a weakness, a passing
indisposition, or something we can arrange to do without, vulnerability is not
a choice, vulnerability is the underlying ever present and abiding undercurrent
of our natural state. To run from vulnerability is to run from the essence of
our nature, the attempt to be invulnerable is the vain attempt to become something
we are not and most especially, to close off our understanding of the grief of
others. More seriously, in refusing our vulnerability we refuse the help needed
at every turn of our existence and immobilize the essential, tidal and conversational
foundations of our identity. To have a temporary, isolated sense of power over
all events and circumstances, is a lovely illusionary privilege the prime and
most beautifully constructed conceit of being human and especially of being
youthfully human, but it is a privilege that must be surrendered with that same
youth, with ill health, with accident, with the loss of loved ones who do not
share our untouchable powers; powers eventually and most emphatically given us,
as we approach our last breath. The only choice we have as we mature is how we
inhabit our vulnerability, how we become larger and more courageous and more
compassionate through our intimacy with disappearance, our choice is to inhabit
vulnerability as generous citizens of loss, robustly and fully, or conversely,
as misers and complainers reluctant and fearful, always at the gates of existence,
but never bravely and completely attempting to enter, never walking fully
through the door.</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"> (from themarginalian.org)</span> </p>acorncentreblog.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17885551385913360444noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4849646215010182686.post-66244222071926539272024-02-01T11:00:00.004-05:002024-02-01T11:00:45.395-05:00cell913blog.com #20 <p> <i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">In fact, he </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">(Chris Hedges)<i> writes, it was while studying at Harvard
Divinity School that he first learned American Christians are the Nazis’ modern
‘ideological inheritors.’ Bearing not ‘swastikas and brown shirts’ but
‘patriotism and the pages of the Bible,’ these new fascists are led by a
‘theocratic sect’ of Calvinism called Dominionism….The Dominionist movement
‘shares prominent features with classical fascist movements, a belief in magic
along with leadership adoration and a strident call for moral and physical
supremacy of a master race. If Christian fascists win, then ‘labor unions
civil-rights laws and public schools will be abolished. Women will be removed
from the workforce to stay at home, and all those deemed insufficiently
Christian will be denied citizenship. The key, Hedges claims, is he certainty
of evangelical faith. Confidence, we are told, is a fascist ploy, while real
Christians accept that we ‘do not understand what life is about…Faith
presupposes that we cannot know. We can never know.’ Those who take comfort in evangelical
dogmas are fleeing what Hedges calls our ‘Culture of Despair’ the social and
economic conditions of modern industrialized America.</i></span><i><span style="font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"> </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">(From Ryan T. Anderson’s piece entitled, Christianity is an Enemy
That Gives Hedges Meaning, 3/7/07, in firstthings.com….reprinted from the last
post in this space.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">While it does not make its way into the
popular coverage of the news, Dominionism, offers a relatively new and
dangerous insight into what some say is going on underneath the headlines in
the United States, if not also elsewhere. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Dominion theology, also known
as dominionism, is<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a group of Christian
political ideologues that seek to institute a nation governed by Christians and
based on their understandings of biblical law. Extents of rule and ways of
acquiring governing authority are varied. For example, dominion theology can
include theonomy* but does not necessarily involve advocacy of adherence to the
Mosaic Law </span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">(Ten Commandments)<i> as the
basis of government. The label is primarily applied to groups of Christians in
the United States. Prominent adherents of those ideologies include Calvinist
Christian reconstructionism#, Charismatic and Pentecostal Kingdom Now theology,
and the New Apostolic Reformation.</i> (wikipedia.org)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">*theonomy: a hypothetical Christian form
of government in which society is ruled by divine law.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">#reconstructionism is a fundamentalist
Calvinist theonomic movement, developed under the direction of R.J. Rushdoony,
Greg Bahnsen and Gary North, and has had an important influence on the
Christian right in the United States. Its central theme is that society should
be reconstructed under the leadership of Jesus in all aspects of life. In
keeping with the biblical cultural mandate, reconstructionists advocate for
theonomy and the restoration of certain biblical laws said to have continued
applicability. Those include the death penalty, not only for murder, but also
for idolatry, open homosexuality, adultery, witchcraft and blasphemy.
…..Evangelical leaders who endorsed it (reconstructionism) explicitly or
implicitly include Jerry Falwell Se.,m Bill Gothard, Jay Grimstead, D. James
Kennedy, Tim LaHaye, Doug Phillips, Howard Phillips, Pat Robertson, Francis
Schaeffer and Wayne Whitehead. (wikipedia.org)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Directly confronting the historic
tradition enshrined in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, <i>“Congress
shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. Known as ‘the
establishment clause,’ the opening lines of the First Amendment prohibit the
government from creating an official religion or favoring one religion (or
nonreligion) over another…..The U.S. Supreme Court has also said that states
must uphold this religions freedom principle. ‘The First Amendment has erected
a wall between church and state,’ which must be kept high and impregnable’.
(Justice Hugo Black, Everson v Board of Education (1947)</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(from freedomforum.org)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Without probing the historic links between
the rise of reconstructionism, Dominionism, and the spectre of an envisioned
imposition of Sharia Law, for example in the United States, while the specifics
of which laws and regulations each would permit and prohibit, the prospect of a
religiously defined and operating ‘state’ are beyond the scope of the
imagination and expectation of most in the West. Furthermore, directly in
conflict with a state in which no religion is dominant, and also where the
absence of religion legally tolerated and celebrated, theonomy, whether in the
form of Dominionism and reconstructionism or Sharia Law, takes matters of
faith, primarily based on a literal, left-brain, legalistic reading and
interpretation of holy writing (Bible, Koran) and imposes them on the secular
society.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Not only is such a prospective development
not conducive or supportive of a tolerant and small-l liberal society, in that
those who subscribe are immediately part of the governance, while those who do
not subscribe are considered some form of alien, (dhimmis, non-Muslim, under
Sharia Law). “Apostates’ might be an appellation for those in a state under
Dominionism, just as ‘liberal’ was a term of disdain for fundamental
evangelicals in the Anglican Seminary of the 1990’s. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">What remains both tragic and ironic, in
the extreme, in any discussion of such matters, outside but not unrelated to
the social and the political implications of these energies and movements, is
that each comes from what has traditionally been regarded as the ‘left side’
(logos) of the human brain, to the denial, or at least shelving of the activity
and significance of the right brain (mythos). <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In her monumental work, The Lost Art of
Scripture, Rescuing the Sacred Texts, Karen Armstrong writes some penetrating
and insightful prose:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">(Referencing Lion Man, a partly human body
(with) a head of a cave-lion, standing some thirty-one centimeters tall, some
40,000 years old, a figurine in the Ulm Museum):<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">From a strictly rational
perspective Lion Man could be dismissed as a delusion. But neurologists tell us
that in fact we have no direct contact with the world we inhabit. We have only
perspectives that come to us through the intricate circuits of our nervous
system, so that we all—scientists as well as mystics—know only representations
of reality, not reality itself. We deal with the world as it appears to us, not
as it intrinsically is, so some of our interpretations may, be more accurate
than others. This somewhat disturbing news means that ‘objective truths’ on
which we rely are inherently illusive. </span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">(Borrowing
here from Michael R. Trimble, The Soul in the Brain, The Cerebral Basis of
Language, Art and Belief, Baltimore, 2007 and from B. Spilka, et al, The
Psychology of Religion, 3<sup>rd</sup> edition, Guilford, NY, 2003<i>) The
world is there; its energy and form exist. But our apprehension of it is only a
mental projection. The world is outside our bodies, but not outside our minds.
‘We are this little universe’, the Benedictine mystic Bede Griffiths (1906-93)
explained, ‘a microcosm in which the macrocosm is present as a hologram.’ We
are surrounded by a reality that transcends- or ‘goes beyond’- our conceptual
grasp…..(But) in recent decades, neurologists have discovered that the right hemisphere
of the brain is essential to the creation of poetry, music, and religion. IT is
involved with the formation of our sense of self, and has a broader, less
focused mode of attention that the left hemisphere, which is more pragmatic and
selective. Above all, it sees itself as connected to the outside world, whereas
the left hemisphere holds aloof from it. Specialising in language, analysis and
problem-solving, the left side of our brain suppresses information that it
cannot grasp conceptually. The right hemisphere, however, whose functions
tended in the past to be overlooked by scientists, has a holistic rather than
an analytical vision; it sees each thing in relation to the whole and perceives
the interconnectedness of reality. It is, therefore, at home with metaphor, in
which disparate entities become one, while the left hemisphere tends to be
literal and to wrest things from their context so that it can categorize and
make use of them. News reaches the right hemisphere first, where it appears as
part of an interlocking unity; it then passes to the left hemisphere, where it
is defined, analysed and its use assessed. But the left can produce only a
reductive version of complex reality, and once processed, this information is
passed back to the right hemisphere, where we see it-insofar as we can- in the
context of the whole.</i> (Armstrong, op cit, p.3,4,5) (Borrowing here from
Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making
of the Western World, New Haven, CT, 2009)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Positing a right-left brain image, however,
does not suggest or imply that each ‘brain’ competes with the other, although <i>the
‘left’ is by nature competitive, and ‘largely ignorant of the work of the right,
it tends to be overconfident. The right hemisphere, however, has a more
comprehensive vision of reality, which…we can never fully grasp; it is more at
home with embodiment and the physical than the left. The left brain is essential
to our survival and enables us to investigate and master our environment, but it
can offer us only an abstract representation of the complex information it
receives from the right. Because the right hemisphere is less self-centred, it
is more realistic than the left hemisphere. Its wide-ranging vision enables it
to hold different views of reality simultaneously, and unlike the left, it does
not form certainties based on abstraction. Profoundly attuned to the Other-to
everything that is not ourselves- the right hemisphere is alert to relationships.
It is the seat of empathy, pathos, and our sense of justice. Because it can see
an-other point of view, it inhibits our natural selfishness.</i> (Armstrong, op.
cit. p. 6 …borrowed from McGilchrist, op.cit.)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">What does all this neuroscience,
right-left-brain ‘stuff’ have to do with Dominionism, and the conflict both
between and among faith communities, and their implications on the future of
the planet?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">First, left-brain competitions, while
appropriate in moderation in select situations, given our obsession (as Hillman
constantly reminds us) with the literal, the empirical, the nominal and the ‘extrinsic’
tilt the playing field on which we all live in favour of its dominance.
Intellectual, cognitive, and ultimately narrow perspectives that are naturally exclusive
of the ‘whole’ and ‘the Other,’ while captivating and dominating our attention,
is nevertheless, also highly constricting. Indeed, it would seem that much of
contemporary religious dialogue and debate, takes place on that level. It is
not to say that these deliberations are unethical, immoral or even merely
secular. Religion and faith are not either ideas or activities that can be
contained in either intellectual or neurological boxes. Also, when attempting
to ‘contemplate, reflect upon, imagine or even aspire to whatever might be
deemed ‘deity’ or God, from whatever faith tradition, while one is conscious
that any activity of this nature cannot attain ‘full awareness,’ full intellectual
or perceptual grasp. And words like “awe,” and “awesome” and “super-natural”
and ‘ephemeral’ and ‘ethereal’ and even ‘imaginative’ spring up on our radar to
hint at our attempt to ‘relate.’ Some writers have even equated the notion of
God with ‘relationship’ in both the literal and the abstract. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">What is it about any aspiration to a
religious faith that is both so captivating and so elusive? And what is the
primary aspiration for the millions who have, do and continue to seek some relationship
with God? And, while such a desire may ennoble the aspirant, it can also
profoundly wound, divide, separate, alienate and even kill.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Armstrong offers some insight into the
human engagement in what she calls a <i>‘deep-seated human aspiration for transformation….This…is
a major theme of scripture: people want to ‘get beyond’ suffering and mortality
and devise ways of achieving this. Today we are less ambitious; we want to be
slimmer, healthier, younger and more attractive than we really are. We feel
that a ‘better self’ lurks beneath our lamentably imperfect one: we want to be
kinder, braver, more brilliant, and charismatic. But the scriptures go further,
insisting that each one of us can become a Buddha, a sage, a Christ or even a god.
The American scholar Frederick Streng has this working definition of religion:<o:p></o:p></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Religion is a means of
ultimate transformation…An ultimate transformation is a fundamental change from
being caught up in the troubles of common existence (sin, ignorance) to living
in such a way that one can cope at the deepest level with these troubles. That
capacity for living allows one to experience the most authentic or deepest reality-the
ultimate.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The myths, rituals, sacred
texts and ethical practices of religion develop a plan of action ‘whereby people
reach beyond themselves to connect with the true and ultimate reality that will
save them from the destructive forces of everyday existence. (borrowed from Streng,
Understanding Religious Life, 3<sup>rd</sup> ed. Belmont CA, 1985)Living with what
is ultimately real and true, people have found that they are not only better
able to bear these destructive tensions, but that life itself acquires new
depth and purpose.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">But what is this ‘true and
ultimate reality?’ We will see that the scriptures (from all faiths) have given
it various names-rta, Brahmin, Dao, nirvana, Elohim or God-but in the modern West
we have developed an inadequate and ultimately unworkable idea of the divine,
which previous generations would have found naïve and immature. As a child, I
learned this response to the question, ‘What is God?’ in the Catholic catechism:
‘God is the Supreme Spirit, who alone exists of himself, and is infinite in all
perfections.’ This is not only arid and uninspiring but fundamentally incorrect
because it attempts to </span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">define<i>, a word whose
literal meaning is to ‘set limits upon,’ an essentially illimitable reality. We
shall see that when the left hemisphere was less cultivated than it is today,
what we call ‘God’ was neither </i>a<i> ‘spirit’ nor</i> a<i> being. God was
rather, Reality itself. Not only did God have no gender, but leading theologians
and mystics insisted that God did not ‘exist’ in any way that we can
understand. Before the modern period, the ‘ultimate reality’ came closer to
what the German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1899-1976) called ‘Being,’ a
fundamental energy that supports and pervades everything that exists. You
cannot see, touch or hear it, but can only watch it mysteriously at work in the
people, objects and natural forces that it informs. It is essentially
indefinable because it is impossible to get outside it and view it objectively.<o:p></o:p></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Traditionally, the scared was
experienced as a presence that permeates the whole of reality-humans, animals,
plants, stars, wind and rain. The Romantic poet William Wordsworth (1770-1850)
carefully referred to it a ‘something’ because it was indefinable and,
therefore, transcended propositional thought. He had experienced<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>A sense sublime<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of something far
more deeply interfused<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whose dwelling is
the light of setting suns<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the round ocean and
the living air,<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the blue sky and
in the mind of man. (Lines Composed a few Miles above Tintern Abbey)<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">He had, he says, ‘learned’ to
acquire this insight. We might say he achieved it by deliberately cultivating a
right-hemispheric awareness by—for a limited time—suppressing the analytical
activities of the left. When people tried to access the ‘ultimate,’ therefore,
they were not submitting to an alien, omnipotent and distant ‘being’ but were
attempting to achieve a more authentic mode of existence. We shall see that
right up to the early modern period, sages, poets and theologians insisted that
what we call ‘God,’ ‘Brahman,’ or ‘Dao’ was ineffable, indescribable and
unknowable—and yet was with them: a constant source of life, energy and
inspiration. Religion-and scripture-were, therefore, arts forms that helped
them to live in relation to this transcendent reality and somehow embody it. </span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">(Armstrong, op. cit. pps. 8-9)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The poetic mind, as a lens though which to
both view and to imagine who we are, as well as how we ‘relate’ to ultimate
reality might offer both a new key-hole into a new experience of faith as well
as de-escalate the wars of religion, politics, greed, ambition and indifference
both to life itself and especially to those considered ‘the enemy’.<o:p></o:p></span></p>acorncentreblog.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17885551385913360444noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4849646215010182686.post-58532454095278435542024-01-30T10:54:00.004-05:002024-02-01T11:01:02.303-05:00cell913blog.com #19 <p> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">In his book, A Terrible Love of War (1976), James
Hillman writes:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">One sentence in one scene from one film,
Patton, sums up what this book tried to understand. The general walks the field
after a battle. Churned earth, burned tanks, dead men. He takes up a dying
officer, kisses him, surveys the havoc and says: ‘I love it. God help me, I do
love it so. I love it more than my life.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">We can never prevent war or speak sensibly
of peace and disarmament unless we enter this love of war. Unless we move our
imagination into the martial state of soul, we cannot comprehend its pull. This
means ‘going to war,’ and this book aims to induct our minds into military
service. We are not going to war in the name of peace, as deceitful rhetoric so
often declares, but rather for war’s own sake: to understand the madness of its
love.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Our civilian disdain and pacifist
horror—all the legitimate and deep-felt aversion to everything to do with the
military—must be set aside. Thid because the first principle of psychological
method holds that any phenomenon to be understood must be sympathetically
imagined. No syndrome can be truly dislodged from its cursed condition unless
we first move imagination into its heart.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">War is first of all a psychological task
perhaps the first of all psychological tasks because it directly threatens your
life and mine, and the existence of all living things. The bell tolls for thee,
and all. Nothing can escape thermonuclear rage, and if the burning and its
aftermath are unimaginable, their cause, war, is not.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">War is also a psychological task because
philosophy and theology, the fields supposed to do the heavy thinking for our
species, have neglected war’s overriding importance. ‘War is the father of
all,’ said Heraclitus at the beginnings of Western thought. If it is a
primordial component of Being, then war fathers the very structure of existence
and out thinking about it: our ideas of the universe, of God, of ethics; war
determines the thought patterns of Aristotle’s logic of opposites. Kant’s
antimonies, Darwin’s natural selection, Marx’s struggle of classes and even
Freud’s repression of the id by the ego and super-ego. We think in warlike
terms, feel ourselves at war with ourselves and unknowingly believe predation,
territorial defense, conquest, and the interminable battle of opposing forces
are the ground rules of existence.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">War is becoming more normalized every day.
Trade war, gender war, net war, information war. But war against cancer, war against crime,
against drugs, against poverty and other ills of society has nothing to do with
the actualities of war. These civil wars, wars within civilian society,
mobilize resources in the name of a heroic victory over an insidious enemy,
These wars are noble good guys against bad guys and no one gets hurt. This way
of normalizing war has whitewashed the word and brainwashed us so that we
forget its terrible images. Then whenever the possibility of actual war
approaches with its reality of violent death-dealing combat, the idea of was
has been normalized into nothing more than putting more cops on the street,
more rats in the labs and passing tax rebates for urban renewal. I base the
statement ‘war is normal’ on two factors we have already seen; its constancy
throughout history and its ubiquity over the globe. These two factors require
another more basic one: acceptability.</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;"> (penguinrandomhouse.ca)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Chris Hedges, in his book<i>, American Fascists: The
Christian Right and the War on America (2007) Hedges insists that today’s
evangelical Christians are good old-fashioned fascists and Nazis reborn.</i>
(Ryan T. Anderson, firstthings.com 3/7/07 in a piece entitled, Christianity is
an Enemy that Gives Hedges Meaning) (Now) in <i>American Fascists</i>, <i>he
offers a critique of contemporary Christianity, drawing, he tells the reader
many times, on his own experience as a Christian and the son of a Presbyterian
minister. In fact, he writes, it was while studying at Harvard Divinity School
that he first learned American Christians are the Nazis’ modern ‘ideological
inheritors.’ Bearing not ‘swastikas and brown shirts’ but ‘patriotism and the
pages of the Bible,’ these new fascists are led by a ‘theocratic sect’ of
Calvinism called Dominionism….The Dominionist movement ‘shares prominent
features with classical fascist movements, a belief in magic along with
leadership adoration and a strident call for moral and physical supremacy of a
master race. If Christian fascists win, then ‘labor unions civil-rights laws
and public schools will be abolished. Women will be removed from the workforce
to stay at home, and all those deemed insufficiently Christian will be denied
citizenship. The key, Hedges claims, is he certainty of evangelical faith.
Confidence, we are told, is a fascist ploy, while real Christians accept that
we ‘do not understand what life is about…Faith presupposes that we cannot know.
We can never know.’ Those who take comfort in evangelical dogmas are fleeing
what Hedges calls our ‘Culture of Despair’ the social and economic conditions of
modern industrialized America.<o:p></o:p></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Certainty, absolute certainty, the notion that only ‘my’
or ‘our’ view, belief, morality, ethics, perception and ‘right’ to such
exclusivity, while perhaps even seeded in the evangelical movement of the Christian
religion, is not exclusive to that demographic. A similar notion is inscribed
in such religious attitudes and beliefs in insignia that read, with regard to
any specific faith group, “this is the right (and only) religion”. The nexus of
a faith position with a deity that purportedly represents that faith, gives
those who espouse that faith a kind of ‘divine right’ to that belief. In
Britain’s history, the ‘divine right of kings’ was elevated to a justification
that God had somehow ordained that person “X” was ordained by God to occupy the
throne and with that authority came the divine right to rule however the king
saw fit. In another life, I encountered a ‘Sunday School’ curriculum that
proudly displayed, as a first directive for teachers, “This is how to speak to
a five-year-old who has been saved, and this is how you speak to a
five-year-old who has not been saved.” Imagine such a preposterous and onerous
responsibility to even presume to ‘know’ which young boy or girl has been saved.
The David C. Cook curriculum, however, was unabashed in its pedagogical,
evangelical tutorial. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Indeed, only this morning, I listened to a similar
degree of certainty from Steve Forbes, in a replayed television interview, in
which he called ‘ridiculous’ the conventional designation of government spending
as part of the country’s GDP (Gross Domestic Profit). His certainty, coming as
it does from the certainty of the economic conservative mother-lode of beliefs,
that by definition government spending cannot and must not be included in any
calculation of a country’s GDP. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">I spent the first decade-plus attending another of those
Presbyterian churches, of which Hedges is so familiar. Adored by his sycophantic
born-again members of the church Session, the clergy, a transplant from Ballymena
Northern Ireland, and effectively a clone for the Reverend Iain Paisley, pontificated
his own brand of religious, and yes, Christian ‘certainty’ on a Sunday morning
in 1958. (Repeatedly reported in this space, in different contexts), the core
of his sermon on the last Sunday I agreed to attend ‘his church’, went
something like this:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">If you are a Roman Catholic, you are going
to Hell.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">If you go to dances, ‘you are going to
Hell.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">If you wear make-up, you are going to
Hell. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">If you go to the movie theatre, you are
going to Hell.<o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">If you prepare meals in Sunday, you are
going to Hell. <o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Something inside of me snapped. I heard myself saying,
“Bullshit!….that message has no place in this church, nor does it have any
resonance with anything one might find in the New Testament.” I had read that scripture,
and while I had not ‘got’ all of its meaning and import, something told me that
such judgement was unwarranted. I never did go back, except in a weak moment
when I agreed to that man’s participation in a first marriage.<b> </b>Decades
later, in a conversation with another Irish clergy, after hearing my story
about the “Ballymena bigot,’ he commented, “I once heard Rev. Paisley speak and
he was just as frightening as the Fuhrer whom I also had heard speaking,” <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Hillman’s notion of the ubiquity and penetration of
the war image, the war archetype, has clearly been one of the most deeply
wedded archetypes for the evangelism movement of whatever religion. Competition
among religions has even reached into the pulpit’s (clergy) telling
parishioners to have more children in order to ‘grow the faith community’ as if
one’s family size were one of the instruments available to the church’s hierarchy,
to demonstrate growth. Indeed, the adoption and absorption of the corporate model
of organizational leadership and development by the ecclesial institution(s) is
one of the more glaring and toxic of the self-promoting, and at the same time
self-sabotaging, features of the church(es). The legacy of the mentality of the
‘poor church mouse,’ that infected hundreds of parishes for centuries,
inculcating both parsimoniousness in all of its darkness and the power of the
purse into the religion of thousands, if not millions of church treasurers.
Indeed, from an abbreviated stint as a parish clergy, in each of the several
churches in which I served, the treasurer had adopted, the role of ‘controller’
of all the thinking, talking and dreaming of the parish membership. Budget size
was the determining factor for whatever might be considered. “We cannot afford
that!” was (and no doubt is in many quarters) the most repeated chant in the
life of the parish. Hopes, aspirations, ‘strategic planning’ and everything
related to church operations were (and too often are) rooted in the current
size and projected size of the bank account. At the same time, often hundreds
of thousands, even millions, in some cases, have been socked away in trust
accounts, as a matter of protecting and preserving the ‘legacy’ of the business.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">Certainty, then, is not merely a matter of certainty
of religious belief. It comes to dominate much of the attitude, the perceptions
and the modus operandi of the ecclesial institutions. However, that depth and fixity
and absolute conviction of one’s dogmatic attitude and perception, can legitimately
be laid at the feet of the most addicted and obsessed group of evangelicals. In
a church history class, after asking a question of the professor, I heard these
words from a classmate: “Never mind all these questions; just tell us what we
need to know so we can get out there and save the world!” And in the same
first-year class, during field education, when a non-evangelical (we were
dubbed the ‘liberals’ then), announced, “I am confident that Hitler will be in
Heaven!” not only did bedlam erupt, but another class member retorted, “That is
not true, and the Bible says so!”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">This scribe has never been certain whether or not
Hitler is in heaven, irrespective of whether the statement is taken literally,
metaphorically or philosophically. As a concept that raises to the ‘outer limits’
of the imagination, however, it is completely in accord with our most elastic
and vibrant imagination and creativity, as well as congruent with the omnipotence,
omniscience and omnipresence of God. Nevertheless, it surfaced the deep divide
within that class, as well the divide which Hedges dubs as ‘war’.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">For our purposes in this moment in history, however, war
on the battlefields proliferates in Gaza, Ukraine, the Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan,
Nigeria, Myanmar and elsewhere. Not all of them warrant ‘coverage’ in the mind
and eyes of news agencies in the West…We are addicted to the headline version
of the news. And, to contemplate any kind of amelioration in the number or
severity of conflict, we will, as Hillman advises, be more effective if we ‘go
to the core of our ‘love of war’ and what it offers, with all of the bloodshed,
rape, pillage, lies, manipulation and devastation, in order to see ourselves
for ‘who’ we are and for which voices (think Mars/Ares) that ‘have us’ in their
clutches.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">On reflection, that kind of exercise was absent from
the several years of ‘formation’ for Christian ministry, in the 80’s and 90’s
in Canada. And yet, two weeks of formal instruction with rigorous oversight and
discipline was required, in what we then dubbed ‘holy hand-waving’ over the sacraments
in order to ‘sanctify’ those elements prior to the Eucharist. Co-ordinating
with the priest’s script for the celebration of the Mass, those hand movements
were to be ‘modest’ and gently flowing and not ostentatious or melo-dramatic. And
in order to be ‘perfected’ they required rehearsal in a manner similar to the
young piano student’s learning to master the arpeggio or the four-note broken
chord. Not only was there not a deep dive into the human psychological ‘love of
war,’ there was not a single course in parish conflict and the various options
for addressing (even if not fully resolving) it.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%;">While it is quite obvious that ‘war’ from ‘certainty
of belief in dogma is an inherent component of evangelical churches and their
adherents, such certainty and conviction (morphed into obsessive-compulsion of
the group) infects many other churches, faiths, and quite recently, political leaders,
and their organizations (hardly worthy of the name, governments). The
conventional “either-or,” along with the plethora of binary oppositions/conflicts/debates/perceptions/convictions/truths
haunts us all every day everywhere. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14pt; line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-language: EN-CA; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">Mandela is turning in
his grave, in despair!</span>acorncentreblog.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17885551385913360444noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4849646215010182686.post-29322611557658943372024-01-28T15:25:00.001-05:002024-01-28T15:25:37.492-05:00cell913blog.com #18<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">It is, currently and has been for several decades,
those passionate, articulate and dedicated writers on the environment who have
been making the case for a world-wide effort to ‘save the planet’ and in that
process ‘save us from ourselves’. William Vogt, in his Road to Survival (2015),
penned these words, prophetic then and more searing nearly a decade later:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Drastic measures are inescapable. Above
everything else, we must reorganize our thinking. If we are to escape the crash
we must abandon all thought of living unto ourselves. We form an earth-company,
and the lot of the Indiana farmer can no longer be isolated fromj that of the
Bantu…An eroding hillside in Mexico or Yugoslavia affects the living standard
and probability of survival of the America people…Today’s white bread may force
a break in the levees, and flood New Orleans next spring. This year’s wheat from
Australia’s eroding slopes may flare into a Japanese war three decades hence…..When
I write ‘we’ I do not mean the other fellow. I mean every person who reads a
newspaper printed on pulp from vanishing forests. I mean every man and woman
who eats a meal drawn form steadily shrinking lands. Everyone who flushes a
toilet, and thereby pollutes a river, wastes fertile organic matter and helps
to lower a water table. Everyone who puts on a wool garment derived from
overgrazed ranges that have been cut by the little hoofs and gullied by the
rains, sending runoff and topsoil into the rivers downstream flooding cities
hundreds of miles away…..Especially do I mean men and women in overpopulated
countries who produce excessive numbers of children who, unhappily, cannot
escape their fate as hostages to the forces of misery and disaster that lower upon
the horizon of our future…..The freebooting rugged individualist, whose vigor
imagination, and courage contributed to much of good to the building of our
country (along with the bad), we must now recognize where his activities destroy
resources, as the Enemy of the People has become…Above all, we must learn to know-to
feel to the core of our beings-our dependence upon the earth and the riches with
which it sustains us. We can no longer believe valid our assumption that we
live in independence…..We must-all of us, men women and children-reorient ourselves
with relation to the world in which we live…We must come to understand our
past, our history, in terms of the soil and water and forests and grasses that
have made it what it is. We must see the years to come in the frame that makes
space and time one….As we are crowded together ..on the shrinking surface of
the globe, we have set in motion historical forces that are directed by our
total environment…If we ourselves do not govern our destiny, firmly and
courageously, no one is going to do it for us. To regain ecological freedom for
our civilization will be a heavy task. It will frequently require arduous and
uncomfortable measures. It will cost considerable sums of money. Democratic
governments are not likely to set forth on such a steep and rocky path unless
people lead the way…So that the people shall not delude themselves, find
further frustration through quack nostrums, fight their way into blind alleys,
it is imperative that this world-wide dilemma be made known to all mankind. The
human race is caught in a situation as concrete as a pair of shoes two sizes
too small. We must understand that, and stop blaming economic systems, the weather,
bad luck, or callous saints. This is the beginning of wisdom, and the first
step on the long road back. </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">(from themarginalian.org)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Imagine those words as a ‘letter to Mandela’ and then
try to imagine his response to such a ‘mandate letter’.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Here are some glimpses of the young boy, Mandela, in
his own words:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">From an early age, I spent most of my free
time in the veld playing and fighting with the other boys of the village. A boy
who remained at home tried to his mother’s apron strings was regarded as a sissy.
At night, I shared my food and blanket with these same boys. I was no more than
five when I became a herd-boy, looking after sheep and calves in the fields. I
discovered the almost mystical attachment that the Xhosa have for cattle, not
only as a source of food and wealth, but as a blessing from God and a source of
happiness. It was in the fields that I learned how to knock birds out of the
sky with a slingshot, to gather wild honey and fruits and edible roots, to drink
warm, sweet milk straight from the udder of a cow, to swim in the clear, cold
streams, and to catch fish with twine and sharpened bits of wire. I learned to
stick-fight—essential knowledge to any rural African boy—and became adept at
its various techniques, parrying blows, feinting in one direction and striking
in another, breaking away from an opponent with quick footwork. From these days
I date my love of the veld, open spaces, the simple beauties of nature, the
clean line of the horizon…As boys we were mostly left to our own devices. We
played with toys we made ourselves. We molded animals and birds out of clay. We
made ox-drawn sleights out of tree branches. Nature was our playground. The hills
above Qunu were dotted with large smooth ricks which we transformed into our
own roller coaster. We sat on flat stones and slid down the face of the large
rocks. We did this until our backsides were so sore we could hardly sit down. I
learned to ride by sitting atop weaned calves—after being thrown to the ground
several times, one got the hang of it. </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">(Nelson Mandela, Long Road
to Freedom, pps. 9-10)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The perspectives of two men, living on opposite sides
of the planet, both in their own way revering nature, both rooted in its
preservation, protection. Nature is and never can be separated from humans or
humans from nature. However, a philosophical perspective, known as
anthropocentrism, argues that <i>‘human beings are the central or most
significant entities in the world. This is the basic belief embedded in many Western
religions and philosophies. Anthropocentrism regards human as separate from and
superior to nature and holds that human life has intrinsic value while other
entities (including animals, plants, mineral resources, and so on) are
resources that may justifiably be exploited for the benefit of humankind. Many
ethicists find the roots of anthropocentrism in the Creation story told in the
book of Genesis in the Judeo-Christian Bible, in which humans are created in
the image of God and are instructed to ‘subdue’ Earth and to ‘have dominion’
over all other living creatures. This passage has been interpreted as an indication
of humanity’s superiority to nature and as condoning an instrumental view of
nature, where the natural world has value only as it benefits humankind. This
line of thought is not limited to Jewish and Christian theology, and can be
found in Aristotle’s Politics and in Immanual Kant’s moral philosophy. Some
anthropocentric philosophers support a so-called cornucopian point of view,
which rejects claims that Earth’s resources are limited or that unchecked human
population growth will exceed the carrying capacity of Earth and result in wars
and famines as resources become scarce. Cornucopian philosophers argue that
either the projections of resource limitations and population growth area exaggerated
or that technology will be developed as necessary to solve future problems of
scarcity. In either case they see no moral or practical need for legal controls
to protect the natural environment or limit its exploitation. Other
environmental ethicists have suggested that it is possible to value the
environmental without discarding anthropocentrism. Sometimes called prudential
or enlightened anthropocentrism, this view holds that humans do have ethical
obligations toward the environment, but they can be justified in terms of
obligations toward other humans….Prior to the emergence of environmental ethics
as an academic field, conservationists such a</i></span><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 107%;">s
</span></i><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">John
Muir and Aldo Leopold argued that the natural world has an intrinsic value, an
approach informed by aesthetic appreciation of nature’s beauty, as well as an
ethical rejection of a purely exploitative valuation of the natural world. In the
1970’s, scholars working in the emerging academic field of environmental ethics
issues two fundamental challenges to anthropocentrism: they questioned whether
human should be considered superior to other living creatures, and they also suggested
that the natural environment might possess intrinsic value independent of its
usefulness to humankind. The resulting philosophy of biocentrism regards humans
as one species among many in a given ecosystem and holds that the natural environment
is intrinsically valuable independent of its ability to be exploited by humans.
</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">(britannica.org)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">From the European, academic perspective, we now turn
to the indigenous perspective. In KAYANERENKO:WA, The Great Law of Peace, we
read these words:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">One fundamental principle that flows from
the Creation story is the relationship between human beings and the natural
world. The Book of Genesis gives human beings ‘dominion’ over all parts of the natural
world and suggests that everything was created to serve the needs of humanity.
More recent Christian thinkers have struggled to insert the concept of ‘stewardship’
into these words. While logic agrees with the approach, fundamentalists who see
an obligation to develop and exploit wage theological war with
environmentalists who feel a need to conserve. The Haudenosaunee Creation story
places human beings squarely in the midst of a natural world in which they form
an integral part and in which each part has been given responsibilities.
Sotsisowah* explained:<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The Haudenosaunee Creation Story, which we
can assume predates the foundation of the League, is replete with symbols of a
rational universe. In the Creation Story, the only creature with a potential
for irrational thought is the human being. All the other creatures of Nature
are natural, i.e. rational.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Nature is depicted as a threatening and irrational
aspect of existence in the West’s cosmologies. The Haudenosaunee cosmology is
quite different. It depicts the natural world as a rational existence while
admitting that human beings possess an imperfect understanding of it. The idea
that human beings have an imperfect understanding of the rational nature of existence
is something of a caution to Haudenosaunee in their dealings with nature.
Conversely, the idea that the natural world is disorganized and irrational has
served as something of a permission in the West and may be the single cultural
aspect which best explains the differences between these two societies’ relationships
to Nature. <o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The reason it’s so important to get people
to cease fearing nature is that negative emotions invade one’s ability to think
clearly. People who are afraid of nature have much more difficulty defending it
than people who are not. All of those negative emotions give you permission to
enact violence on nature.</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> (p. 33-34)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">*Sotsisowah: Native perception of philosopher-thinker-activist
John Mohawk (Sotsisowah). Mohawk’s intellectual approach is keenly universal
while founded in the practice of his ancient longhouse culture. (hks.harvard.edu)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In a footnote we read:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">John Mohawk has suggested that the difference
between Haudenosaunee (and other natural world) religions and Christianity is
the difference between magic and miracles. Haudenosaunee ceremonies call upon
the power of the natural world for assistance: if the power is beyond human,
Western observers tend to call this ‘magic.’ Haduwi, for example, the power
behind the b asked medicine societies, is in some ways a culmination of the forces
of the natural world that we cannot control. Haudenosaunee medicine societies
tend to be reflections of natural forces-the help of the Bears, the Otters, and
the Buffalo, for example. Christianity, on the other hand, sees ‘miracles’ as
unnatural by definition. If a cure attributed to a saint’s intervention can be shown
to have been the result of a natural cause, it is no longer considered to be a
miracle. </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">(Op. Cit. p. 34)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies at Harvard Divinity
School, Janet Gyatso, interviewed on October 29, 2019, for a piece entitled,
Attending to Animals, (on <i>hds.harvard.edu</i>) answers the following
questions in this manner:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">HDS: One of the courses you teach is
called ‘Forms of Life: Buddhist Ethics for a Post-Human World. What do you mean
by ‘post-human’?<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Janet Gyatso: We live in the Anthropocene
era. For the first time in the earth’s four-and-a half-billion-year history,
human beings are the primary force shaping the planet’s climate and environment.
That’s a pretty dramatic development, and it’s the result at least in part of a
belief that humans are superior to all other species and deserve to control the
planet. That’s a deeply held view in pretty much all the world’s major religions,
including Buddhism. Today, the prospect of catastrophic climate change not only
threatens nearly every other species on earth, but also humanity itself. A lot
of people see the climate crisis as a result of the failure of humans to
appreciate the danger of their desire to control the planet, and see the
importance of their relationship with nature and other species. And so, post-human
studies are about how to get beyond that, to stop placing human needs above all
else, for one thing, because we’re digging our own graves, but even beyond
that, it’s just wrong.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">HDS: Wrong How?<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Janet Gyatso: The degree of suffering, the
misery that we put animals through is wrong, whether we’re talking about
factory farming or scientific experimentation or the way that some people
mistreat their pets or farm animals—which is every bit as wrong as mistreating
humans, in my opinion. This is where this work does touch on my study of
Buddhism. Compassion for all other sentient beings—really caring for them,
wanting them to be happy, and not wanting them to suffer—that’s a straight
Buddhist idea. There is also the Buddhist notion that you can only truly be
happy if you have a realistic sense of your place on the planet and an
understanding of who you are in a way that’s free of ideology and other kinds
of stories that we tell ourselves. And so, if we overuse our resources and if
we blot out all the life around us, we’re not in sync with the material reality
of where we ae, and ultimately, we can’t be happy. That’s an idea that a lot of
religions, in some way or others, try to get at.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">HDS:…As we acknowledge the importance of
animals more ethically, do we run the risk of anthropomorphizing them—thinking of
them in human terms rather than their own?<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Janet Gyatso: There are two problems
there: anthropomorphizing and speciesism. With anthropomorphizing, we project
our humanity onto animals. ‘They’re just like us.’ But we also have this idea
that we’re totally different, that we can’t possibly know anything about them,
and that anything we think we know is merely anthropomorphizing. I think both
of those extremes are wrong. We share a lot in common with animals and we can
understand a lot more than we think we can. There’s a difference between
understanding them and anthropomorphizing them. The trick is to be simultaneously
aware of difference and of sameness, which is actually a good way of describing
what we try and teach students throughout the HDS curriculum…..<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">HDS: So, at the core of your thinking, is
a rejection of binaries, of absolutes, of the notion that one should always do,
or one should never do. It seems like that, in itself, is as much of a problem
to you as anything.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Janet Gyatso: Yes, and that’s why some of
what I’m saying is a little bit transgressive. My approach isn’t just post-human,
it’s a little bit post-religion. I’m really interested in getting us back to into
the material realities and building out from there, which for me means moving
away from religious beliefs that are about salvation or about enlightenment. I’m
not sure I believe in enlightenment-at least not in the sense of perfectibility…..I
do think that there is a kind of self-cultivation through which people can
attain a very high degree of realization, but I don’t think that anything ever
gets perfect. Even the Buddha died, you know?<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">After adhering to a strict policy of non-violence for
some fifty years, without achieving its goal of a nonracial democratic society,
the African National Congress, following Mandela’s reluctant, yet sober, decision
to consider an armed ‘wing’, demonstrated not only a high ethical and moral commitment
but articulated the change in strategy in his own defence in the courtroom:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">We of the ANC have always stood for a
nonracial democracy, and we shrank from any action which might drive the races
further apart than they already were. But the hard facts were that fifty years
of nonviolence had brought the African people nothing but more repressive legislation,
and fewer and fewer rights. It may not be easy for this court to understand ,
but it is a fact that for a long time the people had been talking of violence—of
the day when they would fight the white man and win back their country, and we,
the leaders of the ANC, had nevertheless always prevailed upon them to avoid
violence and to use peaceful methods. While some of us discussed this in May
and June of 1961, it could not be denied that our policy to achieve a nonracial
state by nonviolence had achieved nothing and that our followers were beginning
to lose confidence in this policy and were developing disturbing ideas of
terrorism. </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">(Nelson Mandela, Long Walk to Freedom, p.
364)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">Not only can the binary of nature and man as separate
entities be sustained no longer, neither can the absolute commitment to a
highly warranted ethical principle, like nonviolence, be sustained in the face
of intractable concrete oppression.</span> </p>acorncentreblog.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17885551385913360444noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4849646215010182686.post-39232567713486383612024-01-24T11:34:00.005-05:002024-01-24T11:34:56.600-05:00cell913blog.com #17<p> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">In a piece on vox.com, dated February 14, 2019,
entitled, Fascism: a warning from Madeleine Albright, interviewed and reported
by Sean Illing, we find this exchange:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">(Illling): When you use the term ‘fascism,’ what
exactly do you mean?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Madeleine Albright: Well, first of all, I’m troubled
by how thoughtlessly people throw around that term. At this point, anybody who
disagrees with us is a fascist. In the book (Fascism, A Warning) I try to argue
that fascism is not an ideology; it’s a process for taking and holding power. A
fascist is somebody who identifies with one group—usually an aggrieved
majority- in opposition to a smaller group. It’s about majority rule without
minority rights. Which is why fascists tend to single out the smaller group as
being responsible for or the cause of their grievances. The important thing is
that fascists aren’t actually trying to solve problems; they’re invested in
exacerbating problems and deepening the divisions that result from them. They
reject the free press and denounce the institutional structures within a
society—like Congress of the judiciary. I’d also add that violence is a crucial
element of fascism. Whatever else it is, fascism involves the endorsement and
use of violence to achieve political goals and stay in poser. It’s a bully with
any army, really…..I think what differentiates fascism from other ideological
movements is the use of violence and anger to achieve political ends. What you
almost always see in fascist regimes is propaganda being used to set people
against each other without any potential solutions to any of the problems.
Fascism is always, in the end, about stirring people up and giving them someone
to hate.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">(Illing): You say that fascism is ascendant right now.
Why do you think that is?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Madeleine Albright: A lot of reasons. Most of us were
looking toward a system that had been established after World War II—democratic
governments, a globalized economy that would gradually bring the world
together- and thought it was remarkably stable. But the situation has gotten
more complicated. A lot of people have benefited from globalization, but it has
huge downsides. It’s faceless, and people want to know their identity, want to
be connected to some religious or ethnic or national group. Identity is fine,
but if my identity makes me hate your identity, then it becomes very dangerous
and it falls into hypernationalism. Suddenly groups are pitted against each
other or scapegoated and all of political life becomes tribalized conflict. And
we see this happening in a number of places. Viktor Orban’s embrace of ethnic
purity in Hungary is a good example of this. The other major factor is
technology, which has incredible advantages, but it’s also desegregated voices
and made it harder to take political action because individuals are sucked into
echo chambers. Weirdly enough, this has managed to make us more tribal and more
frightened at the same time. So there are just a lot of forces coming together
and creating an atmosphere of anfger, and people have no idea what the
solutions are, or if there are any solutions. Then some strongman comes along
and says, ‘I have the answers, I can fix everything,’ And this is when you get
fascism.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Ruth Ben-Ghiat (ruthbenghiat.com) is professor of
History and Italian Studies at New York University. She writes about fascism,
authoritarianism, propaganda and democracy protection. Her latest book,
entitled, Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present ‘examines how illiberal leaders
use corrruption , violence, propaganda and machismo to stay in power, and how
resistance to them has unfolded<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>over a
century. In her substack space, Ben-Ghiat, on January 3, 2024, in a piece entitled,
Authoritarians and their Sons-In-Law from Mussolini to Trump: Partners in
Corruption, writes:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The essence of authoritarianism is getting
away with crime, and corruption must be at the center of any analysis of how
dictatorships operate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A large
percentage of actions authoritarians take are about covering up corruption: demonizing
journalists, judges, prosecutors, and investigators, inventing narratives about
their selflessness and purity and establishing ‘inner sanctums’ composed of
sycophants, and family members who will keep their secrets, dispose of their
enemies, and share in the profits from illicit activities…..The leverage and
control the leader can exert over the son-in-law is also why left and
right-wing authoritarians have placed these figures in economic policy and
management positions that have high potential to enrich the family. When Chile
became a laboratory of neoliberal policies during the military dictatorship,
leader Augusto Pinochet put on son-in-law, Julio Ponce, in charge of the
government agency in charge of privatizations and awarded him control of a
chemical company with a $67 million annual profit. Another son-in-law, Jorge
Aravena, got a large insurance agency in Cuba, President Raul Castro appointed
his son-in-law, Gen. Luis Alberto Rodriguez, as head of the armed forces’
Business Administration Group, an entity with large powers over Cuba’s
economy…..At his most powerful, the son-in-law can be a proxy for the dictator.
That was the case with Benito Mussolini’s son-in-law Galeazzo Ciano, who was
widely hated by Italians for trying to be a ‘mini-Duce’. As Mussolini’s
biographer Laura Fermi wrote, Ciano’s nickname was ‘the jaw’ because ‘when
Mussolini thrust out his chin, Ciano thrust his own half and inch further. <o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Why begin this piece by referencing Albright and
Ben-Ghiat?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Obviously, everyone in North America, and in the
western world, is both highly conscious of what is becoming a high probability
that trump will be the Republican nominee for president of the United States,
whether or not he is continuing to be arraigned in various courts, or possible
even occupying a jail cell. We are not living back in 2016 when he had no
record, no infamous twitter (X) account and no criminal indictment. There had
been no insurrection which the courts have determined he incited. He has placed
three (3!) justices on the Supreme Court, each of whom, along with the already
three conservative justices on the court, (Roberts, Alito, Thomas) form a
majority that could easily lean in trumps favour in any case that comes before
the court. Republicans in the House and Senate, at least in numbers far
exceeding responsible, court his favour, arguably for the primary, if not sole,
purpose of enhancing their ‘stay’ in power. Even those who sidle up to the
‘great one’ in an attempt to curry his favour, while briefly and glibly
thanked, are then thrown under the bus, if the occasion calls for such
disloyalty.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Indeed, loyalty is another of the trashed traits in
contemporary American (and global?) politics. Trump openly curries the favour
of dictators, while threatening one of America’s own military leaders. In
thehill.com, 09/27/23, Brad Dress, in a piece entitled, ‘Trumps threats to
Milley fuel fears he’ll seek vengeance in second term,’ writes:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Former President Trump’s violent rhetoric
toward Gen. Mark Milley is raising fears he will us a second term in the Oval
Office to seek retribution against enemies. Trump suggested Friday that Milley,
the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who is stepping down from his post
at the end of the week deserves the death penalty for allegedly betraying him
and committing an act of treason. The threat came just days after Milley warned
that if Trump wins the presidency in 2024, he would enact vengeance against those
he felt have done him wrong. And Milley believes he is at the top of that
revenge list. ‘He’ll start throwing people in jail, and I’d be on the top of
the list,’ Milley told The Atlantic in a profile of the four-star general
published last week. </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">(In thehill.com piece)<i> Kristy Parker,
legal counsel at Protect Democracy is quoted as saying, ‘Trump has shown and
talked about weaponizing the Justice Department to retaliate against people who
he perceives as his enemies as he did, in fact, do that to people when he was
president the first time.<o:p></o:p></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Madeleine Albright, in her book, Fascism, A Warning,
did not go so far as to call Trump a Fascist. Ben-Ghiat, the historian of
authoritarianism, clearly considers him one of her cast of strongmen, and there
is a sizeable cadre of American voters who have fallen sway to the trump
‘charm-offensive’. Now that he has successfully ‘won’ top rank in Iowa and New
Hampshire primaries for the Republican nomination for the presidency, all the
while commuting back and forth from and to various court hearings and campaign
rallies, the American political campaign ‘system’ if there was one, has been so
deconstructed as to leave the courts and the stage they offer to this candidate
as another of his campaign resources. He receives wall-to-wall coverage from
the media, whether he is ‘performing’ like a dancing chimp on the stump or in
front of cameras or judges for whom he has nothing but contempt.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Campaigning while undermining the justice system and
its highly professional (an non-partisan) officials, only injects more venom
and oxygen into those trump cultists who have taken to threats to various
individuals (thereby also directing needed and somewhat scarce law-enforcement
resources away from the legitimate work they are being paid to do), while
offering even more open windows to those wishing to throw cash at the trump
machine. The tectonic shift in American life, especially American politics, now
reaches right into the office of the Speaker of the House of Representatives,
himself an unabashed sycophant of the former president, who, not incidentally,
is making it very difficult to pry support from Ukraine out of the Congress.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">At the same time, Netanyahu’s war in Gaza had not only
taken a toll of well over 20,000 Palestinians killed, and many more maimed,
left homeless, without adequate health care or needed food for survival. This
war, too has taken Ukraine off the front pages of our minds, offering Putin
even more opportunity for deadly strikes, while Ukraine forces struggle to
cope.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">If there has been a time in American history in the
last seventy-five years when she has been so ‘inept’ and so ‘paralyzed’ in her
political and geopolitical life as she is today, I do not know when that would
have been. America, on her knees, at least from the eyes of her allies who now
have to prepare to adjust to a world in which trump seeks and acquires a second
term in the Oval Office, is not only a danger to herself; she is also a danger
to the world’s democracies. An American democratic model that has ceased to
function, as trump would prefer, is a serious threat to the stability and
security of the international community. And not only does trump threaten the
stability of the American election and governing systems, he threatens to take
America out of international commitments, just as he did when he withdrew the
U.S. from the Iranian accord on nuclear fission. Taking the U.S. out of NATO,
too, would be an open invitation to Putin to flex muscles beyond Ukraine, and a
‘bent’ America would also embolden Xi Jinping to bring the Taiwan crisis to a
head.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">For those 70+ millions of Americans who voted for
trump in 2020, there is a loud warning siren ringing in all of the capitals of
the world, warning you not to repeat your vote of 2020. Your ‘head in the sand’
in tribal nationalistic evangelical fervor, while demonstrating your thumbing
of your nose at the ‘establishment’ and those you consider ‘woke’ has the
potential not only to hike oil and gas prices, food prices, interest rates and
the padding of the pockets of the financial services and banking sector. You
are, in a word, being duped, for and buy the ‘wannabe’ dictator whose <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">sole interest in his own hold on power (and his
thwarting of the justice system!).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">As Forest Gump reminds us in that memorable line from
the movie:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">“Stupid is as stupid does!”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In his blog, Scuola Leonardo Da Vinci Turin,
(scuolaleonardo.com) writes:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The phrase that the protagonist uses to
defend himself from the attacks of those who offend him conveys a profound
meaning: people are not stupid, but it is their behavior that makes them so.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Can enough people be ‘stopped’ from repeating a very
stupid and dangerous voting choice?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>acorncentreblog.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17885551385913360444noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4849646215010182686.post-63267819468996748422024-01-23T11:02:00.002-05:002024-01-23T11:02:29.808-05:00cell913blog.com #16<p> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">For Nelson Mandela, there was no ambiguity as to the ‘target’
of his life’s work: the elimination of the policy, practices, laws and history
of apartheid. His band of freedom fighters knew that they operated within the
borders of South Africa, and saw the white supremacist governments of that
nation as their immediate and indisputable enemy.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In calling for a new generation of freedom fighters,
in 2024, however, the issues seem much more diffuse, ambiguous, almost ethereal
and elusive in their definition, implications, and in the manner in which
recruit of allied freedom fighters is far more complex, if even feasible.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">We can all ‘feel’ or ‘sense’ or ‘intuit’ or even ‘imagine’
a kind of pall, a cloud, a darkness that hangs over each and every day of our
lives. How we perceive and define and relate to that ‘cloud’ may differ; its
existence, however, is the subject of conversations at the water cooler, in the
lecture hall, in the sanctuaries, in the corporate board room, the government
committee rooms and the newsrooms of every media outlet on the planet.
Pervasive, if not actually invasive, a sense of doom and gloom, worry and
angst, fear and trembling have become a constant ‘character’ in the panoply of
characters that haunt our imaginations, our dreams, our hopes and our prayers. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In his unique and memorable attempt to understand, and
to help others grasp the difference between the inner world of the spirit and the
outer world of ethics and aesthetics, Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, focuses
on the time between the injunction to sacrifice his son Isaac, to Abraham, and the
time of the envisioned event. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">“Infinite resignation is the last stage
before faith, so anyone who has not made the movement does not have faith, for
only in infinite resignation does an individual become conscious of his eternal
validity, and only then can one speak of grasping existence by virtue of faith….There
comes a moment in a person’s life when immediacy is ripe, so to speak, and when
the spirit requires a higher form, when it wants to lay hold of itself as
spirit….Once Abraham became conscious of his eternal validity he arrived at the
door of faith and acted according tohis faith. In this action he became a
knight of faith. In other words, one must give up all his or her earthly
possessions in infinite resignation and must also be willing to give up whatever
it is that he or she loves more than God.</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> (wikipedia.org.)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In a much more recent piece of writing, in The Hollow
Men, by T. S. Eliot, we find these words, also about that ‘in between’ angst.
In interestingliterature.com,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dr. Oliver
Tearle (Loughborough University) writes:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">One of the most famous poems by T.S. Eliot
is The Hollow Men. One of the most famous sections of poetry in all of T.S.
Eliot is the fifty and final section…which contains the famous lines, which
state that ‘between the ideas and the reality falls the shadow’…The ‘Hollow Men’
of the poem are themselves trapped in some sort of between-world, a limbo or purgatory
between life and death, existence and nothingness, light and darkness….(For) ‘between
the idea and the reality falls the Shadow’, critics such as Christopher Ricks
(in his excellent T.S. Eliot and Prejudice) have suggested, is an allusion to
Brutus’ words in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar: ‘Between the acting of a dreadful
thing And the first motion, all the interim is Like a phantasma, or a hideous
dream: The Genius and the mortal instruments Are then in council: and the state
of man, Like to a little kingdom, suffers then The nature of an insurrection.’…And
something falls between conceiving an action and actually going through with
it: this mysterious ‘Shadow’….What is being described here? O<br />
ne possible interpretation is that Eliot is talking about that other interim
state between death and life—not at the end of our lives, but at the beginning.
Between conception and the creation—what is a baby after it has been conceived
but before it has been born….(However), perhaps we would be better off bearing
in mind Brutus rather than foetuses, and think of Eliot’s chain of
idea-reality-motion-act-conception -creation-emotion-response as referring to
the complex relationship between our desires or aims and our actions and behaviour….The
Hollow Men find themselves between the </span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">idea<i> of escaping their
existence and the</i> reality<i> of actually succeeding, but between that idea
and longed-for reality, the ‘Shadow’ falls which will prevent them from seeing
their way to achieving their aim.<o:p></o:p></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Not long ago, I answered a question about the meaning
of the ‘alchemy of the in-between’ (borrowing from James Hillman’s notion of
the soul):<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">What comes to mind (are) the multiple ‘voices’
or ‘images’ that emerge in and through the active, open and curious imagination
in an attentive focus on the ‘moment’ seems at least somewhat analogous to the ‘alchemy’
that attends that ‘energy’ and process’</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">…<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In a piece entitled ‘The Alchemy of Angst’ (on
project-syndicate.org) Elif Shafak, after carefully noting and detailing the
depth and ubiquity of both anger and a sense of hopelessness, writes these
words:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">At the end of the day, is there is one
thing that is far more destructive than any emotion, it is the lack of all
emotion: Numbness. Indifference. Lethargy of the spirit. The moment we become
so desensitized to the deluge of information (and the multiple threats and dangers
we face) that we barely register what is happening in another part of the world,
or just next door, is the moment we are completely severed and disconnected
from each other. And that is a far more dangerous threshold. The decisions that
we make today will have long-lasting consequences for the planet, for our
societies, and for our individual and collective mental health. This might be
the Age if Angst, but from here to the Age of Apathy is but a short and fateful
step. We need to make sure we don’t take it.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Clearly, and unabashedly drinking from the cup of
courage, determination, hope, optimism and the warrior that was an integral psychic
menu for Mandela, and inviting others to ‘share the same cup’ with the same ‘idealistic’
vision (not an addiction, as Jung warns against, but rather a determination for
survival!), let’s look a little more closely at the signs that characterize
this moment, our moment.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Writing on substack, January 22/24 in a piece
entitled, Trump’s Brownshirts, Robert Reich (former Secretary of Labour in the
Clinton Administration), after documenting the threats of violence and swatting
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>and dehumanizing tactics that have
confronted Secretaries of State, for attempting to implement Section 3 of the
14<sup>th</sup> Amendment that would disqualify trump as in insurrectionist
from having his name of the ballot, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>as
well as death threats on Jack Smith, special counsel of federal prosecutions,
noting that the Justice Department spent ‘more than $4.4 million providing
security for Smith and his team’. Reich also notes the determination of trump ‘if
you go after me, I’m coming after you’….the tape of Roger Stone uttering death
threats to ‘either Congressman Eric Swalwell or Congressman Jerry Nadler prior
to the 2020 election…’There is a direct and alarming connection between Trump’s
political rise and the increase in political violence and threats of such
violence in America.’ Reich also delineates the names of people who might have
voted to impeach the former president, but for their fear for the lives of
themselves and their families….and then Reich writes these words:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Political violence in an inherent part of
facism</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">. Hitler’s SA—the letters stood for Sturmabteilung or
Storm Section, also known as the Stormtroopers or Brownshirts—who were
vigilantes who did the Nazis’ dirty work before the Nazis took total power…<br />
Last night in an abbreviated appearance on her own show, owing to a throat infection,
Rachel Maddow, detailed the story of hundreds of thousands of German citizens
in the streets of many German cities, in numbers that threated the safety of
the protesters. These men and women, deeply resonant with memories of the
Fascists of the Third Reich, and their deportation of immigrants, refugees, and
undesireables, are demanding the removal as a political party of the AfD
right-wing party in the upcoming German elections. Al Jazeera, in a story dated,
January 21, 2024, reports: <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The mass protests were triggered after an
investigative media organization, Correctiv, released a report about the ‘undisclosed’
meeting near Berlin, where a proposal to deport millions of immigrants and refugees,
including some with German citizenship, was discussed. Among the participants
at the talks was Martin Sellner, a leader of Austria’s Identarian Movement,
which subscribes to the ‘great replacement’ conspiracy theory that claims there
is a plot by non-white migrants to replace Europe’s ‘native’ white population…..Since
its founding, the party has continually moved to the right and gained support
for its fierce anti-refugee and anti-immigration views.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The Guardian, in a report by ‘staff and agencies’ records,
on January 20, 2024: <i>Politicians, churches and Bundesliga coaches have all
urged people to stand up against the AfD….Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who joined a
demonstration last weekend…urged ‘all to take a stand for cohesion, for
tolerance, for our democratic Germany..(AfD) popularity has risen again since
the Russian invasion of Ukraine, on the back of disgruntlement over high energy
bills, food inflation, and what it sees as the high moral and financial cost of
defending Ukraine.<o:p></o:p></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Maddow’s analysis of the similarity of the threats
facing the German electorate included references to proposals from trump and Steven
Miller that immigrants, refugees and ‘others’ will be detained in internment
camps in the United States, should trump be re-elected. The linkage between the
American alt-right’s resistance to funding and supporting Ukraine cannot be
overlooked in the light of the German protests, nor can the adherence to the ‘replacement
theory conspiracy’ by men like Tucker Carlson, a close associate of the former
twice-impeached president.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Is it becoming more clear, that together we face a
moment of deep and authentic angst, from which we can become paralysed or out
of which we can summon the strength, conviction, determination and commitment to
engage in what is already a fight for the soul of the liberal, democratic,
law-based, human-rights-based order in what the alt-right conceives as a fight
for white supremacy and against all forms of tolerance, liberty and democracy?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Of course, we fear, and we tremble, and also of
course, we can each ‘see’ a place for our voice in this current chapter of
world tension.<o:p></o:p></span></p>acorncentreblog.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17885551385913360444noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4849646215010182686.post-5504064798932031462024-01-22T11:02:00.001-05:002024-01-22T11:02:15.714-05:00cell913blog.com #15<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">One of the issues facing every group, especially any
group dedicated to a series of principles, is the intersection (interface) of
the principles with their enactment. Words on a page, crafted and curated,
edited and vetted, with an eye to clarity, precision, intelligibility, easy and
ready accessibility, elevating an idea, an aspiration, a hope and an ideal,
might or might not include some form of accountability and the potential
sanctions that attempt to enforce compliance. Often, too, any such ‘group’ or
organization comes into being if and when a number of individuals come to a
shared view of the need for change, to which they commit themselves and the group,
both individually and collectively, to ‘action,’ that is the ‘work’ necessary to
bring about that change.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The documentation of the formation, development, narrative
of conflicts toward the achievement of the group’s goals, and the evaluation of
the group’s success/failure in attaining its stated purpose taken together,
comprise the history of that group or movement.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> In his
autobiography, A Long Walk to Freedom, Nelson Mandela, in part 11 of that work,
entitled, ‘Birth of a Freedom Fighter,’ writes:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I cannot pinpoint a moment when I became
politicized, when I knew that I would spend my life in the liberation struggle.
To be an African in South Africa means that one is politicized from the moment
of one’s birth, whether one acknowledged it or not. An African child is born in
an African Only hospital, taken home in an Africans Only bus, lives in an
Africans Only area, and attends Africans Only Schools, if he attends school at
all.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">When he grows up, he can hold Africans
Only jobs, rent a house in Africans Only townships, ride Africans Only trains, and
be stopped at any time of the day or night and be ordered to produce a pass,
failing which he will be arrested and thrown in jail. His life is circumscribed
by racist laws and regulations that cripple his growth, dim his potential, and
stunt his life. This was the reality, and one could deal with it in a myriad of
ways.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I had no epiphany, no singular revelation,
no moment of truth, but a steady accumulation of a thousand slights, a thousand
indignities, a thousand unremembered moments, produced in me an anger, a
rebelliousness, a desire to fight the system that imprisoned my people. There
was no particular day on which I said, From henceforth I will devote myself to
the liberation of my people: instead, I simply found myself doing so, and could
not do otherwise.</span></i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"> (p.95)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Mandela, along with others, had to face, and then shed
what he referred to as <i>“paternalistic British colonialism and the appeal of
being perceived by white as ‘cultured’ and ‘progressive’ and ‘civilized.’ I was
already on my way to being drawn into the black elite that Britain sought to
create in Africa. That is what everyone from the regent (his mentor) to Mr. </i>Sidelsky
(law partner where Mandela articled<i>) had wanted for me. But it was an
illusion. Like Lembede, </i>(South African lawyer, and one of the founders of
the ANC<i>) I came to see the antidote as militant African nationalism.</i> (Op.
Cit. p. 97)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">It may be somewhat beyond the scope of the imagination
of many western readers, especially those whose lives have been founded on
access to privilege, a full education, honourable and remunerative employment, and
all the benefits of access to health care, and especially freedom from any
infringements on his/her human rights, to envisage himself/herself living under
such conditions. Nevertheless, there lingers deep and constricting signs of ‘paternalistic
British colonialism’ and the concomitant ‘reputation’ as ‘cultured’ and ‘progressive’
and ‘civilized’ if and when one integrates oneself into the established power ‘structure’.
And, one does not have to be black, Asian, Middle Eastern, or even European to
confront those ‘preferred patterns’ of social, political, educational and workplace
tolerance and integration.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Any form of “militancy” in the west, is both suspect
and, while formally and legally permitted under free speech statues, is
nevertheless surveilled carefully and critically, by the ‘establishment’.
Indeed, as the “Black Lives Matter” and the Truth and Reconciliation Committee
Recommendations (Canada) have demonstrated, there is deeply rooted and systemic
racism on both sides of the 49<sup>th</sup> parallel. Among directly impacted
men, women and children, there are hundreds, if not thousands of activists who,
every day, dedicated themselves to righting the wrongs and the colonial
vestiges of their/our shared history. Generally, whites, on both sides of the
49<sup>th</sup>, do not either identify, nor actively support these efforts. Indeed,
it is a legitimate discernment to note that governments at all levels,
municipal, provincial/state and federal/national continue to resist a full acknowledgement
of the oppression and repression under which minorities have to live.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">And it is not only the absence of what might be called
‘human rights’ that is oppressive. It is also, and perhaps even more
penetratingly and tragically, the turning away, the eyes that ‘do not see’ and the
‘ears that do not hear’ and the opinions that continue to ‘disparage, demean,
denigrate and dismiss’ people of difference, whether that difference is colour
of skin, accent of language, belief of religion, or choice of lover. We all
have developed, inherited, endorsed, and supported a myriad of body movements,
verbal epithets, social attitudes and superior ‘noses’ (literally and metaphorically)
that both ‘show and tell’ the different ‘others’ how we actually view, consider,
distance and alienate them. In each and every group, even where the divide does
not have a skin colour, or a language accent, or a religious belief, there is a
hierarchy of ‘in’s and out’s’ to which every one either subscribes and fits
within, or refuses and is excluded or withdraws.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Parochialism, defined as a limited or narrow outlook,
narrow-mindedness, may well be the inherited face of nationalism, or its
Siamese twin, as we watch the erection of both physical and mental borders of
exclusion being both funded and applauded around the world. Different forms and
faces and histories of ‘paternalistic imperialism’ not only continue, but seem
to be garnering more and more political support, especially from what has come to
be known as the ‘alt-right’. And ‘freedom fighters’ in the model of Mandela, (and
not in the model of ISIS, Al Qa’da, Al Shabaab, Boko Haram, Ansar al-Sharia, Afghan
Taliban, Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin, Ansar
Bayt Al-Maqdis, Al Nusrah Front, Hamas, Hizballah…et al) but in the model of
Nelson Mandela, and his ANC, with its Youth League, (resisting armed conflict,
until they had to resort to it) seem to be either dispersed or unwilling to
come forward to take ‘political action’ against what is obviously becoming a
tightening noose around the neck of liberal democracies.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Even this weekend, both the New York Times and the
Wall Street Journal are extolling the ‘moderation’ of the likely Republican Party’s
candidate for the Presidency of the United States. “He’s not that bad!” will be
echoed around both the U.S. itself and around the world as leaders everywhere
attempt to brace themselves and their people for a second term of this monster.
As discussed on Morning Joe on MSNBC today, this legitimizing of the trump fascism,
so promised and articulated as not to be either missed, disguised, or denied, a
promise that includes the embrace of tyrants like Putin, Orban, Kim Jung Un, and
others.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Is it respectability and the imprimatur of ‘decorum’
and ‘decency,’ and monikers like ‘cultured and civilized and progressive’ that
those who have the spark and the spine to confront what is clearly a threat to
all human rights, human lives and human security are seized by? Are we sharing
a moment, perhaps even a decade or two or three, <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">when we will have capitulated in our
shared need to reduce global warming and climate change, <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">when we have ceded, permitted and walked
away from inordinate, inexorable and inexcusable divides in income between CEO’s
and ordinary workers, <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">capped ceiling on the labour movement to
organize, <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">permitted the inexcusable banning of books,
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">continued the brutal and cruel deployment of
capital punishment, <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">and the imprisonment of political
prisoners (just this weekend, a women who posted protests against the war in
Ukraine was sentenced to 7 years in prison in Moscow)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">walked away from United Nations Security
Council Resolutions calling for a cease-fire in Gaza,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">refused to fund and to support the Ukrainian
defense of their homeland because ‘trump’ is too cozy with Putin…<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">refused to confront Netanyahu and joint
the law suit charging Israel with ‘genocide’ in Gaza, in the International
Court in the Hague<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Watched banks and financial institutions reap
billions in profits, while ordinary people have to decide between needed
medicines and food or rent<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast" style="mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -18.0pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: Symbol; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%; mso-bidi-font-family: Symbol; mso-fareast-font-family: Symbol;">·<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-feature-settings: normal; font-kerning: auto; font-optical-sizing: auto; font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal; font-variant-alternates: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-position: normal; font-variation-settings: normal; line-height: normal;">
</span></span><!--[endif]--><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">and continued to appropriate, in America,
more funds for the Pentagon, that all other countries combined (for U.S.
defence, rather than for Ukrainian support)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Individuals, the triumphant image of the western, especially
the United States’ ethos, has not only erased any perception of the ‘public
good’ and ‘public interest,’ but in its short-sighted, narcissistic and selfish
opportunism, ‘grab what you can today’…and damn the consequences for the next
generations….is a sure tidal wave of collective self-sabotage.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Are there any freedom fighters who can and do see the
threats we share collectively, around the globe? Are the thought leaders, whose
intellectual lens and pens see and document the connection of the dots in a way
that the spirit of Mandela and his band of freedom fighters can be and will be
found and recruited, funded and engaged in a series of not merely defensive
manoeuvres, but actual offensive initiatives legal, (non-military, but legal, informational,
educational, with both credibility and validity in the arguments proferred)?
Can the tidal wave of threats, all of them at some level co-ordinated and
co-sponsored, by those seeking to overthrow what has been considered an established
world order, for more than three-quarters of a century, be presented with a
determined, courageous and undeterred anti-dote?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">We can talk about principles until the cows come home,
without having to embody their breathe and blood. And we can discuss, and
debate and defer to matters of personal decorum, both legitimately and ethically,
without actually making any change in our personal lives or in the collective
life we share. And when the contest of opposing principles provides the kind of
conflict to which men and women either gravitate to or withdraw from, another silent
ash of the paper on which the principles were written will lie in the ashes of
that group.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Individuals, just like governments and families and organizations
can be and are parochial, imperial, paternalistic and exclusionary. And unless
and until we address, each of us, our own narrowness of attitude, belief,
cognition, dogma or even social status, our organizations and their principles
will founder on our personal myopia.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">And, most, if not all attempts to remove the blinkers,
will find resistance and withdrawal and perhaps even enhanced conflict and division.</span> </p>acorncentreblog.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17885551385913360444noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4849646215010182686.post-67217537965856434122024-01-20T10:11:00.001-05:002024-01-20T10:11:39.515-05:00cell913blog.com #14<p> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">Here is a quote I found recently that begs unpacking…and
as a Friday morning self-challenge, let’s try to unpack it imagining if Mandela
were responding:</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Why are so many problems today perceived
as problems of intolerance, rather than as problems of inequality,
exploitation, or injustice? Why is the proposed remedy tolerance, rather than
emancipation, political struggle, of even armed struggle?</span></i></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">
(Slavoj Zizek)…<i>Mr. Zizek is a Slovenian philosopher, cultural theorist and
public intellectual. He is international director of the Birkbeck Institute for
the Humanities at the University of London, visiting professor at New York University
and senior researcher at the University of Ljubljana’s Department of Philosophy.
In a debate in Toronto in 2019, with Jordan Peterson, in which the topic was Happiness:
Capitalism vs Marxism, Professor Zizek is reported to have uttered these words:
(L)ess hierarchical, more egalitarian social structure would stand to produce
great amounts of (this) auxiliary happiness-runoff.”</i> (wikipedia.org)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">It may seem trite to observe that public debate, at
least in the west, has devolved into a personality litmus test, whereby the political,
intellectual, professional individual’s words are viewed from a lens that is
dominated by questions of hypocrisy, integrity, honesty, consistency,
predictability and the individual’s perceptions of the role of power,
bifurcated into: for personal self-aggrandizement, or for the public good.
Personalization as a perception has supplanted ideas, policies, programs, and
certainly philosophy. We ‘like’ these few men and women because they seem to be
more resonant with ‘how we see the world’; and we dislike these other men and women
because they seem to see the world very differently. Either-or! And either-or
from another perspective that can be depicted as ‘black or white’…there are no
nuances, no alternative, no options, and no doubt in anyone’s mind as to the
righteousness of their views or the heinous contemptibility of both the ‘other’
and his views. The fusion of person and view/attitude has replaced any discernment
that s/he is NOT only his/her position on a specific issue of public interest. “Personalizing”
as a frame for culture, is only one of the several ways of picturing it.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Having dumbed-down, simplified, and effectively
performed a kind of (metaphorical) surgical lobotomy on our public leaders and the
issues about which they are charged with being responsible to address, at a
time when technology has made individual personal opinions, most of them
emerging from the collection of ‘moths’ of persons and opinions that surge
around a light-bulb, instantly accessible in real time, everywhere, and also at
a time when local media has been eviscerated of dollars, staff, offices and even
existence, and international media is struggling by a cash-thread, we are living
in a time of minimal, if not excoriated, intellectual engagement, interest and especially
trust.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Critical thought has been a casualty of both the
social media and the coup of democratic, and small-l liberal governance by
narcissistic, nationalist, tribal despots<span class="MsoCommentReference"><span style="line-height: 107%; mso-ansi-font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 14.0pt;">
funded primarily by right-wing financial oligarchs. Their argument, of course,
would be that they are only protecting the public interest by their patronage, given
their focus on the trickle-down economics of unfettered capitalism. No economic
system, if and when allowed complete free reign, without guardrails, reasonable
regulations and controls, a serious commitment to the welfare of even the ‘least
among us,’ can be justified, tolerated nor can it even support itself. Untethered,
like a green-broke horse, it will ‘run wild’ and self-destruct, as history has
demonstrated frequently. Neither extreme of capitalism nor communism can survive,
nor can the extremes of any polarized issue find the needed oxygen to survive.
What is true in personal psychic biography is also true in municipal, national,
and geopolitics…extremes burn themselves into oblivion. Nevertheless, the damage
they can and do generate can and does last for eternity. And we have a complex,
unnuanced, and seemingly mutually exclusive perception of extremes: we adore
their theatricality, their histrionics, their drama and their risk and we also
wither at their limitless ambition, their relentless absorption and/or consumption
of everyone and everything in their wake. And we oscillate between these
polarities, sometimes consciously, often unconsciously.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span class="MsoCommentReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Now, let’s look more
carefully at the ‘tolerance/intolerance’ ‘diagnosis/disease’ dichotomy!<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span class="MsoCommentReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Elevating personal
relationships to the top of our ‘value totem pole’, as it were, we have
effectively turned a blind eye to the complexities of ideas whether those ideas
have their roots in history, philosophy, religion, economics, sociology or psychology.
In our seemingly obsessive-compulsive rush to worship at the altar of science, and
the proposition that our universe can be reduced to its atomic (both literal and
metaphorical) structure, for the purposes of all ethical, moral, political and intellectual
debate, the very notion of abstractions, ideas, propositions, principles and
especially the multiple, varied and highly complex and nuanced relationships
between various ideas, in various theatres (venues, playing fields, boardrooms,
lecture halls, sanctuaries, stock exchanges, institutions) has become a vestige
of history. We have fallen into our self-obsessed microscopic magnification of ‘our
ego and our person’ as the defining totem in our value system. And we are
unable to assign culpability either to Capitalism or Marxism, or any other ‘ism’
for our ‘fall’. Indeed, we have fallen, like Narcissus, in love with our own
image and then found readily available, vulnerable and accessible targets for
our highly inflamed judgements, based on what once would have been considered
adolescent hormonal outbursts. Ad hominums gone wild! Call it hubris, or call it
anxiety, or call it insouciance, or call it sanctimonious, or call it
sycophantic, or even pre-pubescent, or call it myopic….nevertheless, our social
and cultural perspective is a form of blatant, if unconscious, self-sabotage,
both individually and certainly collectively.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span class="MsoCommentReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">What is behind diagnosing
another as ‘intolerant’ whether the diagnosis comes from a legal perspective,
or a corporate management perspective, or a social justice perspective or a
religious perspective, effectively means that from the perspective of the ‘diagnosing
source’, that person has instantly become ‘persona non grata’…And we all know that
‘intolerance’ has so many faces, iterations, ramifications, and even
reprehensible consequences. Inside each of us, there seems to be a cast of
characters (images) for which/whom we feel an attraction, as well as those for
which/whom we fell a kind of rejection. At the moment when that ‘switch’
becomes conscious, whether we are in direct contact, or virtual contact, with
the other, we are ‘responding’ to that image. We often know little to nothing
about the ‘other’ person; that lack of information, however, is almost irrelevant
to our ‘switch’. And whether we actually put ‘words’ to our response to the
other person, or not, we have, it seems, at least metaphorically if not also
scientifically and biologically, released a chemical, or an electrical, or a
neuronal impulse. Even the notion of this image of ourselves, as involuntarily
responsive, without seeming to engage in any cognitive or willful engagement,
may seem preposterous to some.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span class="MsoCommentReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">However, tolerance/intolerance
as a dichotomy, has to be considered, at least if not first, as a personal
response. And each of us likely has numerous such responses daily, depending on
our circumstances.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span class="MsoCommentReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">From the personal/psychological,
let’s move to the public issue depictions of our universe. Tolerance/intolerance
is a highly effective, worthwhile litmus test for assessing racism, sexism, ageism,
religious bigotry, nationalism and tribalism, in sum, personal identity value!…It
is, however, highly defective, incomplete and inadequate in any legitimate
exploration of public issues that, while embracing the persons charged with decision-making,
nevertheless, call for a perspective that embraces multiple options, perspectives,
ideologies, attitudes and even philosophies. Binary choices, in the final analysis,
may have legitimate application if only after multiple perceptions, discernments,
interpretations and circumlocutions have been explored. Rushing to an ‘either-or’
at the beginning of any question, whether about a person or an idea, is both an
escape from fully embracing the person or issue, as well as an easy way out of
confronting the either. Tip-toeing around both persons and issues, however,
they might be ‘framed’ by whomever, for whatever purpose or motivation, is a
sure-fire approach to avoid the fullness and complexity of the truth, at least
in so far as we are able, (in all aspects of that word) to discern it.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span class="MsoCommentReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Take for example, the
issue of global warming and climate change. A person can be considered to be ‘tolerant’
and thus supportive of measures to combat the crisis. Another person,
considered ‘intolerant’ will be much more favourably disposed to continuing the
production and deployment of fossil fuels, and the resulting increase in emissions
of carbon dioxide, methane and other toxins. And, of course, among both sides
of that and other issues, are ‘allies’ and ‘enemies’.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span class="MsoCommentReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Another binary reductionism,
allies/enemies, only insults both the observer and the subject of the
assessment. Like cardboard cut-outs, we not only reduce our opponents to that
flimsy, incomplete and insulting image; we also reduce ourselves to a
perspective that tolerates, <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>endorses and
engages in more of the same.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<span style="font-size: medium;">Think, for a moment, about Mandela’s obsession to defeat apartheid. He could be categorized as ‘intolerant’ of this oppressive system. He was never, however, intolerant of those who passed the laws, worked as wardens in the prisons, inspected men, women and children in search of their ‘passes’ under the pass law regime, or those who burned down the house his wife and children were living in. Indeed, even those who accused the ANC of being ‘communist’ were treated by Mandela simply with the truth: that some in the ANC had communist affiliations yet the organization itself was never controlled by, dominated by, or dependent on the Communist Party. He did, however, see the benefits of a focus beyond the individual to the public good, the collective, that helped preserve both his perspective and his never-failing hope and optimism that the movement would eventually succeed. He never forgot or ignored, or denied that, in any post-apartheid South Africa, the men who had imposed and sustained the system would still be there and would have to be ‘part of the solution’…In Mandela’s perspective, this was not mere transactionalism; it was respect and honour for the ultimate worth of every human.
</span><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-size: medium;"> </span></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">One of the most frightening aspects of AI, and its
insertion into our political life, according to forensic Artificial
Intelligence scholars, is that political actors will be able to say literally
anything, without worry about having to defend, validate or authenticate it. And
they will then defer to the now infamous “it is fake” defence which has already
showed its indelible ‘face’ on our screens. Similarly, by infecting our public
consciousness, and the concomitant public debates, with ‘a frame of ‘tolerance/intolerance’
those who are responsible (or at least were) for researching the back stories
to the public issues they wish to champion, or oppose, and then arming themselves
with the most relevant and applicable ‘data’ and then attempting to form a
legitimate, if debatable theory that embraces those facts, have been freed from
all of that ‘dirty work’ of the intellectual. Public rhetoric on steroids, that
fires character assassination word-bullets, or burns a political operative over
a specific and heinous failure, whether on the public or private/personal
stage, imitates a scorched-earth battlefield.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Free speech, especially in the American context, has
become a ‘wild west’ of not merely tolerance but actual totem heroism. Hate speech
has been slaughtered, dismembered and buried in the dust-bin of archives along
with shame, responsibility, decency and respect for one’s public and political
and ideational opponents. And along with that funeral, buried in the same columbarium,
is collaboration, co-operation, compromise and shared responsibility,
irrespective of ideology, for the public good. Some will argue that capitalism
has become cancerous, and that may be true. Others will argue that the capacity
for and the will to engage in critical thought has withered on the vine of ‘Facebook,
Twitter (X), tik-tok and other social media platforms. Others will note a
growing chasm between those with post-secondary education and those without, owing
to a divide in thought, perceptions, values and aspiration.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">In the current public discourse around the upcoming
presidential election, the phrase, “I don’t like the man, but I do like his guts,
his courage, and the fact that he gets things done!” is repeated frequently in reference
to the twice-impeached, multiply-indicted, ex-president. “I don’t like his
mouth but I do like what he accomplished!” is another rationalization for their
intent to vote for him again. “God chooses unlikely people to do his work, and God
has chosen him to do His work in our time!” is another of the bandied-about simplifications,
all of them echoes of that ‘either-or,’ ‘black-white,’ reductionism that has
come to characterize the culture. Indeed, this one man, through the most
nefarious, heinous, historically-embedded strategies and tactics of the worst
kind of dissembling and propaganda, under the most repressive regimes in
history, has somehow catapulted his ‘straw-man,’ feet-of-clay’ embodiment of
Eliot’s Hollow Men to the top of the U.S. political-entertainment-fake-manipulative-pseudo-saved
public opinion polls, and as of this date, stands ready and likely to win
another election to the Oval Office.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">And the world shudders at the prospect! As it and we
all should!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Personal, narcissistic unbridled ambition, for
whatever one’s ego demands, has, like trump, become an engraving on the totem
pole of the culture, the ethos, even the theology. Some have written that class
becomes a kind of theology for those whose inheritance includes privilege,
superiority, even supremacy. And such ‘status’ is not and cannot be isolated as
‘white supremacy’. Indeed, we have all witnessed a kind of privileged
superiority (and oppression, repression rejection etc.) in our lives, not all
of it attributable to Caucasian or European, or Catholic of Protestant, Muslim
or Jew, educated or illiterate, wealthy or even poor. Whether it is a human
defence against perceived inadequacy, worthlessness, abandonment, alienation,
separation, sin or evil, or the judgements of others on various projected perceptions,
Eric Berne’s, Games People Play, one of which quarters assigns the epithet, “I’m
not OK you’re not OK” and another “I’m not OK,” your’re OK” are still relevant,
if out of favour and fashion in our vernacular.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">A human fear, distaste, even revulsion at ‘looking
inside’ and finding the ‘gold’ of our deepest wounds, fears, inadequacies,
uncertainties, may well be a part of the ‘soil’ of our individual ‘soul’s
identity and perception. And such fears know no boundaries, of any kind. Our
eagerness to detach and analyse, in some kind of ‘objectivity’ that seems (we
believe) to keep us safe from being ‘uncovered’, offers numerous opportunities
for engagement with others, with some vague notion of the ‘rules of engagement’
in which to feel safe. The private, personal ‘Shadows’ of our lives, however,
continue to remain both mysterious and thereby somewhat frightening. On the
other hand, the tradition of diplo-speak, so highly valued among nations, courtrooms,
lecture halls, science labs, and sadly seminary seminars, offers a kind of
veneer of protection.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">We can, however, continue to honour and to embrace our
‘Mask’ (Persona) without devolving into a personality deconstruction mentality or
culture, while keeping a diligent training program for our critical thinking
capacity. We are all ‘tolerance and intolerant’ to and for ourselves, at
various times, (simultaneously?); and yet we are not and must not be reduced to
either polarity, as a final ‘sentence’. Neither can the issues we face,
including especially the human agents and actors with whom we will engage in
search of solutions and resolutions (the latter may have to precede the former),
become polarized as ‘tolerable or intolerable’ if we seek not merely to survive
but to thrive.<o:p></o:p></span></p>acorncentreblog.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17885551385913360444noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4849646215010182686.post-91715412116278083102024-01-17T10:23:00.002-05:002024-01-17T10:23:31.027-05:00cell913blog.com #13<p> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">Nelson Mandela was one of those black Africans who,
while having the benefits of considerable support in his youth, including the
opportunity to attend and to graduate from college, and to practice law, and
eventually to attain his LLB degree from the University of London,
nevertheless, also lived a life among his people, provided legal counsel for
his people, profoundly understood the oppression of his people, and as fully
engaged in helping his people to gain not only their human rights but also
their respect, dignity and honour, not only from the government but from the
psychic imprisonment of apartheid.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">His perspective, attitude, conviction and determination
did not stop at restoring human rights, in a legal sense. His person embodied
the struggle and the eventual honour of removing the tumor of cancer that had
infected the body politic in South Africa, long before his birth. <br />
He knew every nock and cranny of the geography, history, governance, tribal
traditions, social ethos of his nation and had links and allies throughout Africa
and especially in Great Britain and the United States. He worked diligently,
collegially, collaboratively and courageously to see the ‘good’ in all,
including his enemies, and to listen to those opinions, within the ANC and even
from those outside the organization, not merely for the purpose of exercising a
specific strategy or tactic in the moment, but with a much longer view, for the
‘good of the cause’ and thereby for the long-term life-giving benefit to and for
his people. Also, amid the darkest clouds in his personal as well as his
professional and activist lives, he never lost both the hope and the vision of
the demise of apartheid.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">So much for the obvious, and some might say trite,
eulogy of this one man.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">It is not incidental or irrelevant to note the vast
differences from the cause to which Mandela dedicated his life, to the kind of
political, legal, institutional, economic, academic and cultural ethos of the
contemporary globe. While real time communication brings the latest drone
attack, wherever to our various screens, we are enclosed in what might be
termed an epistemological loop, (not to mention how that loop also encircles
public leaders, news outlets, public consciousness) and limits our openness,
and perhaps even our capacity to connect the dots from the many ‘files’ of
information from which we are being ‘fed’. Like a balkanized and nationalized
piece of geography, we tend to regard borders, separations, alienations, and
the inherent ‘protection’ of our ‘privilege’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>(think white supremacy, removing fascism from Ukraine, eliminating all
terrorist cells, installing barbed wire, floating barrels, and legal border
enforcements) as not only our ‘right’ but our responsibility, in many quarters.
<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">We have stifled not only the free flow of people whose
lives have been so traumatized in their original homes. We have also stifled
the free and respectful flow of ideas needing respectful and honourable contest.
We have burned the notion of tolerance of political ideologies among their most
virulent opponents to the ground, almost without a whimper of push-back. And we
have come to a point where the metaphor of ‘war’ beyond any notion of respect
for the rules of engagement in war and military conflict, now valued only as a
zero-sum conflict. Insertion of the image of Ares (God of War), the spirit of battle,
as a guiding voice and light into our public consciousness, into our public
debate, and clearly into our children and youth as their inheritance, has
become so welcomed as a model for our collective perceptions, that we can hardly
be surprised, at the results. Britannica.com notes:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Ares’ worship was largely in the norther
areas of Greece, and although devoid of the social, moral and theological
associations usual with major deities, his cult had many interesting local
features. ..He represented the distasteful aspects of brutal warfare and slaughter….his
fellow gods and even his parents..were not fond of him. …Human sacrifices were
made to him from the prisoners of war. In addition, nocturnal offering of
dogs-an unusual sacrificial victim, which might indicates a chthonic (infernal)
deity-was made to him.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Neither honourable nor heroic, Ares’ spirit of war is
hardly a ‘crown’ of honour among the many potential images we might like to
emulate. And while there is a panoply of gods and goddesses that emerge from
any scanning of the mythology, Hercules (Heracles) <i>in art and literature…was
represented as an enormously strong man od moderate height, a huge eater and drinker,
very amorous, and generally kindly but with occasional outbursts of brutal rage.
In Italy he was worshipped as a god of merchants and traders, although others
also prayed to him for his characteristic gifts of good luck or rescue from danger.</i>
(Britannica.com)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Attempting, metaphorically, to ‘cast’ an imaginary cast
of voices that seem to be haunting the public stage, one cannot fail to note
the ethereal, ephemeral and also toxic ‘ether’ of Loki, one of several
trickster gods in the mythological pantheon. (Dolos in the Greek world). In Norse
mythology, Loki, a cunning trickster who had the ability to change his shape
and sex….He also appeared as the enemy of the god, entering their banquet uninvited
and demanding their drink. Loki weas bound to a rock (by the entrails of one or
more of his sons, according to some sources), as punishment, thus in many ways
resembling the Greek figures, Prometheus and Tantalus. Also like Prometheus,
Loki is considered a god of fire.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">And, from the backstage, of our ‘theatre,’ comes the
voice of <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Themis<i>, in Greek religion,
personification of justice, goddess of wisdom and good counsel, and the interpreter
of the gods’ will….On Olympus, Themis maintained order and supervised the ceremonial.
She was a giver of oracles…In the lost epic, Cypria, she plans the Trojan War
with Zeus to remedy over-population…The cult of Themis was widespread in
Greece. She was often represented as a woman of sober appearance carrying a pair
of scales.</i> (Britainnica.com)<i><o:p></o:p></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Attempting to imagine those voices that might have
been inspiring, guiding and counseling Mandela, as compared with those whose
voices have a volume and a ubiquity today, we might note that, Ares would not have
been as welcome a voice as Hercules, nor would Loki have been as welcome as
Themis. These references to mythology are not proferred as clinical diagnoses,
merely as hints about the kind of strength of the multiple voices that are currently
extant in the American, especially, and also more broadly in other locations. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Neil Postman wrote a book, as far back as 1985
entitled, Amusing ourselves to Death, in which he argued that entertainment had
become the dominant pursuit of the American culture, with politics, the media
and the culture generally preferring to be entertained as opposed to what he
would have preferred, a deep and rational consideration of the complex issues
then facing the nation. Based largely on the work of Marshall Mcluhan’s The Medium
is the Message, Postman’s insights, while valid and honourable, seem to day
like the layer of distortion quite above that of our plight these days.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">No longer is entertainment on the throne of the culture.
Dolos and her lies, trickery, propaganda, and deception, in the service of absolute
power and control, by men whose personal needs far outstrip any pursuit of the ‘public
good’. And that model of seduction, which just this week demonstrated its
penetration into the psyche of the U.S. in Iowa, with the sliver of Republican
caucus voters ceding 51+% of their vote to the former, twice impeached, and
multiply indicted president. And, while the perceptions of those voters may
well be that ‘he gets things done’ there is a blindness in their perspective
that ignores, or minimizes or avoids confronting not only his dictatorial
methods, but equally if not more importantly, his coziness with world
dictators, wannabe autocrats and institutional anarchists. Think Putin, Erdogan,
Xi Jinping, and more recently Netanyahu. Finally, in a public media broadcast
only this morning, Jennifer Palmeri, former press secretary for Hillary Clinton
and Obama, asked emeritus president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Richard
Hauss, if Netanyahu and Putin were conducting their respective wars in Ukraine and
Gaza respectively with an eye on the presidential election of November 2024, a
mere matter of months away. Hauss not only agreed, for reasons that included a
lessening of pressure on the pursuit of democracy and human rights that would
be welcome for autocratic leaders, but for wider implications including his
conversations in South East Asia, where, he says, in South Korea a prime topic
of conversation is their perception of a growing need for them to develop and
secure nuclear weapons. This anxiety, Hauss notes, comes from a significant concern
about not being able to rely on the United States as an ally and partner in
their tensions with North Korea.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Decades ago, there was a popular epithet in the west, ‘think
globally and act locally’ as an inspiring exhortation to engage in the fight to
control global warming and climate change. Long faded, such epithets are mere
memories today. And in their place, we, as in we all (everywhere) face global
threats and dangers that cannot be contained in metaphors or images of global
warming and climate change. Underneath that legitimate and existential tension
lies the blatant, heinous, manipulation and sabotage of all vestiges of
institutional, democratic and what we once knew as ‘liberal democracy’. Whether
by criminal invasions of legitimate democratic elections through cyber
technology, or by illegitimate invasions of national boundaries (Ukraine, Gaza
and potentially Taiwan for example), or by the implicit and not-so-secret
liaisons between anarchist leaders who seek, and likely need, absolute control,
or by manipulating of constituency boundaries to serve highly parochial and
racially motivated interests in support of the fringes of white supremacy, or
by promoting the pseudo-intellectual deception, as Steve Bannon has done
repeatedly, that we are in a civilizational war in the west against whomever,
be it Muslims, or Arabs, or non-Christians or atheists, or terrorists.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">What was once considered the natural order of things,
at least from a western perspective, included the Vatican, the Pope, the
Christian monotheism and its dogma, injected as a life-giving infusion of how ‘God
wants things to be’, and foisted on the unsuspecting men and women as ‘protecting
them from the hordes of invaders who are coming to take over the country. Effectively
a ‘seige mentality’ that threatens to seduce even more millions, not only in
the U.S. but much farther afield. Dependent on a ‘victim’ psychology, that
believes and holds the conviction almost as a religious mantra, that ‘they’ the
hordes (whoever and however they might be defined, pictured and invested with
imaginative venom) are coming to ‘take your country away’. Dancing in the
imagination that is aroused by much of the public rhetoric are images of a
sexually abused Medusa seeking and taking revenge for her misfortune, in the
spirit of Nemesis, the goddess and personified moral agent of retribution. She
represented the punishments suffered by those who committed injustice, those
who violated the established laws, or those guilty of hubris against the gods.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The voices of Nemesis, Medusa, Ares, Dolos seem to
have found a platform for their chorus in the digital age that stretches around
the world. They have garnered cash from unsuspecting donors like the Koch
brothers and other corporate self-appointed titans, oligarchs, power-brokers,
sycophants all, whose need for inclusion in the circle of power, dominance and ‘royalty’
overrides their public duty and responsibility. As a potential counterpoint to
this choir of nefarious, heinous, anarchist and despotic dissonance, the voices
of Eirene or Irene, the personification of peace in Greek mythology and ancient
religion, seem to be eclipsed not only in melody and rhythm but more
importantly in volume and range. (From theoi.com) <i>‘In classical art the
goddess usually appears in the company of her two sister Horai (plural) bearing
the fruit of the seasons. Statues of the goddess often depict her as a maiden
holding the infant Ploutus (Plutus) (Wealth) in her arms. At Rome, too, where
peace (Pax) was worshipped, she had a magnificent temple which was built by the
emperor Vespasian. The figure of Eirene or Pax occurs only on coins, and she is
there represented as a youthful female holding in her left arm a cornucopia and
in her right hand an olive branch or the staff of Hermes. Sometimes, also she
appears in the act of burning a pile of arms, or carrying corn-ears in her hand
or upon her head.<o:p></o:p></i></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">With the image of ‘war’ as a dominant cultural archetype
for youth exemplified in so many places and ‘theatres’ and the images of ‘being
armed’ as a ‘protective’ lie, (we all know that the NRA has perpetrated one of
the greatest lies every foisted on humanity), and that lie having consumed weak
and desperate mostly men, what hope is there for the voice of Eirene (Pax) or
even Sophrosyne, the personified spirit of moderation to be even engaged, never
mind being listened. (Again from theoi.com) <i>Sophrosyne was the personified
spirit of moderation, self-control, temperance, restraint, and discretion. She
was one of the good spirits to escape Pandora’s box and abandoned mankind in
her flight back to Olympos. Elpis (Hope) is the only good god remaining among
mankind; the others have left and gone to Olympos. Pistis (Trust) a might god
has gone, Sophrosyne (Restraint) has gone from men, and the Karites (Charites,
Graces), my friend, have abandoned the earth. Men’s judicial oaths are no
longer to be trusted, nor does anyone revere the immortal gods; the race of pious
me has perished and men no longer recognize the rules of conduct or acts of
piety</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Are we wondering any longer about whether or not we
are re-enacting ancient voices, stories, myths and are doing so in a primarily
unconscious state?<o:p></o:p></span></p>acorncentreblog.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17885551385913360444noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4849646215010182686.post-36141027674964051422024-01-13T11:04:00.003-05:002024-01-13T11:04:40.981-05:00cell913blog.com #12<p> <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">One of the more intricate
and subtle examples of how perception informs our thoughts, beliefs, and ensuing
behaviour is contained in the way in which ‘images’ are considered, on the one
hand as allegory, and on the other as myth. In the former instance, </span><i style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;">allegory
is a defensive reaction of the rational mind against the full power of the soul’s
irrational personifying propensity. Gods and demons become mere poetic
allusions.….Words, like angels, are powers which have invisible power over us.
They are personal presences which have whole mythologies: genders, genealogies
(etymologies concerning origins and creations), histories, and vogues: and their
own guarding, blaspheming, creating and annihilating effllects. For words are persons.
This aspect of the word transcends their nominalistic definitions and contexts and
evokes in our souls a universal resonance. Without the inherence of soul in
words, speech would not move us, words would not provide forms for carrying our
lives and giving sense to our deaths. It in this person in the word, its
angelic power, that nominalism dreads. Nominalism* is not simply a
philosophical position which would disembowel words, emptying them into
windbags, flatus voci. It is a psychological defense against the psychic component
of the word. The bigness it fears and would reduce refers to the complex nature
of words, which act upon us as complexes and release complexes in us.
Philosophy works wholly with words, so it must bring their complexities into
rational order. This it the job of rational speech whether in logic, theology
or science. In fact, the rational use of words was what the words ‘sanity
originally meant in Latin. Therefore, nominalism refuses to recognize the
person in the word or to personify them; to do so implies insanity….Today we
have lost both the eighteenth century’s poetic capitals and the nineteenth-century’s
oratorical ones, used to imbue with power and substance such jingoes as
Liberty, Progress, and Empire. Our ‘gods’ have become small, save one, and with
the exception of a few last conventions of proper names, titles and places, and
the nonsense capitals of corporation abbreviations (nominalism is capitalism,
letters as units of exchange), the one magnification persisting as a capital
refers to the one person still remaining in a depersonified world: I. Only I
and God, one to one, and some say God is dead.</i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 14pt;"> (James Hillman, Revisioning Psychology,
p. 8, 9,10, 11)</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 78.05pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">For many the assumptions
of these notions are mere exaggerations, on conventional vernacular,
melodramas, far too ‘heady’ and ephemeral, idealistic, and thereby beyond
either legitimacy or necessary deployment, both in thought and in ‘effective
communication.’ Clarity of thought, today, implies and indeed demands, a
literal, empirical and nominal approach squeezing all of the universal essences
out of everything, every concept, every person and every noun, adjective, very
and adverb. Add to this impoverishment of words, through almost universal
compliance, is an imposed ‘morality’ to each word, each piece of behaviour.
Abstractions, universals, and the resonance of those mysteries, as if they were
‘immoral, anti-God, and worse, ‘woke’ because they do not conform to the minimalist,
constricted, repressed and devoid-of-imagination mind set of much of our public
discourse.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 78.05pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Inserted into such a
vernacular (as well as mental, political, academic, legal, medical, religious
languages) as the one remaining ‘capital letter’ the personal I, the ego, has
taken on such an inordinate aura of both importance and responsibility as if to
give literal embodiment to the again literal interpretation of the Biblical
phrase from Genesis !:28:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 78.05pt;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">And God blessed them, and
God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue
it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and
over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. <o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 78.05pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The scorched-earth
erosion of words into both literalism and nominalism linked to the inflation of
the ego as the only poetic force remaining (as dominator of the earth), can be
considered a poverty on two basic and fundamental levels, from a psychological
perspective. Whatever petrifies or terrifies must be deflated into something we
(believe) we can and will manage….or perhaps even psychically and historically
erased from use, and thereby from our consciousness, like death, or demons, or
daimons.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 78.05pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Individual ‘issues’ are
so reduced simply by the surgical and eventual conventional removal of all ‘cognitive
fat’ like what would be integral to the human imagination. Rejecting
anthropomorphism, animism and personification, and preferring ‘personifying’
Hillman continues his tutorial:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 78.05pt;"><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">(Another tradition)…continued
to regard personifying as a necessary mode of understanding the world and of
being in it. It began with the Greeks and Romans, who personified such psychic
powers as Fame, Insolence, Night, Ugliness, Timing, Hope, to name but a few.
Theses were regarded as ‘real daemons to be worshipped and propitiat4ed and no
mere figments of the imagination. And, as is well known, they were actually
worshipped in every Greek city. To mention Athens alone, we find altars and sanctuaries
of Victory, Fortune, Friendship, Forgetfulness, Modesty, Mercy, Oeace and many
more….Many consider this practice as merely animistic, but it was really an act
of ensouling; for there is no question that the personifying of the ancient
Greeks and Romans provided altars for configurations of the soul. When these
are not provided for, when these Gods and daemons are not given their proper
place and recognition, they become diseases- a point Jung made often enough….The
need to provide containers for the many configurations of the soul was formulated
in the third century A.D. by the greatest of all Platonic philosophers, Plotinus.
In a section of his Enneads called appropriately ‘the Problems of the Soul’ we find
this passage:<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 78.05pt;"><b><i><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">I think, therefore, that
those ancient sages, who sought to secure the presence of divine beings by the
erection of shrines and statues, showed insight into the nature of the All;
they perceived that, though this soul is everywhere tractable, its presence will
be secured all the more readily when an appropriate receptable is elaborated, a
place especially capable of receiving some portion or phrase of it, something
reproducing it, or representing it and serving like a mirror to catch an image
of it. </span></i></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">(Hillman, Revisioning Psychology, pps.13-14)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 78.05pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Growing up in a social
and cultural ethos of 1920’s and 30’s in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Hillman was
confronted almost on daily, if not hourly, by exaggerations of various kinds: the
circus, the ‘freaks of nature’ the first Ferris-wheel, the depths of both the
ocean and the underbelly of crime, to which he frequently delved, through his
imagination. Exaggeration, for a young boy may have morphed into a penchant for
the creative imagination, stripped of any sense of ‘linear development’ and
replaced by a kind of episodic perspective.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 78.05pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Such exaggeration, and
more importantly, such deference for and to the creative imagination, in today’s
world of ‘the pursuit of empirical facts’ as the ultimate reality (and then deposed
as if they were dangerous and too liberal), sounds like a hollow knock on a
door behind which there is no one listening. Indeed, literalism, empiricism, and
nominalism reject any and all forms of exaggeration and the poetic mind, while,
ironically, remaining fully and deeply, almost unconsciously, enmeshed in an exclusive,
exaggerated, inflated crowning of those reductionisms.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 78.05pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">The word ‘apartheid’
itself, now resurfacing in the accusation of genocide by Israel, coming from South
Africa, for what they consider crimes in Gaza, cannot be confined to a single
act, a single moment in history, and a single uninflated or unexaggerated box.
By its very personifying, it warrants not only a capital “A” as if it were a
figure of tragic and epic history but a universal revulsion whose legal technicalities
and final judgement in The Hague could take years. Not to be worshipped, as,
for example, Hope, Apartheid is a personalized monster, and carries that force and
power especially for the people of South Africa, all these years after its official
demise.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 78.05pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">What does not carry a
similar potency, however, is the culmination, the convergence, the vortex of
the multiple insidious and potentially existentially threatening forces which,
themselves having been stripped of their poetic mind’s perception, and reduced
to another of the many intractable conundrums that we (the collective of
humanity) attempt to probe, diagnose, experiment to ameliorate and potentially
eliminate. Just as so many of our medical interventions are not ‘cures’ but
perhaps ‘management of symptoms’ for the purpose of reduced discomfort and pain,
so too, many of our interventions -whether political, military, scientific,
philosophic or medical, legal and diplomatic- prefer, if not require but demand,
their own specialists, separated from and elevated above a common and universal,
while using a multivariate analysis and seeking a collaborative initiative.
Caught in the vortex of a language that does not permit personifying of an
issue, or a ‘god’ which could be ‘seen’ as having us by the collective throat
(think denial, obfuscation, hypocrisy, pretention, hubris) and a personal as well
as a universal ‘ego’ that can and will accomplish whatever it ‘sets its mind to’
achieve, a resulting paralysis can be seen as both inevitable and disastrous.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 78.05pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Political and
conventional language in speeches, lectures, books, movies, television dramas
and school curricula, as well as an underlying and heroic ‘ego’ perception that
we are ‘doing the best we can’ read like a recipe book for continuing to expect
the expected. And, how can anyone be either surprised or even hopeful while we
are all swimming in a whirlpool of our own ‘basic’ blind or at least foggy
perception. Seeing clearly, is not only a requisite for weather forecasting,
and for diagnosing a tumor in a breast; seeing clearly is also the capacity and
the willingness to view whatever tumor or storm in and through the lens of a poetic
imaginative and universal lens, the human soul.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 78.05pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Surely, we do not have to
come to the place where the black South Africans were in their political, cultural,
legal, social and economic impoverishment, imprisonment, illegitimate arrests and
slavery before we reach the tipping point in our perception of our condition as
‘suffering inordinately’ the ravages of the abuse of political, economic, ideological,
corporate and even intellectual repression, constriction, willful deception and
the closing in of the legitimate human rights and freedoms and dignity, for which
Mandela and his freedom fighter comrades made such sacrifices.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 78.05pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">‘Lifting our eyes’ as a
phrase incarnating the image of opening our perspective to the whole horizon of
not only the immediate diagnoses and ameliorating palliatives, and seeing both
our historic and evolving and ‘freeing’ perspective not only as bureaucrats and
managers, but also as visionaries, rebels, and prophets. And, like Mandela,
whose leadership rested upon a notion of selflessness, and continuous learning
even from his enemies, we might embrace some of that selflessness and open our
eyes, ears, and especially our minds to imagine what might be!<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 78.05pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">Mired in what is, while
we scurry to swat flies, (metaphorically), will continue to blind us to both
our potential and the seriousness of our ‘boiling pot’….Is it that frog we are
determined to emulate?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 78.05pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 78.05pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 78.05pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;">*Nominalism: (from
merriam webster dictionary) a theory that there are no universal essences in
reality and that the mind can frame no single concept or image corresponding to
any universal or general term; the theory that only individuals and no abstract
entities (such as essences, classes, or propositions) exist.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 78.05pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 78.05pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 78.05pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 14.0pt; line-height: 107%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>acorncentreblog.comhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17885551385913360444noreply@blogger.com0