An element of the divine comedy

I’m currently reading up on a book called “Dystopian Fiction East and West: Universe of terror and trial” which I’m really enjoying at the moment to be honest. The chapter I’m on starts by detailing the contents of Plato’s “Republic” and the vision of a perfect society where “law and reason” reign and the poets who live by “pleasure and pain” are exiled from the fabled land, it likewise mentions a similiar work by Thomas More written in the 1500’s detailing the island of “Utopia” in which similiar things happen. The author then goes on to mention how just as Plato attempted to dispel the concept of tragic from the Republic so did the Soviet Union in it’s conception and indeed the removal of such things from it’s future.

The author then goes on to comment on how Marxism simply tried to simply suppress the tragic as there was no room for it amongst the pride of scientific principles and that Christianity (she mentions the book of Job and his plea for justice) puts it’s hope amongst the greater narrative of the divine comedy. The Christian scheme of resurrection and redemption which Marx critiqued for enabling religion to function as the “Opiate of the Masses”. Marxism saw itself as a mechanism, a means to fulfill the gradual (‘evolutionary’ even) enlightenment of all people into a leisurely, classless and just society, Christianity on other hand follows the line of entropy as it dances along the arm of a clock and the process of time.. the indication that things get worse as time goes on, not better. However both have this eschatalogical or view of how things will end despite Marxisms apparent secularism. However they show the massive divergence in their view of things.. in this instance Marxism is utopian in looking towards what is required for a brighter future, dystopia offers a tragic warning of how things will become in the current situation, however both utopian and dystopian literature ‘attempt’ to point to something better or an awareness which tries to comment on the current time with a view which is echatalogical in nature.

The reason I’m reading this is because I’m hopefully going to be examining life under Burmese oppression for my dissertation. Burma is the worlds second most heavily censored country in the world and boasts one of the largest armies in Eastern Asia.. and yet has no enemies, the army is at war with the civilian population of the country. The Generals in charge of the military junta are politically unschooled and fear any challenge to their power or more expressly their ideology.. so any divergence or hint of anything going in the direction of a pluralistic or democratic way of life between the components of society is fiercly oppressed. I’ve already been looking at the U.S.S.R and it’s approach to things.. and how that could be compared to Burma’s ‘modus operandi’ but I’m also now examining dystopian literature to see what that has to say on the topic..

But to be honest I’m really fascinated by the whole concept of the tragic and this referral to the Christian worldview. Even the crucifixion of the Christ is an element in the tragic worldview of Christians, it really is at the core of what we believe. Pilate asked “What is truth?” and didn’t bother to stick around, he instead trusted or if anything relented to the justice of Rome and I guess that is compliant with the Soviet’s view as it was with the tower of Babel. The Christian concept of joy is intrinsically linked with that of hope.. I think it was in some movie because I don’t remember hearing this when I read the original myth but in the tale of Pandora, after she opened the box and unleashed evil and suffering on the world at the bottom of the box was hope. It isn’t something immediate and it’s out of our hands but we hope that God will rescue and redeem this existence.

This book then goes on to talk about the divergence of purely tragic literature like Oedipus and King Lear (or much of Shakespeares work) with dystopian literature.. in the tragic.. the individual becomes aware of his place in ‘existence’ and the absurd nature of that existence and yet by his sacrifice or often just his or her awareness we see a divergence from the way of the world… an elusive ‘another world’ just beyond the horizon, in dystopia the main character is often purely a victim. I think this touches on something I read by a guy called G.K  Chesterton, he said something like “there are two types of death.. the martyr and the suicide.. one dies to this world.. the other is crushed by the world” (or something like that).

I remember watching an interview with a Journalist and a Burmese dissident, the old guy was on a breathalator or something but wanted to meet the journalist to tell him about what was going on he then said something like “This time when they come to pick me up after you leave I won’t come back, not this time I know that.” and even though he knew that and for all we know was taken away he believed in something, what happened to that guy was tragic no doubt.. but he was witness at the same time to the hope of a deliverance.. admittedly a literal deliverance of Burma.. but I think this struggle is written into us as human beings it’s right there at our core. Deliver us from this absurd existence, this way of the world, this way of ourselves. I think that is starkly different to something like.. I dunno the message given in something like Taxi Driver.. however I think that film says a lot of interesting things about human nature.

I really like this book..

Thin Places

Aurora Borealis

I just finished reading a book about a Norweigan who in struggling to figure out meaning in his life took to making lists.. to figure out what he had.. and what he wanted.

I thought it was stupid but a part of me started wanting to make a list of places I would like to see before I die. I quite like the idea of travelling, wanderering.. just taking stuff in.. most of the travelling I’ve done in the past been fairly loud with crazy times with strangers in hostels. I have a clue what this life is about.. but I quite enjoy being by myself.. and being outside I dunno these moments seem more significant than the others. I read a book about the first generation of Christian Celtic monks in England who travelled and identified places like this.. holy places as ‘thin places’ the idea that the border between the seen and the unseen was thinner in that place. It was subjective.. not based on a worship of the place itself but of the objective, expansive presence of God. It could be a room, a seat on the bus, a wood or a grave.. God isn’t actually in that place but that place opens your heart to God.. and God’s spirit rests within those who accept him. The Jews before they built the temples had a tabernacle or tent which moved with the people in exodus, and after the crucifixion of the Christ it’s said that God’s spirit became tabernacled amongst the people instead caught up in a temple..

I heard about this guy called Leonard Knight. I really really would love to meet him some day, theres something else about him.. he made Salvation Mountain which is literally a pile of cement and paint made from donations which he’s used to tell people about the love of God, it’s in the middle of the desert in California but people are drawn to it from all over. It’s all he does really as far as I know, just paint and build non-stop and I think if anywhere is a thin-place it’s, for me atleast.. the concept of Salvation Mountain and Leonard Knight.. I read a story about his life somewhere, it’s pretty crazy.. but just makes me realise what a massive world we live in.

Leonard Knight

I’ve just gone off on one again but, for me atleast there seems a significance in the idea of thin places, of being reminded that God is with us, that to a measure we reflect him and that this world can remind us of that.. whether it’s in something beautiful or even in something horrible that can remind us of our need for God. I never really woke up the idea of Christianity till I had read Nietzsche and.. the world left behind by Nietzsche for me just wasn’t worth living in.. all I could say after reading about Nietzsche was somehow he didn’t live quite by his convictions, and then I read Satre and I don’t think he did either.. which just made me figure I haven’t got these moral hangups by some cruel joke; Not even that.. I just got sick of being so bloody melancholy, half happy, half sad.. and such a consistently apathetic cynic. Even when the world does try to toughen me up I know I got a heart that bleeds, thats flesh.. that might not be pretty but it’s real.

Sometimes I’ll look at the world and I’ll remember all of a sudden it’s real.

The Ordinary Radicals Documentary

 

The Ordinary Radicals Documentary

So there was this guy from Iceland..

Sigur Ros

And he.. met sigur ros! He runs a coffee shop and somehow for some reason some of them walked in; they got talking and he told them he uses their music in worship settings and they were like, “ok..” so he asked if they would play for him and a few others in a small setting as they worship.. and they were like…. you know what.. that sounds pretty cool.. but then the icelandic guy was in england somehow even though he had no money, talking to me in southampton.. and it was all little bizarre. I mean, I think he literally had no money, I’m not sure what was going on with the coffee shop in that situation.

Recently though, I realise that I find myself in the position that… I have this faith… but naturally I tend to avoid.. structure or anything.. and I find it hard to connect with ‘big stuff’ as a result. Thats ok with me, I don’t know if thats ok with the God or not, but I just realised when I met a bunch of crazies this last weekend that.. somewhere down the line I got involved in something absolutely nuts.. which is all about hanging out with people.. and hanging out with God and.. we call that love.. and we like.. try and fix broken stuff because God fixed us and so we’re part of the kingdom of God.. which is a ‘way’.. or something which is more a series of actions and responses rather than a place… because the place God is in.. is in.. us? If we want him that is, even if all we want is a bit more love in our lives.. thats good too.

I also met these guys called the triibe. The triibe, beat things really hard as a way of talking to God.. they shout random stuff too, and it sounds pretty good actually. It made me think that to connect with God we really, really just have to put ourselves in this place where we forget about anything else but God and how he relates to us and the peoples/places we know.. and it’s like “God I’m here! Can we hang out?” and these guys who make up this triibe are talking to marxist professors in america now about God and hanging out with him which is nuts.

Northwood HQ

Today though I found out my friend Martin the out of work priest from london is going to court in two day’s time for protesting outside a military base over Iraq and Afghanistan awhile back and then refusing to pay fines.. nothing major bad would happen.. he says like, prison for a bit week or so but (that would sound pretty bad to me)… he really thought it important and I guess if you think somethings important you pay the price associated with it.. he’s pretty deep and.. pretty challenging in an ordinary sort of way…

So.. that was my weekend.. and it just all seems a little bit bizarre in retrospect. In a good way though I think..

I don’t do anything like these crazy people I’ve met but, that’s ok because I don’t think these people are doing anything but trying to find an authentic expression of who they are, how they relate to the world, to people and to God and the situations we sometimes find ourselves in. It just makes me think what a crazy world we’re part of sometimes.

Defining

I’ve been thinking quite a lot recently inbetween commuting and what ever else I tend to get upto. Mostly about how someone starts or struggles with grasping.. what it means to be human? to be alive? I’ve had the situation stuck in my head of a human from birth brought up in a completely neutral or unimpressionable environment.. for some reason in the wild. Of course the more I thought about it the more I realised how stupid it sounds, no one starts with a ‘clean slate’ and I do not think their is a default position for this hypothetical exemplar human. From birth we all have bias or ‘pre-judgements’ (prejudice) formed by our character as social beings.. as creatures which interpret meaning and in posession of a supremely unique spark which puts a spin on a situation which is a sum of a whole number of things I have no real knowledge of.

A small part of me still and I think perhaps increasingly less so thinks that the soul or the human can be reasoned I doubt it more so now because to be honest I do not think there ever has been a single truly reasonable person who ever existed.. I could be wrong of course, but this is just a thought regardless. Our hearts bend towards things, like plants to sunlight as we grow.. we find things to grow towards.. the one thing I think we cannot do is to stop ourselves reaching out or indeed to instead shrink away from everything or anything.. what makes us different from plants.. or indeed other living things I think.. is that we have a choice in that which we grow towards and that sometimes this choice is admittedly clearer for some than others. We feed on it, define ourselves by it and indeed take meaning from it. The problem I find then is this notion of “unbearable lightness” which some might be aware of. In it’s original context the phrase I think is touching on liberation of a sorts.. that what we do has no real consequence we can make no “dent” in the fabric of truly objective being, leaving no real mark to say we were here.. we are nothing and there is nothing.. you can define if you wish.. as you must but there ‘is’ nothing.. so do as you will and be free. What I query with this is what I have discovered in my own life and this is that I do not believe we as individuals belong to ourselves, we need others.. for some this might be so that they might simply master others.. and for others to serve, often with most of us it is the mixture of the two. What I question is the individualism of the “unbearable lightness”, I have a quote in my mind.. it reads “Happiness is only real when shared.” and it comes from.. somewhere within the pages of doctor zhivago or somesuch I think. This I think has some truth.. not a private truth but something which affects all of us. I could have all the money in the world, but if I was the only man in the world I would truly be a pauper.. and to dehumanise or distance one human to another I think is fundamentally harmful to all of us and leaves us like a rich lonely man that i mentioned. That perhaps might seem obvious to some. I would not think it a far stretch then to say “Ok, group truth.. you could possibly maybe be unbearably light still as a collective.. with you’re ‘group story’ but does this make a dent in being? Does make lightness heaviness?”.

I would first off say that nothing on earth will make your being heavy.. because it is nothing but a reflection of you I think in short.. or rather it might not.. but that is all you see it to be, or you might realise it for the nihilistic void that it is. For me atleast, I do not think this a private realisation but something people could share.. I genuinely believe in a bracketing of my being.. or this universe and it’s being. I thought about it at work because.. well just like any code on a website’s page.. it only means anything when it’s in the right document or bracketed in the correct fashion. Otherwise it doesn’t compute, your page breaks and design fails. I thought about it too when i designed a 3-d game for a uni project and I pulled together page upon page of scripting and design to produce a world of limited capacity.. but with functionality which followed into form.

I hope then it is no surprise then to say that for me it is not hard to find God somewhere amidst this, not just a little personal god but one beyond the environment I find myself in. I would believe him too far away and out of my reach to know of should he not have touched me. God ceased long ago to be a fanciful notion and as Kierkagaard puts it “The I-it becomes the I-thou”. The Jews claimed they worshipped the God of “Heaven” not the god of trees, money, mountains or seas but something above, God called himself the Alpha and Omega, and I think then.. in light of that to live in God’s ‘channel’ is a means to break the unbearable lightness of being. I think this is.. because we are not rational creatures.. we are social creatures.. ‘herd’ creatures.. and we need our ‘group stories’ but for it to really matter we need a group story which the entire universe fits into. I think that is heaven when people live in harmony with the environment they find themselves in and love one another as God loved them and of course to see God as he/she truly is.

The next thing for me then is the realisation that despite what I “think” I know also how I feel… here is where musing is lost.. because I feel in who I am I do not want entirely to live in “harmony” entirely, sex, drugs and rock n roll still have a big appeal, I secretly want to give the finger to society, to university, to faces I know and just disappear off somewhere and gorge myself on what life has to offer me in terms of pleasure and pain. I think I realise now though that there are two different types of… ’satisfaction’, Nietzsche provided these as architypes to his work and I will present them, dionisius and apollo. I can drink alcohol till I’m sick.. and I have, I can sleep around till it becomes nothing to me.. and I can smoke all the pot I want.. but I know I’ll always want more, I’ll never “have my fill” I might get old, but I’d want my youth back just to do it all over again.. it always has it’s hangovers too. I realise too that if I have unprotected sex with a girl theres a real chance another human could come into existence from that and in that sense part of me then has to question it’s function, I could turn it into something else.. but try as I might I can’t get that out of my head for some reason. The other side is in that too, to live accordingly to the common means the ‘deep way’, the ‘will of God’ I think is obviously one of apparent self sacrifice.. but from what I know of it, it can do what the other pleasure cannot.. it can fill me up, I can say with deeds that I do not need to enter into them more than what is my fill. We can live without sex I believe but we can’t live without love, or hope, or friendship.. or faith (whever you call yourself religious or not)

Sex I think is a good example though, you can easily pay for sex.. you can easily get sex without paying that much either if you play your cards right.. but that person doesn’t want you.. they only want what you do or vice versa. People spend so much time dolling themselves up like peacocks.. it gets to a point when you think one lot of dressed up flesh is the same as any other as long as you don’t look her in the face. The other extreme is marriage, sex in the setting to the ideal isn’t the basis for the relationship but its an act which takes two seperate people and brings them closer, it also.. if done ‘naturally’ can result in life.. so rather than dehumanising.. you’re perhaps.. pro-humanising? I know people are going to disagree with what was just said to a whole range of degree’s.. but thats how I feel and I’m not entirely ignorant on the topic concerned. I do think though that this, in being what I think is a very real reality beyond my own perception.. and me being a meaning based and placing creature needs a group story to share, what I need is to transcend the concept of the I and turn it into the you. Instead of being locked in my own head and looking at the world a some dirty glass I need to know the people around me are real. My philosophy teacher’s classroom is one I’d never forget, he literally covered the walls in the quotes of different philosophers and thinkers aswell as all this bizarre art and strange poster designs. One quote among a few stuck with me though and it’s one by Iris Murdoch which said “Love is believing another person can be real.” God I’ve read is love and I think if that is true I can connect with the people around me and the world around me properly.. not dysfunctionally.. when I was in India I was taught the Hindi word ‘namaste’ which meant “I recognise the prescence of the holy one within you” I think thats what love is.. I think we define ourselves in God and other people.. or the two might be the same thing Jesus said “whatever you do the for the least of these you do for me” and “when I was hungry you fed me, when I was naked you clothed me”. I think the more we give ourselves to the shared story, the more we see what it’s all really about.

Umm.. so yeah… um.. bye? I don’t know if what I said is exactly fashionable or not so think what you will.

Crypto-fascist

Is.. according to the urban dictionary a word to describe a ‘hidden supporter’ of fascism. Fascism in turn is something which it seem’s not a lot of people can agree on.. but is what for simplicity’s sake could be called an authoritarian form of goverment (among other things). I knew a guy once who called himself a national socialist, he was pretty hard to get on with.. but I then later found that Hitler’s Nazi Party in Germany had considered itself a national socialist party.

 The thing I considered strange then was I always thought Marxism and Fascism two quite distinct.. and opposed ideologies. How wrong I was! (I’m going somewhere with this, honest) Marxism is a system intended to deliver ‘justice’ to the working classes. The belief that the needs of society are put over the needs of the individual, and the individuals desire for ‘capital’ of his or her own. It is also many other things but this is what I wanted to say on it.

National Socialism by contrast then looks at ‘class’ and broadens it to the ‘nation’. The delivery of ‘justice’ and rights for those of the nation group. I found a quote by Himmler which best captures the attitude.

 ”Whether nations live in prosperity or starve to death like cattle interests me only in so far as we need then as slaves to our culture… whether ten thousand Russian fenales fall down from exhaustion while digging an anti-tank ditch interests me only in so far as an anti-tank ditch for Germany is finished.”

 The question I want to then pose to anyone who might be reading this is to think on some things regarding Marxism and National Socalism before continuing.

-Marxism if concerned for a concept of Justice for the oppressed working classes requires a preconcieved concept of justice. Where might this come from?

-National Socialism likewise requires a concept of justice, however this concept appears to differ in some sense. How so?

-Both definitions of justice seem to be redefined or atleast restricted to either a nation group or a class and suggest a pre-existing desire to change things.

-Both these institutions are by a result of their thinking atheistic (though some would argue this isn’t a given)

So.. I guess the thing is here is.. why should anyone concern themselves about justice unless it concerns the self.. or unless they are moved by some moral obligation? Without a infinite point of reference (something like God) how are finite expressions (like measures of justice, terror, mercy etc.) given any lasting value? If it is we then who define these from the moment when we reject God it is quickly visible why National Socialism is viewed as an authoritarian regime.. why should an individual like Hitler define what is right and wrong for a nation when his value is of insignificance anyway? and more so, his view is just as insignificant as anyone elses!

Now the fascism and the thinking behind Hitlers third reich has always been tied together with Friedrich Nietziech and his work concerning the concept of ‘The Will to Power’ . In the absence of God, we must become God’s ourselves and define our own existence, to control others and to rise over notions like pity, mercy or justice because such things no longer exist.. or did not exist ever. In short.. I’m looking out for me and me only. Yet we all feel the pull to our own ‘tribe’ be it our family or subculture (and boffins say this is something to do with our evolutionary heritage). So it’s “me and my tribe are all that matter”.

 Ever heard someone say do something for your country only to have someone reply what’s my country ever done for me? (Or words to that effect?) I think it’s the same thing. Why care about stuff which doesn’t concern you? Most politicians will be dead by the time Global Warming does it’s worst.. and I quite like my standard of living.. why should they care.. why should I? I’m only interested in now and me, me me. Damn the ‘future generations’ who gives a monkeys?

The link in with today is Nietzsche although not so often talked about now is one of the first “Post-Enlightenment” thinkers. One of the first or even ‘pre-’post-modernists. It might not be popular.. or some might not care but it isn’t a massive streach to see how the ethics which make something like Hitler so bad are so evident in our own lives.. and our own society today. Hitler simply defined what was right and good for Nazi Germany aswell as all that was bad and wrong for it too. Don’t we belong to tribes or groups which make these same claims in our ’search for meaning’. Hitler just seems bad because his notion of Good and Bad were just so different to what we now consider ‘normal’. So unless your in my tribe.. why talk to me of justice? You don’t know what it means!

But.. what if there really was truth, justice and other such things? What if there was a true truth wether we liked it or not? That we could share an understanding to then communicate and act on our communal existence beyond the confines of any one persons definitions?

Just some thoughts.. I just don’t how any of this is possible without something like God. Without him or whatever you think of him as, what is actually the point? We’re already dead we just don’t realise it yet.

 But I think with Jesus you know he showed us a way and lived like there was meaning in his life. The only person who used those shared values and didn’t say “No! Me and my tribe only” but..

“I command you to love each other the same way that I love you. And here is how to measure it- the greatest love is shown when people lay down their lives for their friends. You are my friends if you obey me. I no longer call you servants, because a master doesn’t confide in his servants. Now you are my friends, since I have told you everything the father told me. You didn’t choose me. I choose you. I appointed you to go and produce fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask for, using my name. I command you to love each other”