I think often about the human condition – and maybe too often – and in particular about what it would take to move beyond the current state of affairs that appears to be largely defined by an insatiable desire for personal gratification.
The rule seems to be: the more you have, the more you want – and one can never have enough. Here, we have truly abandoned our animal past, by perverting the need to survive into a grotesque effort to rise to the top of the heap through relentless consumption, sustainable or not – with no regards for the millions amongst us who can do no better than maintain a marginal existence to the point of starvation in the face of drought or famine, or other conditions of adversity that prevent even very moderate levels of prosperity to be in reach of those willing to work hard for it.
I guess we can’t help ourselves – the predator primate within us is still very much in charge, and as such we are human only to the extent that we like to think of ourselves as being able to be more than that, although we really don’t know what that means in terms what is actually achievable should we ever be able to put our minds to it.
This – for me – is one of the most depressing part of being human.
Franz Kafka’s Before the Law is a deliciously ambiguous parable that is part of his 1925 novel The Trial – about a man from the country who goes to the king’s castle in order to gain entry before the Law. (Kafka doesn’t explain what he means by “the Law” – and there is little consensus on this point – but I take it to mean “the Law” as in the authority as to why things must be as they are, and in this context the King would be the ultimate authority here …)
And so he is granted permission to appear for the Law, and is led to a gate that leads to it. While the gate appears to be open, there is a gatekeeper preventing him entry and who tells him that he cannot grant him entry at the moment. The gatekeeper gives him a stool and allows him to sit down by the side of the gate.
There he waits for days, weeks, then months, all the while asking and negotiating with the gatekeeper to let him through. And although the gatekeeper continues to suggest that entry continues to be a possibility – but not just yet – eventually years go by and he ends up waiting his entire life, to no avail, never gaining entry.
Then, when he is about to die, he wonders why he was the only person waiting at this gate seeking entry before the Law. The gatekeeper tells him that, “Here no one else can gain entry, since this entrance was assigned only to you. I’m going now to close this gate”.
Kafka has the unique gift of being able to capture a critical insight into the larger human condition and weave it with great literary skill into an allegory that gives it away – but not quite. As a result, we can’t always be sure of what aspect of our lives he is writing about. Countless interpretations have been provided by those who have studied Kafka’s writings over the years, intrigued by his efforts to challenge us beyond the usual boundaries of our thinking about the world and the role we play within it.
What I believe what he wrote about here is, once again, his own acute experience of being in the world without an apparent reason, and feeling compelled to make the assumption that there has to be an aspect of our existence that provides the justification for it. And while this reason may be staring us directly in the face from the very day that we were brought into this world, how will we ever gain access to it?
And so it appears that – while having evolved towards the capacity of being able to consider a reason for being, as in the question “I want to know why I am here, and for what purpose?” – being allowed to confront this question is no guarantee that you will be able to get it answered even if you are willing to dedicate a lifetime to it! At the same time, this is very much an individual question, in the sense that it is meaningful only for those who feel the need to pursue the answer for it.
It was reported in the news today that Islamist insurgents retreating from Timbuktu set fire to a library containing thousands of priceless historic manuscripts. The Saharan town’s mayor described the incident as a devastating blow to world heritage.
Apparently, al-Qaida-allied fighters on Saturday torched two buildings that held the manuscripts, some of which dated back to the 13th century. Soldiers got there too late to rescue the leather-bound manuscripts that were a unique record of sub-Saharan Africa’s rich medieval history.
This act tells you a lot about fanatical Islamic militants in general, and al-Qaida in particular. Like the book-burning that the psychopath Adolf Hitler presided over, these acts are about seeking out and destroying the recorded history of thoughts and events capable of showing that certain traits of thought have absolutely no substance to them. And in the case of the Nazis that would have included their own warped ideology idealizing “the German way of thinking” – whatever that meant, but likely only that there wouldn’t be any people of Jewish faith involved.
Likewise, al-Qaeda and similarly minded Islamist groups – such as Boko Haram – are on a quest to destroy not just the Western way of life – but any way of life that might undermine its miserable vision of pious totalitarianism that reduces people to a form of religious slavery by terrorizing them with the harshest form of barbaric Shariah law to keep them under their control.
It seems that this execrable brand of Islam seems hell-bent to prevent people in their power from exercising the one thing above anything else that separates us from the animal that we once were: our brains, and the ability to think critically about ourselves, our place in the world and what kind of future we want to create for ourselves.
You would think that – if life is inherent in matter – and evolution drives the process of reaching ever higher levels of organizational complexity within it, there would be a continuation of this process in the collective consciousness that was brought about as a result of it.
And indeed, if you look at the various forms of human organization that we are familiar with today – and consider something as complex as a modern democratic nation state – its successful functioning depends entirely on the organizational capacity of its people to integrate its many socioeconomic, moral-legal, cultural and political dimensions into a stable entity that is able to persist over a long period of time.
In the end, we can see a world order that exemplifies this principle to the extent that individual abilities are maximized for everyone in the interest of the self and the larger good, and that should mean we are no longer a threat to ourselves or the planet we depend on for our continued survival and well-being.
Then, we will be ready for the next phase of cosmic evolution, whatever that may be.
Ruins are the visible symbols and landmarks of our societies and their changes, small pieces of history in suspension. The state of ruin is temporary by nature, the volatile result of the end of an era and the fall of empires. (Sean O’Hagan – The Observer)
America, I love thee dearly, and don’t look now (but maybe you should … ) as your once great and magnificent country has been in serious decline for some time – and not just in Detroit!
Woodward Avenue Presbyterian ChurchMichigan Central StationWaiting hall – Michigan Central StationGeorge W Ferris SchoolMichigan TheatreLee Plaza HotelHighland Park Police StationEast Side Public LibrarySt Christopher House- ex-Public LibraryEast-Methodist-ChurchWilliam Livingstone House – Brush Park
America, these photos are just one example of what is happening to your country ever since you put profit before jobs and people – by selling off your manufacturing capacity for cheap labour abroad; and since you allowed yourself to be robbed absolutely stinking blind by a handful of bandits on Wall Street and that resulted in the the 2008 financial meltdown. And none of these financial bloodsuckers went to jail for this!
Yes, I know, there is a lot more to it than that, including allowing your interests being represented by politicians without any integrity whatsoever and who – from the very day that they are elected to public office – begin pimping their position to raise money for their next election campaign because that is the only way you can be in politics in the land of the free and home of the brave, and – above all – the land of the corporate lobbyist and self-interest serving politicians.
Your once thriving country was the product of many years of good strong government, driven by a common vision and the shared belief in what the American dream should be all about. But that vision seems to now have completely disintegrated, certainly in the political arena and aided and abetted by a sickly obsessive and obscenely partisan media that is putting it’s own shallow agenda of promoting hostility and divisiveness ahead of the common cause. And, no, that intellectual lightweight Glenn Beck and his out-to-lunch Tea Party won’t save you, and neither will that belligerent school yard-bully-in-training, Russ Limbaugh. Nor – for that matter – will Fox News contribute anything positive to the situation so long as it remains creepy Rupert Murdoch’s favourite sewage outlet with the only mission of creating division by polarizing their audience towards the fanatical right.
As you sow, so shall you reap!
All photographs by Yves Marchand and Romain Meffre, from their book Detroit in Ruins, a stunning documentary document what remains of a once-great city and hint at the wider story of post-industrial America.
Salman Taseer – a senior member of the governing Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) – was assassinated by one of his bodyguards angered over the governor’s opposition to blasphemy laws. He had recently angered Islamists by appealing for a Christian woman, sentenced to death for blasphemy, to be pardoned.
Earlier, Sunni Muslim clerics had organized a 24-hour strike across Pakistan to protest against possible changes to blasphemy laws. Rallies were staged in Islamabad, Lahore, Karachi, Peshawar and Quetta after Friday prayers.
The government has distanced itself from a bill to change the law, which carries a mandatory death sentence for anyone who insults Islam. Rights groups say the law is often used to persecute religious minorities.
The legislation returned to the spotlight in November when a Pakistani Christian woman, Asia Bibi, was sentenced to death. Although no-one convicted under the law has been executed, more than 30 accused have been killed by lynch mobs.
Even the Pope got into the act by asking to show mercy on Ms Bibi, who denies insulting the Prophet Muhammad during an argument with other farmhands in a Punjab province village in June 2009.
As I stated earlier – the insanity that is religion, kills – and there are unfortunately no surprises here. Those who are afflicted by the most extreme manifestations of this pathological condition will stop at nothing in order to prevent any opposition to it, and even the mildest forms of it are seen as a threat and must be eradicated.
Don’t look for any rhyme or reason at the bottom of it, as you will only find hate, deep seated hate, so blinding in its intensity that no appeal to a common humanity can get through. This is because these feelings are not truly human; they belong to that part of the brain that is still pure animal, and driven by the most basic of primitive instincts: fear.
Such instincts serve the herd well and keep it alive, for religion requires herd-like behaviour that allows it to be a force to reckoned with, and not because it is made-up of individuals who are themselves strong – no, precisely the opposite! Membership in the herd is based on mindless participation, of unquestioning obedience and servitude. As such, a mob, herd or a posse is a function of strength in numbers only. No individuals need apply: there is no room for people who think for themselves, as that will only serve to destabilize the mob and so are seen as an absolute danger to it. And so they must be hunted down, murdered and destroyed to keep the herd safe.
Sadly, this was Salman Taseer’s fate today – shot down by his own bodyguard, someone who was hired to protect him, and dedicated keep him safe from harm. A traitorous, dishonourable act by any other name – but allegiance and honour are higher human qualities and are meaningless in the stunted mind of any member of the herd.
So indeed, a very, very sad day for humanity today.
I have been amused – somewhat – by the recent encounter between former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, and a frequent writer on atheism, Christopher Hitchens, on the resolution: “Be It Resolved that Religion is a Force for Good in the World.” Part of the Munk Debates, it took placed on Friday, November 26th at Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto.
I heard some of it on CBC the other day, and enough of it to feel comfortable with my view that Blair’s position is a sham, while befitting him as well as any of his previous untenable positions similarly devoid of true substance during his life as a politician, but nevertheless staunchly defended by him. Well, there is his view on the invasion of Iraq – and repeated consistently right up to the present moment, in that the invasion was “absolutely the right thing to do”, etc.
I must admit, not having a particular favorable view of Blair as a result of his political life – slick, if not oily, are the words that come to my mind – I am immediately suspicious of what he says, and why he would say them. Now knowing that his earnings since leaving Downing Street and hitting the lecture circuit are calculated to have topped £12 million, and in 2008 that figure represented more than six times his previous lifetime income, it is clear that his most outstanding skill is to speak convincingly about matters he is absolutely wrong about while claiming them to be absolutely true, and getting lots of money for it. In particular, his always somewhat evangelical speaking style has suited him well – and especially now, when he is trying to claim that religion isn’t the scourge that some of us make it out to be, and that it is a force of good in the world.
Christopher Hitchens does his usual good job of dispelling the metaphysical fog around religion, and exposing it for what it really is: an irrational state of mind too often met with deadly consequences, particularly between those who have competing versions of it. And as history has shown to those who are free to see this for themselves: the human race would be better of without it. This, of course, is a view to which I wholeheartedly subscribe.
Blair, on the other hand, is grasping at straws while trying keep his head above the usual quagmire of religious conundrums. He claims that, while religion has done bad things, such acts – atrocities, etc. – have been committed by non-religious folks as well, and can therefore not be blamed on religion exclusively – (Hitchens doesn’t claim that, BTW) – but that in many instances people have been driven or inspired to do good things because of their religious beliefs. Therefore “Religion is a Force for Good in the World”, according to Blair. Hitchens then goes on to show that people have done good and noble things without being religious – therefore, you can’t be sure that it when good and noble acts are committed they were part of a sense of common humanity that people were tapped into.
So, the bottom line for me would be the fact that while we would experience good acts and bad acts with and without religion, doing away with religion would remove an historically significant source of death and destruction in the world. And as I have claimed a number of times in earlier posts, one might claim that these kinds of actions have nothing to do with the religious beliefs themselves – and that they are misused when wielded as weapons of murder and destruction. No – it is precisely the unsubstantiated and irrational nature of these beliefs that allows them to be used in this manner. When you think you have the creator and eternity on your side – all your actions are justified; you cannot be wrong! Until we shake off the influence of these dangerous beliefs, our species will continue to be murdered for them.
Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. (Steven Weinberg, 1999)
Joseph Ratzinger, RC Pope, anachronism and pretender to some heavenly throne on earth – and who is already a fossil well before his time – claimed today that religion is ‘marginalized’ during his speech in Westminster Hall in the UK. He went on to warn the assembled that there were some people who wanted to see “the voice of religion be silenced”.
I presume I am one of those who would like nothing better than the voice of religion to be silenced, if only long enough for people to come to their senses so they will see through the pitiful sham it represents, be done with all that nauseating pomp and circumstance, and to start believing in themselves as the source of their own spiritually and redemption. This as opposed to being led like sheep down the garden path while having their pockets picked so Joe and all the other fat old farts can live like royalty in their palatial Roman digs.
I guess it is the misappropriation of being the local guardians of all morality that really sticks in my craw with these charlatans, particularly after being exposed for what they have being hiding amongst themselves in terms of the rampant incidents of child molestation committed by them over the last few years. More likely: over the last five hundred years!
Hypocrisy is too mild a term to describe their despicable behaviour – and no greater pretenders were ever thus …
Miep Gies has died at the age of 100 on January 11 in Hoorn, The Netherlands; she was born in 1909 in Vienna as Hermine Santrouschitz before moving to Amsterdam in the early 1920s and marrying Jan Gies in 1941.
Miep Gies helped hide Anne Frank and her family from the Nazis for two years in a secret annex of a house on the Prinsengracht in Amsterdam. She also saved Anne’s diaries from destruction, allowing the world a glimpse into the day-to-day realities of Jews during World War II. Of the numerous people who helped the Frank family avoid deportation for two years from July 1942 to August 1944, Miep Gies was the last one still alive.
Despite the heroic efforts of Gies and the others, a tip off by persons unknown allowed theNazis to raid the Frank’s hiding place on the morning of Aug. 4, 1944 and deport its residents to Auschwitz. Anne Frank, spared immediate death in the Auschwitz gas chambers, died of typhus in the Bergen-Belsen camp just weeks before the end of World War II. She was only 15. Miep Gies recovered Anne’s dairies after the raid and gave them to Otto Frank – Anne’s father and the only member of the Frank family to survive the war — upon his return and he published them in 1947.
Of all the European countries, the Netherlands – together with Poland and Greece – fared the worst as a result of the Holocaust in terms of a decline in their Jewish populations. The Netherlands lost 75% of its Jewish population, with the Nazis deporting more than 105,000 people primarily to Auschwitz en Sobibor between 1940 and 1945, leaving roughly 35,000 Jewish survivors between those who remained hidden during the war and those who managed to find their way back from the death camps after 1945.
In 1994, Gies was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany as well as the Wallenberg Medal by the University of Michigan. The following year, Gies received the Yad Vashem Righteous Among the Nations medal. In 1997, she was knighted in the Order of Orange-Nassau by Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands. The minor planet 99949 Miepgies is named in her honor. She always maintained that while she appreciated the honors, they embarrassed her:
“I am not a hero. I am not a special person. I don’t want attention. I did what any decent person would have done.”
On 30 July 2009, the Austrian Ambassador to the Netherlands, Wolfgang Paul, presented Grand Decoration of Honour for Services to the Republic of Austria to Gies at her home.
Anne Frank House today – museum on the right across from the Westerkerk.
The Diary of Anne Frank is a 1959 film based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name that was partly filmed at the actual building at Prinsengracht 263 in Amsterdam where Anne Frank and her family were hiding until they were betrayed and shipped off to Auschwitz.
As it happens, in the summer of 1958 I was in Amsterdam looking for jazz records at a 2nd hand store on the Prinsengracht when I noticed a crowd of onlookers in front of one of the buildings on the other side of the canal. Someone told me then that they were making a movie about Anne Frank, a Jewish girl who had lived there during the war.
I must admit I have never read the Anne Frank’s Diaries – but one day I will summon up the courage for it, to read them in the context of a time really not all that long ago, dominated by those who thought that she should be hunted down and exterminated because for what she was. And what else could a 15 year old girl be? Someone’s sweet daughter – nothing more and nothing less – capable of innocent hopes and dreams only, until her life was stolen from her through a state-sanctioned act of unimaginable savagery:
Anne Frank was discovered, seized, and deported; she and her mother and sister and millions of others were extinguished in a program calculated to assure the cruellest and most demonically inventive human degradation. The atrocities she endured were ruthlessly and purposefully devised, from indexing by tattoo through systematic starvation to factory-efficient murder. She was designated to be erased from the living, to leave no grave, no sign, no physical trace of any kind.
Her fault—her crime—was having been born a Jew, and as such she was classified among those who had no right to exist: not as a subject people, not as an inferior breed, not even as usable slaves. The military and civilian apparatus of an entire society was organized to obliterate her as a contaminant, in the way of a noxious and repellent insect. Zyklon B, the lethal fumigant poured into the gas chambers, was, pointedly, a roach poison.
Anne Frank escaped gassing. One month before liberation, not yet sixteen, she died of typhus fever, an acute infectious disease carried by lice. (Excerpted from an article by Cynthia Ozick, The New Yorker Magazine, September 28, 1997)
Much has been made of the fact that the Swiss population rejected via a referendum the further propagation of religious symbols across the Swiss landscape in the form of minarets on mosques. Predictably, the politically correct have cried foul and see this as an assault on the freedom to practice a religion.
And – not surprisingly – most of the noise about this will come from the Muslim communities around the world, and which are not exactly known for their tolerance of divergent religious beliefs in their midst. In fact, they are the least likely to make allowances for other religions in their communities – and the irony of this should not be lost on anyone
But let’s be clear: this is less about the freedom of religion, and more about the need by some to brand the landscape with one’s particular flavor of religious superstition through the use of distinctive architecture.
When this has happened, I can’t help but think of how similar this is to what animals do to mark their territory (!) But by erecting one’s uniquely symbolic architecture across the country is one way to assert ownership or control of sorts. This is religion at its very tribal origin – and goes together with all the other outward symbols of religious tribalism, such as hairstyles, beards, turbans and other headgear, e.g., burkas, kippahs, shtreimels, as well as specific rituals, such as genital mutilation, etc.
And so this wasn’t at all about some religious group not being able to practice their faith in public. But by rejecting the public display of their most visible and overt symbolism of their faith across their landscape, the Swiss are in effect only saying that “believe what you want, but don’t mark or otherwise contaminate our landscape with it!”
Lost Planet 