Past Ruminations...

June 12-21, 2002
  

 Diverging paths. I went to the movies today. My nephew and I were originally going to see Lilo & Stich but it was sold out, so we saw Minority Report instead. This science fiction movie is taken from a story by Phillip Dick, the same writer who gave us Do Androids Sleep Electric Sleep? that was made into the seminal sci-fi movie Blade Runner.

Last month I saw George Lucas' new Star Wars production and now I have seen Steven Spielberg's latest effort and there is no comparison. Of course Minority Report does not have the scope or vista of Star Wars, being a more personal and limited movie, but it is so much better.

Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gives Minority Report 4 Stars, while giving Star Wars: Attack of the Clones 2 Starts. I have to agree with him and add that for me, these two movies clearly show the divergence of the careers of the two directors. Spielberg continues to grow and produce outstanding material while Lucas seems stunted and diminished. A key statement in Ebert's review of Minority Report is

Now here is Spielberg using every trick in the book and matching them without seams, so that no matter how he's achieving his effects, the focus is always on the story and the characters.

We can accept the importance of characters and story but what is it really that separates the success of Spielberg and the failure of Lucas, at least in my opinion? I think Lucas is concerned about character and story but he fails at a fundamental level that Ebert catches in his last paragraph. I think he nails the issue.

Religious rituals. Ann Coulter hit the problem right between the eyes when she called the current policy of "random" searching of boarding passengers a "religious ritual" of the cult of liberalism. Al Gore was pulled out of a boarding line and searched recently. That is patently ridiculous. What will we have next, Bush being searched before boarding Air Force One? All the search of Gore accomplished was diminishing the possibility that a true terrorist might be accidentally caught. But we have to do it folks, the liberal inquisition says so. After all, we can't do profiling, that would be politically incorrect, though every policeman will tell you off the record that profiling is the most important tool in looking for generic offenders: drug traffickers, illegal immigrants, and of course terrorists.

The current policy reminds me of searching everyone, including Black and Hispanic people, when there is a warning that the KKK has said it is going to blow up something. It's the blind leading those with no eyes.

Soccer madness. Four or five people are coming over to my house at 7 a.m. tomorrow morning to watch the USA-German quarterfinal World Cup soccer match. Who would'a thunk it. Not I. I have watched every US match of this World Cup. From the highs of leading Portugal 3-0 to being down to Poland 3-1, I watched it all. Beating Mexico 2-0 was a treat, but during all of those moments I have been alone. There was no one to commiserate with, no one to share the joy or the sorrow. Not so tomorrow. For good or ill, ups or downs, I will have others to share it with.

That is what I like about sports, the sharing of the experience with a group of friends. It adds so much to the moment. No, not friends to the sporting moment, the sport to the friends moment. The sporting moment adds a wonderful dimension to the friendships. It will do so again tomorrow.

It's your fault. Paul Hollander in an article titled  The "Banality of Evil" and The Political Culture of Hatred discusses the shift from disinterested institutionalized evil in which people are dispassionate cogs (banal evil) in the killing machine, typified by Nazi Germany, to a climate of radical hatred that is both personal and institutional, typified by Islamicists.

However, when discussing the causes, he identifies for me not just the cause for the current problem between Islamicists and Israel or the West, but the cause of many of today's problems that center around the culture of victimhood, which Islam currently embraces.

Its "root cause" is not poverty but relative deprivation or frustrated expectations and the overpowering but comforting belief that others are responsible for one's misfortune.

"Relative deprivation", "frustrated expectations", and "others are responsible." That to me fits the American slavery reparations movement to a T. It is the politics and philosophy of envy and scape-goating and just like the hatred of Islamicists for all things Jewish and Western, it does not listen to reason, accepts no rational discourse, and makes its demands from a platform of anger and retribution, whether or not that anger is justified and that retribution valid.

It is not hard to see why people resort to these tactics when you consider their essential beliefs. Without a constructive baseline, such as the Christian God, who demands that you forgive to be forgiven, there is nothing left but what I want and feel I deserve, no matter how warped or illogical the premise. The demand for forgiveness brings balance into the culture and social relationships and allows daily activity to continue without destroying everything by an unrelenting pursuit of vengeance and vigilantism. Islam and the reparations cult have no theology of forgiveness, therefore they pursue their destructive goals unabated and unabatable.

It is important to note that nothing is their fault. The fault in the unforgivable other and anything they do to seek redress is also not their fault, but the fault of the unforgivable other.

A Rose by any other name. There was no national TV coverage, no demands for action, no liberal outrage and posturing, but what happened at 2 a.m. yesterday morning in an East Village bar was as much a hate crime as any other so defined. The New York Post reported

Terrified partygoers in an East Village bar watched in horror yesterday as a crazed gunman went on a racially motivated rampage, shooting three people and spraying hostages with gasoline while threatening to burn them alive, cops and witnesses said.

"It's time for all of you crackers to pay - you know what this is about," Steven Johnson, 34, reportedly snarled as he jammed a gun against the head of one woman and ordered her to tie up 16 other hostages.

For 40 minutes, the Brooklyn gunman - armed with three handguns and an 18-inch Samurai sword - taunted his hostages as he sprayed gasoline on them and flicked a barbecue lighter, saying he wanted to see "white people die," a hostage told The Post.

 Johnson was charged with attempted murder and weapons possession.

Why do I bring this up? Well the Salon.com article (no longer found on site) on the same incident plays down his racial outbursts and plays up his "victimhood" (emphasis added).

Witnesses told police that Johnson was "ranting about white people and vowed revenge for thousands of years of suffering." Johnson said that he was having "fun" and that "a real man chooses when he dies," Kelly said.

The New York Post quotes Johnson's racially charged words while Salon quotes an unnamed source (witnesses) opinion about Johnson's words that allows them to slant the coverage and only quotes Johnson's innocuous "fun" and "a real man chooses when he dies" words. In other words they selectively quote Johnson to put the best spin on the incident.

An Australian MSN report (no longer online) was more blunt, "Anti-white rampage harms three in NY."

Mr. Johnson is not being charged with a hate crime. We all know what would have happened if the attacker has been a white man shouting anti-black rhetoric and the bar had been in Harlem. It appears that hate crimes are in the eyes of the beholder which means justice is not based on objective law, but rather on current politically correct opinion. So much for "equal justice under the law", which is another good reason to remove these selectively oppressive laws from the books.

(June 17, 2002)  Ý

Boys.  My nephew (my sister's 12 year old) arrived this morning to stay with me for four weeks. Since my wife left in mid-May to work on a contract in Florida, I have been alone except for the dog and three cats. Now I have an incessant bundle of energy, bursting at the seams to do something new every minute, demanding my attention. It will be interesting to see how much work I am able to get done during his visit.

We never had a boy, only a wonderful daughter. They are quite different, you know. While my daughter would have been considered something of a tomboy, she was still all girl. Nick is all boy, with a mechanical and functional inquisitiveness I have not seen for any extended period of time. I have only been exposed to boys for short duration demands, but this is the first time I will have to deal with one continuously for four weeks. I am very interested to see what will come out of this little adventure.

Weekends. Weekends are the modern reward for making it to Friday, at least if you view the workweek as the modern gulag and something you have to be rescued from.

That is not where weekends started, however. One of the innovations of Mosaic law for the new nation of Israel was the creation of the Sabbath, which was the first weekly day of rest proscribed by any law in the ancient world. Up till then, everyone worked continuously, except for special festivals or individual manumission. A proscribed day of rest was a radical innovation, a 1/7 removal of productive labor from the demand of the taskmaster.

So, our modern weekend owes it genesis from the Judaic Sabbath and the idea that mankind in general, not just special or wealthy individuals, are required to rest from their labor, to give back time to God. Nowadays, God holds very little sway on the weekend, which instead is seen as a reward for working, a time of personal pleasure and leisure. It is true that we usually forget the reason for the season and our period of rest seems no different from anything else we should remember, just another forgotten genesis.

Fridays. The world in which I live views Friday with its own acronym, TGIF (Thank God its Friday), since the general view is that work is something they can't wait to get away from so they can do their real life, which is the pursuit of pleasurable experiences.

We have all sorts of these little phrases, some brought to us by advertising, that reinforce the apparent drudgery of work. McDonald's came up with one that I can't get out of my head and it often attempts to justify a period of inactivity and self indulgence to me, "You deserve a break today." You have been working so hard, you deserve a break; not you could use a break, or a break might re-energize your efforts, but you deserve a break. You are owed it. It is your right.

It is as if no one enjoys their work and everyone thinks that work is an unnatural demand on our lives that must, for practical reasons, be gotten through. The great goal of technology and social advancement is to reduce the demands of the workweek, to create more time for leisure, with the ultimate goal of leisure becoming life.

That goal is completely foreign to my Christian foundations. Genesis begins with "By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food..." Genesis 3:19. As we look at the Gospels, there is a very difficult parable told by Jesus in Luke 17: 7-10.

"Suppose one of you had a servant plowing or looking after the sheep. Would he say to the servant when he comes in from the field, 'Come along now and sit down to eat'? Would he not rather say, 'Prepare my supper, get yourself ready and wait on me while I eat and drink; after that you may eat and drink'? Would he thank the servant because he did what he was told to do? So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, 'We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty.' "

Without arguing over the master and servant part, lets instead focus on the fact that work is assumed to be the duty of life, while our culture looks at it as the plague of life. As a result, there is a severe disconnect between the foundational view of my faith and what my culture aspires to. There is no nobility of work any more in our culture, no duty, or if there is duty, duty is seen as a dirty, lifeless word, not a sublime virtue to be aspired to. Work is drudgery to be avoided at all costs.

I guess the fundamental question is are we better people when pleasure, not work, guides our existence?

Displaced worship. There is in the heart of man a desire for the sublime. Traditionally this idea, nurtured by poets, involves the feelings engendered by being in the presence of the divine. Jamie Glazov, in his recent column in FrontPage Magazine comments

It brings to mind the sublime in the Western tradition, a notion which has been nurtured by poets such as Percy B. Shelley, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth. The sublime deals with the inspiration of awe and terror that humans experience in the presence of the Divine. 

Theologians argue that this is part of the "God-sized" hole in the heart of man and when God is denied it will find something to act as a substitute, since we by nature seek the sublime.

Glazov's particular target is the leftist professor of sociology bell hooks (nee Gloria Jean Watkins--lack of capitalization an on purpose affectation). He believes that leftists substitute their ideological icons for God in pursuit of the sublime and have done so with hooks.

I always had the suspicion that my Leftist colleagues, like the Nazis, engendered a pathological illness in themselves because they craved the reality of the sublime but simultaneously had to reject the natural human desire to worship God. Belief in God, after all, violated their central philosophy that they were humanity’s redeemers. Thus, desperately needing to submerge their personalities into something greater than themselves, they ended up disfiguring the sublime into a mutated process in which they felt awe and terror in the presence of a hooks or a Chomsky - instead of in the presence of the Divine.

hooks is Brown Visiting Scholar-in-Residence of Feminist Studies at Southwestern University, where she gave the recent commencement address that is raison d'être of Glazov's article. She is described in glowing terms by her admirers. Typical is the Southwestern University web site (link removed) which says the following.

A true public intellectual of our time, bell hooks is one of the most prolific cultural workers active today.

Followers of hooks give her credit for speaking her mind, staying true to her opinions, and for just being critical. Her college appearances are usually packed with an adoring crowd of fellow travelers.

One might legitimately question if bell wants to be worshipped. In an interesting essay taken from the Southwestern website hooks said (link removed)

Last week, our discussions of diversity were interesting, illuminating and at times magical. In the core group, after outrageous bursts of giddiness, we agreed on the profound insight that humor is needed as we build community, as we create revolution. (Those of you who missed our President Jake Schrum kneeling at the feminist feet of yours truly in abject adoration missed the opportunity to see the humorous disruption of imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy. Ah, if only the men of the world would follow his example and fall on their knees!)

While this can be seen as somewhat tongue-in-cheek, it does reveal a certain joy at being worshipped, even euphemistically.

While accepting Glasov's critique of the liberal's worship of their icons, I don't think it is unique or for that matter a province of atheists/agnostics (some would argue there is no such thing as a true atheist). The Bible is full of examples of those who believe in God yet accept worship, in a sense ascending to the throne for their moment in the sun.

What may be more important, but not expressed, is that those who seek and receive this worship become deluded that in a real sense that they are gods, above the rest of us in important, almost divine ways. They soon become enamored of their own opinions, speaking ex cathedra in encyclicals that cannot be challenge. bell hook's whole address at the Southwestern commencement can be seen in this light. It was a pronouncement from on high, not an invitation to dialog. This is not surprising since that is the primary currency of the radical left, self-justified ex cathedra pronouncements. I said it, so it must be true. Don't confuse me with the facts, since they are your facts, not mine.

It appears hooks was booed during her speech. I guess there were heretics in the audience. Thank goodness she doesn't have the real prerogatives of godhood and can't send plagues and calamities against the unbelievers. This would all be funny if it weren't so sad.

Small things. Most relationships in life are sustained by small things. While we often try to do the big things, to make grandiose statements of significant caring, it is the little acts of kindness and self giving that build the foundation and solidify the structure of our personal connections.

When separation occurs, it is not the big things that we really miss. Instead we notice the growing absence of all those minor graces that no longer enrich our day-to-day existence. The old aphorism that absence makes the heart grow fonder is probably related to the ache that accompanies this hole in the fabric of our life as those things we had come to take for granted are no longer there.

This fact has been brought home to me this week. My wife has been in Florida working since May 17 and this week the absence seems to be most acute. My wife is something of an introvert and tends not to do the big things, though her surprise 40th birthday party was a humdinger. She is, however, a fount of little niceties, a purveyor of small pleasures.