A crowd gathers. Bells ring. Bright colors flash everywhere, fast paced marketeers tell you that things are looking good for the future. People tell you that you can be happy, and that your future can be brighter than your past. The doldrums of everyday living can be alleviated. For a small price, you can buy something, an idea, a plan, to make things better for you and your loved ones. In conjunction with this scene, strange spectacles pepper the place. Oddities, objects, stories, sensations, dramas, tragedies – you can see objects associated with celebrities, you can even buy them for towering sums. You are surrounded by promises that can be fulfilled in return for the contents of your wallet, and stories that tell you how and why that is so. Over all this, there are beautiful looming words. Fulfillment. Freedom. Solidarity. Holiness. These are the expressed purpose of the hubbub.
Sound like a flea market? An infomercial? Any single hour of television watching? The weirder parts of a county fair? What about a day spent in the Vatican in 1490? You got it.
I often hear about the concerns of people for the well being of Christianity. From people like Bob, and Preemptive Karma. They ask about the state of the church in modernity. About how the church has capitulated to contemporary commercialism, become too like “the world,” and lost its spiritual foundations. It is true that today, with the rise of Corporate industry and media to a new level, the church has seen a growth of materialism within its ranks. But I do not believe this to be a new phenomenon. In fact, Christianity is in many ways the founding source of this tirade of commercialism. In the age of indulgences which Martin Luther rebelled against, a saint’s toes could be seen on display, or the foreskin of Christ, or any number of celebrity worship icons and relics. The difference, we tell ourselves, is that today... well... there isn’t much difference, actually. A piece of gum which was supposed to have been chewed by Brittney Spears was sold on E-Bay for thousands of dollars. This is not so different from the general fascination with the undergarments worn by a particular saint in the late Middle Ages. And still, to this day, the worlds abounds with promises of how your life can be better, if you buy this or that self help book, or sign up for this or that program. We should not be asking so much why the church is a part of it, but why it started it in the first place, and why it remains in the thick of it. It is not a new thing for the endeavors of people’s hearts to be so intertwined with and manipulated by other people’s desires to fatten their wallets. We think for some reason that Christianity should be different, above it all. but in truth, our spirituality and our economic meanderings have never been so separate, at least as a culture. The question that I think is more pressing is an individual one. Everyone wants the world to change. But no one wants to change.
One of the interesting things about this information age in comparison to the age of the Holy Roman Empire is the sheer ease for anyone to learn. And one would think that by this sheer factor, considering the surpression of public knowledge in the old age (the Bible was only in Latin, preventing anyone outside the clergy from reading it), that we would finally see through such gimmicks. Yet the fact of their continued existence shows that people still buy them, hook, line and sinker.
I found out recently that MIT and several other notable universities are in the process of making all of their classes available online, for FREE. You can take the whole class, any class that MIT offers. You can do it all online, and learn everything they teach. However, you don't get credit for it. But if you pay the tuition price, you can take the whole class, you can still even do it online, and you can get credit for it. So what you pay for is really the transcript. Not the education. The reason I bring this up in a post about Christianity and consumerism is that it is a distinction between classes, in the same way that there was distinction made between the clergy and the laity through their ability to read the Bible in the Middle Ages. If you can pay, then you get the credits. If not, you are likely one of the seventy-five percent of American adults who are without a college education. Such things as this being decided by the accumulation of material wealth seems ludicrous. But ultimately, it is the same problem as is asked about in this common question of "How did the church get like this?" And as our cultural sense of spirituality informs our material wealth, so our wealth, certainly, informs our spirituality, as can be seen in books by the unpalletable Joel Osteen, who promises that through prayer and spirituality you can become rich. Or Amway, or any number of organizations and mindsets. This is not new.
The better question to ask is "Why do class and materialism and class taint our sense of what is supposed to be transcendent to them?" We have lost our reckoning with the more recent developments in History, of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emmerson, who proclaimed a new spirituality transcendent of such things in his address to the Harvard Divinity School in 1838. A spirituality which remained unfettered by attachment to success. Saint Paul wrote, "all that I once thought gain, I now count as loss." Jesus overturned the money changer's tables. John the Baptist's head was presented on a platter, and Ralph Waldo Emmerson was labelled a heretic, and lost his job at the Harvard Divinity school. If one were to ask why, the answer would be "the same reason that megachurch preachers are becoming millionaires, Africa is starving, and we still can't stand the Commies." The decency and generosity of good people will always be challanged with the malice of those who do not wish to change. Yet as I said before, we all want the world to be a better place. Even the megachurch millionaires. The question that could really change the world, is "How can I change myself?" This is the question which Henry David Thoreau answered by going into the wilderness in the style of John the Baptist. He then wrote "Civil Disobedience," which DID change the world, as later on it was read by both Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr.
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Saturday, January 13, 2007
A cold january night
Whatever misfit creature invented the term, brought such an ego fraught mandate into the world, this thing, this idea of contrasting what something is with what else it could possibly be -- nothing but unequivocal, rampant, agonizing narcissism can ensue, when it collides, as it inevitable does, with the similar contrast between the lens of depravity through which we see, coloring everything in its own likeness, and the pure austerity we presume should be, merely because it is in contrast with the thing we call depravity.
So the 'potential' of a given object lies in how closely we can compare it, once it has passed through the subjunctifying processes of seeing, to the things in ourselves which we have assigned with the values of 'good,' 'austere,' 'vivacious,' in contrast with how much more we think we could make it like that.
But here's the rub: Henry David Thoreau observed a philanthropist to be a man who ate a bad apple and got sick. His vision blurred, and he became feverish. He then set out to cure the rest of the world of these problems; of being blurry and too hot.
So the 'potential' of a given object lies in how closely we can compare it, once it has passed through the subjunctifying processes of seeing, to the things in ourselves which we have assigned with the values of 'good,' 'austere,' 'vivacious,' in contrast with how much more we think we could make it like that.
But here's the rub: Henry David Thoreau observed a philanthropist to be a man who ate a bad apple and got sick. His vision blurred, and he became feverish. He then set out to cure the rest of the world of these problems; of being blurry and too hot.
Tuesday, January 9, 2007
The Sideways Children of 1985...
The year, 1985, was the year that O. J. Simpson was inducted into the Football Hall of Fame. It was also the year they found a grave of a man named Wolfgang Gerhard in Embu, Brazil, and dug him up to find out that he was really Josef Mengele, the Nazi officer they called the 'Angel of Death.' And there was a guy with one leg who ran all the way across Canada in fourteen months. An airplane was taken over by terrorists, and the Vice President, George Bush, announced that a teacher from New Hampshire named Christa McAuliffe would become the first schoolteacher to go to space, riding in style in the Challenger shuttle. A Japanese Boeing 747 jumbo jet had crashed into a mountain in Gunma and killed 520 people, and four of them somehow managed to crawl out of the wreckage and live to tell about it. There was a cruise ship called the Achille Lauro carting rich Europeans and Americans around the Mediterranean Sea. It was taken over by Palestinian Liberationists, who ransomed it for prisoners held by Israel, and succeeded only in chucking a guy in a wheelchair overboard, into the winedark sea, before being captured. Then there was the volcano; Nevado del Ruiz, that buried the city of Armero, and socked the breath out of twenty-three thousand people. And it was the year Tipper Gore decided that there should be warning labels on albums that contained curse words. There was a guy who got life in prison for selling stealth bomber secrets to the Russians, and in New York City, two Mafia bosses, Paul Castellano and Thomas Bilotti got gunned down by their own men in the middle of having coffee. The ancient Aztecs said that it was the year in which the future savior of the world would be born. And it was the first time that “Calvin and Hobbes” hit the newsmen's press.
Sunday, January 7, 2007
Truth?
I saw this quote on a blog called Iambic Admonit. I was really just drawn there because I have such a fascination with formalism, i.e. specific styles of constructing writing or other media (Iambic). This quote jarred me a bit, and it speaks to a sour feeling I get sometimes when I think I have written something profound. It also speaks to the icky feeling that I have had recently while reading some blogs. I am new to blogging, and I wanted to find some others who had interesting things to say. Much of it, I was half surprised to find, consists of this or that socio-political rant. When I look up Christianity, it tends to be just the same, or moreso. The quote is this:
Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from love of the thing he tells, to love of the telling till, down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about Him.
--C. S. Lewis
This hits home pretty hard, and is a good thing to remember. I have been writing a scene in a novel recently in which a character gives some unorthodox ideas about truth. This could speak to that as well. If what we say is lacking in love, compassion and edification, there is little it can do to help. If it is spoken with a proud ego, it is rare that the truth itself is heard above the din of our self-centeredness. The more we become absorbed in our ability to convey truth, to dazzle with witticisms, the greater danger we are in of losing sight of the importance of that truth over our own pride. Ego is the first to jump in front of the bus. And even when it gets run over time and again, we keep pampering it, believing that our ego and our value are synonymous. This could not be further from the truth. In the words of Eric Clapton, "I am an egomaniac with an inferiority complex." And it is such a common thing. The Bhuddists say that enlightenment involves the death of ego. This does not mean endless self effacement; far from it. It is refraining from feeding our petty illusion of self over the greater, Universal Self which we are privvy to. Or as a hindu guru said to someone who could not understand why he would choose to live in poverty, "I have renounced the finite for the infinite, but you have renounced the infinite for the finite. Which renunciation is greater?"
I think that it is important to keep ourselves in perspective when we create. I tend, more than anyone I know, to define my own value by how well I can create. But this is not so. My value is inherent, as is yours. It precedes our actions. Ego is what follows them. What I have learned recently, is that in giving up my own attachement to my acheivements, in relenquishing the idea that it is about me making something, saying something, and not what I am talking about, the boat flies farther. And yes, the boat flies.
The denizens of far right Christianity seem utterly preoccupied with differentiating "capital T truth." I would admonish them only by referencing them to St. Paul: ...Faith, Hope and Love, and the greatest of these is Love. I may speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but if I lack Love, I am no more than a loud gong or a clanging symbol.
Every poet and musician and artist, but for Grace, is drawn away from love of the thing he tells, to love of the telling till, down in Deep Hell, they cannot be interested in God at all but only in what they say about Him.
--C. S. Lewis
This hits home pretty hard, and is a good thing to remember. I have been writing a scene in a novel recently in which a character gives some unorthodox ideas about truth. This could speak to that as well. If what we say is lacking in love, compassion and edification, there is little it can do to help. If it is spoken with a proud ego, it is rare that the truth itself is heard above the din of our self-centeredness. The more we become absorbed in our ability to convey truth, to dazzle with witticisms, the greater danger we are in of losing sight of the importance of that truth over our own pride. Ego is the first to jump in front of the bus. And even when it gets run over time and again, we keep pampering it, believing that our ego and our value are synonymous. This could not be further from the truth. In the words of Eric Clapton, "I am an egomaniac with an inferiority complex." And it is such a common thing. The Bhuddists say that enlightenment involves the death of ego. This does not mean endless self effacement; far from it. It is refraining from feeding our petty illusion of self over the greater, Universal Self which we are privvy to. Or as a hindu guru said to someone who could not understand why he would choose to live in poverty, "I have renounced the finite for the infinite, but you have renounced the infinite for the finite. Which renunciation is greater?"
I think that it is important to keep ourselves in perspective when we create. I tend, more than anyone I know, to define my own value by how well I can create. But this is not so. My value is inherent, as is yours. It precedes our actions. Ego is what follows them. What I have learned recently, is that in giving up my own attachement to my acheivements, in relenquishing the idea that it is about me making something, saying something, and not what I am talking about, the boat flies farther. And yes, the boat flies.
The denizens of far right Christianity seem utterly preoccupied with differentiating "capital T truth." I would admonish them only by referencing them to St. Paul: ...Faith, Hope and Love, and the greatest of these is Love. I may speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but if I lack Love, I am no more than a loud gong or a clanging symbol.
Saturday, January 6, 2007
Mmmmmmm....
Many marmalade munching magistrates mangled my motorbike. Moreover, Mama means to make merry in the moonlight, muttering to me malevolent misgivings. Misunderstanding my motives, many may mumble meanness at me. Most of my mates are mad; maybe my mother mistreated more men than mice.
Miserable magistrates. My motorbike's mobility is mute. May maggots and mealworms and mantises munch them to mayonaise.
Me? I'm mellow on the monkeybars.
Miserable magistrates. My motorbike's mobility is mute. May maggots and mealworms and mantises munch them to mayonaise.
Me? I'm mellow on the monkeybars.
Friday, January 5, 2007
Sweet Maria's Revenge
I have been working on this Nano Novel for about two months now, and just gotten to the 50 thousand word threshold. But I am not nearly as close to finished with it as I thought I would be. I don't even have an ending yet. Actually I do, but none of it is written, and the text that supports is isn't written. This is for all you novellers out there.
So one figures, "I can fill a hundred and fifty pages with nothing in particular in order to recieve the arbitrary title of nano-winner." But then all my characters started chattering at me, and they're all like, "man I don't think I would do that,' or 'why won't you make me go do this?' or 'that character's really bugging me and I'd really like to give him a piece of my gosh darn mind.' Amid this clatter I was able to scrawl the few bits of dialogue floating through my head that made considerable sense. But when Maria started drinking all my coffee, and Jamie left a mess of P B and J all over my counter and didn't clean it up, I thought I had to put my foot down. I tried, but the kids just don't listen, you know? Next thing you know they're leaving the door open in mid December, staying up and singing at all hours of the night, and inviting random people in the coffee shop over to come and sit with us.
To top all that off, after everything, they start telling me, 'Tim, you really need to loosen up. Try to understand yourself a little better. You don't always have to be accomplishing something great. Learn to be happy with who you are, where you are.' Sound like good advice? Well it might, excepting for the fact that it's coming from a fictitious character who can't learn to put the cap back on the friggin jelly when she's done with it. The audacity of it all, I tell you! Her, giving me advice?
But in their defense, I should add that they have come a long way since I first met them. They have changed and grown as people so much ... I know, Neal, I'll write you some more lines ... Honestly, though, I can say I'm proud of them.
Fellow novellers, there is hope. By the way, if you liked Nanowrimo, check out this site: http://www.3daynovel.com ... Yowza - Caffeine.
So one figures, "I can fill a hundred and fifty pages with nothing in particular in order to recieve the arbitrary title of nano-winner." But then all my characters started chattering at me, and they're all like, "man I don't think I would do that,' or 'why won't you make me go do this?' or 'that character's really bugging me and I'd really like to give him a piece of my gosh darn mind.' Amid this clatter I was able to scrawl the few bits of dialogue floating through my head that made considerable sense. But when Maria started drinking all my coffee, and Jamie left a mess of P B and J all over my counter and didn't clean it up, I thought I had to put my foot down. I tried, but the kids just don't listen, you know? Next thing you know they're leaving the door open in mid December, staying up and singing at all hours of the night, and inviting random people in the coffee shop over to come and sit with us.
To top all that off, after everything, they start telling me, 'Tim, you really need to loosen up. Try to understand yourself a little better. You don't always have to be accomplishing something great. Learn to be happy with who you are, where you are.' Sound like good advice? Well it might, excepting for the fact that it's coming from a fictitious character who can't learn to put the cap back on the friggin jelly when she's done with it. The audacity of it all, I tell you! Her, giving me advice?
But in their defense, I should add that they have come a long way since I first met them. They have changed and grown as people so much ... I know, Neal, I'll write you some more lines ... Honestly, though, I can say I'm proud of them.
Fellow novellers, there is hope. By the way, if you liked Nanowrimo, check out this site: http://www.3daynovel.com ... Yowza - Caffeine.
my American and unamerican saints
Hey cyberspacers. I am hoping that in starting this blog it will give me some incentive to write every day. To write things that don't have too much reason to be written other than that I thought of them. I suppose if I had to introduce myself to you I would say that I am 7 years old, 25 years old and 86 all at once. I live in a house that is surrounded on all sides by the Atlantic Ocean. I know how to juggle, but I don't know how to knit. I am fascinated by revolutionaries but realize that they all become a little too comfortable with themselves over time.
I am a Christian, but I can rarely abide going to church, and so my faith tends to be satiated by reading and talking with friends. I LOVE people. People are my favorite things thing the world. I also am deeply in love with Montreal, but I do not live there anymore.
I am pretty sure that space goes on forever but that there is something even more infinite that makes it all worthwhile for it to be so big. And if you think that there is no infinity bigger than infinity, read a little about complex numbers, and find out that scientifically, there is.
I want to know more about everything. Especially about people. I want to go to Turkey and teach English, but mostly so that I can meet all the people there. I love art, but hate the elite institution.
"From each according to his means, to each according to his needs."
God is with us always, even when we are not with ourselves. Love is the best.
Okay, so that's me. Once I forget everything they taught me in school I will be able to tell you a little more clearly who I am. Tell me about you?
I am a Christian, but I can rarely abide going to church, and so my faith tends to be satiated by reading and talking with friends. I LOVE people. People are my favorite things thing the world. I also am deeply in love with Montreal, but I do not live there anymore.
I am pretty sure that space goes on forever but that there is something even more infinite that makes it all worthwhile for it to be so big. And if you think that there is no infinity bigger than infinity, read a little about complex numbers, and find out that scientifically, there is.
I want to know more about everything. Especially about people. I want to go to Turkey and teach English, but mostly so that I can meet all the people there. I love art, but hate the elite institution.
"From each according to his means, to each according to his needs."
God is with us always, even when we are not with ourselves. Love is the best.
Okay, so that's me. Once I forget everything they taught me in school I will be able to tell you a little more clearly who I am. Tell me about you?
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