Letter Never Sent

I’ve been reading this book, Authority by Richard Sennett. It has some pretty meaty ideas in it, even if a lot of them come from citing other sources. I liked this one:

The young Hegel thought that the burden of establishing conditions of liberty in society lay with the oppressed; no benevolent Platonic guardian, no necessary angel, would come to the rescue. The Hegel of the Phenomenology has clarified this idea. Hegel does so by defining the birth of liberty — in the bondsman’s consciousness of his work. He then describes the stages of liberty through which the bondsman passes. There are four of these stages, and the movement from each to the next occurs when the oppressed negates what he or she had formerly believed.

These four stages are stoicism, scepticism, the unhappy consciousness, and rational consciousness. They begin with the stoic’s withdrawal from the world into his or her own thought, a primitive, inward freedom. The scepticism of the next stage turns toward the world: the bondsman, still an obedient servant, nonetheless disbelieves in the role he acts and in the lord’s moral superiority. The unhappy consciousness takes this sceptical knowledge about a social relationship inside; there is a lord and bondsman in every human being. Hegel calls unhappy consciousness “consciousness of self as a dual-natured, merely contradictory being.” In a rational consciousness this knowledge again becomes social; the unhappy schism each person feels in himself he also sees in others. Hegel calls this final stage of freedom “rational” because now the person can perceive and act with others according to common purposes; there is no longer the need to fight others for recognition, since one’s own consciousness is so developed that one knows the divisions within oneself are divisions that exist in all humanity. Hegel also calls this rational, purposive consciousness an “absolute” state of freedom, and the use of the word “absolute” is key to his overall intentions: “Of the absolute it must be said that it is essentially a result, that only in the end is it what it truly is.”

Via LibertyForum: Neturei Karta: Anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews to Demonstrate at so-called Israel Day Parade:

On Sunday, June 1, 2003 beginning at 11:15 am at 5th Ave. and 59th St. in Manhattan there will be a group of anti-Zionist Jews demonstrating against Zionism and the Zionist State that will be celebrated by marchers in their so-called Israel Day Parade.

The Anti-Zionist Orthodox Jews will proclaim their loyalty to pure Judaism and their opposition to Zionist heresy, which violates every principle of the Jewish religion. These people shall proclaim that the idolatrous Zionist ideology has no role in the life of an Orthodox Jew, and that Jews are obligated by Judaism to live in peace and harmony with every other people throughout the world, including of course, the native Palestinian People.

Pure Judaism proclaims that we are to accept the decree of Exile of G-d and live among the nations in every corner of the Earth, and are not to establish a State and attempt to end the divinely ordained Exile.

Pure Judaism forbids the uprooting of the indigenous people of the Holy Land, it proclaims its principles of humanity and justice that demands the total restoration of all human, civil, economic and political rights of the Palestinians, including the right of return of all Palestinians to their homes in historic Palestine, thereby enabling Palestine to be governed by its original native inhabitants.

These principles are essential ingredients of Judaism, and no amount of Zionism brainwashing of many Jews throughout the world and Zionist media propaganda can ever do away with these eternal principles. We declare to all non-Jews who believe that support for Zionist idolatry and ethnic cleansing demonstrates sympathy for the Jewish People that this is a grave error!!

We beseech all well-meaning non-Jews to understand the truth of what Judaism teaches, and we encourage our fellow Jews to resist the incessant hysterical and paranoia-filled propaganda of the Zionists, their heresy and their xenophobia, and learn the truth of what Judaism is and what Zionism is.

Those of us who oppose Zionism express true compassion for the Jewish People because we address the ROOT CAUSE of the suffering in the Holy Land inasmuch as Zionism is the cause of bloodshed in the Middle East and hatred of Jews throughout the world.

Via Robotwisdom: The ongoing evolution of Christianity:

In her new book, “Beyond Belief,” Pagels draws on further study of the more than 50 discovered texts – but particularly the Gospel of Thomas – to reveal a diversity of early teachings about Jesus that will resonate with many people today.

“Although later denounced by certain leaders as ‘heretics,’ ” she writes, “many of these Christians saw themselves as not so much believers as seekers, people who ‘seek for God.’ ”



Pagels, who teaches religion at Princeton University, points out that the Gospel of John is the only one in the New Testament that actually promotes the idea of Jesus as God in human form, and she argues, based on research, that it was written explicitly to counter the Gospel of Thomas, which said otherwise. Thomas’s gospel, she writes, teaches “that God’s light shines not only in Jesus but, potentially at least, in everyone … and encourages the hearer … to seek to know God through one’s own divinely given capacity, since all are created in the image of God.”

Thomas teaches that one’s affinity with God is the key to the kingdom. A quote from the gospel reads: “Jesus said, ‘Let the one who seeks not stop seeking until he finds. When he finds, he will become troubled; when he becomes troubled, he will be astonished and will rule over all things.'”



The gospels of John and Thomas share striking similarities, however. Both encourage people to look toward “the beginning” not the end of time, and both emphasize, unlike Mark, that the kingdom of God is not to be expected in the future, “but is already here – an immediate and continuing spiritual reality,” Pagels says.

In her graceful, illuminating exploration of various works – including the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, which shows that women were also early teachers, and the Gospel of Truth, which speaks of God as Father and Mother – Pagels explicitly raises the question of how different Christianity might have been had these works not been banned.

I’ve been reading this book, Authority, by Richard Sennett, and consequently have found myself looking up information and articles by or about him in the hopes of coming across some juicy ideas.

Guardian UK: Inner-city scholar:

But if he is rarely critical of individuals, he holds nothing back in his criticism of the new economy in which “to make it you really have to plunge into much more superficial social relations. It is dysfunctional to feel loyalty to an organisation. The notion of accumulating a life history with an institution or a person doesn’t work in this economy. The boom gave people the impression that the class divide was going to end – that there would be no losers. In fact, it has made it worse.”

He is currently overseeing a research project in New York which involves interviewing young people in their 20s, who have gone into financial services, IT and the new media. They are confused, he says: “Everyone thinks they are going to be the next Martha Lane Fox but they are learning very quickly that all these fantasy worlds just aren’t going to happen. Don’t commit, don’t be dependent, stay loose. Loyalty is very low on this list. But if you think dependence is bad, what you produce is a damaged human being.”

Ruth Levitas of the University of Bristol describes The Corrosion Of Character as a “wonderful description of the way in which insecure work has taken away the basics for a certain kind of character”. But she also thinks there’s something about the thesis “that doesn’t work in relation to women, something that’s not quite right. Ultimately, I felt the book doesn’t address gender”.

Guardian Book Reviews: Integrity rules: Richard Sennett’s unusual memoir, Respect, is also a meditation on self-worth and self-respect:

Sennett knows this better than anyone. The Fall of Public Man was scathing about the way self-absorption kills off one’s ability to pay attention to others and function in the public realm. Sennett’s memoirs are not at all narcissistic in this way, but neither do they lend themselves to exploring the experiences of people on the receiving end of welfare. The argument, as a result, seems to become more abstract and abstracted the further it gets from Cabrini Green.

“Treating people with respect,” Sennett writes in his conclusion, “cannot occur simply by commanding it should happen. Mutual recognition has to be negotiated; this negotiation engages the complexities of personal character as much as social structure.” What exactly does this mean? The only moral Sennett is prepared to offer has to do with what he calls “the psychology of autonomy”, which involves “accepting in others what one does not understand”. By allowing of someone that you do not understand them, you grant them their dignity; by granting them their dignity, you thereby strengthen your own. It’s an ethical win-win.

Christians Hail Rightist’s Call To Oust Arabs:

A spokesman in DeLay’s office rejected the claim of religious exclusivism, citing many occasions when the Majority Whip spoke out in favor of religious tolerance. The spokesman declined to comment on Elon’s remarks.

During his speech last week, Elon quoted from Chapter 33 of Numbers, in which God tells Moses that the children of Israel are mean to inherit the land of Canaan. God then instructs the children of Israel: “Ye shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you… But if ye will not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then shall those that ye let remain of them be as pricks in your eyes, and as thorns in your sides, and they shall vex you in the land wherein ye dwell.”

Drawing loud cheers from the audience, Elon said, “I know, we always have to be politically correct, but it is very, very complicated to be politically correct when you have to correct so many political mistakes.”

To correct such mistakes, said Elon, an Orthodox rabbi, “Let’s turn to the Bible, which says very clearly… we have to resettle them, to relocate them, and to have a Jewish state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean.”

I probably have posted something along these lines before, but I have been chewing on these ideas again lately in my normal pattern of bubbling, pulsing angst so I thought some of you might find them interesting as concepts.

Personality Theories of Otto Rank

Life and death

Another interesting idea Rank introduced was the contest between life and death. He felt we have a “life instinct” that pushes us to become individuals, competent and independent, and a “death instinct” that pushes us to be part of a family, community, or humanity. We also feel a certain fear of these two. The “fear of life” is the fear of separation, loneliness, and alienation; the “fear of death” is the fear of getting lost in the whole, stagnating, being no-one.

Our lives are filled with separations, beginning with birth. Rank’s earliest work, in fact, concerned birth trauma, the idea that the anxiety experienced during birth was the model for all anxiety experienced afterwards. After birth, there’s weaning and discipline and school and work and heartbreaks…. But avoiding these separations is, literally, avoiding life and choosing death — never finding out what you can do, never leaving your family or small town, never leaving the womb!

So we must face our fears, recognizing that, to be fully developed, we must embrace both life and death, become individuals and nurture our relationships with others.

The artist

Rank also tackles the difficult issue of artistic creativity. On the one hand, Rank says, the artist has a particularly strong tendency towards glorification of his own will. Unlike the rest of us, he feels compelled to remake reality in his own image. And yet a true artist also needs immortality, which he can only achieve by identifying himself with the collective will of his culture and religion. Good art could be understood as a joining of the material and the spiritual, the specific and the universal, or the individual and humanity.

This joining doesn’t come easily, though. It begins with the will, Rank’s word for the ego, but an ego imbued with power. We are all born with a will to be ourselves, to be free of domination. In early childhood, we exercise our will in our efforts to do things independently of our parents. Later, we fight the domination of other authorities, including the inner authority of our sexual drives. How our struggle for independence goes determines the type of person we become. Rank describes three basic types:

First, there is the adapted type. These people learn to “will” what they have been forced to do. They obey authority, their society’s moral code, and, as best as they can, their sexual impulses. This is a passive, duty-bound creature that Rank suggests is, in fact, the average person.

Second, there is the neurotic type. These people have a much stronger will than the average person, but it is totally engaged in the fight against external and internal domination. They even fight the expression of their own will, so there is no will left over to actually do anything with the freedom won. Instead, they worry and feel guilty about being so “willful.” They are, however, at a higher level of moral development than the adapted type.

Third, there is the productive type, which Rank also refers to as the artist, the genius, the creative type, the self-conscious type, and, simply, the human being. Instead of fighting themselves, these people accept and affirm themselves, and create an ideal, which functions as a positive focus for will. The artist creates himself or herself, and then goes on to create a new world as well.

I always knew there was something more going on in the genesis story.

Ophites

A Gnostic sect which evolved during the second century AD. and existed for several centuries afterwards. The name, or word, was derived from the Greek ophis, meaning “serpent, and relates to the great reverence which the Ophites had toward the serpent. The members progressed through full-fledged initiation ceremonies that included symbols for purity, life, spirit and fire. The entire system of the sect appears to be a combination of the mysteries of the Egyptian goddess Isis, concepts of oriental mythology, and early Christian doctrine.

According to the theologians Origen, Irenaeus and others, the essence of the Ophitic Doctrine was that the God of the Old Testament was a misanthropic deity from whose power mankind had to be liberated. From this point of view the serpent in the Garden of Eden was a benefactor to mankind when he urged Adam and Eve to revolt against such a God. Therefore, other enemies of Jehovah in the Old Testament became heroes of the sect.

As a mark of reverence for the serpent, it was reported, the snake took part in the sect’s communion service. The following was reported by Epiphanius (fourth century Church Father) who called the service abominable. The snake was kept in a chest known as the cista mystica. At the beginning of the service the snake is summoned out. He then rolls among the loaves of bread which are on the table after which are broken and eaten. Following this each of those present kiss the snake on the mouth for it has been tamed by a spell. They have then fallen down and worshipped the snake as a part of the Eucharist service. They claimed they have sent forth a hymn to the Father, and thus concluded their mysteries. A.G.H.

Today my roommate’s girlfriend, Sarah, called me up and invited me to attend the evening Unitarian service with her. We had been talking about going together since I knew she went every week and I had been missing the weekly ritual of meeting with people and discussing spiritual matters I had experienced growing up. Granted, growing up as a Southern Baptist was far from completely positive, but there was always something I sorta liked about seeing the same people every week and thinking quietly about those feelings inside me and my relationship to the universe and to other people.

The service itself was novel yet familiar. They appear to have some ritual (the voluntary lighting of votive candles to remember a loved one or to commemorate something) but at the same time are very hands off and liberal. Tonight they had some sort of Persian group playing music. It was pretty neat.

The sermon was very intellectual and mentally stimulating, references to Jung and world religious ideas were made to ask certain philosophical questions. The main thing I like about the Unitarians is that they reject the divinity of Jesus and the idea of original sin. At times I was uncomfortable with the openness of it, but that’s mainly my own reticience and self-maintained distance. I recommend checking it out.

• First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin
• Austin Area Interreligious Ministries

As it happens, only one of the hundreds of saber-rattlers in congress has a son in the military. I think these pigs at the trough ought to be the first to ship out in the event of war. I’m sure that idiot Lieberman or Lott can shoulder a modern-day musket. We’d probably be better off if they caught the wrong end of an Iraqi grenade or something. Lord knows they do nothing for us here but drive us to betray the very principles our constitution is supposed to uphold.