Letter Never Sent

If there was a book that disclosed all the existential secrets of the universe, would you read it? Would you read it if you knew that the information enclosed within could potentially drive you insane? Which is stronger, your desire for self-preservation or wanting… to know.

Like many of you I’ve been watching the Iraq and Najaf coverage with interest. It is challenging to try to read between the lines about what is happening. You have to sift through so many news reports to distill a semblance of what is actually going on, and you have to do a significant amount of research to achieve the most rudimentary amount of context. It seems like media coverage is impossible to obtain from a disinterested and contextual point of view. Anyway, whenever you see the Shiia marching with their portraits of Sadr you may have also noticed the presence of depictions of Imam Ali, the fourth Caliph of Islam, who the Shiia regard as the true successor of Muhammad. Ali was betrayed and killed much like another famous religious figure. See the image below for a visual comparison of popular depictions of Ali (left) and Jesus Christ (right).

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.