TIME IN LUTHERANISM, BUDDHISM, and MARXISM

Buddhist thought is about getting to the timelessness of now, and thus appears at least to outsiders as a theory of moments.

Lutheran thought posits that things "take time," but that we never actually arrive at perfection, and patience for the return of Christ asks us to think instead that we are stuck in time, perhaps for millenia. Lutheranism thus posits basic time-bound institutions: family, church, government, and argues that these will outlast our own individual selves, and that we must try to accomplish what we can through them, as our time is valuable.

Marxism posits a time when the lion will lie down with the lamb, and that history will be over. Their theory of institutions lies in the notion that all bourgeois institutions must first be destroyed for anything to rise out of the ashes. In the Soviet Union they wanted to destroy not only the railroads, but also language itself, and its subject-object nature. They wanted to free the object, and turn everything into a subject. Marxists don't have a theory of nature. They think everything can be changed, including the Aral Sea, to serve the proletarian state. Communism is aberrant capitalism without limits. All institutions are controlled by the military wing, and there are no competing institutions. Even reality itself is not considered (until too late) to be considered a rival institution.

Luther believed that competition, even within families, was the norm. He argued that a husband and wife would rarely see eye to eye, and found humor in this. Like Augustine, he didn't think peace was possible in this world, and that when it did happen, it was a temporary stay against the constant strife that this world demands. Three minutes a year of peace is about what Lutherans think is possible, and even that may be illusory.

Marxists enact five-year plans, accompanied by giant leaps forward, beggaring their peoples with planning that is centered on a single individual's ideas. Anyone who gets in the way of Cyclopsean planning, is cannibalized, or put in cold storage.

Marxism works like an ant colony in which the matriarchal queen demands what needs to be done, and you do it to the best of your ability, or face the mandibles of the state.

Lutheranism doesn't proffer a planned economy. We believe with Adam Smith that God has given each of us a talent and it is ours to suss out, and fulfill it according to our own imagination, within an ever-diversifying economy.

Buddhists don't seem to believe in progress, or in doing anything. Even swatting a fly is a distraction from the possibility of stillness which could offer a momentary nirvana, and glimpse of Nothingness. Sitting around doing nothing is considered the highest act, and so the best thing to do in Buddhism is nothing at all. Until recently the most frequent do-nothings in Buddhism were the adult men. Now of course women are also offered nunneries (even in theory in Tibet), but they don't seem to believe that they have to make a living. Like the Catholics, they think that others should support them.

In Myanmar for instance the Buddhist monks go out every day and beg for alms from an increasingly impoverished population dealing with the communist juggernaut that has been in place since the 1960s. Myanmar is a communist state run by the military (there are no other competing institutions, and the military is all-powerful -- their armament is furnished by Red China, and they can do anything they wish, and no one dares to complain). The monks don't have a prayer against the military, as they don't have rifles. The only insurrectionary movement is run out of Karen state, the only portion of the country that has a large Christian minority.

http://www.buddhistchannel.tv/index.php?id=82,5211,0,0,1,0

(Link furnished by Jack Daw, a newly arrived Buddhist commentator.)

There are a few powerful individuals mostly under house arrest such as Nobel Prize Winner Aung Kyi, but they lack a military wing, and their only weapons are either talking, or self-immolation. Neither of which have any effect on the military, who can imprison anyone in the country as long as they wish.

We do appear to be stuck in time and to be stuck in a natural state that is organized around competition. Therefore, it only makes sense that the state not have a monopoly on competition, and that there be many competing factions to up the ante of competition. Competition is an overall good, that sharpens our wits and ups our own level of ability. This is why Lutheran Surrealism seeks to attract the best minds from various traditions and to create an agonistic conversation in which our time on earth, and the values that it might contain, are assessed.

For us, I think, it is children and education, first. Then of course the freedom of inquiry that is the basic mandate under which education thrives. Finally, competing viewpoints must be allowed, since no two people can ever agree on anything, because they occupy different points in space and time, and have different perspectives, therefore. The ant colony is not our model. Nor is it the solitary frog, about to jump into a pond, as is celebrated in the Basho haiku. Our model is also not a barrel of monkeys, though it may appear to be that way in this particular blog.

What we want are: competing institutions (checks and balances), the revival of the notion that God has given us the gifts of various orders (in particular the family, the church, and the state), and that we must at all times keep in mind that competition will never cease, but that we want the competition to be fair, so that the best in any given sphere of life will win out, thus ensuring continuing survival, and the thriving of our individual talents within a greater perpetual motion machine called the economy.