I've finished reading the OT, and believe that it boils down to following God's laws. Exactly what those are, however, is not clear.
In Jeremiah 22:13 there is an explicit reference to capitalism.
"Woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong; that useth his neighbor's service without wages, and giveth him not for his work."
Capitalism is ok.
But the law doesn't stop with providing wages in return for work. There are some other stipulations.
In Ezekiel, God says,
"Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine; the soul that sinneth, it shall die."
Clear enough.
To be lawful and right, a soul should "not have defiled his neighbor's wife, neither hath come near to a mentruous woman, and .. hath spoiled none by violence, hath given his bread to the hungry, and hath covered the naked with a garment" 18:4-7.
If a person is poor through gambling, or through drink, should one help them? the etiology of poverty is rarely addressed.
2,700 years later, here we are in America. Are we going by the Old Testament, or by laws created by the People, for the People?
John Adams thought the country should be "bound by fixed laws, which the people have a voice in making, and a right to defend" (Adams, Novanglus, no. 7, 6 Mar. 1775).
So, whose laws? Will they be ours, or God's?
When Emma Lazarus wrote that the statue of Liberty should welcome all immigrants to our shores it was 1883. The poem was originally part of a fund-raiser for the pedestal (which the French didn't provide), but was added in 1903, thanks to a friend's crusade (she had been dead for 16 years). The French gave the Statue to us to thank us for the concept of a non-monarchical country (they were slipping back into monarchy under various emperors). But Lazarus turned it toward a conception of welcome to the world's poor. Many continue to think America has an eternal debt to the world's poor, as it is enshrined in Lazarus' final lines:
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
I think we should only take people who arrive legally, who want to follow the laws, and who we can be put to immediate and useful work that no current American who is out of work can do. We are a nation bound by fixed laws. At any rate, Lazarus was never elected to office. Poets do legislate, Shelley said, but who elected Shelley? Who elected Lazarus? Who elected Ezekiel? Screw them. This is America.
46 comments:
this is way off topic, but I had to say this: I thought of you when reading this editorial essay in the WSJ.
<a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903596904576516232905230642.html?mod=opinion_newsreel>The Presumption of Male Guilt</a>
Unlike the Buffalo Springfield song, God's laws are exactly clear:
Love the Lord your God with all your body.
Love your neighbor as yourself.
The Bible is a grab-bag, an anthology cobbled together over centuries, written in old languages, translated and revised and tinkered with over and over by numerous hands. Who would expect such a document to be consistent, or organized, or even whole?
It isn't. You can "prove" whatever you want with it. That's its use.
It's fascinating, but not as history, or as coherent philosophy. It was written during times when there was no generally accepted science.
You treat it like a kindergarten reader. Maybe that's okay for Sunday school, but for serious reading?
Wendy, this was a terrific article by Peter Berkowitz. I loved it.
Thanks so much for sending it.
The major universities are the weirdest now. Not many are aware that it is like the panic that has swept through China under the Red Guards. As the creeps from the sixties begin to die off, perhaps some of this will die down. It isn't clear yet.
Obama's clearly their mouthpiece, but he's clever not to be caught at it too often.
We saw how he abrograted due process in incriminating Officer Crowley. He wants that same rush to judgment everywhere.
The protection of the innocent, especially when they are on the side of the race gender class boundary, is not his highest priority. It's not as bad as it was under Stalin and Mao, but it's leaning that way.
Curtis, most of the texts until about 1750 were written before there was generally accepted scientific evidence as the grounding for truth. Does this mean we wipe out Shakespeare (he, too, used a variety of sources, and the texts are not altogether clearly from one hand). If we go back to the first generally accepted texts in the west such as Homer, we have no idea who wrote them. They are parallel to the OT texts.
The great Greek tragedians, and the Romans such as Seneca, were adding on to Homer. None of these were eye witnesses to what took place in Troy or in its aftermath, but we still have a "Trojan Women" by Euripides, and another one by Seneca.
The "translations" we have of these things are so different that they are almost different plays. Read David Slavitt's version of Seneca's Trojan Women and you get a limpid set of sentences that could have been written by Hemingway. A hundred years ago you get sentences and lines that were closer to Tennyson.
Do we approach Homer as a Sunday School text simply because it was cobbled together from many texts? Some scholars think it was based on a gigantic oral tradition (much as the Finnish Kalevala was), and many others think it was elaborated upon by many different bards.
The humanities are about values. These are always under discussion, and never quite finished. Values ARE fictions.
They aren't facts in the same way that water freezes at 32 degrees.
Values are standards that we agree upon: do we recognize the sanctity of a child's life, or do we think of it as a bundle of molecules?
Values provide frameworks for laws and guidelines for appropriate behavior.
They're quite important.
Science can help us to create atomic bombs that can rip apart a city in a second. Or it can create tools that allow Mengele types to destroy human beings in callous experiments.
Or put a civilization to death in gas camps.
You argue that values without science are useless.
I'd agree that science without humane values is worse.
Wendy, I meant on the other side of the race, gender, class boundary -- Obama and the PC Red Guards do not want any protections. In essence, they want to be able to destroy white men at whim. There is a very thin line of law that protects them at this point. Get rid of that law and it's open season. This is what we saw at Duke University.
We see even how quickly the public prosecutors will go with the reds if they are requested to do so.
Obama is very very dangerous because he doesn't care about the law, or the Constitution, or anything else that stands in the way of the immediate satisfaction of his Marxism. Many on his side, however, are a thousand times worse.
God help us if he gets a second term.
Curtis, all I'm saying is that science is hardly value-neutral. It can be hijacked by the Nazis for instance to create factories of death starring Cyclon-B, or it can be put to use to make bigger and better bombs that incinerate millions in a twinkling.
Some will argue that it has been hijacked by the left to create a global government to deal with Global Warming, which many scientists claim is a fraudulent use of science.
At this point, nothing much is clear, but values do seem to come first. The Bible and Shakespeare have been a watershed of values in west for many years.
Now increasingly people are turning to Marx for their values.
Or lack thereof.
It was Marx that was used in the Soviet Union. They had their version of science, too. Lysenko's science departed from western science. They used science to destroy the Aral Sea.
Industrialization which was created by the scientific method has been a mixed blessing.
Kirby - besides the OT's concern for law, there's another major "plot line," so to speak, which has to do with God's covenantal promises to his people through, just for starters, Abraham and David. In covenants such as these, God binds himself unconditionally to act in certain ways, pretty much irregardless of the behavior of those with whom he covenants. See for instance 2 Samuel chapter 7 and most particularly verses 12-17. The plot then becomes how God will keep these promises he's made and/or will he be faithful to them?
To see the OT as simply a matter of keeping God's law (and the consequences of disobedience) is to miss the half of it.
JEP -- this is VERY helpful. Thanks. In the beginning of Habbakuk it seems the author is bewailing the fact that no matter what he does or how he prays God is not enforcing the contract.
But he says he loves God just the same.
What is that about?
Also, I wanted to tell you that the Seneca play in Franklin is absolutely genius. You really should go see it.
The tickets are free.
I think it shows the Roman empire at about the time of the crucifixion from the other side of things (Seneca was Nero's tutor, and suffice it to say that Nero was such a bad boy that Seneca was about to give up on life -- which he was shortly forced to do).
It's a very elegant production. I have an article coming out on in an online vehicle called Watershed Post out of Andes (run by two young women from Harvard).
I'll send you a link.
Some early Christians thought Seneca was more or less in sympathy with their movement (I think Tertullian may have thought this).
You can see why!
What a completely disastrous moment the play opens with, and it only gets more bleak -- but the whole thing is done from a moral viewpoint.
At any rate, I had to run Lola up there again this morning, and the whole day has been like that, but I think it's worth it for Lola! I hope you'll get a chance to see it.
Tickets are free. Google Franklin Stage Company and you'll get instructions how to reserve a ticket. It goes Wednesday to Saturday at 8pm with a matinee on Saturday and a Sunday program at 5 pm.
I'm also saying this in case anyone else who comes here is a local lurker who might get the chance to see it.
I cried all through the ending but you'll see why.
Kirb:
We've had this argument before.
You tend to think in terms of direct ethical applications, whereas even the authors of most of the "sacred texts" would balk at such a preemptive use.
We don't go to Homer or Euripides or Tennyson for guides to direct political action--at least most people don't. Works of art are discrete actions which are meant to be appreciated as enactments of behavior, or of formal principles. They aren't lists of do's and don'ts.
Yes, Homer is in fact "several authors"--does that mean that his work is either suspect, or that it could, or should, be a guide to conduct?
This notion that artistic entertainments must have a moral purpose is really medieval, Kirb. Almost no one believes that any more. Maybe Harold Bloom.
Art doesn't provide us with "fictional mystery plays" meant to teach us how to think and act. Our apprehension of art occurs at a much higher level of sophistication. Any text can be abused, appropriated for partisan purposes. There are in fact thousands of disagreements about meaning and significance regarding biblical extracts. None of which make it any truer, or more useful, than it is. But all that arguing is mostly a waste of time.
There are no absolute truths in art.
"Values" is a word we assign to certain conditions and behaviors. It's just a word. Context is everything. Killing someone in a war is not the same as killing someone across the street over adultery. Teaching children to mind their parents in Afghanistan is not the same thing as teaching them to mind their parents in Samoa.
Values versus science is a false dichotomy. Humans are incapable of seeing action and circumstance as morally neutral. Everything has "value." Even money, the root of all evil, has a value which EVERYONE agrees on.
Simply using the word "value" as if it had some ulterior, magical vibration that suited your purpose is very bad philosophy.
We developed the bomb BECAUSE we wanted to kill people--large numbers of them--very efficiently. That was its purpose. That was its value.
Value is a value-neutral word. Get used to that.
"Curtis, all I'm saying is that science is hardly value-neutral. It can be hijacked by the Nazis for instance to create factories of death starring Cyclon-B, or it can be put to use to make bigger and better bombs that incinerate millions in a twinkling."
You've just contracted yourself. Can't you see it? Science is in fact ethically neutral--it's the application of it which makes it an ethical phenomenon. The equations and relationships revealed through experiment and induction don't "make up their minds" about us. We do that.
"Some will argue that it has been hijacked by the left to create a global government to deal with Global Warming, which many scientists claim is a fraudulent use of science."
No, the science of global warming has been hijacked by industry and capital. You've got it exactly wrong.
"At this point, nothing much is clear, but values do seem to come first. The Bible and Shakespeare have been a watershed of values in west for many years."
No, the science comes first, then the morality. Imposing morality upon science is what creationism is all about. That's what Rick Perry believes. That's one reason--among many--that he's a danger to our country.
"Now increasingly people are turning to Marx for their values."
No, they've been turning away from Marx for decades. That's old history. Marx reposes upon the junk-heap of confounded theories.
"It was Marx that was used in the Soviet Union. They had their version of science, too. Lysenko's science departed from western science. They used science to destroy the Aral Sea."
No, it was the misapplication of science that took place under the Soviets. The conductors and glasswear and log-tables weren't to blame, Kirby, it was the irresponsible use of them which was to blame.
"Industrialization which was created by the scientific method has been a mixed blessing."
Now we're getting somewhere. If you could clarify what you're suggesting here, we might understand the composition of your thoughts. I'd like to hear what makes industrialization bad--and what makes it good. Mixtures are morally complex, Kirby--no simple answers. Ambiguity. Shades of grey.
Re: Habbakuk
God's apparently "not enforcing the contract," as you put it (and not a bad way of putting it), is in fact the major factor that advances the Bible's "plot." It's all over the place.
JEP, could you expand on this? It seems that God sometimes enforces the contract and at other times almost seems to disappear. Throughout Ezekiel he's going almost mad with apoplectic tics as He explains how mad he is about the behavior of the chosen people.
He gives a kind of account of the history of the problem in Ezekiel 20:7-8, of which I will type in 8:
"But they rebelled against me, and would not hearken unto me: they did every man cast way the abominations of their eyes, neither did they forsake the idols of Egypt: then I said, I will pour out my fury upon them, to accomplish my anger against them in the midst of the land of Egypt....
11: And I gave them my statutes, and shewed them my judgments, which if a man do, he shall even live in them...
The statutes are a kind of living house, like the ark of the Covenant -- meant to be brought with one.
And poverty is the result of not living within them.
It is not clear to me how anyone could miss this, or not take it seriously. It's so wonderfully clear.
It frames an inner law -- and in Jeremiah there's a wonderful part in 31:33:
"But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; after those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people."
It's a thing of beauty!
The Jews that came to America, like Emma Lazarus herself, brought this law with them in many cases, and we do still have tablets holding the ten commandments in some courthouses (the communists assiduously try to tear them down in any and every instance, since they worship Moloch).
The communists have a sense that all wealth is stolen, and so they feel that wealth is simply a matter of stealing. So they grab others' wealth in every and any way they can -- through taxes, through pogroms, through camps, and then kill the owners of the wealth, and put in draconian laws in which the state is the only business in town, and then of course no one can question the edicts of the state, and there is nothing above the state (since they've also killed God).
I fear this.
Curtis--you can't say "it's a fact that Homer is many authors" any more than you can say "it's a fact" regarding the Oxfordian/Stradfordian Shakespeare divide--with far less certainty, "in fact" because the shrouds of history covering "Homer" (whoever Homer was) are so dense.
And those books certainly WERE used for moral guidance--Romans constantly used the Aenead as a guide to their lives, likewise for the Greeks and their Homer.
If literature is not a guide to life than I guess it's meaningless. People still use the Aeneid as a guide to life. At least a friend of mine who used to be friends with John Ashbery and other NY school poets in the early 70s said they'd put a finger on a passage by chance and use it to guide their lives for a day or two.
Wisdom literature is like that.
I do think that many many many used Ginsberg as a guide to moral and political action, as many today still use Michel Foucault (God knows what they think they're doing using NAMBLA types as a guide to life!).
Still, it's done all the time.
Plato and even Aristotle saw literature as having a powerful moral component.
Martha Nussbaum, today, believes that it's the moral component of great literature as a guide to life that still makes literature a wonderful adjunct to philosophy.
thinking of literature as meaningless marks on a page that can be appreciated solely from the viewpoint of aesthetics is a very odd marginalization of literature.
Literature provides comments on life, as does the critique of literature.
Emma Lazarus's poem has had an ENORMOUS influence on American sensibility.
thank you for your intervention, GM.
Poetry affects the conscience. Reading Ezra Pound one cannot help but be completely disgusted by the lack of a conscience.
G.M. Palmer (whoever you are):
Kirby repeated the commonly accepted opinion that Homer was not a single individual. This is what scholars and archeologists now believe. Don't take my word for it, and don't guess either. Do a little research before offering uninformed commentary.
There are very few serious scholars (actually I would say none), who believe that Shakespeare's plays were written anonymously or "ghost-written." This is a dead argument, and has nothing whatever to do with our discussion, really.
It's true that Virgil intended to create a parallel text for the Romans, and based his epic on Greek models. What people may "use" art or literature for really doesn't affect my argument. You can stand on your head while you read Dante, for all I care. The Aeneid is a narrative, with moral implications. Characters may even serve as mouthpieces for the author's beliefs. But its first function and meaning is as entertainment--as tapestry containing history and familiar types of character and situations.
Kirby:
When we were kids, we were read fairy tales and fables, which were intended to "teach us lessons" about life.
The Three Little Pigs was about the smart pig who built his house out of bricks.
The grasshopper and the ant.
At the level of juvenile literature, simple lessons can be dramatized and swallowed whole. That serves some kind of useful social purpose in showing the childhood mind by example, rather than simply preaching to it.
But grown-up literature isn't about brushing your teeth, or taking out the garbage, or finishing the food on your plate.
I'm surprised that a Professor of Humanities would make the absurd claim that we appreciate art primarily for the moral lessons it can teach us. The first function of art is to entertain. Unless it does that, it will not endure. Once an artist, or composer, or writer has our attention, then there are things which can be implied, dramatized, and expanded into systems of behavior. But didactic art usually fails in one way or another to fulfill its higher purpose of transmitting the complexity and mystery of life. Milton is a wonderful poet, but he tries too hard to teach, and can exhaust the reader's patience.
One of the hallmarks of modern art and literature is that it has largely abandoned the obvious function of condescending to its audience by preaching to it.
The art and literature I've most admired in my life has been that for which there is no clear answer--no obvious solution.
If all literature needed to do was to teach us to love the god-head, or wipe our butts, I'm afraid we wouldn't ever have exalted it to the high place in our culture it occupies.
"thinking of literature as meaningless marks on a page that can be appreciated solely from the viewpoint of aesthetics is a very odd marginalization of literature."
Who said literature was "meaningless"? Where we differ is in the degree to which we are willing to impute motive and significance to actions and narratives and pictures. This is where art lives or dies. Norman Rockwell creates dozens of falsly naive didactic pictures of heroism, humor, and folksy wisdom, but as a serious artist, he failed. In that failure is the dumbing down of art to the level of the lowest apprehension of our human capacity. There's nothing noble about it. It's just sad, and stupid.
Literary criticism, on the other hand, or philosophy, do directly address conduct, and the consequences of models of behavior. But criticism is one step away from art.
Criticism, as a matter of fact, is largely what we're doing here, right now. You're trying to make points by claiming that the best art teaches you simple lessons. I disagree. We have divergent critical theories of art and literature. I'll put mine against yours any day.
I'd think the one point about "serious" literature is that it attempts to be "serious" about being a guide to life.
"Entertainment" isn't "serious" by definition.
At any rate, your remarks are entertaining, Curtis.
"I fear this."
You're being paranoid.
Kirby:
I'd appreciate your posting my last comment.
Are you moderating me out, now?
Kirby, you say
"Poetry affects the conscience. Reading Ezra Pound one cannot help but be completely disgusted by the lack of a conscience."
Let's deconstruct these sentences. They represent a classic error in logic.
Kirby being illogical. It's a first!
The idea that the word "conscience" represents a single moral point of view is by definition illusory. There are as many "consciences" as there are people. The old saw about following the dictates of one's conscience is as empty as a tin can. Pound's conscience isn't your conscience. My conscience isn't George W. Bush's.
Obviously Pound's anti-semiticism disturbs most people's sense of decency. But that certainly wasn't true for most of the German population in 1936. They found it quite appealing. Their conscientious persecution of the Jews was "awakened" by Hitler's propaganda machine. Ethnic hatred of people is something you've engaged in, too, Kirby.
Am I entertaining yet?
Why not just announce that Lutheran Surrealism will henceforth be a site devoted to Christian val-yas, and be done with it? And ban all commentary that doesn't start with a commitment to the Bible as a document whose inherent truths are self-evident, and the only fit subject for consideration.
You are trying to turn your opponents into straw men, Curtis. You didn't read GM's post, and then attacked the straw man that you had built out of it. You are doing the same thing to me. Slow down a bit.
I never said "simple lessons."
That's how you turned my argument into a straw man.
You're not being fair. You're now castigating me as a racist bigot.
If that's what I am, why are you posting here?
You're turning me into a straw man.
Slow down, please.
I retired early last evening. Was tired.
You jump to too many conclusions. I might add: "simple" conclusions.
But that's because you're not willing to think about the complexity of an argument.
GM only said that we can't say on a FACTUAL basis who wrote Homer or Shakespeare's work.
Very little can be said on an absolute basis. Kant would argue that NOTHING can be said on an absolutely factual basis. But he also adds that the moral questions are part of our operating code.
We need to think in a moral way.
We need to separate good from bad, right from wrong.
Literature and philosophy often attempt to do this especially in areas where it isn't quite clear what is right and wrong, good or bad. Good religion goes into the same area.
One of the huge problems I found in the OT and the NT is that there is a concern for the poor. But often the poor are regarded as a giant set that includes gamblers, and spendthrifts along with widows and orphans.
I'd grant the latter more right to the public purse than the former.
Likewise, I'm trying in this post to distinguish the right that Lazarus implies have a right to these shores, from the actual laws, that says that they don't.
Literature can help us to clarify moral questions. But it's not a one-sided dialogue.
It's a long long long discussion.
Literature that doesn't facilitate discussion isn't serious.
You're not facilitating discussion. You attempt to close it by misreading others' comments and then hitting a straw man.
I'm letting your comments through, but don't see very much in them of value, including your caricature of the church from within a southern dialect. The south has a right to be in the country, too. Southerners also have the right to be here.
The left has a strong tendency to infantilize, but this in turn keeps them from answering the full weight of others' thought. It's a big part of the reason that I left the left.
Kirby, you say
"I'd think the one point about "serious" literature is that it attempts to be "serious" about being a guide to life.
"Entertainment" isn't "serious" by definition.
At any rate, your remarks are entertaining, Curtis."
You don't understand simple words. Anything which entertains isn't necessarily trivial or without purpose. If the only purpose of art were to teach moral principles, then it could be as dull and tedious as you seem to want it to be.
Shakespeare's Plays are first of all entertainments. Anyone who doesn't understand that has yet to get out of diapers, in my opinion.
You can argue about literature serving as a tool for moral instruction, but that's a long way from trying to redefine all art and literature primarily as pedagogical tools.
Perhaps you'd like to do away with all forms of art and literature which don't further your religious aims, as the Muslims are said to do, making their children parrot the Koran endlessly, to the exclusion of all other texts. Perhaps you'd like to do the same with the Western Bible. I have no idea.
If you're moderating comments, now, this might be one you'd exclude. Shades of Silliman, Kirby. Is this what we went to war for, so you could replicate the same flimsy pretext for one-sided debate?
Do I need to keep copies of each of my comments, now, in anticipation of not seeing them passed through?
Did you reconsider in posting my comment from August 22 (Monday)? You withheld it, while publishing my response to Palmer.
My response to Palmer was specifically to his comment regarding Homer and Shakespeare. You welcomed Palmer's "intervention" which you thought supported your position, though I hardly see how it did.
In raising the issue of the moral value and significance of art, you betrayed a quite narrow notion of the application of art and literature for instruction. I think that was just a momentary lapse on your part, one which you probably instantly regretted. But it needed addressing, lest you make a gigantic error. Shakespeare in church? My, my.
"We need to think in a moral way."
No, we first need to think clearly. If you can't do that, you'll never achieve anything like a moral approach to life. Clear thinking, and clear expression--followed "religiously"--will take you most of the way. A good heart helps too.
In the meantime, let's appreciate Shakespeare and Homer and Shelley and Jack Gilbert. You make your anthology, I'll make mine.
You can lobby for commissioner of censorship. That would place you in the ideal position to exclude works which don't toe the line.
Most of your problems, Kirby, derive from twisted logic and confused arguments. Sometimes it's deliberate, and sometimes it isn't. Do you know the difference? It's not at all clear.
AFAIK, I haven't withheld any of your twisted and confused arguments, Curtis. I'm too entertained.
Aut prodesse volunt aut delectare poetae
aut simil et iucunda et idonea dicere vitae.
("Poets mean either to benefit, or to delight, or at once to utter words both pleasing and helpful to life.")
omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci,
lectorem delectando pariterque monendo.
("He has won every vote who has mixed the useful with the pleasurable,
at once delighting and instructing the reader.") Horace, Ars Poetica
Reading all but a few of Shelley's pieces is like falling on the thorns of life.
i'm pretty sure that my comments are not being withheld but stolen and are being placed into an anthology of ridiculous blog comments which kirby will publish as a surrealist poetry anthology and make a million dollars and refuse to give me a cut until i say something super ridiculous about the pope and i won't do it i just won't do it
there's a conspiracy alright
a conspiracy of dunces
homer was a blind derelict who hung out by the sea and rambled on and on about the oddest oddysee
you'll see no i won't he said i'm blind here by the sea but i have a story to tell so who needs eyes
it's obvious shakespeare did some serious cut 'n pasting
i wonder who the last person to memorize ulysses was
probably joyce
we think entertainment is about being wowed with lights and sparkles and women flashing their inner thighs and stupidity we would pay for and sports brutality
and when it tries to be interesting and intellectual it goes out the window fast
i find it interesting and horrible that freud dismissed the bible narratives and went with the greek stuff what a mistake man that guy got a alot of distance off of being completely blind and ridiculous
i'm glad it's all over nobody must ever refer to freud again he's done he's had his say he was wrong about eveything but that's ok just don't let school girls read him
to ignore the long series of covenants and dismissing them as historically dubious or spurious or whatever negative is to choose to be blind to a consistent growth of awareness about what it means to be human in this mysterious world
those who choose to dismiss the covenant narratives stand on the ancient books and yell something about aesthetics like it matters
atheism and agnosticism are the flatulence of the leisure class
no good arguments have been posited
i'm sorry to have to say
that's just the way it is
epistemological bankruptcy
at it's worst
no bailouts
it's absolutely impossible to be a good person without referring to jesus of nazareth or some comparable rabbi of which i will admit there are a few
abraham abulafia for one
to say that he doesn't matter
is to say water is useless
the dark ages weren't all that dark
really
i think we've got religion in our balls and ovaries
it's a pathetic denial to mistrust all that
but who cares
the world is spinning out of control
maybe the marxists will save us
when everyone becomes middle class
no more richy rich no more poor
just decent middle class folks
every eye contains the spark of god
no matter how occluded
yo
grrrrpmmmntiiingjgjghhjkjejjr99idjkntn'd
yeah
jh
jh:
bbeebbeebbeebbeebbeebbeebbeebbeebbeebbeebbeebbeebbeebbeebbeebbeebbee
bbeebbeebbeebbee
bbee
bbee
bbeebbeebbeebbeebbee
curtis is pioneering cyber jazz
it sounds like a computer
on drugs
bbeebbeebbeebbeebbbeeeebbbebbbbbeezzzzzzttttttttbbeebbeebbee
if you can't be with the one you love
send her a love poem for god's sake
i mean
what ever happened to
creative restraint
delayed gratification
poetry
i think obama should begin every news conference with a poem
i wonder how many people got to stay in america simply because it was too impractical to send them back in 1750
give every mexican an acre or 2 to cultivate his own food and we'd have no problems
we need more wendy's around here
daring courageous women who are not afraid of the zaniness of lutheran surrealism
rodeo clowns
jh
Psycho-babble deluxe.
Curtis--Kirby is right, you were misreading; I was taking (and still take) umbrage with the idea that we can definitively say anything regarding authorship of any writer prior to 1700 or so (and even then, I'd be wary).
We can have some fine ideas, even very well-supported ones, but to say "it's a fact" is pedestrian at best.
Moreover, my real point is that yes, folks do use "entertainment" as you would have it for moral guidance.
Indeed, that has always been the purpose of art--a communicative hybrid of hedonistic education--that is, it's something you enjoy and learn from.
If it's just something you enjoy it's not art.
On a side note, I would ask you to consider your rudeness in regarding me as "whoever you are." Though it is possible that you have missed my name (linked to my blog) to the right of the blog as "Frequent Commenters Here" and my active participation in LS for, what, five years, it is rude in the main to refer to anyone as "whoever you are" in polite conversation.
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0811/61677.html
There's a story here about an important painting by Rockwell -- another very good and difficult painter -- difficult because so clear in his didacticism. But also very clever about it.
This isn't one of my favorite paintings -- but it definitely makes a point. Obama likes it.
This means the left has to like it, too.
With GM, I'd ask Curtis to reconsider slamming GM. He's been a commenter for years and years here, and is easy to look up, and has his own blog.
He's a living person.
Kirby:
You frequently treat unwelcome visitors here with contempt, as do many of your "regulars." You can't choose sides with etiquette--either it applies to everyone equally, or it doesn't. JA frequently disses people, and gets off scot-free.
When someone whom I don't know engages in gratuitous attacks against me, I give as good as I get. If that's not permitted, then perhaps you ought to police your comment boxes with more discrimination.
Palmer entered a discussion with little or no understanding of the issues involved, and continues to make assertions that are unsupported by research or knowledge. I think everyone should be able to have opinions, as long as they're clearly just opinions, but when they attack you for veracity and documentation, without having anything concrete to back it up, then it's irresponsible.
Since I'm unfamiliar with Palmer, I see no reason to go to the trouble of "getting to know him" since he pays me little or no respect to begin with. I certainly feel that way about deLater; why would I want to subject myself to further abuse?
What happens on individual blog comment boxes, is that "regulars" begin to assume a kind of familiarity with the blog-master, and think they have "license" to pretty much act how they please. When things get ugly, they expect the moderator to take their side. Far too often, on Lutheran Surrealism, Kirby, you take sides and beat up on people you disagree with. It's bad practice, and you shouldn't do it.
Curtis, you're as much of a regular as GM if not more so. You're kind of the odd man out here now since all the other secularists like Tom, and the Icelander, and many others who used to come, have all thrown in the towel. J is the one other violent secularist who still tries to post now and then (I never let him through).
He goes to your blog, and your blog has its regulars.
I think if you come to a blog full of Christians and blow hot air to the effect that Christianity is humbug, and that your SF viewpoint is the only one that matters, and that everyone should be humping one another in the streets and the godless should rule, and there's nothing that matters above material things, and express contempt for anyone who doesn't think there is nothing real about right and wrong, then you should counton contempt in return.
There have been a few cases in which someone waltzes into another society and by simply announcing good news has changed that society.
Jonah goes to Ninevah, terrified lest he will be killed. All he has to do is say God Exists! and everyone converts. It's almost comical.
You think you can just come up and pull an anti-Jonah on us and that's that.
Obviously it isn't working, so you think we're mistreating the messenger when in fact we find the messenge a little dopey. If we find you a little dopey, too, for trying this, it's not because we think you're an object of contempt.
It's that we find your message an object of contempt.
When you try to switch your rhetoric as you sometimes have and argue from within our tradition you sometimes get a little better traction. We were all surprised at your rhetoric with regard to marriage, and with regard to illegal immigration.
We don't really like your equation of the Bible with children's stories.
Or your equation of Christians with bone-in-the-nose savages.
Obviously they are not the same.
The notion of the law that is announced by Moses, and that is clarified by Christ in the Sermon on the Mount, is unique in human history, and can't be compared to anything else.
You can try to do it, but to my mind it doesn't work.
Jungian hacks tried to do it with the notion of the universal unconscious -- a comical viewpoint that makes no sense. Obviously every culture is unique, and comparisons strain the imagination at best.
Jung was an anti-Semite who hated the Jews, and hated Christians.
Marx was of course worse.
Together they made quite a stew in the 80s, but finally the Marxists destroyed the Jungians.
Now what's left is a monolithic Marxist left that is imperious in its idiocy, and demands that Christianity lay down its cross and take up the hammer and sicle and join the Red Guards as they cut western civilization off from its roots in Moses.
No thanks.
Kirby, I don't know why Faville continues to toss out the "melon tes Eridos" (or the "Apple of Discord"--the Greek's just for him)here and rag on tediously about supposed rudeness to himself in his complaints about your administration of your LS site.
It's more than beginning to seem at once cranky and whiny.
He also loses no opportunity to refer to my supposed personal attacks on him, but he neglects to mention specific examples of this supposed personal rudeness. I've actually pulled not a few punches here and there in critiquing his statements and ideas, though I suspect that mere opposition to them in any spirited way he takes as a kind of slap on the face.
I appreciate Faville's contributions here, for it's good to have a mix of widely differing views even if (as stu has it) a few rhetorical sharp elbows get swung about from time to time. If he thinks (as President Nixon rightly noted about the press) he gets kicked around here, he should at all costs avoid mixing it up on a real rough-and-tumble blog site like law prof Ann Althouse's.
JA:
There are two things I really dislike about you.
1) Your affectation of condescension which I don't buy for five seconds.
2) Your hoary rhetorical style which strikes me as completely inappropriate.
We all enjoy intelligence--but intelligence worn ornately and ostentatiously is a bore. Besides, you're not half as erudite and elegant as you seem to think you are.
Plain talk is usually best. Trying to turn every discussion into a Federalist brief is evidence, in my book, of a strong sense of insecurity--at some point in your life. You're compensating for that now.
That's my take on you. Fix those things and I'm on your team, mate.
The main difference between us on the internet, Kirby, is that you have an agenda, and I don't.
My blogs are intended as casual explications of subjects of interest to me, but I frankly don't care if anyone is persuaded by my points of view. I'm not running a holy rollers' tent.
You should know by now that I'm not doctrinaire about anything, that I make up my own mind about each issue separately, and none of it adds up to a coherent, dependable voting record.
I've never lived in San Francisco in my life, and have never considered myself to be partisan of any particular religious or political viewpoint--or belonging to any regional demographic. Attacking people on that basis is just empty demagoguery.
You'll never make a Republican out of me, or a conservative, or whatever it is you want to make me into.
You and JA can huff and puff and bluster yourselves until you're red in the face, but I don't respond to condescension or double-talk--and I don't think any of the other people who visit here do either.
I don't "switch my rhetoric" to suit the case. If you disagree with me on one issue, doesn't imply that we'll disagree on another one. Sorry to be unpredictable and contradictory, but that's just the way I am.
I'm uninterested in organized religion, and have little patience with discussions which revolve around religious texts or teachings. My assertions regarding religion are completely a-religious--it's pointless to be offended by my disinterest. You may as well curse the humidity.
Over the last year, you've become increasingly strident and rigid about your extremist attitudes, on your blog. I appreciate that--at least you're being honest. But as you drift further to the right, you leave me and others like me behind. You seem to have a strong "true believer" streak, which draws you to more and more defiantly intransigent positions. I too am capable of bullheadedness, but not about everything, and not all the time.
We first became friendly by sharing certain frustrations about Silliman's philosophical framework as applied to art and literature. What most bothered me was his doctrinaire approach, which brooked no compromise. That, more than any specific disagreement I had with him, or with you, was what sparked my disillusionment. I "came over" to visit your site and began to engage.
But now you've become as rigid in your own way as we thought Silliman had become in his. To my eyes, this seems as plain as day. Perhaps you were leading me on, hoping for or expecting that I might become more amenable to your beliefs--perhaps you were looking for converts.
If the only purpose of these discussions is to proselytize to religion or radical political action, then it's not something I'm interested in. My participation is posited on other pretexts.
it might help everyone to read kirby's initial statements made back in 2004 about what he wants lutheran surrealism to be
he more or less admits that he's average at best when it comes to dealing with human difficulty he wants to avoid OK he wants to create it and then provoke it some then run away from it or he wants to tweak everything just to see what will come of it
of all the commentors here i think i like jadl the best he always links us back to the cultural oddities and hypocricys of old
but i like stu too for his thoroughness and brett has
come around with the most scathing insights into kirbyeez madness and we all of course tacitly agree
now curtis gives us a little hell and i think he likes doin it
as much as kirby likes being
a clown
he wears diamond studded eye caps kirby does and he plays with the skyhook
and wears one roller skate and listens to cap'n beefheart all day long driving everyone around him just nuts
and then he watches plays feminist deconstructionist reconstructionist plays by seneca and lets his daughter get caught up in the decadence of the theatre world keep her out of there kirby it's ugly there eeeyeeeech o i know we like to have all this ongoing stagey stuff in our culture o the stage is going to save us o the actors are so what should we say like real they act like they're real and in fact they are or are they
o how did i get on that topic
anyway
jadl is impervious to psychoanalysis he proved that long ago
i don't know curtis
i think you should have some fun
try to be goofy like craig
he throws zingers in
gm palmer swings
he can be as succinct as the point of a pin
or as broad as a florida marsh
jep is new and i'm wondering about him too
i mean where's the ludicrosity
knowledge is one thing
but idiocy is another
it's a wonder that we still know how to breathe
think of it as a cyberspace adventure in an escher print cosmos
and we all get to see one another in a long convoluted series of broken mirrors
the chickens do always come home to roost
ahr ah ahr ah ahhhrrrrrlllld
this ole man he played one
he played knick knack with his thumb
liberty poverty and poetry for all
summer is losing some of her passion
she doesn't embrace like she used to
and then there's the broken down car by the side of the road
with a crow on the hood
seems like a dream
got me hypnotized
jh
Thanks first to jh for his perceptive comments on us, and I certainly don't take offence at the (sort of) faint praise he's offered me.
But I do think he's right to note Kirby's ludic streak in his postings and comments as well as the ways these influence our responses. That's not to say there isn't a serio ludere (serious play) element to our comments especially on current events and political issues, but I think there's more than a bit of rhetorical posturing for effect in our modes of expression. Kirby's good at that, just as jh is often pleasantly bewildering.
I think Curtis takes the "style is the man" ("le style c'est l'homme meme") too literally and personalizes (or affects to personalize, as jh has it) the exchanges to the point of offering some corny sidewalk psychologizing that's itself pretty condescending (presuming to tell people you don't know personal things about themselves they don't or can't know). Trouble is, such lame psychologizing is not only empty of content but is quite unaffecting, at least in my case.
And I don't expect to convert Curtis (or stu or Brett, for that matter) to my own views--quite the contrary, for I like the mix of contrasting opinions expressed here. Sometimes I respond, sometimes I just sit back and watch the words go by. . . .
"I certainly don't take offence at the (sort of) faint praise he's offered me."
How gracious of you!
"I think there's more than a bit of rhetorical posturing for effect in our modes of expression."
Speak for yourself, JA.
"Kirby's good at that, just as jh is often pleasantly bewildering."
My adjective would be less gentle.
"I think Curtis takes the "style is the man" ("le style c'est l'homme meme") too literally and personalizes (or affects to personalize, as jh has it) the exchanges...."
Where we diverge is in my acknowledging that everyone who posts here does in fact have a human counterpart which is a real breathing person. The illusion of anonymity or "masks" of whom there are so many on the net, frequently makes intelligent, civilized conversation difficult, if not impossible. The idea that one can, with utter impunity, level scurrilous attacks against other people on a daily basis, is one behavior which I've been at some pains to address.
"...corny sidewalk psychologizing that's itself pretty condescending (presuming to tell people you don't know personal things about themselves they don't or can't know)."
Actually, one of the symptoms of the sort of problem you appear to have, is a reluctance to take responsibility for it. Hiding behind elaborately constructed avatars is a hallmark of classic sublimation, a refusal to deal with the sources of insecurity, and a sense of inadequacy in other spheres of one's life.
"Trouble is, such lame psychologizing is not only empty of content but is quite unaffecting, at least in my case."
Typically, there's a tendency to hide behind "respectable" anonymity, but the problem itself remains unacknowledged. Throwing out a smokescreen of pretentious persiflage isn't an answer, and "playing" naughty on blogs--for no apparent reason other than to provoke indignation--is a childish deflection.
Kirby undoubtedly welcomes your presence here, which tends to legitimate your persona, but you're smart enough to know how fragile that permission is, and how hollow the value.
Insofar as I know, the only "person" I've banned is J.
We don't know who he is, and he won't come clean, and he is violently anti-Semitic and doesn't forward the conversation.
So everyone here has carte blanche. We know who JADL and his wife are, have read his other writings, and appreciate his presence. Even JH who's a Catholic but a very liberal one in some ways, loves JADL.
So, I think you're a one man song of complaint, Curtis. It's true that JADL abuses you, but you abuse us, much more, and you could use at least some of your medicine spewed back in your face, Buster Brown.
Psychology is the last refuge of the scoundrel and of the profoundly immoral, Curtis.
/sarc off :P
Not sure how to answer Curtis's latest personal provocation, but rest assured I'll answer it openly (here) and not in some underhand way by petitioning Kirby in private messages to have my comments deleted for offending some self-styl'd Great Cham of Internet Etiquette.
Still waiting for examples of the copious and "scurrilous" personal attacks Curtis fancies he's accused me of making against him, but if I were of his "Fraudian" bent I might answer his fortune-cookie "sublimation" diagnosis by chuntering on (with a cunning "ach, so" punctuating the terms) about his supposed "resistance,"
"projection," "displacement,"
"fixation," "repetition compulsion," "obsession," etc. That's "if" I believed in dishing that "passive-aggressive" sort of calumny, though I don't, for psychologizing others in large part is simply a mode of character assassination. It's what corrupt people do to try to get a rhetorical leg up on those with whom they disagree about something or other.
And, as Kirby's pointed out, I'm not "hid[ing] behind 'respectable' anonymity," so that bit of inattention on his part doesn't bode well for the sense of his following comments.
Still, it's been a long day, and I have Curtis to thank for a few hearty laughs Emmy and I've had at Curtis's Raymond-Massey-as-King-Philip-II-style lugubrious lucubrations.
Nevertheless, it's not psychologizing to wonder if Curtis has of late suffered some kind of reverse, and if so, I take no pleasure in irritating him further.
Kirby:
I've abused no one.
Go back and read the posts.
Make up your own mind.
Don't play to the gallery.
It's a very big world.
You're a very very tiny corner of it.
No point in letting your indignation get the better of you.
At some point, JA will tire of mugging in the blog-world, and so will you.
So much pretense wasted on so little moment is very tiresome.
Now Emmy must rush to defend JA. But no one here really knows anything about him. He's just a phantom.
JA wants to be judged by his words. But I've never read anything in any of his posts to convince me that he's anything more than bluster and fustian.
This is just
to say
thanks, jh
o father
for the apt words--
I'll swing on.
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