The Distressing Mirror

Two men went up into the temple to pray, 

one a Pharisee, and the other a tax-gatherer.  

The Pharisee stood and was praying thus to himself, 

"God, I thank Thee that I am not like other people: 

swindlers, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax-gatherer. . ."

- Luke 18:10-11

Over the last week or so I downloaded an audio narration of another nonfiction book by Haruki Murakami.  (I already had his books Novelist as a Vocation and What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.)  Murakami has achieved fame as a novelist due to his complex, dreamlike narratives and complex, multidimensional characters.  However, I personally am drawn more to some of his short stories and nonfiction.  Also, nowadays I like to consume my fiction and narrative nonfiction in the form of audiobooks, since I can listen to them while exercising or doing housework or yardwork.  

The book I downloaded last week was Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche, and it deals with the March 1995 terrorist attack against Tokyo subway passengers which was perpetrated by members of Aum Shinrikyo (オウム真理教), a Japanese apocalyptic/doomsday cult founded by a certain Chizuo Matsumoto, known more widely as Shoko Asahara.  Over the years, Mr. Asahara had directed Aum followers to perpetrate a number of violent physical attacks against innocent Japanese citizens, including some who were critical of Aum activities and some who had been members of Aum but had since fled the cult.  (By the way, if you click on some of these links, you will be directed to webpages that are written in Japanese.  If you want to read them in English, simply copy the link address into Chrome or Chromium and right-click anywhere on the page.  An option will appear that says, "Translate to English."  Click on that option.)

The attack that occurred on March 20, 1995, used a liquid sarin solution that was stored in plastic bags.  The perpetrators boarded the Tokyo subway trains, dropped these plastic bags, then punctured them with the sharpened tips of umbrellas.  They then fled the trains at the next stop after the stop at which they boarded, while the liquid sarin solution spread over the floors of the subway cars and the sarin began to evaporate into the air.  As the sarin evaporated, it began to sicken and kill passengers.  It also sickened (and in some cases killed) Tokyo subway workers who were dispatched to clean up the liquid on the floors and who did not know that the liquid contained sarin.  This attack was entirely unprovoked.  None of the people riding those trains or working on those train platforms had done anything evil beforehand to Aum or to Shoko Asahara.

In writing Underground, Murakami sought to correct certain biases which he observed in Japanese media coverage of the gas incident.  In particular, there had been a tendency toward sensationalism which obscured the unavoidable grainy uniqueness of the individual stories of each of the victims and bystanders who had been riding the Tokyo subways on the day of the attack.  This is why there is a large number of interviews of victims in Murakami's account.  

But Murakami also attempted to challenge and correct certain biases in the Japanese societal and cultural perception of the meaning of the gas attack.  This attempt is captured in "Blind Nightmare: Where Are We Japanese Going?", a series of essays at the end of the original edition of the book.  In those essays, Murakami challenged the evolving narrative in which a "right," "sane," "good" Japanese society was juxtaposed against an "evil", "insane," "diseased" adversary.  As time passed, this narrative allowed the birth of a mindset in which "most Japanese [seemed] ready to pack up the whole incident in a trunk labeled things over and done with." (Murakami, ibid.)

What Murakami wanted to do instead was to ask, What kind of society have we Japanese (that is, all of us) become that something like Aum Shinrikyo could have arisen and that something like the Tokyo gas attack could have occurred?  To quote him again,

"In other words, the shock dealt to Japanese society by Aum and the gas attack has still to be effectively analyzed, the lessons have yet to be learned. Even now, having finished interviewing the victims, I can't simply file away the gas attack, saying: “After all, this was 

merely an extreme and exceptional crime committed by an isolated lunatic fringe.” And what am I to think when our collective memory of the affair is looking more and more like a bizarre comic strip or an urban myth? 

"If we are to learn anything from this tragic event, we must look at what happened all over again, from different angles, in different ways. Something tells me things will only get worse if we don't wash it out of our metabolism. It’s all too easy to say, “Aum was evil.” Nor does saying, “This had nothing to do with evil' or 'insanity'" prove anything either. Yet the spell cast by these phrases is almost impossible to break, the whole emotionally charged “Us” versus “Them" vocabulary has been done to death."

In his closing essays, Murakami cites the abortive attempt by Aum Shinrikyo to win seats in the Japanese Diet during the 1990 elections, mentioning in particular an encounter he had with Aum rallies in the Shibuya ward of Tokyo.  He speaks of the discomfort behind the revulsion he felt toward Aum and how he asked himself why he felt that revulsion, that horror.  His answer was that he saw in Aum a mirror of Japanese society itself at the time, and of himself as a Japanese man.  True, the mirror had distortions, yet it accurately reflected elements of the shadow self, the indwelling corruption which each of us must deal with on a daily basis in order not to descend into nihilistic destructiveness. 

I don't know whether other Japanese voices spoke up in the same way as Haruki Murakami in the months and years after the Tokyo gas attack.  But I do see a parallel between the gratuitous, unprovoked destruction of innocent people perpetrated by Aum and the gratuitous, unprovoked destruction of innocent people (especially the poor and the nonwhite) perpetrated by the Global Far Right over the last decade especially.  In particular, I am thinking of the murders of unarmed African-Americans, the abortive wall at the southern border of the U.S., and the many, many deaths of poor and nonwhite people in the United States, Brazil, Britain, and similar places due to COVID-19 in 2020.  I think of how these deaths were aided and cheered by a cohort of largely religious people with an apocalyptic/millenarian/doomsday mindset that justified in their minds their active attempts to murder their fellow human beings.  I think of the cults of celebrity/personality worship that have been created or attempted by people such as Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Elon Musk.

I also think of how in the West (particularly the United States), while there have been so many revelations of the existence of destructive cults in our midst over the decades, there have been so distressingly few voices calling us to a time of collective self-examination.  This is particularly true of those who claim to study and write about malignant narcissism.  I think of how the description of malignant narcissism found in the DSM-IV was modified in the DSM-V over the last decade.  The DSM-IV could be summarized thus: "This is what a wolf looks like - and by telling you all what a wolf looks like, hopefully we can keep you from getting bitten!" But the message of the DSM-V seems to me to be more sympathetic to wolves: "A wolf is not really a wolf unless he experiences suffering as a result of being a wolf..."  This obfuscation has helped to distort the discussion of narcissistic pathology among rich and powerful people such as national politicians and heads of big business.  And those who claim to write as the victims of narcissists hid their eyes from the realization that many of these "victims" in 2016 and 2020 had pledged their allegiance to the very narcissistic types against whom they claimed to be angry.  They tried to hide from the fact that their own narcissism was reflected in the political candidates whom they chose for themselves and the collective aspirations they embraced.

I too am a victim of cultic activity - as a person of color victimized by a society which claimed a religious mandate to Make Itself Great by trashing me and my ancestors - and as a former cult member myself - yet I too find that I must engage in a time of self-examination in light of the fact that I live in a society (namely, American society) which tends to form cults as prolifically as mangy dogs produce fleas.  For I must admit that during my days as a member of a particular cult I did damage to other people, because the cult appealed to a latent desire in me to dominate other people, to have power over other people.  To fulfill a latent desire within myself to be A Big Part of Something Great, I surrendered myself to someone else's prefabricated narrative.  My story became similar to that of the Aum devotees described by Murakami:

In order to take on the “self-determination” that Asahara provided, most of those who took refuge in the Aum cult appear to have deposited all their precious personal holdings of selfhood — lock and key — in that “spiritual bank" called Shoko Asahara. The faithful 

relinquished their freedom, renounced their possessions, disowned their families, discarded all secular judgment (common sense). "Normal" Japanese were aghast: How could anyone do such an insane thing? But conversely, to the cultists it was probably quite comforting. At last they had someone to watch over them, sparing them the anxiety of confronting each new situation on their own, and delivering them from any need to think for themselves.

A time of self-examination - both individual and collective - is urgently needed, both in the United States and throughout the West, particularly in those countries that have become "Murdochified."  This is because the 21st Century has already begun to bring urgent societal challenges that will require intelligent responses on both an individual and a collective level.  But if we are going to combine safely and equitably in order to craft collective responses, we need to be mentally healthy.  We must, as much as possible, eliminate our susceptibility to the voices of cult leaders who appeal to the darkness within each of us in an attempt to turn us into an embodiment of the darkness that exists in these cult leaders.  My concern is that achieving this may be a challenge in the United States.

Another Expose of An Evangelical Cult

Here is a link to a couple of interviews of another former member of the Assemblies of George Geftakys, who describes the horrible upbringing she experienced as a child of one of the main leaders in this group.  The interviewer is also a survivor of the Assemblies.  These interviews were very interesting to me because of my former involvement in this unhealthy group.  They are also interesting because of how they illustrate the influence of bad men from the toxic evangelical mainstream, men such as James Dobson.  As I said a while back, all the assertions of the American Religious Right are utter crap.  A caution about these interviews: they contain strong language and deal with triggering experiences.

Man, You Got To Figure It Out Yo'self

(Pardon the title.  I've been listening to some old Billy Joel lately...)

I have been following Cosmic Connies' blog Whirled Musings for a while, and I really appreciated her latest post.  The first part of that post deals with Ginni Thomas, the crazy-mixed-up wife of crazy-mixed-up U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence (Uncle Tom) Thomas.  It appears that she got involved in a cult during her young adulthood, then saw the light and got out of the cult.  After leaving the cult, she did some very good personal work which helped to build an exit path for others who had been sucked into cults.  But much later, she fell into the present day cult of white supremacy and the conspiracies that have been manufactured to express the existential fears of white supremacists whose supremacy is now fading away.

A few observations.  First, I think that the cults which hapless rubes fall into tend to reveal a lot about the motivations and values of those rubes.  I am thinking of those who fall into money cults, for instance.  That Ginni Thomas could fall into the cult of Trump and the associated cults such as QAnon does not speak well about her inner motives and values.  But let's consider the issue of cults from a larger perspective.  It seems to me (having myself fallen into a cult once and gotten out of it after many years) that people who fall into cults are looking for a certainty in life that simply cannot be guaranteed.  Therefore they look for gurus who will show them the minutest details of a supposed "One True Way" so that they can regiment every aspect of their lives to fit this supposed "Way" without having to do any thinking of their own.  Gurus tend to be people who lay out every detail of all the steps which the lives of their followers should take, including what to eat, what to wear, whom to marry, and where to work.  The guru's false promise is that if you follow all the steps which he (or sometimes she) lays out, you will never make any mistakes.  Cults provide both leaders and followers with an illusion of control.

But life can't be controlled the way the cults promise, simply because although we can know the past and experience the present, we cannot know much about the future except in its broadest brush strokes.  In many cases, all we can do for the near and intermediate future is estimate possibilities and probabilities.  There are general principles (especially moral principles) that we can and should apply in navigating those possibilities and probabilities.  And we can be confident that sooner or later, the moral principles will always work themselves out.  But we can't always know in advance the precise details by which this working out takes place.  People probably shouldn't expect a voice telling them to buy a certain lunch from a certain restaurant on a certain day.  You'll have to figure that out on your own.  

So in my own post-cult life, I have had three main priorities.  The first is to un-learn the malignant ways which I learned in while in the cult.  The second is to figure out for myself the general moral principles which I should follow.  Let me explain this one a bit.  I am a Bible-believing Christian and I intend to stay that way.  But I have had to realize that most of what I was taught by mainstream American evangelicalism is completely false.  (How could it be otherwise, when so many white evangelicals refuse to obey the Sermon On The Mount, when they are armed to the teeth, when they vote for slimy politicians like Trump?)  So I need to construct my own theology.  It is a work in progress.   The goals of that theology are that I myself may become a decent person, and that I may not get fooled again.  The third priority is to recover some of what was stolen from me.  To borrow a bit from Shawn Colvin,

I have lost too much sleep

and I'm gonna find it.

And as for the one in five Americans who still believe in QAnon or the Americans who still belong to the cult of Trump, I can only say that by their own evil they have made themselves the willing victims of "a politician who has fallen into populism and begun to make impossible promises...Naturally, his lies will come to light before long." (The Courage To Be Disliked, Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga)  Some of the lies which have come to light have come from the anti-vaxxer and COVID denialist members of that group, many of whom are now pushing up daisies because they became victims of COVID.  Based on my reading of trends, I think that life is about to serve up a number of other painful contradictions of the things which these people believe.

The Unexpected Consequences Of An Under-Noticed Addiction

This post will be short.  I am almost choking to death on grad school and work, and today I am more than a little sleep-deprived.  But in keeping with one of the more recent themes of this blog - namely, the tracing of the outworkings of the moral consequences now being reaped by Western society - here is something for readers to chew on.

In previous posts (see here and here), I commented on the shrinkage of broadcast and cable television, and hinted at the possible emergence of a culture in the West which is no longer influenced by Western mass media.  I'd like to explore that thought in greater detail some other time.  But today, for those of you who are still plugged into the electronic beast known as mainstream media (including not only "news," but all other forms of mass entertainment), I've got some disturbing words to say.

First, I've recently discovered that neuroscientists over the last two decades have been pointing out a disturbing link between excessive consumption of electronic entertainment and the risk of Alzheimer's disease.  Here is an article from CBS (ironically!) which reports the findings of a study connecting excess TV watching in youth to cognitive declines as early as middle age.  Here also is a link to a Washington Post article which describes the same study.

And here is a link to an article which shows that as far back as 2001, American neuroscientists were aware of such a connection.  In that article, one of the researchers, Dr. Robert Friedland, is quoted as saying, "...[it is possible for television to be intellectually stimulating], but probably that is not what is happening most of the time, especially in America, where people watch an average of four hours a day.  I think it is bad for the brain to watch four hours of television a day.   The brain has been honed by evolutionary forces to be active, and learning is an important part of life. When you watch TV you can be in a semi-conscious state where you really are not doing any learning."

And it gets even better.  A study published by the Royal Society in 2015 linked excessive playing of video games to the onset of changes in brain structure that diminished grey matter in the hippocampus, leading to an increased likelihood of development of neurological or psychiatric disorders later in life.  One such likely neurological disorder is Alzheimer's.

I would also like to suggest a link between excess consumption of electronic entertainment and the unmistakable rise in the number and percentage of personality-disordered people in Western society.  (What?  You haven't noticed?!)  Finding proof of such a link is an exercise I will leave to you, the reader.  (Hint: How do you describe spending hours of time in voyeuristic spying on narcissistic, histrionic, and borderline personalities trying to wipe each other out week by week?  I call it "watching soap operas" or "watching 'reality' TV," or in extreme cases, "watching the U.S. Presidential election campaigns."  Watching lots of that stuff eventually rubs off on a person.)

Killing A Predator - Nonviolently

Among the animals there are natural-born predators - animals who are specifically designed to live by eating other animals.  They are incapable of relating to certain other animals as anything but a food source - a fact which, no doubt, causes a great deal of stress in the animals who are regarded as food by the predators.  After all, nobody likes being eaten, or living under the constant threat of being eaten.  What if among humans, there are people who can't look at their fellow humans in any other way than as something that would look good between two pieces of bread?  How should the rest of humanity look at such human predators?

There are a few possible responses one could choose.  The first would be to be on the lookout for those in our midst who are natural predators, and who are incapable of being reformed, and to physically attack and destroy these people before they can make a meal out of you.  The trouble with this, however, is that some predators have used this justification for accusing and attacking people who were not a threat to them, in order to prey on them.  Or, we could let the predators run society so that they could shape society into the form most advantageous to them.  (This is the model adopted by the United States from 1776 until now.)

But what if you were bound by a moral code that prohibited you from doing violence to your fellow human beings, even if some of them were predators?  Would that mean that you had to passively offer yourself up to be eaten whenever you met a predator?  Surprisingly, opinions are divided on the answer to this question.

If you asked me what I thought, I would tell you that I am a Christian; therefore, I am prohibited from physically attacking those whom I recognize as human predators.  On this point, the New Testament is quite clear, if one is willing to take what it says at face value.  But where opinions diverge is on the question of whether we are obliged to keep constant company with predators, once we see that their fangs and claws have come out.  One school of thought would quote Luke 6:27-36: “But I tell you who hear: love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who mistreat you...", and would say that our duty is therefore to embrace every opportunity to do good deeds to abusive people, even going so far as to choose to remain in situations where we must endure long-term abuse, in order to have the opportunity to minister to abusive people.  This is how an acquaintance of mine counseled me after I told him of my recent decision to leave the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod, after I had heard some statements from some of their clergy who tried to justify the many police shootings of unarmed African-Americans over the last few years.  The acquaintance told me that I should stay with the Lutherans in order to "minister" to them, in the hope that "the Holy Spirit might reach them."  I didn't take his advice.  But it is the sort of advice that tickles the ears of the sort of people who want some of us to be like the central character in Uncle Tom's Cabin.

For there is another school of thought which says that placing yourself in situations of long-term abuse is sometimes a codependent behavior, and is not a sign of health on your part, but rather of pathology.  For such a response on your part enables the abuser to continue with his dysfunctional behavior.  ("Enabling" can be defined as "removing the natural consequences to the addict of his or her own behavior.")  So while I do indeed submit to Luke 6:27-36, I am also guided by Matthew 10, where the Lord sent His disciples out to do good to a nation which He knew would not receive His message.  There He says, "Behold, I send you out as sheep among wolves.  Therefore be wise (some translate this as "shrewd") as serpents, and harmless as doves.  But beware of men..."   Someone who is shrewd is smart or clever in a practical sort of way; he or she has an ability to understand things and make good judgments, and he or she possesses hard-headed acumen.  (In the original Greek, the word translated "wise" or "shrewd" is the Greek word φρόνιμος , or, "phronimos.")  In Matthew 10, the Lord also told His disciples that if their intended audience rejected the message of the good deeds done to them, the disciples were to leave them and move on to someone else.  And He said, "But when they persecute you in this city, flee into the next..."  (Emphasis added)  In other words, don't stick around.  

Things get even clearer when the abuser calls himself or herself a Christian.  For 1 Corinthians 5 says that we are not to associate with anyone who is called Christian if that person practices certain sins, among which are scheming to steal other people's stuff (which is a rough working definition of covetousness), or threatening other people in order to rob them (which is a rough working definition of extortion).  In other words, we are called to separate ourselves from those who are hell-bent on being abusive.  (That also applies on a certain level to abusive nations that call themselves "Christian".)

What if the abusers own the major institutions of society, and own the playing space in which the great game of economic advancement is played?  Then separation will not be without cost.  But those who do separate themselves will discover an amazing thing, namely, that they can indeed live outside of the system, if they are willing to stop wanting the things the system has to offer.  In other words, they discover that they don't need the things the system told them they needed.  1 Corinthians 7 commands us not to make full use of the world, since this world is passing away.  

So let's bring this to the realm of secular geopolitics.  The United States and Britain have, for the last sixty or so years, sought to refashion the world into their own personal possession, a united Anglo-American empire rising like a phoenix from the ashes of the British empire, on which "the sun never set."  They have imposed the dollar on the world as the world's reserve currency, the de facto currency of international trade.  They have enforced monetary policy via the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and have made the world into their oyster, an oyster which has only one choice, namely, to be eaten.  For they have made the pursuit of all other options impossibly painful for the oyster (or so they thought).  

But the oyster is now discovering that it does not have to be prey.  Syria (with a great deal of help from Russia) has just successfully resisted Anglo-American attempts to dismember it.  Iran recently announced that it will no longer conduct international trade with any other nation in dollars, but will trade in euros from now on.  China has announced that it will no longer peg its currency exclusively to the U.S. dollar, but rather to a basket of currencies.  (See this also.)  Russia and China are now trading with each other in Chinese yuan and not in U.S. dollars.  Other nations are also now ditching the dollar.  (See this also.)  And even inside the U.S. there is an increasing number of people who are unplugging from the system, financially and in other ways, by adopting simpler, more frugal lifestyles.  (One such development: note the swelling numbers of people who don't have a cable subscription, who don't even watch Netflix, and who don't have a TV.  Note also the very successful boycotts of year-end holiday shopping by African-Americans over the last two years.)  Such developments - not widely reported in Anglo-American media - must be giving a lot of hunger pangs to the predators who want to eat the oyster.

And this - the fear of starvation - is one big reason why predators start getting nervous when the prey begins to leave the pathological space created by the predators.  Just as no prey likes to be eaten, no predator wants to die of starvation.  The other reason why predators get nervous when their prey leave them has to do with the dynamic that emerges between predators once there are no longer any prey among them.  Along those lines, last week I was fascinated to hear a TED talk by Margaret Heffernan, author of Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore The Obvious At Our Peril.  In her talk, she described an experiment performed by William Muir of Purdue University, which involved two groups of chickens.  Chickens might prey on worms and bugs, but they normally don't prey on each other.  However, Muir took both groups of chickens through six generations of his experiment.  With one group (the control group), he did nothing but feed and care for them in the usual way.  However, in each generation of the second group, he separated out from them the best and most productive egg-layers (also known as the "super-chickens"), and used them as the breeding chickens for the following generation.  After six generations, the control group - the flock of mostly average chickens - was happy and thriving.  However, in the group which was subjected to selective breeding, by the sixth generation, only three of the "super-chickens" were alive.  The rest had pecked each other to death.

Culture-Wreckers and Culture Repair, Part 2

I'm glad that many people read my last post.  After I wrote it, I was a bit embarrassed, as it seemed to me that my thinking wasn't as clear as it could have been.  After all, TV isn't the only way of wrecking a culture, and it isn't as if the culture of the United States hasn't been seriously ugly in serious ways from the very beginning.
Still, it is useful to consider the theme of that post, namely, why cultures are perverted, who does the perverting, and the means they use to do it.  That can lead to an exploration of the self-organizing cultures that might likely arise in a society whose masters are losing their grip on society because their tools are losing their effectiveness.  What happens to people who no longer watch TV, who don't even have Internet access at home (see this also), who have also begun to be cut off from access to the American orgy of consumerism - for instance, people who don't drive or own a car because they can't afford to?  How do they respond to attempts to inject free-market, greed-is-good, Dave Ramsey-"Financial Peace" propaganda into their brains?  How do they respond when they begin to realize that none of what they see in real life matches anymore the TV commercials showing the perfectly manicured "American Family" with their 2.2 kids in a McMansion in the suburbs, SUV parked in the driveway?
I'd like to do a series of posts exploring these questions, and to expand on the theme of culture and the difference between healthy and perverted cultures.  I'd like to finish by addressing whether there's any hope for the redemption of mainstream American culture.  Such an exploration would take in a few other sources, such as Soong-Chan Rah's book, Many Colors: Cultural Intelligence for a Changing Church.  (Dr. Rah said something fascinating a few years ago, namely, that while every culture is fallen, every culture is redemptive.  It would be interesting to test his statement against American culture as it now is.)  Such a consideration would be especially interesting in light of the culture of violent narcissism now being promoted by the wealthiest members of American society.  I am thinking especially of Donald Trump and Cliven Bundy.
The trouble is, school has started again, and I need to think about some other things for several weeks.  So those posts on culture may be slow in coming.  In the meantime, here's another example of culture worth enjoying.  (I told you I've been picking up some good music from churches outside the American "mainstream"...)

Буду петь Господу

Culture-Wreckers and Culture Repair

It can be devilishly easy to wreck a culture, and devilishly hard to clean it up afterward.  If you want to wreck a culture, it helps to be very rich and to own most if not all of the main voices in the culture you want to wreck.  Those who have to clean up your mess afterward are usually people without a voice in the culture, and they find themselves facing the same set of issues, regardless of where the wreckage occurred.  So it is with those who have to deal with the messes made by the United States in various places.  For the Ukraine and Eastern Europe, the question is how to de-Nazify these places.  That Nazification took place over a period of several decades, amply funded both by neocon elements in the United States government and by some of its wealthiest citizens.  A key element of that Nazification was the wide dissemination of propaganda through various media outlets.  That process has resulted in a wrecked Eastern European country, and a number of other countries who have a dangerously inflated view of themselves, and who thus may no longer be able to live at peace with each other.  A similar process has taken place in Syria, where a culture has been partially wrecked by means of the funding of foreign rogues by the United States and its allies as they attempted to overthrow the government of President al-Assad.  The toxic culture created by the ISIS and al-Qaeda "moderate freedom fighters" funded by the U.S. and others has begun to damage even some Syrians.  It too was helped by American funded mass media.  The question, both in the Ukraine and in Syria, is how those who remain undamaged can clean up the toxic culture created in these places by foreign intervention.

But a similar question awaits those who seek to heal the culture of the United States.  For a lot of money, time and effort has gone into poisoning the culture of our nation.  Contrary to the propaganda many of us learned in grade school, the culture of the United States was never very virtuous.  But it seemed that during the late 1960's and 1970's, this country was stumbling toward the first grudging acknowledgement that all humans are created equal and ought to be treated as equal, regardless of race, creed, color, national origin, country of residence, or economic status.  However, there were people at that time who regarded such an acknowledgement to be an intolerable threat to their self-created identity as masters of everything, "more equal" than everyone else.  So these people began working to create a toxic culture which glorified the wealthy, the powerful, and the Anglo-American at everyone else's expense.  They began with people like Wally George and continued through the building of the radio empire of Rush Limbaugh and the rise of the media empire of Rupert Murdoch.  By now, their control over most of the organs of mainstream American media is nearly complete.  And they have done a really good job of poisoning the culture of this nation, having accomplished the revival of a sort of ugliness that hasn't existed since the Jim Crow days of the American South.

Cultural messes are created by people who want to legitimize the raw use of force to achieve selfish ends and to victimize the powerless.  And when cleaning up a mess, the first thing that must be done is to put a stop to whatever is making the mess.  If the pipes burst in your house and the floor gets flooded, it makes no sense to grab a mop and bucket until you've shut off the water.  Similarly, it may not be too useful to have public and private employers host "equity workshops" and "diversity trainings" for people who will simply turn around and sit in front of a propaganda-spewing TV set when they go home.  Maybe the first thing to do is to stop the river of sewage flowing from the outlets of mass media.

The thing is, it looks like that stoppage may be happening in the United States, and that it may be the result of the choice of an increasing number of people to get rid of the sewage outlet in their living room.  I've been reading lately about the increasing numbers of Americans who are going without TV, and the increasing number of households who do not even own a TV.  And while some analysts blame the decline in TV ownership on Internet entertainment and live movies, there are reports that revenues from online entertainment and live movies has also been dropping.  Here are a few links to what I'm talking about:

• "These Charts Show that Netflix is Killing TV", Business Insider, December 2013
• "Netflix Shares Tumble As U.S. Subscriber Growth Falls Short Of Company's Forecast", Forbes, October 2015
• "Cord Cutters and the Death of TV," Business Insider, November 2013
• "Nielsen Reports Sharp Growth In Zero TV Households", Deadline Hollywood, March 2013
• "Broadcast and Cable TV Ratings Keep Declining," IBTimes, June 2015
• "As Live TV Viewing Declines, How Can Networks Fully Monetize Their Viewers?", Adweek, October 2015
• "Zero TV Homes Are Really Starting To Worry Broadcasters," Huffington Post, April 2013.

There's plenty more where that came from, but I'm sure you get the point.  These articles don't even touch the subject of the growing number of people who are not watching any kind of electronic media, or the increasing number of people who no longer go out to watch movies.  One of the primary means of wrecking a culture has been to buy up all the voices of mass dissemination of that culture.  But now, an increasing number of people in the culture are no longer listening to those voices.  The average age of the typical broadcast TV viewer is now over 50.  The empires of Rupert Murdoch and people like him are becoming less and less effective, and people are starting to engage each other in the face-to-face creation of cultures of their own.  This is a hopeful sign that a safe space may be opening for those who want to create healthy cultures.

Yet all is not rosy.  There are other ways of creating a cultural mess besides the use of legacy broadcast, cable and print networks, and these ways are being exploited by the supremacists who are behind the great American culture-wrecking project.  In the age of the Internet, our best weapon against such people and their tactics may well be to display an unwavering decency, both in realspace and in cyberspace.

For Those Who Want To Take Charge Of Their Own Growth

I am very busy with grad school just now, so I won't be able to write a new post this week.  However, grad school (and self education in general) line up nicely with a post I wrote a few months ago, a post which I have decided to share again with interested readers who are trying to improve themselves in the midst of a society that is trying to scapegoat and destroy them.  Here then, for your enjoyment and edification, is Not Someone Else's Bonsai.

The Export of Hedonism

The Russian military intervention in Syria has produced a lot of interesting fallout.  It is now becoming clear that the militants whom Russia is targeting were financed by the United States (via the CIA) for the specific purpose of overthrowing the legitimate Syrian government, and that most (if not all) of these militants are one and the same as ISIS, who have been responsible for much of the havoc wrought on the Syrian nation and surrounding regions over the last few years.  It is also becoming clear that the one of the goals of U.S. intervention in Syria over that same time frame was delusional, for the U.S wasted over $500 million trying to raise an independent militia (and state) who were "moderate".  The word "moderate" should be understood to mean, "friendly to the interests of the United States."

What are those interests?  They are, by and large, corporate commercial interests.  The goal of American foreign policy seems to be to create a world which is friendly to a economic order ruled by the United States, a world which doesn't mind being exploited by the United States, a world whose citizens come to resemble the citizens of the United States in their consumerism and utter dependence on the commercial networks established by the corporate masters of the United States.  Consumerism is but a facet of hedonism.  Temptations to hedonism are therefore used by the United States to export "democracy" to "markets" closed by national leaders unwilling to sacrifice their sovereignty to the United States.  The "opposition" movements which spring up in such countries are often composed of people whose hedonism has been successfully awakened, and who are thus enticed to grumble against their existing national order because of the lack of "fleshpots, leeks and onions and garlic."  Thus they are led to grumble against regimes which were often quite successful at meeting the basic needs of their citizenry.

We can see the export of hedonism in the British empire, where Britain legalized and fought to protect the opium trade in China during the 1800's.  We can see it now in Afghanistan, in that the growing of opium - forcibly ended by the Taliban prior to the U.S. invasion - is back in full swing, thanks to U.S. involvement.  These are but two of the fruits of the foreign policy of nations which have at one time or another called themselves both "Christian" and "defenders of freedom."  What they really meant, it seems, was the "freedom" to be made into addicts.

I think the export of hedonism by Anglo-American society deserves much more research, and even several well-informed blog posts providing further elaboration.  However, I am fighting for my life right now in grad school.  So if anyone else wants to take up the topic, please feel free.  If you wish to write on the subject, I ask that your focus be on the role of the Anglo-American export of hedonism in the fomenting of revolutions and attempted regime change by the U.S. and its allies, focusing especially on the time from the beginning of the Cold War onward.  Thanks, and have a good day.

Give Me Some Delicious Reasons...

So, lately I've been in dialogue with a retired clergyman of a mainstream American church.  He and I have had, shall we say, a more than moderate difference of opinion concerning the revival of overt oppression of people of color in this country, and the appropriateness of the mainstream American evangelical response so far.  Those of you who read this blog know that I believe that the mainstream evangelical response has been rather lame, amounting to a non-response - which is why I can't really take mainstream American evangelicalism very seriously anymore, since I now view it as a tool of oppression.  He tends to think that the problem of oppression in this country is much less severe than the facts now indicate, and he tends to talk vaguely of a "race" problem which he assumes to be a bi-lateral grievance between two belligerents who are equally at fault.  The retired clergyman would rather I saw things his way, and our last face-to-face discussion was slightly hot in places.  But amazingly, at the end, he offered to let me write an installment of the weekly prayer email sent to the prayer team at his church.

So here is what I wrote for that week:  

"'Remember the prisoners, as though in prison with them, and those who are ill-treated, since you yourselves are in the body.' - Hebrews 13:3

"I am reminded of this verse as I consider a recent study I conducted in order to prepare for a discussion of ongoing injustice being perpetrated in the United States. One of the elements of that study was the failure of the criminal justice system, which has been guilty of sending many innocent people to prison (and in several cases, to death row). Here are links to some of the sources I read:

• 'Three black men, convicted as teens, exonerated in Ohio after serving 20 years in prison',

• 'Three black men released after 18 years in prison on wrongful murder convictions' (this group is different from the three in the first article),

• 'Exonerations in the United States, 1989-2012' (especially starting at page 30),

• 'Race and Justice: Wrongful Convictions of African American Men',

• 'Wrongfully Convicted African-Americans Wait Longer To Be Exonerated Than Others: Study',

• 'How Often Do Wrongful Convictions Involve Black Defendants?' (The answer is between 71 and 73 percent.)

"Minorities (especially African-American) make up a disproportionate number of those incarcerated or sentenced to death in this country, yet the available data seems to indicate that the majority of prisoners of color in the United States are innocent. It is a real challenge for the innocent to prove their innocence and to obtain release from prison, because the criminal justice system purposely makes it hard for convicted prisoners to prove their innocence. Indeed, in 2009, the United States Supreme Court ruled that prisoners have no constitutional right to DNA testing that might prove their innocence.

"Therefore, please remember the prisoners, just as the Scripture has commanded us. Let us remember them in our prayers. Let us pray for their release from oppression and unjust imprisonment. Let us also pray about how we might physically, materially 'show compassion to those in prison' and to their families - Hebrews 10:34. And let us pray for the repentance of the United States."

As I said, it's amazing to me that I was able to send these exact words to the prayer team at that church.  Now I guess I should visit a Sunday service to see how those words were received.  And as for the hard words I have already written about mainstream American evangelicalism (and about present-day American society), I'm praying for some more delicious reasons to eat those words.  We'll see...

The Demise of The Right Cross

Now we come again to a theme which we have explored in previous posts on this blog, namely, the role and purpose of American civil religion in American narcissism. This week's post will compare that religion with the thing for which it is often mistaken in this country, namely Biblical Christianity. I will be quoting a fair amount of Scripture, and I'll get a bit theologically “heavy” at times, so if some of you feel like bailing out on this post, I'll not take it personally. But hey, you've come along for the ride this far, so why not ride a little more with me? (Some may wonder how my posts of the last several months are related to the original theme of this blog. I'll get around to explaining that sooner or later.)

Let me begin by quoting the New American Standard translation of 1 Peter 1:1 – “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who reside as aliens, scattered...” The King James Bible renders the verse thus: “Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia,...(etc)” In my opinion, the King James rendering is rather sleepy. The wording of the New American Standard translation is here more evocative: “To those who reside as aliens, scattered...” In other words, a chief characteristic of those whom Peter is addressing is that in the earthly places where these people reside, they reside as aliens – as a people apart, a culture apart. This is a chief characteristic of such people wherever on earth they reside. They are “expatriados” (Spanish, RV 1960 translation), “extranjeros” (foreign, alien) (1 Pedro 2:11), “пришельцам, рассеянным” (1-е Петра 1:1). Among the meanings of рассеянным are “dispersed,” and “broadcast” (as seed). This lines up quite nicely with the way the Lord characterizes His people as seed sown in diverse places in His parable in Matthew 13:24-43, and the way in which the lifestyle of the Lord's people is to be a declaration that they are strangers and pilgrims on earth, as stated in Hebrews 11:13-16.

Thus, those who call themselves Christians are to live as strangers in whatever society they happen to be embedded. They are to seek a Kingdom which is to come, having become citizens of a Kingdom which is not from here (from earth, that is) as it says in John 18:36. This is how the early Church conducted itself in the Roman Empire in the days from the first century until the day that Augustine conferred earthly secular political power on the Church. Note that I did not say that the Church is to have no effect on the society in which it is embedded. Rather, the Church is to have a profound effect, realized by the active doing of good in the larger society.

But according to Scripture, what the Church is not called to do is to try to build an earthly kingdom, using earthly, temporal power or laws to create a “Christian” nation. There are reasons for that, some of which I explored in a post I wrote many moons ago. I'll expand on one of those reasons in today's post.

If the Church is not called to create earthly “Christian” kingdoms by earthly, secular, temporal means, why do so many well-placed American evangelicals insist on trying to “baptize” Uncle Sam? Moreover, where did they get the notion that the United States of America is a Christian nation founded on Christian principles? And are those who say they want to “bring the nation back to Christian ideals” saying that they want to take us “back” to a place where we've never been?

If you try to find the roots of the “Christian” principles on which this nation was founded, you will find that a fair number of the Founding Fathers were not orthodox fundamentalist Christians.  Thomas Jefferson is a notable example of a non-fundamentalist, and late in his life he published a book titled, The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, in which he removed all references to the supernatural or the Divinity and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  In fact, Jefferson valued Christ only for His teachings and believed that the writers of the New Testament were ignorant and superstitious men. Jefferson was also on friendly terms with Joseph Priestly, the founder of Unitarianism.  A solid majority of the Founding Fathers were against the use of the state to impose any religious creed, dogma or observance on the citizens of the United States.  (See this and this.)  Many of the Founding Fathers were Deists, and a significant minority of the generals and statesmen of early America were Freemasons.

It can thus be argued that in the early United States, there was very little effort made to cast this nation as a “Christian” nation. There are a few notable exceptions when it comes to those whom the nation wished to venerate as heroes. For instance, a number of larger-than-life stories about George Washington were the fabrications of a man named Mason Weems , whose account of Washington has been thoroughly debunked by a number of historians. It can also be argued that the United States of the 1800's was certainly “Christ-haunted” (but in a way that even Flannery O'Connor  might not have imagined), yet certainly not Christian in the main. Later in the 19th century, there were efforts by denominational leaders to make the government and tokens of the United States more explicitly “Christian.” Thus, during the Civil War, the words, “In God We Trust” were added to American currency, among other minor victories.

But a Princeton historian argues that it was not until the early decades of the 20th century that religious activists in the United States really began a concerted push to cast the United States as a “Christian” nation. In his book One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America, Kevin Kruse  argues that the notion of the United States as a Christian nation founded on Christian principles was the product of an intense marketing and propaganda effort on the part of big businessmen and government figures from the 1930's onward, to produce a perception in a nation suffering the effects of the greed of these authority figures that patriotism was the same thing as godliness. They used religion as a weapon to stave off the welfare state (and to protect the wealthy from having to give up some of their riches to help the poor). In the process they enlisted prominent religious figures such as Billy Graham and prominent denominations whose de facto interest lay in maintaining a certain social and political status quo.

In the process, American fundamentalism (and the American evangelicalism into which it later evolved) became a sort of loosely organized, fractious, yet de facto state church. This state church performed (and still performs) many of the same functions historically performed by state churches in European history, namely, to bless, sanction and promulgate the imperial ambitions of the secular state that supports it. (You may not know this, but during World War 1, religious leaders in both Germany and England goaded their populations to slaughter – Germany with its “Gott strafe England!” and the Anglican Church with its calls for a “holy war.”)

As with all state churches, therefore, the current American evangelical church is called “Christian,” but does not look like 1 Peter 1:1. (If you bring me an animal that can't climb trees, but does howl at emergency vehicles, lifts its hind leg when relieving itself, barks and chases postal workers, should I believe you if you tell me it's a cat?) The American evangelical church has become merely another weapon of those who strive for secular earthly power. As a young adult, I once read a science fiction novel by Larry Niven in which one of two men in a brawl picked up a cat and attempted to use it as a weapon against the other man by swinging it at the other man's head. So Christianity and the Bible are being used today in the United States by people who want to maintain a last vestige of earthly supremacy, as they were used to build that supremacy and hegemony in the first place – sometimes by missionaries who were spies and servants of the earthly empires which sent them (see this and this and this for instance), and sometimes by missionaries who preached to conquered natives the duty of turning the other cheek and of not looking for rewards in this earthly life while the missionaries celebrated every holiday of their home countries in which their home countries refused to turn the other cheek.

To see the way in which American evangelicalism has become a dog whistle for those who seek earthly supremacy, we need look no further than the most recent evangelical scandal which has blown up like ordnance cooking off in a fire. Let me introduce you to Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar and their nineteen children. They are a wealthy white family who are part of a couple of rather wacky “Christian” movements in the United States, one of which is the Quiverfull movement and the other of which is the “Christian Patriarchy” movement. I'll leave it to you to look up the information on these movements, but I'll summarize them as movements led by men who want to restore white male privilege and domination over family life, and ultimately over both the United States and the world – “all for Jesus, of course!” Jim Bob is also actively involved in Arkansas state politics.

One characteristic of the leaders of such movements is that they always hold themselves and their families up as models of people who have done everything right, who have followed all the rules, and who therefore have earned the right to demand that the rest of us submit to them. So Jim Bob and Michelle used their family and their religious profession as a weapon, to the point of insinuating themselves onto network television with a “reality” TV series called “19 Kids and Counting,” which began airing on 19 September 2008. The only trouble with the series (and with their perfect image) is that in 2002 and 2003, their eldest son Josh molested (or is that sexually assaulted?) a number of underage girls, and that the Duggar family covered this up with the help of the Arkansas state police. Josh also sued the Arkansas DHS in 2007 to block their investigation of these incidents. And in 2013, Josh became the executive director of the legislative action arm of the Family Research Council, a conservative “Christian” organization founded by James Dobson.

Now I don't intend to get on a soap box to denounce Josh Duggar's sin. We are all sinful. But what really makes me angry is the way in which this hypocrite and his hypocritical family continue to try to use their religion as a weapon in what is actually very much like a barroom brawl, just as the cat was used in the story I mentioned. The de facto state church of America is a hypocritical entity composed of people who use religion to try to secure earthly dominion for themselves, yet they can't keep their own rules. They love the doctrine of justification by faith when they can apply it to themselves, but they reject the need of personal repentance in the same way that children will sometimes refuse meat and vegetables in order to chow down on dessert. But they are quite willing to shove all sorts of rules and obligations down the throats of the people over whom they wish to exercise dominion – among whom are all nonwhite people and all women.

The trouble for them is that they are now in decline.  (See this and this.) Their leaders would say that this is because they haven't been effective in communicating their message, but they might want to consider that the reason is that they don't practice what the Good Book preaches. They are not the salt of the earth. They are unwilling to repent of their own greed and selfishness; therefore, they are unable to call a nation to repentance over its greed and selfishness – greed and selfishness manifested in oppression of the poor, the foreign-born, the non-white, the citizens of other nations; oppression also manifested in the endless calls to war so that the United States can “liberate” property (land and natural resources) which rightfully belongs to people other than Americans while destroying the earth with its outlandish per capita consumption. In short, American evangelicals have become distasteful people to be around. Thus their children are choosing to separate from them and their religion.

But this does not mean that the true Church is in decline or in trouble, or that Christianity is about to disappear from the United States. Rather, the immigrant church is quite strong here. And immigrant Christians, especially those from poorer countries, are much quicker than many American evangelicals to remember what it means to be a stranger and a pilgrim. Therefore, they have much to teach us. One immigrant Christian, a man named Soong-Chan Rah, wrote a book with a rather provocative title, The Next Evangelicalism: Freeing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity.  His book caused a bit of narcissistic injury among some American evangelical leaders, but that's okay, they'll get over it.

If you are thinking of going to church tomorrow, you might therefore try out an immigrant church. Many of them have headphones and translators for English-speaking visitors. The Hispanic churches are friendly and welcoming, as are the Karen (Myanmar) churches. The Vietnamese churches can also be quite welcoming. The Ethiopian (Oromo) churches are good, although they can be very, VERY LOUD!!! (Dude, step away from the mic!) If you go to a Russian or Slavic church, they are more formal, so be sure to dress in your Sunday best, because for them, Church Is Serious. When you go, be sure to listen for the differences in worldview which exist between their preachers and the vast majority of American evangelical preachers. You'll be intrigued.

Not Someone Else's Bonsai

The attitudes of a culture toward the people it touches are seen in the impact that culture has on the people and things it touches. Sometimes a culture can turn those it touches into works of art. Sometimes a culture succeeds only in turning everything it touches into garbage. Not infrequently, the culture in question can become confused as to which category its works belong to, and as to whether or not its modifications of the “wild” are actually an improvement.

Consider the practice of bonsai, an Asian art which is over 1,400 years old. The word bonsai is a Japanese modification of the Chinese word penzai. Both words can be rendered as “tray plantings” and penzai is related to penjing, which literally means “tray scenery.”  The object of bonsai is to recreate a large-scale, wild landscape in miniature, using the same living elements which comprise the large landscape, yet at a scale which can be as intimate as a tray in the living room of a house. The living elements of bonsai are trees such as fir, maple, alder and elm – trees which in the wild grow to many times the height of a man. Yet the bonsai sculptor trains these trees from the seedling stage – using wires, bands, pruning and other techniques – to shape the tree into a living sculpture which is usually no taller than a man when mature, and which often grows to less than half as tall.

Imagine for a minute that you are a child in a locale where a large population must inhabit a limited living space. Now suppose that this population comprises a culture which loves greenery and cultivation of living things, yet which is forced to adapt its love of cultivation to limited spaces. Thus they become practitioners of bonsai. Throughout your youth, therefore, the only landscapes you see are miniature, planned down to the centimeter, carefully crafted. Then a day comes when you must travel to another place far away, and you must pass through a wild forest – full of maple, fir, alder, and elm trees, big and tall. Would the sight make you uncomfortable? Would you say, “A tree that is left growing in its natural state is a crude thing...”? 

I mention bonsai, not as a criticism of the art form, nor of Asian culture (for which I have the highest respect), but to use bonsai as a metaphor.

Each of us is a sculptor of others at some point in our lives. But how the sculpture turns out is often highly dependent on the intent of the sculptor. If the sculptor complains that his finished sculpture looks like garbage, maybe we should look at the motives of the sculptor rather than blaming the material which has been sculpted. When sculpting human beings, what material do we start with?

Here I look to the Good Book for answers. Acts 17:26 says that “[God] made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the surface of the earth...” That is, according to biblical Christianity, every one of us has the same origin. Therefore, every one of us is fully human. There is only one race within the human race, and that is the human race. We have the same basic genetic makeup, and therefore the same basic potential. This assertion is backed by science, which has determined that the concept of individual “races” within the human race has no factual validity. In other words, the human race has no subspecies.  The abundant proof of this is seen in such things as the success of “colorblind” organ transplants and blood transfusions.  It is also seen in the similarity of outcomes in those children across all “racial” and ethnic classifications who are exposed to the same “sculpting” process – also known as nurture.

That nurture has been scientifically examined in recent years, and the relative weight of nurture versus nature in producing specific outcomes has been examined as well. In 1993, a team of cognitive psychologists led by K. Anders Ericsson published a paper titled, “The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance.”  That paper asserted that innate talent is vastly overrated in the making of an expert in a particular field of endeavor. Rather, the key to the making of an expert is regular, consistent, “deliberate” practice. (Ericsson's definition of “deliberate” is itself deliberate.)

This research turned out to be rather controversial, and it deeply offended a number of people who had come to believe that they and their offspring are innately “all that and a bag of chips.” But there are several examples, both historical and modern, which justify Ericsson's assertions. One example cited in Ericsson's paper is that of Laszlo and Klara Polgar, a Hungarian couple who set out to train their three daughters to become chess masters. As a result, two of them became the best and second best women chess players in the world, and the third is ranked sixth in the world. Ericsson's research is also confirmed by the documented experiences of Shinichi Suzuki, originator of the Suzuki method of music instruction.

The focus of Ericsson and his colleagues, as well as Suzuki, was the outcome of healthy nurturing by mentors with good intentions. But mentors with evil intentions can be just as effective in producing the outcomes they want to see in their protégées. This is why adult children of alcoholics (ACOA's) and adult children of narcissists (ACON's) suffer such damage. Benevolent mentors lovingly encourage those in their care to develop their full potential, but personality-disordered and evil mentors seek to destroy those in their care – through constant put-downs, negativity, and active sabotage.

And when a society is itself narcissistic and dysfunctional, it destructively mentors those populations within it who are targeted as scapegoats. This was the motivation for laws in the antebellum South which made it illegal to teach African slaves to read and write. (See this and this.)  This was the motivation for segregated schools in the American South, and schools in the North which were de facto weapons of mass destruction.  This was the motivation for the first counterattacks against the minority education victories won during the civil rights struggles of the 1960's.  This is the motivation for the continued disparity in expectations, discipline and outcomes between white and minority children in American mass education, whether public or private. This is also seen in the portrayals of minority culture which are deemed to be acceptable to mainstream media (see this and this), media whose owners tend to look for the most dysfunctional elements of minority culture (especially Black American culture) in order to make sweeping generalizations about an entire people from one small element of what is after all a heterogeneous culture. Then they endlessly rebroadcast this elements to a defenseless and clueless public, saying thus that “THIS is what minorities are, and THIS is all they will ever be.” And they turn around and attempt to use the school system again as a weapon of mass destruction as the Oakland school district tried to do in the 1990's when it tried to force all Black children to be taught in the language of “Ebonics.”  One of the crowning successes of American mass media has been its ability to convince broad American society that Black Americans constitute a “criminal race” even though the facts contradict this. (See this and this for instance. Did you know that there are studies which indicate that actual rates of drug use among Black American youth are far lower than among White American youth, and that there is a higher percentage of White youth selling drugs than Black youth?)

The experience of minorities of color therefore continues to be similar to that of trees “sculpted” with fire, chain saws, battery acid and Roundup by a sadistic bonsai gardener who likes bare dirt better than soil “contaminated” by living matter. Yet seedlings manage to escape and turn into something much healthier than their sculptors planned. Some examples of plants which turned out differently than their sculptors intended include Junot Diaz, a writer from the Dominican Republic who made a name for himself by publishing gritty stories about life in inner-city ghettos in the American Northeast. Now he is working on a passion which for a long time was secret, namely, his desire to become an author of science fiction.  There is also Lloyd Ferguson, PhD, an emeritus electrical engineering professor who is also part of the Affordable Learning Initiative at Cal Poly Pomona. For many years Dr. Ferguson taught electromagnetics using a textbook written by another notable Black academic, namely Dr. Matthew N.O. Sadiku.  And there is veteran astronaut Robert Curbeam, and Vladymir Lamadieu, an information technology professional with a law degree who is also a good guitarist.  And there is Candace Makeda Moore, a Black American doctor now practicing medicine in South Africa.  I haven't even begun to scratch the surface of other female Black academics, professionals, or intellectuals, nor the vast number of Hispanics in the United States who are turning out differently than the masters of our predatory society had hoped. These all turned out as they did because they were not sculpted by American culture, or they learned to sculpt themselves in spite of American culture. In daring to be different, they risked the wrath of those who would accuse them of not “keepin' it real.” Not a few of the accusers are white!

Although high achievers in a scapegoated group can arise even in the midst of a culture which seeks to destroy them, the fact is that the scapegoating is almost always damaging. Dysfunction almost always results in the targeted group. This is seen across cultures and in many nations. The example of the Burakumin of Japan is illustrative, showing that the sort of dysfunction which arises from cultural scapegoating is very similar to that experienced by many members of the Black American population. It is also the same sort of dysfunction produced in Irish and Welsh populations by British occupiers from the 1700's to the early 20th century.

What scapegoated groups must therefore do is to disconnect from their abusers as much as is humanly possible. You're not somebody else's bonsai. Stop letting abusers treat you as if you were their plant to be ruined by them. There is also a need to heal the damage done by sadistic sculpting. And those who have been damaged will have to take charge of their own healing. That will be the topic of my next post.

The Sick Dreams of Fevered Minds

I was reading a few of my favorite blogs this week when I stumbled on the news that the LAPD had recently shot an unarmed homeless African-American man.  The trouble for the LAPD is that someone caught the entire incident on video and audio.  The officers involved initially said that the man had a gun; then they said that the man reached for an officer's gun.  I leave it to the reader to tell from the video whether the officers were lying.  (Of course, there's one rather stupid gadfly whom I expect to hear from with a loud, profanity-laden justification of the shooting regardless of what the video shows.  But people are beginning to tune him out.  Maybe I should too.)

To me, the shooting is yet one more evidence of the decompensation of privileged, entitled, narcissistic Anglo-American society.  As I discussed that decompensation with some online acquaintances, I brought up two other pieces of evidence: the movies American Sniper and 50 Shades of Grey.  One of those acquaintances questioned my assertion of a connection between the two movies, and in doing so, forced me to logically analyze what started for me as an intuitive association between the two.

So I wrote, "To me it seems that the U.S. is longing for a return of days in which America was supreme in the world, and in which Americans could dispense with politeness in their dealings with people different from them.  That is no longer the world in which we live, because of the contraction not only of the global economy, but of the American economy.  And starting wars in order to tip the balances in our favor is not working like it used to.  So many formerly privileged people in this country indulge in fantasies of heroic invincibility - as seen in movies like American Sniper, a movie which conveniently ignores the real reasons why the U.S. overthrew Saddam Hussein, and which romanticizes the killing of over 1 million Iraqi's.  If heroic fantasies of invincibility don't work, there are fantasies of power to obtain any desire one wants - as seen in reactions of many moviegoers to 50 Shades of Grey, who don't see the movie as a warning, but as a legitimization of the deviant desires of the rich and powerful.

"But fantasies alone are not enough for some people, and they are acting out against any targets they can find, in order to convince themselves that they still hold a position of power and privilege over those they consider to be less than themselves.  That's where we see the shootings - especially mass shootings - committed predominately by white males..."

In resposnse, the acquaintance shared with me the Chris Hedges article I linked to at the top of this post.  Hedges sums up both movies quite nicely in this quote: "[50 Shades of Grey], like “American Sniper,” unquestioningly accepts a predatory world where the weak and the vulnerable are objects to exploit while the powerful are narcissistic and violent demigods. It blesses this capitalist hell as natural and good." 

This is the sick society in which we live just now - a society in which most of us are getting poorer due to the contraction of the industrial economy, while the wealthy not only continue to concentrate all remaining wealth into their hands, but also manufacture fevered dreams of continued "unlimited power, success, brilliance," etc. to shove down our throats.  To those who allow themselves to be indoctrinated by such dreams, I'll leave one quote: "But if you bite and devour one another, be careful that you don’t consume one another." - Galatians 5:15.

Living Through National Decompensation

For the last three months, the main focus of the posts on this blog has been the psychological examination of the public American persona. That persona is characterized by a certain pathology, which I have identified as narcissistic personality disorder. According to the Fourth Edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV) of the American Psychiatric Association, the signs of this disorder are as follows:

“a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy, beginning in early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:

(1) has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)

(2) is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love

(3) believes that he or she is 'special' and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)

(4) requires excessive admiration

(5) has a sense of entitlement, i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations

(6) is interpersonally exploitative, i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends

(7) lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings or needs of others

(8) is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her

(9) shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes.”

According to the site from which I copied this description, there should be added a tenth characteristic, namely, an exaggerated desire to mete out justice.

How does the behavior of the United States, both historical and recent, stack up against this diagnosis? Let's look at a few characteristics.

Grandiosity and Requiring Excessive Admiration: We would like to believe that we are and have always been the greatest nation on earth, and that we are the most exceptional people on earth. This, by the way, is not just a feature of American narcissism, but of Anglo-American narcissism. Therefore, in an odd irony, one of the greatest champions of American exceptionalism is Rupert Murdoch, an Australian who became an American citizen so that he could buy up most of American electronic and print media. This is also the myth that has been preached from the pulpits of mainstream white America's churches from the nation's founding until now.

Preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love: I can't speak for the “ideal love” part, but this nation certainly seems to be preoccupied with the other fantasies, as seen in the movies we make and watch, the celebrities we exalt, and the supposed cleverness, genius and ingenuity of which we constantly boast. This preoccupation is also seen in the constant pushing of the Horatio Alger myth that anyone in this country can get rich, and that this is something we should all want.

Entitlement, Exploitation and a Lack of Empathy: In order to exalt ourselves in our own eyes, we have abased much of the rest of the world, to the point of dispossessing people of their lands, robbing them at gunpoint, murdering them and enslaving and oppressing them. Yet we have felt entitled to do so, and have been genuinely surprised by the resulting hostile “blowback.” We can't for the life of us figure out why our enemies are fighting us, except that in some vague way, “they hate our freedoms.” Unable (or actually unwilling) to comprehend our enemies, we ascribe their motivations to an inchoate and unnameable “savagery.”

Envy, Arrogance and an Exaggerated Desire to Mete Out Justice: This explains the peculiar American tendency to justify its aggression and oppression of the world by casting itself as the world's “policeman.” This is the motivation for a few lines of Francis Scott Key's “Star Spangled Banner”:

O thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved homes and the war's desolation.
Blest with vict'ry and peace, may the Heav'n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

That Key's hymn is a direct contradiction of the New Testament is a fact that seems to have escaped a few American “Christian patriots,” but that is a subject for another time.

Certain writers have described the narcissistic personality as a “grandiose self” manufactured by a person who is actually very fragile on the inside. The grandiose self is the compensatory mechanism of such a person. However, when that grandiose self is effectively contradicted by outside events, the person who constructed that self is liable to suffer an episode of decompensation.

In a previous post, I began to describe what American national decompensation might look like. In future posts I will elaborate on that description, and will begin to describe the moral choices facing a person living in our decompensating society. My point of view will be Biblical as well as technical, and for every finger I point outward, there will be three pointing back at me – which is to say that the posts will be more of a personal diary than an analysis.

Meanwhile, the literature I have read indicates that two signs of decompensation are a worsening of narcissistic behaviors combined with a diminishing of sound judgment and cognitive function.  Here then are a few signs of American national decompensation for you to chew on: first, the U.S. is busy building the infrastructure needed to become a major oil and gas exporter, even though most independent analyses of U.S. oil and gas reserves and production show that shale and tight oil production is at peak or will peak by 2016. Why are we doing this? Because certain members of our ruling class want to continue to live in the fantasy that this is the greatest nation on earth, even though reality contradicts this fantasy. (See this also.)  Another sign of decompensation is our continual and escalating search for any nation we can start a fight with. Narcissists have a great deal of inward hostility, and they need a target on whom to dump it. This narcissistic nation, having long used the poor and the nonwhite within its own borders as its toilet bowl, is looking to build more outhouses in the Mideast and Eastern Europe (i.e., the Ukraine).

The Libertarian Lifeboat

I'm a bit tied up with an ongoing research project, so here's another repost from way back.  I think it's particularly relevant in light of some of the essays and comments I've seen circulating the blogosphere recently.  As I wrote in a recent post, American society has been unstable from the start, due to the emphasis by the Founding Fathers on "liberty" (as in the right to do whatever one pleases) without a counterbalancing emphasis laid on our duty to each other as members of a civil society.  Yet there are still credulous people pushing "libertarian" ideals and champions such as Lew Rockwell and Ron and Rand Paul.  I'd like to say to such people, "So...we got into our present fix because some people found out how to get filthy rich at the expense of all the rest of us by dirty, yet legal tricks.  Now they are making us all suffer.  And your solution is to keep promoting a supposed right to the very selfishness that got us into this mess.  Hmm...what's that saying about insanity consisting of doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result?"

I'd like to take a break from considering alternatives to our present breaking corporatist economic and societal systems, in order to tell a couple of stories that need to be told. Also, I have taken a number of pictures of people over the last several weeks, promising those whom I photographed that I would post their pictures on future installments of The Well Run Dry. So, God willing, the next two posts will tell needful stories, and the following post will have pictures relating to bicycle transportation.

The story I am about to tell you is one I heard a few years ago. It is a very strange illustration of the potential for bizarre human behavior. It took place several years back, aboard a double-bottomed, Handy-sized sea-going bulk cargo ship whose name escapes me at the moment. The ship was old, and had seen many voyages, some through very severe weather, both in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Its crew was a volatile mix of quirky, memorable types and experienced, wise, level-headed men. One of the strangest and most quirky characters was the boatswain (or bos'un for the nautical initiates), a big-boned, burly, sandy-haired, square-jawed man of indeterminate age.

The bo'sun was a fearsome sight to the deck crew whom he supervised as he directed sharp glances all around, swiveling his large head on his bull neck while barking commands, muscular biceps flexed as he rested his large hands on his hips. Those who crossed him usually did it only once, as the punishment he dealt was swift and severe. Aside from giving orders, he almost never talked to any other shipmates. This was unusual, since the three licensed officers on board were quite friendly with all the crew, figuring that pleasant voyages contributed to crew effectiveness.

The bo'sun tended to keep to himself when not on duty or at meals, preferring to remain in his quarters rather than mix with the crew. Almost no one ever saw the inside of his quarters, but the one or two crewmen who were able to get a glimpse said that on one wall was a Confederate Rebel flag, and that there was a bookcase underneath containing books such as The Politician by Robert W. Welch; The Way Things Ought To Be and See, I Told You So, by Rush Limbaugh; and Robert Lewis Dabney: The Prophet Speaks by Doug Phillips, along with several copies of The New American, a magazine published by the John Birch Society. He also had a life-sized poster of Rush next to an old VCR with which he frequently played a battered copy of Birth of a Nation. (At times while on watch, other crew members could hear him muttering scenes of the movie from memory.) Somehow amid all the clutter, he had also managed to stash 250 pounds of cast iron free weights, a couple of dumbbell bars and a barbell bar, all of which he used religiously.

His physical training served him well on the particular voyage we are now considering – a voyage that took the ship from the tropics up into the North Pacific during the height of typhoon season. The ship was carrying a load of some grain – rice, I think – and its course carried it right into the path of a tropical depression that was also moving north. The loading of the rice had been supervised by a junior officer without much experience, and as a result, the cargo settled, then began to shift as the ship ran into increasingly rough weather. The depression strengthened into a storm that grew into a typhoon, and began to produce dangerous rogue waves. Most of the crew had experienced typhoons before, and they were therefore not terribly worried, until two rogue waves hit the ship within five minutes of each other and caused her to heel hard to port. This caused the cargo to shift dangerously, making the vessel list. Then a third rogue wave hit and downflooded the engine room, causing the ship to go dead in the water.

The vessel's situation was now serious. Yet even at this point she might have been saved if the engineer had been able to restore power quickly. But by this time the ship, which was old as has been mentioned before, began to suffer the effects of corrosion and metal fatigue as the pounding of the storm proved to be too much for her. Within thirty minutes of losing power the front hold began to flood, and the flooding quickly spread to hold number two. By the time the crew realized their peril it was too late for many to escape. Only one lifeboat could be launched in the minutes before the ship sank, and those who were lucky enough to be nearby piled into it in whatever condition they found themselves, with whatever possessions they happened to be carrying. It was night when she sank.

The dawn revealed that seven men had survived out of a crew of twenty-four. Amid somewhat calmer weather, they looked at each other with mostly frightened eyes. There were two able seamen, the second officer, an oiler, the steward's assistant, an ordinary seaman, and the bo'sun. The steward's assistant shivered in the wind and rain, as he hadn't had time even to put his clothes on before the sinking. One of the able seamen had been able to don a survival suit, as had the bo'sun. The second officer had a fractured leg. The ordinary seaman had suffered a concussion. All were badly shaken – except for the bo'sun.

He had managed to grab several items before getting into the lifeboat. His stash consisted of a number of blankets, some tins of meat, water and hardtack, several Army-style can openers, a solar still, an emergency fishing rod, a knife and a first aid kit. In all he must have carried over a hundred pounds of supplies with him into that boat. Of course, this was in addition to the supplies with which the lifeboat was normally stocked. The other survivors cheered up greatly when they saw the bo'sun's stash in addition to the lifeboat's regular supplies. But their cheer was short-lived.

The steward's assistant spoke first. “Hey there, bo'sun,” he said, “could you pass me one of those blankets? I was in bed when the ship started to sink.” One of the able seamen said, “Say, bo'sun, the second officer's in bad shape. Is there any Advil we could give him?” The oiler chimed in and said, “Oh, no! The launch of the lifeboat caused us to lose all of the can openers in the boat's survival kit. Hey, bo'sun, could you spare an extra?”

Their requests died away into silence as the bo'sun merely stared at them for several seconds. Then he spoke. “You're not expecting a handout, are you? That's socialism!” He spat derisively over the side of the boat. “I earned what I have by my own effort,” he continued. “I won't give handouts, but I will let you earn the privelege to use what I have. That's what our Founding Fathers believed in.”

Now the rest of the survivors were silent in their turn, staring with shocked faces at the bo'sun. Finally, the able seaman who had asked about the Advil spoke again. “But that's totally wacked out, bo'sun!” he shouted. “Look at the second officer! He's in no shape to earn anything! Why are you being a jerk?” An instant later, the bo'sun's fist crashed into his jaw and he crumpled to the bottom of the lifeboat.

“Now hear this,” said the bo'sun in a low, dangerous voice. “I don't give free rides to anybody. If you don't pull your own weight, you get nothing from me. Why, next you'll want me to socialize medical care! Ain't gonna happen. If the second officer is motivated enough, he'll do what it takes to get medicine. You who want the extra blanket!” he shouted, pointing at the steward's assistant. “If you want a blanket, get over here and grab this fishing rod. You gotta catch thirty pounds of fish. That's my price.”

Thus began the miserable journey of the survivors as ocean currents pushed them slowly northward. Needless to say, the second officer died within three days, and the others dumped his body overboard on the bo'sun's orders. The only epitaph the bo'sun spoke was to mutter about “freeloaders on society getting what they deserved.” He also muttered frequently that it was his manifest destiny to be the boss of that lifeboat.

Afterward, all the survivors were kept busy from sunup to sundown catching fish, cleaning fish, sun-drying fish and operating the solar still. In return for their labors they were allowed to eat just enough to stay alive. But the bo'sun ate his fill every day, and his stocky build began to grow chubby. By this time almost everyone in the boat was shirtless, since the weather had entirely cleared and had grown quite warm as the boat drifted out of the tropic zone into Northern Hemisphere summer conditions. The other survivors took notice of two large tattoos across the bo'sun's chest, one of which was an artist's rendition of Ayn Rand's face, and another which was a picture of a gnarled hand with the name “ADAM SMITH” written below.

The bo'sun himself noticed his increasing chubbiness, and began a two-hour regimen of calisthenics and body-weight strength-building exercises every day (although he never used his strength to do any actual work). Meanwhile the other survivors grew weaker and weaker, and one more man died. By now it was late July or early August, and though the boat had drifted north of the 35th parallel of latitude, it was still quite hot. The bo'sun was bothered by the heat, especially because it made him sweat a lot and grow thirsty during his workouts. But the solar still was slow in producing fresh water and the canned water was by now used up.

One day the bo'sun had a brilliant idea. “We're gonna do things a little different,” he said to the others. “We're all each gonna get his own space on this boat. However much space you get depends on how much you can fight for, and since I'm the strongest guy on this boat, I get the biggest space. Stay outta my space,” he said. Later that morning, he took most of the remaining blankets and made a shade covering over his newly created “space.” But still, he felt hot. Frustrated, he racked his brain for a solution. Then he smiled broadly as a new idea occurred to him. He found a hand drill and some large wood drill bits from the stash he had brought on board, and began to drill a hole in the bottom of the boat under his “space.”

The other survivors looked at him aghast. “Hey man, what are you doing??!” they all shouted at once. “I'm making a little fountain for my space, to cool my feet,” the bo'sun replied. “What's wrong, are you jealous?” “Dude,” they all shouted back, “you'll sink this boat and kill us all!” “What I do isn't gonna kill us or ruin this boat,” he growled, “and besides, what I do in my space is my business, so lay off!”

At this, the man telling the story broke off, overcome by emotion. “That dirty, selfish...” he finally said, then began coughing uncontrollably. The cough turned into a gag as our chief steward turned the man's body to the side and held a bucket up to his mouth. He retched up a last bit of swallowed seawater, then lay back on the steward's bunk, gasping. The steward noticed that the man was still shivering, ten hours after being pulled from the sea.  As the steward readjusted the man's blankets, we briefly glimpsed the sunburns and multiple salt water sores that covered his bony, emaciated body.  Under the blankets he was naked, for shortly after pulling him from the water, we had disposed of the tattered rags that had served as his clothing during his long months as a castaway.  At least he was no longer cyanotic.  Had we not spotted him at just the right moment, things would have turned out much worse for him. The ship's doctor gave the man an injection, told the cook to bring more hot water bottles, and told the rest of us to let the man have some rest.

P.S.: The story I have just told is entirely false. Anyone who has actually worked on a ship can probably tell that I haven't. But I told this story in order to prevent it from coming true, if you get my drift. As a very influential Man once said, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

P.P.S.: The Bo'sun in this story is a caricature of a particular ideology. Yet there are many ideologies of selfishness in the world today, and they must all be guarded against if our society is to successfully navigate the downside of Hubbert's Peak.