Connecting Moral Dots

I check my blog stats from time to time, and I noticed that there are people who are actively exploring my back catalog.  Thanks much for your readership!  One note: my favorite posts are the ones I have written over the last four years.  If you go really far back, you may stumble across posts which are a bit cringe-worthy, as my writing style was a bit more convoluted back then (I was trying to imitate a couple of bloggers whose writings I have since abandoned), and my worldview was not as fully developed.

I am happy to see that people are re-reading my post "Nihil Nixed".  That post is actually the first in a series of three connected posts, the other two being "The Go To Jail Truth" and "Whadja Do With The Money?!"  I am no prophet, yet note that I wrote "The Go to Jail Truth" about six months before the massive protests in Russia over the arrest of Alexei Navalny.  Anyway, if you have time and you have enjoyed "Nihil Nixed," feel free to check out the other two posts.  And as for this upcoming weekend, I will try to have a fresh post ready, a post that will continue to deal with the subject of strategic nonviolent resistance.

From D to D, Chapters 8 and 9: How The Straight Subverts The Crooked

This post is a continuation of my "study guide" and commentary on the book From Dictatorship to Democracy by Dr. Gene Sharp. In this series of posts, I have shortened the title of the book to From D to D. As I have said in previous posts, the consideration of this book is highly relevant for these times, in which those who support the supremacy of the world's dominant peoples have created a world in which a select few get to Make Themselves Great by exploiting everyone else. Although these who wish to dominate suffered a serious electoral setback in the United States in 2020, they have not given up their dreams of supremacy.  Therefore we are still in a state of conflict, and those of us who are not rich and not white are still under threat.  The threat we face can be most effectively neutralized by strategic nonviolent resistance.  Because of the strategic element of strategic nonviolent resistance, the last several posts have focused on the need for struggle groups to understand and develop wise strategy.  Of those posts, the last few have discussed the consequences of bad strategy.  Today's post will attempt to explain what happens when strategy is done right.

So what should be the ultimate aim of an oppressed people?  Some would say that it is to convert oppressors so that the oppressed can live in peace within a society that is still owned by the oppressors.  But a much more radical goal is the creation of a society which is no longer under the control of oppressors at all.  This occurs through campaigns both of selective resistance and of collective self-reliance which create and progressively expand the social and political space within which oppressed people can manage their own affairs.  The staged, incremental expansion of this space shrinks the control of the oppressors.  To quote Gene Sharp, "As the civil institutions of the society become stronger vis-a-vis the dictatorship, then, whatever the dictators may wish, the population is incrementally building an independent society outside of their control...in time, this combination of resistance and institution building can lead to de facto freedom, making the collapse of the dictatorship and the formal installation of a democratic system undeniable because the power relationships within the society have been fundamentally altered."

To illustrate this process and its strategy, I'm going to quote a few verses from the Good Book.  In particular, 1 Peter 2:13 says the following: "Submit yourselves for the Lord's sake to every human institution, whether to a king as the one in authority, or to governors as sent through him for the punishment of evildoers and the praise of those who do right."  Now what is interesting is the word translated "institution."  In the original Greek, that word is κτίσις ("ktisis"), which literally means, "founding", "settling", "creation", "created thing", or "created authority."  Now here's the thing.  First, we are commanded to submit to every human created authority.  That includes the structures of authority which oppressed people create to govern themselves.   

Second, note the purpose of our submission, which is to do right, as noted in the next two verses: "For such is the will of God that by doing right you may silence the ignorance of foolish men.  Act as free men, and do not use your freedom as a covering for evil, but as bondslaves of God."  This brings up an interesting question, namely, how to respond when any one or more of the manmade structures of authority to which we are to submit commands us to do wrong.  The answer to that question is given in 1 Peter 2:18-20: "Servants, be submissive to your masters with all respect, not only to those who are good and gentle, but also to those who are crooked.  (Note that the original Greek word here is σκολιός, or "skolios", and it means curved, bent, or crooked.)  For this finds grace, if for the sake of conscience toward God a man bears up under sorrows when suffering unjustly.  For what credit is there if, when you sin and are slapped or punched, you endure it with patience?  But if when you do what is right and suffer you patiently endure it, this finds grace with God."

Two things should be mentioned about this passage: first, that those Bible translators who translate "skolios" merely as "unreasonable" or "harsh" or "cruel" are missing the point of this passage.  For it is entirely possible for employees, subjects, or servants to get along famously with a boss whom the Bible would describe as "crooked."  All they have to do is to twist their souls, their morals, and their ethics to conform to the boss's crookedness.  Those who have worked in abusive workplaces or who have served in abusive churches or who have been part of crooked governments know this well.  Just look at the staff (especially the senior, most highly-placed staff) of Enron, of Goldman Sachs, of British Petroleum, of Hillsong Church, of Mars Hill Church, of the Assemblies of George Geftakys, of the Honor Academy, of the Republican Party, of the administration of former President Trump, of the corrupt government of Vladimir Putin.  If the devil wears Prada, then the best way to avoid suffering is to make sure that you dress likewise!

But if you're not a sycophant and you don't want to wear hellish clothing, then you will suffer - that is, you will get into trouble for doing the right thing - and you need to prepare yourself for it.  For the Good Book commands us to continue to go straight even when those in authority over us tell us to go crooked.  This means that our commitment to the straight will lead to civil disobedience.  Note that Simon Peter, the author of the passages I've been quoting in this post, was himself a jailbird on a number of occasions - as seen in Acts 4 and 5, (where he was beaten for his civil disobedience) as well as 2 Peter 1:13-14 in which Peter wrote of his impending martyrdom.  And civil disobedience for the sake of doing right becomes disruptively powerful when it is done collectively.  

The key then to creating a collective movement of civil disobedience is for the oppressed to create for themselves structures of authority, of collective self-reliance, and of collective expressions of the common good which are more righteous than those of the oppressor.  By doing so, those who are part of such collectives will be pledging themselves to go straight in ways that run completely counter to the crookedness of the oppressor's society.  And in a contest between the crookedness of the oppressor and the straightness to which the collective of the oppressed aspires, the winner of our submission will then be our collective straightness.  It is this creation and progressive expansion of these "spheres of straightness" which leads to long-term shifts in the balance of power in a society.  And when the oppressor reacts to this society-building with violent oppression, the oppressed are to deprive that oppression of its power by a response of nonviolence and non-retaliation (1 Peter 2:18-25).  It is this non-retaliation which aids the process of backfire or political jiu-jitsu.  

This sort of institution-building - this creation of a righteous parallel society - is much more effective than merely getting a bunch of people together to do a mass protest march.  And it is much harder to hijack.  Moreover, it can start very small.  A completely secular example of this is the permaculture movement, especially as articulated by David Holmgren.  I am thinking especially of an interview Holmgren granted to Scott Mann of the Permaculture Podcast in 2013, in which he stated his view that the best way to start a revolution (in a positive sense!) is to create working, replicable small-scale models of the attractiveness, viability and success of a revolutionary lifestyle.  However, he believed it is a waste of time simply to get a large group of people together to "shout more loudly" at the holders of power in order to pressure them to pull the levers of power in the ways demanded by the shouters.  In other words, it is a better use of our time to build local expressions of the world we do want than to agitate in mass protest to try to stop the world we don't want.  This mindset can also be seen in the insistence by Mohandas Gandhi on the importance of the "constructive program" and the development of swaraj (that is, "self-rule") as an essential part of strategic nonviolent resistance.  And this mindset was a prominent part of the Polish nonviolent resistance against the Russian-backed Jaruselski dictatorship in the 1980's.

Let's conclude by mentioning some possible hindrances to the creation of this kind of liberated space.  First, there is the hindrance of ignorance.  This is why it is essential for those in a struggle group to read books!  Read the history, theory and practice of strategic nonviolent resistance!  Second, there is the hindrance of passivity - a passivity of victims who refuse to acknowledge that the continuance of their victimhood is their own fault, and who therefore refuse to take it upon themselves to begin their liberation.  An outgrowth of this passivity is "Uncle Tom-ism," the motive behind the continued selling out of struggle leaders by members of oppressed groups who refuse to take responsibility for their own lives and who look to their masters for a little extra spending money.  (Do thirty pieces of silver sound about right?)  Remember that the Good Book commands us to come out of Babylon, not to sell ourselves or each other to Babylon or to "try to get ahead in an oppressive system" as someone said to me a few years back.  Those who continue to lean on Babylon for support can best be described as "shiftless", a word which Charles Payne used in his book I've Got The Light of Freedom to describe the Uncle Toms and Aunt Tammys whose actions threatened to undermine the work of SNCC in the Mississippi voter registration struggles of the late 1950's and early 1960's.

But some would say, "Well, our people have been oppressed so long that we can't create spaces of self-determination for ourselves!"  As an African-American, I am mindful of African-Americans who say this about our people.  My answer is this: the Indians prior to Gandhi were at least as bad off as many of us, and yet under Gandhi's leadership, they won the freedom to rule themselves.  Let us not be shiftless.

The Tactical and Strategic Failures of Summer 2020

This post is a continuation of my "study guide" and commentary on Gene Sharp's book From Dictatorship to Democracy (shortened in these posts to From D to D.)  Those who have read previous posts on this subject know that the most recent posts discussed Chapters 6 and 7 of the book.  Those chapters deal with the important subject of the strategy of a nonviolent liberation struggle.  Strategic nonviolent resistance does not rely on the weapons and resources of the holders of oppressive power, and one big reason why is that those who are oppressed do not have access to the weapons and resources of the powerful.  This is why strategy and strategic thinking is so important.  If the strategy of a struggle group is solid, the struggle group can achieve great shifts in the balance of power between the powerful and those without power.  If the strategy of a struggle group is weak, foolish or nonexistent, then that group will lose.

So we come to the events of the late spring and summer of 2020, those events connected with the police murder of George Floyd.  As an African-American, I stand with my brothers and sisters who are involved in the Black Lives Matter organizations, yet I feel the duty to point out some of the serious ways in which they dropped the ball last summer, as well as pointing out some of the political consequences of their failure.  (One consequence of that failure: their mistakes helped re-elect a certain two-faced gentrifying mayor of a supposedly progressive city on the West Coast.)  So here goes.  And I'm going to tell the story from the point of view of an observer who was only rarely near the center of any action.  If any readers have more expert knowledge or analysis, feel free to chime in with corrections as appropriate.

First, let's begin with the immediate consequences of the murder.  The first response seen by myself and most observers was the almost immediate arising of a wave of spontaneous mass protest, both in Minnesota (where George Floyd used to live) and elsewhere.  I would like to suggest that much of that protest originated outside of the Black community and outside any other communities of color in the United States.  I would also like to suggest, based on what I saw in the Pacific Northwest, that much of that protest originated outside of any Black Lives Matter (abbreviated in this post to BLM) organization.  However, the emergence of this protest thrust BLM movement organizations into the limelight, as many protestors who were not officially part of BLM chose to identify their actions as taken in support of BLM.  Thus BLM was offered a unique moment in which to take a leadership role, and BLM organizers initiated their own protests as a result.

But at almost the same time as the emergence of spontaneous mass protest came the almost immediate emergence of "spontaneous" violence.  I know of one white blogger who characterized it as "the emergence of the worst race riots this country has seen in decades."  However, he is exaggerating greatly what actually happened, and his reasons are dishonest.  For he does not want to face the fact that the incidents of violence were perpetrated almost entirely by white people.  (See this  and this also.)  An early case in point is the "Umbrella Man."  There is also Matthew Lee Rupert, as well as members of the Boogaloo Boys and other white groups who vandalized and looted minority businesses and attacked CNN journalism crews.  Moreover, this violence spread in ways that seemed designed to provoke outrage and strengthen the societal "pillars of support" of the police and of the regime of Donald Trump.  For the vandals and the violent targeted iconic statues and other monuments to the cultural heritage of the United States.  (See this, this, and this for instance.)  And in attacking minority businesses, the vandals sought to send a clear message that this is what happens whenever there is mass protest against established authority.

Other ways in which violent infiltrators sought to convey images of dis-order included the setting up of so-called "temporary autonomous zones" in city capitals by people who did not own property or have jobs in these so-called zones.  In essence, the people who set up these zones became squatters of the same sort that emerged in city parks throughout the United States during the "Occupy" protests.  And those who occupied these zones in 2020 were mostly white, just as those who "occupied" various public spaces in 2011.  The 2020 occupations ended just as badly as those in 2011 had, for the occupiers were rightfully seen as squatters.  But these squatters, along with the looters and the vandals of businesses and statues, served a useful purpose for the right-wing fascists running the Federal Government during Trump's last year - namely, that they gave him a convenient platform to portray himself as the sole upholder and defender of "law and order" against a crazed opposition movement who simply wanted to plunge American society into "chaos" and "anarchy."  In other words, they were the convenient foil in the continued re-telling of the myth of redemptive violence - the favorite myth of fascists and oppressors, by the way, and a myth that became part of Donald Trump's re-election campaign strategy.

I would like to suggest that in the violence, vandalism and squatting that took place, people who had no sympathy for the Black struggle in America managed to hijack the protests over the murder of George Floyd and to twist the message of these protests in a direction which has nothing at all to do with the Black struggle.  (As Marshall Ganz has repeatedly said, if you don't intentionally tell your own story, someone else will tell it for you - in ways that you won't like.)  That this could happen is due to the following failures of many in the Black community:

• A failure by the Black community to appropriately define our collective identity and the strategy of our struggle.  For at least four decades, we have been unconsciously following a rather limited "strategy" of the sort first articulated by Martin Luther King, namely, the strategy of trying to build a supposedly colorblind society in which our individual or historical identities are all dissolved in a "melting pot" to produce a so-called all-American alloy.  Thus we have tried to build "beloved communities" with people who ought not to be trusted because they have no good intentions, people who refuse to give up their dreams of total domination.  It is way past time for us to come together as Black people (NOT as part of some "rainbow coalition" alloy!) to decide who we are as a people and how we will struggle as a people.  In other words, it is way past time for us to self-consciously organize ourselves.  When white people who supposedly stand for "diversity" try to bring us as individuals into their "coalition", we need to say, "Not so fast.  We will decide as a group what we choose to support.  We will NOT allow ourselves to be turned into the foot soldiers of someone else's agenda!  Maybe we're not better together!"  Of course, to say such things might provoke the sort of reaction from certain white supposed "allies" that would show their true colors.

• A failure by the Black community to understand the methods by which unarmed people shift the balance of power between the powerful and the powerless.  In short, this is a failure to understand the methods of strategic nonviolent resistance, which has also become known as people power.  We have for too long allowed ourselves stupidly to believe that strategic nonviolent resistance consists of trying to love your enemy or to "rise above" the oppression dealt to you by your enemy (that is, to smile when your enemy serves you a sandwich made of excrement!), or to show how "spiritual" you are in the face of oppression.  Therefore, too many of us have understandably written off strategic nonviolent resistance.  It's time for some of us to start reading some books.

• This ignorance played out in 2020 in a failure to understand the impact of violence on a protest movement.  When violence began to erupt during the protests, I saw it as a clear indication of a lack of organization on our part, as well as a lack of training.  I saw it moreover as a clear sign of tactical and strategic misunderstanding and failure.  But in conversations I had with BLM organizers, both during the 2020 CANVAS Summer Academy and in 2021 with BLM organizers who were part of the Leading Change Network, whenever I pointed out these failures, the BLM organizers got really defensive.  Their response to my criticism was, "We were not the violent ones!  And you can't believe everything the media tells you!  Most of the protests were peaceful!"  In making such criticisms, they missed the point altogether.  That point being this: that if you engage in mass protests, and violent things happen during your protests, your protest movement will suffer, no matter who started the violence.  Erica Chenoweth explains this beautifully as follows: When a mass protest is peaceful, everyone who is an ally or potential ally is likely to show up.  This includes young families with small children and elderly grandmas with nothing better to do.  In such circumstances, it is very hard for the government to justify using violence to shut down your protest.  But as soon as the government is able to provoke or inject violence into the protests, the vulnerable - young families with small children and elderly grandmas - start to disappear until you are left only with athletic young men facing heavily armed cops.  In those circumstances it becomes very easy for the government to justify the use of violent oppression to shut down the protest!

• Having said that, I wonder why the BLM organizers did not shift from tactics of concentration to tactics of dispersion as soon as the violence began to appear!    (Pardon me - I shouldn't wonder.  It's because these fools did not read any books!)  For instance, why didn't one or more leaders immediately issue a statement saying, "We see that evil actors have shown up to inject violence and vandalism into our protests.  Therefore, we are switching to protest tactics that don't involve large groups of people coming together in the streets.  These new tactics will be legal, and will not be able to be hijacked by those who want to cause violence or to paint us as criminals." It shows a fatal lack of brains that not one of these leaders took such a step.  I remember reading the news reports of protest after protest in which a small group of agents provocateurs broke away from a protest march to go off and vandalize while the police "declared a riot", and I was shouting in my living room, "Please, wake up and shift tactics!"  (It felt to me very much like my experience as a kid watching Saturday Night wrestling and screaming at the TV whenever the "hero" made an obvious mistake.  Lot of good that did.)  I agree with BLM that there should have been protests.  Yet there are both smart and stupid tactics of protest, and BLM failed to understand the difference.  (Oh, look!  It's happening again.)

• A failure to see the limitations of mass protest.  Protest is not a viable single strategy of liberation.  At best, it's a single tactic.  A tactic is not a strategy.  And as we have considered strategy in the context of strategic nonviolent resistance, we have learned that the best strategy is a strategy which your opponent is not ready to meet, and for which he has no defenses.  Chapters 6 and 7 of From D to D have drawn heavily from the writings of a British man named Basil Henry Liddell-Hart, who in the aftermath of World War 1 advocated heavily that armies should adopt a strategy of indirect approach as the best means of meeting one's enemy in a place where he is not prepared to meet you.  I suggest that among the tactics of nonviolent action, mass street protest is now the tactic which most governments are most prepared to meet, and that these governments can short-circuit mass protest most effectively simply by injecting violence into the protests.  Once they do that, they can justify raising the cost which ordinary people must pay to participate in protest by using tactics of violent police repression of protest.  Mass protest is therefore not an example of the strategy of indirect approach.  And mass protest carries certain unavoidable costs even when the protestors do not have to face police repression.  I think of some of the BLM websites I saw last year in which organizers vowed to protest every day until their demands were met.  I guess they never heard of "protest fatigue"!  Moreover, as pointed out by Jamila Raqib, protest by itself does not alter the balance of power between the powerful and the powerless.

In their insistence on the same tactic of mass protest day after day, the BLM protest organizers reminded me very much of a Briton who never considered the strategy of indirect approach, namely Sir Douglas Haig.  I hope the man has no partisans, fans, or groupies who are still alive - otherwise, they might come to the USA to hunt me down and slash my tires - er, I mean, "tyres" - or threaten to give me "a bunch of fives."  But Haig is a man worthy of much criticism.  I think of his insistence on costly daily frontal assaults for three months during the Battle of Passchendaele in 1917, and how the Germans played rope-a-dope with him there.  I fear that here in the USA, should another outrage against African-Americans be perpetrated, and should that outrage spark mass protest, our enemies may play rope-a-dope again with us as they did in 2020.  

Random Sunday Ramblings

I owe longtime readers a series of concluding posts on Gene Sharp's book From Dictatorship to Democracy.  I will try to write another post in the series within the next week or so.  But today I'm feeling a bit lazy and I have the challenge of trying to rein in a schedule that has recently become less manageable than it ought to be.  So I'm chillin' in my backyard right now.  (My cat Koshka is chillin' also next to my right foot.)

I normally shop for groceries twice a week, although I hope to cut that down to once a week as soon as the veggies in my garden start producing.  However, last Thursday I forgot to catch up on some items that had run out, so this morning I made a run to a supermarket.  Along the way I passed three churches and noted the cars in the parking lots.  Those parking lots have had Sunday cars for the last few months, and whenever I've thought of people going to church during a pandemic like that caused by COVID-19, I have wondered at the craziness of some humans.  I haven't been to church (or coffee shops, libraries,  restaurants, etc.) for over a year.

The percentage of people who have received at least one vaccine shot in my state is high enough that a few days ago, the governor's office removed the requirement for people to wear masks in most public places.  That means that one of my biggest excuses for not attending church may go away.  Yet I still feel a curious reluctance to resume my churchgoing.  Part of the reason is that I have become used to taking what I consider to be lifesaving precautions.  In this I am not alone.  Today, for instance, I noticed that perhaps a majority of people in the supermarket I visited were still wearing masks, including store staff.  I feel a bit like the Willie Keith character in The Caine Mutiny after WWII has ended and he's steaming back to the United States - still observing personal blackout practices at night aboard his ship and unable to get used to steaming with the sonar turned off or having his ship's lights brightly blazing.

But another part of my reluctance stems from the fact that the pastors and members of many churches in the United States have shown themselves to be thoroughly, nauseatingly disgusting during the Trump era and especially during the last year and a half.  That stinking disgust burst into my consciousness again just a few minutes ago, as I was reading the Gospel of Luke, particularly Luke 3:15-17:

Now while the people were in a state of expectation 

and all were wondering in their hearts about John, as to whether he might be the Christ,

John answered and said to them all, "As for me, I baptize you with water; 

but One is coming who is mightier than I, and I am not fit to untie the thong of His sandals; 

He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.  

And His winnowing fork is in His hand to thoroughly clear His threshing floor, 

and to gather the wheat into His barn; 

but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.

This passage struck me precisely because John describes Christ as a coming Judge.  It must be noted that Christ, when He came, did not refute or alter anything that John had said about him.  Nor did Christ alter any of John's exhortations to people to prepare for the coming of Christ by repenting - and by bringing forth fruit in keeping with repentance.  This is seen clearly in Luke 19:1-10, when after meeting Zaccheus the tax collector, Zaccheus announces to the Lord that he is giving back to people everything he stole or cheated out of them.  The Lord responds by saying, "Today salvation has come to this house, because he [Zaccheus] too, is a son of Abraham."  In other words, if a person has really repented, it will show in the way they treat others - especially in the way they treat the powerless, the poor and the oppressed.

Now the white American evangelical/Protestant church (and those Stockholm Syndrome-affected pastors of certain nonwhite churches) will enthusiastically preach Christ as a coming Judge - especially as a Judge who is coming to destroy all dark-skinned infidels.  Thus the white American evangelical/Protestant church continues to insist that "Blue lives matter!" and that we need to pray for our men in uniform who continue to use State-sanctioned violence in order to maintain both white privilege and white supremacy.  And their pastors continue to try to validate both themselves and the politicians who are backed by them by appealing to a "culture war" which is being waged to "purify" our society from deviant elements.  Never mind that these "culture warriors" continually prove themselves to be as deviant as the sins they condemn, or that the appeal to "culture warfare" is itself simply a ploy to garner more political and economic power for a privileged minority.

A funny thing happens, however, when anyone dares hold up a truth-telling mirror to the eyes of these people.  When they are forced to look at their own sins, they are suddenly all, "Well Jesus is full of grace!  The wonderful thing about Christ is that He died for our sins!  You're being judgmental for pointing my sins out to me!"  It gets even better if you dare to point out to them the Biblical mandate for social justice and the practical love of one's neighbor.  In Luke 16, for instance, the story of the rich man and Lazarus is routinely misinterpreted by these evangelicals to mean that the rich man went to hell simply because he refused to accept a 90-second catechism from a "Gospel tract."  (Somebody forgot to give that rich dude a leaflet explaining the Four Spiritual Laws!  After all, we're justified by faith apart from works of the Law, aren't we?!)  Many of these evangelical/Protestant types now going so far as to say that anyone who says that Christians are mandated by the Gospel to practice social justice is guilty of "legalism."  (See this, this, this, and this for instance.  And when you say "legalism", say it with the same sinister hiss that you would use when you say the word ssssocialissssmmmm...)

But the best of all whoppers I have ever heard were the assertions by evangelicals during the Trump years that Trump was somehow a Christian.  In order to say such a thing, these evangelicals had to deny almost all of the Biblical teaching on Christian character.  And when it was pointed out that Trump was not even a good example of sexual purity (almost the only purity that evangelicals seem to care about), we heard drivel like "Well, Trump is just a baby Christian" and "If God could use a wicked king like Nebuchadnezzar or Cyrus to accomplish His will, we can be sure that God is using Trump!  So we must support him!"

But what if Christ, when He returns, turns out to be what many evangelicals would call "legalistic"?  What if, moreover, many evangelicals wind up getting incinerated by unquenchable fire?  What if, when the Judge comes, He's coming for you?  Lemme tell ya, it makes me a bit uncomfortable to write this, knowing that for every finger I point outward, there are three pointing back at me!

Tying Two to Two

I have been thinking today about a Greek word I encountered a few weeks ago during my daily Bible reading.  It is found in Matthew 13 and Mark 4, shortly after the Parable of the Sower, and it is the word συνίημι ("syniemi"), which means literally "to send, bring, or set together."  In a metaphorical sense it also means to "put two and two together," that is, to understand the meaning and implications of a thing.  The passage in which this word appears reads thus:

For the heart of this people has become dull,

and with their ears they scarcely hear, 

and they have closed their eyes, 

lest they should see with their eyes, 

and hear with their ears,

and understand (σῠνῑ́ημῐ) with their heart and return,

and I should heal them.

Here we have a picture of a people who were diseased - and who indeed were suffering from their diseased condition - yet who were doomed to remain in their suffering because of their refusal to put two and two together.  Consider the many forms of suffering that arise from this willful refusal to put two and two together - a refusal that is one of the hallmarks of addiction or of cultic thinking.

And consider those nations which have historically identified themselves as the Global North.  Note how the cultures and political discourse of so many of these nations has been hijacked by the ideology of predatory laissez-faire free-market capitalism, the worship of wealth, white supremacy, and the selfishness of "libertarianism" and "conservatism."  Those who promoted this hijacking have loudly and insistently preached the message that there should be no limits or restrictions placed on the "liberty" of individuals for any reason whatsoever.  They failed to mention that they are most concerned about preserving the liberty of those individuals in a society who have the greatest economic and political power, who are thus free to indulge their selfishness by stepping on the toes (and any other convenient body parts) of all the rest of us.  Yet what is both noteworthy and tragic is that so many of the rest of us have bought the same message and drunk the same Kool-Aid which is sold to us by the wealthiest and most powerful members of our society.

But in recent decades, a number of crises have emerged as a result of this thinking.  I will consider only two of these today.  Let me mention that both crises could have been mitigated or avoided entirely had our society held a more collectivist mindset - that is, had we been the sort of people who value the common good above the unrestrained exercise of individual "liberty".  The first crisis is that of manmade climate change.  Yes, I said "manmade."  Other accurate phrases or terms would include "anthropogenic" or "human-caused."  We have known for decades that industrial activity was altering the earth's atmosphere in ways that would alter the climate - yet the defenders of "liberty" have loudly and insistently denied such knowledge.  Why?  Because to admit the impact of human industrial activity would have forced these people to confront a moral choice.  They would have been faced with the choice of "understanding with their hearts."  And that choice would have cost either a numbed conscience or possibly lots of money.  The Global North does like its money, doesn't it?  (The white American Evangelical/Protestant church really loves its money!  Must be why so many of its members and leaders can't seem to put two and two together...)  And in addition to the numbing of conscience, these nations chose to continue the destructive chasing of economic gain because many of their citizens told themselves that the consequences of their choices would never fall on them.  They said, "What do we care about polar bears?  Or about poor island people drowning in rising seas?  That's so far from us!"

Except that now it isn't far away at all.  Last year was the first year of my life in which I lived in the midst of a widespread, potentially lethal climate event.  It was an event for which to escape, many of us would have had to travel up to a thousand miles to the east.  It was an event during which the amount of free oxygen in the local atmosphere dropped to such levels that dangerous levels of carbon monoxide were produced.  And it was caused by wildfires that raged from Southern California to southern Canada.  We are about to experience another potentially lethal climate event, as daytime temperatures over much of the American West will exceed 100 degrees for several days, and nighttime temperatures will not drop below 70 degrees.  (See this also.)  Moreover, there will be few places to which to escape, because much of the rest of the United States is also experiencing climate crises including severe weather.  And both the heat and the severe weather are likely to recur several times this summer.  Would you like a little fire with that order?  Or maybe you have enough money to escape to Europe for a while.  Except that Europe is enduring its own heatwave (especially Eastern Europe), and parts of Russia have turned into a bit of Hell.  (See this also.)

There is also the ongoing crisis of the coronavirus pandemic.  What is noteworthy about the United States is the large number of people who have not yet been vaccinated - especially in southern "red" states - as well as the number of people who continue to refuse to wear masks in public.  I ran into one such gentleman this morning when I made a quick dash to buy some groceries.  I pointed him out to one of the store clerks, who told the man to put on a mask.  He protested, saying that he had been vaccinated.  Then the man looked at me and announced that he had been to Afghanistan.  I don't exactly know what reaction he hoped to get out of me - he was fat and had gray hair, and if he was really a vet, it was obvious that it had been a long time since he had graduated from the college of violent knowledge.  I just looked at him.  Had he caused trouble, he would have been able afterward to boast that not only had he been to Afghanistan, but he had also been to jail.  He did put on a mask.  People like him are the reason why the United States is so slow in returning to any semblance of a pre-pandemic "normal."  

The United States ignored for a while the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic, and as a result, the American economy was badly damaged even as our leaders prioritized profits above dealing with the crisis.  The United States is now no longer the strongest nation on earth.  The Global North has ignored the implications of climate change until now, and as a result, the differential in power and wealth which the Global North has built with respect to the rest of the world is eroding.  Could it be perhaps way past time for some of us to start putting two and two together?

In Search of Good Work, Or, A Right Autarky

I'm glad to report that the work I've had over the last few months is winding down to a more manageable level.  (Not that I want it to disappear entirely - I still like eating and having some spending money!)  So today I thought I'd write a post that continues to develop some of the thoughts I've tried to expound in my series of comments on Gene Sharp's book From Dictatorship to Democracy.  One thing that Gene Sharp says in his book is that "a liberation struggle is a time for self-reliance and internal strengthening of the struggle group."  (Emphasis added.)  This notion of self-reliance and internal strengthening reminds me of a Bible verse which has struck me repeatedly ever since I noticed its occupational context over ten years ago.  The verse reads as follows: "And let our people also learn to engage in good deeds to meet pressing needs, that they may not be unfruitful."  (Titus 3:14)  In the margin of my Bible, the word rendered "deeds" has an alternate rendering of "occupations."  It is the rendering of that word as "occupations" which first arrested my interest.

Now if you Google "Titus 3:14", you will encounter a huge number of emotive commentaries by people who tell us that the "good works" mentioned in Titus are primarily deeds of church-style charity to those who are in need, such as picking up elderly Sister Gladys from her house in the country so she can come with you to church on Sunday, or helping Deacon Weatherly pull weeds in his front yard on Saturday so he can have more time to be a servant to the church.  Carried still further, those who interpret the verse in this way begin to talk eloquently about the huge amount of work that is needed to run a church with multiple services - from running the sound system to making the coffee to mowing the church grounds to cleaning the bathrooms, etc., etc.  (Not to pick on anybody, but here and here are a couple of examples of what I'm talking about.)

But to interpret that verse in an occupational sense opens up an entirely different window - a window through which many people have never attentively looked.  For this interpretation begins to illuminate the spiritual dimension of the work, and of the kinds of work, which we choose to do for a living.  So let us consider this dimension as we read the words "good deeds," or in the King James version and other versions, "good works." Those words in the original Greek are "καλός ἔργον," which can be translated literally as "beautifully good work".  And the purpose of the work is to provide for "necessary, urgent, indispensable needs, necessities or uses" (ἀναγκαῖος χρεία).  If we take Titus 3:14 as part of a body of New Testament teaching on the spirituality of work, we are drawn to other Scriptures such as 1 Thessalonians 4:11-12, which says "...make it your ambition to lead a quiet life and attend to your own business and work with your hands, just as we commanded you; so that you may walk properly toward outsiders and have need of nothing."  

The quiet working with our own hands is a key pillar of the Biblical definition of righteous autarky.  The other element of righteous autarky is contentment with what one has, as described in 1 Timothy 6:6.  But there are many in the world who seek autarky in a perverted way because they insist on living in a world that places no limits on them, and because they are addicted to consumer culture, national narcissism, and the love of money.  For them autarky means going to war against those who are both content and self-sufficient in order to knock them over the head and take their stuff.  The wealthy of most nations fit into this category - including много вороватых русских человечков в бункерах as well as many rich American thieves in their own bunkers.  This evil kind of autarky is a hallmark of earthly empires.

Righteous autarky is a hallmark of those who are escaping from the global system of predatory capitalist domination and exploitation which in Revelation 18 is called "Babylon", for those who practice this kind of autarky depend on their own beautifully good work and their own ability to live simply as a means of breaking their reliance on their oppressor, that is, Babylon (and providing themselves with a clear conscience as part of the bargain - Revelation 18:4).  I submit to you that engaging occupationally in "beautifully good work to meet indispensable needs" is a key part of righteous autarky.  Ain't bad work if you can get it, but ya gotta know where to look!

So let us consider the search for occupations that are beautifully good and that meet necessary needs.  And here we must consider the things which make this search difficult.  First of all, there is the distraction of the worthless - that is, the distractions served up by a society that exalts the worthless.  By this I mean particularly celebrity culture, the culture which exalts the best and brightest performers in those fields which are crowded precisely because they are fun, they don't require much effort, and they are entirely optional.  Here we have those who want to follow in the steps of rich as YouTubers and lottery winners, those who want to become famous podcasters like Joe Rogan, those who are wanna-be actors and other celebrities, and those who would like to become members of the British royal family - in short, people who seek to be like those individuals who have managed to get a lot of something for nothing.  We are told to imitate celebrity because celebrities are held up as a model which the rest of us can and should imitate.

An acute example of the distraction of the worthless is the celebration of worthless business.  By this I mean the rise and excessive valuation of many "tech" companies whose chief executives (like Mark Zuckerberg) are celebrated as inventors of engines of "wealth creation."  But to credit these people with "wealth creation" is actually false, for what they have actually achieved by means of tech platforms such as Facebook is parasitic wealth transfer - a transfer of the last remaining distributed wealth of the non-wealthy into the pockets of the wealthy.  In other words, men such as Zuckerberg (and, I would suggest, Elon Musk) are merely really good examples of efficient parasites.  The same could be said for the CEO's of many major retail chains such as Walmart and Home Cheapo which have driven smaller retail operations out of business.

The activities of these parasites has given rise to a third difficulty, namely the impacts of a changing society on our ability to find meaningful, beautifully good work.  This change has two causes:

• The change in the occupational landscape wrought by the deployment of artificial intelligence and task automation.  AI is an interesting subject in that there are two camps of human opinion regarding its use.  One camp consists of those who look critically at AI in order to determine and define its limits and adverse effects (such as the sometimes disastrous effects of automation-induced complacency).  The other camp is enthusiastic about the ability of AI to transform the workplace by automating repetitive tasks or tasks that require a lot of brute force calculation, thus freeing humans to focus on tasks which require "creativity."  A barely noticed corollary to this assertion is the fact that software and hardware development teams are trying hard to push AI into realms of human "creativity" as well.  (Case in point: if you use AutoCAD for engineering design, you will have known for a long time that Autodesk has automated many design tasks which used to take a fair amount of skill on the part of a designer!)  This push is being driven by owners of capital who would much rather use AI to continue their concentration of capital by paying an upfront capital cost for a piece of machinery in order to do more with fewer people.  As the push for task automation progresses, people will need to engage in a constant re-skilling in order to keep from being run over by the robot juggernaut of "progress".

• The impact of resource depletion on the kinds of economic activity which a society can sustain.  I will not say much tonight about this subject, since much has already been written on this subject.  (Some of what has been written actually makes sense.  On the other hand, I removed from my bookshelf all books by Dmitri Orlov or James Howard Kunstler and threw them into the compost bin.  Those books have better uses as fertilizer than as guidance.)  But I will say that there are forward-looking societies run by leaders who know how to play a long game, which have begun to respond to resource depletion by investing in progressive responses such as circular economy principles.  On the other hand, there are nations like the United States.  If you live in the USA, you may find yourself needing to navigate situations and invent solutions which Asian nations (and I don't mean Russia!) have long since collectively figured out.  

To close, then, let us look at the characteristics of the kind of work we should be looking to do.  It should be beautiful - that is, it should have an element of craftsmanship, of mastery, and of increasing rewards for the acquisition of increasingly rare and valuable skills.  It should be good - that is, genuinely beneficial to humankind.  And it should be necessary - that is, indispensable.  As Asef Bayat says, "An authoritarian regime should not be a reason for not producing excellent novels, brilliant handicrafts, math champions, world-class athletes, dedicated teachers, or a global film industry.  Excellence is power; it is identity."  This is how the church of the New Testament - composed largely of poor people and slaves - began to liberate itself from Rome.  This is how we of the African-American diaspora will liberate ourselves.  To  borrow some language from the study of artificial intelligence, let these characteristics define the "objective function" you seek to optimize in your search for paying work.

On Fleeing The Glowing Glass

I have every intention of continuing my series of posts on Gene Sharp's book From Dictatorship to Democracy.  However, as I have said in a recent post, I've been working like a dog.  This has deprived me of bandwidth needed to write research-heavy posts.  In a few weeks, hopefully, I won't be so busy.  

This week, I thought it would be good to re-visit a post I wrote a few months ago titled, "Farewell to YouTube."  I wrote that post to announce my decision to quit watching YouTube videos.  I made the decision to quit because YouTube had chosen to make itself the haunt of racist, far-Right thugs (and of extremists in general).  (See this also.)  The reason for YouTube's decision was that the executives who run this service were told by marketers and cognitive psychologists that the way to drive up viewership was to recommend and promote videos that provoke outrage and extremism.  The reason why these doofuses thought that this was a good idea was that increased viewership meant increased advertising revenue for YouTube (and hence for Google).  I just got nauseatingly tired of recommendations to videos by Sky News, Fox News, or any other media outlet owned by the family of Rupert Murdoch.  I got "projectile emesis" tired of seeing recommendations for any videos with Donald Chump as the main character - especially after the attempted takeover of the U.S. Capitol by Trump-head white supremacists in January and after YouTube's foot-dragging in removing former President Chump's access to YouTube.  

So I quit YouTube this past January.  But a funny thing happened.  I discovered that I was experiencing withdrawal symptoms of a sort.  Not that I missed being constantly insulted and threatened.  But it was because of my original reasons for starting to watch YouTube in the first place - reasons which roughly paralleled my original fascination with the Internet in the first place.  For the Internet (and YouTube in particular) started out as a source of inspiration and information to guide me in my pursuit of the mastery of hard things.  Later, they became an unfortunate escape to an unfortunate extent, as I found myself stuck in the drudgery of everyday life while compensating for the drudgery by sneaking looks at people whose lives truly seemed to be a happy adventure. This was especially true of the fascination I developed for the Philippines, for Indonesia, for South Korea, and for Gambia last year.  For in watching YouTube videos of life (and music) in these places, I was struck by the difference between the happy, sane cultures and the polite, pleasant people I was seeing versus the derangement of life in the United States under Donald Thump.

In quitting YouTube, I found that I was missing the dopamine rush of vicarious living - that is, of living through the experience of watching other people's happiness.  So I fell off the wagon a bit in February.  I thought I could tame the YouTube beast by switching browsers and search engines.  And I discovered YouTube channels hosted by people who made videos of themselves studying.  This was during our rainy winter season, and I had not yet been vaccinated, so I was stuck working from home.  The study videos did indeed provide inspiration, but I noticed that some of them also seemed to be designed to sell furniture, music players, computer monitors, and other gear so that the viewer could replicate the perfect study setup he or she was watching on his or her glowing screen.  As I watched these videos while doing some difficult reading of my own, I was struck by the silly banality of thinking I needed to watch a video of someone else studying in order to help me do my own work.  

And I was again confronted by the fact that for too many people (myself included), YouTube had become a means of vicarious enjoyment of other people' successes rather that a help for us in doing our own difficult yet worthwhile tasks.  It is much easier to watch mentally healthy, non-radicalized, non-European people socializing in developing countries than it is to try to repair the poisoned culture of one's own country.  It is much easier to watch an accomplished fingerstyle guitarist play music than it is to pull one's own ax out of the closet and engage in an hour of deliberate practice.  It is much easier to watch someone study to the sound of background music in the perfectly decked out living room of a fifth or sixth floor condominium whose window looks out over a city skyline than it is to read technical journals in silence at a desk in a spare bedroom during a rainstorm.  (Although now the weather is quite warm and dry.  My backyard has become the perfect place for me to do some deep work, accompanied by the ASMR sound of the freeway several blocks away and the more intermittent sound of the wind in the trees. My backyard beats the condo dude's living room - even though he has thousands of YouTube "followers"!  Maybe I should make videos of myself reading in my backyard.  Or maybe not...)  

So I am back on the wagon.  And one thing that has helped me stay on this time is a podcast I heard in March or April, titled, "Close Enough: The Lure of Living Through Others."  Fascinating stuff.  What are we missing by living vicariously through social media rather than doing the hard work needed to accomplish worthwhile things ourselves?  What kind of miserable life do you have if you spend all your time on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube?  And even if YouTube should clean up its act and cease to be a tool of white radicalism, would it be worth it for me to go back?  Didn't I waste enough time as a kid watching hours of TV?  What if by boycotting a thing, you discover that you really don't need it anymore?