Again I say (not to sound oracular or pontifical, much less Dominical) - but again I say, Pray - and fast when you can - for the peace and free passage, the safety and sanity of the Persian Gulf.
And of course there's a specific reason - quite apart from the obvious - why I want to keep urging that message, through quiet times and loud. It is that frankly I don't trust any of our present global so-called leaders to be - well, sufficiently human in matters like these. To be sufficiently mindful of the people on the ground, anywhere. As distinct from people in high-rises the world over. Or in boardrooms, or control installations, or who likely have bunkers in reserve somewhere, whether owned or borrowed. In fact, I'm having trouble recalling any period in, e.g., the past 200 years, when the lives of so many world-scale leaders were more removed from, less directly invested in, or more thoroughly insulated against, say, the rougher parts of the lives of the people they govern, manage or employ. And if that peculiar deficit (but especially in this war-simulation-as-total-entertainment Age?) isn't likely to make otherwise rational yet powerful leaders think "All or nothing" or "Now or never" - at least with other people's lives - I don't know what is.
Because NO world leader should be that secure in his own mind. No one should be so big and rich and powerful and global, so placeless and countryless himself, that he's prepared to risk, much less write off, the peace and stability of what is still - for most of us ordinary peons anyway - a globally critical part of the world. I don't care how smart and indispensable, how accomplished and multi-productive and superior our Superhero is. No one of his stature and influence should be able to look in good conscience at any part of the globe, much less the earth as a whole, as chiefly the backdrop for some glorified, epic-scale, highest-of-stakes videogame. Or even a chessboard (however grand).
One more thing. It's possible that we already have more leaders like that than we can handle - leaders who think that way, here in the West and Russia and China and India. In that case, I was wondering if anyone might care to explain to me: Just how is that not the most serious and far-reaching judgment on us? And every adult one of us?
(Edited.)
31 July 2019
26 July 2019
A Weakness Stronger than Man
I
I notice we live in an age of many terrors.* Some might even argue, more than our fair share of hectic anxieties, fierce preoccupations, driven - and driving - obsessions. In other words, not just the sort of fear we tend to associate with some of our more cliche'd horror movies - the fear that panics or paralyses us, or keeps us from acting wisely. Or ensures that we always do the stupid(er) thing. But also the kinds of fear that goad us on, into further and more positive action. And perhaps even supply us with more solid incentives (that magical economist's word!) to do better, and be better. Leave it to our Great Global World to find both a productive and an edifying use for everything. And terror not least of all.
* And some of the strangest kinds too. One I find especially alarming - and that seems all the rage today in places like America, China and Arabia (and as I've been lately repeating ad nauseam in various quarters) - is the terror of not being terrifying enough. Almost as if any strength we have is wasted in being even slightly muted or held back, modulated or restrained; that all strength is only used adequately in being exercised to the nth degree. Which I suppose might be true enough when there's just one Giant in the room, with everyone else being pygmies, and he alone having that particular anxiety. But when you've got three or four Giants in the same "shrinking" room, and all of them like-minded . . .
So again please note, when I speak here of terrors, I mean not just those we Global Moderns may be happy to inflict on other people, other religions, other countries. In other words, I don't mean only those terrors that some of us may use to intimidate people whom we deem, say, not holy enough ("we" in this case being, for example, any portion of Sunni Islam engaged in or highly supportive of jihadism). Or not efficient enough ("we" here meaning any really big employer, whether private or public). Or not progressive enough ("we" = virtually the whole of our current Western corporate-political establishment). I mean also the terrors we suffer - or even inflict on - ourselves. Yes, even we fearless Americans. Like the sheer terror, the horror of our being, you know, NOT Number One.
Indeed, I'm by no means convinced that these various fears don't in fact all come down to one and the same terror. That is, I'm not at all sure that the same nightmares with which we moderns systematically torment those who fail to meet our particular standards aren't also the same basic horrors haunting us. Somewhere, I suspect, there's a geostrategic-mastermind jihadist lying awake most nights in abject fear that his man-eating god is every bit as rabidly, bloodily angry with him as he himself is with his favorite collection of infidels and MINOs (Muslims In Name Only). Which is to say, if your chosen god basically is according to as he does - and what he does best is to consume without remorse every creature who fails to meet his most exacting standards of worship and fidelity - well, what else is there left for you his disciple, but to go and do likewise?
Not sure what I mean? Well then, let's try approaching it from another angle, one hopefully closer to home. Let's suppose that my particular favorite god is Efficiency. And that my aim is to terrorize my otherwise worthless employees into ever-greater amounts of it. So what does that leave for me to do - other than become that much more terrifically (if not horrifically) efficient myself? Goose and gander, you know.
Not that I make any serious claim to grasp what's "really" underlying all this, whether here in the US or in China, in Europe or the Middle East. But from where I stand, the general assumption seems to run as follows:
If there is anywhere in the universe an Ultimate Strength - something one might want to call, say, Allah, or Evolution, or Productivity, or Progress - the only hope we have of making ourselves able to endure Its challenge, censure, wrath, judgment, etc, is to make ourselves consistently stronger . . . and stronger . . . perhaps even brutally so . . .
Sort of a "Be ye powerful, even as I Am Power."
The one common denominator I find in all this is a fear of weakness or unpreparedness of any kind, whether physical or technological, moral or spiritual. A dread that somewhere in the universe there's a challenge we humans aren't equal to; or an adversary to which we can't become morally (no less than militarily) superior; or an environment or other set of conditions which we're unable to stand up to, survive, overcome, dominate, and so reduce utterly to our own purposes and uses. Almost as if our whole career as a species, our entire sojourn in this universe were sure to be proved a lie and a fraud, except as we humans become the supreme, autocratic power in every corner of it. Again, even as our god is Power.
But now imagine my grossly amateur diagnosis to be more or less accurate. Suppose that our one supreme terror is in fact the fear of our own fragility. Then our most natural response, it seems to me, would be to want to terrorize - yes, you got that right - terrorize every ounce and hint of weakness out of everybody. Including both ourselves and each other. In short, our response would be pretty much exactly what I believe we've been doing with a particular vengeance these past thirty years or so. And all in a massive effort to be equal to, ready for, worthy of, etc, the challenge or the "coming" of Ultimate Strength - whether our readiness take the form of being morally pure, evolutionally perfect, technologically all-powerful, or politically "all-enlightened" or "correct."
And yet notice how often, time and time again, history proves itself to be nothing if not ironic. And even bubble-bursting. So wouldn't it be something if it should happen that all this time (c. 1995 - ?) we've been rehearsing for the wrong show? What if it turns out that we cutting-edge moderns - Superwahhabis, Superchinese, Superamericans, Superisraelis and all the rest - have all along been preparing for the wrong god, the wrong strength, the wrong crucible, the wrong judgment?
II
But now let's pause for a moment. And pardon me if, once again, I seem unduly hard on our nothing-if-not-wildly-ambitious Post-Cold War Era. Certainly we humans in any age have seldom been less than ambitious, restless, even champing at the bit. At the same time, it's no less true that we have always been far more fragile - at least when measured against what might be called the great sweep of universal time and space - than most of us would surely ever want to imagine, or concede. For my part, I can't think of any period of Western civilization - not even the Middle Ages! - when it was exactly the fashion to stress the marginality, weakness or insignificance of Man vis a vis the cosmos as a whole. And yet, all the same, doesn't it seem that certain Acts of Concession - to our essential cosmic frailty, I mean - have been much harder to manage in some ages than in others? But especially in times like these past three decades, when we superhumans have been blithely contemplating "coming into our own" - coming into a dignity at last commensurate with our true importance - and so finally beginning to exercise our full and rightful lordship over the whole creation. In any case, let me be last to suggest there won't come a time when Man has succeeded in colonizing - and so by implication conquering - just about about every corner of the galaxy, if not the universe.
And yet I wonder: As strong as we succeed in making ourselves, both individually and as a species, so as to endure and prosper in the most extreme outer-space conditions and environments, can any of us ever make ourselves strong enough within time - within history - to endure the fullness-of-presence of a God coming to us from out of eternity? Of course, here I mean not just any old god of our brilliant devising, but One who reveals Himself most intimately in our Scriptures, both Hebrew and Greek. Consider it carefully. Suppose He were to make Himself so palpably real as to silence the grumbling of all but the stupidest (or most suicidal?) of our atheists. And not just palpably, but brutally evident, to all of us, all the time. In much the same way that we humans are screamingly evident and crushingly real to so much of the sentient lower creation. Pity, in any urban area, the poor bird or rodent who happens to be an atheist or agnostic: who disbelieves in, or even dares to doubt, the existence of the Great God Man. Even at their most cautious, one false move, one chance miscalculation and these creatures are easily enough crushed under the weight of our glory. So what of it? Are we supposed to imagine any of us would fare any better - however "spiritually" - under the full weight of Glory Himself?
And so, when it comes to how ready even we Rapturously expectant Christians can be for the fullness of a conquering God, I'm moved to say,
First things first, and Last Things Last.
Better, I say, first to steep ourselves in that peculiar, lowly Divine presence with which we're already most familiar, and whose familiarity is often most apt to incite our contempt, if not outright disbelief. Better to be imbued with that, if you will, gentler glory of God that imbeds itself - even now - with and in and through time, before we go and try to brave that other kind: the all-conquering glory of God as it breaks in upon us at the end of time, and from outside of time. Better to submit to, better to imbibe and fully absorb first the weakness of God, as it continues to weave and entwine itself like tendrils into the stones and friezes, sculptures and cornices of our human history, than to presume that - even because we've worked so hard, and disciplined ourselves so thoroughly! - we're now ready to endure, much less welcome and embrace, that fiery strength of God which can only consume the entire structure, which can only be the end of all human history as we've known it. Better, in short - and for now - to be weak as only He is weak, that we may in due season be made strong as He alone (and not we ourselves) can strengthen us. Better for now, surely? - a patiently "weak" God, than a prematurely, impatiently strong Man.
Lastly, do you think maybe it's high time we put our fears "back where they belong," and where they can be put to most fruitful and productive use? I.e., not to make us terrified of our own fragility - such that we succeed only in becoming Holy Terrors, both to ourselves and to each other - even as we await the appearance of one more final god of terror to end 'em all. What I mean rather is to prepare, this time in earnest, for the real coming of the real Christ. To make ourselves reverent in the old-fashioned way, minus the military swagger and bombast: to be still, and knowing, and in awe. And most particularly to be in awe of what is in fact most worthy of our fear - namely, the holiness, judgment and mercy of a God who finds in our human weakness nothing to be ashamed or afraid of, precisely because He has already, and in His own human flesh, endured and redeemed it to the utmost?
I notice we live in an age of many terrors.* Some might even argue, more than our fair share of hectic anxieties, fierce preoccupations, driven - and driving - obsessions. In other words, not just the sort of fear we tend to associate with some of our more cliche'd horror movies - the fear that panics or paralyses us, or keeps us from acting wisely. Or ensures that we always do the stupid(er) thing. But also the kinds of fear that goad us on, into further and more positive action. And perhaps even supply us with more solid incentives (that magical economist's word!) to do better, and be better. Leave it to our Great Global World to find both a productive and an edifying use for everything. And terror not least of all.
* And some of the strangest kinds too. One I find especially alarming - and that seems all the rage today in places like America, China and Arabia (and as I've been lately repeating ad nauseam in various quarters) - is the terror of not being terrifying enough. Almost as if any strength we have is wasted in being even slightly muted or held back, modulated or restrained; that all strength is only used adequately in being exercised to the nth degree. Which I suppose might be true enough when there's just one Giant in the room, with everyone else being pygmies, and he alone having that particular anxiety. But when you've got three or four Giants in the same "shrinking" room, and all of them like-minded . . .
So again please note, when I speak here of terrors, I mean not just those we Global Moderns may be happy to inflict on other people, other religions, other countries. In other words, I don't mean only those terrors that some of us may use to intimidate people whom we deem, say, not holy enough ("we" in this case being, for example, any portion of Sunni Islam engaged in or highly supportive of jihadism). Or not efficient enough ("we" here meaning any really big employer, whether private or public). Or not progressive enough ("we" = virtually the whole of our current Western corporate-political establishment). I mean also the terrors we suffer - or even inflict on - ourselves. Yes, even we fearless Americans. Like the sheer terror, the horror of our being, you know, NOT Number One.
Indeed, I'm by no means convinced that these various fears don't in fact all come down to one and the same terror. That is, I'm not at all sure that the same nightmares with which we moderns systematically torment those who fail to meet our particular standards aren't also the same basic horrors haunting us. Somewhere, I suspect, there's a geostrategic-mastermind jihadist lying awake most nights in abject fear that his man-eating god is every bit as rabidly, bloodily angry with him as he himself is with his favorite collection of infidels and MINOs (Muslims In Name Only). Which is to say, if your chosen god basically is according to as he does - and what he does best is to consume without remorse every creature who fails to meet his most exacting standards of worship and fidelity - well, what else is there left for you his disciple, but to go and do likewise?
Not sure what I mean? Well then, let's try approaching it from another angle, one hopefully closer to home. Let's suppose that my particular favorite god is Efficiency. And that my aim is to terrorize my otherwise worthless employees into ever-greater amounts of it. So what does that leave for me to do - other than become that much more terrifically (if not horrifically) efficient myself? Goose and gander, you know.
Not that I make any serious claim to grasp what's "really" underlying all this, whether here in the US or in China, in Europe or the Middle East. But from where I stand, the general assumption seems to run as follows:
If there is anywhere in the universe an Ultimate Strength - something one might want to call, say, Allah, or Evolution, or Productivity, or Progress - the only hope we have of making ourselves able to endure Its challenge, censure, wrath, judgment, etc, is to make ourselves consistently stronger . . . and stronger . . . perhaps even brutally so . . .
Sort of a "Be ye powerful, even as I Am Power."
The one common denominator I find in all this is a fear of weakness or unpreparedness of any kind, whether physical or technological, moral or spiritual. A dread that somewhere in the universe there's a challenge we humans aren't equal to; or an adversary to which we can't become morally (no less than militarily) superior; or an environment or other set of conditions which we're unable to stand up to, survive, overcome, dominate, and so reduce utterly to our own purposes and uses. Almost as if our whole career as a species, our entire sojourn in this universe were sure to be proved a lie and a fraud, except as we humans become the supreme, autocratic power in every corner of it. Again, even as our god is Power.
But now imagine my grossly amateur diagnosis to be more or less accurate. Suppose that our one supreme terror is in fact the fear of our own fragility. Then our most natural response, it seems to me, would be to want to terrorize - yes, you got that right - terrorize every ounce and hint of weakness out of everybody. Including both ourselves and each other. In short, our response would be pretty much exactly what I believe we've been doing with a particular vengeance these past thirty years or so. And all in a massive effort to be equal to, ready for, worthy of, etc, the challenge or the "coming" of Ultimate Strength - whether our readiness take the form of being morally pure, evolutionally perfect, technologically all-powerful, or politically "all-enlightened" or "correct."
And yet notice how often, time and time again, history proves itself to be nothing if not ironic. And even bubble-bursting. So wouldn't it be something if it should happen that all this time (c. 1995 - ?) we've been rehearsing for the wrong show? What if it turns out that we cutting-edge moderns - Superwahhabis, Superchinese, Superamericans, Superisraelis and all the rest - have all along been preparing for the wrong god, the wrong strength, the wrong crucible, the wrong judgment?
II
But now let's pause for a moment. And pardon me if, once again, I seem unduly hard on our nothing-if-not-wildly-ambitious Post-Cold War Era. Certainly we humans in any age have seldom been less than ambitious, restless, even champing at the bit. At the same time, it's no less true that we have always been far more fragile - at least when measured against what might be called the great sweep of universal time and space - than most of us would surely ever want to imagine, or concede. For my part, I can't think of any period of Western civilization - not even the Middle Ages! - when it was exactly the fashion to stress the marginality, weakness or insignificance of Man vis a vis the cosmos as a whole. And yet, all the same, doesn't it seem that certain Acts of Concession - to our essential cosmic frailty, I mean - have been much harder to manage in some ages than in others? But especially in times like these past three decades, when we superhumans have been blithely contemplating "coming into our own" - coming into a dignity at last commensurate with our true importance - and so finally beginning to exercise our full and rightful lordship over the whole creation. In any case, let me be last to suggest there won't come a time when Man has succeeded in colonizing - and so by implication conquering - just about about every corner of the galaxy, if not the universe.
And yet I wonder: As strong as we succeed in making ourselves, both individually and as a species, so as to endure and prosper in the most extreme outer-space conditions and environments, can any of us ever make ourselves strong enough within time - within history - to endure the fullness-of-presence of a God coming to us from out of eternity? Of course, here I mean not just any old god of our brilliant devising, but One who reveals Himself most intimately in our Scriptures, both Hebrew and Greek. Consider it carefully. Suppose He were to make Himself so palpably real as to silence the grumbling of all but the stupidest (or most suicidal?) of our atheists. And not just palpably, but brutally evident, to all of us, all the time. In much the same way that we humans are screamingly evident and crushingly real to so much of the sentient lower creation. Pity, in any urban area, the poor bird or rodent who happens to be an atheist or agnostic: who disbelieves in, or even dares to doubt, the existence of the Great God Man. Even at their most cautious, one false move, one chance miscalculation and these creatures are easily enough crushed under the weight of our glory. So what of it? Are we supposed to imagine any of us would fare any better - however "spiritually" - under the full weight of Glory Himself?
And so, when it comes to how ready even we Rapturously expectant Christians can be for the fullness of a conquering God, I'm moved to say,
First things first, and Last Things Last.
Better, I say, first to steep ourselves in that peculiar, lowly Divine presence with which we're already most familiar, and whose familiarity is often most apt to incite our contempt, if not outright disbelief. Better to be imbued with that, if you will, gentler glory of God that imbeds itself - even now - with and in and through time, before we go and try to brave that other kind: the all-conquering glory of God as it breaks in upon us at the end of time, and from outside of time. Better to submit to, better to imbibe and fully absorb first the weakness of God, as it continues to weave and entwine itself like tendrils into the stones and friezes, sculptures and cornices of our human history, than to presume that - even because we've worked so hard, and disciplined ourselves so thoroughly! - we're now ready to endure, much less welcome and embrace, that fiery strength of God which can only consume the entire structure, which can only be the end of all human history as we've known it. Better, in short - and for now - to be weak as only He is weak, that we may in due season be made strong as He alone (and not we ourselves) can strengthen us. Better for now, surely? - a patiently "weak" God, than a prematurely, impatiently strong Man.
Lastly, do you think maybe it's high time we put our fears "back where they belong," and where they can be put to most fruitful and productive use? I.e., not to make us terrified of our own fragility - such that we succeed only in becoming Holy Terrors, both to ourselves and to each other - even as we await the appearance of one more final god of terror to end 'em all. What I mean rather is to prepare, this time in earnest, for the real coming of the real Christ. To make ourselves reverent in the old-fashioned way, minus the military swagger and bombast: to be still, and knowing, and in awe. And most particularly to be in awe of what is in fact most worthy of our fear - namely, the holiness, judgment and mercy of a God who finds in our human weakness nothing to be ashamed or afraid of, precisely because He has already, and in His own human flesh, endured and redeemed it to the utmost?
07 July 2019
A (Yet) Stranger Prayer for Peace
One thing I know for sure:
I haven't got the slightest makings of a martyr, much less a prophet or seer. So I know that I know I'm not the only one, even within my local circle of church friends and associates, who has felt a near-desperate need to pray and fast for the state of our poor Union over this 4th of July weekend.
So what's the problem with us prayer-warriors? Why aren't we all rapidly becoming something more on the order of a gathering and swelling army? What's making it so hard for us to correspond and co-ordinate, at whatever distance we happen to be, in this (last time I looked) still-globalizing world? Certainly nothing these days seems to keep larger and more complicated human entities - particularly the prouder they are of their bigness, and the more jealous and ravenous they are to extend their influence - from co-ordinating and even combining across today's globe. But more on that presently.
Anyhow, needless to say I haven't any answers to the questions of the preceding paragraph. But I can tell you in any case what I've been praying for - concerning America - over these past four days.
Briefly, it is for the preservation of something I venture to call her real diversity. As distinct from any mere ideological kind. To begin with, I pray my country will remember that she is far more than any one thing, or combination of things (influences, currents, lobbies, ideologies, etc), that would try to congeal, harden, broad-stroke, streamline or homogenize - or brutalize - either
(1) herself;
(2) her Idea of herself (whatever that's supposed to mean); or
(3) her presence and influence in the world.
Above all, she is more than whatever makes her nowadays feel SO big and sprawling, endangered and besieged, angry and lunging and ravenous that (if I may rehash an old Western movie cliche) this earth just ain't big enough for the both of us. Both of us - as in, say, America and China. Much less any three or four or five of us. I pray in particular that she remember she is more, even today, than Washington, or Wall Street. Or even Silicon Valley. Or any other influence, however brilliantly successful or profitable, that disposes her to feel like - or worst of all, makes her feel she has no rational choice but to act like - a behemoth or leviathan. And in what to me seems more and more to be a thriving age of such monsters.
So yes, even in this hypermilitarized, devoutly corporatized Early Twenty-First Century, I believe America remains so much more than any of her (self-)stereotypes. Even as that sprawling, ravenous thing we call the Chinese mainland is more than Beijing; that ungainly monstrosity we call the European Union is more than Berlin or Brussels; that cauldron of luxury, misery and inhuman fanaticism we call the Arabian Peninsula is so much more than Riyadh. Or even Saudi Arabia.
So that, for the record, my prejudice isn't against just American behemoths. Rather do I viscerally detest the whole politico-economic Concept of Behemoth, Goliath, Leviathan, etc, pretty much wherever I find it. Except that nowadays, for some reason, I find certain far more consistent and persuasive (and possibly dangerous?) articulations of that concept coming out of Washington, Beijing and Riyadh, than anything currently on offer from Moscow. Or (dare I say it?) even Tehran.
The result then is a prayer, not for America only, but no less for those other Three Horsemen of Self-Anointed Apocalypse listed above. Among all four of whom - USA, EU, PRC, KSA (why do they all answer so well to acronyms?) - and despite certain apparently growing collisions of mind and body, there remains I think a remarkable kinship, or at least parallelism, of spirit. But is there such a thing as a spirit of monotonization?
Mind you, I'm not saying that certain currently prevailing traditions in America, China, Europe and Arabia have NOTHING to offer the wider world. I just wish they'd stop behaving as though they themselves, and maybe each other, were about to become the only games in practically anybody's town the whole world over.
In sum (after all that I'll try to be brief), my prayer is that they'd all stop trying to forget the following 4 points, or rather facts:
1) There is more to being Western, or modern, or enlightened, or even human, than can be encompassed under any version of the word American; and there is vastly, richly more to being American than could ever be found within certain narrow but forceful ideological currents of today, that may answer to names like Neojeffersonian / Manifest Destiny / Expansionist / Exceptionalist / Interventionist.
2) There is thankfully, even now, more to being European than being German, however brilliantly; and there is far more richness to being German than can be comfortably administered under words like Berlin, or confined within umbrella concepts like Prusso-German, or Lutheran, or Liberal Protestant, or post-Christian.
3) There is more to being Asian or even East Asian than being merely Chinese; there is fascinatingly more to being Chinese than being just Mandarin; and there's a whole universe of difference between being Mandarin and being a mere - let me see now - mercantilist technophiliac Confucio-Maoist authoritarian-cum-totalitarian.
4) There is a whole lot more to being Arab or Arabic than being Muslim; and there is immeasurably, blessedly more to being Muslim than can be either lodged or imprisoned within concepts like Wahhabi, or Salafi, or even Sunni . . . or (gasp!) Riyadh . . . or Islamabad . . .
I haven't got the slightest makings of a martyr, much less a prophet or seer. So I know that I know I'm not the only one, even within my local circle of church friends and associates, who has felt a near-desperate need to pray and fast for the state of our poor Union over this 4th of July weekend.
So what's the problem with us prayer-warriors? Why aren't we all rapidly becoming something more on the order of a gathering and swelling army? What's making it so hard for us to correspond and co-ordinate, at whatever distance we happen to be, in this (last time I looked) still-globalizing world? Certainly nothing these days seems to keep larger and more complicated human entities - particularly the prouder they are of their bigness, and the more jealous and ravenous they are to extend their influence - from co-ordinating and even combining across today's globe. But more on that presently.
Anyhow, needless to say I haven't any answers to the questions of the preceding paragraph. But I can tell you in any case what I've been praying for - concerning America - over these past four days.
Briefly, it is for the preservation of something I venture to call her real diversity. As distinct from any mere ideological kind. To begin with, I pray my country will remember that she is far more than any one thing, or combination of things (influences, currents, lobbies, ideologies, etc), that would try to congeal, harden, broad-stroke, streamline or homogenize - or brutalize - either
(1) herself;
(2) her Idea of herself (whatever that's supposed to mean); or
(3) her presence and influence in the world.
Above all, she is more than whatever makes her nowadays feel SO big and sprawling, endangered and besieged, angry and lunging and ravenous that (if I may rehash an old Western movie cliche) this earth just ain't big enough for the both of us. Both of us - as in, say, America and China. Much less any three or four or five of us. I pray in particular that she remember she is more, even today, than Washington, or Wall Street. Or even Silicon Valley. Or any other influence, however brilliantly successful or profitable, that disposes her to feel like - or worst of all, makes her feel she has no rational choice but to act like - a behemoth or leviathan. And in what to me seems more and more to be a thriving age of such monsters.
So yes, even in this hypermilitarized, devoutly corporatized Early Twenty-First Century, I believe America remains so much more than any of her (self-)stereotypes. Even as that sprawling, ravenous thing we call the Chinese mainland is more than Beijing; that ungainly monstrosity we call the European Union is more than Berlin or Brussels; that cauldron of luxury, misery and inhuman fanaticism we call the Arabian Peninsula is so much more than Riyadh. Or even Saudi Arabia.
So that, for the record, my prejudice isn't against just American behemoths. Rather do I viscerally detest the whole politico-economic Concept of Behemoth, Goliath, Leviathan, etc, pretty much wherever I find it. Except that nowadays, for some reason, I find certain far more consistent and persuasive (and possibly dangerous?) articulations of that concept coming out of Washington, Beijing and Riyadh, than anything currently on offer from Moscow. Or (dare I say it?) even Tehran.
The result then is a prayer, not for America only, but no less for those other Three Horsemen of Self-Anointed Apocalypse listed above. Among all four of whom - USA, EU, PRC, KSA (why do they all answer so well to acronyms?) - and despite certain apparently growing collisions of mind and body, there remains I think a remarkable kinship, or at least parallelism, of spirit. But is there such a thing as a spirit of monotonization?
Mind you, I'm not saying that certain currently prevailing traditions in America, China, Europe and Arabia have NOTHING to offer the wider world. I just wish they'd stop behaving as though they themselves, and maybe each other, were about to become the only games in practically anybody's town the whole world over.
In sum (after all that I'll try to be brief), my prayer is that they'd all stop trying to forget the following 4 points, or rather facts:
1) There is more to being Western, or modern, or enlightened, or even human, than can be encompassed under any version of the word American; and there is vastly, richly more to being American than could ever be found within certain narrow but forceful ideological currents of today, that may answer to names like Neojeffersonian / Manifest Destiny / Expansionist / Exceptionalist / Interventionist.
2) There is thankfully, even now, more to being European than being German, however brilliantly; and there is far more richness to being German than can be comfortably administered under words like Berlin, or confined within umbrella concepts like Prusso-German, or Lutheran, or Liberal Protestant, or post-Christian.
3) There is more to being Asian or even East Asian than being merely Chinese; there is fascinatingly more to being Chinese than being just Mandarin; and there's a whole universe of difference between being Mandarin and being a mere - let me see now - mercantilist technophiliac Confucio-Maoist authoritarian-cum-totalitarian.
4) There is a whole lot more to being Arab or Arabic than being Muslim; and there is immeasurably, blessedly more to being Muslim than can be either lodged or imprisoned within concepts like Wahhabi, or Salafi, or even Sunni . . . or (gasp!) Riyadh . . . or Islamabad . . .
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