Making Love the Easier Thing

As I'm sure by now some of you have noticed, I'm not the easiest of writers to understand. But lately I'm beginning to wonder if I'm getting worse instead of better. And in particular concerning a recent blog entry - and the plight of a few of my readers (or possibly more than I'd care to admit or imagine?) who may have had rather a hard time following all its various twists and turns.

I mean, of course, my four-part Labor Day reflection, "A Less Debilitating Busyness." If you're one of those frustrated readers, believe me when I say you have my sympathy. And that your difficulty is far more a reflection on me than on you - and by no means a good one. But for now, let me see if I can't clarify some of the main points of an admittedly difficult meditation.

What I was trying to explore was our fallen human appetite for glory and grandeur - almost any way we get them, in fact. Sometimes even at the price of great contest and suffering, both to ourselves and to each other. I've at least touched on this distinctly agonistic, as opposed to hedonistic, aspect of our present Century's capitalism* - not to mention of other facets of our Modern lives - in a few different places. Most recently in my latest post prior to this one, but also here, and here. Perhaps even as far back as here, from 2011, or even here from 2009 (principally the second-to-the-last paragraph; apologies for the "missing" comment, which I inadvertently deleted and can't seem to restore).

* In contrast to that of the Twentieth Century, as touched on, again, here, and explored a bit more in depth here, just a few years back.

But in the Labor Day essay I had one chief focus. I was concerned with how this lust for greatness, if you will, in turn has shaped three things that I believe are very much at the forefront of our Global Modern Life:

1) the way we love charitably, both within organizations and outside them; 

2) the way we work, both commercially AND charitably;  

3) the way our Modern Life tends, if not to equate "hard" love and hard work, at least to understand them as practically more or less interchangeable (as in Love = Work = Drudgery - and vice versa). And along with that, as a result, how we can often make the "challenge" of love - and even of work itself - more daunting, and so more stressful, than it really needs to be.

Not, indeed, that we always foresee the stress as it comes churning down the track. Sometimes it can seem like great fun to make a big high-intensity production out of everything. And especially of things that seem simple and easy enough in themselves. (Like, e.g., even household tasks that we insist on doing as if we were on a high-speed assembly line. Or operating a McDonald's drive-thru window.)

Or else, if not exactly fun, "productionizing" the stuff we do can seem like great heroism, or grandeur, or glory. And preferably such as accrues to ourselves and nobody else. One thing we can be sure of, however. Any big production, however instigated, is sure to involve some or other high degree of stress. And the bigger, the intenser, the more high-stakes the level of drama we try to insert into any situation, chances are, the greater the amount of stress likely to be inflicted on all concerned. Including, ultimately, ourselves.

The obvious corollary being that any human creature can only handle so much stress. Now it may be very convenient - as well as comforting - to think of stress as coming primarily from other people, or from situations and pressures beyond our control. And yet how is it that, so often, the very worst, most grueling stresses are those we inflict on ourselves. And, as often as not, in an effort to do good - often a very heroic (or at least strenuous) good - to somebody else. We assume we are doing more good because we're getting more and more worked up, and bent out of shape. But NO love is gauged, nor is it made somehow more authentic, by its mere arduousness or difficulty: sometimes the easier thing to do is also the kinder, quieter, more gently ministering thing - for all parties involved. 

By the same token, the harder thing we choose to do - precisely because it cuts most sharply against our own grain or nature - may justify in our minds that much less patience with the grain or nature of someone else. That is why I keep insisting: The more we measure the love in any charitable act by how burdensome or draining or dissipating it is, whether of giver or receiver (or preferably both), the more we may be tempted to use that very burdensomeness as a cloak to cover a multitude of sins. In other words, the easier we shall find it to pre-justify, in our "good and kind" act, elements of harshness, cruelty, even violence. And the greater the degree of harshness we deem "necessary" to mete out - say, to certain loved ones who keep failing to meet our expectations - the more our vision and discernment of them shall be clouded. I.e., the more we shall be prevented from seeing the subjects of our good acts in those creatures' initial, pre-intervention state. Because, in fact, the very violence of our demeanor, words, expressions, actions has already altered them, constricted them, made them less and less "themselves", and more and more the objects (or obstacles) of our will. And how are we supposed to bless, and love, any creature more, in the measure that we understand it less?

Really, is that so very hard to understand? -- Love as that which least alters the subject of our investigation, and of our ministry? So that we may at last see it - or him, or her, or you or me - most clearly for what it is? and so minister to it accordingly? 

Which is to say, according to its own God-given nature, and not our own man-given, endlessly reconfiguring agendas. And all the more so when you consider that we are being led by God, through trustful prayer, (hopefully) every step of the way.

"Oh, but where's the challenge and  SUFFERING in all that? Where's the drama and martyrdom, the heroism and glory?"

Well, hopefully nowhere. At least not on man's side, or coming from man's quarters. God's side of things is, of course, a wholly different matter. God may direct or allow any number of difficulties, even tribulations, to come our way. But notice that these "crosses" usually have the effect of disciplining, or even diminishing, our egos, rather than inflating and indulging them. In addition to being brutally hard, if not downright impossible, to rehearse "on our own," before our hour of trial and visitation comes. 

Again, let me try to be clear on this point: we humans can no more "rehearse" or self-inflict our own trials than our wise global elites could have readied us for Covid-19. After all, no matter how hard it strives, there is only so much in this world that Blind Arrogance can prepare one for; at some point or other Vigilant Humility must step in to relieve. Until then, of course, we have our own, often very public, attempts to crucify ourselves. These most often do a very good job of puffing us up, and then in turn make us that much more demanding of others.  But they're typically the poorest modes of rehearsal for the often very secret and silent crucifixions God may send or permit to cross our paths. 

My point is that suffering is inevitable in this world of ours. And not just from malign things in "Nature" like Covid. We humans generate it almost as naturally as we breathe. And often precisely in those times when we least want to. The joy of God's - of Christ's - Cross lies in that it is no mere m1an's suffering that we are taken into the heart of, but our very own Maker's. Any door or path into Man's suffering, however noble and altruistic, can only imbed us ever more deeply in Man's misery. Which in turn can only generate more false glory, and even falser (self-)satisfaction. And then on to more misery. The miracle of Divine suffering is that it breaks into this familiar treadmill cycle of misery, self-martyrdom and glory. In the Cross we have a God who has made Himself so fully human, all the way to death, and beyond death, as to carve out of Himself, as it were, a prior path of suffering in which we can walk. So that we humans don't forever and always have to be spiritual-wilderness pioneers, constantly blazing a trail of our own through uncharted and hostile territory. I can assure you, God has fully charted Himself. And just because it is a path right into heart of Himself, it is so much more loving, gentler - even kinder! - a way to purification, and so to perfection, than any road we could ever make out of our own pain and sacrifice. And that, regardless of whether we break and pave our roads chiefly to impress ourselves, to impress each other, or to impress God.

In sum, then, my point is not to minimize the value and gain of suffering as a training and discipline in humility - i.e., a training in being properly sobered, and awed, by all the things we cannot control. Or that we strive to control at our own peril. But most of the gain involved depends on how grace-fully we accept and endure suffering as it is sent - not as it is self-inflicted, or self-provoked.

On the other hand, if that much less of my own self-travailing heroism and glory can only mean so much the greater satisfaction - the greater fulfilment - of the creature I'm trying to understand, why, shouldn't that be enough contentment for all around? As for my own glorious "merit," here's a question to consider:

Shouldn't it be enough - even for me - to know I am pleasing God so much the more (to say nothing of that particular creature of His whom I've been commissioned to bless)? Even as I'm pleasing my own self-image that much less?

(Edited.)
  

An Honest Sermon from Our Times (for a change)

For whatever it may be worth, I promise to write something seriously Christmas-related. Eventually. (Assuming anyone cares, of course.) But for now, this little morsel from the Spirit of - what shall we call it? Antichristmas? - will have to do:

"My dear beloved sisters, and brothers, and everyone in between,

"When are you going to stop being dismayed - or worst of all, JUDGMENTAL - at the seemingly irresponsible behavior of your public figures?

"Remember, Life is nothing if not grand-scale and demanding. It was never meant to be easy. So inevitably it will always be those with the largest, most capacious sense of Self* who rise to the top. Think about it. Who else could handle, what other GROWNUPS could be entrusted with the awesome responsibility of ruling, governing, managing, motivating, manipulating, etc, the rest of us otherwise unproductive children? 

* The losers prefer to call it narcissism, and capacious egos. Which is why they're - well, you know. 

"Which brings me to my main point. When are you going to understand that the whole purpose of Government, Business, Wealth, Prosperity and Power has never - even remotely - been to make life simpler, or easier, or more straightforward? Much less to help it become more 'colorful,' beautiful, engaging or satisfying. Indeed these institutions' real purpose, strictly speaking, is not even to make life BETTER - unless by 'better' you mean more perplexing, tempting, challenging, adversarial, and, yes, competitive.

"But the reason? Why, that should be obvious to any but the most hopelessly incompetent fools. The heart of human life and growth has always been controversy, argument, contention and confrontation, because those are the only ways we get at the Truth. Most importantly, they are our surest ways of making Love truthful - which is to say, hard, strict, uncompromising, DEMANDING. As opposed to merely sentimental and indulgent. I mean, how else do you suppose we're ever going to vindicate the right and competent, the commanding and organized? Even as we humiliate and punish the wrong and stupid and servile and disorganized?

"How else, in sum, are we ever going to sift and cultivate and raise up a REAL aristocracy - to say nothing of maintaining the one we've got - from among you otherwise worthless, workless helots?"


"Oh come OFF it," you yawn. "Why the h--- don't you just admit that it's all about profit???"

To which I can only humbly reply (after all that I'd better try to be humble):

"Since when have the motives of any human leader - even the most successful - been JUST about profit? Much less the rest of us losers?"

On Beijing and Other Behemoths

One point is pretty clear to me:

The deeper our world gets mired in Covidity, the more absolutely vital it is that we Yanks, in particular, do not either worship or despise - much less demonize - this admittedly vile thing we call mainland China. AKA the One Indispensable Ingredient, without which our Global Pandemic Stew could hardly have come to a boil, much less boiled over.

Neither worship, nor despise, nor demonize. Honestly, is that so terribly hard? Is it asking so much that we do our best NOT to make the Red Chinese an even more vindictive, arrogant, self-righteous enemy - or medical savior - than they already are? By now we know that worshiping them, as we did at the height (c. 2005-2010) of our infatuation with All Things Beijing, can mean only the (further) economic, political and social degradation of America. And that, despite all our most grandiose/grotesque fantasies of permanent unipolarity. Even as despising the Imperial Chinese, as did the 19th-century British with their flippant, heartless pursuit of the opium trade, once meant only the moral and spiritual degradation not just of China, but even more so of Britain. While, lastly, demonizing them can only lead to the One Thing that we wretched Americans seem to "excel" at these days: more war, whether cold or hot or whatever lies in between.

My own advice at this point? Just respect Today's Neoimperial China - and above all be sure, from hereon in, always to cultivate a firm, respectful and guarded distance. Political no less than social.

As for that other favorite obsession of ours - our ongoing, through-thick-and-thin loathing, scorn and simultaneous demonization/belittling of Moscow? Something tells me the sooner we swear off that vicious habit, the vastly better our chances of discerning whatever residual goodness/usefulness DOES lie, even now, in the (still) beating heart of Russia. And, who knows? - maybe even bringing that goodness to the surface?

Remember, the world's not exactly becoming a safer place, or simpler, or easier to manage. Not even by us omniconfident Yanks. Nor are our most serious and formidable rivals exactly getting nicer either. Especially as we come ever more face-to-face with competitors like the (Anti-)People's Republic, which - although hardly deserving of our contempt or demonization (much less our worship, or continued codependency/partnership) - for sheer nastiness has few rivals anywhere. All the more reason, it seems to me, that we smart Yanks should try to conciliate all the (semi-)competent, well-resourced, NON-Communist, NON-Wahhabi friends we can get. Including, yes, Russia. Even if they wind up being just neutral bystanders.

 
Oh yes (to my American readers) - and wherever possible, vote American Solidarity Party.

(Edited.)

A Less Debilitating Busyness III, IV

III  (as continued from Parts I and II here)

 
My point is that humans can make a high-stakes drama out of anything. Certainly we moderns are no slouches compared to even our first-century ancestors. There is no work we humans do - no matter how inherently small, quiet and domestic - that we can't somehow find a way to make it BIG, complex, operational, challenging. To say nothing of globally arduous - and even agonizing. At the same time, there's no work we do that's so intrinsically complex and arduous, SO globally loud and overwhelming and interconnected, that God cannot somehow uncomplicate it. Or disentangle it. Perhaps even make it gentler, and quieter, and more local again.*

*Indeed, just from my own past two years' experience I can testify - and not just with home projects either - how uncanny are the myriad, gently insinuative ways in which our Maker may cause us to spill and drop and break things ever more gradually less . . . and less . . . and all, bizarrely enough, while actually saving us time. Which of course you're free to dismiss as so much anecdotal evidence. RIGHT: as if these infinitesimal building-blocks of personal training and discipleship have not, time and time again, proved themselves the immovable cornerstones of much bigger efforts, initiatives, even institutions. Then again, when hasn't Man Almighty been busy inventing "operations" either too small or too big for God to enter in? Which, naturally, leaves almighty US no choice but to be the sole lords of these "mere human" domains.

But please note the kind of work, the quality of result I'm talking about here: not more sloppy, or makeshift, or passable, or "good enough," but at once both genuinely easier, and more excellent.

Of course I'm aware how much all this goes against our Modern Grain. I realize this Hypermodern Global World is not only an action-packed, but an (often intensely) action-valuing place. Maybe even a world that sort of - well, worships Action. And arguably to such a degree as no human time or place ever did before. Why, "JUST DO IT," right? I mean, it's not like any act of mere quiet contemplation can ever shed real light on this person, place or thing - whatever it is - that I'm so fiercely anxious to get to work on. Indeed (a really hands-on, practical mover-shaker might argue), what place can these virtues of antiquity - or in particular, any such antique mode as we used to call contemplative - have in a 24/7 globe where creative and productive activity literally never stops?

 
At the same time, note that our traditional medical ethics begins with the words "First, do no harm." Almost as if to suggest that some - I don't know - quaint spirit of contemplation? might actually add a note or two of cautionary, harm-preventive grace to our efforts. Whereas we hypermoderns, in our futuristic wisdom, seem able to grasp only the curative mode. And so presumably have rendered the old maxim obsolete. Our modern injunction (did we dare to advertise openly such a thing) should probably read "First do SOMETHING."

Do anything, it would seem. As in, "Even if you haven't a clue, just keep on doing something until you do it right, OR discover the right thing to do, OR . . ." 

Which surely is the most wondrous thing about any incessant, unstoppable, whirlwind human activity: I just keeping piling more and more new, self-interposed data onto my original subject, lest there be so much as a pause, or breath, in which the infernal smoke of my work can clear. Thereby making me at last able to see the thing I'm trying to work - or change, or reconfigure - for what it is. Apart, I mean, from my own machinations.

And again, note this Age is especially proud of how it likes not just doing things - and preferably with as few words as possible* - but also doing them up BIG. And with a big splash. Apparently this is one of the grand wisdoms of globalization (or of the militarization that seems always to accompany it?):  Everything's better when done on a large scale, and preferably made a grand spectacle of. "SHOCK AND AWE," as I believe was the fashionable phrase at one time. After all, whatever it takes to make the world happier, more peaceful, more productive, right? Beijing, Baghdad, Benghazi, bank bailouts - again, the sky's the limit.

*Definitely not words of explanation, or apology, in any case. Much less words of inquiry or reassurance.

Yet surely by now, one might hope, some of us have grown tired, poor and miserable enough to venture a cautious question: i.e., Is striving to make a hyped-up, arduously global ordeal of just about everything -  and with words that only further agitate and "hype it up" - is that really the key to doing the job right?

IV

What is it, then, about exaggerating the difficulty, or seriousness - or complexity - of a pending task that makes us not only unhappier (and often crueler) in the doing of it, but at the same time more full of ourselves, and more demanding of ourselves?

What is it, I wonder, about doing even the simplest jobs in a tense, self-scrutinizing, other-comparing hurry - full of the importance of our task and yet, it would seem, utterly dismissive of that task's own natural rhythms and flow (having "digitized" it, so to speak)? What is it about doing that, in particular, that almost invariably, sooner or later ministers to our pride? And not just any old pride either. At least not the kind we most conventionally think of - one that's smug, comfortable, self-congratulating. But rather is it the sort of pride that is above all ambitious, and anxious. Sometimes even brutally self-critical. Only not with the species of criticism we most need - the kind that actually makes us into BETTER, kinder, more attentive and discerning human beings, and human workers. As opposed to workers who are just busier, harsher, more nagging and complaining. Or, in a word, more perfectionist. 

Perfectionist: Almost as if all real perfection depended solely on us, and always had. As if you and I were gazing out, for the first time, at the seemingly endless prospect of the original Eden from some grand palatial window. And feeling on the one hand wholly overwhelmed, yet also kind of furiously exhilarated, by what it's going to take to SUBDUE ALL THAT - to bring all that unimproved wilderness to its properly shorn, docile, tightly manicured perfection. All the various, numberless (multi-)tasks required, along with their just-in-time co-ordination - to be completed, indeed, just in time for the record-early deadline.

Talk about Pride in one's work. Along with the humiliation of just about everything (and everyone?) else. And lest we forget, Nature never sleeps: this is a War no less "endless" than its prospect.

Whereas I like to think of humility, in contrast, as a very different kind of agenda and project. Unlike all our Prideful Work or Workful Pride or whatever, it doesn't have to be such a hard, daunting thing to understand, or undertake. Think of humility, then, as that secret (neglected or forgotten) window, into the quietest part of the garden, through which we find ourselves making what may be, in fact, the strangest of all modern discoveries. That window through which we discover that, even in our busiest, demandingest work, what we hypermoderns so often call perfection is no longer the Key. At least not to the WHOLE operation. So that we no longer have to do everything with that angry, tense, micromanagerial meticulousness so popular today. The kind that tells us that not just our task or job, but the entirety of our success, our prosperity, indeed our very survival depends on our being, you know, perfect. ("What do you mean you're not clever? not SMART? You want to sur-VIVE, don't you? You wanna EAT, right?") Almost makes me wonder how simple, humble people in the past ever survived at all, much less made a living, without our monstrous self-promoting, self-judging Egos.

Or think of humility as that refreshment from the Garden in the cool of the day - if we could just open the (industrially-sealed) window. That quiet lowliness, if you will, which teaches us that, just because we no longer have to do everything with Today's hammering, harrowing perfection, we are now free to work even some of the biggest, most operationally urgent jobs wisely, flowingly, grace-fully. Perhaps even beautifully. And sometimes, as often as not, with that peculiarly old, still and haunting beauty - seemingly remote as our own birth - which yet also seems to anticipate and partake of what may be, in fact, the lowliest, most unexpected Perfection of all. Or surely, in any case, One very different from the kind we've grown used to performing in these digital times.

Imagine, if you can, a kind of Perfection that doesn't measure itself by what it disdains and discards, what it wastes and trashes and uses up, but rather by what It yearns to gather up and enfold into Its own bosom - even each one of us, and every creature. So that finally, at long last, you and I can begin to be something of what our Maker created us to be. And finally do the job right. Only this time, of course, minus Almighty Adam's (and Eve's) urgently necessary tension and strain, and anger.

(Edited.)

A Less Debilitating Busyness I, II: A Labor Day Reflection

I

This present world - for all its spiritual near-rottenness and decrepitude - yet has many practical talents and strengths. Yes, even NOW: in the midst of what may be the grossest misuse/abuse/dereliction of cream-of-the-crop, globally-sifted talent - and in the face of a global health threat no less! - that our world has ever seen.

Strengths, for instance, like our American Gift of Making Money, and drawing extraordinary profits from investments, in the most ingeniously circuitous ways. Ways that in turn can generate whole new industries, commonly called "financial," which in times of economic uncertainty may seem like the sturdiest house of cards you ever breathed on. 

We have other talents too, like the devising of technologies so miraculous, as it were, in their power to obtain and disperse "instant" results, they just might lead you to believe there's a technical - if not a technological - solution to every human problem. Until we wake up one day - in the midst of a world of global pandemic, violent domestic social unrest, and all-around massive public fear and distrust, alienation and confusion - to find that not only the problems but the (offered) solutions are more political than ever. 

 

But if there's one talent we continue to have and use in abundance - and even more so in this present Age? - it is the power to extract a loud, furious BUSYNESS out of the quietest, most inward, most penetrating things one could never imagine. Or, at any rate, things you and I likely could never have imagined, not if we lived another thousand years.

Things like, for example, the God of the fire and fury of Exodus coming to enter into the inmost corridors and recesses of the soul of His creature Adam. And then staying there permanently. And in a way so starkly, whisperingly quiet, that almost no one knew about it. Indeed hardly anyone even begins to suspect it - His Mother being perhaps the sole exception - until some 33+ years later. But please note how He does this: not by perching Himself atop some glorious, immovable summit of human maturity - like, e.g., the state in which our first parents were created in Eden - but by Himself living through every pre-adult biological phase, wise or "foolish," of our natural lives. Even as a fully helpless, fully human infant. "He came all so still." And what could be more silent, or more completely operative only in and through silence, than the Divine presence plunging right into, not just the "thick of things," but the thick of US - to calm all our human Seas of Galilee?

So how did we fallen humans manage to muck it up? What did we finally wind up making of this strangely still, unbroadcast, unfanfared First Coming? It's an oft-told tale, but all the more worth repeating, especially if we can hear it with fresh ears. In brief, our work was nothing less than the glorious spectacle - the wind, earthquake and fire - of a trial- and torture-prefaced crucifixion. Talk about scenes from a blockbuster epic. Which I suppose, when you think about it, is only too appropriate. The Spirit of (Self-made) Man tends to manifest itself through pretty much any glorious medium it can find - other than, of course, the still small voice.

"But the Crucifixion was utterly necessary for our salvation," you tell me. Indeed: and AMEN. My question is what made it necessary. Was it really the best in us, or the worst? Was it the depth of our secret human yearning for holiness, or self-sacrifice, or suffering, or spiritual heroism - real enough motives even today, I'll grant you - that made the crucifixion of God the Son both necessary and inevitable? Or was it the depth of our sin?

On the other hand, are the two factors really - always - as mutually exclusive as we're so often wont to think?

Indeed, what I'd like to suggest is that the two are often intertwined. That it is precisely this Depth of Sin - imbedded even (or especially?) in the very tissue of our noblest aspirations - that tempts us to make such a Big Angry Deal out of things that in themselves may be very simple, or loving, or kind. Or that tempts us, in this instance, to make such a big, bustling, noisy, nerve-wracking Production out of not just God's own coming, but sometimes every other major event and action in our lives.

Now the popular narrative, as I understand it today, is that the great mass of human beings are in essence pleasure- and comfort-seekers. As opposed to sacrifice- and glory-seekers. Most of us - so the legend has it - want nothing better than to live a safe, quiet, comfortable life. 

Which may be true. I just wish I could find more 21st-century evidence of it. The general rule I've most often encountered is that we mere humans tend to take glory any way we can get it. Even via the ministrations of a certain Tempter. And especially when it seems we have reason to suspect our Maker has been holding out on us (as no doubt Eve felt on first listening to the enlightenments of the serpent.) But all the more so, it seems to me, when the Glory-in-question is our very own self-made, self-won holiness or righteousness or spiritual heroism. Of course it can be a difficult road - indeed, as often as not it may prove not to be just hard, but excruciatingly hard work. Then again, even in mere carnal terms, do we humans always balk at the long, hard, grueling slog? Especially when the prize is a glory of one's own, and Nobody else's?

II

But now let's go back for a moment to the Crucifixion, as almost a kind of prototype of human self-glory. To many of us today it seems the very apex of human evil; I doubt if it seemed quite that way to many, if not most, of its participants. One point is clear to me: human beings are not monsters, at least not from birth. Or normally even within the first six to twelve years of life. And however many adult, well-adjusted, "mature" monsters may have been complicit or participant in the Crucifixion, for many of the others I have no doubt it was real, and really hard, work. The kind of work which often goes most directly against our natural human grain. Work in which, yes, anger, outrage, indignation towards Jesus surely played their part, at least among the more fanatically correct Judaeans and Romans. Along with a sort of anything-but-innocent satisfaction, or self-vindication. But real joy? Of all natural human sentiments, it's the one I find hardest to imagine there. On the other hand, I can well imagine some of our Lord's more idealistic tormentors - say, the Sauls of Tarsus among them? - applying themselves all the more vigorously to the ugliest features of the most odious task ever completed.

And all the more reason too, I suppose, when it might be argued that both offended parties, Judaean and Roman, were aiming at a certain angry, narrow, yet - on their own terms, at any rate - by no means indefensible Perfection. One of simple, un-nuanced secular Law and Order in the case of Pilate; one of the most authentic fidelity to Divine Law, together with vindication of the absolute unity and utter transcendence of that Law's God, in the case of Annas and Caiaphas. Both choices also being marbled, it's true - at least when measured against the strict letter of either code's standard of justice - with no small degree of corner-cutting, together with the vilest of worldly compromise. Still in all (a really hands-on, practical person might argue), the "real world" being what it is . . . and given the nature of omelettes . . . what else could they do?

Which "real world" is still, of course, very much with us. And if anything even more stridently and, well, uncompromisingly demanding of compromise, than was the Roman world of the 1st century. For now, suffice it to say that, in any age, we humans have garnered an impressive degree of expertise in making the most glorious Productions out of relatively small, manageable events, annoyances, obstructions, etc. Even in our own personal lives. (Which may go some way towards explaining our unflagging US divorce rates.) Not to mention public events on a much larger scale. And in particular, I notice, we restless, ever-dynamic and -impatient Westerners. At all events, we've proved ourselves no laggards in the fine art of crucifying innocents for the sake of some political expediency or necessity. 

But perhaps you'd like something in the way of more recent or current examples. What can I say? Other than to take your pick from our Western/US track record of the past 20 years: Full-spectrum dominances; Wars on Terror; MEGAbig outsourcing arrangements with post(?)-Communist China; Middle East hostile takeover-reorganizations; massive drone operations that, for all their superhuman precision and accuracy, have no light civilian impact; SARS and other epidemic rebounds; TBTF recession bailouts; sky's-the-limit national debt; Libyan civil wars; NATO enlargements; Russian encirclements; Iran embargoes/provocations; Yemeni genocides - yep, right down to our all-time show-stopping Mega-SARS Encore, unfolding even as we speak. I mean, the list itself may not be endless, but very likely the long-term consequences are.

(Edited.)

(continued here)

A Prayer Too Late?

Not to get overly dramatic,* but anyhow:

This hideous, bloated, self-infatuated monstrosity that presumes to call itself China:
May God save all the rest of us, and all the Chinese - wherever in the world they may happen to live -  from its blandishments, seductions, deceptions. And above all, from its monstrously arrogant stupidity.

*Really, since when has that ever stopped me?

Oh, and I almost forgot:

The same goes for that other hideous, bloated, etc, monstrosity. You know, the one that's most securely based in places like Washington DC, and Wall St, and Silicon Valley, and that presumes to call itself America.

A Balance Sheet

Well let's see now:

Work. Business. Technology. As everyone knows, these are three extremely important matters. Indeed, I can well imagine not a few zealous (and by no means unintelligent) Twenty-first-Century souls saying - or rather shrieking:

"Considering how much we've discovered we DEPEND on them - for EVERYthing - can they ever be important ENOUGH???"

Which is exactly my point. Sometimes it takes an awfully long time, in human-history terms, for Life's really critical and determinative factors to come into their own, to be seen as more than just nerdy sidelines, to be at last recognized for their true significance and essentialness and sacredness and whatnot. To be lauded, in short, as the factors, in relation to which everything else in human affairs - family, local community, love, religion, literature, art, politics, etc - is pretty much downstream. Just get the Operation(alism) right, and everything else will follow.

And so it's come to pass that in a Kind of Fullness of Time - the past twenty-five years or so - we humans have managed to award  these Three Most Essential Factors something like the respect they deserve. And naturally adjusted our own behaviors and ideals accordingly.  We have succeeded, possibly beyond anyone's wildest hopes, in making Work, Business and Technology into three of the most grimly unrelaxed, uptight, unforgiving bullets anyone ever dreaded having to bite. To say nothing of the actual surgery. And not just for workers, supervisors and and managers, but sometimes, I'd swear - in a weird sort of way? - even for customers. Sort of a "Get with the program - or BE programmed!" ultimatum, as I've bemoaned in other places (unprogressive soul that I am).

I call it the Capitalism of Sacrifice.

And then, as if that weren't enough Progress for two earths, we now have even bolder souls yet further raising the bar of perfection. Just these past ten years, give or take, America has succeeded in injecting that same Spirit of Urgency into other, equally life-and-death, salvation-and-damnation areas of human life. Like politics. And political allegiance (both yours and mine). And even the Politics of Disease Control. And Social Justice. And Law Enforcement. After all, can one ever get too unrelaxed, or too uptight, or - for that matter - too angry, about anything really important? I mean, you really do CARE about people, don't you?

"Not counting the cost?" you say? Frankly I'm wondering: Is anyone even tallying the gains anymore?

(Edited.)

America's Ancient Madness

NOTE: Ancient madness. Which is to say, ancient by American standards. Meaning at least as old as our Constitution and Revolution. And since there are those who, not without reason, hold that the precepts underlying both Revolution and Constitution are every bit as old as the Universe, or older than Time, or even as old as God Himself - why, who's to say that these precepts' accompanying vices, or downsides, aren't equally ancient?

And no, it's not just American racism that's being implied in the title. Though that may in fact be the one most telling symptom of a far more complicated Disease. What I'd like you to consider for a moment is a certain strand, or tradition, or current within our American political culture. One that's well over 200 years old, but by no means unrespected even today. A tradition perhaps best articulated in the Founders' Era by Thomas Jefferson; and in the pre-Civil War decades by "Manifest Destiny" Democrats like Thomas Hart Benton, or Lewis Cass, or Caleb Cushing. And yet not without its far subtler exponents in our own times (most of them, I suspect, largely unwitting of the fact, or at least unwilling to connect the dots in their own thought-processes).

I mean the tendency among some of our intellectual leaders, both then and now, to default to - to fall back on - an unofficial, wholly unsystematic, yet highly practical scheme of racial/cultural hierarchy. One that has, on the one hand, tended to "superhumanize" Imperially-minded mainland Chinese, particularly of the official and wealthier classes. Even as it has tended to "subhumanize" poor or disadvantaged Americans of African and Latin American descent. But more on that - especially the Sino-American Connection - in an upcoming post.

Right now, what most fascinates me is how those same eras - e.g., 1820-1860 - in which large segments of America tended to think in terms of (1) racial hierarchy, were also periods of (2) extreme political polarization, (3) "Manifest Destiny" kinds of expansionism, and (4) the wildest optimism concerning our trade, cultural and other ties with Imperial China (almost as if we couldn't get far enough from our European past except by getting as close as possible to our Chinese future). And what I keep seeing - but maybe I'm looking too long, and getting enthralled, mesmerized? etc - is a Thread of Madness running through all four patterns. The sort of madness that may still be with us, not merely in vestiges, but in the form of a hearty, robust, flourishing life - of an Idea - such as we haven't seen in America for over a century. Or possibly even since those glorious pre-Civil War decades.

Picture a kind of collective insanity. Picture the kind of mania in which you and I are so violently possessed, as it were, by the rightness of our own positions - say, of racial/cultural superiority, or of China-worship, or rabidly ultrapartisan dogmatism, or the Messianic/apocalyptic nature and mission of our exceptionalist country - that it's getting harder and harder for me to see the humanity of, e.g., you, because your positions happen to be different from mine. Even slightly different. Yes, even though you may be living right next door, or down the block from me. And despite the fact that we both may be threatened more or less equally by, let's say, the same public health crisis. A crisis that, whatever its degree of real seriousness or inflatedness, is in its effects no respecter of the political persuasions of either of us. Imagine, then, a kind of political madness that denies, or overlooks, or makes light of, or pretends not to see, the common interest, and by implication the common humanity, of people living closely together in a particular place. Usually for the sake of some fierce ideological preconviction: some preconceived or pre-judged ideology that, whether it intends the result or not, is in fact driving the residents of that place ever farther apart. And then, predictably enough, bringing them to blows.

My public-health case is of course just one example; our mutual madness may have any number of contexts and pretexts. It may lie in our stubborn attachment-to-division-and-hostility in the face of a common environmental threat - say, an approaching wildfire. Or a common security threat, like a jihadically-inspired self-detonation right in our own downtown. But where I see it best illustrated today is in our present lines of confrontation over the question of degrees of appropriate police force. A sort of confrontation that, pressed too far to its logical extremes, bids to make many of our urban neighborhoods both unliveable and uninvestible. For surely that's the problem with all police presence? Too much or too little of it can have more or less the same effect - namely, the creation of one kind or another of urban wilderness. Or wasteland.

Now, based on the present media coverage, you'd swear the gulf between the two sides was a difference of Cosmic Light and Darkness. Yet the fact remains: they are both agreeing to hate, or despise, or at very least misunderstand each other. So that, instead, what I'm most forcefully struck by is what the opposing sides have in common - both those looking to defang and defund the local police, and those who seek to further extend and militarize its powers of repression. Neither do I find this common element confined to just our angriest protesters, or most indignant extremists: if anything, here is a Faith that, for some time now, has been whispering, calling, screaming out to us Americans from every corner of our media, whether of opinion, instruction or entertainment.

I mean this quaint, unflagging old faith we have - at least as old as the presidency of Andrew Jackson - in a certain venerable three American "institutions of sentiment."  Three institutions of which the general assumption seems to be that, having made us Yanks so well-liked and effective overseas during these past 30 years, surely they can only be twice as serviceable in enforcing our domestic peace? Three institutions that, however much or little they've been lionized by previous American generations, in our own time seem well on their way to becoming as American as baseball and apple pie.

I mean, of course, our more-than-ever-popular American faith in (1) violence, (2) arrogance, and (3) confidence in the rightness - if not Divine righteousness - of one's own judgment. Attitudes that, when exhibited separately, can be mild enough in their short-term effects. But when yoked together can have an uncanny way of ministering to long-term political rage: intransigent wrath being apparently a further measure or confirmation of one's righteous confidence. So that, even when you and I find ourselves on diametrically opposite sides of an issue, somehow we're redeemed from real error, from real sin and wickedness by our positions of staunch, "dug-in" irreconcilability. As if, really, nobody could be ALL THAT BAD who holds to such dogged convictions.

And I suppose there is a kind of not wholly incoherent logic to such an argument. After all, whether we happen to be fierce, take-no-prisoners, no-margin-for-error despisers of the local police, or exalters of the same - oh, granted we're none of us anywhere near perfect - but still in all, we can hardly be evil, can we? I mean, look how angry and indignant and OUTRAGED we are. Whereas really nasty evil is cut from a different cloth altogether. Everyone knows, for instance, that Satan (so far as he exists at all) is a languid, leisurely, almost blithely indifferent sort of cultured gentleman. One who instigates evil mostly from sheer boredom, or for the aesthetic diversion of it all. And who, besides, has all the time in the world, and hence NOTHING to get worked up about. Much less irreconcilably embittered. Whereas we time-urgent, impassioned, laborious agitators and "up-in-arms"-ers . . .

So in conclusion, what I marvel most at is the sheer number of actively, angrily decisive people in America - the kind who shape and steer whole policies - who seem to take great pride in their moral entrenchedness and sureness. And even see their positions as a sort of insurance or stopgap against falling into worse forms of badness. Folks who care very intensely about their respective (often extremely violent, when not deadly) Ideals of Law and Order, or of Social Justice. And who may carry this caring to the extreme degree of forgetting about a prior public health threat (still very much with us) - one that they may feel themselves now immune to, but from whose more unpredictable effects they have no sure way of guaranteeing the immunity of their loved ones. A threat that, however much it may have been minimized or exaggerated, under- or over-reacted to, neither side can hope to get a clearer, more empirical and scientific handle on, by facing as mutual antagonists.

What it would seem, then, that neither side cares much about at all is the coronavirus in itself, and how best to overcome it. As distinct from best politically. Rather, more than ever their main concern seems to be with how pandemic can best be used to confirm and illustrate their own Most Favored Narrative. Apparently COVID-19 poses no real threat to us merely as human beings - no danger to what we call our common humanity - but only so far as we provoke or antagonize it, by making the wrong political choices: in this case, the choice being whether to damn to Hell, or to exalt to some kind of municipal heaven, an over-armed, fear-ridden and at times savagely arrogant municipal police force. "Make but the right Choice, my children, and lo, you shall have nothing to fear from the most contagiously human-hating respiratory virus. Your mere courage and conviction will set you free."

Welcome to heaven on earth. AKA Righteous America. And God help us all.

(A Smarter) Russia's Opportunity

I'll admit: I have no idea when a certain broad spectrum of our US governing class is going to stop being tantalized by the legend of a Trump-Putin-Satan Masterconspiracy to Subvert Democracy and Freedom Everywhere in the World.

And even then - in the event that (what's left of) the storm finally does blow over - I don't imagine this decade blossoming into one of the great ages of Western love for Russia, or Western hope or trust in Russia. Indeed, even among those on our side who wish her well, or have no particular beef with Moscow, there don't seem to be many who have any great faith in her - what shall we call it? - democratic potential, or (geo)political versatility. In short, I haven't noticed many who believe that Moscow is capable of doing anything really novel or surprising, and least of all on the geo-economic and geopolitical fronts. I mean, what are the options, right? Russia + China - USA. Russia + China + Germany - rest of Western Europe/USA. Russia + China + Europe + Iran - Saudi Arabia. Or even + Saudi Arabia. The possibilities are far from endless. Nor even terribly interesting. Unless, of course, one's aim is to enhance the prospects of some new strains of pandemic spreading even faster throughout Euro-Asia.

But most discouraging of all, I find, are those on both sides, pro- and anti-, who believe that any Russia, good or bad, authoritarian or liberal democratic, is by nature condemned to be a behemoth - i.e., an empire and hegemon. And that that holds true no matter how far she may shrink to her so-called natural, "non-imperial" boundaries. In essence, for her to cease being a beast would be to cease to exist.

I don't know if that's true. I sincerely hope it is not, and I most emphatically do not want Russia to cease to exist. Or even shrink to unrecognizable borders. One thing I'm all but sure of, however:

The more Russia keeps on trying to imitate, rival, envy, model herself after or compete with certain other (more or less stupid as well as brutal) behemoths - of which I count four as the principals - the more she continues to dream of being, say, a Counter-USA, or Co-China, or rival Europe or Saudi-foil or whatever, the more she is guaranteed to make a royal - or rather imperial - ass of herself. If not some yet more obnoxious and destructive species of animal. 

Now it may be that she has no choice but to remain, or become, a hegemon of one kind or another; or else deconstruct. Personally I doubt it, but either way: better a smart ass than a dumb grizzly. By all means let her be the kind of intelligent empire that knows how to do something really useful. The kind of subtle, patient and respectful hegemon that knows how to cultivate what has seemed like a lost - if not dead-and-buried - imperial art, since at least the end of the Cold War. Or more likely, since the geopolitical eclipse of the British Commonwealth in the 1950s. (Bearing in mind that even during that decade, what was left of the British Empire comported itself anything but honorably in countries like Egypt, Iraq, Iran and Pakistan.)

I'm thinking of the kind of relative giant who knows how to stand in the breach and intercede for the relative pygmies. Who knows how to protect and buckler, to bolster and rally the common interests of certain smaller, rather less gaudy, bombastic and pretentious nations. Including not a few in Europe, Asia and Oceania. And in particular those nations that, in a sane world, would have every wish to go on trading with the likes of a USA, or an EU, or PRC or KSA, but have absolutely no desire to be swallowed up or partitioned, hegemonized or globalized by ANY of them. Much less pandemicized by them.

In short, here is what Russia needs to do, it seems to me, if she plans to be a sensible, measured, more or less humane sort of hegemon. As distinct from that Opposite Kind we've been overblessed with, over this past generation, across virtually every continent of the globe. And about whose occupations the Middle East in particular could write volumes.

She needs to secure - as opposed to enticing or dallying or playing around with - the good will and trust of a certain kind of niche country. I.e.,  the sort of country that gladly sees the point of being on good terms with a good-natured behemoth, or two. Perhaps even three. But has no wish to be either the pawn or the plaything, much less the meal, of four merciless Leviathans.

Of course I can't predict how big a niche it may turn out to be, or how many such countries Russia is likely to find. But right off the top of my head? - and especially in light of certain still-unfolding "global health" events - I'd say there are tons of them.

The Barely Mentionable Word

So help me God, I'll say it again:

Call me ignorant and simpleminded. (Lord knows I've been named worse.) It's just that, among all the various things I've  been reading, I can't believe what I keep failing to read during these days of (supposedly) rampant pandemic. In particular there is one key, utterly essential word that I seldom if ever run across, whether by word of print or word of mouth. Yes, even from ostensibly Christian quarters. I mean the one indispensable ingredient, apart from which all our best recipes for confronting, controlling and subduing this viral monster are so much blind flight, and whistling in the dark.

Which is to say, of course, prayer. But not just as our usual means of getting "what we want," or of submitting to what God wants ("ALRIGHT! I'll go along quietly! JEEZ!"). But prayer also as the means to our understanding of what is already there  - of precisely whatever God has already allowed to be placed in front of us. And of how to deal with it effectively, according to that Narrow Way that truly optimizes the real, God-discerned well-being of any place, and of any people living in it. As distinct from our own many bold and glorious, if not global, agendas for addressing those same issues.

Because, regardless of whether we're supposed to be enforcing and extending the lockdown, or scaling it back, or mitigating or minimizing it, or even lifting it altogether, the fact remains:

In prayer alone do we have the one thing utterly necessary, not just to the right execution of any of these measures, but to the right choice among them, for every tiniest locale, region, country and megacountry (any two of which, even as neighbors, may be vastly different). As opposed to just connecting with them, you know, facelessly and globally, in the usual brutal human way. Neither just prayer as a last resort, but as the vital concomitant of every stage of every resort we attempt.

Think of it - that same language of God apart from which Love itself is barely audible, and can barely utter its meaning: how is it that this strange, yet anciently intimate and familiar tongue, is something I hardly hear mentioned as strategy or tactic - or even weapon - in this conflict? Much less the primary and foundational weapon of all.

Maybe it's because of what prayer requires - indeed demands - in order to be truly knowledgeable, penetrating, separating, like the Word of God, of joints and marrow, soul and spirit. And because once prayer is duly armed with this requirement it becomes so - well, Divinely hard to politicize. But let me see if a few metaphors can help. (You're also welcome to come up with some of your own if you like.)

Think of prayer as a vehicle that only moves at its right speed - neither too fast nor too slowly, not too soon or too late - only so far as it is fueled by love. And think of love as the one proper fuel that moves our prayer most accurately according to the nature of the thing - of that creature or situation - for whom we are praying, or about which we are praying. Finally, consider this kind of prayer as the humblest, directest, most readily accessible way of loving someone with whom we vehemently, even politically, disagree. Or even despise.

Because in a sense there is no creature, human or otherwise - not even a coronavirus! - the essence of which prayer cannot know, cannot discover, cannot draw out from its hiding place, as it were, and into the open, so that at last it can be seen by us even as God sees it. Nothing can be long hid from prayer so long as our praying is fueled, not by hurt or fear or anger or frustration, but by love. Indeed, there are some creatures so timid, so guarded even when they do evil or great harm, that they can only be known, only emerge from their disguise or covert or lair as love draws them out. The reason is that our dealings with them only become fruitful - only get to the heart of them - inasmuch as we see and know them for what they are, and not merely for our own image of them. Or worse, through the bubble of our own favorite narratives and preconceptions. Even something as miserable and vile as a coronavirus is a problem we can hardly afford to politicize, whether we veer to the ("callously" impatient) Right or to the ("tenderly" self-righteous) Left.  Indeed, the more "clever" and slippery and persistent any threat, the less we can afford to politicize it. Much less conspiratorialize it. (There: now you can call me REALLY simpleminded.)

Again, for what they are. But for that degree of clarity, love alone is what opens every window and unlocks every door into the house, so to speak, of any created thing. Including those we need to overcome, or develop immunity to.  And prayer alone - humble, unpresuming, trustful and loving prayer - is our one complete, our one more-than-scientific objectivity.

(Edited.)

The Logic of Modern Love (a "hidden" side of our New Domesticity)

"Well, to be honest, it never was just a Modern thing. In fact, almost since human life began, this 'Modern Love' has nearly always been the way that practical, workaday, results-oriented people  have gone about their lives. And not just in big commercial operations, but especially within effective marriages and households.

"So why is it so confoundedly hard to understand?

"Once again, I'll start from the beginning. There are obviously, self-evidently two (2) distinct sides to charitable, giving, sacrificial love. Likewise there are two (2) distinct and appropriate objects to which each side is properly directed.

"There is that side of Love which is agitating and stressful, and which makes demands, and places expectations, and expects nothing less - do you hear me? - NOTHING LESS than whatever perfection is appropriate to the particular task, situation and context in hand. Because NOTHING LESS THAN THAT is what's required for the good of the Whole Operation. Now as I said before, this love has its own proper object and outlet. That is why we have humans. And then there is that other side of Love, which is calming and soothing, and which nurtures, and reassures, and accepts and supports and gives strength. This love too has its own proper object and outlet. That is why we have animals.
 
"To sum up (since you don't seem terribly bright): Consolations are for animals; expectations are for humans.

"Any questions?"

A Prayer More in Keeping with Our Great Pre-COVID-19 Progress (so rudely interrupted)

We thank thee, O Lord, that this same glorious Beijing, which once was moved to create an unprecedentedly harsh, exacting and uncompromising, anti-social and even anti-human socialism (even as all things social and human must needs be subject to periodic revolutionary upheaval), has been pleased in the fulness of time, and in the abundance of its wisdom, to create a Maoist capitalism equivalent to, and fulfilment of, that same glorious Maoist socialist experiment.

We thank thee that this truly unprecedented capitalism, solely by its own strength, brilliance and dogged determination, has lifted so many unworthy multitudes out of poverty, both within its own borders and far beyond them, even unto Africa and Europe and America - even as our own want of faith in Beijing, and undue harshness towards its legitimate mistakes, have begun to plunge us back into a conceivably still worse poverty.

We humbly beseech thee to grant us true repentance, and Beijing's holy spirit, that we may once again strive to be some small part, however unworthy, of that glorious, inevitable and impregnable post-human Future which the People's Republic has so kindly undertaken to build alike for us, and for all humankind, unto all ages. Amen.

(Edited.)

A Kind of Prayer for Easter

As the title suggests (make sure you're sitting down), I'm really not very good at this sort of thing. Which means that "getting it better" is not going to be just a matter of trying harder. Also, please excuse what may seem like the unnecessary length - these are trying times, and I'm learning by fits and starts, if at all. Anyhow, here goes:


Divine Father, we who were hardly expecting this interruption have been hardly prepared for it. We who were so unstoppable have become all but immobilized. We strong ones who once loomed so large and competent over the whole earth have shrunk back to our familiar spaces, so that now we seem small and helpless even to ourselves. Please don't let us forget this passing moment - and this abiding reality - of our smallness and helplessness. And all the more so as we prepare to resume one day our "normal"  routines. Let us not again become so big and overwhelming, so fast and furious, as to be daunted by nothing else in this world that is, after all, of Your creation, not ours. Let us remember who we are, and who You are (verse 3). 

Console the suffering and the dying with that stillness of Your presence that searches, convicts, loves and nurtures all things. Prepare them for Your bosom. Likewise those who care for and minister to them. Deliver us all from this self-inflicted morass into which we slid so quickly, and from which now we seem to be emerging so very slowly. Those of us who will live on, may we thank You for allowing us some small share in Your Passion during this strangest of all Lents. Make our own rising from this ordeal one with Your Resurrection, and thus utterly free - even as Your Resurrection was free - from all boasting, violence, vengeance and triumphalism. Give us the humble joy and gratitude of Your Resurrected Life, not because, but in spite of our eventual return to "full" normality, and because we are undeceived by its seeming triumph.

Let our confidence in ourselves be so much the less, even as we know our only Confidence is in Your Son our Lord, Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns even now, with You and the Holy Spirit, one God for ever and ever. Amen.

(Edited.)

The Indispensable Ones

It may go down in history as one of the all-time-great discoveries of our pre-COVID-19 Age (assuming, of course, we really do enter a different age in COVID'S aftermath)

I mean our Global Modern Discovery that certain things we humans have long been conditioned to recognize as virtues - patience, kindness, humility, consideration, attentiveness, etc - have been grossly over-rated.

The trouble with these ancient virtues is obvious: Thinking of other people all the time - or hell, even most of the time - is just too much work. And worst of all, work of the wrong kind (which means, conversely, one can never work too hard at the right things). There are just too many different kinds of people out there for them all to be worth thinking about. Even among the various individuals you're likely to meet on a given day, there are far too many different types of them even to keep track of, much less acknowledge and respect and be kind to individually. Surely, then, there must be some larger-scale - or even global? - method of streamlining your dealings with all of them? And in such a way as conduces to the most productive and profitable advantage of the Aggregate Whole?

The solution rather, as our Age has been busy discovering,* is to think and reflect upon the needs of others as little as possible, and instead to think primarily of oneself, but with one CRITICAL proviso: It has got to be your right Self.

* Or at least until we were so rudely interrupted by global pandemic.

The Key - you guessed it - is to make one's Self so perfect(ionist), so efficient, so self-lessly driven and determined and dedicated, so exquisitely, exactingly conscious and conscientious of every slightest flaw, facet and function of the Whole Operation* - to make yourself, in a word, so indispensable - that the people around you don't just excuse your many apparent rudenesses and inconsiderations; they applaud and encourage them. Indeed, they dread the prospect of you becoming even marginally nicer, for fear that the Whole Operation - which could be anything: a country, a company, a church or charity or other agency, or even a single family or household - the Whole Operation will come crashing down like London Bridge. Possibly even to the lasting detriment of the whole global economy. Or at least of your country's place in it.

* Which is, after all, to be mindful of practically everyone in your purview. Maybe not so much of their needs, but most definitely of their uses?

And meanwhile, most of your peers and colleagues - so far as they value their jobs, positions, professional and collegial esteem and reputations, etc - will want to make you more or less their Gold Standard of Indispensability. Even if they otherwise hate you for your seeming abruptness, harshness, etc. Which means that, more and more, they're going to want to see you not just as a necessary prod and goad to their own best efforts, but as an exemplary model of selfless diligence and dedication to the Aggregate Whole (however hard you may be on the individual parts). Or if nothing else, an exemplary rival.

So what's all this got to do with the Coronavirus? Nothing directly, so far as I'm aware. It just seemed to me as good a time as any to reflect on certain fashionable ways of recognizing and rewarding talent - especially within our busy organizations and other collective entities. Ways that, for all their seeming functionality, may become all too quickly dysfunctional in crisis times. And all the more so, during our present crisis of organizational (self-)confidence. As good a time as any to reflect, namely, on those policies of personnel recruitment and advancement that, for all I know, played a vital role in propelling both of us Indispensables - Superchina and Superamerica - into our respective places of highly stoic unpreparedness for the Global Challenge of our Lifetimes.

(Edited.)

Seeing the Gods Clearly

Whatever else we may be learning or unlearning through this global tribulation, this much at least, I hope, is clear:

Sobriety is needed. And that word, moreover, in a context we are hardly familiar with, and in a sense in which we Global Moderns wouldn't normally dream of using the term.

Because if this Bold New 21st-Century World (1995-?) doesn't start seeing certain things more clearly, things in general are definitely going to get foggier and clammier, and colder. If we Westerners in particular don't start taking a more sober and hardheaded, more unpoetic and unromantic view of certain things we've hitherto been drunk and mystical about, if we don't start scrutinizing our gods, our fetishes, our ideals and obsessions with a less enwondered and enraptured eye . . .

But what sort of ideals, etc? you ask. Oh, things like, you know, our practice of everybody from everywhere moving about all the time, wheresoever in the globe that money and ambition take them (spouses and children be damned!); things like the social benevolence of digital technology; things like the economic benevolence of Communists who magically stimulate entrepreneurship, and of magical Belts and Roads stretching from Beijing all the way to Rome and Milan and beyond! . . . 

. . . If we don't start brutally examining and interrogating these gods with all our heart and soul, well, things may indeed get somewhat better for some period of time. But then they're going to start getting much, much worse, all over again.

(Edited.)

Some Basic Thoughts on Basic Stuff

Right here you can read what is, in my opinion, quite possibly the wisest and most prudent* overall assessment of our coronaviral predicament and prospects I've run across so far. Far better than anything I could have managed, in any case. And I'm a pretty regular fellow-traveler of both Rod Dreher and his various sources/correspondents, on just about any topic they choose to wrestle with. In brief, I've read rather on a lot on this subject from both him and his readers, including those rare moments when they've seemed to be either over- or under-reacting to it (though, for the record, let me be the last to accuse Mr Dreher of under-reacting to anything, much less COVID-19). So this one article especially seems to me, more than anything else I've yet read, to get the whole issue about just right.

* Prudent - now there's a word that seems quaint enough in this boldly-confident (1995-?) Age.

But what I like in particular about this quite recent post is the way it seems to address both certain natural - including the merely human - and supernatural ramifications of the current crisis. The former are tackled in Mr Dreher's usual rather dead-on, direct fashion, the latter somewhat more obliquely. In fact, I find their treatment - both his and his readers' - of the epidemic's supernatural "side" a mite too oblique and indirect for my tastes. I was especially disappointed (and here I'm open to correction, since I may well have read it too quickly) at what I found to be their general avoidance of a certain very familiar p-word.

The way I figure it is this: God created all beings. And therefore He quite simply knows all these things, and everything about them - backwards and forwards, inside and out - as no one and nothing else can.* Think what a comfort it is, then, that the only Way we humans can be ushered into the Real Presence of any creature, including ourselves - and thereby safeguarded against our own mere ideas, abstractions and reductions, pigeonholes and stereotypes of these creatures - is:
         
        1) through prayer;
        2) through that apart from which any prayer is dead or delusional, the grace and love of God.

Think, too, what a blessing it is that the latter should include both His love of us, and our love of Him, and each other.  So that even we presumptuous humans can literally, prayerfully love our way into, not a perfect or comprehensive knowledge - but surely the "one thing necessary" to such knowledge? - of any creature, any situation, any problem.

* Think of it! Nothing else: not even the prodigious talents of Man Almighty, as expounded by our - at least until quite recently? - all-sufficient Global Business, in concert with that Master-Civilization of them all which has its center in, and emanates from, Beijing (and of which Washington has been at best a partly-owned subsidiary).

And so naturally, even in non-routine, highly unexpected times like these, we mere humans rightly continue to do our best to seek out the appropriate precautions, and to respect and defer to the appropriate expertise. And (one can only hope) in ways that are free as possible from political bitterness and ideological preconception. But even here, what a comfort and a joy it is to know that the Ultimate Precaution is prayer, and that the One to whom our prayer is directed is also the Ultimate Expert.

(Edited.)

He's a New World Man (right?)

I am a notorious snail, if not sloth, at processing news. But especially the kind of news that's sure to attract a flurry of publicity and controversy. So naturally, here it is, almost a month since the latest US Presidential State of the Union address, and I have no clearer notion of what it signals or portends - whether of the recent past or the near future - than I did when I first heard it. I just wish I could be reasonably sure, one way or the other, that we as a country have been turning a real corner - and a good one (as distinct, of course, from one that takes us straight into the waiting arms of a potentially epic-scale[?] global health crisis).

I repeat: a good corner - one such as finds America at last starting down a fresh, what I'd like to call emphatically post-Clinton-Bush-Obama path of national (in)security. As opposed to continuing down the same, 25-years-familiar road of Permanent War as both Way of Profit and Way of Peace. Only now with the wretched difference of the same Exceptionalist message being delivered in a more crass, bombastic and "populistic" style of presentation.

In fact, about the only thing I'm fairly convinced of is the nature of the street we've been on so far, for the better part of at least the 21st century. For some time now it has seemed to me that the world as a whole has been shaping up into a most interesting and exciting place. The kind of place not altogether unlike certain rougher, more lawless times and spaces of the Old American West: a sort of world in which those with the most drive, cold rationality and initiative - along with, some might argue, the least sensitive consciences and faculties of remorse - are more or less free to dispose of the rest of us as they choose. In brief, it has seemed to be becoming a kind of globe consisting of more and more lawless places, regions, countries, etc, in which men and women with, yes, sufficient wealth and connections - but also more than enough grit and gumption - were now free as never before to become as big as they liked. With ultimately the only thing constraining them (within their particular compass of influence anyway) being some other men and women getting bigger and likely meaner still, and then taking their place. And of course there would always remain the time-honored option of the two or more of them combining, splitting the difference, etc.

There were also two notable ways, as I saw it, in which this expanding New World seemed to differ from that of the Old West:

(1) There were, or would soon be, fewer and fewer places of stable settlement, law-abidingness, peace and comparative democracy surrounding these, as it were, emerging Global Frontiers, such as might otherwise be able to contain, much less engulf, these various titans, Goliaths, emerging Leviathans, etc. (Indeed, at times it has seemed to me more like one big continuous Modern Global Frontier, which unlike the old ones, does far more encroaching than it is encroached upon, and whose one officially titled and recognized Federal Marshal - the US Blob - seems at least as much on the side of the outlaws as of the homesteaders.)

(2) These same titans, much like the Robber Barons of the late 19th century, were fully capable of being not just fronted by, but actually becoming corporations: collective Goliaths, as it were, seemingly now faceless, yet in a strange way still able to embody and perpetuate the spirit of the founding giant.

And naturally the bigger and more conglomerate the giants got, the less they would be satisfied with anything short of the entire globe as their Old West-style play- and stomping-grounds. And after that - why, what would there be left for anyone else to do? Except to watch as the Big Fish turned this great big globe - at least so far as its smaller fish were concerned - into the littlest, most cramped, most unbreatheable pond you ever saw. Much less tried to swim and feed in.

But again, that may be just one more phase of history turning its corner and rounding off to a close. I just wish I could be sure of it. More specifically, I wish I might be reasonably persuaded that the seeming wild cards, the mavericks of this past decade - Trumps, Putins, Orbans, Salvinis, etc - really were a different kettle of fish: that they really are - eventually? - going to provide some semblance of multipolar balance, stability and sanity to this otherwise increasingly volatile, friendly-only-to-the-biggest-and-wealthiest Global Wild West. As opposed to their being, you know, more of the same old Big Fish, just of a slightly different color.

A Highly Stoic Unpreparedness

This essay was begun, and far the better part of it completed, on January 4 of this year - with most of the rest, l believe, being finished by no later than the 14th of that month. A lot has happened in the world since then, obviously: some of it giving rise to speculation as to whether, at last, Heaven's mandate is being withdrawn from a certain East Asian regime - not to mention those of its enablers, cronies, erstwhile "partners," etc. But whether or not this (even more than usually) bizarre little post has any real relevance, however indirect, to currently accelerating events coming out of mainland China, l thought it best to leave it substantially as l first put it to paper, with only more or less minimal and technical kinds of editing. Rather than try and shoehorn it into some kind of strained, hindsighted relevance visible only to the one who wrote it. And even he likely needs to have his eyes rechecked.


At times I think I must  be someone who's easily disturbed and overwhelmed. Because I can't get over the sheer number of people I meet nowadays (even comfortable retirees!) - as well as read, and read about - who make it a sort of policy to be what I call jadedly stoic. Who give every convincing appearance of being - well, surprised by nothing; paused by nothing; impressed and awed by nothing; moved and touched - and even disturbed - by NOTHING. Other than perhaps themselves and each other. And even that very tentatively. After all, being truly awesome is a result one not only has to earn without ceasing, and often by the most irksome toil, but endlessly polish and brush up on. Like any resume. Again, even if you're retired. Awesome is almost never anything that happens to you: it is rather what YOU - by your indomitable will, drive and corporatized initiative - MAKE to happen. (Just ask Comcast, etc.) And still more so a century from now. Remember, we're only just getting started.

For me, it's as if these good people - including a neighbor couple I just visited -  have taken the fullest possible measure of all those things our Great World most demands and respects. And that, in a very comprehensive nutshell, is just about all one needs to know about Life. In particular, they seem to make it a point to understand what does awe and impress the predominant world of today - be it that world as orchestrated from Washington, Brussels, Berlin or Beijing. What moves our hypermodern, globally-connected human world is power and confidence, swagger and self-assurance. Along with, of course, the ability to get quick, decisive, and even violent results by the use of these traits. Whatever else there is, that doesn't possess these qualities, or doesn't admire them, or isn't all that amenable to or manipulable by them, simply doesn't matter. Not really. All that matters is a (humanly-constructed) universe in which stoic unfazeability, coupled with a smooth, measured arrogance and a well-grounded, well-recognized sense of accomplishment, is what opens every door, and removes every obstacle.

Now I can appreciate what makes all sorts of decent people, of every age, taste and walk of life, feel maybe now more than ever pressured to get with the Program. One can scarce fault even more traditionally religious Americans of this century for being persuaded of a thought an earlier generation would have deemed mildly blasphemous: i.e., that there's NO CHALLENGE - not from god or man, demon or Donald Trump - that our godlike, politically-connected* Global Business isn't, in the final count, more than equal to. And not just able to conquer, but to reduce utterly to its own wise, rational and profitable ends. 

* To say nothing of politically correct.

And yet I can't help thinking of certain doors that haven't been opened by these Modern Virtues. Or hurdles that haven't yet been cleared. Or even of certain other doors, that we may never want to see opened at all? And yet may still, in some strange fashion, find we have to pass through.

I'd like you to permit me what may be, to some tastes, a rather extravagant example. Consider for a moment today's various worlds of story and entertainment. Imagine if devils and horrors, nightmares, zombies and apocalypses - and all the other fun things that routinely populate our TV, movies, games and other media - imagine if these creatures were all of a sudden to become really, stubbornly, uncomfortably real. How prepared do you suppose our Great World's most commended people, its most applauded talents would be, in the event that their precious, ever-so-tightly interlocked global routines were ever to start getting seriously disrupted? And not by mere rumors of trade war, or rumblings of populist anger and discontent, but by nothing certifiably human?

But to return to earth, I can't help remembering what else continues to be missed by these great Door-Openers (end of Par. 2), that is nonetheless real, and that really impinges on all of us, regardless of our degree of power, talent, confidence or prestige. I'm especially reminded - and not least by the escalating tensions and volatilities of today's geopolitical scene - of what our highly credentialed smugness, arrogance and indifference have blinded us to. Not the ever-loved plasticity and predictability of the world, of course, but its pain and beauty; its mystery and strangeness (or even weirdness); its madness and fanaticism. Or even its sheer unpredictableness. In short, all those things that seemingly no surplus of technology or rationality, no amount of contempt or arrogance or indifference can quite get us a good handle on these days. And which we may have even less firmly in our grip than we did at the start of this grand century. And which therefore we feel we have no choice but to ignore - as, say, a place on a map, and where it really is, because our GPS will find it. Or else to mow down, and drive and pave over. Or even (try to) bludgeon, or burn, or drone to death. Mysteries like Syria and Persia, and Yemen. Or what used to be called - in a less madly Sinocentric age - Sinkiang. Or even (no doubt a duly chastened and cleansed) Russia. Because any other response would be grossly unstoic, unjaded, undignified. Any other response would be to give these other, rather more mysterious, less manipulable factors - and even places and peoples - a dignity they don't deserve. One can never be too confidently rational in subduing the irrational.

But of course - you know me - I still have my inevitable question. Again, one can never be too confidently rational in subduing the irrational. But what happens, I wonder, when all our vaunted Sino-Western rationality, confidence, technophilia over-reach themselves? You know how that can happen, right? - in the course of our mostly noble efforts to subdue and constrain the world's madmen and fanatics - its Putins, Assads, Khameneis, miscellaneous Uighurs, Tibetans, Houthis, etc. So what happens when our Sino-Western modernity itself ceases to be rational? When it seems to lose all sense of measure, restraint, proportion? And what happens when our, if I may so, proudly secular modernity takes on a momentum, madness and fanaticism - indeed, a religiosity all its own?