Loving God with Only Half of Ourselves (at most)

I've said it before, but it bears repeating: 

These are intensely, even savagely purposeful times. Which is to say, most of us tend to take our "higher" purposes - moral, political, theological - very seriously. And in particular those on which we've duly and morally deliberated. The apparent assumption being that we, as a Radically Enlightened Aggregate Globe,* are finally getting on the Right Track, or Right Side, or whatever. Which can further mean that, depending on how enlightened and virtuous we deem our Purpose to be, most of us don't take any too kindly to things not turning out the way we intend. Especially when we've already pre-determined what the proper course of events and outcomes should be - like, again, say, a Right Side of History. Not to mention how our own actions - and yours too, for that matter - should ideally reflect and reinforce that right pattern. With no exceptions or deviations. 

*Whatever the grosser deficiencies/sins/errors of individual nations and states: Hungary, Florida, etc.

And yet, as much as most of us would like to do exactly what we intend to - with not so much as the slightest deviation arising from impulse, perplexity or circumstance - the fact is that our actions don't always conform perfectly to our intentions. Being human and fallen, we often fail to live by the things we profess. Or else certain other things get in the way - often despite our own best efforts - leaving us frustrated, or discouraged, or chastened. Sometimes even humbled. 

Yet even then, I think, far too often (but especially in these Russo-Ukrainean times?), the solution for far too many of us is simply to double down on the Original Aim. As if conforming our actions perfectly to Its requirements was a mere matter of greater discipline and tenacity. Of putting all our mind and will to it, and thus getting exactly what we intend. To the point, indeed, where not just our own Best Selves, but whatever god, superior being, higher power or larger purpose we esteem ourselves to be serving, is presumed to be in fullest agreement with our tenacity. And even with our "stubbornness," if you will. And self-frustration. And self-disgust. Almost as if this Higher Power or Purpose were not just requiring nothing more of us, by way of command, but could offer nothing more to us, by way of grace, and help. Other than maybe "That's right, do it again! But this time DO IT RIGHT!" 

And seriously, what's the use of any god that's unable to be gracious? or even illuminating? What's the good of any supreme being, power, purpose, plan, etc, that merely rubberstamps all our most self-obsessive moralistic compulsions?

So, again, I find this to be an Age that fervently believes in and swears by discipline - indeed the all-but-limitless power of disciplined self-invention and self-command - to open just about every door, and to remove practically every obstacle. Including those involving what some would call - or used to call - nature, or gender, or national identity. Or even, sometimes, the barest semblance of national, regional or local autonomy, and self-determination. After all, if truth is Truth - and how much more our hard-won truths of self-creation and self-discipline? - and if our Truth be such that it must be expounded not just economically but militarily throughout the globe - then why should it be constrained by borders of any kind, whether geographic or biological? 

An older generation - one, say, more conscious of its debt to German moral philosophy - might somehow feel like it's been here before. Might even recall lots of stirring talk about the Power (or even the triumph) of the Human Will. And by no means only among those German belligerents, along with their many admirers, of the Second World War. But however we like to phrase it nowadays, I find this generation to be one that believes in the power - the almost boundless power for good - of choice, decision, resolution, DISCIPLINE. 

At the same time, again, we all know how even the best-laid and most disciplined resolutions can fail us. What we often fail, I think, to realize is how sometimes even our best decisions can have outcomes worse than failure. How not just the worthiest, but the most successfully-carried-out resolves can warp, distort and denature our actions. To the point where, even with some of our apparently most successful executions of aim, the result becomes something different - indeed disturbingly different  - either from what we intended, or from what those most affected by our actions might have wished we'd intended.* But either way, the result is revealed to be something deeply disappointing. If not downright brutal and ugly.

*Just think of all the civilian populations of Libya, Syria and Yemen who during these past twelve years were terrorized, oppressed and dislocated, either by ISIS, or by what were very likely ISIS- or al Qaeda-fellow travelers or competitors. And who now have every reason to wish that the intentions of US policy-makers had been either very different, or very differently executed.

But, again, this is nothing if not an Age of fierce, even implacable resolution and determination. And so nowadays we have all sorts of people, professing a wide gamut of religious and quasi-religious beliefs, who are firmly resolved upon loving (what they take to be) God and neighbor, as if the matter depended entirely on their mere strength of resolution. And determination. And DISCIPLINE. 

My question is, How's it all really working? And working out? To what extent is it making us more effectually charitable, and compassionate? And in a Way that actually changes us for the better? And not just for the more staunch and resolute? And up-in-arms? And confrontational?

What I think we've been learning, but especially today - and that from the hardest of teachers - is what a miserable thing  it is to try to love God with only a part of oneself: what an angry, barren, recriminatory thing it is to resolve, and strive, and strain to love God with all one's mind and strength, before we have first yielded to Him our heart.

Now of course no moral act is ever a matter of mere emotion - as this Righteous Age never tires of reminding us. But that doesn't mean our emotions cannot be allies, and even conduits and instruments - imagine it! even of the God who made them. And of course there is more to us than our hearts, nor are they all of us that matters. But personally I know of no better portal to the soul than the affections - at least when we have allowed them to settle, so that our oldest, most secret desires are at last visible from the pond's surface: no clearer sounding into that Depth of us which hungers most desperately and ravenously, as it were, for God. In any case, and whatever the passing deceptions and superficialities of our hearts, they reveal a very different - if I may say, a far more childlike? - face, as we allow God to be their molder and sculptor. And lover. They may even point the Way to a soul we hardly knew was there, much less realized that it, too, has a voice, and a longing, and a wisdom. "Oh, but who could have imagined it? I mean, just what exactly does the soul DO?"

Well, I can hardly claim to be anything like an expert on the soul's actions. But if nothing else, I suspect it knows a far gentler and surer path to love, whether of God or of neighbor, than even our most staunchly convictioned vehemence of intellect and will. Not to mention - provided we let God be its searchlight - it tends to know and search us. And far more thoroughly, I believe, than all our most brilliant combinations of heart, mind and strength could know the life of a mouse. Much less that of any man or woman. And maybe least of all a child's?

Pray for the peace of Kyiv.

God heal America.

Why Klaus Schwab is My Favorite Modern Poet

I

Unhappy First - and please God last? - Anniversary of the Russo-Ukrainean Mutual Madness. 

And pardon, again, my disgracefully long hiatus.

It's not that I didn't write anything. But even those scribblings of mine that attempted a holiday (much less a holy season) mood were pretty much desiccated by what I'd like to think of as my driest, deadeningest, most desperate-for-a-glimmer-of-hope Christmastide in memory. It was, in short, exactly the sort of "Antichristmas" all too appropriate for a world skating merrily on the brink of - but wait for it - potentially thermonuclear escalation. (Can't get too much of a righteous thing, you know.) And that, of the most epically wicked, apocalyptically insane war ever instigated by two equally mad  - and I suspect more or less evenly wrong - "great" powers. 

Then again, I've heard it said that every global generation gets the kind of Russia it's worked hardest for, and so most deserves. Plus, the renewed threat of an expectedly odious Moscow usually means some rise in the political stock of Washington. Making it all the more likely the same globe will end up with the kind of America it's worked hardest to appease and mollify - to say nothing of idolize? With the overall result being one any fool could predict: the whole world gets exactly the sort of omniconfident Hyper-america, and criminally paranoid Russia, everyone else most dreads. 

(Meanwhile a benignly[?] futuristic Beijing - much like the Walrus in the Lewis Carroll poem - sheds a bitter tear for us both. And then proceeds to sort out for itself the oysters - both Russian and American - of the largest size.)

But now recall how I described my latest Christmas: "driest, deadeningest, most desperate for a glimmer of hope." I'm not perfectly sure why. But I believe it has something to do with - and may even be a near-perfect description (if not indictment) of - our language today. And in particular that language we use to explore, and advocate, and celebrate those things dearest to us. Or that we profess to care most about. Or even such as we might have been tempted, once upon a time, to "wax poetic" about, as we used to say. Tempted, in other words, to try and find the most concise, musical, evocative words, and those "in the best order,"* with which to express our joys, and to "bring to life" those things we most delight in. Things, you know, like Christmas. Or, on a much more comprehensive scale, like the Future Peace, Progress and Prosperity of the World. 

*To paraphrase Coleridge's definition of poetry.

II

Which brings me to the subject of my title. Because if Mr Klaus Schwab, founder and presiding genius of the World Economic Forum, hasn't devoted the better part of a lifetime to caring about what he understands to be those latter things - Peace, Prosperity, a Global Progress seemingly defiant of all human limits and constraints - I'd like to know who has.

Still, the question has been raised as to why - in that case - he hasn't chosen livelier, more compelling, more humanly-accessible words to exhort us towards these goals. In a Guardian review of his 2017 prognosis The Fourth Industrial Revolution, Stephen Poole writes: "It is composed in the deadening language of executive jargon, addressing 'leaders' who want to know how to navigate an era of 'exponentially disruptive change'." 

He goes on to write: "As usual, this high-management style contains much fashionable vacuity (we should avoid 'linear thinking', it says, which is meaningless however you interpret it), and also a weird kind of imagistic brutality – the 'gig economy' companies such as Uber or Taskrabbit are 'human cloud platforms', as though the serfs who work for them are euphoric angels playing harps on a bed of cumulonimbus. To complete the style, just add a heavy dose of tech-utopian boilerplate, such as the claim that 'digital technology knows no borders', which of course it does: witness Facebook’s recent decision to comply with China’s censorship laws so it can operate there."

Poole qualifies this criticism by adding: "To be fair, Schwab shows in an appendix that he does know that the idea that 'digital technology knows no borders' is simply false, and throughout he is careful to be even-handed about the upsides and downsides of every technology he discusses. Artificial intelligence might be super-useful, or it might constitute 'an existential threat to humanity'. Biotechnology might cure all diseases, or it might create a schism of bio-inequality."

In keeping with that more qualified assessment, I'd like to submit the following direct quotes, as further evidence that Mr Schwab is no dry and brutal technocrat. Rather do we find him able to bring to his favorite topics not just nuance and sensitivity, but a very balanced concern for the possible human downsides of an exhilarating, yet also conceivably terrifying Age, and pace, of change.  

"The Fourth Industrial Revolution has the potential to empower individuals and communities, as it creates new opportunities for economic, social, and personal development. But it also could lead to the marginalization of some groups, exacerbate inequality, create new security risks, and undermine human relationships."

"As the novelty of wearable tech gives way to necessity - and, later, as wearable tech becomes embedded tech - will we be deprived of the chance to pause, reflect, and engage in meaningful, substantive conversations? How will our inner lives and ties to those around us change?"

Now call me a blithering literary ignoramus. But the more I study the matter, the more I find Mr Schwab, even as a prose-writer, to be one of our finest contemporary poets. Or at least to the extent that nuggets of real and excellent poetry, as a writer wiser than myself has suggested, can be found lodged in even the stubbornest, most calcified prose. None of which latter terms, I think, fairly describe the bulk of Mr Schwab's writing. Just consider for a moment what he has succeeded in doing, and how it puts him leagues ahead of the pack of some of our most serious living poets:

     1) he is more or less intelligible and straightforward; 

     2) he has something to share with the general public, and not just with some enlightened coterie of chosen colleagues and fans; 

     3) the things that he says are heartfelt - they concern those matters he most unabashedly cares about and hopes for (as opposed to finger-wagging and sneering at); 

     4) he manages to write, on topics and prospects that might otherwise be either hideously dull or horrifically alarming, with not just a certain elegant conciseness, but with a measured enthusiasm,  caution, even a kind of compassion.

So why, some have asked, hasn't he chosen better words for the job? If these are the things he cares most about - indeed is most viscerally passionate for - why can't he convey their urgency in words that are more visceral and vital: that go, so to speak, to the very roots of our being? Which is to say, those roots that suggest we humans might even have a life beyond this present one?

Not, of course, that he's by any means impervious to the religious dimension of human progress. Poole himself admits: "Indeed, the book climaxes with a rather lovely plea for everyone to work together in a 'new cultural renaissance' that apparently will depend on some kind of cosmic spirituality. The fourth industrial revolution might lead to a dehumanising dystopia, Schwab allows soberly. On the other hand, we could use it 'to lift humanity into a new collective and moral consciousness based on a shared sense of destiny'." 

My question is, Do all these possible outcomes - even the happiest - have to depend solely on our unaided human efforts? And in the unsettling event that they don't, could he not be more specific, or at least suggestive, about some of the possible alternatives? And in particular, on What - or Whom - else we might be depending? Suppose, let's say, that there really is an intelligent pre-established End as well as Beginning to the history of this vast universe. A blessedly unmovable Omega as well as Alpha, such as even we ever-dynamic human can't alter or derail. Or deter. And yet One who also has a kind of plan or goal or consummation, even for us. Could not he - Mr Schwab - then, have tried to give us a more vivid and compelling sense of our human place and mission within that spiritual journey, and that promise of fulfilment? And if not, what is it that prevents him? Is it primarily the limitations of the man himself at work here? Or more those of the time and intellectual climate he lives in? (Allowing, let's not forget, that Mr Schwab may have played as large a role in the shaping and sculpting of our Age - at least of its distinctness and peculiarities - as any single human being living.)

III   

But before I go on, an apology. My point is not to hold up poor Mr Schwab for either excessive admiration or undue belittlement. Whatever else, he is above all a man of his time - an Age which some would argue has never been more verbally limited, if not downright impoverished or straitjacketed. Certainly, whatever else this glorious Era may excel in, it is no Golden Age of Poetry. Or at least no poetry that's readily accessible, or encouraging  - or even approachable? - to the moderately literate reader. I mean, after all, there's only so much verbal challenge/stridency/cacophany/agony even a modernistic ear can tolerate, much less the rest of us. And granted, we all may still on occasion experience the need for lilt, flow, grace in our written and other words. But unless we are gluttons for disappointment, we don't as a general rule go hunting for it in the jungles of today's verse. 

And so, lacking pleasurable - or even intelligible - alternatives, it's no wonder we Global Moderns have made a kind of god-of-all-work of the prosaic. Or of the Wisely Practical, as some might prefer to call it. I.e., of all the busy things we think, do and use, in short, which are best accessed by types of language that are - what? 

Most practical, to be sure. And workaday. And relevant (that sacred modern word). But anything else - in effect, if not intention?

I don't know - most clunky? flat-footed? ham-fisted? Or else, at the other extreme, most rigidly "fashionable," and present-normative? Or even Present-worshiping - and by implication past-despising? And so, in a word, least like poetry, whose own memory, and uses for memory, are far, far different things from any present-bound speech. Indeed, I sometimes wonder if a good poem can ever garner enough memory: can ever reach back far enough into the Past: can ever be more than restless until it rests, as it were, in that Presence which is the beginning of all things, and all words. Or so, I think, do our most resonantly-timed and -measured words - whether of verse or prose - lead and draw us on inexorably, even to our own farthest origins, if you will. And that regardless of our own religious beliefs or non-beliefs.

So what do I mean by Modern Prose? I mean all those realms of language whose sheer ironclad utility demands that they be almost the express opposite of any good poem: i.e., least dependent on music, and memory, and resonance, on loss and exile, on imagination and yearning. Modern prose is precisely that speech most required by the surface frictions of our lives, and by the Selves in each of us most occasioned by those surface conflicts and tensions. Those Selves, that is, which tell us that we humans really haven't got much of  - well, anything to remember. And really nothing much to hope for. Whether of Alpha or Omega. But somehow, everything to do. And that done yesterday, if not last week, or last month. Modern prose belongs most to those selves we "have to be" - or need to become - in order to thrive and prosper in, and progress beyond, the stresses of this mad world we mutually create. As distinct from those other Selves for which we (secretly) yearn, and which our restoration, and the creatures of its Garden, most eagerly awaits. 

Now of the two, our prosaic self is of course the most outward, and so easiest to recognize, in both ourselves and others; and thus we see and collide, confront and compete with it all the time. The other is most inward, and so we see most seldom if at all; indeed the great majority of us would hardly know what to do with it if we did see it. Our first reaction would be to dismiss it as utterly useless. Or worse, as irredeemably primitive: something our human evolution in its wisdom should have canceled ages ago. 

And so I suspect we largely do, most of the time. Except, of course, in the measure that our modern language - even our most desertified everyday, workaday speech - still thirsts for some forgotten rivulet of verbal music from old Adam's oldest wellsprings. But that's just it: even if we did so thirst, and all the time, how would we know it? And especially Today, of all practical ages? The most tin-eared, leadenly-unmusical prose is so much simpler and ready-for-use, for everything we do (except of course for those moments when, in its often brutal zeal to over-simplify, it complicates everything). 

But even allowing for its occasional mis-steps and barbarities, where would we be without our Modern Prose? It explains, it functionalizes, it creates whole agendas and projects for the almighty frictions and future-drivenness of our lives. So what if it doesn't understand the periodic need of those same lives for peace, and recollection? We've gotten along just fine, using it as our maid-(if not god-)of-all-work these past 50-odd years, thank you very much. Yes, even as our "poetry" has grown more ponderously esoteric and dark, violent and dissonant. Which makes sense too, I suppose, when you (merely) think about it. I mean, what's the use of any modern poetry that can't compete point for point - or even tooth and nail? - with our best Modern Prose? Hence, again, our Global Modern intoxication with the utility and power of the prosaic, and our incapacity to find any use, or even beauty, in anything remotely poetic, whether in prose or verse. 

Right. And this is the sturdy "practical" language with which we're supposed to find the tender, exquisitely compassionate words to encompass every conceivable human condition and confusion, and (gender-)reconfiguration. We don't even care to know how, or why, this or that soul has been made the way it is. Or even if it has a maker. And we're the ones who are going to pontificate - wisely - on how its body both needs to, and must, be remade?

Meanwhile, pray - and fast - for the peace and sanity of Kyiv. And the return to sanity of Moscow (and the rest of us).

God heal and deliver America.