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?