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.)