The Roots of Our Problem?

Likely more of my usual paranoia, but:

Something tells me we Americans need to reverse our entire paradigm of how we got Here. "Here" being - among myriad other blessings - Covidiotic paralysis, a bipolar nation at the heart of a supposedly unipolar world, an increasingly post-human global surveillance capitalism, and all the other exciting milestones of our unfolding Pinkerian Utopia.

My central question is, What if we trusting Yanks didn't just sleep-walk, in our usual touchingly naive fashion, into the vast utopian maze of trying to liberalize - or even democratize - Red China? What if the crux of the matter wasn't nearly so much something we had meant to teach the mainland Chinese - about capitalism, human rights, the Open Society, etc - but rather Something Else, that we were determined to make ourselves learn? Or - and rather more likely, I should think - something our wise Beijing-worshiping global elites had already pre-determined to pound into the otherwise stupidly nationalistic heads of us unwashed masses. Whether by hook or by crook.* A certain Something about Who Really Counts in any business, trade or technology transaction. And in case there's anyone still unsure of just who I mean by Really Counts, may I submit what I hope is a decisive clue: It ain't the end user.

* Then again, why not get our best wisdom direct from the Source - again, our true Masters in All Things Productive and Profitable, those beneficent human gods of Beijing?

Something tells me, the better we understand this missing piece, the better we shall grasp the really distinctive and defining traits of our Twentyfirst-Century American Capitalism (TFCAC). And so the better our chances of getting ourselves out of its present rut. In short, we need to understand what truly drives and motivates TFCAC: not just the tangible and quantifiable rewards of profit, but even more so the intangible, immeasurable rewards of a sense of power, superiority and advantage. And in particular the advantage of being on the designing, building and selling side of the counter. As opposed to the unworthy inferior schmucks waiting on the customer's side.

Neither do I think our much-vaunted traditions of American customer service need stand in the way of  this "new" vendor-centered mindset. I mean, wasn't it we bold trailblazing Yanks who pioneered use of the word store (however small or modest) in place of shop? And more recently, cellular instead of simply mobile phone? Because that's the standpoint that really counts, right? - that of the needs and demands of those mighty John Galts we all depend on, be they inventors or designers, producers or distributors. Honestly, what could be more vital to the appreciation of any new product, innovation, system, paradigm, etc, than sensitivity to the requirements of those who most truly make them happen? As opposed to the hopelessly muddled, useless perspective of any mere end user.

Call me a spoilsport, amidst all this rational, producer- and creator-centered exuberance. But something tells me, the sooner we "get" this - the sooner we understand that the great undoing of our modern, (more or less) Beijing-ized, "communistified" capitalism is not just profit-mania, but mania for POWER and advantage - the sooner we shall get to the heart of our current economic (i.e., our socio-economic) difficulties.

And perhaps even get out of them?

A Weird Thought

It's been said that nothing is harder to predict than the future. Indeed, I suspect there may be only one thing we hypermoderns do, in trying to understand the times we live in, that is more hazardous than our feeble attempts at prophecy. It is when we - often very smugly and comfortably - project the tendencies of the present onto the past, and "read back into" our recent history more or less the exact outlines of our current situation. To borrow from Orwell: Is Oceania currently at war with Eastasia? Why, then we've always been at war with Eastasia.

Case in point: It may seem, in keeping with the general fallout from Covid-19, that the most glaring feature of current Sino-American relations is our two countries' mutual, mounting animosity and distrust. At the same time, we know that that hardly explains all recent events Chinese-American, right? It doesn't, for instance, begin to explain our rather advanced degree of trust, collaboration - dare one even say cohabitation? - during the pre-Trump previous 25 years. 

The fact is that neither of us got to this point of bitter separation/divorce merely - as some married couples do - by hating, suspecting and accusing each other, and otherwise maintaining a healthy social distance. Nor did our previous Mutual Infatuation Society - one that may yet be with us in some circles, but that surely climaxed in the two decades on either side of AD 2000 - exactly come out of nowhere either. Rather, its striking degree of pre-Trump progress appears to be a quite rich and complex phenomenon: indeed, one that may have been some long time coming, through many delays, detours, hopes and frustrations (c.1860-2000). Along with, arguably, a shared persistence in overcoming divers obstacles across well over two centuries.

My own overwhelming sense is that what climaxed c. 2005 was partly the fruition of a shared dream of both countries. A dream, at least on the American side - and going as far back as Franklin and Jefferson - of a young, vigorous post-Western civilization seeking validation, guidance and commercial opportunity from what was, after all, not just any old Asian country, but in fact the oldest pre-Western civilization in the world.

But now suppose that what the Jeffersonian American Project longed for was both a brother-civilization, if you will, and an ally. If so, then two further points seem brutally obvious to me: our hunger for Chinese affirmation was not on account of 

1) any Yankee inferiority complex with respect to either Europe or Asia, or
2) any lack of confidence in the wisdom of our own conceits.

To the contrary, my repeated impression of Jeffersonian-Painean America (c. 1800-1820) suggests a country more than confident of both its right and its capacity, maybe not to rule, but surely to "overtake" and enfold? the better part of the globe. Or at all events, those parts of it that weren't firmly within the orbit of Imperial China. My question is, might not both of us - young American and ancient Chinese empires - also have been seeking common cause against a common enemy? Against, say, a Concert of European powers that viewed us both as either already, or in process of getting, way too big for our breeches? A Concert of Europe that had every intention of taking us both down at least a peg or two? My point is not to cast doubt on, much less excuse the pettiness and jealousy of European resentments. At the same time, considering that the worst European "snobbery" may have nothing* on good old Chinese and American "we-are-the-Future" smugness, self-entitlement and proudly imperial "mission," are we sure we can entirely blame them?

*At least from pretty much everything I've seen, read and heard.

Which brings us down to the present day. And with it the question of whether not just Europe, but the rest of the globe hasn't got still more reason to be leery of even the most dynamically visionary USA and PRC - either together or separately. In any case, and whatever the current ledger may show of dynamism and vision on both our sides, there seems to be no loss of smugness, or sense of Imperial mission. May I suggest, then, that what we "Chimericans" share most especially and enthusiastically is no mere contempt for "the West" (to say nothing of that lame, despicable Russia). Rather is it a mounting sense of the non-American West's superfluity and obsolescence, and increasing irrelevance to the world's future. Albeit, I'll admit, for two initially quite different reasons in each case. 

In the case of today's Neoimperial China, this contempt seems largely due to its confidence that its own culture not only vastly predates the West, but can expect a vibrant future well beyond the latter's decline and demise. Whereas our Imperial American disdain seems driven by something different but not unrelated: an ingrained habit - one I find useful to call Neojeffersonian - of seeing ourselves as not just Europe's rightful and much superior legatee and successor, but as having successfully outgrown and transcended the better part of the entire West's traditions, its limitations, perhaps even its very definition and character.* 

* In particular Paragraph 10, and also the section under the subheading "Role of Caleb Cushing."

In short, our joint "Chimerican" disdain and impatience of the West can hardly be described as a common sentiment, proceeding as it does from hugely different origins and histories. At the same time, that doesn't mean our two coinciding futures have not at various times (like, eg., c. 1996-2016) foreshadowed a kind of convergence of attitudes, or even a common conviction - at least as regards the (rest of the) West. The issue, then, is not why both an ancient China and an infant America may have looked down on Europe over 200 years ago. Rather it is what has made us both, in c. the past 30 years, so blithely confident of our vast superiority - whether together or in competition - to the rest of the world. So blithely confident that we had most if not all the answers to the world's dilemmas: hence the inevitability - an irreverent wag might argue? - that we both should be so very differently, yet no less miserably, caught off-balance by the explosion of COVID-19.

(to be continued)

A NEW Age? Or More of the Same Old (violence, arrogance, etc)?

 All I can say is: Welcome to our madder-by-the-minute America.

The Real Tragedy of Hell

"Hmmm . . . God as a newborn babe . . . so beastly hard to imagine, much less grasp . . . coming to us (if that's at all the right phrase) clothed in this absurdly quiet, simple, unassuming familiarity that's so easy to despise . . . or at least overlook? So easy to pat and patronize and condescend to, to 'awww' and coo over. Or just roll our eyes over. But apart from that, no ferment, no drama. Certainly nothing on the order of 'shock and awe.'

"In other words, pretty much the same way He is with most of us - at least most of the time? - year round, day in and day out. Only not as a newborn in a manger (thank God). I mean, for crying out loud, once and for all can't He stop pussyfooting around and just show Himself for WHAT HE IS? And in a way that's utterly unmistakable, convincing, overwhelming?"

How sad, that when our Maker finally does manifest Himself in the way that I think we hypermoderns, in particular, presumably would most "like" and respect . . . or surely at least find cool beyond words? . . . when He finally does come to us big and bad, awesome and full-spectrum-dominance, kickass and sweeping and global and heavy-duty industrial ENOUGH (picture the insides of a steel mill from - well, you know) . . . by that time, for many of us it may be too late.

Of course, ALL things are possible with God. Provided, that is, we don't despise and delay That which He makes possible. Divine Mercy is always an urgent grace, to be pursued, grasped, clung to. But always within a very definite, very circumscribed Present - "seek the Lord WHILE he may be found," "behold, NOW is the day of salvation" - not as an optional gift to be presumed on and postponed for an indefinite, unbounded future.

But if we can't accept a helpless, homeless infant as sign and token of mercy - but all the more so One who is Mercy Incarnate - then who else is left?

Profiting through Intimidation; or, The Fear Factor Revisited

To an Age that thinks all good work - indeed, all genuine efficiency - can be extracted from purposive agents by means of fear: 

Maybe it's just me being overly humane, or "sensitive?" But I keep finding it remarkable - yes, even in this Progressive Century - how seldom do we get the best results from anyone, except by first putting them at ease. 

And not just animals, but people.

I know, I know: "Tell that to Beijing." (To say nothing of Washington, and Wall Street.)

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?"