Monthly Archives: December 2016

The Steamroller of Culture

Posted on by
Reply

On the Live Science website this week are a number of news items about the nativity in the Christmas Story.[1] The findings depict accurately the story of the nativity but are 3000 years older. It is no wonder that faith often rejects science. On the one hand, faith accepts wisdom in any form as valid and eternal. On the other hand, science depends entirely upon facts and logical assumptions based largely on facts. Over the decades, mariner has found this confrontation to be the most complex and convoluted relationship – that is of dependence on faithful beliefs in good, life-saving theological and behavioral ideas versus the forever emerging accumulation of facts, discoveries, and the pressure of changing cultures.

What is good? What is divine? What is the behavior that will save humanity? The answers to these kinds of questions require a mythic premise – one that is not influenced by human history, one that is valid beyond human behavior and abuse. This is a good way in which to secure our religious ritual; it is beyond the reach of daily life and is based on heroic goodness.

Alas, it seems science is dedicated to disassembling myths. Still, humans are created to be sensitive to forces beyond human achievement. Since the earliest times 12,000 years ago there is evidence that H. sapiens has incorporated the powers of God as part of the management of life. If one could take a snapshot every 1000 years to assess the role of God, one will find remarkable modifications in who God is and how God contributes to human quality.

God must do some fancy dancing to keep up with the latest in cultural changes. Not only does science keep changing the rules, humans keep reinventing the way humans interact and find meaning in life. Whoever thought God would have to deal with memes? How will God find a path through the electronic games, devices and preoccupation with capitalism? How will God reintroduce for the umpth time that love and respect, not possessions, is the core value to happiness and sublime life?

We know science has no interest in inculcating spiritual value; that is not its job. But given the results of science – certainly knowledge is beneficial – how do we construct a new myth that is meaningful today? How do we return divine essence to the forefront of humanity’s values?

There are fragile signs. It is a topic of conversation that we have lost, among ourselves, the soul and spirit that is required to manage our political and economic life. There are growing concerns about matters beyond our own comfort and pocketbook: the environment of an entire planet is beginning to fail. There are conversations about how to elevate this issue to daily levels of awareness in our destructive oil economy. There are so many humans on this planet that the basics of why we have an economy must change dramatically.

Unfortunately, you and I are in the generation of basic labor and sacrifice. It is we who must pull hard on the reins of a diverse and self-indulgent world. It is we who will pay the price of change in our comfort, our faith and our pocketbook. Our job is to stop further degradation for we are approaching something akin to Armageddon (largely a metaphor but nevertheless inevitable).

It has become your turn to step up and take charge.

Ancient Mariner

[1] See http://www.livescience.com/57311-5000-year-old-nativity-scene-found.html

The God Thing Redux

Posted on by
Reply

Have you seen the TV commercial where a fellow hits a tennis ball over an off-camera net and receives hundreds of balls back? So it is with ‘The God Thing,’ a recent post. To mix metaphors, mariner thought he could, like a fighter jet doing a touch and go on an aircraft carrier, do a quick touch and go on the carrier of Christendom. He should know better.

Mariner is more than willing to engage in dialogue so don’t stop until you are satisfied. In the meantime until disagreements subside, the subject will remain part of a post rather than put into a reply. Let’s start by dissecting mariner’s theological shorthand into something with broader perception:

God is not directly a separate thing. Yes, in retrospect, that is obfuscating. If the word ‘God’ is an element in our discussion, the perception that God is the Trinity is not disturbed; the Trinity is intact. Mariner’s intent was to advance Father Christoforos’s statement that we, the humans, utilize God’s spirit when we take action to invoke the Second Commandment, the Ten Commandments, and most of the Beatitudes not to mention Old Testament prophets and New Testament disciples. The Father was advocating (if not admonishing) humans to carry out the responsibility side of their faith. Put your money where your faith is, so to speak: if we love God, we have no choice but to love people. God created all of us and commands in his name to love all things. Father Christoforos simply said if you don’t love people, you can’t love God.

Feeling God through empathy. Regarding the idea that the way we feel God is through sympathetic, empathetic and compassionate feelings is not one that can be dismissed. Jesus said more than once, especially in his parables, that if we behave in a certain way, great will be our reward in heaven. It may be helpful if one follows that thought as God’s tit-for-tat. Latch on to the experience that people describe when they have immersed themselves in a charitable act. Think about the athletes, celebrities, common citizens and just anyone who is committed to helping someone who has testified to the resultant deep satisfaction and reward; it is an experience too similar among them not to be a profound, deep seated human experience. Through an intense feeling of sympathy, empathy and compassion along with personal sacrifice, the flower that blooms is God’s Grace.

Showing a superior force. The superior force is the healing power of God displayed by Jesus in any number of healing events. This is frequently illustrated throughout the New Testament. Although most easily displayed as a medical advantage, the healing spirit of God applies to moments in the lifetime of every one of us. As God’s emissary, you show the power of God through the power of your commitment – expressed as sympathy, empathy and compassion. These three sensations are the tools by which you express your commitment to God, God’s domination of all things, and the power of love itself.

Mariner hopes these clarifications help. Clarifications aside, he wants to reiterate the importance of applying this portion of the body of Christian works, repeated from ‘The God Thing:’

Today, each of us knows the bottom line: Each of us has a responsibility to nurture compassion and empathy as key parts of our personal value system. In the present millennia, this commitment to expressing God’s values through our personal actions has become critical. Have a link to God’s URL – it is critical to our existence.

Ancient Mariner

The God Thing

Posted on by
1

Mariner was watching the PBS News Hour the other day when the broadcast did a piece about the immigrants coming into Lesbos, a large island belonging to Greece. One of the locals in the video was an Eastern Orthodox priest, Father Christosoros, who was very receptive of incoming immigrants and was a leading helper organizing them and arranging shelter and food. All of Lesbos, in fact, has done the best they can for the immigrants despite an overwhelming obligation.

Father Christosoros, in an interview by the PBS reporter said, “How we see people is how we see God.” It reminded mariner of the years when he was a pastor and had the responsibility of assisting parishioners in seeing and knowing God in their lives. It still affects his conversation on occasion.

When you think about it, it is a difficult task to incorporate God – or any universal but not physical authority into one’s own very empirical existence with five senses and four dimensions. How can two such different entities coexist at the same time?

The Eastern Orthodox priest had it right. God is not directly a separate thing. God is experienced as part as one’s own ability to accept the reality that God provides. God’s existence can only occur as a result of your actions. Do you see sanctity in every individual? Do you feel a need to show a superior force spawned by respect, caring, and empathy that will easily assuage the difficulty that confronts others? Do you not judge or harbor feelings that separate you from others? The Bible is thick with comments that suggest if you take care of others, you will be taken care of. That’s about all you can ask, though oddly, the rewards of representing God are addictive.

Most literal, highly regulated rules about your relationship with God are antiquated in their presentation. They were formulated in past ages where knowledge, science, and culture were not as aware as they are today. Today, each of us knows the bottom line: Each of us has a responsibility to nurture compassion and empathy as key parts of our personal value system. In the present millennia, this commitment to expressing God’s values through our personal actions has become critical. Have a link to God’s URL – it is critical to our existence.

REFERENCE SECTION

Just a kudo for PBS. Watching the PBS News Hour has double or triple the insight into the world situation as the plastic, viewer share driven news channels elsewhere. If mariner can watch only one news program, it is the PBS News Hour.

Ancient Mariner

 

Election Postscript

Posted on by
Reply

The 2016 election has left the nation deflated. A citizen, no matter their ilk, can take only so much wear immersed in politics, morality, philosophy, culture and other esoteric, massless issues none of which ever produce absolutes a citizen can count on. Alas, the wear has only begun. One segment of the nation’s politic, a narrow one, will feel positive about the outcome of the election: the upper and middle class far right. One pundit on CBS television said “We have a President with no ideological direction appointing intense ideologues as Secretaries, supported by the most conservative and dominant Republican Congress since before the Great Depression.”

The largest losers are the faithful who voted for Donald. There’s an old saw that goes, ‘Why would a working class person ever vote Republican’? Fareed Zakaria had it right before the holidays: the electorate votes for the personality most like themselves; policy is not a factor. It is normal for voters to select preferable bits of gossip and campaign noise to support their opinion; 2016 saw uncontrolled abuse from the social media – Donald among them.

A tonic for the general public – and an important lesson in civics – is an interview of Jon Stewart by Charlie Rose that ran last November and was rerun on Bloomberg channel last week. Jon is no one’s court jester. His wit made him a leading personality in serious politics. Jon has a no-nonsense attitude about politics and feels all’s fair in love and war as the spirit and purpose of our democratic republic is hammered out by the electorate. “It’s a messy business,” he said, “but it’s our job to keep this country free rather than let it slip into something else.” He commented on his intense campaigning for the passage of a bill that would pay the medical bills of first responders on 9/11 by saying that if the government is doing something immoral or abusive, it’s everybody’s job to take action to set things right.

Mariner suspects not every political activist has the loyalty to the nation that Jon has. Typically, political activists are warriors for a cause; anyone with another opinion is a dangerous enemy. Once a voter absorbs his personal opinion, not even ISIL can change that opinion. Jon said this firm attitude is what it takes to run this country. However, it isn’t very intellectual. Donald said he could shoot someone down in the middle of Broadway, NY and not lose a vote. So it seems….

What our country is left with in the game of nations is a jump ball. Fortunately or unfortunately each nation has its own ball. The nation with the best overall game will win. Trouble is, our team just drafted teammates of Jerry West.[1]

Jon also said the democrats no longer represent the hometown citizen, the people each of us know next door or in our family. Every time a labor union is busted or a right to work law is passed by state and local governments, it continues to weaken an already bad situation for the working class. The only solution is to strengthen the local democratic presence in order to elect democratic candidates who will support labor friendly legislation; in other words remove redistricting completely from party-sensitive control. Accomplish that and the rest will be easy.

 

REFERENCE SECTION

Mary Noble interviews Arlie Russell Hochschild

THE MORNING AFTER Trump’s victory, The New York Times recommended “6 Books to Help Understand Trump’s Win.” Number two on the list was Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, by Berkeley sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild. The book takes us to Louisiana, where Hochschild spent five years among Tea Party voters who have suffered at the hands of the oil industry. It’s people like these that have become Donald Trump’s most ardent supporters. Hochschild explores the emotional logic behind what she calls their “deep story”: they believe that the government helps minorities “cut ahead of them in line,” while liberal America mocks their values. [2]

This book and the interview are a humanistic and thought provoking look at the intimate experiences of those citizens who have nowhere to turn for a future. We may think of them as misguided or uneducated. But the truth is, the truth is, they have come to us and discovered there is nowhere to turn. If Donald can rock the boat and make a crack in the vast unresponsive firmament, maybe there will be a place to go. It was their last hope.

Ancient Mariner

[1] Jerry West played basketball for the Los Angeles Lakers in the 1950’s and 60’s – the implication being the new nation’s leaders still abide by political philosophies and problem recognition that existed over sixty years ago.

[2] Quote from Los Angeles Review of Books, https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/reaching-out-not-backing-down-an-interview-with-arlie-russell-hochschild

The Wind Is Changing

Posted on by
Reply

The mariner does not make predictions or propose a direction at this time but feels the wind differently. Just a small whiff that may mean nothing.

Donald sees himself as king of the world, not just the United States.

Four larger democracies are suffering from authoritative would-be kings who hold no allegiance to human rights and intend to “fix things” and not be wrong about it. (US, Russia, Greece and Turkey) The fuse is the Middle East.

Donald already has infringed on freedom of the press telling it when and where it can receive canned news releases. Individual threats have been made at several specific news agencies. Where is enforcement of the First Amendment?

Donald already has made it clear that his judgment is not to be fair but rather never to be wrong and he will visit his wrath on those who may insist he is wrong. (Sounds exactly like Kim jong il).

It is obvious his scope of importance does not separate the opportunity for profit at the expense of human welfare – wherever profit may take him internationally.

The mariner can go on endlessly with these thoughts but two cultural indicators are emerging that hold his attention: too many crooners and incidents of swing music are popping up on entertainment media and too many Father Knows Best shows are popping up – signs of transition in pop music and entertainment suggest instability in cultural values – couldn’t ask for a better barometer.

Our last chance to avoid war is to stop Donald absolutely without fail at the emolument clause with an impeachment. A bleak future with the US Congress is far better than a world with Dictator King Donald.

Ancient Mariner

It’s all about Washing too many Clothes.

Posted on by
Reply

During 2016, the year of politics, the main concern of American citizens often was laced with words like freedom, fairness, loyalty, ethic, social justice, virtue, ethos, and other words that focus on how Americans treat one another and the spirit that binds them or separates them as fellow US citizens. It seems, as a closely experienced moment in history, not to have been orderly. The American psyche behaves as though it were in a clothes washer. As a people, we are tossed about by economic unfairness; we are tossed about by clashes in philosophy of government; we are tossed about by a blatant intrusion of technology without time for adaptation and understanding; we are threatened by the loss of our planet.

But in a quick glance, we see only the tip of the iceberg. When we studied history in school, we were able to identify different periods of history tied to wars or inventions or shifts in culture. For example, The Enlightenment, or The Protestant Reformation, or The Elizabethan era, or The Boer Wars, or The Nuclear age. What is our era? What can we call the years from the end of the Viet Nam war (April 30, 1975) to 2016? Perhaps there are subdivisions: The Reagan Government; The Millennial Years; Beginning of the Electronic Age; The Middle East Wars; The Emerging age of Corporatism. Mariner suggests these time periods are too short. Are there more influential years that we may not think of at the moment?

Maybe the sixth Great Extinction suggested by Elizabeth Kolbert; maybe the newly named Anthropocene Epoch (Human use of fossil fuel since 1850 literally has changed the chemistry of the planet); maybe “The Age of Sinking Megacities.” Mariner does not suggest these titles to be cynical. They are too real and quite too serious to be castigations. It’s just so hard to focus. So many wonderful things about modernity are pushed aside because we have the froth of the clothes washer in our eyes.

Ancient Mariner

A Necessary Gift

Posted on by
2

Tonight was a rare and pleasant evening. Classical style Christmas music was playing; the house was decorated. The wife was reading a book and a magazine; the mariner, frankly, was dozing. And outside bitter temperatures and blowing snow kept us where we were. We made a cherry pie and watched a couple of television shows.

Has the reader had many evenings of this type? It’s difficult to set the mood as passively as we were blessed.

The fact of the matter is that our American culture has stepped faster a few paces with information available from computers, electronic games, Skype, smart phones, email, retail marketing online, texting, and as if there were time to fill, social media. Even against the onslaught of data and electronic socializing, the roads are too slick to permit much traffic so shopping is thin this evening. Stay at home and warm the keyboard . . .

What was rare this evening was the direct link to ourselves without being conscious of a responsibility or compulsion to draw us to a social function or task requiring an electronic partner. Go back a couple of generations and we likely will not visit grandma in Florida because there are no interstates. Go back another couple generations; we’ll be harnessing the carriage to see grandma six miles down the road.

Then within fifteen years – the time a child attends secondary school – from horse, carriage and plow to automobile, to airplane, from carriage to trains on rail and steamboats at sea. And movies.

The pleasant evening leads the mariner to a pondering: Any of us can go to our own collection of books, or to a library, or wherever, and pull out dozens and dozens of books by philosophers, theologians, psychiatrists, etc. that firmly advocate what Joseph Campbell called a blissful spot. It’s a place that belongs only to you. Though not intended specifically, the wife and mariner had a blissful experience. It was a nice experience; it may even be called therapeutic, giving us a shot of grace and fortitude to reenter our challenging environment next time.

There is a great deal of commotion, challenge, Frenzy, and diversion in our lives every single day. In the opportune moment of this holiday season, gift yourself with an hour or two all your own to remember who you are, why you are and to restore the battery of fortitude.

Merry Christmas.

Ancient Mariner

Donald

Posted on by
2

There are many who have made up their mind about Donald. Some see strengths in his extremely pragmatic judgment, which is counter to the conservative’s doctrinaire adherence to the Reagan era; some see opportunity in Donald’s intellect, that is, his ability to see the state of affairs differently; some see a new public representative to the corporate world and among the one-percent – those who believe corporatism is the path to US strength and prosperity.

Others see Donald as politically incompetent and dangerously uneducated at a time when certain mistakes and improper behavior may be destructive; some see disruption to the establishment by his disregard for old-school liaisons; some see a collapse of multidimensional government because he has no allegiance to public wellbeing.

Still others see Donald as morally corrupt and untrustworthy; some see life-long cronyism and business relationships dominating his perception of what is important; some see his narcissistic disorder, pathological lying and his aberrant ego as disqualifying.

To be honest, all these perceptions of Donald have some validity – some have more merit, others less. Factually, Donald does not react normally to doctrine, morality and public perceptions; Donald is all that everyone sees.

Granting Donald with a free pass to the Presidency, accepting the whole person, will he do the nation some good? To answer that question, another one: what does the President need to provide to our nation? Ponder the second question broadly. Some examples using other Presidents (mariner’s perceptions):

George Washington provided weighted stature to a young, helter-skelter nation. He won the war with England, never wore anything but his military garb, and defended the idea that independence could not co-exist beside authoritarianism.

Andrew Jackson was an outsider like Donald (much ado in social media about similarities). When Andrew moved to the White House, he rode in the front door on horseback. Andrew had no allegiance to decorum; he was a racist; he ordered the Trail of Tears; he closed the Central Bank; he started the Democratic Party. Like Donald, his report card was not all A’s in any case. But Andrew gave the nation what it needed. The following quote from Tablet Magazine clarifies the contribution Jackson made to the US versus that expected from Donald:

“….Jackson preferred a republic without a special class of uniquely privileged aristocratic rulers: a democratic republic, in short. Democracy was a pressing matter, in his estimation, and not just a utopian aspiration. Modern capitalism, with its sophisticated system of banking and credit, took root in the United States in the 1810s and ’20s and was proving to be a mixed blessing. The new economic sophistication allowed the financiers to assemble vast piles of capital, which was good. Only vast piles could pay for ambitious new industrial enterprises. But the new sophistication also allowed and even encouraged a swindler’s economy, based on unsecured loans and misrepresentations. Swindler capitalists began to set off one financial crash after another—the Panic of 1819 was the first—which were devastating to ordinary working people. Jackson and his followers worried that swindler capitalists were going to establish themselves as a malignant new aristocracy, on top of the traditional old aristocracy. And Jackson and his political movement became the enemy of swindler capitalism—the enemy of financial frauds and exploitations in their own time, and the enemy of swindler capitalism for the American future.

On this count alone, Andrew Jackson was not a Donald Trump. Jackson was an anti-Trump. The whole style of Trump’s business empire, with its systematic bankruptcies, tax evasions, and mountains of debt, is a throwback to the swindler style that Jackson found offensive….

….[Andrew] tried again in 1828. His party was by then on its feet. The party mobilized the largest electorate by far in the history of the world—a mass of people who in many cases were enjoying for the first time their political rights. The immense size of the electorate guaranteed victory. It was a revolution. And, in his triumph, Jackson succeeded in ascribing his preferred meaning to the American Revolution and to the United States, which was democracy, and not aristocracy: a democratic republic, and not an aristocratic one. Today we do not remember Jackson’s achievement because we assume it. We cannot imagine the United States in any other light, and therefore do not give the matter any thought. But we had better give it some thought.”[1]

Abraham Lincoln was a rare politician in that he firmly followed virtuous objectives. Abe knew in a practical sense that the nation was splitting further apart over slavery. It was a conflict between citizens engaged in a slave economy and citizens (who did not use many slaves) engaged in an industrial economy. Yet underneath there was a democratic Republic that would not survive a split economy. Abe saw that the ideals of the nation would be destroyed as two economies put pressure on the US culture. He had the fortitude to press the slavery issue to closure. He knew that the slave states would be exposed to economic collapse that would require decades for recovery. He signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Six hundred thousand citizens died in the Civil War that followed but the concept of freedom, liberty and justice for all was restored and the nation remained whole. The nation needed a virtuous imperative at any cost.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected President at a time when the US was broke. Not just in debt, broke. The banks were closed. The citizens were broke; the economy had failed. As in every economic model that lasted long enough to dominate world economies and alter the morality and ethos of its time, the unique economic freedoms were abused to excess. In the time of FDR, it was about to roll over a nation losing the core experiment on which the US was founded: freedom, liberty and justice for all. Among many Presidential acts and decrees, and a government dominated by Andrew’s Democratic Party, FDR resuscitated the nation. Despite the firm disrespect for FDR by conservatives and establishmentarians that exists even today, FDR provided what the nation needed to survive.

It is time again to require a powerful and virtuous President. The nation’s old economy, a typical tail end era of hodge-podge banking practices, disappearing middle class, over assimilation of wealth, growing numbers of poor, and inadequate regulations on the economy have again threatened the survival of virtuous and multidimensional beliefs that support a signal concept among nations. The framers of the Constitution wanted a democratic republic founded on the crazy idea that the citizens should manage the nation – not authoritarians, plutocrats, totalitarians, or kings.

The citizens must take note, however, that their votes for a virtuous President come only from citizens who have virtue in themselves. Loyalty to the survival of a democratic republic is a voter’s number one responsibility – especially now!

Ancient Mariner

[1]  http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/219613/donald-trump-andrew-jackson

Naomi

Posted on by
1

The mariner was eleven years old. His mother had recently passed; when she did, his father went into the Methodist ministry. Mariner was not familiar with church ritual, social practices or having the stature of a preacher’s son. Just attending church was a new requisite that interfered mightily with his own social practices.

But this post is about Naomi. Father’s first appointment was a small church in a small neighborhood between a Baltimore City dump, a glass factory, a foul smelling backwater of the Baltimore harbor, a small public park, and project housing. Railroad tracks were countless, cutting through the village (be nice) at many places. The village was isolated enough that it had its own grocery stores, drug stores, cleaners, ice cream parlor, bank, movie house, Methodist church, a one-engine fire hall and a 100-book public library. Oh, and three bars, a covey of resident prostitutes, as much heroin as anyone would want, and a club of revolving visitors to the State’s prisons. The mariner grew up in the village and has close friends from there today.

A person emblazoned in his memory forever is Naomi. Naomi probably was an immigrant from Germany in her childhood but now was in her early sixties. One time, Father took the mariner to her home for Sunday dinner. The meal was veal, sauerkraut and odd tasting potatoes. Naomi had a German air about her but spoke the village dialect just fine. Naomi was a physically large woman and firmly packed, with a noticeable double chin. Her voice went with her stature: firm and virtually in imperative sentences.

Naomi was the main piston in the church. She easily could be picked out as the CEO. Naomi was in the choir, about four strong, and was, of course, the lead soprano. Well readers, this is the key memory for the mariner:

When the congregation sang a hymn or the choir sang special music, Naomi took off with notable volume and roaring. Sorry to be rude but the mariner tries to be honest. The higher note required a higher volume. It was not a musical sound nor had a tone of enrichment. I suggest “took off” as appropriate phrasing:

Think about being on deck on an aircraft carrier when fighter jets are screaming off the runway. Think about the mariner’s eleven year old virgin ears the first time he heard Naomi. It is true that mariner had a shock response at first sound.

Mariner has taken liberty. Still, we all have our idiosyncrasies. The village was a better place because of Naomi. A tour de force for sure.

Ancient Mariner