a new species

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

~ Robert A. Heinlein

Great and rational organizations- in brief, bureaucracies- have indeed increased, but the substantive reason of the individual at large hast not. Caught in the limited milieux of their everyday lives, ordinary men often cannot reason about the great structures- rational and irrational – of which their milieux are subordinate parts. Accordingly, they often carry out series of apparently rational actions without any ideas of the ends they serve, and there is the increasing suspicion that those at the top as well- like Tolstoy’s generals- only pretend they know. The growth of such organizations, within an increasing division of labor, sets up more and more spheres of life, work, and leisure in which reasoning is difficult or impossible. The solider, for example, ‘carries out an entire series of functionally rational actions accurately without having any idea as to the ultimate end of this action’ (Mannheim, Man and Society) or the function of each act within the whole. Even Men of technically supreme intelligence may efficiently perform their assigned work and yet not know that it is to result in the first atom bomb.

~ C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination, quoted previously

Whatever kind of future suburbia may foreshadow, it will show that atleast we have the choices to make. The organization man is not in the grip of vast social forces about which it is impossible for him to do anything; the options are there, and with wisdom and foresight he can turn the future away from the dehumanized collective that so haunts our thoughts. He may not. But he can.

He must fight The Organization. Not stupidly, or selfishly, for the defects of individual self-regard are no more to be venerated than the defects of co-operation. But fight he must, for the demands for his surrender are constant and powerful, and the more he has come to like the life of organization the more difficult does he find it to resist these demands, or even to recognize them. It is wretched, dispiriting advice to hold before him the dream that ideally there need be no conflict between him and society. There always is; there always must be.

~ William Whyte. Jr., The Organization Man

The Puritan wanted to work in a calling; we are forced to do so. For when ascetism was carried out of monastic cells into everyday life, and began to dominate the worldly morality, it did its part in building the tremendous cosmos of the modern economic order. This order is now bound to the technical and economic conditions of machine production which today determines the lives of all the individuals who are born into this mechanism, not only those directly concerned with economic acquisition, with irresistible force. In Baxter’s view the care for external goods should only lie on the shoulders of the “saint like a light cloak, which can be thrown aside at any moment.” But fate decreed that the cloak should become an iron cage.

Since ascetism undertook to remodel the world and to work out its ideals in the world, material goods have gained an increasing and finally an inexorable power over the lives of men as at no previous period in history…

No one knows who will live in this cage in the future, or whether at the end of this tremendous development entirely new prophets will arise, or there will be a great rebirth of old ideas and ideals, or, if neither, mechanized petrification, embellished with a sort of convulsive self-importance. For of the last stage of this cultural development, it might well be truly said: “Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has attained level of civilization never before attained.”

~ Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism

is this still an exercise in hope and cynicism?

Just yesterday, I rediscovered this passage from Thomas Merton tucked in between some of my old papers. A man I respected very much gave paper copies to me and two others while we were volunteering at the Woodstock Family Center in the summer of 2006. (Tim also posted it on his blog early January of this year.)

Somehow the weight and the wisdom of the passage did not quite register for me in the past, but when I read this yesterday, Merton's words were such a gentle yet truthful reminder of the futility of my half-hearted efforts and the hope that is to be had in my God.

Letter to a Young Activist

Do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, essentially an apostolic work, you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. And there too a great deal has to be gone through, as gradually you struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people. The range tends to narrow down, but it gets much more real. In the end, it is the reality of personal relationships that saves everything.

You are fed up with words, and I don't blame you. I am nauseated by them sometimes. I am also, to tell the truth nauseated by ideals and with causes. This sounds like heresy, but I think you will understand what I mean. It is so easy to get engrossed with ideas and slogans and myths that in the end one is left holding the bag, empty, with no trace of meaning left in it. And then the temptation is to yell louder than ever in order to make the meaning be there again by magic. Going through this kind of reaction helps you to guard against this. Your system is complaining of too much verbalizing, and it is right.

...[T]he big results are not in your hands or mine, but they suddenly happen, and we can share in them; but there is no point in building our lives on this personal satisfaction which may be denied us and which after all is not that important.

The next step in the process is for you to see that your own thinking about what you are doing is crucially important. You are probably striving to build yourself an identity in your work, out of your work and your witness. You are using it, so to speak, to protect yourself against nothingness, annihilation. That is not the right use of your work. All the good that you will do will come not from you but from the fact that you have allowed yourself, in the obedience of faith, to be used by God's love. Think of this more and gradually you will be free from the need to prove yourself, and you can be more open to the power that will work through you without your knowing it.

The great thing after all is to live, not to pour our your life in the service of a myth: and we turn the best things into myths. If you can get free from the domination of causes and just serve Christ's truth, you will be able to do more and will be less crushed by the inevitable disappointments...

The real hope, then, is not in something we think we can do, but in God who is making something good out of it in some way we cannot see. If we can do His will, we will be helping in this process. But we will not necessarily know all about it beforehand...

Enough of this...it is at least a gesture...I will keep you in my prayers.

All the best in Christ,
Tom

a liberal helping of change

Thus, the people who are the public voice of American liberalism rarely have any real connection to the ordinary working people whose interests they putatively champion. They tend instead to be well-off, college-educated yuppies from California or the East Coast, and hard as they try to worry about food stamps or veterans’ rights or securing federal assistance for heating oil bills, they invariably gravitate instead to things that actually matter to them – like the slick Al Gore documentary on global warming.

...

“Unfortunately, today, when you talk about the ‘American left,’” he says, “as often as not you’re talking about wealthy folks who are concerned about the environment (which is enormously important) who are concerned about women’s rights (which are enormously important) and who are concerned about gay rights (which are enormously important).

“But you’re not really referring to millions of workers who have lost their jobs because of disastrous trade agreements,” he says. “You’re not talking about waitresses who are working for four bucks an hour.” As often as not, he says, you’re talking about “sophisticated people who have money.”

...

A hell of a lot of what the left does these days is tediously lecture middle America about how wrong it is, loudly snorting at a stubbornly unchanging litany of Republican villains. There’s a weirdly indulgent tone to all of this Bush-bashing that goes on in lefty media, a tone that’s not only annoyingly predictable in its pervasiveness, but a turnoff to people who might have tuned in to that channel in search of something else.

...

Rich liberals protesting the establishment is absurd because they are the establishment; they’re just too embarrassed to admit it. When they start embracing their position of privilege and taking responsibility for the power they already have – striving to be the leaders of society they actually are, instead of playing at being aggrieved subjects – they’ll come across as wise and patriotic citizens, not like the terminally adolescent buffoons trapped in a corny sixties daydream they often seem to be now.

~ excerpts from the article The American Left's Silly Victim Complex by Matt Taibbi on Adbusters

~

This articles touches upon alot of what annoys me about "liberals" in contemporary American culture. It's quite cool and trendy to be liberal, and sometimes I'm tempted to call myself one. But I try to remind myself, that at the end of the day, regardless what I call myself, I am in a position of amazing privilege in this world. I am part of the establishment. I am part of the problem as much as I can potentially be part of the solution.

~

When we were done, I started wondering if we had accomplished anything. I started wondering whether we could actually change the world. I mean, of course we could -- we could change our buying habits, elect socially conscious representatives and that sort of thing, but I honestly don't believe we will be solving the greater human conflict with our efforts. The problem is not a certain type of legislation or even a certain politician; the problem is the same that it has always been.

I am the problem.

I think every conscious person, every person who is awake to the functioning principles within his reality, has a moment where he stops blaming the problems in the world on group think, on humanity and authority, and starts to face himself. The problem is not out there; the problem is the needy beast of a thing that lives in my chest.

The thing I realized on the day we protested, was that it did me no good to protest America's responsibility in global poverty when I wasn't even giving money to my church, which has a terrific homeless ministry.

I tried to get my head around this idea, this idea that the problem of the universe lives within me. I can't think of anything more progressive than the embrace of this fundamental idea.

~ Donald Miller on leaving a protest against a World Bank meeting in Blue like Jazz

A man on a park bench in Rittenhouse Square spoke to me in a soft gentle voice today. He mentioned something about wanting to buy something at WaWa. I wasn't listening very closely. I don't like giving money. I don't like changing my plans for others. So I walked away, without hearing the rest of what he had to say. Heart hardened. No, not even hardened, just dead.

when words lose their meaning (2)

The problem with most good things is that they can become so easily perverted.

Books that offer a fount of understanding, enjoyment and knowledge become another form of distracting entertainment. Sleep that restfully strengthens us becomes an activity for withdrawal and escape. (And laughingly in my case, the productive craft of knitting becomes a substitute for self-centered consumption.)

We are so easily turned from agents, individual who choose, to passive recipients, individuals whose lives are controlled by their fears and their environment. Arguably in that case, we are no longer individuals.

“Do not value money for any more nor any less than its worth; it is a good servant but a bad master.”

~ Alexander Dumas

“Books can speak to us like God, like men or like the noise of the city we live in. They speak to us like God when they bring us light and peace and fill us with silence. They speak to us like God when we desire never to leave them. They speak to us like men when we desire to hear them again. They speak to us like the noise of the city when they hold us captive by a weariness that tells us nothing, gives us no peace, and no support, nothing to remember, and yet will not let us escape.

Books that speak like God speak with too much authority to entertain us. Those that speak like good men hold us by their human charm; we grow by finding ourselves in them. They teach us to know ourselves better by recognizing ourselves in another.

Books that speak like the noise of the multitudes reduce us to despair by the sheer weight of their emptiness. They entertain us like the lights of the city streets at night, by hopes they cannot fulfill.”

~ Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude

thoughts on hope

I feel like hope is a word rarely used in its fullest sense in today’s conversation. We hope that some guy might like us back. We hope that we might get that promising job offer. We hope that we will get an A on that last test we took. We always hope for things that remain in the realm of possibility. If it does not seem likely, we prefer not to hope. Instead of hoping and risking disappointing, we resign ourselves to accepting that it cannot happen, and settle for something less.

Perhaps this accords better with the dictionary definition: to cherish a desire with anticipation; to desire with expectation of obtainment; to expect with confidence: TRUST.

But is it really hope to eagerly expect something that we can see? To await something that we’re pretty sure that we can achieve?

At the very least, I know that as Christians, we can actually hope (in fact, we must hope) for more than what seems attainable by human means, because our hope is based in a God who can do immeasurably more than what we ask for or even imagine. When we do not hope, or hope for little, it is not that we are being realistic, but that we lack faith.

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our own lifetime, therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history, therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone, therefore we must be saved by love.

~ Thomas Merton

Cowardice keeps us ‘double minded’ – hesitating between the world and God. In this hesitation, there is no true faith – faith remains an opinion. We are never certain, because we never quite give in to the authority of an invisible God. This hesitation is the death of hope. We never let go of those visible supports which, we well know, must one day surely fail us. And this hesitation makes true prayer impossible – it never quite dares to ask for anything, or if it asks, it is so uncertain of being heard that in the very act of asking, it surreptitiously seeks by human prudence to construct a make-shift answer.

What is the use of praying if at the very moment of prayer, we have so little confidence in God that we are busy planning our own kind of answer to prayer?

~ Thomas Merton

Hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

~ Romans 8:24-25

Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.

~ Hebrews 11:1

how to be merry

The assumption under the advertising and the money that flows around this season is: consume more and you will be merrier!

But we should all know better than to believe advertisers...

some alternative suggestions from the economists:

What sumptuary advice do they offer? In general, the economic arbiters of taste recommend “experiences” over commodities, pastimes over knick-knacks, doing over having. Mr Frank thinks people should work shorter hours and commute shorter distances, even if that means living in smaller houses with cheaper grills. The appeal of such fripperies palls faster than people expect, they say. David Hume suggested that “the amusements, which are the most durable, have all a mixture of application and attention in them; such as gaming and hunting.”

That, it turns out, is not easy. Happiness, as measured by national surveys, has hardly changed over 50 years. The rich are generally happier than the poor, but rich countries do not get happier as they get richer. The Japanese are much better off now than in 1950, but the proportion who say they are “very happy” has not budged. Americans too have remained much as Alexis de Tocqueville found them in the 19th century: “So many lucky men, restless in the midst of abundance.”

~ from Happiness and economics: Economics discovers its feelings

a few thoughts from scripture:

Better one handful with tranquility than two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind.

~ excerpt from Ecclesiastes 4

Whoever loves money never has money enough;
whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income.
This too is meaningless.

As goods increase,
so do those who consume them.
And what benefit are they to the owner
except to feast his eyes on them?

The sleep of a laborer is sweet,
whether he eats little or much,
but the abundance of a rich man
permits him no sleep.

I have seen a grievous evil under the sun:
wealth hoarded to the harm of its owner,

or wealth lost through some misfortune,
so that when he has a son
there is nothing left for him.

Naked a man comes from his mother's womb,
and as he comes, so he departs.
He takes nothing from his labor
that he can carry in his hand.

~ excerpt from Ecclesiastes 5

complications of choice

We do not know what we want and yet we are responsible for what we are - that is the fact.

~ Jean-Paul Sartre

I just stumbled upon this from my friend Angela's blog and the thought that popped into my mind was 'democracy'. Especially the part about "We do not know what we want", because perhaps, we don't know what's good for us.

l'enfer, c'est nous (hell is us)

unbearable lightness / burdensome weight

an interesting observation from Zach's blog:

I think it's a very sad fact of the human condition that we cannot conceptualize a state of being in which we would enjoy living forever. Our existence is fundamentally flawed - paradoxically, we are terrified of both death and eternal life.

... which in my mind touches upon some points made in C.S. Lewis passages (and the thesis of his book The Great Divorce):

"Christianity asserts we are all going to on forever, and this must either be true or false. Now there are a good many things which would not be worth bothering about if I am going to live for ever. Perhaps my bad temper or my jealousy are gradually getting worse so gradually that the increase in my lifetime will not be very noticeable- but it might be absolute hell in a million years- in fact, if Christianity is true, hell is the precisely correct technical term for it... Hell begins with a grumbling mood, always complaining, alwyas blaming others... but you are still distinct from it. You may even criticize it in yourself and wish you could stop it. But there may come a day when you can no longer. Then there will be no you left to criticize the mood or even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself, going on forever like a machine. It is not a question of God 'sending us' to hell. In each of us, there is something growing, which will BE Hell unless it is nipped in the bud."

"Earth, I think, will not be found by anyone to be in the end a very distinct place. I think earth, if chosen instead of Heaven, will turn out to have been, all along, only a region in Hell: and earth, if put seecond to Heaven, to have been from the beginning a part of Heaven itself."

Perhaps Jean Paul Sartre is in part right: "L'enfer, c'est les autres" (Hell is other people). Except that, hell isn't just other people- it is us.*

*Or perhaps, more correctly, it is in us.