Author Archives: Dave Mathwin

Finding a Medium

by Dave Mathwin

Some of you may have familiarity with the show “Hoarders.” In each episode a person who has collected way too much stuff has an intervention team come and try and get them to get rid of stuff and reclaim sanity in their lives. I avoid shows like this but others in my family occasionally dabble, so I have a mild familiarity with it. I have always assumed that such people had a kind of emotional or social block of sorts. But I think differently after listening to Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History episode on art galleries.

In part of the episode he interviews people who knew famous hoarders, and they revealed that, in fact, the hoarders had an exceedingly heightened emotional connection with their possessions (this makes sense, I should have recognized this before). Each item was connected with an intense memory, and they needed the object to connect to that memory. For them, no object=no memory, which meant a loss of self identity.

It struck me that the real issue with hoarders involved not just a crass materialism, but more fundamentally, their inability to rightly “symbolize” their experience. We tend to think of symbols as stand-in’s for reality, as something less than real. But actually symbols are a form of heightened reality, a concentrated reality, akin to myths or folklore. Most of us do keep some things from our past. But we concentrate a diffuse set of memories into one object, i.e., this shell unlocks our beach memories, or this hat accesses my experience with my grandfather. We don’t need 30 shells and 17 hats to do this.

But not just any object can serve as a symbol. As forms of heightened reality, symbols have to unlock complexity. A proper symbol will have many layers, like an onion. In turn, this helps explain why religions utilize so many symbols. In his episode about art galleries, Gladwell compared hoarders to dragons of western folklore. Dragons collect treasure not to spend it but simply to have. They live in caves, and their absolute focus on wealth shows them as overtly and dangerously “of the earth.” Dragons have a chaotic biology and function–they bring chaos wherever they go. Their exclusively earthly mindset essentially means that they cannot symbolize.

Most every religion has holy mountains in its sacred texts or myth. We probably assume this is because that mountains exude awe and power. But mountains in their physical structure also represent the one and the many. At the bottom is breadth and the ‘individuality’ of things. As we move up the mountain, our experience become more “concentrated,” and of course the summit brings unity to our experience.

Someone too earthly focused will stay on the bottom of the mountain, seeing only one thing after another thing, after another–a form of chaos. Reside only on the peak and you miss the individuality of things and can hyper-focus on their unity.

Be that as it may, when we see symbolism on a grand scale we should assume that we observe a religious activity.

Currently we witness a plethora of symbolic activity, from sloganeering to mask wearing/not mask wearing. It is no surprise that a great deal of this symbolism has seeped into sports. Sports have always had ritual elements involved, but it seems that such ritualization has ballooned over the last few years, especially in the NBA and perhaps in the NFL. Of course there are the pre-game rituals athletes and fans engage in. The post-game press conference ritual is another. But now, even entering the arena from the bus, the slow saunter down the hall, has taken on the weight of ritual, as athletes seek to market themselves, the products they endorse, their kids, or what have you.

To me, a breaking point surely seems near.

Let us take the question of the national anthem. What has a collective expression of patriotism have to do with sports? The fact that many of us feel some need to do this goes beyond societal conditioning. I think we subconsciously realize that we are engaging in a collective ritual and know that it needs solemnized. With this in mind, a few theories emerge:

Theory 1

It is good and right that we ritualize sports and solemnize sports with the anthem. Obviously we are a pluralistic country and so we are not going to sing a hymn. But, we can sing the national ‘hymn’/anthem. This brings us together, unifying the home team and the “enemy”/away team with the crowd. The spectacle then belongs to all of us. Players have an obligation, as the enactors of the ritual, to stand at attention at least.

In church, for example, not everyone in the congregation will sing along. Some may stand silently, some will look at their phones. But what would happen to the church if instead of singing along, the pastor looked at his phone, or . . . protested the singing of the song. That church could not last long. So . . . athletes, this is your chosen profession, and the duty of respecting the ritual comes with it.

Theory 2

Mark Cuban defended players kneeling for the anthem recently by asking a fan, “How would you like it if they played the anthem every day that you came to work?”–a thoughtful rebuke. For, of course, we wouldn’t like it at all. Such repetition would feel oppressive. Athletes should maintain their individuality and have the same rights as anyone else, which includes freedom of speech. If we force them to engage in the ritual, we must also allow them all of their rights under the Constitution to protest the government, a particular law, or anything else they wish.

The problem with Theory 1 is that it inveighs sports and the athletes with a symbolic weight that they cannot carry. Theory 1 attitudes will bring about Theory 2 behavior as a natural reaction. The players at some point rightly rebel under the burden. The Problem with Theory 2 is that it sets up an oppositional relationship with those that make their lives possible, with the fans that “pay their salaries.” Neither theory can sustain itself for long. So, I offer

Theory 3

I argue that we rightly attach important rituals to sports, but that we have gone too far with them, and that players, fans, and media alike share the blame. Player salaries, lifestyle, and the powerful voice that comes with fame and fortune cannot happen without media and fans. Yet, nearly every media duty is onerous and pointless. Reporters usually ask dumb questions, and when they ask good ones, players fear speaking honestly, knowing that their every word will be dissected by millions. Yet much of the money leagues make comes from media rights. You can’t bite the hand that feeds you.

Fans can create impossible standards for athletes. We want the bland media rituals perfectly enacted. Athletes look like they have fun playing the game, as they should. Who ever had fun at a press conference? Fans will also damage the souls of athletes by completely overlooking anything and everything–their behavior and education, to pick two examples–provided that they can beautifully enact on the field rituals of play.

Many athletes, perhaps especially in the NBA, go to great lengths, however, to create cardboard images of cool, and to thereby become a kind of Greek god, whose power, both cultural and physical, is worshipped. Then, they turn on those that worship them. Fans are understandably confused, for many players seek outsized attention, then spurn the peons who give it.

But the solution is not to remove rituals from sports. Athletics precede drama historically, but when drama started with the Greeks, it emerged from Dionysian worship. The “ecstasy” associated with acting and the stage–the “out of body” experience–is akin to a great athlete transcending normal physical limitations. Perhaps this is why we give god-like attention both movie and sports stars. There is indeed a communal beauty involved in most sports, but this needs translated via ritual for communal consumption. Confuse the ritual, and something will indeed be lost in translation.

But this beauty, because of its transcendence, cannot be confined to the purely national. And though we long to worship beauty, we have to inject levity back into sports to put them into proper perspective again. So I propose (finally–sorry for the very long prologue!) the following:

  • The national anthem will not be played before sporting events. Rather, a team song (akin to a fight song for high schools and colleges) can be played when the team takes the field. If you don’t have a fight song for your team–time to get one.
  • Post- game press conferences will no longer be mandatory. If an athlete wants to participate, great, but no fines for those that don’t want to.
  • Athletes need to live in the town of the team they play for. They need to be seen by the communities that support them. This used to be the case more or less everywhere, and I think this is healthy for all sides. If people know the athletes as normal people, the athletes may feel less need to fight back against the weight of their symbolic identity.

The first suggestion could be easily implemented. The second would be a bit harder, the third should not be enforced, obviously. Restructuring sports media would likely make profits and salaries decrease slightly. Sure, things would change, but the change would allow us to remain the same.

A friend of mine in the telecommunications field in a recent conversation talked about the priority of their company. Amidst changing consumer demands, changing cultural priorities, and so forth, the number one goal is always to maintain the reliability of their network platform. Without that, nothing else really matters because nothing else could take place without a reliable network. Let athletes say whatever they would like on their own time, he argued, but don’t tamper with the rituals that give you the prominence to spread your ideas. I think our sports culture, from owners down to the casual fan, needs to come up with a way to maintain a viable baseline platform of connection to fans. That might involve risk to players in the COVID era, changing expectations from fans and media, and possibly, as suggested above, introducing slightly new rituals.

All of this might restore a new normal and a proper symbolism associated with sports, the “medium” we seek.

I have spoken of sports here, but teachers–my profession–are playing the same dangerous game as sports leagues. In ‘Teacher Mythology’ you find phrases such as “It’s all about the students,” “Going all-out for a better future for the students,” etc. Some of this is gooey nonsense, some of it has a semblance of truth. Teachers are not wealthy but they enjoy a general sense of respect in the community for their profession–a respect based on shared trust in this mythology.

With many public sector teacher unions declaring that they will only teach online (this is not true of many private schools), they greatly endanger this mythology. Certainly some teachers may be at genuine risk, but this should be dealt with separately. All of the evidence suggests that kids need to be at school. By focusing exclusively on their physical well-being and refusing to take reasonable risks for their students, public school teachers rapidly dismantle the pedestal upon which they stand.

My advice to athletes and teachers alike–you can stand on the mountain peak, but don’t forget that underneath you lies tons of rock.

Dave

Signs over North America

by Dave Mathwin

I originally posted this in July of 2020, but I insert this addendum due to the recent interest in UFO’s. I find it intriguing that the pattern Jung elucidates, both in post WW II America and in 16th century Germany, fits with our current patterns. The interest in UFO’s commenced again in America just as we were/are undergoing a significant crisis of identity and cultural confusion.

And now, the original post . . .

**************************

On April 14 a report arose stating that “a very frightful spectacle seen by numerous men and women” appeared in the skies. Globes of “blood-red, or bluish” color appeared in large numbers near the sun,

some three in a row, now and then four in a square, also some standing alone. And amongst these globes some blood-colored crosses were seen.

There were two great tubes in which three, four, and more globes were to be seen. They all began to fight one another. They all fell from the sun and sky down to the earth, as if all were on fire, fading away on the earth, producing much steam.

This appears to us like any other modern UFO sighting. But the April 14 in question came from Basel in 1561–the quotes are from reports at that time.

On August 7, 1566 a Samuel Coccius in Nuremberg recored that

At the time of sunrise many saw large black globes in the air, moving before the sun with great speed and turning against one another as though fighting. Some of them became red and fiery and afterwards went out.

Below are the images produced by these reports, first from Basel, then Nuremberg.

Carl Jung wrote, Flying Saucers: A Modern Myth of Things Seen in the Skies as attempt to deal with the phenomena of post W.W. II UFO sightings, most of which came from North America. As to the sightings, we usually divide into two camps:

  • The sightings are real, or at least a great many of them remain genuine, and therefore UFO’s are real.
  • The sightings are lies, distortions, etc. and UFO’s are not real.

Jung takes an interesting third position, stating that he firmly believes that “something is seen”–and those “somethings” are not weather balloons, experimental military aircraft, or some other natural occurrence. But at the same time, he remains skeptical of anyone seeing actual physical aliens.

Along with Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung developed new theories of psychology in the early 20th century. Both men shared an aversion to the overt materialism of prevailing theories of their day–perhaps Jung especially. Jung looked for archetypal and psychic explanations for human personality problems. Eventually he applied these ideas to civilizations in general.

Jung first notes that a great number of sightings seem to fall within a similar pattern, including

  • They happen to people who are almost universally skeptical–before the claimed sighting–of UFO’s in general.
  • They involve circular or possibly cylindrical shapes.
  • They occasionally tend to produce apocalyptic dread, but often a sense of calm and inner contentment–one that brings with a “higher wisdom” that transcends current norms or beliefs.
  • Most sightings happen in North America.

Jung considers all of this in psychic terms, first considering the importance of the shape of UFO’s.* He argues that the circle or cylinder has deep roots in mythic structures of consciousness. Circles have always represented eternity and perfection–heaven as opposed to earth. Note below, the mother of the saint on the left, still living at the mosaic’s creation, depicted with a square halo, with the departed saints with the traditional circle halo.

As the Chinese proverb states, “The way of heaven is round, and the way of earth is square.”

Jung argues that the constant theme of circular shape strongly suggests the psychic desire of the observer for encounter, wholeness, and transformation. Of course, encounters with “eternity” will also frighten us and change us, possibly even shaming and exposing us. The fact that these appearances happen to initial skeptics heightens the power of this encounter, a Damascus road of sorts for the UFO observer. For Jung, the very skepticism of the observer creates the perfect mental conditions for sightings. Such people starve certain metaphysical aspects of their being, and then when these deep parts of ourselves finally break out, they do so in strange and overwhelming ways.

Of course possibly UFO’s actually exist, and by coincidence appear to people fitting a particular pattern. Maybe these UFO’s just happen to be circular. Maybe they appeared mostly over North America either by coincidence or for some unknown reason. Jung thinks otherwise, and takes particular interest in the question of, “Why North America?”**

The UFO movement for the most part started after W.W. II in America, just as we were grappling with world power status and the real possibility that this power and knowledge would destroy all of us, i.e., atomic weapons. Jung makes explicit links between the H-Bomb and UFO’s. America’s position in the world had dramatically altered post-WW II, and we had unleashed nature against itself with atomic weapons. It makes “psychic-sense” that we should be primed for UFO appearances amidst this psycho-social crisis, a kind of schism in the soul.

True, religion had a strong presence in America at that time. But aside from very traditional Catholicism or Orthodoxy–an especially small minority–American Christianity has almost nothing to do with the pre-modern. Influenced by democracy and Enlightenment values, American believers often focused on plain truths in a materialistic way. Instead of the traditional “one-storey” universe, we have added a second floor and banished spiritual elements “upstairs” and outside our experience. Jung would say we have ignored the subconscious and the deeper elements of being. We can ignore such aspects of reality for a time, but they will come roaring back–starved and ready to make up for lost time.

The strange sights in the sky in 16th century Germany fit this same pattern.

  • That era was dominated by thoughts of the end of the world either literally by divine intervention or figuratively via invasion of Moslems who had entirely taken over the Byzantine empire.
  • Germany found itself geographically at the center of religious and geopolitical controversy.
  • The Protestant world was not yet “modern” in their outlook, but they had perhaps (according to Jung at least) began to sever themselves from the mythic (which does not mean “false”) substructure of their faith.

For Jung, these manifestations reveal more about the people or civilizations that report them than what may actually be “out there.”^ Whether or not you agree with Jung on UFO’s I think he has some interesting thoughts for us as we manage our multiple crises as a nation. As to what follows, well . . . I’m no expert.

As we tackle the COVID crisis, I am hopeful that we have learned that we cannot treat public health only in terms of material physical health. Our approach to COVID mirrors the modern approach to religion in general–reductionistic and materialistic. We quarantined for weeks, “fasting” from communing with one another. After starving ourselves of this element of our being, the moment an opportunity came to “feast” on group interaction we did so. Alas that some chose to do so violently–surely a Jungian moment for our society. We see that strong societies have to foster regular and “healthy” interactions between people. When the next pandemic comes along, hopefully we now understand that telling people to simply play video games and watch Netflix fails in the long run.

So too our politics have become more and more totemistic. I have discussed before Trump’s symbolic status for his supporters. Recently Alex Morgan at The Atlantic argued that, “It’s as if Biden exists primarily as an idea, rather than an actual candidate.” All we need, she intoned, is for Biden to “stay alive.” “Democrats need little from the front-runner beyond his corporeal presence,” as the byline states. Politics always has contained certain symbolic elements. Pre-modern societies had strong symbolism woven directly into their political cultures, and so their politics could bear the necessary weight of psychic modes of being (to borrow Jung’s language). Certainly our founders had the opposite view. They created a form of government built on a philosophy quite wary of concentrating coherence of meaning, leaving that to the individual or local community.

But as our society has grown more connected, technocratic and incorporeal, i.e., more digital, we have seen strange apparitions. We have gone into our subconscious, a world both potentially more rewarding and more dangerous and open to temptation. Even rather anodyne statements about free speech have become actual debating points. And, no matter who wins the presidential election in November, America will see a strange symbolic presence above us in our “highest” office. It appears that try as we might, we cannot be quite as secular and “modern” as some might wish.

Dave

*Those interested in further reading on this may wish to consider Father Seraphim Rose’s Orthodoxy and the Religion of the Future. Father Seraphim had a serious background in mathematics and philosophy of the west and east, which may help buttress his overall conclusion for skeptical readers. Father Seraphim does not deny the possibility of UFO’s per se, but argues that it is very likely that many recent claims of sightings are demonic apparitions or temptations. His analysis differs from Jung’s, obviously, but has some interesting overlaps, including:

  • “Something is seen”
  • This “something” is primarily not a physical something
  • For Rose, the apparitions may indeed have something to do with the observer’s psychic or spiritual state.

Neither Jung, Fr. Seraphim, or myself discount the idea that UFO’s exist. They may exist, and perhaps just maybe some recorded sightings prove this. Rather, they both argue that the accumulated evidence on hand leads to a different conclusion.

If I had to choose, I would choose Fr. Seraphim’s analysis over Jung’s.

**I am discussing the parts of the book I found possibly persuasive. I am not discussing here Jung’s interpretations of dreams where UFO’s are encountered. I can believe that Jung might be onto something at least in part with his universal archetypes, but dream interpretations seem much more subjective and not a subject for argument. Alas that about 1/2 of the book involves his interpretations of different dreams of UFO encounters reported to him.

Jung mentions the possibility of mass hallucinations but never sets out to prove this is possible. A more full treatment of UFO sightings would have to include something about this. If Fr. Seraphim is right in his conclusions, he needs no mass hallucinations to explain the phenomena. To be fair to Jung, he would probably not term these sighting “hallucinations” but perhaps psychic projections. These “projections” would be entirely real, just as our psyche is real–though not materially so.

^Jung has an interesting psychological theory on why pilots often report UFO’s–too complex for me to understand–but essentially involving a psychic effect of contrasting the combination of precision mechanical instruments directly in front of the pilot in the midst of a vast open expanse.

Malleus Maleficarum

by Dave Mathwin

Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger’s Malleus Maleficarum (translation–possibly, “The Hammer for Devils/Witches/, i.e., “Malefactors”) ranks way up there among the more strange historical documents I have read. Published in 1484, this tome tells one all about witches and other sundry works of the devil. It deals with the reality of the supernatural quite openly and frankly, and in this way strikes us as “pre-modern.” And yet, the “hammer” the title alludes to appears to strike hardest through the use of the farthest reaches of the logic parsing of the scholastic method. Those familiar with the Summa Theologica (dating more than two centuries prior to the Malleus) can testify to Thomas Aquinas’ clarity and brevity, even if he relies possibly too much on Aristotelian logic. Aquinas leaves a certain amount of space and room to breathe in his work. It is that mystical fringe that exists in Aquinas’ best writing that gives it its staying power.

Not so Kramer and Sprenger. Though grudgingly–I have to admire their ability to go on for pages on end, giving all counterarguments incredible deference and losing the reader in a labyrinth, before finally turning the battleship slowly round towards their correct conclusion. I firmly believe that Christians should take the supernatural seriously–much more so than many do today. However, one must wonder of the efficacy of extended discussion on “Whether Witches may work some Prestidigitatory Illusion so that the Male Organ appears to be Entirely Removed from the Body”–which is only Question IX of Part One, of the First Part, or what final precautions should be observed in the trial of a witch in the eleventh action of the second examination (3rd Part, 2nd Head, q. 16).

At least one does get the sense that Kramer and Sprenger enjoy their work. Here is a very mild excerpt . . .

If it be accordance with the Catholic faith to maintain that in order to bring about some effect of magic, the devil must intimately cooperate with some witch, or whether, one without the other, that is to say, the devil without the witch, or conversely, could produce the same effect.

And the first argument is this, that the Devil can bring about an effect of magic without the help of any witch.  So St. Augustine holds . . . and we learn from Holy Scripture of the disasters which fell upon Job, . . . which the Devil himself was able to bring about, with God’s permission.  What a superior power has within itself to do, it may do without reference to a lesser power.

So too, an inferior power may work within its “sphere” to produce effects without reference to a power greater than itself.  For Blessed Albertus Magnus says in his treatise De Pasionibus Aeris that rotten sage, if used according to certain specifications and thrown into running water, will arouse fearful tempests and storms.  

Moreover it may be said that the devil makes use of the witch not because he has any need of her agency, but because he seeks the damnation of the witch.  We may refer to what Aristotle says in the 3rd book of his Ethics, where Evil is a voluntary act . . . 

But an opposite opinion holds, that the Devil, being unlike man, cannot readily do harm to man without the effect of material agency, such as the instrumentality of witches. For every act, some kind of contact must be established.  And many hold this to be proven by the text of St. Paul to the Galatians, where the gloss on the text who have singular, and fiery eyes, who by a mere look can harm others.  And Avicenna [Abn Ibn Sina] also bears this out, in Naturalism book 3, “Very often the soul may have an impact on the body of another, for such is the influence of the eyes.”  And the same opinion by Ali Ghaza in the fifth book of his Physics  . . .   St. Thomas too speaks of this in the Summa, part I, q. 117, whereupon he states that the influence of the soul may be concentrated in the eyes. 

Without any mental powers insensible bodies may produce effects, and so a living man, if he pass near the corpse of a murdered man, is often seized with fear though unaware of the dead body.  Moreover, it would seem that most extraordinary and miraculous events come to passby thte workings of the power of nature, and St. Gregory points out in his Second Dialogue. The saints perform miracles, sometimes by prayer, sometimes by their power alone.  St. Peter prayed and Tabitha was restored to life.  By rebuking Ananias and Saphira who told a lie, he slew them without any prayer.  Therefore a man by his mental influence can change the condition of another material body.*  

Can any doubt that a man with courage will warm his body, and a man with fear will cool and enfeeble his body?

St. Isidore in Etymologies calls witches guilty of greater sin, for they stir up and confound the elements with the aid of the Devil, and bring about terrible storms and tempests.  And Vincent of Beauvais, quoting many learned authorities in his Speculum Historiale, says that he who first practiced magical arts was Zoroaster, in the line of Ham, son of Noah, and according to St. Augustine in the City of God, Ham laughed aloud when he was born, showing that he would give service to the Devil.

When comparing Aquinas and these authors, I reminded of analogy used I believe by both Toynbee and C.S. Lewis–that bacon and eggs smells so much better when hungry at 9 am, as opposed to when satiated later in the day. Even in the text above, though I largely agree with the conclusion, the method conjures up the smell of bacon and eggs after one has eaten. The scholastic method has run its course.

That late-medievals thought seriously about witches should surprise no one. But to many moderns, the breadth of discussion, the familiarity with many texts both within and without the Christian tradition, will surprise many. When we disagree fundamentally with others, we assume that they do not have actual reasons for their belief. We assume their ignorance, selfishness, or some other such flaw. About 150 years later, an Ambrosian monk named Francesco Guazzo published a companion volume, the Compendium Maleficarum. In Book I, Chapter III he writes,

Any man who maintained that all effects of magic were true, or who believed that they were all illusions, would be a radish rather than a man.

This spirit of balance characterizes the work, which a modern must acknowledge even if one believed that witches and demons did not exist.

Of course the Devil works in various ways, both through physical and spiritual/mental means. I have no thoughts on the exact nature of the Devil’s work regarding COVID-19. What we can say in general is that the Devil always seeks to sow confusion, doubt, and fear. He is the accuser, the divider of the brethren. Just as he seeks to divide us from God, so too he brings death–a literal decomposition of soul from body, and of the various connections in our physical form. He seeks to “decompose” meaning as well, and we have certainly seen this in our society the last few months.

The uncertain nature of the disease relates strongly to this decomposition of meaning. But I feel sure that others factors must be at play, and I wonder at the manifestation of this confusion as it relates to masks. Some people, given their circumstances, probably should wear masks, but I am curious about the vast majority of us who have options and feel the tension between wearing/not wearing them. What motivates our choices, and why do those choices often divide along political lines? Liberals want more mask wearing, conservatives seem to wear them less–although the terms “liberal” and “conservative” lack a defined meeting. We should approach the subject with the method of the Malleus in mind, aware that not everyone who believes in wearing masks is a coward or out to control everyone, and those who eschew masks may not always be selfish jerks, or ignorant of “Science.”

I am sure that something else is going on, but not sure exactly what. Consider what follows speculative, and certainly incomplete . . .

Perhaps the most obvious connection might relate to debates over the last few years around free speech. Progressives want to limit certain kinds of speech in certain places to protect the “vulnerable” minority. Conservatives push against this. So progressives stress protection from the disease, even if this protection should extend far beyond those directly at risk. Conservatives who favor a more rough and tumble approach to speech might then favor the same approach to the disease. We should be tough, have thick skins, and so on.

Perhaps this might go some way to explaining the difference with mask attitudes now. But just 50 years ago, liberals championed free speech, not conservatives. And–liberals tend to prefer longer shut-downs of the economy, even though the shut-down obviously hurts the poor far more than the rich. Restrictions on the economy–favored more by progressives–also will hurt illegal immigrants–another progressive issue.** It makes sense that conservatives want order, sanctity, protection, and liberals would want freedom, and the knocking down of boundaries. But part of the confusion the world experiences lies in the lack of coherent meaning in our political designations.

With rates of abuse, depression, suicide, time on screens, opioid and alcohol use, etc. all going way up during the quarantine, we must realize that the temptation to go a bit nuts will significantly increase. And when our visible structures of decision-making and common institutions fail us–as they largely have during our various recent crises, we will revert to archetypal symbolic modes of being. When the visible symbols of unity fails us, we will retreat inward even subconsciously to find meaning and direction.

These subconscious symbolic actions make themselves perhaps most evident with masks. I have no solid thoughts here as to why they have caused such disagreement among good people. I think we have to go beyond politics (i.e., does the government have the right to order this or not?). And–let us borrow from the Malleus and assume that the Devil would like nothing better than to tear us apart. And to borrow again from Sprenger and Kraemer–no doubt both sides have good arguments that could fill many pages. I shudder to think how many the two of them could find to apply to the mask argument.^

When we think of masks, we should think of the use of veils, for masks function much like a veil. Veils have very little role in our society today. Even in weddings, very few brides today would consider wearing a veil. But most ancient societies used veils (or something like them) in many religious settings, and certainly for weddings. In the ancient world veils would be used to cordon off portions of a temple, for example. You would use veils as means of

  • Protecting the people from the power/holiness of what lay behind the veil, or
  • Protecting what was special/holy from intrusion by the people.

We live in a society that builds on a foundation of “openness”–trade with others, traveling from place to place with few barriers, free speech, etc. and so the notion of veils initially strikes us as odd. This “open” view of life is certainly part of existence. We cannot sustain our own lives. Whenever we eat anything, we take the life of something else into our bodies and incorporate into our own lives–this holds true for plants just as it does for pigs and cows. We do not generate life for ourselves. We must be filled from outside ourselves and ultimately, “In Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).

But . . . we must be “closed” to some things in order to survive. We cannot play in traffic, swim with sharks, or take candy from strangers. And other things are so powerful that we can only have a little bit of at a time lest it destroy us, like whiskey, for example. In ancient Israel the high priest went into the Holy of Holies only once a year, alone, with a rope tied around his leg to remove him in case he died from the experience.

As to veils for brides, both of the above purposes could fit. On the one hand, the bride is the most precious “item” of the day, and she is meant for her husband only. Thus she should not be “revealed” until the ceremony is completed. So too, to veil the bride is to honor her beauty and to protect us from it. This may not make sense historically or scientifically, but certainly it does mythologically–recall “the face that launched 1000 ships,” or Lucy’s desire in The Dawn Treader to say a spell that would make her “beautiful beyond the lot of mortals,” and have men and nations fight over her. In the medieval Marian office of “None” (the ninth hour) the antiphon before the psalms hearkens to the power of the beauty of the feminine:

Thou art fair and comely, O daughter of Jerusalem, terrible as an army set in array.

Song of Solomon 6:4

To wear masks in public places may be entirely appropriate and necessary, but we should understand what it means. It means, in certain respects, that we cannot act as a community of trust that mutually shares life together. And this is not necessarily our fault, as the insidious nature of the virus means that one can have it and spread it without any knowledge. But neither is it a trifling thing. To “veil” ourselves means that we set ourselves apart from society. One cannot have a conversation with a mask on–one cannot really share life with another with a mask on. It is terribly ironic that we have to “come together” in such polarized times to essentially isolate ourselves socially from each other. As Jean-Claude Larchet writes,

Through our body we reach out and communicate with others–by exchanging glances, smiles, handshakes, and so on.  It is through our body that others gain their first impressions of us–our character, or our mood at the time.  Our body both reveals and hides us from others . . . 

I believe this accounts for much of the confusion about masks. Larchet rightly suggests that even small physical gestures of communication that we normally make at the grocery store become impossible with masks. Circumstances ask us to hold an impossible tension in our minds and we can’t quite do it. Telling the difference won’t always be easy.

In such times we may want to reach out and look for solutions and healing in what is distant from us–in our political leadership. These days we will not find it there, and likely were never meant to. We should return to our immediate center–our churches, families, and friends–a Malleus Malleficarum for our times

Dave

*I think Jonathan Pageau makes some good points here about the validity of the so-called “Evil Eye,” tradition, derided by some materialists.

**I have heard some suggest that those out of work should get checks from the rich/the government, and so what’s the problem? This strikes me as not ‘progressive’ in any sense. What about the ‘dignity of labor’ so hallowed by the Marxist tradition? I find the ‘just give them a check and they should be happy’ mentality degrading and paternalistic. Perhaps it is necessary–but don’t dismiss the cost to the soul.

^A brief parody of Kraemer and Sprenger (with all references entirely made up)

There are many who say that we should not wear masks in public. For has not Aristotle said in his Physic that, “to one is one thing, and another, like unto it, has the same properties” (B.V-8.12). So we see that all things “come unto all other things” (Averroes, De Civitate, Q. 12, p.4, S.4), so then it follows naturally that we follow The Almagest and declare that we maintain the motion of the “heavenly spheres,” which in this case means, our bodies. For Ptolemy has said much that many of the wise would hardly dare to gainsay.

And should not our bodies be compared to the heavenly spheres? For Plotinus has called us all a microcosm of the worthy cosmos, as have many holy men, though others have not agreed (Quintus, et al, Deus Mirabilius, Book II, p. 8). And is not the face the “bearer of all things” (Isocrates, Etymologies Part II, 6.7.8)? We bear with one another, then, for how else shall we live if we bear not with another, as Ulfin stated in Amor Arondus Ibid (Bk. II, p. 5)?

But others deny it, stating along with Avicenna that, “As things move, so they are distinct, for not all motion is equal (Figures, Book V.3-1).” Now if motion is not equal, than it means that motion must be set in a hierarchy, and to appear contrarian is not in the habit of the scholar, who seeks to have “all put in its proper place (Fabius, Magnus Opus, Bk. 1.3).” . . .

8th Grade: “In your anger, do not sin.”

by Dave Mathwin

Greetings,

This week we looked at the crucial decisions of the 2nd Punic War, and how Hannibal won very dramatic battles, but ultimately could not defeat Rome.

Tradition tells us that Hannibal’s father from an early age made his son swear a sacred oath to hate Rome forever and do all he could do bring about its destruction.  We saw last week how Rome’s policy toward Carthage after the 1st Punic War was at best foolish, at worst deliberately provocative.  With control of the army in Spain and war with Rome declared, Hannibal determined to make the most of his opportunity.

Given that the controversy that started the war involved Spain, I think Rome assumed that the war would be decided in Spain itself. But Hannibal had other plans.  He did not want to secure Spain, or even regain control of territory Carthage lost after the 1st Punic War.  Hannibal wanted to reverse time, and create the geopolitical situation that existed in the mid-5th century B.C., when Carthage dominated the Mediterranean and Rome was little more than a minor city-state in Italy.

I don’t care much for the romanticizing of losers that historians often engage in (i.e. Napoleon, R.E. Lee, etc.).   But it may be true to say that Hannibal did invent the art of strategy in war.  The idea of “strategy” in battle was an entirely foreign concept in the ancient world, much like the idea of strategy in handshake might be foreign to us.  We think of a handshake as a handshake.  For the ancients, battle was battle.  Armies marched into a field and squared off.  May the best man win.  For the Romans especially, the idea of strategy smacked of dishonor, of cheating.

Perhaps necessity was the mother of invention for Hannibal.  Or perhaps the fact that he essentially grew up with his father away from Carthage meant that he had no particular attachment to any cause or code, just victory.  The Romans may not have praised Hannibal for the practice of his art, but they did learn from him nonetheless.

Hannibal’s army did not nearly equal Rome’s in size, so he concocted a bold strategy to attempt to achieve his aims.  He knew that to “reverse time” he would have to beat Rome in Italy itself.  Without control of the sea, however, that meat that Hannibal had to get there by land, which meant crossing the Alps.

Once in Italy, Hannibal hoped that some big military victories would inspire those that Rome had conquered and incorporated into their federation to switch sides.  Hannibal believed he had a strategy to provoke Rome into big enough battles that would allow him a chance to impress his potential Italian allies.

Hannibal went back and forth through central Italy, burning towns and farms.  Naturally the Romans grew furious and rushed headlong to attack him, and what luck!  Hannibal had foolishly placed himself between a lake to his south and some hills to his north, making retreat difficult.  The Romans felt they had him dead to rights.

Except Hannibal hid good portions of his best troops behind those hills, and when Rome rushed in, Hannibal sprung the trap, driving thousands of Romans into the lake and splitting Roman lines.  He inflicted perhaps 20.000 casualties on Rome.

The Roman dictator Fabius concocted a bold strategy designed to starve Hannibal of both food and battles.  Fabius saw that Hannibal needed to win allies to his cause to succeed, and therefore needed to impress others.  If he denied him a chance at glory, Fabius reasoned, he would help prevent Roman allies from feeling tempted to flee.  If he denied Hannibal food, he would force Hannibal to get food from the very people he claimed to try and liberate, the very people he needed to have as friends.

Fabius’ strategy had many merits, but it proved very difficult to maintain politically.  People had to watch the Roman army snipe at Hannibal’s heels while their farms went up in smoke.  Additionally, Fabius did not appeal to the Roman sense of glory, the Roman sense of their own greatness.  They could not not stomach for long the idea that they simply could not defeat Hannibal head-on.  Alas for Rome, Hannibal thrived on this very sense of Roman superiority.

Hannibal then went to south-east Italy, where once again he feigned weakness.  He arrayed his army in an open area, which would allow Rome to use its superior numbers.  He even camped out in front of a river, which made retreat almost impossible for him.  All this looked just too inviting for Rome, who took the bait once again and plunged into the attack in the famous Battle of Cannae.  This visual shows the results:

Once enveloped by Hannibal, Rome’s superior numbers meant next to nothing.  In what was one of the bloodiest battles of all time, Rome suffered perhaps as many as 70,000 casualties.

In three battles, Hannibal inflicted at least 100,000 casualties, and yet Rome fought on, and eventually won the war.  With Scipio Africanus in command, Rome shifted its strategy, fighting in Spain and Africa to eventually force Hannibal to leave Italy.  Once in Africa, Scipio needed just one battle at Zama to force Carthage to surrender.

How and why did Hannibal lose?  He won the biggest set-piece battles, save the last, but this could not translate into victory.  Some point to the fact that Hannibal asked for reinforcements from Carthage, and Carthage refused.  Was Hannibal then, let down by his home country, and can we attribute his failure to this?

I am already on record as rarely liking the “doomed/betrayed romantic hero” interpretation of history, and Hannibal is no exception.  I think Hannibal failed for reasons of his own making:

  • Hannibal chose an all or nothing strategy of his own devising.  He chose a strategy that would isolate him from supply lines or the possibility of quick and easy reinforcement.  The fact that Carthage denied him extra troops should not, therefore, surprise us.  Where would they come from? Rome had already begun to attack overseas and Carthage had every reason for concern regarding their territory in Spain.
  • Hannibal needed victories to win allies.  To beat Rome with a smaller army, he needed to draw Rome out and make them angry.  To make them angry he resorted to devastating local towns and farms.  But these were the same people he wanted to “liberate” from Rome.  How could he make friends with them by burning down their towns?
  • Hannibal did not understand the nature of Rome’s alliance system.  One reason for Rome’s success was their general clemency with people they conquered.  Those incorporated into Rome owed them only taxes and military service.  Hannibal did get a few provinces/towns to leave Rome, but to help encourage them, he had to offer more than Rome did for an alliance.  For example, Hannibal got the key port city of Capua to come to his side, but only by exempting them from military service altogether.  So even when Hannibal gained allies they did not help him very much.

Few could equal Hannibal on the battlefield, but Hannibal could not make political use of his victories.

It’s a difficult concept to grasp, but I do hope that the students saw that the result on the battlefield is not the only thing that matters in determining who wins wars.  One only has to think of the Alamo, Thermopylae, or the Charge of the Light Brigade to see how battlefield defeats can become political victories, and this Rome managed to do.  For example, they publicly rewarded Varro, the general who led Rome to disaster at Cannae.  He was transformed into a hero of Rome’s resistance to Carthage.  Machiavelli, commenting on this seeming peculiarity, wrote in his Discourses,

As regards [Roman attitudes towards] faults committed from ignorance, there is not a more striking example than Varro, whose temerity caused the defeat of the Romans by Hannibal at Cannae, which exposed the republic to the loss of her liberty.  Nevertheless . . .they not only did not punish him, but actually rendered him honors; and on his return, the whole order of the Senate went to meet him, and, unable to congratulate him on the result of the battle, they thanked him for having returned to Rome, and for not having despaired of the cause of the republic.

Before sharing this with the students, I asked what they would do with Varro in the Senate’s place.  Most of them said that they would have Varro killed, or at least banished.  But then I asked them,

  • Did Varro break any laws?
  • Was Varro derelict in his duty as commander?
  • Did Varro own up to his mistake?
  • Did he show courage in returning to Rome?

In the end, despite his colossal blunder, Varro trusted in the laws and institutions of Rome, and this attitude, shared by most Romans, would be one of the main keys to Rome’s eventual victory.  It is worth noting that after the Carthage’s defeat in the Battle of Ecnomus at sea during the 1st Punic War (256 B.C.) the Carthaginians executed their admiral Hanno in humiliating fashion.

The war contains other lessons, especially if we accept the truth of the traditional story of Hamilcar teaching his son to hate.  The strategy Hannibal employed does bear the marks of someone unleashing years of pent of fury.  Anger can drive one to do much in a short time, but it also carries you beyond normal limits, beyond proper bounds.  Did Hannibal find himself in such a position, even after Cannae?  Did he lose energy and drive after this battle because, having exhausted his anger, he had nothing left?

We can make some comparisons to Nazi Germany, where Hitler stoked rage and anger for Germany’s supposed humiliation after W.W. I.  In 1939 they unleashed that fury in what became 2 1/2 years of blitzkrieg that gave them almost all of Europe.  But when they paused and looked around, they had bitten off more than they could chew, adding the Soviets and Americans to their list of enemies, to say nothing of their already existing enemy England.  The defeat they suffered as a result in 1945 was far worse than the one they endured in 1918.

“In your anger, do not sin” (Eph. 4:26).

10th Grade: The Feeding Frenzy

by Dave Mathwin

Greetings,

This week we came close to wrapping up the events of the Reign of Terror.  During the terrible years of 1793-94 somewhere between 15-40 thousand people died and some 300,000 were imprisoned.  How did a Republic dedicated to “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity” descend into this barbaric nightmare.  Many theories exist, and here I would like to highlight a few we will discuss in class.

David Andress – The Terror & Outside Pressure

Historian David Andress wants us to consider what happened inside France in light of events outside of France.  England, Austria, and Prussia all tried militarily to oppose France, and all looked for the the fledgling republic to collapse.  The stress of war on an already fragile government heightened the stakes inside France, and they cracked under the pressure.

Edmund Burke – The Abandonment of Tradition

A contemporary of the Revolution, Burke warned back in 1790 that France would pay a terrible price for putting people in power who had no idea how to use it.  Having no political experience, France’s leaders would quickly grow frustrated, and then lash out in the most basic way possible: violence.  Burke would prove a prophet.

Burke may seem stodgy at fist glance, because of his strong emphasis on tradition and habit.  But in a paradoxical way, he believed that habits were the only sure foundation for progress in the world.  We make thousands upon thousands of decisions in a given day, and Burke sees these these habits as a path to freedom, giving us time to pursue new things rather than have to “rationally” whether or not to eat breakfast first or get dressed first.

In a terrible irony Burke predicted, those fired by the Enlightenment idea to apply the strong light of reason to all things would end up erasing habit and thereby condemn us to starting all over again, setting us back to a barbarian past.  The Revolution saw multiple constitutions over a short period of time, a change of calendar, a change of morals.  No one could be sure of anything, and in this environment, fear and violence would likely take over.

Burke applied the same thought process to the exercise of power.  We often make two mistakes regarding political power:

  • We assume that it is a kind of magic, reserved only for society’s wizards.
  • We assume that anyone can do it.

Burke believed that good use of political power functioned like many other things in life, as a matter of experience and training — a matter of habit.  Certainly we want intelligent people to hold office, but this intelligence needed training like anything else in life.  The problem with the revolutionary leaders was not their lack of intelligence.  It was not their wicked designs (we can grant that some of them, at least, meant well).  The main problem lie in the fact that no one really knew what they were doing, and so fell back on force as a last resort.

Simon Schama – Dangers of Ideology

In his great work Citizens, Schama took another approach.  He focused how the French defined what it meant to be a citizen of their country. Increasingly they defined citizenship in moral and ideological and not legal terms.  Frenchmen had rights, but only those truly “virtuous,” or dedicated to the Revolution were truly French.  Those not revolutionary enough could not be French, and so they had no rights.  They functioned as a cancerous tumor, foreign to the national body, and had to be excised.

All three of these eminent thinkers emphasize important aspects of the political context. But all three I think leave out some fundamental aspects of human nature.  I think this image of Robespierre, the head of the ironically named “Committee of Public Safety,”  speaks volumes.  Here we have a man who believed in his own virtue, and had a passion for enforcing his rules on others.  Imagine the ultimate HOA Board Member on steroids.

Robespierre believed in perfection and insisted upon it.  Unfortunately he more or less thought he had achieved it himself.  People called Robespierre the “Incorruptible.”  In all his dealings, Robespierre appears to have been that rare politician who truly did not take bribes or show favoritism.  It would have been better for France (and Robespierre).  Perhaps then he would not have been able to maintain his furious streak of self-righteousness, which led to so many deaths (perhaps thinking of Robespierre might help us to understand Martin Luther’s oft misunderstood “Sin boldly.  God can only forgive a hearty sinner,” line to his quibbling friend Melancthon).

A passion for moral and political purity destroyed France. One can think of a potter attempting to make the perfect circle.  It wouldn’t be perfect at first, and one would have to shave off bits of clay continually to get it just right.  Eventually, however, you would not have any clay left.  While they said they cared for liberty, they did not realize that the amount of liberty one can enjoy is the amount you are willing to have abused.  France found that it could tolerate no abuse of liberty, so in the end they had none at all.  As the Terror increased, even the Committee of Public Safety members turned on each other and many of them faced the guillotine.

The guillotine itself represents part of the tragedy of the Revolution.  Dr. Guillotin invented the instrument to make executions more humane.  In the past, death by beheading was actually a privilege reserved for the nobility.  Those of more “common” lineage might face execution through hanging, disembowling, or even being drawn and quartered.

The guillotine meant now that everyone would have the “right” to death by beheading, and the mechanism meant now that no executioner might potentially botch the job.  Instead, in an almost bizarre parody, the mechanical nature of the machine gave the state power to execute more people more quickly, and now indeed “the people” could all face death equally.

Emmett Kennedy, author of A Cultural History of the French Revolution makes a great observation about French Romanticism and its relation to violence.  If man is naturally good, he suggests, than grace becomes irrelevant.  But what can take the place of grace as a proper inducement to virtue?  St. Just, Robespierre’s lieutenant, had the answer.  Kennedy writes,

Sensibilite (right sentiments, for lack of a better word) impels a man toward virtue, it affirms his natural goodness; it does for him what grace does for Christians.  If “sentiments”  do not produce virtue, then [St. Just argues] terror must take its place (emphasis mine).

In a round-about way Kennedy hits at a central truth.  The doctrine of the Fall of Man leads us not towards cruelty but mercy.  The Revolution denied mankind’s nature, but this “liberation” from sin could only lead them to destroy one another in blind and merciless search for perfection.

12th Grade: Israel, Palestine, and Solutions Beyond Governments

by Dave Mathwin

Greetings,

This week and last we looked at Israeli democracy, and tried to understand the dilemma they face regarding Palestinian statehood.  I hope we gained sympathy for both sides of this question.  Through this lens I wanted the students to understand one of the Catch-22’s that many democratic states face.

Democracies appeal to us largely because of their high ideals and goals, not just for the state itself, but for the individual.  But human nature almost guarantees that we will not attain these goals, and so democratic states are much more prone to hypocrisy and blind spots than authoritarian dictatorships, for example.  This should not make us abandon democracy.   As Chesterton and others have said, if you aim at nothing you’re sure to hit it.  But I do hope it will give us greater understanding of democracy’s Achilles heel.  The “processes” of democracy, like voting, representation, etc. have no real meaning unless they have roots in specific values.  If values make a democracy, then one must lead with those values.

The idea of a Jewish state predated World War II to the 1890’s.  The western world in general experienced an intensification of nationalism and heightened awareness of ethnic identity, which bore such horrific fruit in the 20th century.  Many Jews, having been scattered throughout Europe for centuries, began to resettle in Palestine, which the Ottomans then administered.  By the 1920’s Jewish settlement in Palestine looked something like this (darker areas indicate Jewish presence), though I should add that almost every map related to the Israel/Palestine question is polemical and controversial in one way or another.

After World War I, the British administered the area, but could no longer do so after World War II.  At that point England wanted to jettison nearly all of its colonial empire, and so they handed the question of Palestine over to the United Nations.  After the Holocaust the world had to answer the question as to whether or not there should be a specific Jewish state, and if so, where it should be.

Although people debated various sites, including Madagascar, they eventually settled on Palestine, which made sense in relation to Jewish history and the recent Zionist movement. No place would be without controversy, but choosing Palestine came with problems.  During World War I many Arabs fought with the British against the Turks, and the British in turn pledged to grant Arabs independence.  Instead they reneged on the deal and added Palestine to its colonial holdings.

Actions have consequences, even if sometimes those consequences take years to make themselves known.

From the Israeli’s perspective, owning a small sliver of land that did not even include Jerusalem, was the least the world could do.  Europe had persecuted the Jews on and off since the Crusades.  The latent, on again off again anti-Semitism that simmered for centuries metastasized into a horrifically clinical attempt to wipe them out entirely with the Nazi domination of Europe.  The world had shown that the Jews must have a safe haven, and giving them back a small part of their ancestral land made  political and ethical sense.

The Palestinians saw it differently and many continue to do so.

While the Palestinians were not the Jews number one fan, the Holocaust happened in Europe. It was not their doing, either directly or indirectly.  If the Jews need a homeland, and Europeans need to give them one to assuage their consciences, fine.  How about taking some European territory?  How about part of Germany?

Instead, what the Palestinians feel happened is what they felt always happens with the West. The Palestinians felt stomped on by one colonial power or another for centuries, and now it looked like deja vu  all over again.  This time, the guise took the form of the United Nations, but the result is the same:  someone took our land without our consent.  Rest assured, the Palestinians did not vote at the U.N. to cede part of Palestine for a Jewish state.  Thus, the very existence of the Jewish state is another form of colonial imperialism in Palestinian eyes.  The Jews invaded, in a sense, under U.S. and European flags.  In their mind Israel has no legitimacy because they are no better than other colonial occupiers.  When some critics of Israel, be they Palestinian or not, talk of Israel as a state founded on thievery, they have these associations in mind.

Most argue that the wars fought between Israel and her neighbors in 1948, 1967, and 1973 were started by Israel’s Moslem neighbors (though some might dispute ’67, where Israel launched the first physical attacks).  Not so, say the Arabs.  Israel started them all simply by being there.

Time has not favored the Palestinian cause, as the map below indicates:

Upon its creation, Israel had to make some crucial choices about its future.  It chose a Parliamentary style democracy, which did not surprise many.  But what to do with Palestinians living within their territory?  In 1948, Palestinians formed a distinct minority within Israel, but they were protected and given citizenship.  A British parliamentary style usually has less federation and more majority rule.  But that was ok, because Jews had the clear majority.  Still, it stood as a statement that Israel need not be for Jews only, and in the wake of the Holocaust, this was a powerful statement.

But what to do with Palestinians in the territory Israel acquired in 1948 and 1967?  Should they be citizens too?

This dilemma pierced the heart of the whole purpose for Israel’s existence.  They no longer could be both a Jewish ethnic state and a fully functioning democracy.  In other words, they could either

  • Give every Palestinian full citizenship rights, and risk that Jews would no longer be the majority in Israel.
  • Give them no rights and treat them as an occupied people
  • Give them some rights and not others, but this middle ground would probably not make legal or moral sense, something akin to the 3/5 Compromise in the Constitution, which made slaves count as 3/5 of a person.  How can one be 3/5 of a person?

In other words, Israel could be an ethnic state or a full fledged democracy.  The two could no longer go together.  They would have to give up something.  I have enormous sympathy for Israel here.  The whole purpose of Israel was to create a refuge for Jews and create a state run by Jews. To attain peace they would need to give up something of their identity.  For a generation that saw and survived the Holocaust, this would have been a near supernatural act, and it is not my place to judge.  Palestinian Christians have the only solution, but tragically, some of Israel’s policies, at times supported by the West, and at times supported by some Christian denominations, have deeply eroded and marginalized the Palestinian Christian community.

The middle course Israel chose gave Palestinians in newly acquired land some economic opportunities but not political representation.  Such mixed messages are usually deadly for democracies, and in time those contradictions often assert themselves with a vengeance.  One only needs to think of what happened when our own country sent blaring mixed messages for the first 80-90 years of our existence. In essence, the Palestinians got invited to the party, but then got told to eat with the servants in the basement.

Eventually, security concerns led Israel to build a wall between themselves and certain occupied areas.  But this seems all wrong.  We are familiar with walls — the Berlin Wall, the Iron Curtain, and so on.  Democracies are not supposed to do this.  But Israel felt that they could not be secure without it.   Some supporters of the wall might argue that it sends a signal, like the Emperor Hadrian’s wall in the north of England, of an end point to expansion in the occupied territories.  In other words, it should comfort the Palestinians. But this is not how Palestinians, or the world-wide community, has interpreted the wall.   Some have called it “the most religious place on Earth.”  The images are powerful:

I think Israel’s history comes with many lessons for democracies, including the need for consistency, and the need to lead with cultural values over strict security concerns.  Ultimately, however, we see the need for something greater than what governments can give.

Many thanks,

Dave M

10th Grade: The Rules of War

by Dave Mathwin

Greetings,

We began the actual fighting of the Revolutionary War this week, with a focus on the generalship of George Washington.

But we began by looking at the tactics employed by the colonials at the Battle of Concord.

After the British broke through the lines like a knife through hot butter at Lexington, the colonials changed tactics after the British abandoned their search for weapons in Concord.  Rather than meet them out in the open, the hid amidst the treelines, taking potshots and then melting back into the woods.  The British had no effective way of countering this.

This infuriated the British, of course.  This was not how men fought!  What kind of coward fires from safety and then runs away?  Battle was meant as a test of honor, solidarity in the ranks, and courage under fire.  Fighting as the colonials did at Concord might be akin to one team poisoning the water of their opponent.  If they then won the game, would we call that victory?

There is a possibly apocryphal story of the Battle of Fontenoy, between the British and French in 1745.  Tradition says that both sides argued about who which side would strike the first blow. Lord Hay, the British general, supposedly asked, “Gentlemen of France, perhaps you would care to fire first?”

The Battle of Fontenoy

For the Europeans, for battle to be decisive, for it to mean anything, it must be ‘fair.’  Victory without ‘fairness’ solved nothing.

Students wisely countered with the fact that this analogy of a sports team doesn’t quite add up.  First of all, it’s against the law to poison water, where there is no law saying that armies must line up in the middle of field.  Secondly, why should the colonials have to fight on British terms according to British strengths?  The  colonial troops should be free to do what they do best.

These are good arguments.  What happens when we apply them to our current situation in “The War on Terror?”  We would all wish that the terrorist radicals would all line up in a field somewhere.  If this happened, the “War on Terror” would be over in about 15 minutes.  Naturally, they possess enough intelligence not to do this, so they choose other tactics.  Does this make them cowards?  Are they “playing fair?”  Where are the differences?  Some said that the differences lie in the treatment of civilians, and this is an excellent point.  Does the same difference apply to the Ft. Hood shooting a few years ago, where only military personnel were targeted?

To turn this further on ourselves, we should confront the fact that our extensive use of drones inspire a great deal of hatred.  For our enemies (and the innocent civilians in the line of fire), our use of drones is ultimately a cowardly act.  We put others at risk while risking nothing ourselves.  The drones hover in ways not accessible to retaliation, and they strike without giving anyone a chance to escape.  My guess is that if terrorists flew a small drone into a large city remotely and attacked people, we would be tempted to call it a “cowardly act.”

It’s important for us to realize (returning to our original context) that for the British raw military victory did not count in the same way that honor and integrity did in battle.  Wars happened, but wars should take place within the confines of civilization, not outside it.  How one fought was in itself a victory of sorts, and could not get separated from the tangible results on the field.

During our look at Washington, we noted that he won only 3 of his 9 revolutionary war battles.  Previously to the American Revolution, he may have been responsible for the Fort Necessity disaster with the French, and he accompanied Braddock on his ill-fated attempt to capture Fort Duquense.  Does he deserve his high reputation?

Some years ago I came across a book entitled, ‘The 100 Greatest Generals of All-Time’ (or something very close to that).  Lists are always fun for me, so I opened it out of curiosity.  As one might expect the usual suspects of Julius Caesar, Alexander, Napoleon, Ghengis Khan, etc. could be found in the top 10.  But his number 1 general of all-time?  George Washington.

This shocked me so I had to read his thoughts (was this shock value part of the author’s motivation for listing him at #1, and not say, at #4?).  His points were these:

  • Many of the generals in the list accomplished a great deal militarily but failed politically (i.e. Alexander, Julius Caesar).  Some had short-term political success, but could not make it last (i.e. Napoleon).
  • Some of the generals (again Alexander and Caesar) inherited what was likely the best army in the known world at the time and fought against weaker opponents (this could especially be said about Alexander).
  • By contrast, Washington faced the best with an untrained army with weak political support.  As commander-in-chief, not only did he win the war, he turned that victory into lasting political success for his side.  Not only did he help usher in a new political era, he did so without seizing control himself.
  • Washington had a solid understanding of the fact that the Americans only needed to ‘not lose’ the war to win it. He knew that keeping the army intact and functional was more important than risking the army in unsure scenarios. Orderly retreat could sometimes be the better part of valor.  Most military men can’t do this consistently even when intellectually they know it’s the right thing to do.  Washington did so, and distinguished himself thereby.
  • Former Georgetown Hoya basketball coach John Thompson says on occasion, “I don’t want to know how many points somebody scores in a game.  I want to know when he scores them.  What do his points mean for the team in a given situation?”  In the same vein, Washington knew how to minimize the impact of his defeats and maximize his victories.  When things looked bleak in the winter of 1776, for example, he came through in the battles of Trenton and Princeton.  It would be years before his next victory at Yorktown in 1781, but the British surrender there basically gave America its independence.

As I mentioned previously, it is possible the author listed Washington so high to distinguish his book from others. Still, I feel he has solid arguments to at least rank him highly.  I wanted to use our look at Washington to introduce the concept that in war success can come in many ways.  Since war is ultimately a political act, the battles themselves are simply one extension of the conflict.

When we think about war in broader terms, we see how many of England’s advantages (such as an elite professional army) meant little in the political context of the Revolution.  They had the unenviable task taking someone who didn’t want to be your friend anymore and making them a friend.  Would beating them up do the trick?  Over the previous 10 years (1764-75) the British proved politically inept with the colonies, so a political solution would not come easily for them.  If they went the route of force more or less exclusively they would need to absolutely pulverize the colonies so badly that further resistance would be physically and psychologically impossible.   As long as the Americans kept their heart beating, they could outlast England.  Washington, I think, understood this to his advantage.

Next week we will look at the battles of Saratoga as well as the Declaration of Independence.

Enjoy the weekend, and many thanks,

Dave Mathwin

12th Grade: Wag the Dog

by Dave Mathwin

Greetings,

Last week we looked at Athens’ disaster in Sicily and the subsequent and extensive fallout.

Why did Athens lose in Sicily?

Part of Thucydides’ brilliance lies in that he does not merely look at battles and personalities, but finds ways to link events to a grand narrative.  Athens had many strengths, and one could argue that their passion for excellence helped produce democracy.  But I think that something began to go wrong just prior to the Peloponnesian War with the completion of the Parthenon, one of the great architectural achievements in history.  Ostensibly the building stands as a temple to Athena, the patron goddess of the city.  But a closer look at the carvings on the Parthenon reveal not scenes of gods and goddesses but of events in their own history.  Athens had in fact, made a temple to themselves, and showed that the true god they worshipped was their own community.

What kind of impact would this idolatry have, and what does it have to do with democracy?  Part of answering this question has to do with what we say the essence of democracy is.  If we say that the mere act of voting, of having a voice, is the meaning of democracy, than a naval-gazing, self-worshipping state will not be far behind.  For in this situation the process counts, and not the result.  If democracy (or any other form of government) serves a higher ideal than it has a built in check upon itself.  With no higher ideal than whatever decision we arrive at must by definition be good, because we thought of it.  This kind of attitude, present in ancient Athens, leads to disaster eventually.  If we travel with our heads down we’ll eventually walk off a cliff.  G.K. Chesterton has a great quote about self-worship in his book Orthodoxy,

That Jones shall worship the god within turns out ultimately to mean that Jones shall worship Jones.  Let Jones worship the sun, the moon, anything rather than the “Inner Light.”  Let Jones worship cats or crocodiles, but not the god within.  Christianity came into the world firstly in order to assert with violence that a man had not only to look inwards, but outwards. . . . The only fun of being a Christian was that a man was not left alone with the Inner-Light, but definitely recognized an outer light, fair as the sun, clear as the moon, terrible as an army with banners.

The problems with Athens’ expedition to Sicily can be traced to their democracy.  Alcibiades wanted the expedition, Nicias opposed it.  Both had wealth, political and military experience, each had their own political power base at home.  They also could not stand each other.  Their personal and political rivalry spilled over into the formation of Athens’ war policy in Sicily.  For example, Nicias’ purely personal political moves against Alcibiades ended up having a dramatic effect on the composition of the numbers and kind of military forces Athens used against Sicily, and perhaps even the goal of the mission.  One wonders if they realized this.  With their heads down, I think not.  In my opinion, they thought that

  • We voted, just as always
  • We picked experienced people
  • We followed the procedures and processes to arrive at a decision

Therefore, everything is fine!

Democracy has to involve more than mere voting, more than mere process.  The Athenians apparently did not see that in voting for the expedition they had approved a massive invasion of another democratic country not directly involved in the war they had been fighting.  The man who ultimately led them (Nicias) argued against any expedition at all.  Self-worship exacted its price in the thousands of dead outside Syracuse.  In his An Historian’s Approach to Religion AJ Toynbee wrote,

The strength of the devotion that parochial-community-worship thus evokes holds its devotees in bondage to it even when it is carrying them to self-destruction; and so the warfare between contending parochial states tends to grow more intense and more devastating in a crescendo movement. Respect for one’s neighbours’ gods and consideration for these alien gods’ human proteges are wasting assets. All parochial-community-worship ends in a worship of Moloch, and this ‘horrid king’ exacts more cruel sacrifices than the Golden Calf. War to the death between parochial states has been the immediate external cause of the breakdowns and disintegrations of almost all, if not all, the civilizations that have committed suicide up to date.

Athens’ failure in Sicily brought about the collapse of their democratic regime.  Their god had failed to provide for their basic needs, and needed replaced.

The oligarchs that replaced the democracy fared no better, ruling wantonly based on the pent-up sense that now is was “their turn.”  We sometimes see this when one party, shut out of Congress for a time, suddenly gains control.  This “my-turn” attitude usually leads to over-reaching and miscalculation.  The Newt Gingrich led government shut down in the mid-90’s comes to mind.

Democracy came back, but the instability engendered by these power struggles weighed like a mill-stone around the Athenians necks.  They had no anchor beyond their immediate needs.  We saw Athens 1) Win the Battle of Arginusae, then 2) Put the victorious generals to death for impiety, and finally 3) Put the lawyer who prosecuted the generals to death (we never should have listened to him!) all within the span of  several days.  Process trumped justice.  The tail wagged the dog.

Authenticity, Man

by Dave Mathwin

Having flamed out on Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age, I was happy to find a more bite-sized chunk of his thought in The Ethics of Authenticity. I admit to approaching the book, like others of a traditional bent, leaning against the very idea of authenticity. “Get over yourself, already.” The search for meaning within the self can never go anywhere and remains something of an illusion. What, after all is there to really “experience?”

The whole concept of “authenticity,” born out of the 1960’s (or so I thought), has given rise to a whole host of modern problems. All of the issues with sex and gender have their roots here, as does a great deal of spiritual innovation with the church, along with the Trump presidency. Many inclined to read this book of Taylor’s might hope for a thorough denunciation from the venerable professor.

Of course, boring conservatives such as myself may not have always been such. We may remember the days of our youth when it seemed we had to break free from our surroundings to see what we were made of. Taylor taps into this, and so, while he criticizes much of what the “Authenticity” stands for, and finds it ultimately self-defeating, he reminds us that a kernel of something like the truth remains within this–in my view– unpleasant husk. Taylor writes,

The picture I am offering is rather than of an ideal that has been degraded . . . So what we need is neither root-and-branch condemnation nor uncritical praise; and not a carefully balanced tradeoff. What we need is a work of retrieval . . .

Taylor demonstrates that of what we term “authenticity” has its roots in Christianity. In the ancient world nearly every person received their identity by what lay wholly outside their control, be it birth, race, family, etc. The triumph of Christianity meant believing that an entirely other world lay outside of our normal lives, the Kingdom of God, in which there existed “neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free . . . (Gal. 3:28).” The book of Revelation tells us that God “will also give that person a white stone, with a new name written on it, known only to the one who receives it (Rev. 2:17). St. Augustine’s magnum opus told us that the City of God lies nestled, in some ways, within the City of Man, to be discovered by anyone willing to walk through the wardrobe.

18th century Romantic thinkers, primarily Jean-Jacques Rousseau, picked up this dormant thread, albeit thin sprinting with it in ways that St. Augustine would abhor. I find the 18th century an absolute disaster for the Church, but still, Taylor calls me to at least a degree of balance. There was something quite ridiculous and artificial about the French aristocracy, for example, ca. 1770, accurately portrayed (I think) in this clip from John Adams

Perhaps St. Augustine did see “the road to God as passing through a reflexive awareness of ourselves” (p. 27). Many have pointed out how psychologically oriented was Martin Luther’s view of salvation. John Calvin began his Institutes by asking his readers to heed the Socratic dictum to “know thyself,” for knowledge of God and ourselves have an inextricable link. But Taylor sees Rousseau as the main originator of the modern view of authenticity. For Rousseau, “Our moral salvation comes from recovering authentic moral contact with ourselves,” and, “Self determining freedom demands that I break free from external impositions and decide for myself alone” (p. 27).

Well . . . ok. I don’t like the concept of authenticity but perhaps the difference lies in the “time of day.” What I mean is, bacon and eggs smells wonderful on the skillet when you’re hungry before breakfast, but that same smell hits one very differently with a full belly after lunch. The early Romantic movement, just as with the early Enlightenment, had good points to make. Rousseau championed, among other things, mothers actually breast-feeding their own children–something dramatically out of fashion for his time. Connecting with “nature” and the “self” I suppose could lead to more morally responsible living. You cannot blame your birth or other circumstances for who you are. But let it linger too long and you get the ridiculous movie Titanic, riddled through with romantic and “authentic” ideology–the smell of bacon and eggs at 10 am after you have already eaten. Still, Taylor asks the reader to see the premise of the morning before jumping straight to the twilight.

As for today, Taylor points out a variety of ways in which the “authenticity” narrative has gone astray.

Rousseau and his followers helped fuel democratic movements at home and abroad, but having created democracies in part through the dignifying the self, these same democracies would make a mockery of the original golden thread. Liberated from tradition, democratic man seemed to attain authenticity not via stern moral struggle against tradition, but as a birthright. If we are all authentic, then are all special, and thus, we all need recognized and regarded by others.

Taylor’s insights show us why those, for example, like Kaitlyn Jenner can be granted moral weight. The Authenticity narrative tells us that such people have attained a status of “real” humans because of their “courage” to make war even on biology itself–the final frontier–in order to achieve their version of true personhood. And, while I believe that those who alter their sex (if such a thing is truly possible) make terrible and tragic decisions, Taylor hints at why those that make these decisions often find them so empowering. Seeking a “genuine” connection with the self is the modern version of a transcendent experience. We grant large amounts of authority to those that have them, like the mystics of old.

Taylor also points out the endgame in store for “authenticity” lay implicit in its origins. If the self is to be the guide, and self-actualization has the ultimate authority, then we have a contradiction. The self can never be absolute, certainly not over others. Telling someone about your “experience” is nearly as bad as telling someone about the dream you had last night. In the end, we require an outside reference.

Alas, logical contradictions will likely not derail the Authenticity movement. But it is possible that time may take of this in ways that logic cannot.

I mentioned above the analogy of the smell of bacon before and after breakfast, and the analogy holds true in other aspects of life. In his War and Civilization compilation Toynbee admits the allure of the “morning” of a military outlook when reading the Iliad. Homer’s battle scenes have a dramatically bracing effect. Then, fast-forward to 19th century, where Prussian militarists like Helmuth von Moltke give one an entirely different impression of essentially the same thing that Homer described:

Perpetual Peace is a dream–and not even a beautiful dream–and War is an integral part of God’s ordering of the Universe. In War, Man’s noblest virtues come into play: courage and renunciation, fidelity to duty and a readiness to sacrifice that does not stop short of offering up Life itself. Without War the World would be swamped in materialism

Toynbee comments that, “there is a note of passion, of anxiety, and of rancor,” here that takes far away from the Greek poets. Moltke continues, perhaps even aware that he sails too close to the wind;

It is when an institution no longer appears necessary that fantastic reasons are sought or invented for satisfying the instinctive prejudice in its favor, which its long persistence has created.

If the modern Liberal order was created in part on the back of Authenticity, then surely we might say that those who still champion the idea copy Moltke and indeed invent “fantastic reasons” for the path they take. Perhaps Authenticity has run its course and can go into hibernation. We will wake it up when the scales have tipped too far in the other direction.

Dave

Zombie Markets in Everything

by Dave Mathwin

This post’s title, of course, has its origins with Tyler Cowen . . .

It seems as if we are living in a tale of two cities. It is the best and worst of times. One the one hand, the economy is great, and unemployment is way down. Public intelllectuals like Steven Pinker proclaim that, however bad things may be in certain segments of life, all the most important indicators show remarkable growth and progress, such as a sharp decline in infant mortality. Momentary trends may not always look favorable, but the arc of the last 300 years shows a continual rise in progress thanks to science and the application of reason. The complaining and angst so prevalent in the media, then, resembles that of a spoiled child. If we could all just calm down and count our blessings . . .

But others like Jordan Peterson, John Vervacke, and Jonathan Pageau state that western civilization exists by a thin thread in the midst of a deep meaning crisis–a crisis that perhaps hits men harder than women. Rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide have risen dramatically over the last 20 years. I think Vervacke would tell Pinker that he sees only a fragmented surface. I suppose Pinker and others like him would say such people are fundamentally deluded.

Chronologically we have mirror images from both camps. Pinker and his crowd write that starting around AD 1700, the Enlightenment took hold and over the next few centuries the world became a dramatically better place. But for those on the other side, the Enlightenment disastrously contributed to all the problems we have now in relation to meaning and knowing our place in the world (though others would go further back still, into the Renaissance).

Most would say one or the other is true, and you have to choose. Below I propose a theory that will attempt a “both-and” explanation–a highly speculative one–that will attempt to explain how the economy can grow and life can improve in various measurable ways and we can still struggle with meaning. In fact, the two may have a symbiotic relationship.

The perception of a current meaning crisis has led to the dramatic recent rise of the psychologist as guru, i.e., Jordan Peterson. John Vervacke has less fame, and popularizes less than Peterson (I do not use the term ‘popularizes’ derogatorily). His analysis goes deeper, and his co-authored book Zombies in Western Culture: A Twenty-First Century Crisis gives a slightly sideways but effective analysis of modern culture. Vervacke et. al do not blame the right or the left, campus ideology, or Trumpism, for the decay. “Decay” is indeed the right word, for zombies are decomposed beings of some undefinable kind. Our modern disease has infected most all of us to some degree.

Each era has its monsters that help define its zeitgeist. As the Enlightenment settled across western Europe, and scientific materialism began to entrench itself as the dominant ideology, Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, which explores the limits of man’s powers over nature. The monster in the book of course, is not the “Monster” but Dr. Frankenstein, it’s creator. A few decades later we have Bram Stoker’s Dracula. In the Victorian era, the aristocracy still exists, but exists in a weird place in society given the nascent rise of democratic ideals. Everyone perhaps feels in their bones that the aristocracy no longer serve a real purpose, isolated as they are within a culture that no longer needs them. One notes that, in contrast with pre-modern Europe, in the modern age the monster is a twisted human, though perhaps still a kind of tragically grand monster. That is, at least there exists some kind of high aspiration for a Dr. Frankenstein or Count Dracula.

Vervacke argues that the zombie is the monster for the 21st century, and the graph below shows the dramatic increase of the word in the popular culture just recently, just as the Cold War ended.

Zombies have the following characteristics:

  • They move in packs, but have no connection to one another
  • They have no particular intent–they exercise no conscious will towards evil.
  • They live only to consume, and their hunger to consume cannot be satiated or even lessened.
  • Constantly on the move, they have no home base or concept of home.

In other words, they form the perfect monster for the democratic age.

The zombie personifies our crisis of meaning. The internet, globalization, etc. means we can indeed consume as we like virtually for free, but though we like to sing along, we “know not what it means.”* The market also thrives on fluidity and movement. It is best for everybody to give everybody else money, for example, rather than everybody put it under their mattress, even if that consumption has no real overall purpose or goal in mind.

So too the market of information thrives on abundance and transfer. But like zombies, we both crave and lack Mind, and so have no way to integrate our experience into a meaningful whole. Vervacke writes regarding this,

This is because the information we obtain from the world has never been more unreliable. Abundance is one dimension of the problem; one need look no further than news media to appreciate the sheer volume of (often irreconcilable) narratives.

And again,

Humans are animals who most fundamentally understand what reality is . . . by locating ourselves within larger narratives and meta narratives that we hear and tell . . . When such narratives collapse, we are lost in the dislocation, fragmentation, and disorientation of homelessness.

So far so good, but what of the other side of the coin, i.e., a strong economy, less violence worldwide, and so on? Vervacke gives us the link. If truly we are the “walking dead,” then lacking mind and the means to integrate our experience, we would naturally seek expansive consumption as a means of coping. This consumption is a byproduct of all of the intense focus on the material aspects of creation fostered in western culture during the time period Pinker cites. It indeed brought great blessings of a certain kind, but it could possibly be nearing the end of its string.

Of course all humanity throughout all time has sought some sort of solution for a lack of understanding of the self. But our typical response is indeed to consume. We are depressed, we might go shopping. We are anxious, we “stress-eat.” We are out of sorts, we might consume information by browsing Facebook or news feeds. Such actions can distract us for a time, but also creates an unsustainable cycle. It is this drive to consume that makes solving certain environmental problems so difficult for all of us, whether Green or not so Green. The “peace” of the modern world championed by Steven Pinker has in some ways brought this out of us.

In contrast [to times of war], in times of relative peace, internal issues become more focal and so the opportunity for a relative loss of social integration is greater, hence the increase in the suicide rate.

This antipathy to peace can lead to increased participation in what the authors call the “pseudo-religion” of politics. Politics gives us much that religion provides.

As politics is, by necessity of governance naturally integrative of other systems, it was a proximal replacement for [meaning]. . . . systematic complexity made [politics] a convincing imitator of that normatively as the influence of religion diminished. The 20th century, therefore, bore witness to the rise of the most potent political pseudo-religion we have known in the modern world.

We risk ending the “peace” we have then, by feeding upon our own body politic, unable to stop our consumption of so called “outrage porn.” specialized in by Twitter and news media of all kinds. We can see this process of disintegration at work since the time of the vampire as monster. First, modernism deconstructed the church, and told us that it could no longer function as a means of communal coherence. “Religion should be private.” We then expected the state could serve that purpose, and so we developed various rituals around the symbols of the idea of nationhood. By the mid-20th century, we saw the folly of that project, but no fear–we can rally around our freedom to consume. So we built malls, accurately described by James K. Smith as spaces constructed for liturgical communal consumption.** But this no longer holds either. Now, like zombies, we roam the internet to consume, with no defined space to bind us.

In the old tales, the hero slays the dragon, but Vervacke points out that our zombie stories offer little hope. The plague always seems to grow, and those that survive will be continuously on the run. Rebuilding something new in these scenarios becomes extremely difficult. Patrick Deneen, for example, has a persuasive critique of the whole modern enterprise in Why Liberalism Failed. He blames progressives and conservatives nearly equally but offers no alternative political reality to which we can aspire. Slightly more hopeful is Rod Dreher, whose The Benedict Option, while giving no grand solution, at least points us towards embodied liturgical relationships with others as a good beginning.

With a quick search I found one place in our culture where a cure for zombies is possible: Minecraft. I find it charming that such a thing exists within this relatively benign (I dislike video games) world building enterprise, and that even many teens still play this game. It is interesting to see how they use traditional archetypes for this cure. Among other things needed to cure local villagers from being a zombie is dragon’s breath. In other words, the monster may be the only hope for the monster. Jonathan Pageau has often talked about how once a culture reaches the outer limits of the fringe, it takes just a small tap for everything to come right round again. The clown, or the fool, or perhaps even the monster is needed to make things right. It may be that if we are indeed in such a dark place, dawn is not far behind.

Dave

*Those my age, or fans of the music of early 90’s music, will recognize the Nirvana reference. In retrospect grunge music might be seen as a harbinger of the meaning crisis. How is it that right after winning the Cold War, when we should have celebrated and entered something of a golden age, we plunged ourselves into music that fundamentally celebrated alienation?

**We need not absolutely throw the baby out with the bathwater. National symbols and national identity can do us good. Market exchanges often benefit both parties. The problem is putting a weight on such things that they cannot bear. The only way they can bear the load of culture for long is to give them a kind of steroid. Of course one recalls the specter of the early 20th century regarding the problems of nationality. I also remember post-9/11 how we were all encouraged to keep spending so the terrorists would not win. It can work for a while, but the body gives out eventually.

Risky Business

by Dave Mathwin

In Goodbye to All That Robert Graves wrote that in W.W. I, young officers went through some distinct stages in their acclimatization to trench life. For the first couple months, the new man was a danger to himself. Ignorant of how things worked, he easily could walk in the wrong place at the wrong time and be injured or killed. Then, from around month three to six, the officer functioned well, armed with more knowledge but maintaining a healthy fear. The real problems came after the sixth month, when the officer now became a danger to others. The abnormal risks of trench life were now normal life for him, which influenced the officer to take stupid chances that foolishly cost lives–choices that the officer would not recognize as abnormally risky at all. Graves, of course, experienced this first hand as a young officer himself.

Diane Vaughn’s excellent The Challenger Launch Decision made me think of Graves’ remark. Ultimately I lacked the patience and technical familiarity to fully benefit from her magnificent analysis of the decision to launch the Challenger in January 1986. A sociologist by training, she still demonstrated a solid command of the technical information. But she focused not on what happened but the working cultures of engineers, managers, and NASA in general. The end result lends a great deal of complexity to our standard understanding.

After the tragedy, the standard understanding of the event went something like . . .

  • NASA faced unusual pressure to launch as part of their two pronged effort to 1) Advertise civilians in space (teacher Christa MaCualiffe), and 2) Be included in the President’s State of the Union address.
  • The unusually low temperatures created the possibility of the failure of the ‘O-Ring’ to seal. Design engineers noted this possibility and passed their concerns up the chain of command.
  • Design engineers indeed did initially recommend canceling or delaying the launch, but faced with strong pressure from NASA managers, changed their minds and approved the launch.

Events seemingly fit a Hollywood script–plucky engineers, lone dissenters faced down by The Man, with tragic results.

But Vaughn painstakingly points out that this narrative dramatically oversimplifies what happened.

First, the idea of risk . . .

Vaughn gives a helpful picture for us regarding perception of risk. Imagine a butcher shop, with its variety of saws, knives, etc. A two year old around said saws and knives would have no perception of any risk whatsoever. His mother would have an entirely different perspective. The butcher himself would have yet a third perspective. He understands the equipment, knows that it can be dangerous, but accommodates his life to work around and manage these risks. Without willingness to do so, he could not be a butcher at all.

So too, Vaughn reminds us that space flight remains extremely risky, at least relative to almost anything else our government undertakes. When the general public, unfamiliar with such risks, sees engineering reports that describe “possible” malfunctions (or some other such phrase) we react in ways that NASA personnel would not. To attempt to fly into space at all meant assuming a great deal of risk to begin with. That something might go wrong was perfectly obvious, the more relevant questions for NASA routinely ran along the lines of:

  • What is the likelihood of something going wrong?
  • Does this likelihood exceed the threshold of “acceptable risk?”
  • Why do you think it would go wrong? Is this a theory, or do you have testing data to back it up? If you have data, is that data conclusive or conjectural?

NASA had known for years about the problems with the solid rocket booster design and performance. They had known that what happened to the Challenger might possibly happen. The Solid Rocket Boosters (SRB’s) always worried NASA. They launched in spite of these concerns because, “we are in the business of launching rockets”–they routinely “pushed the envelope.” If you don’t want risks. then you don’t want to go space. No one thought the shuttle design perfect–far from it–but the shuttle was what they had to work with.

Vaughn suggests that NASA made the important decisions about the SRB’s years before the Challenger Launch, when they accepted a design that all knew had flaws, and then began a process of systematically normalizing these flaws. Bigger flaws then became smaller flaws, because the starting point itself had flaws built in.

Most Americans accept, however, that space travel has risks. What seemed abnormal and negligent were the events leading up to the launch. We had a launch in unusually low temperatures, a launch to which the SRB design engineers from Thiokol objected to the night before. They had fears that the rubber O-rings might not seal properly and allow too much explosive gas to escape at any temperature below 53 degrees. Of course this is exactly what happened.

But NASA managers strongly criticized Thiokol’s assessment and (seemingly) put pressure on them to change their opinion. Larry Mulloy stated, “My God, Thiokol–when do you want me to launch? Next April?” Another NASA manager, George Hardy, stated that he was “appalled” by their recommendation. Thiokol went back to confer among themselves and then reversed their position. The rest is tragedy, and on the face of it NASA seems horribly guilty.

Vaughn has plenty of criticism for NASA throughout her lengthy book. The book gives copious details about the budgetary issues, design choices, and the engineering culture that was NASA between the early days of shuttle development and January 1986. I will focus on the launch decision itself, because what made The Challenger Launch Decision such a great read for me is that by the end of it, I perceived these seemingly damning comments given above entirely differently. Vaughn devotes at least half of the book towards this end. NASA bears ultimate responsibility for the disaster, but Thiokol bears much of the blame as well. Events proved them right, but those that objected to the launch were not right for the right reasons, or perhaps, for reasons that the engineering culture of NASA would be able to hear and act upon.

Of course NASA had known of the the O-ring problems for years.

Thiokol’s stated position that the design flaws [of the SRB] are not desirable but acceptable.  Neither NASA or Thiokol expected the rubber O-ring sealing joints to be touched by hot gases of motor ignition, much less be partially burned.  However, as tests and flights confirmed damage to the sealing rings, the reaction was to consider the amount of damage “acceptable.” At no time did management recommend a redesign of the SRB . . . 

Presidential Commission Report on Challenger

From the beginning, a certain understanding of risk developed within NASA.

As in all previous space programs, certain residual risks have been accepted by management.  These residual, or acceptable risks, which remain after all feasible corrective actions have been taken, have been thoroughly reviewed . . . 

The conclusion of this review is that there is no single hazard nor combination of hazards that should be considered a constraint to launch.  All phases of Shuttle development and operations are continually being monitored to ensure that the aggregate risk remains acceptable.

Space Shuttle Safety Assessment Report, 1981

Before the Challenger, NASA had 24 successful launches in different kinds of weather. Yes, the O-rings would always be damaged, but that damage stayed within the bounds of “acceptable” wear and tear.

Vaughn collected a great deal of documentation and first hand testimony to describe what happened on the fateful eve of the disaster. NASA had several critiques of Thiokol’s recommendation to postpone the Challenger launch.

The 53 Degree Limit

As mentioned above, on the night before the launch SRB designers Thiokol declared that they could not recommend any launch when the outside temperature dropped below 53 degrees.

For NASA, this posed some terrible problems.

Whether [NASA’s Richard Mulloy’s] choice of words was a precise as perhaps it could have been, it was certainly a valid point, because the vehicle was designed to launch year-round.  Thiokol was proposing significant changes to the whole shuttle program on the eve of launch.  

NASA Engineer Larry Wear

The implications of trying to live with the 53 degree [limit] were incredible.  And coming in the night before the launch on such a weak basis was just–I couldn’t understand it.  

NASA Engineer Bill Riehl

And from Richard Mulloy, of the “launch next April!?” comment:

There are currently no launch criteria for joint temperature.  What you are proposing to do is to create a new launch criteria [not backed up by data], after we have successfully flown 24 launches with the existing criteria.  With the new criteria we may not be able to launch until April.  

I was frustrated.  Their analysis was dumb.  The data said one thing, the recommendation another.  Their 53 degree limit did not solve the technical issue, which was–what temperature did the joint need to be, [not what temperature it was outside]?

I find Mulloy’s point about joint temperature rather than outside temperature most crucial. Also, the Challenger launch had already been delayed several times, and on some of the other proposed launch days the temperature was below 53 degrees. None of the postponements were based on temperature, and Thiokol never raised this objection at any time before. The launch was scheduled for January 27, when it was 37 degrees out, and postponed, but not for cold temperatures. Again, Thiokol failed to raise temperature objections January 27. Thiokol engineer Jack Kapp admitted that,

Most of the concerns we presented . . . we had a very difficult time having enough data to quantify the effects we had talked about.  A lot was based on engineering “feel.”

It seems unreasonable to me to ask that the NASA cancel a launch and completely revise launch criteria based on “feel.” In fact, in the various O-ring tests, the worst damage the equipment had ever sustained came on a day of high outside temperature. Thus, no data existed to show that low temperatures had a conclusive impact on the ability of the O-ring to seal. And yet, NASA said they would have canceled the launch had Thiokol stuck to their guns.

George Hardy, of the “appalled” comment, also stated according to many witnesses that he would not launch against designer advice, and also said, “For God’s sake, don’t let me make a dumb mistake.” If Thiokol truly thought they were on to something, they failed to state their case in a way that could convince NASA or even convince themselves beyond the standard nerves everyone has for a launch. They had no data. They had a “feeling.”

Now of course–they were right about this feeling! This adds to the Challenger tragedy. They had a hunch, but could not translate that hunch in a way that could lead to meaningful action. NASA would have listened to them, but Thiokol could not speak in a way they–or even themselves–could understand. Canceling would have meant that

  • New launch protocols would have been introduced without any real data to back it up
  • The number of shuttle launches planned would have to be drastically reduced
  • NASA management would have to have a reason for the cancellation to their bosses, and would have been asked to base it on a “feeling.”

To cancel the launch would have essentially upended the entirety of NASA’s culture. This is exactly what should have happened. But Vaughn wants us to see that, all things considered, it is not reasonable for us to expect that either Thiokol (which did reverse their recommendation to cancel) or NASA to do this. We do not have a Hollywood script with heroes and villains. The Challenger astronauts died not at the hands of craven management, but as part of something much larger. Vaughn’s analysis shows us that questions we should ask in the aftermath of the tragedy are much more complicated than we might have thought. Once an organization establishes a culture, some decisions almost seem to get made automatically.

Vaughn wrote her book in 1996, and if anyone at NASA read it, it had no impact. We may remember the destruction of the Columbia in 2003 upon re-entry. It’s heat shielding was very likely damaged upon launching when insulation foam from the external tank dislodged during liftoff and struck the left wing. The tank needed insulation to keep the fuel cold enough, but it routinely dislodged during launch, as we might expect given so much thrust and vibration. Unfortunately, this time a large piece dislodged and struck the shuttle in a vulnerable spot during liftoff under the left wing. Columbia lost control and disintegrated upon re-entry. The official investigation into the crash stated that,

Cultural traits and organizational practices were allowed to develop . . . and reliance on past successes [served] as a substitute for sound engineering practices. Organizational barriers prevented communication of critical safety information.

Some might take solace in the fact that NASA’s culture of risk appears to have changed. In their partnership with Space-X, for example, their criteria holds Space-X to a 1 fatality for every 230 launches. Some applaud this reform. But others find this impossible–how can NASA hold Space-X to a standard that no space program at any time and place have ever been accountable to? How much risk must we accept to make progress?

Dave

Time Me

by Dave Mathwin

This post is slightly dated, as it was originally written three years ago.  I repost it based on our discussions in class this week . . . . .

****************************

I don’t follow baseball vey closely, nor do I watch many games.  I had no interest in watching the Home Run Derby before the All-Star game.  Unfortunately I still listen too frequently to sports talk radio.  After the said derby, commentators proclaimed that the new rules involving time limits had made the experience much more enjoyable.  “The clock saved the Home Run Derby,” proclaimed one radio host.  After discussing it briefly, they quickly turned to other areas of life where clocks could make things better, like for teenage daughters in bathrooms, bank lines, and so on.  If only we could have more clocks in our lives!

This got me reflecting a bit on the the invention of the clock.  Besides fire and the wheel, I have a hard time thinking of other inventions with as much staying power.  The influence of the clock goes so deep we don’t notice it.  Part of the motivation for me to read Authority, Liberty, & Automatic Machinery in Early Modern Europe by Otto Mayr was the hope that, among other things, he would give some perspective on the clock and its impact.

By “clock” Mayr means the mechanical clock.  People used sun-dials from ancient times, but even the most reliable  sun dials (in Egypt where the sun always shined) did not facilitate an acute subdivision of our experience of time.  In other more cloudy locales the sun-dial had even less influence.  The mechanical clock came on the scene in the late middle-ages and immediately made a dramatic impact on that society.  People fell in love immediately.  In his Paradiso Dante used the metaphor of the movement of a clock’s implements to describe the movement of the angels in heaven, and this merely stood as one example among many. The rare dissenting voice did exist.  The Welsh bard David Gwillym wrote,

Woe to the black faced clock which awoke me on the ditch side.  A curse on its head and tongue, its two ropes and heavy wheels, its weights, yards, and hammer, its ducks which think it day and its unquiet mills.  Uncivil clock like the foolish tapping of a tipsy cobbler, a blasphemy on its face.

But on the whole the “ayes” substantially overwhelmed the dissenters.  People praised the precision and complexity of the instrument, and almost immediately various metaphors for God’s design of the universe arose.  And as we might expect, no people sang such great peans to the clock as in Germany.

Such was the scene on the continent.  Yet those in England reacted far differently.  Yes, many liked the clock and it came into general use.  But far more dissented in England than in other places. In Love’s Labor Lost Shakespeare uses a “German clock” as an epithet.  In Richard II Shakespeare flips all the positive clock metaphors and in a soliloquy by Richard has the clock stands for a symbol of undue self-consciousness and a failed life.

Now sir, the sound that tells what hour it is

Are clamorous groans, that strike upon my heart

Which is the bell.  So sighs, and tears, and groans

Show minutes, times, and hours . . .

Why did they feel this way?  Here we get to the heart of the main idea of Mayr’s book.

Mayr believes that ultimately the answer lies in the different kinds of political cultures of England and the continent.  Briefly, authoritarian style politics had far more “boots on the ground” in places like Germany and France, which explains their love of the clock.  He develops the connection thusly: England’s political theory emphasized balance.  Whether they invented the idea of the “separation of powers” is beside the point.  They had a long history, predating the Magna Carta, of seeking equilibrium between different political bodies, which the European continent lacked.  This led England to put much more emphasis on developing “feedback” technologies.  These devices did not exert power so much as prevented one element from gaining too much power.  The thermostat serves as a good example of such a device.  It helps create balance.  Neither heat nor cold win the day. Notably, thermostats only come on when they need to correct the temperature.  Otherwise they lie dormant.

We may balk a bit at this distinction.  We may not consider the clock a device associated with unchecked power.  The clock may always be “on,” we surmise, but it exerts no direct influence over us.  Perhaps, but I think Mayr has a good point.  During the talk show I mentioned earlier, for example, all the ideas that people had related to people having to move faster because of the presence of the clock. They wanted the clock to make people act in certain definite ways.  Our speech reflects this as well. We “answer to the clock,” and so forth.  This idea played itself out politically.*  France had Louis XIV, Robespierre, and Napoleon. Prussia had Frederick the Great.  When England’s Charles I attempted to reign more independently he faced a revolution and the loss of his life.  Mary Tudor and James II also failed to introduce significant changes.**

The book moves along nicely to show how other “self-regulating” systems developed in England.  Aside from the political self-regulation between king, parliament, and courts, Adam Smith developed the idea of a self-regulating economy. Mercantilism, the prevailing economic theory in the 18th century, called for one to dominate other countries via exports over imports.  Smith believed the market could work much like a thermostat and correct itself with no government interference.  Central control of trade not only was unnecessary, but counter-productive.  We need not wonder about the veracity of Smith’s theory here.  What seems obvious from Mayr’s extensive knowledge is how developments throughout a particular culture have a common root.  The thermostat and Smith’s free market ideology come from the same place.

If the clock occupied pride of place for inventions from 1300-1800, what shall we say about our own day?  We would first need to decide what invention has pride of place in our society.  One would at this moment probably say the smart-phone, but we might wonder if in 10 years we will have moved on.  So we should settle on something larger, like “digital technology.”  As Peter Thiel has commented frequently, we have dramatically advanced the world of “bits” while the world of atoms has remained stagnant.  We need to look beyond mere profit and opportunity to understand why we have done so.

The digital universe excites us perhaps mainly because it has no discernible limits.  The powers of computers change all the time.  We can assume different identities, and so on.  We can always have our music.  We can contact anyone we want at any time.  It seems at times as if we can defy reality itself.  The world of atoms, however, confronts us with limits.  And if our recent behavior surrounding gender and sexuality give us any clues, we do not like limits.^  Our politics may soon start to reflect this and our corporate practice.^^  Who can say exactly where this will end up?  But if the trend continues we may need to revisit De Tocqueville’s dilemma regarding liberty (no limits on our actions) and equality.  We cannot have unfettered doses of both, for at some point they work against each other.  We must choose.  We still live in the real world.

Dave

*Compare Bishop Bousset’s explication of absolute monarchy for Louis XIV to James I (King of England) own writing on the subject.  Both reach similar conclusions, but in very different ways.  Bousset’s writing has an inexorable logical methodology.  James I writes more haphazardly, and more poetically.

**Henry VIII may be the exception that proves the rule.

^I re-watched The Matrix recently and noticed something curious.  At the end of the movie Neo speaks into the phone to the machines and tells them that he will show people “a world without limits, a world of possibility” and so on, and then proceeds to fly in the air.  But surely he refers to the world of the Matrix?  This is the world that offers the possibilities of dodging bullets.  In reality we remain subject to gravity.  On board their ship they have to wear dingy clothes and eat protein goop.  So what did Neo really mean?

True to form, the story starts to bleed out in the next two installments.  The Wachowski’s can’t stay content to let Neo be limitless merely in the Matrix (which makes some sense within their invented world).  By the end of Matrix Revolutions Neo can stop the Sentinels in reality just as he could stop bullets in the Matrix.  The Wachowski’s refuse even stay within the limits of their own story.

^^I like Amazon, but I found it a bit odd that they essentially tried to start their own holiday (Prime Day).

10th Grade: The Galileo Myth

by Dave Mathwin

This week we continued with many of the same themes as last week, with a special focus on Galileo.

Thomas HobbesBefore tackling him, we looked at the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes’ concerned himself mainly with outlining his vision of a workable political system, but he was strongly influenced by the tenor of the times.  Hobbes, like Descartes before him, believed that getting at the truth meant reducing the world to its simplest, most understandable components.  If we dig deep enough, we will finally find an irreducible foundation.  For Descartes, it was thought, and Hobbes builds his politics on the concept of motion.  Mankind, for Hobbes, was in many ways “matter in motion.”

The Scientific Revolution did indeed change many things, and this concept of knowledge may have been at the heart of those changes.  The Medieval philosopher would have argued that to see a thing truly, it must be seen as a whole of many parts.  Not only that, they would have gone further and said that to know a thing, one must know its purpose, its end, its “telos.”

Galileo continued the revolution in other facets of thought.  Copernicus had established the possibility of a heliocentric universe in the 16th century, and while his ideas did not gain wide acceptance, Copernicus was not a controversial figure.  Aristarchus of Samos had, in fact, proposed a similar theory in the 3rd century B.C.  Galileo caused controversy by proposing a new idea of how we arrive at truth, and blurred the lines between theory and fact.  In 1543 a man named Osiander wrote in the preface to Copernicus’ work that,

[W]hen from time to time there are offered for one and the same motion different hypotheses…, the astronomer will accept above all others the one which is easiest to grasp. The philosopher will perhaps seek the semblance of the truth. But neither of them will understand or state anything certain unless it has been divinely revealed to him…. So far as hypotheses are concerned, let no one expect anything certain from astronomy which cannot furnish it, lest he accept as the truth ideas conceived for another purpose and depart from this study a greater fool than when he entered it.

Owen Barfield, a contemporary of C.S. Lewis, wrote in his Saving the Appearances, that Galileo

began to affirm that the heliocentric hypothesis not only ‘saved the appearances,’ but was physically true.” What they professed was in fact a new theory of the nature of theory; namely that, if a hypothesis saves all the appearances, it is identical with truth.

What (I think) Barfield meant by the idea of “saving the appearances” was the old idea that our notions of scientific truth should do their best to explain the reality that we see around us, to preserve the validity of the senses.  However, this was always recognized to represent our “best guess” and may not reflect actual truth.

But after Galileo the burden of proof shifted.   Arthur Koestler writes in his book The Sleepwalkers that,

if theologians could not refute Galileo their case [would] go by default, and Scripture must be reinterpreted.  This implied (though Galileo did not dare state it explicitly) that the truth of the system was rigorously demonstrated. It is all so subtly done that the trick is almost imperceptible to the reader and, as far as I know, has escaped the attention of students to this very day. Yet it decided the strategy he was to follow in the coming years.

Galileo was right about the Earth’s rotation around the sun, though we would later discover that the sun, too, is in motion.  The issue that I wanted to stress to the students, however, was the fact that one can be right for the wrong reasons.  Many great scientific minds of this time were likely sincere Christians, but the ways which they reached their conclusions may have helped lead people away from Christianity.  True knowledge must involve more than what we see with our senses.

The Scientific Revolution also raised the question of how we should interpret Scripture.  To what degree should scientific discoveries impact how we read the famous passage about the sun standing still in Joshua?

On the day the Lord gave the Amorites over to Israel, Joshua said to the Lord in the presence of Israel:

“Sun, stand still over Gibeon,
and you, moon, over the Valley of Aijalon.”
 So the sun stood still,
and the moon stopped,
till the nation avenged itself on its enemies,

as it is written in the Book of Jashar.

The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and delayed going down about a full day. There has never been a day like it before or since, a day when the Lord listened to a human being. Surely the Lord was fighting for Israel!

Of course the Church made mistakes at this time too.  In condemning Galileo they surely overreached and made themselves look silly, contributing to an unnecessary and unhealthy divide between science and faith that lasted for at least three centuries, from which we have fully to recover.
Dave

Time vs. Space Redux

by Dave Mathwin

Whether the conversations be thoughtful or awkward, Thanksgiving seems to be a time to think about the times we live in with our families. About a month ago I tried to think about our culture in deeper terms than merely red state vs. blue state, taxes, immigration, and so on. I think what’s plaguing us runs deeper (I base what follows on my previous post on this topic, which is here), though what follows should be seen as a thought experiment more so than anything definitive.

In that previous post I suggested that what might be “proper” tension between Time and Space could vary depending on the culture. So Egypt leaned heavily toward Space, Babylon towards Time, but both civilizations could be considered “great” in different ways. I have only scratched their respective surfaces, but if one reads their mythology and folklore I think we see that they both had some awareness of this necessary tension. My point previously was that we lack even this basic awareness and need to recast our thinking in order to understand our culture more fully.

The problem is not that we contain contradictions within ourselves. We overpraise consistency in most cases. We need the fluidity of Time and the stability of Space in some measure–a society built 100% on either reality would be both an absurdity and an impossibility. One can be 2-1 in favor of space, or 3-2 in favor of time. I think that our issue is, rather, that our different political sides embrace 100% of both without even realizing it. Our political choices then, border on the non-sensical and thus can only go into more subconscious symbolic realms.*

On the Left Time/Fluidity Scale:

  • Open borders–which makes the capital and labor maximally fluid
  • LGBT agendas (which often involve the erosion of the “fixed” state of nature and biology)
  • Maximal “Equality” for men/women (which includes strong pro-choice stances–“safe, legal, and rare” won’t cut it any more), which flatten out distinctions and traditions.

On the Right Time/Fluidity Scale:

  • Free market and free trade (few forces are more destabilizing to tradition, be it good or bad, then the free market, so though I apologize that I can only think of one example for the right, it is a really big one:).

On the Left Space/Stability Scale:

  • Higher minimum wage laws, which restricts the flow of free labor, along with a penchant for corporate regulation.
  • Safe spaces and tight restrictions on what can be said so that the “communal identity” might be preserved

On the Right Space/Stability Scale:

  • Build a wall, protect our borders
  • I don’t see a strident nationalism in the U.S. as a huge problem, but if it came it would certainly come from the right

Again, it is one thing to hold positions in some kind of balance, it is another to hold them maximally in different areas without even being aware of the contradictions.

Once we see that our differences run into mutually contradictory realms, we naturally look for who or what to blame for our predicament. Some say the iPhone, the internet, the 2008 stock market crash, identity politics, the War in Iraq, Newt Gingrich, and so on. But I think we have to go further back. If there is any consolation for us, I don’t think millennials, Get-X’ers, or Boomers started all this.

Perhaps we can begin with the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment valued (at least at the beginning) common things for common people. That era valued self-control of body and emotions. So far they lean heavily on the side of Stability/Space. But at the same time they gave strong preference to syllogistic reason, the province of the mind and the elite. Jefferson, Rousseau and others also propounded the most universal ideas (which have no boundaries) in the modern era–“all men are created equal,” and “the rights of man,” from the French Revolution, and so on. It is no wonder that the French Revolution swung so wildly so quickly.

Then we have the Romantic era. On the one hand, they praised emotion which put them heavily on the side of Time/Fluidity. But at the same time the Romantic movement gave birth to the modern recovery of folklore, fairy tales, and a kind of ethno-nationalism seen in Wagner, among others, all of which strongly favor Space/Stability.

The dramatic tension in the Romantic movement has a touchstone example in England’s empire. They spread throughout the globe (Time) but also sought to bring England’s culture (Space) everywhere they went. Such tension might very well produce something of a “schism in the soul” that Toynbee often wrote about.

In W.W. II both of the major Axis powers (Germany and Japan) sought to mimic the British in far, far more hideous ways.

  • Both Germany and Japan were strong ethno-nationalist states, yet both sought a significant increase of their territorial reach.
  • Both had strongly hierarchical views of authority (Space), but their military strategies strongly favored continual motion and speed (observe how Hitler took the traditional swastika image and pivoted it to give the impression of continuous forward motion. The problem being, of course, is that the swastika shape cannot “move.” It could not spin or roll forward. Thus, the inherent contradictions of Nazism were present right within its foremost symbol).
  • I believe that both countries perhaps subconsciously pursued impossible objectives that could only end in cataclysmic defeat–the kind of destruction that can come only with a violent clash of two opposing forces (I write a bit about this here).

In our own land we have struggled with the same dichotomies. Our blended form of government gets somewhat near a political balance of Time & Space. But in truth, we have no truly conservative tradition outside of democracy to call upon, which can lead to excess fluidity of the liberal democratic tradition. We have a strong sense of land (stability) being tied to liberty (fluidity) inherited from Aristotle, Locke, et al. but showed an outsized and continuous desire for more and more land–a quasi schizophrenia between Time and Space. Every political theorist on democracy thought that for it to work it needed contained in a small space–“stability” to balance out the “fluidity” of liberty. We said “no thanks” to that and immediately upon getting our independence, we began rapidly expanding our territory, believing that perhaps everyone else was wrong about this political calculus.

Possibly this can give us some perspective on the current Time/Space war in our culture. If it feels like it is accelerating, it may be because we are entering another election cycle, or perhaps it is the pace of life which our ubiquitous “time-saving” technologies push us towards. But I think too that both political parties contribute to this by jumping into the mosh-pit.

On the ACLU Twitter homepage their banner reads, “Fight for the Country We Want to Live In.” I don’t wish to pick on the ACLU per se–my point likely could have been made with other organizations, though I do fear that they too are becoming overly politicized. The country we “want” to live in? The country I want to live in is an impossible pipe-dream of my own personal fancies.** No one should want me to fight for the country I want to live in. The country I need involves something much more politically feasible–a balance between Time and Space, and left and right. That perhaps, is worth a fight.

Dave

A postscript from the recent British election which may show us how to reduce the tension between Time and Space:

He has done what no other conservative leader in the West has done: He has co-opted and thereby neutered the far right. The reactionary Brexit Party has all but collapsed since Boris took over. Anti-immigration fervor has calmed. The Tories have also moved back to the economic and social center under Johnson’s leadership. And there is a strategy to this. What Cummings and Johnson believe is that the E.U., far from being an engine for liberal progress, has, through its overreach and hubris, actually become a major cause of the rise of the far right across the Continent. By forcing many very different countries into one increasingly powerful Eurocratic rubric, the E.U. has spawned a nationalist reaction. From Germany and France to Hungary and Poland, the hardest right is gaining. Getting out of the E.U. is, Johnson and Cummings argue, a way to counter and disarm this nationalism and to transform it into a more benign patriotism. Only the Johnson Tories have grasped this, and the Johnson strategy is one every other major democracy should examine.

*By this I mean that we will make our political choices more from our gut and less from our head. This will likely give an advantage to Trump, who seems quite comfortable governing from his gut impulses.

**Growing up I swore that if I ever became King of the U.S.A., I would first and foremost make it illegal for bands to release a “Greatest Hits” album with one new song on it–something routinely done in the 80’s and 90’s. The internet has fortunately solved this for me, but in so doing it did take away what was to be a major plank in my policy platform.

If Civilization is Worth Doing, it’s Worth Doing Badly

by Dave Mathwin

Historian Arnold Toynbee takes the long view–the very long view, on the fall of Rome.  We think of Rome as a grand empire, but Toynbee reminds us both in his book Hellenism, and in Hannibal’s Legacy, that Rome originally organized itself very much like other Greek city-states.  The early Roman Republic was essentially a polis.  As they grew in size, the political dynamics changed until little to nothing remained of its more democratic past.  But if we think of Rome as a “Republic” first and foremost, we should place the decline of Rome somewhere in the transition between the 3rd-2nd cenutry B.C. at the absolute latest.*

Toynbee takes this approach because he sees civilizations operating in a spiritual sense.  He focuses on the beliefs, the internal coherence, the relationships between different groups in society, and so on.  He has long sections in volumes five and six of his multi-volume A Study of History on the “schism in the soul” present in declining civilizations, which might strike one with a more materialist bent as rather absurd.

Niall Ferguson takes a different approach, and I believe that I see common themes in his books, Civilization, Colossus, and Empire.  Ferguson sees civilization running on various physical platforms, such as the quality of roads, a good sewer system, and a good way of gathering and using tax revenue.**  He eschewed the idea of slow, steady decline–or at least one that we could observe in any meaningful way.  For him, the system works until suddenly it doesn’t, and no one can really predict when it will stop working. This explains why no one saw the collapse of the Soviet Union coming, or various stock-market crashes.  The collapses, when they come, will therefore come out of the blue suddenly.

Joseph Tainter’s The Collapse of Complex Socieities is a short, dense, book about a difficult subject. Tainter does a good job with his argument, which I admit even I though I disagree with some of his basic premises.

His argument boils down to a few key points:

  • Major civilizations tend to experience an early period of rapid growth through the ‘low hanging fruit’ of available territory, resources, etc.
  • This growth inevitably leads to specialization, stratification, and complexity which initially serves growth–though this “low-hanging fruit” won’t last forever.
  • The civilization plateau’s and the structure established to help it grow becomes an inextricable  part of society just at the moment that it is no longer really needed.
  • When the ‘low hanging fruit’ disappears, further expansion (be it territorial, trade-oriented) becomes less and less profitable, and eventually starts to work against the civilization.
  • Finally, the complex structure gets too unwieldy, a ball and chain, as the state has to spend more and more to get less and less. But now we depend on the structure.   It has become too big to fail, but like a house of cards, easy to knock over.

Tainter supports his theory well from civilizations across time, and uses very obvious info, like territory, and some other more unusual information, like crop yields, colonial administrations, and so on. No doubt there are many lessons for economists here.

But, while his book is valuable, it has big holes.

In his quest for absolute objectivity, he rejects all value-judgment theories of collapse. If you can’t measure it, it’s not useful. We can never be sure exactly a civilization really believes, and even if we could, it is not an objective field of study, so has nothing to contribute to the study of collapse. After a brief summary of  the work of people like Gibbon, Toynbee, Spengler, and others he dismisses them with a wave of his hand. But as C.S. Lewis once pointed out, very few people are actually German economists. Any study of history must involve people, which will involve more than graphs on paper.

This over-emphasizing of economics shows up in what is actually a thought-provoking idea. What happens after collapse, he argues, may actually be beneficial to society, because it removes a great deal of inefficiency that the old system labored under. Collapse, might be the cleansing forest fires of history, events to almost welcome.

This sounds good on paper, but no actual human being who lived through collapses would have agreed with him. Imagine living in Western Europe ca. 550 AD and thinking, “Boy, I sure am glad for the fall of Rome. Of course, our ramshackle village could be overrun, destroyed, and our people pillaged who knows when by some Goth, Ostrogoth, Visigoth, Vandal, Hun, or some other kind of Goth I have forgotten about. But I’ll take that any day over the economic inefficiency of the late Roman Empire.”

To augment Chesterton’s oft-quoted phrase (If a thing is worth doing, it’s worth doing badly,” “If civilization is worth doing, it’s worth doing badly.”

Dave

 

*I love and admire Toynbee for many reasons.  But in some places he puts the decline of Rome at 431 B.C. (!), the same year as the outbreak of the Pelopponesian War in Greece.  He does this mostly because he sees much more similarity than difference between Greece and Rome.  One can make that argument, and he does so decently in his Recollections, but to carry it so far as to say that Rome began declining when Athens hit the wall goes way too far.

**In some ways the difference between Toynbee and Ferguson boils down, as (almost) always, to the differences between Plato and Aristotle.  Both are great–I prefer Toynbee and Plato.

Epilogue

I almost always find Toynbee stimulating, and I include some of his collected thoughts on the fall of Rome . . .

It is indeed, one of the tragic ironies that the idealists that arise within the ruling class should tread the same path of social migration as the wastrels.  The Graachi worked far greater havoc through a nobility [in the late Republic] to which someone like Commodus could never aspire. Commodus did far less damage by his own social truancy [i.e., pretending to be Hercules, fighting in the arena, etc.], by engaging in a vulgarity that represents a spiritual malaise, to which the Graachi would never fall.  

By their ‘downward migration’ towards the plebs, the Graachi incurred the wrath of their fellows, who punished them severely for abandoning their class privilege.  Commodus is uneventfully swallowed by the slough in which he delighted to wallow, whereas the Graachi released a kind of demonic energy into the masses of Rome.

*********

Seneca writes ca. A.D. 60 concerning the social function of the Emperor in one of his treatises. . .

 

“He is the bond that holds the Commonwealth together, he is the breath of life is breathed by his subjects, who in themselves would be nothing but a burden and a prey if they were left to their own devices through the removal of a presence which is the soul of the Empire.

 

Their king is safe?  One mind informs them all;

Lost?  They break faith straightway.

*********

If this calamity, written about by Vergil in his Georgics (IV, 212-13), which he imagines overtaking the bees, would overtake us, the people would be safe so long as it does not snap the reins, or–if they refuse to be bridled again.  Should this happen–then the texture of this mighty empire would be rent and its present tidiness would fly apart into a hundred shreds. Rome will cease to rule the moment they cease to render obedience.”

A foretaste of the fulfillment of the prophecy that Seneca made to the Emperor Nero was inflicted on the Roman world in A.D. 68-69 as an immediate result of Nero’s tyranny; but the first time round this calamity acted as a stimulus, for after the chaos Rome got Vespasian as emperor and relative calm.  Though Domitian (d. A.D. 96) tried his utmost to revive the chaos by claiming deity for himself, the tide was turned by a series of beneficial philosopher emperors who succeeded one another from Nerva (A.D. 96) through Marcus Aurelius (d. A.D. 180).

It was only after Marcus that the new “time of troubles” set in, and even then foolishness of Commodus managed to right itself after the civil wars of Severus, who repeated Vespasian’s work, though with a rougher and less skilled hand.  It was only after the death of Alexander Severus (A.D. 235) that the storm broke with shattering and uncontrollable violence.

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And finally, some of his thoughts on the drawn out length of Roman decline:

In the downward course of a civilization there is truth in the saying of the philosopher Heraclitus: “War is the father of all things.”  The sinister concentration of the resources of a civilization upon the business of fratricidal warfare may generate a military prowess that will place their neighbors at their mercy, may create a military technique that may grant them a far reaching technical mastery over the merely “Material World.”   

Since it is common to reckon success primarily by power and wealth, the opening chapters in the decline of a civilization will be hailed as times of blessing and growth, and this misconception can persist even for centuries.  Sooner or later, however, disillusionment is bound to follow, for a society that is hopelessly divided against itself is almost certain to try and double down on military might, for that is what seemed to work initially.

For example, we see the money-power and man-power won for Greek society by Alexander the Great, and these same vast resources used to intensify the civil wars between Alexander’s successors.  This same power swept into Roman hands through the meteoric rise in Rome’s land and wealth ca. 241-146 B.C. was just as quickly spent in the various civil wars that wracked Rome before the rise of Augustus and the Pax Romana.  For Spain, the treasure gained in the new world and the free labor of the essentially enslaved native populations was the food for their wars in Europe during the late 16th and early 17th centuries–the same wars that brought them into second-rate power status in Europe.

Thus the increasing command over the environment gained is apt to bestow upon a society a disintegration that puts a greater driving power into the suicidally demented society’s chosen work of self-destruction; and that story turns out to be a simple illustration of the theme that, “The wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23).  And again, the empires of industrialized Europe in the late 19th century gained the material resources to nearly destroy European civilization in our great Western civil war of 1914-18.

[Toynbee goes on to argue at length that Augustan synthesis bought Rome time, and brought Rome increased prosperity, nevertheless, it was an “Indian Summer” that lasted about 175 years that did nothing to fix Rome’s basic issues or  prevent the coming winter.]