Random Remarks - Quareness Series 119th "Lecture".
Here's a few random observations for these "strange" times:
- Our dominant economic system has placed competition as a cornerstone of growth and development. And so strong has been the hold of the economy on our values and beliefs that competition’s corrosive spirit seems to have seeped into every part of our lives. But perhaps deep down we have known this isn’t right...after all we often tend to qualify the whole concept with references to “healthy competition” giving it an illusion of goodness.
- In any competitive environment winners and losers are inevitable and there may be no end to this situation. Each win may give you an advantage placing you that much more ahead in the next round of competition and the next and the next...advantage and privilege heaped upon advantage and privilege. And as for those who must lose, they may get to begin each round that much further back and recede further and further.
- Winners are applauded and the losers are pitied thereby skilfully placing the blame not on the system itself but on the participants. And to alleviate our deep down uneasiness with this state of affairs, we delude ourselves that everybody can win if only they try hard enough.
- In the circumstances it's hardly unreasonable to conclude that for as long as such a culture of highly prized competitiveness remains a de facto fundamental value, successfully harnessing all of our resources for maximum aggregate effect/impact must remain “a pipe dream”.
- Bertrand Russell once pointed out that society passes into stagnation and illiberty once the conscience of its individual members comes under the control of monopolistic ideologies with each constantly sparring for supremacy. And perhaps this is the inevitable outcome of the "first half" of the formation of nations/civilisations
and the energy required to hold them together?
- He also maintained that the hypothesis for every freedom is non-conformity. And perhaps this is one reason why (in human psychology terms) the rise of pluralism is ultimately inevitable in any society?
- It's arguable that the raison d'etre of bureaucracy is rationality in the organisation of society. And it's more than arguable that human beings are not entirely rational creatures. It seems to make sense, therefore, that unless bureaucracies are constantly monitored/supervised, humanity will suffer.
- In turn it's arguable that the structure and spirit of our current political institutions facilitates our modern day authoritarianism/totalitarianism which may perhaps be best understood as a contemporary blend of three religio-philosophical traditions...
The first is the absolutist tradition with its many ramifications. For example it largely determines the principles of organisation within the state (and the economy), which are authoritarian and generally patterned on military lines. Irrespective of the title (democracy or otherwise) all authority exercised by or on behalf of the state stems from the person or persons at the top, while on every subordinate echelon the principal duties are those of obedience and responsibility to superiors. Again, those at the top are in effect above the law. The standards of conduct that apply to them are not those that apply to the private citizen. The leader is judged only by his success in maintaining and extending the power of the elite. Like under Machiavelli's principle..."if the act accuse him, the result will excuse him."
The second is organicism. According to this theory not only a nation, but say the whole West, is to be properly understood as an organic unity (like a human being) with a larger interest or general will that is necessarily superior to the interest or will of others. Such organicism has apparently now led to the conclusion that the
Western World has not only an organic reality but a super-reality so awesome that its apparent will is the true will of subordinate citizens, whether they think so or not. Nothing must then obstruct this super-organism from liquidating all elements within and outside it that interfere with the achievement of its objectives. (And when such
absolutism and organicism are combined, the general way of life and will of the people is identified with the will of the leaders).
The third is deliberate "irrationalism" to serve as catalyst in combining the two elements already mentioned. Sometimes an attitude, sometimes a manipulative device, sometimes a seriously proposed methodology, the express denial of the competence of reasonableness to guide human life opens the door to acts, claims and outright lies immune to effective criticism (on whatever side).
- Those early mass persuaders postured themselves as performing a moral service for humanity in general. Democracy was too good for people and they needed to be told what to think, because they were incapable of rational thought by themselves. "Those who manipulate the unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible
government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. In almost every act of our lives whether in the sphere of politics or business in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires
that control the public mind". These are the words of one "insider" who seems to have believed that only a few "with balls", like himself for example, possessed the necessary insight into the Big Picture to be entrusted with the sacred task of "informing the public's discretion". Democracy ain't at all what we may think it is.
- From a religious/spiritual point of view we might say that the eternal Holy Spirit cannot be confined to any particular or restricted community, given that marvellous generous gameplan from the outset - salvation for all? Our biological life is flat and circular....tramlines round the earthly city constructed by human hands where time is
birth, growth, decay and death i.e. chronological time and life. Resurrected life, on the other hand, holds time as kairos not chronos...event replaces cycles. Accordingly, we have to set our watches and hearts to awaken and be ready for ecstacy i.e. to stand outside (ex-stasis) time measured in minutes and hours. In order to counteract our linear, horizontal and circular serpentine tendencies and to prevent the circle from being an eternally repeated error, we have to keep on developing within us the urge upwards towards this kairos spiral.
- Manufactured realities may be symptomatic of the perhaps primal urge of a psychopathic tendency/worldview to destroy? As yer man Michael Ellner (the New York author & medical hypnotherapist) pointed out..."Everything is backwards. Everything is upside down. Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, psychiatrists destroy minds, scientists destroy truth, major media destroys information, religions destroy spirituality and governments destroy freedom". In the circumstances it can be encouraging to see increasing numbers turning away from the "matrix" and actively searching.
- In terms of personality, Kerry Packer (that brash outspoken entrepreneur of the late 20th century) had more than a few things in common with Donald Trump and Rupert Murdoch (another Australian). In 1990, Kerry suffered one of his four major heart attacks whilst playing polo. The attack left him clinically dead for a total of six minutes. Later on at a press conference he referred to this experience: “I’ve been to the other side and let me tell you, son, there’s f*cking nothing there…there’s no one waiting there for you, there’s no one to judge you so you can do what you bloody well like.”
Packer’s conviction that “there’s nothing f*cking there” on the other side and that thus you can (and should) do what you like may be one of the best tools we possess for understanding the way the world works today. The so-called elites, with their protective fatty membrane of politicians, media sycophants and rigged judiciaries, operate from the same belief system as Packer: we only live once, the world is up for grabs and may the best man (or rather, the worst man) win. There’s nothing to worry about except winning and holding on to what you’ve got. The rest is just empty background space, cannon fodder and raw materials to be exploited. They are convinced that they are right in this. They feel superior to everyone else in understanding the basic facts better and therein lies their right to the winnings. To remain undisturbed in their hegemony, they airbrush over their nihilistic beliefs, hiring legions of liars (politicians and media) to spread illusions of ethical governance to conceal the boundless predation and depredation in which they are so invested.
However, despite the prominent massive apparatus dedicated to distorting truth, there's a growing general awareness today of an Orwellian drift in government.
- We could look upon all this historical and ongoing unfolding as kinda like a giant jigsaw and the more pieces we have to consider to fit, the greater seems to be our prospects of making sense of the whole shebang. As the great bard hisself indicated
..."all the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players, they have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts..."
- Back around 2003/04 the New York Times in trying to explain M theory (spawn of string theory) as simply as possible to a general audience wrote - "The ekpyrotic (from Greek word for conflagration) process begins far in the indefinite past with a pair of flat empty branes (i.e. membranes) sitting parallel to each other in a warped five-dimensional space...The two branes, which form the walls of the fifth dimension, could have popped out of nothingness as a quantum fluctuation in the even more distant past and then drifted apart". And as that light-hearted writer Bill Bryson commented..."No arguing with that. No understanding it either".
With regard to cosmology he also noted one suggestion that we have "a mountain of theory built on a molehill of evidence" and another that "our present satisfaction (with our state of understanding) may reflect the paucity of the data rather than the excellence of the theory". Fairly close to the mark still?
In addition he cited two (appropriately labelled?) main current theories for what the universe is made of...WIMPS (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles i.e. specks of invisible matter left over from the Big Bang) and MACHOS (Massive Compact Halo Objects i.e black holes, brown dwarfs and other very dim stars) with astrophysicist
sentiment swinging back and forth between them. But as someone pointed out even with all the known factors added in "two-thirds of the universe is still missing from the balance sheet" which we might call DUNNOS (Dark Unknown Nonreflective Objects Somewhere). His conclusion - we're living in a universe whose age we can't quite
compute, surrounded by stars whose distance from us and each other we don't altogether know, filled with matter we can't identify, and operating in conformance with physical laws whose properties we don't truly understand.
And personally I'm quite content with this state of affairs given the potential therein for our on-going learning (our real reason for being here?).
- Work is the result of original sin?
Yes indeedy...in the wonderful world of religiosity...mans' privileged and harmonious state in the Garden of Eden (Evil?) was torn asunder and devastating consequences ensued as a result of the original of the species "acting the tool"...Grim Reaper came onto the scene - "for you are dirt and to dirt you shall return" (Genesis 3:19)...man
was now to work for a living - "by the sweat of your face shall you get bread to eat" (3:19)...and the women also got a bad rap - "I will intensify the pang of your childbearing; in pain shall you bring forth children" (3:16). The painful toil of redemption became the only game in town. After all that what more was to be said except maybe "Jaysus Joey" (a la Jimmy Rabbitte in yer man Roddy Doyle's "The Commitments").
No wonder Oscar regarded work as the curse of the drinking classes.
- It's kinda ironic that the word lucifer means light in some modern languages despite the "original of the species" having been blinded by pride. Poor proud Adam & Eve would seem to have been just curious and seeking knowledge. The impact of their expulsion from the Garden can perhaps be seen as necessitating active learning/
thinking on the part of all their descendents in order to find our way back to paradise, and this time around know it on the rational mature level.
We can pity the poor snake which got a bad rap, but at least it does appear to have an inbuilt ability to regularly change its "overcoat"...a sort of renewal of itself perhaps reflecting the wisdom for our own human "growth" of shedding the ego from time to time?
There's a theory that the fallen angels are the stars in the sky who were expelled from heaven in the Big Bang (or God breathing out) - someone's attempt to match up creationist and scientific notions of how we got here - and that when "God" breathes in all will fall back into heaven!
- Perhaps we humans tend to see only what we aim for, with our perception adjusted to our aims? If our aims are dark and corrupted, we'll likely see the dark and corrupt things that facilitate those aims. And if our aims are high, we'll see different things...
belief colouring perception.
- The Adam & Eve myth shows us the coming of self-consciousness and an awareness of mortality / vulnerability / the future / good and evil, when everyone in the story starts to lie and dodge the blame...Adam blames Eve...Eve blames the serpent...then Cain & Abel come along and the former having gone and murdered his own brother out of resentment against him and God alike, then lies about it.
It may be vitally important that we don't underestimate malevolence and indeed our individual capacity for such (it was "so-called" normal people who were responsible for many/most of the atrocities of history?). And defence of the individual against groupthink may also be vitally important for our collective wellbeing...just as it may be quite enlightening for each of us to read history as potential perpetrator rather than victim.
Sean.
Dean of Quareness.
May, 2020.