But I would like to go on record right now:
I hate bull fighting
Part of the reason that I don’t Ernest Hemingway is because he was into bullfighting. I don’t think it’s macho to kill bulls. I don’t think that contemptuous eyeing of the bull that is supposed to be sexually charged is that. I think its barbaric, fixed, and sick.
As I said about Christ in The Passion, bullfighting is Thanatos on display.
Sick.
Like explodingdog.com
The owner makes drawings to emails people send him.
Some of them are touching, some are tragic, pathetic, and they all are beautiful in their own way..
It’s odd to find such a site while watching Hedwig and the Angry Inch.
It’s an incredibly eclectic film, it pulls an amazing set of icons and standards and pop culture isms in that post operatic postmodern glam opera rock characterized by T. Rex, and the Rocky Horror soundtrack.
Oh and a good dash of Marlene Dietrich makes things all the weirder.
Great voices, very good acting, and a very strange plot. It’s definitely original despite having clear predecessors in Rocky Horror, David Bowie, and Marilyn Manson.
This is a slightly modified version of an email I sent to my parents and sister. All of them are a good deal more religious than yours truly, but here s my take on the film and the ministry of Christ
I do not plan on seeing The Passion. The movie, I have been told, and feel free to correct me, starts with the betrayal and for the remaining balance of the film, aside from a few brief flashbacks, is the corporeal scourging of Jesus.
Jesus’ physical torture is not the message of Christianity. Christianity was a religion of the underclass, of the oppressed, of the beaten down. The original Christians lived the tortures of The Passion every day. No, the message of Christ’s ministry is hope, its moment is the Resurrection, its holiday is Easter.
This movie encourages the masses to focus on the wrong part of Christ’s terrestrial visit.
Freud said that man’s actions were the result of a battle between the eros instinct (to create, to preserve, to procreate) and the thanatos instinct (the urge to destroy, to revel in death and destruction) [ Original source: Beyond the Pleasure Principle, summary]. Jesus’ final hours can either be seen as precursors to salvation (eros) of the soul or glorifications of the body [ which can be reversely illustrated through torture] (thanatos). To focus on the thanatos exclusively strikes me as demented and immature, quite possibly even psychotic.
This film seems like an unadulterated flow for two hours of thanatos. I think that authors and artists who dwell exclusively in the thanatos instinct are sick.
I think religions that glorify corporeal mortification and that obsess about scenes of history like The Passion are likewise ill (thus I’m no fan of certain sects of Catholicism, in particular).
Gibson appeals to sadomasochistic sexuality in the film and essentially asks the audience to get off on the thanatos-charged glory of blood. I’m, quite frankly, disgusted.
Gibson serves up, under the cover of Christian history, the same foul aspect of human existence which enjoys snuff films, yells “jump” to a man on a ledge, and lets ones eyeballs feast on the bloody corpses of Iraqi schoolchildren blown up by missiles.
Sick? Yes. But we all know that we let this greater evil of our nature run wild in moments of fear and loss. Am I asked for proof? What did you do all day on 9/11? Is the scene of people leaping out of the WTC not burned into your memory?
To admit we have this instinct is one thing, to cater to this instinct in glorious rich physical detail ( like those lush colors captured in Mel’s Panaflex celluloid ) with the deep enfolding beauty of gorgeous Mediterranean actresses is perverse.
I can think of one other form of visual titillation which operates in the same manner and which has the exact same effect upon the soul: pornography.
Here’s another, war films (thanks Chris Hedges). War films as much as they deride war (Platoon, Full Metal Jacket) invite you into their orgy of death. The rich visual media pull you in, you go with Private Joker through Boot Camp, you thrill as they lay waste to the Vietnam stronghold, you are even invited to thrill as he puts a bullet in an illiterate rice patty farmer woman’s head. Thus even anti-war movies become war pornography.
The Passion is Christ pornography.
Gibson’s perversion of the message of Christianity aside, I think he’s acting cheaply as an artist.
It’s artistically dishonest and cheap to turn the screws on a mother/son relationship. You know you’re guaranteed to extract pain from the audience, to protract it is perverse, cynical filmmaking.
The film strikes me a perversion of the Christian spirit and, based on the amount of marketing associated with the film (http://www.sharethepassionofthechrist.com/), I wonder what Jesus’ reaction to this financial endeavour would be given his stormy relationship with moneychangers.
I fear that the Christian majority who are praising this film do not realize that they are sowing the philosophical seeds of the destruction of their faith. Strange that the same parties that decry the commercialization of Christmas are praising The Passion, the media event. Do they not realize that just as the history of the Holocaust has been re-written by Spielberg, so too will the history of Jesus Christ be turned into a commercial institution? Do not these masses realize that supporting The Passion is undermining the strength of the Christian faith?
So, no I will not see The Passion for I believe true Christianity is worth trying to preserve.
I have a few additional thoughts on the matter in the extended entry (more…)
Purpose and Atheism or Purposelessness and Christianity, an Exploration
By: Steven G. Harms
Introduction:
Mice has recently asked some challenging questions on his blog (http://www.miceland.com).
See posts on purpose here
“…if one does not believe in God, where does one’s purpose come from? Where does meaning come from?”
Essentially, and if I may be so gauche as to meta-analyze my friend and co-worker, Mice is asking The Great Existential Question. In this, he joins a long legacy of philosophers both atheist and Christian. I provide a quote and and a ‘mindset’ that represents said quote in parentheses.
“Without God[1], what is the purpose of my existence?” (Ancient Greek, Roman virtue ethics)
“Without God, what is the basis for moral behavior” (Sartre)
or, as the Kierkergaard would have phrased it in Christian terms,
“Under the all-watchful eye of a non-interventionist God, how shall I comport myself?”
I will address the first question and re-state it thus:
“If one does not believe in God, where does one’s purpose come from?”
This reprhasing is a close approximation of Mice’s view. I will examine the two key arguments contained in Mice’s position:
I will argue against position One with the thesis: Without God, a purposeful existence is possible.
I will argue against Position Two with: Belief in God does not automatically define human purpose.
I shall first build the case to show that without God, human purpose is possible.
Nausea:
Mice recounts vividly in his ‘blog how accepting the non-existence of God causes him great anguish.
Mice clearly feels that in a God-less universe his life, and perhaps all human life, has no purpose. He describes a certain level of dread that Sartre called anguish. He recounts the listless nausea of being directionless. Like Descartes, he feels as if cast head-first into cold water (The Meditations). I will use this concept of nausea repeatedly throughout the rest of this essay.
He is feeling the sickness that comes with leaving innocence and taking responsibility. He is tasting the true bitter fruit of Eve’s blessing and curse- that he will know whether his actions are good or ill.
Imagine man, with total moral agency and total moral responsibility. In the story of Genesis we find our primeval parents acting as such total moral agents and then they eat from the Tree of Knowledge. What follows is a very telling passage where we see the all too weak moral fiber of humans:
KJV: Genesis 3:11-13
11: And he said, Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat?
12: And the man said, The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.
13: And the LORD God said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.
Saddled with total moral agency, our primeval parents opted to act cowardly, he to turn upon his beloved and she to pass the buck. Hardly a profile in courage.
(Aside:I recall Lord of the Rings where Frodo first starts to feel the weight of being the ring-bearer and he tries desperately to give it away, to fall from the challenge, to return to his Eden like Shire.)
It is so much harder to choose, to direct ones life than to be directed. Man, weak, sniveling, cowardly man, immediately sought to give up responsibility. To be weak instead of strong, to cower instead of choose, to blame instead of to be brave.
This is the essence of the burden of being human in a God-less world - the same world that Adam and Eve suddenly found themselves after this interrogation.
We feel nausea? Surely those two had it much, much worse.
In this tale we see an essential existential truth: Equally cursed and blessed with this great power of moral agency, mankind prefers to escape its terrible weight.
So what did Adam do (with some slight reconciliation with God, a matter of a certain set of BVDs of leaves comes to mind)? He went into the lands East of Eden and by the work and the sweat of his brow would he provide for Eve and their children. Eve would, in turn, use the Godlike power given from the Tree to create Life (with much pain).[2] Their purpose became to exist in spite of being cast out.
Eventually the survival necessity came to define Adam. Adam’s purpose became to be the first made, cast out, but who still survives. As Socrates said, “To be is to do.” In his doing, in his toil, Adam was. As Camus said in The Myth of Sisyphus, despite the fact that Sisyphus’ task is futile and absurd, he will not quit, for to be the man that pushes a rock up and down a hill endlessly is what it is to, at the core, be Sisyphus.
Thus in an atheistic world, to act, to achieve, to attain, to survive, to define the goal of the orbit of ones life - and to singularly bear the responsibility for these choices - is ones purpose. Like the fallen host of Paradise Lost we must strike out to find our own purpose anew. We must seek the ribs of gold in the furrows of earth and build a kingdom in our surrounds.[2.5]
Religion and Avoidance of the Burden:
Yet some cannot bear this burden, to act as they see fit and bear responsibility for it. As such, they mortgage off their agency for a myth - a myth that will provide comfort, a myth that will guide them, a myth that will take the nausea away. Adam and Eve didn’t have these myths for solace, but in time powerful people came to realize that by controlling what people fear, you have over the fearful. Thus religion as “Your personal intercessor to spiritual matters, Inc.” was born.
Luther rightly saw what had been done. The burden of individual responsibility had been taken away, as a profit opportunity. This is why his theses against the sale of indulgences were written. Religion created a fix for the symptom (nausea) but at the expense of creating a populous of cowering, weak-willed, children. Marx realized that this false panacea would allow the proletariat to accept their victimization, Nietzsche realized that this model of religion stole away some percentage of the will of man to be beautiful and strong. In short, these philosophers tried to warn us that we were selling bits of our soul to avoid being truly human and truly free.
To retreat, to find solace in myths and lies which help one find reason to limit one’s total responsibility - this is what Sartre called bad faith. To give up the burden of being responsible, the burden of making choices, to let someone else decide for you … this is a terrible thing. Sartre theorized that if the Church could make you do it today, man could make you do it tomorrow. You would sign over your free will for answers, in short you would stop thinking because it was easier [3].
Beyond Religion:
So if God doesn’t exist, whither shall we find purpose? How shall we proceed?
The first step is to accept this body-crushing responsibility - one must accept total moral responsibility. Then, at the very least, you are truly a man (or woman). The next step is to take the responsibility of deciding what the purpose of your life is - and to be prepared to bear the weight of your choice. You must avoid dividing your gift-burden of moral agency and selling it to the hawkers of religious snake oil.
“Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”
Man’s Search for Meaning, p.172
In short, on Earth, we should seek to build Heaven on Earth, where the sick are treated, where the orphaned are cared for, and respect rules over exploitation. This is our atheistic goal, and so long as individuals can mortgage off responsibility under a veil of confusion and the cover of irresponsibility, conveniently supplied by religion the snake-oil hawkers will retain the upper hand.
It informs language even today…
“As a Muslim I celebrate the attack…” - Osama bin Laden
“This is a case of good and evil, right and wrong” - G.H.W. Bush
“They are part of an Axis of Evil” - G.W. Bush
Each of these can be re-stated in a way that puts the choice of action in the hands of the speaker, not in the will of some abstract diety, as if “God / Allah made me do it” is still a legitimate excuse? If I said “Quetzalcóatl made me kill the busload of nuns because they are evil” I would find myself quickly incarcerated - yet the worlds’ leaders use this same manner of speech to describe the pathway of our decisions?
Thus I have shown a model of how a purposeful existence can be found in an atheistic world. I now ask, is it necessarily true that belief in God endows one with purpose? The answer is no, and that despite a belief in God’s existence, one winds up living according to the model described above.
In Converse:
Belief in an interventionist God with whom one has a relationship does not define purpose. I believe in God, great. Am I to go to the store, buy food for homeless people, murder a man? Should I feel good about that?
Belief in God can only serve to make one, post-facto, feel good or bad about one’s actions. Many Christians I know state that they don’t know what their purpose is, but they feel that God has a plan for them. This is well and good, but no purpose has been defined. One is still living in the universe described above where evaluative statements about the quality of ones actions are either assented to or judged lacking by a dusty book.
Conclusion:
I suspect that God, at the end of days, will ask us how we exemplified His spirit and did His work when we were on earth. Consigning our responsibility is not the first step towards pleasing Him, taking the burden of responsibility is the first step to doing His work. We made ourselves Gods in the garden and we must act in a manner worthy to this custodianship. God built us to be simple and naïve, Eve and Adam opted for something more, to raise the bar. Let us seek to excel in this task and create His Kingdom here.
—-
Footnotes:
1. Mice’s language is imprecise with the term “atheist” (of course, a ‘blog is not a place for linguistic precision, but as we are proceeding to chase that quarry that loves to hide, let us presently take the time to be precise). I understand “one does not believe in God” to be synonymous with “believes in a non-interventionist God”, “believes in a God who has no concern with the Good or Evil of human behavior”, as well as “the person in question is an outright atheist” etc. I do not believe such modification ruins the spirit of his question, although a reader may feel free to contest this.
2. I find it haunting that this story so closely parallels the fall of Lucifer. Lucifer sought to be like the Most High and wast cast down and has worked to frustrate creation ever since. It seems that the Serpent, if accepted as an agent of Lucifer, pulled a fast one on Yahweh, and got Him to act in exactly the right way to build a bond between mankind and Lucifer. Both cast out, both feel the nausea of severance, both exist both by the grace of and in spite of The Creator. It’s strange that Adam didn’t thumb his nose and begin a more adversarial (Satanic, as the word Satan actually merely means “adversary”) relationship with God.
One might suspect that this parallelism was meant to be a link between the Luciferian plan and mankind.
2.5. I suspect that the human plight mirrors the Luciferian incident and that’s why, quite to the contrary of Milton’s intentions, his Lucifer is a much more sympathetic and interesting character than any other party in the Paradise cycle.
I will also assert that one can harmonize this view with Christian ethic, I believe, but that is beyond the scope of this document and, frankly, is a question that the Church should examine for itself.
3. Keep in mind the years that Sartre is writing in Being and Nothingness - in the immediate aftermath of World War II. Sartre had seen his countrymen collaborate with the Nazis to assist in the obliteration of others of his countrymen and for him, anything that obfuscated the total responsibility of the acting agent (Appeals to social norms, appeals to religion, Allah’s Will) was a treason against this absolute responsibility. To be afraid of the Church for encouraging similar behavior is not entirely unreasonable either, the Vatican took no stand against Hitler and the reign of the Inquisition was not an entirely distant memory.
Heterochromia iridium
It’s when you have two irises of differing colors.
Actress Kate Bosworth sports this. She’s in Blue Crush. I’m watching it right now. The story is pretty so-so, but the surf photography is out-standing.
Iris is the ancient Gr∑∑k word for rainbow.
Addendum
Movie features the Tahitian Hula, always a pleasure for the eyes. Grade of movie just went up one letter.
Movie features Fiji, also known as Mount Fiji, formerly of the gorgeous ladies of wrestling (GLOW). I may have to look into buying this.
Oh crap, a big sappy romantic moment where she thinks she can’t chase her dream and the guy comforts her and stuff and makes her go on with her dream. God I’m such a sappy Romantic sucker.
Addendum II
The sound on this movie is incredible. I would say that if you have surround sound you must watch this movie late at night, with the sound waaayyy up, the subwoofer tweakked to maximum. The sound of the waves crashing, the foley, the foam, it’s absolutely incredible. When you hear the sounds of the banzai pipeline breaking on your left and right you really get that feel of how deafening the waves in the agitator are.
I’ve not written philosophy or on philosophical matters (per se, I always try to write philosophically, of course) in quite some time. Recently my co-worker Mice has asked some tough questions about God, religion, and purpose at his site.
See posts on purpose here
I have worked to craft an answer to his questions and have posted them in Philolog.
I am watching CSPAN2’s book TV where a panel is discussing the myth of warfare.
On the panel we have Athony Swofford, author of Jarhead, and Chris Hedges, combat correspondent and author of War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning.
Hedges pointed out that most of the coverage of the accounts of the battles in Iraq describe the effectiveness of the weapons: they are precise, they are accurate, they are effective and thus by extension, so is the empire that produces them. Thus the coverage builds the success of the nation, it is an autocatalytic cycle that expands Nationalist Sentiment.
I am reminded of the myth that Hitler and the Nazi party shared towards the end of WWII that the wunderwaffen (wonder weapons) would save Deutschland. More deeply, it would save Deutschland and legitimate Deutsche Nationalism.
So when the coverage praises the weapon, fear the country. I mean seriously, what the fuck are we praising, the efficiency of which we can obliterate human life? When we buy into the myth of the Other we enable ourselves to voyeuristically achieve climax in the orgy of death. Belief in the other is centreal to pretty much every horrible action of human history.
I always thought it was particularly obscene the way Cold War Russia would parade missiles on truckbeds through Moscow (Kim Jong Il does the same bit in North Korea). Is it not more obscene that our nation of Hollywood does it more sickeningly, glossing over the creation of the other, glossing over the obscenity with which we achieve death. Yay!
Other sayings from Hedges:
War is the most intoxicating drug ever invented by man.
The essence of war is death. Not nationalism. It is a poison. It is commercilized, refit, and spun. In the same way that tobacco companies or liquor companies sell you death glamourized, so has the White House sold us death.
It’s not the titilation and excitement that the embedded journalists sold us.
It is impossible to create an anti-war movie. All war movies are war porn. It’s like making a movie denouncing pornography that features graphic love scenes.
The Bush Administration has tried to hide the essential fact of warfare.
When will we wake up and say enough? When will the Toby Keith lines stop having their magic narcotic effect?
Wearied, I am reminded of Jarrell:
Randall Jarrell The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner
From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.
Is this picture and this poem worth it? What is it we are in Iraq for?
WMDs? an al-Qaeda link?
Wolfowitz’s ego?
I see now we’re stuck there, but what did we go there for, really? And what will it take to get our soldiers back home?
Monday I took my first class in Flamenco guitar. I went with my friend The Army Guy to Starving Musician in Santa Clara and picked up a cheap classical six-string ($50.00 - what a deal).
I went to the class and was pleased to see that the few things I remember about guitar technique and theory were really helpful. My teacher set me off with some challenges and I will work on it this week.
I was really inspired to try to get back into this based on this brilliant flamenco show my sister and I saw in Madrid. It was great. It was in the middle of some hard to find alleyway (as is just about everything worth seeing in Spain). You walk into a restaurant and you’re like ‘uhhh’ but then you see this curtain at the back. Through the curtain, it feels very sorta secret society secret meetup-ish, you find dozens of chairs crammed together. They serve you sangria and out come the musicians. The musicians come to the stage and start to play, soon there are dancers and more music. It was a great show.
While I don’t expect to find myself performing at a show in the near future, I would definitely like to pick up some new skills.
Last night was also my first night back at yoga class since my trip / sickness. I was exhausted when I got home and was in bed at 9pm!
When in the Barr?o Gotic do as the …. ehhhh …. ride a bike.
I believe it was Neal Stephenson who once opined:
“Anyone can condescend you, but it takes a Unix user to do it right”
Well, in a similar vein I will stake:
“Anyone can be sanctimonious, but it takes a Public Broadcasting Service member to do it right.”
After years of shamefully leeching off the backs of other good residents of the area’s donations I righted myself with Host and Humanity by joining KQED.
I even got a nifty bumper sticker.
Now when I drive my righteous ass up and down the highways I can make all those other leeches in their leech-mobiles remember their leechy place in society. Scum.
:: self-satisfied * ahem * ::