Utopias, Shigalyovs, Lotharios and Suffering

I think I am coming to terms with the fact that I may be destined to be both naturally conservative, or traditional, or likely, a nostalgist, and yet a Socialist. I love the small things, the old songs, the old traditions, the family. Not the mere nuclear family, the Dobson family, or what have you, but the whole of a family, the family that extends into the past and is broad, deep and abiding, neck deep in vice and virtue. How ever rare such a family may be, both in our time and in ages past, it is beautiful when it happens.

I am a Socialist because I see Capital crushing and leveling the small, the old, the family. I am convinced that in the world to come, the socialist ideal is the closest we have imagined to how it will be. Some say that is utopia making, that we cannot achieve it in this world, in this time. To a certain extent I agree, but we need utopias and ideals. Can we achieve socialism? I think not. That does not mean we should not strive intensely to get there. To emulate that ideal and get as close as we can. Liberty, equality, brotherhood. Is that not half the Gospel? How we are to relate to each other?

I agree with Dostoevsky’s criticisms of utopias, when those utopias are the visions of men imposed on his fellow man. I despise both the slavemaster Capitalist and the bleeding heart Liberal who would tell us all how to live. Ayn Rand is as guilty as any Shigalyov. No, my dear Chesterbellocian, Socialism is not about the State owning the means of production, controlling the lives of it’s subjects. Socialism sees the State fading away. The land, the water, the air, all that is contained in it and the tools of production that are brought forth from it, are the creations of God and are His handwork, and are the common inheritance of all mankind.

So, yes, I believe in a “traditional” family, or rather, the Christian ideal of the family, which rarely exists. I believe in all of those surrounding tropes of heterosexuality and per-marital abstinence, and so forth. Yet, I believe those beliefs, the old moral teachings related to sex, are used by those who would destroy us. A liberal Christian might point out that Christ rarely spoke about sex, to make the point that perhaps it doesn’t matter. I don’t say that. It does matter, but that same argument does lend some perspective to how much it matters in the grand scheme of things, which is probably very little. Especially in relation to caring for the suffering. That is the true test of an ideology, and dare I say, a Church, a parish: how do they care for the suffering? I have been to parishes where they drive out the suffering, barring those rare types who can smile while their lives are torn asunder.

One of my best friends is a man who has a weakness for the ladies. He is open about his sin and will call it that, “my sin.” Which he rightly notes that we all have, in one form or another. Once another friend told me that the ladies’ man needs to decide who he is – the faithful Orthodox Christian or Lothario. I think not. My favorite definition of kitsch is “the absolute denial of shit.” And kitsch is from Satan himself, dear readers. Especially a life lived as kitsch. That is why our Monsieur Lothario is one of the few real and true Christians I have ever met. The shit is right there for you to see. Not reveling in it, just letting it be there and so. Being Christian isn’t hiding your vices from the eyes of the world. It isn’t policing other people’s bedrooms. It is to love both God and man, to try and be better, to care for the suffering, and God knows the world is filled with enough of them.

Some Anarchists like to say, “No kings, no gods.” I like, rather, “No kings but God.” However trite that might be, and even if I am a secularist.

Χριστός ἀνέστη!

Remember Mr. Angry?

Harrowing

Moreover, Death fell down to the feet of Christ, and Christ carried him away, and the Devil who had been a rebel became a captive. Christ made Amente to quake and the power of the Devil he turned backwards. Death heard the voice of the Lord as he cried unto all souls: “Come forth, O ye who are bound in fetters, O ye who sit in the darkness and shadow of death, on you hath the light risen. I preach unto you life, for I am Christ, the Son of God.” Then he set free the souls of the saints, and he raised them up with Him.

And earth itself cried out, saying: “Spare me, O Lord. Free Thou me from the curse that is on me. Remove from me the wickedness of the Devil. Thou hast held me to be worthy of having Thy Body buried in me, in the place of the Blood, which was poured out upon me, in order that Thou mightest raise men from the dead. Thy glorious image is spread abroad in every place. Except Thyself, when Thou utterest Thy words, no one shall resist Thy commands; but it was Thy love which compelled Thee to come to the beings whom Thou hast made. Take Thou, then, man, the deposit. Take Thou Thine image, which Thou hast committed as a pledge to me. Take Thou Adam, being complete in his likeness.”

Then Christ rose from the dead in the third hour of the day, and he took the saints with him to the Father; now all mankind shall receive salvation through the death of Christ.

For one was judged instead of all men, and salvation and mercy [came] into the whole world. Moreover, one died in order that all might rise from the dead. And the Lord died on behalf of everyone, in order that every one should rise from the dead with Him. For having died, he put man on himself like a garment, and took him with him into the heavens, and man became one of one with him. He took him as a gift to his Father.

-Coptic Homilies in the Dialect of Upper Egypt

Hung Upon A Tree

Big Country Sky

Camping season is coming on soon. I am now counting the dwindling days until  I will fill the ice chest with beer, chorizo, bacon and BBQ beans, throw it in the tent trailer, hitch it up and head on out to Joshua Tree. There’s nothing like the desert in the spring. Strap on the hiking boots, listen to nothing but the wind and forget about the world.

Drinking Myself Smart

Half the group drank the equivalent of two pints of beer before doing the tests, while the rest carried them out sober.

The drinking group solved nearly 40 per cent more problems than the others, and took an average of 12 seconds compared to the 15.5 seconds needed by sober subjects.

It’s official. Drinking makes one smarter. Now I have justification for making my coffee Irish.

Purposelessness

As particle physics revolutionizes the concepts of “something” (elementary particles and the forces that bind them) and “nothing” (the dynamics of empty space or even the absence of space), the famous question, “Why is there something rather than nothing?” is also revolutionized. Even the very laws of physics we depend on may be a cosmic accident, with different laws in different universes, which further alters how we might connect something with nothing. Asking why we live in a universe of something rather than nothing may be no more meaningful than asking why some flowers are red and others blue.

Perhaps most remarkable of all, not only is it now plausible, in a scientific sense, that our universe came from nothing, if we ask what properties a universe created from nothing would have, it appears that these properties resemble precisely the universe we live in.

Does all of this prove that our universe and the laws that govern it arose spontaneously without divine guidance or purpose? No, but it means it is possible.

And that possibility need not imply that our own lives are devoid of meaning. Instead of divine purpose, the meaning in our lives can arise from what we make of ourselves, from our relationships and our institutions, from the achievements of the human mind.

-A universe without purpose

….from the creation of a socialist utopia via perpetual revolution of the masses. I jest.

The author, of course, refers to to the idea of a universe with purpose as a fantasy universe. Quite silly. The very idea of the universe coming forth from nothing, ex nihilo, is one of the most basic of Christian theology. Really, all of this is perfectly consistent with Christian thought, outside the fundamentalist strain that obsesses over the historicity of various narratives. Like the inability to find the particle that consists of nothing but itself, modern science has been remarkably consistent with Christian philosophical thought. It doesn’t prove anything one way or the other, but it is interesting.

In the end, I always find such ideas of finding ones own meaning in a meaningless universe, the creation of one’s personal übermensch of one sort or another, to be in some sense small minded, missing something essentially human.