Here's something about on-line writing. It's always the afterthought, the thrown-off idea that sends ripples thru the pond. Turns out my best post last night was the Beckett post on love of the Irish people. My friend Mark, a Catholic, responds:
2. Nevertheless, cultures, not all-too-fallible individuals, ultimately nurture, maintain and pass on what is valuable in the human spirit. A paradox, if you will. Cultural love and pride without narcissism and with tolerance for analogous human efforts.
Innaresting. I'm a fallible individualist. Yet I know that like other frogs, I look back fondly on the pond where I tadpoled.
And this just in: In a letter to Max Brod, a Zionist writer, in 1917, Kafka wrote that with respect to "the existent or prospective community of our people… I have not acquitted myself well, and moreover I have failed in such a fashion–I know from close observation–as has no one else around me."
It is clear that Kafka, who lived in a Jewish/Zionist world, failed for the same reason that Arendt and Beckett failed in this same regard 20 and 40 years on during the history of European nationalism: because they were writers seeking to serve humanity, not just a subset of humanity. And isn't it interesting that each of these writers made his/her disclosure of failure in a letter to a nationalist friend: Max Brod, Gershom Scholem, and Thomas McGreevy. All writers themselves–and none nearly as memorable as the failure.
"1. Paul in Galatians maintains that love of Jewish "chosen-ness" is idolatry, is narcissism. Applies to all nationalisms."
This is why only Christianity is equipped to be "the right hand of power." Judaism is tribalism, nationalism is tribalism, and left-liberal multi-culturalism is nothing but a patchwork of tribes pursuing their own narcissistic interests at the expense of the whole under the guise of "universalism."
Statists say: "Oh, democracy is the new Christianity." But that just leads to clowns like Clinton and Bush.
Ed, Are you saying that christianity and islam are not tribal in nature? Everyone wants to be the chosen people. Every tribe calls itself chosen, from the aborigines of the world to Adolf Hitler. You must be joking.
Are you saying that christianity and islam are not tribal in nature? Everyone wants to be the chosen people. Every tribe calls itself chosen, from the aborigines of the world to Adolf Hitler.
While that might be true – up to a point*, none of those 'tribes' have the means and power to erect impregnable walls between them and the rest of Humanity.
* Christianity & Islam are more universalist than tribalist, which is a characteristic that while decried by many, at the same time has the advantage of providing both with an appeal that exclusivist ideologies cannot have.
I'm saying let the marketplace of ideas decide who is chosen.
We know Jews don't want to lower themselves or dilute their bloodlines by proselytizing, so they are out of the running. We know that the statists have to promote their own choseness at the point of a gun, so that's not exactly an accurate measure. And we know that the Jewish Zionists promote their choseness in the same way.
Why not get these coercive, strong-arming elements out of the way and let the marketplace decide? What are they so scared of? Competition?
The whole animating principle underlying these statist and Jewish types is that they know they can’t win hearts and minds without using the monopoly on force provided by the State to rig the game and coerce loyalty or compliance to the concept of their own “choseness." And anyone who beleives that the Leftist elites, for example, consider themselves any less "chosen" than do the Jews is deluded.
RE: "…they were writers seeking to serve humanity, not just a subset of humanity…"
MY COMMENT: "CONSCIOUS PARIAHS!"
Ditto Re: "…because they were writers seeking to serve humanity, not just a subset of humanity….
Like the figure of Christ, the principle of humanitarianism carried out, Christ spurned no one. But those writers never claimed to be other than mere humans–High literature is the result of a tremendous singular effort to discover and share what it is to be human. That's why the world over can thrill to the Classics.
Too bad Christ himself didn't write his own parables down. Probably would have went nuts like Nietzsche and anyway his overlapping ambiguities would have been misinterpreted. Marx did not consider himself a marxist. History is full of false messiahs–we might even have one in the White House now?
Proust wasn't big on "the Jewish people" either; he's been accused of latent anti-Semitism
because in the early manuscripts for A la recherche du temps perdu there is an extended portrait of Swann's mother, which was deleted from the first typescript for Combray. He also subscribes to certain socio-evolutionist ideas about "race" in these early uncensored texts. That Jewish mother thing is a perennial a la Philip Roth et al. Talk about love-hate.
I would say that Christianity–by which I understand the Catholic Church–is definitely not tribal. With Protestantism it's harder to say, since many Protestant groups consciously imitate Judaism to a significant degree–think of the Pilgrims, for example, as having a self understanding of themselves as a Chosen People voyaging to a Promised Land.
Islam, I think, is tribal. But more properly I call it the ideologization of a way of life. That is, it idealizes the Bedouin raiding way of life–a predatory, parasitic life on the margins of civilization–and extends it to the entire earth. Thus, the way of life becomes a universal ideology: whereas the Bedouin raided opportunisticly, the Jihadi is under a positive injunction to not merely raid and plunder but to subdue all humanity. While Mohammed is termed a "prophet," I think his role is better understood as a shaman. I also believe a comparison between Islam and the Mongol expansion is highly instructive. There are, I believe, many parallels.
To expand slightly, note that Islam follows Judaism to some degree, in that it divides all humanity into ingroup and outgroup. It has been historically difficult to join Judaism, and still is, depending on a number of factors–thus deep divisions on just who is a Jew? Islam, on the other hand, like Christianity, is easy to join, but those who decline to join are treated as, well, perhaps worse than Gentiles. This, I maintain, is typically tribal. Christianity, while allowing the distinction between believer and non, in principle maintains that in the eyes of God there is no difference between "Jews and Gentiles," to quote Paul. What nominal Christians have done in practice is another matter, but the fundamental religious experience is different.
Yes, mark I agree, as may perhaps Ed; correct me if I am wrong but the word "catholic" originally meant "universal," or no?
Yes. From a Greek expression meaning general, all inclusive, taken as a whole. It refers to the union of the local churches in the universal church.