A priest and a prophet

 When I was in junior high, I got into a war of wills with my mother. She was a hardcore Episcopalian, and was hellbent, no pun intended, on me getting confirmed in the church.

At the time, I had just emerged (mostly) from my nihilistic juvenile delinquent phase but had no interest whatsoever in religion

We butted heads but eventually struck a deal: I’d go to confirmation classes with Father Bill Kirkland, the new priest at St. Timothy’s in Hurricane, and then make my own decision.

Kirkland was one of the most remarkable people I’ve ever known, although I was slow in recognizing it. He was raised in rural Georgia as a severe fundamentalist, attending a very strict Baptist college with the original John Birch, for whom the hardcore rightwing conspiracy theory-believing John Birch Society was named.

Kirkland eventually moved on theologically but didn’t give up on religion. After serving in WW2, he studied theology at Edinburgh and at the famous Union Theological Seminary in New York. He taught philosophy at what would become the University of Charleston.

After a few classes, I began to conclude that this whole thing might not be as dumb as I thought. It apparently stuck, despite my best efforts to escape.

Kirkland was active and unafraid to speak out for social justice, but mostly he attended to priestly duties, celebrating sacraments, visiting congregants, comforting the sick, putting the dead to rest. After he retired, his ministry consisted of walking the dogs at the local animal shelter. 

The course of my life would probably have been very different without his influence. He reminds me of a cryptic line from Psalm 110 about a mysterious holy man who blessed Abraham in Genesis: “Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.”

I didn’t realize for years that he was a direct student of one of the greatest and most influential theologians of the 20th century, Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971), who left his mark in the halls of congress and on the picket lines of the labor and Civil Rights Movement.  Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke of Niebuhr’s “unswerving devotion to the ideals of freedom and justice”

I’d heard about Niebuhr for years, but my interest peaked years ago after reading Parting the Waters, the first volume of Taylor Branch’s powerful study of America in the King years. By then, I’d been working for the American Friends Service Committee for a few years, an organization that had close ties to Dr. King and others in the movement. I learned from Branch that Niebuhr was a major influence on King and many others. He has been claimed by people across the political spectrum—even people who weren’t religious.

Naturally, Kirkland was glad to share his memories of Niebuhr. I also took a l deep dive into his writings.

Niebuhr took the concept of sin seriously, but not the way we often use the term. He thought of it less as this or that misdeed but rather the all-too-human tendency to put ourselves and especially the groups we identify with (ethnic, racial, religious, national, political, etc.) at the center of the universe. If we all have this tendency as individuals, it is multiplied when we come to group behavior and social systems. Most individuals have consciences, but often the closest thing to the conscience of a group is its persecuted and despised minority. 

He was fond of quoting St. Augustine (354-430) as saying that “Without justice what are kingdoms but great bands of robbers? And what is a band of robbers but such a kingdom in miniature?”

He also reminded us that we are often most dangerous when we think we’re the most righteous. You can call it human weakness, original sin, or evolutionary baggage, but ignore it at your peril. Many of the worst atrocities in history have been committed by true believers of one stripe or another who were sure they were right.

In Niebuhr’s view, there is no such thing as absolute purity. Human motivations are always ambiguous, and the conflicts of the world are between sinners, not between the totally evil and the totally righteous. That view may seem grim, but it’s a pretty good antidote for self-righteousness.

But if all are sinners, all haven’t done the same amount of damage. He called this “the equality of sin and the inequality of guilt.” There is a huge difference between the Roosevelts and the Hitlers of the world, one that matters.

This assessment of human nature challenges the ideas of inevitable progress or utopias, but the news about human nature wasn’t all bad. In addition to original sin, we’re also gifted with “original justice.” These views have profound political implications: to paraphrase a famous Niebuhr quote, our capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but our capacity for injustice makes it necessary.

For Dr. King, his theology was an antidote to “the false optimism characteristic of a great segment of Protestant liberalism” and “a persistent reminder of the reality of sin on every level of man’s [sic] existence.” According to Branch, King “came to describe Niebuhr as a prime influence on his life, and sometimes referred to Gandhian nonviolence as “a Niebuhrian stratagem of power.’”

In 1965, King invited Niebuhr, then 73, to participate in the famous march on Selma. He replied with regret that “Only a severe stroke prevents me from accepting … I hope there will be a massive demonstration of all the citizens with conscience in favor of the elemental human rights of voting and freedom of assembly.”

I’m grateful that, thanks to Kirkland, Niebuhr is part of my lineage. I learned this from him: a good society or group is one that is structured in such a way as to limit the amount of damage we can do to each other.

(This appeared as a column in the Charleston Gazette-Mail.)

Gazing into the abyss

It’s comforting to think that good and evil people are completely different, and that “our” side, whatever that is, is all good, while evil belongs exclusively to the other.

Too bad this is a dangerous illusion.

As Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn put it in “The Gulag Archipelago,” his study of Soviet punishment camps:

“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. ... During the life of any heart this line keeps changing place; sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish.

“One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being. At times he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood.”

He quotes a Russian proverb that, “From good to evil is one quaver,” noting it works the other way, too.

That’s a good summary of social science on how ordinarily good people sometimes do terrible things.

Someone who explored this field for decades is Philip Zimbardo, creator of the infamous Stanford Prison experiment and author of “The Lucifer Effect: How Good People Turn Evil.”

He argues that we tend to attribute evil actions to the individual dispositions of people who do them but ignore the powerful forces situations exert on individuals. Further, powerful people create systems that put decent people in situations in which they do things they otherwise never would have.

He warns that we often have a dangerously inflated notion of our ability to resist evil influences.

“For many, that belief of personal power to resist powerful situational and systemic forces is little more than a reassuring illusion of invulnerability,” he wroted. “Paradoxically, maintaining that illusion only serves to make one more vulnerable to manipulation by failing to be sufficiently vigilant against attempts of undesired influence subtly practiced on them.”

Two powerful toxins that can unleash the beast in any of us are dehumanization and deindividuation.

Zimbardo: “Dehumanization is one of the central processes in the transformation of ordinary, normal people into indifferent or even wanton perpetrators of evil. Dehumanization is like a cortical cataract that clouds one’s thinking and fosters the perception that other people are less than human. It makes some people come to see those others as enemies deserving of torment, torture, and annihilation.”

Dehumanization happens at an individual level, but it is most dangerous when the powerful create systems that label and target some groups as being less than human.

When we dehumanize others, another process that kicks in is what social psychologist Albert Bandura called “moral disengagement,” when we convince ourselves that some people are unworthy of empathy and compassion.

Then it’s on.

Deindividuation happens when we identify so closely with a group that we lose our sense of individual responsibility. This happens in organized or informal ways. When countries send people off to war, the warriors are often deindividualized with shaved heads, uniforms and drills that emphasize following orders and acting as a unit. It can also happen in informal groups like mobs and gangs. Things like masks and hoods can add to the effect.

This is most dangerous at the systemic level, particularly when it goes hand in hand with dehumanizing some vulnerable group via ideology and propaganda. Throw in our tendency to conform and obey authority, and you have a pretty lethal brew. Signals from above give permission to abuse those below.

The scary side to group behavior has long been recognized. Sigmund Freud noted that, in groups, emotionalism rises while rationality falls (think political rallies, rock concerts, some sporting events).

He believed that when groups fall under the spell of a charismatic authority, the people in it regress to a more primitive mental state. He wrote, “It is not so remarkable that we should see an individual in a group doing or approving things which he would have avoided in the normal conditions of life.”

The theologian Reinhold Niebuhr even titled one of his books “Moral Man and Immoral Society.” He didn’t have any delusions about the flaws of individuals, but rather noted that, “In every human group there is less reason to guide and to check impulse, less capacity for self-transcendence, less ability to comprehend the needs of others and therefore more unrestrained egoism than the individuals, who compose the group, reveal in their personal relationships.”

After all, most individuals have consciences. But often the conscience of a group is a dissenting minority accused of disloyalty.

We live in are dangerous times. Polarization runs high. There are calls for dehumanization coming from high places around the world. America may be on its own dark journey, although it’s unclear how far it will go. I’m consoled by the thought that many other nations have gone through dark times and come out on the other side.

I hope we step back from the edge of the cliff and resist the temptation to see the other, whoever it may be, as some kind of monster.

As the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said, “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”

(This ran as an op-ed in the Gazette-Mail a day or so ago.)

Faith, hope, love, foregiveness

I feel lucky to have been a second generation student, sort of, of Reinhold Niebuhr, one of the 20th century's greatest theologians. To be more specific,the Rev. William Kirkland,  an Episcopal priest who studied under Niebuhr, was a major influence on my life. He even taught my reluctantly agreed to confirmation classes when I was in junior high.

Here's a little sample from the vast treasury of Niebuhr's thought:

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. 

Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. 

Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore we must be saved by love. 

No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore we must be saved by the final form of love which is forgiveness.

One trick ponies

There are many meanings of the word conservative, and I like some of them a lot. One kind that I have no use for, however, is that branch which devotes itself to justifying the wealth, power and privileges of ruling groups.

Such ideologies, whether ancient or modern, pretty much all run the same. Those in dominant positions are there due to merit (or God's will) and are where they should be. Furthermore, any effort to reel in any of their excesses would only hurt people in the lower social orders. The same argument can be applied to feudal lords, coal barons, Wall Street speculators, CEOs, you name it.

This was another area where 20th century theologian Reinhold Niebuhr nailed it:

Since inequalities of privilege are greater than could possibly be defended rationally, the intelligence of privileged groups is usually applied to the task of inventing specious proofs for the theory that universal values spring from, and that general interests are served by, the special privileges which they hold.

He also had some interesting things to say about the philanthropy of the powerful, which he believed

combines genuine pity with the display of power and that the latter element explains why the powerful are more inclined to be generous than to grant social justice.

MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE SENATE, here's Ken Ward on the hearing about the Massey mine disaster and here are WV Senator Robert C. Byrd's opening remarks.

A LOST DECADE? Krugman waxes a bit pessimistic here.

I WAS NOT AWARE OF THAT. The musk turtle's tongue has weird properties that enable it to stay underwater for months. Try to work that into a conversation today.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Motes, beams and nations

El Cabrero has been musing lately about the political insights of 20th century theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, whose work has been vastly influential. Niebuhr was no fundamentalist but he took the idea of sin as in egoism seriously and applied it particularly to social and political life.

In Moral Man and Immoral Society, he was particularly skeptical about the moral claims of nations, which always justify whatever they do (however unjustifiable) in the most grandiose terms:

Perhaps the most significant moral characteristic of a nation is its hypocrisy. We have noted that self-deception and hypocrisy is an unvarying element in the moral life of all human beings. It is the tribute which morality pays to immorality; or rather the device by which the lesser self gains the consent of the larger self to indulge in impulses and ventures which the rational self can approve only when they are disguised.

There has probably never been a war of aggression or colonial adventure which wasn't justified in the highest terms by people who may or may not have actually believed it.

No nation has ever made a frank avowal of its real imperial motives. It always claims to be primarily concerned with the peace and prosperity of the people whom it subjugates.

Along with hypocrisy, nations also have self-righteousness down pretty good.

Nations will always find it more difficult than individuals to behold the beam that is in their own eye while they observe the mote that is in their brother's eye; and individuals find it difficult enough. A perennial weakness of the moral life in individuals is simply raised to the nth degree in national life.

DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS. I apologize to email subscribers. Yesterday, as I was working on a draft post, I must have hit the wrong button and a not-ready-for-prime-time post may have hit your mailbox. My bad.

MORE STUFF FOR THE COAL INDUSTRY TO DENY. Leading groups of scientists just published a report calling for serious action on climate change.

I WANNA READ the book reviewed here.

WELFARE MOMS. How are they doing these days?

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A powerful mix

1898 political cartoon.

People have long observed how powerfully nationalism can motivate people, even those who have low status and little apparent stake in the nation in question. When World War I broke out in Europe, for example, there was widespread joy and euphoria on all sides. Even many political radicals who had previously vowed to oppose international conflict joined it.

Nationalistic enthusiasms (which nation is involved is immaterial) can override rational and religious considerations. Reinhold Niebuhr in his 1932 classic Moral Man and Immoral Society, has a succinct explanation:

"The man in the street, with his lust for power and prestige thwarted by his own limitations and the necessities of social life, projects his ego upon his nation and indulges his anarchic lusts vicariously. So a nation is at one and the same time a check upon, and a final vent for, the expression of individual egoism."

In his view, it is precisely that mixture of selflessness and vicarious selfishness that give nationalism its power.

A LIVELY CREW greeted shareholders at Massey Energy's annual meeting in Richmond, Va.

WORDS, WORDS, WORDS. A new survey about American attitudes towards things like capitalism and socialism finds some surprising numbers.

CHRISTIANITY AND CONSERVATISM. This article wonders how, given the Bible's powerful statements on social justice (yeah, I said those dreaded words), the two can go together.

OK, SO I'M SMIRKING. The state of WV is discontinuing it's redesigned version of Medicaid, which is something quite a few people I know will celebrate.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Moral rebels and criminals

El Cabrero has been blogging lately about political philosophy, with a special emphasis on the late great theologian Reinhold Niebuhr's insights from his 1932 classic Moral Man and Immoral Society.

(Here's one sure sign that the book in question comes from another era: there was no obligatory colon and subtitle.) His main idea is that while groups take us away from our self absorption, they can also be much more egotistic, imperialistic and dangerous than individuals.

A classical example of this is nationalism. He had this to say about that:

...the nation is a corporate unity, held together much more by force and emotion, than by mind. Since there can be no ethical action without self-criticism, and no self-criticism without the rational capacity of self-transcendence, it is natural that national attitudes can hardly approximate the ethical. Even those tendencies toward self-criticism in a nation which do express themselves are usually thwarted by the governing classes and by a certain instinct for unity in society itself. For self-criticism is a kind of inner disunity, which the feeble mind of a nation finds difficulty in distinguishing from dangerous forms of inner conflict. So nations crucify their moral rebels with their criminals upon the same Golgotha...

Holy Dixie Chicks, Batman! Jeez, it's a good thing that doesn't happen any more huh?

UPPER BIG BRANCH MASSEY MINE DISASTER. Here's an interesting report on Massey from NPR. And here's another on the fun and games that will accompany Massey's annual meeting.

A LITTLE GOOD NEWS. West Virginia's unemployment rate fell in April. I hope it's the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel (rather than an oncoming train).

MY ENEMY, MY FRIEND. As we grow up, it's hard to tell them apart.

MAYBE POE HAD IT WRONG. It appears that ravens console each other when one has a bad day.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A two edged sword

"Those who benefit from social injustice are naturally less capable of understanding its real character than those who suffer from it."

Theologian Reinhold Niebuhur's Moral Man and Immoral Society is basically a deconstruction of political utopianism. His main point is that social life will always be an arena of struggle given that fact that groups amplify all the flaws of human nature.

He is skeptical of many things that people of various times and places hoped would remedy social ills--including religion. In the past, it wasn't uncommon for people to believe that the civilizing influence of religion would gradually lead to a just and good society.

To some degree it has. The influence of Buddhism seemed to mellow out peoples such as the Mongols and Tibetans. The early Christian church, once it emerged from illegal status, put an end to the practice of crucifixion and gladiatorial spectacles (although it didn't take too many centuries before the church outdid even these with inquisitions and witch burning).

But he viewed religion historically is a two-edged sword. It can lead to greater social justice, but it can also justify injustice with other-worldliness or sanctify cruelty with the belief that God is on one's side. Without engaging in religion bashing, it's hard to deny that there's plenty of that to go around these days.

WHACKADOODLISM. Paul Krugman's latest op-ed is on the growth of right wing extremism in the wake of the recession.

LICENSCE REVOKED. I was stunned to learn recently that the clerical license of my friend the Rev. Jim Lewis has revoked by the Episcopal bishop of WV. Here's an op-ed questioning that decision.

TEACHERS AS TARGETS. It kind of looks like teachers are the scapegoats for all that is wrong in El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia these days.

HAST ANY PHILOSOPHY IN THEE, SHEPHERD? A new online series tackles the subject.

THE EARLY BIRD probably didn't fly too well.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Sweet reason

As far back as Plato, a cherished idea among philosophers and reformers is that people only do wrong out of ignorance. If we really got it, presumably, we wouldn't act badly.

The European Enlightenment was based on the idea that the spread of education and knowledge would eliminate most social evils. To be fair, that has happened, sort of. We don't literally burn as many witches and heretics as they used to anyhow.

But reason isn't a cure all, as Reinhold Niebuhr argues in Moral Man and Immoral Society. While acknowledging its very real contributions to social betterment, Niebuhr points out that

Men will not cease to be dishonest, merely because their dishonesties have been revealed or because they have discovered their own deceptions. Wherever men hold unequal power in society, they will use whatever means are most convenient to that end and will seek to justify them by the most plausible arguments they are able to devise...

...Men will never be wholly reasonable, and the proportion of reason to impulse becomes increasingly negative when we proceed from the life of individuals to that of social groups...

Those are some reasons why we shouldn't have unreasonable expectations about reason.

ALL GONE. Many jobs lost in the recession won't be coming back.

COLLEGE GRADUATES are facing higher unemployment rates.

FIZZLING OUT. The drying up of Recovery Act aid to states could worsen the recession and harm state budgets and education. Meanwhile, WV has been slow in spending its share.

APPLES AND ORANGES. Here's Paul Krugman on the difference between the situation in Greece and the US.

THE WORLD'S STRONGEST ANIMAL (FOR ITS SIZE) is the copepod.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Conscience and power

Reinhold Niebuhr's Moral Man and Immoral Society is a masterpiece of anti-utopianism. The book, like much of his other work, is an extended polemic against naive and overly optimistic views of human nature and society.

While he doesn't hold to the idea of the "total depravity" of humanity, he takes the idea of sin very seriously. By sin, he doesn't mean disobeying this or that divine rule but rather the self-centeredness which causes people to do harm to others, the creation and even themselves. And if individual humans have sinful tendencies, groups are much more selfish and imperialistic.

He also argued that human motivations are inherently ambiguous and people often do the most harm when they think they are being the most righteous. Oppressors often quite sincerely believe that they are acting for the good of those they oppress--and some of the oppressed might do the same given the chance.

If that's the case, then while we might make this or that social improvement, society will always be an arena of struggle:

there is good reason to believe that the sentiments of benevolence and social goodwill will never be so pure and powerful, and the rational capacity to consider the rights and needs of others in fair competition with our own will never be so fully developed as to create the possibility for the anarchistic millennium...

While democracy represents a great advance over other forms of government, it still doesn't and can't eliminate the element of struggle:

Politics will, to the end of history, be an area where conscience and power meet, where the ethical and coercive factors of human life will interpenetrate and work out their tentative and uneasy compromises.

EASY STREET. Here's economist Dean Baker's latest rant on Wall Street.

ONE TO WATCH. WV Governor Joe Manchin has issued a call for a special session of the legislature to convene today. One item is health care related in the wake of national health care reform. The most contentious issues are those related to education.

CLIMATE. Here's some coverage of the new energy/climate bill that has just been introduced in the US Senate.

ONE SHOT DEAL. There's more scientific evidence that life on earth arose exactly once and that all living things have a single common ancestor.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Individuals and groups

Reinhold Niebuhr was one of the 20th century's greatest theologians and philosophers. One of his most influential works was the 1932 classic Moral Man and Immoral Society.

The title may be a bit misleading as Niebuhr wasn't convinced that human individuals were necessarily all that moral--it's just that we are even more dangerous when we're in groups. Compared to group behavior, human individuals seem pretty harmless.

As he put it,

In every human group there is less reason to guide and to check impulse, less capacity for self-transcendence, less ability to comprehend the needs of others and therefore more unrestrained egoism than the individuals, who compose the group, reveal in their personal relationships.

In his view, one of the (many) tragic features of human life is that we are social animals and need others in order to survive and thrive. Group orientation can bring out the best in people, but it can just as easily bring out the worst. I'll be looking at some over his ideas over the next little stretch. Stay tuned.

WHILE TEA PARTIERS PROTEST high taxes, most Americans paid less than at any time since 1950.

UNEMPLOYMENT. This report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities recommends a moratorium on interest payments for states that borrow from the federal government to fund unemployment insurance.

URGENT UPDATE ON HOW SOME DINOSAURS GOT TO BE SO BIG here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Seriously but not literally

I guess one mark of a great theologian is that they have something to say even to people outside of their religious tradition. Several names come to mind in this context: Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Kierkegaard, Paul Tillich. And Reinhold Niebuhr would certainly be on many people's short list.

Niebuhr was born in Missouri in 1892, the son of a pastor in the German Evangelical tradition. He followed in his father's footsteps and served as a pastor in industrial Detroit for several years, where he criticized the brutality of the factory system.

From 1928 until 1960 he taught theology at Union Theological Seminary and for most of those years was very active in political life. In the 1930s he supported the Socialist Party but later became something of a New Deal pragmatist and political realist. He has been claimed by people across the political spectrum, from progressives to neo-cons.

His theology is sometimes described as neo-orthodox, which takes the Biblical and Christian theological tradition seriously if not literally. Above all, Niebuhr takes the idea of sin very seriously indeed and applies it broadly to human social life.

I think one reason I like him so much is that this is one of the few areas in which El Cabrero is in the orthodox camp.

One of his most famous books is the 1932 Moral Man and Immoral Society, parts of which holds up remarkably well. More on that tomorrow.

GOING LOCAL. This item looks at the importance of local economies.

HARD SCIENCE. Here's some research on marital felicity.

ARCHAEOLOGY MADE EASY. New technology makes it possible to map ancient civilizations in a fraction of the time required by traditional methods.

IT PASSED. NOW WHAT? Now that health care reform is the law of the land, it will take a lot of education and outreach to help people understand what it is and isn't. Here's what local groups in WV are planning to do.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

One that stuck

El Cabrero has a theologian in common with President Obama, his 2008 opponent John McCain and quite a few people across the political spectrum. That would be Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971), a professor at Union Theological Seminary who was very influential in the US in secular as well as religious circles.

I guess I can claim to be a second generation student of Niebuhr. When I was in junior high, a new priest came to the Episcopal Church I was brought up in. At the time, I didn't have much use for religion in general, a periodically recurring condition with me.

I'd been involved in a civil war over this with the Maternal Unit until we agreed to a ceasefire on the following terms: I'd complete confirmation classes and go through the ceremony and after that I was on my own.

The priest taught the confirmation classes, during which I came to realize that the whole thing might not have been as stupid as I thought. The priest in question, Fr. William Kirkland, had studied at Edinburgh and later with Niebuhr himself at Union, although I didn't realize that at the time.

It was much much later, when I had begun working for the American Friends Service Committee that I really began to study his thought. I made it a habit to study social movements of the past to look at what worked and what didn't and became aware of Niebuhr's profound influence on Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement.

It stuck with me. Lately, I've revisited his writings, which will probably show up here for the next little stretch.

OIL SLICK. Paul Krugman opines on the Gulf oil disaster and the role of government in his latest column.

MEDIA AND MORE. Here's the latest edition of the Rev. Jim Lewis' Notes from Under the Fig Tree. Jim appears to be going through some static with the Episcopal bishop of WV.

EAT LOCAL. This item looks at the economics of organic gardening and local food production.

GETTING INVOLVED can make you happier.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

SERPENTS AND DOVES

This would be an interesting topic to research, but El Cabrero is willing to bet that most people who are active in the anti-war/"peace and justice" movement have little or no interest in the history of warfare and strategy, mostly because they think war is bad.

I suspect that this neglect isn't contributing a whole lot to their effectiveness.

I would agree that war is bad. It's one of many nasty things in human history, along with poverty, massive inequality, exploitation, domination, oppression, etc. Economic disparities alone cause many more deaths today than armed conflict (at a ratio of around 180:1, according to one estimate I found in the 1990s). But I don't think ignoring things one doesn't like is the best way to deal with them.

Can you imagine what the fields of medicine or public health would look like if people refused to study injuries and diseases because they were "bad?"

I think it's bad when people's houses burn down, which is why I'm glad that all firefighters have to study at least a little about the science of fire. Car wrecks are bad, which is why I'm glad EMTs, rescue services, and fire departments study first aid and auto extrication.

For that matter, even the most peaceful efforts to promote social change often involve dealing with opposition and power, both one's own and that of the opponent. Power is defined by sociologists as the ability to make something happen or keep it from happening even in the face of opposition. Any chance of improving things (victory) requires intelligent decision making (strategy).

In fact, a whole lot of the universe and the biosphere consists of things colliding with each other and if people want to make things better and more peaceful, I think we need to recognize that right off the bat.

I am reminded of a couple sayings of Jesus along this line. In Luke (16:8), he said "The children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light." This, by the way, inspired the title of theologian Reinhold Niebuhr's classic The Children of Light and the Children of Darkness. In Matthew (10:16), he advised his followers to "be wise as serpents and harmless as doves."

Musings such as these will be the theme of this week's Goat Rope. Tune in again if you want to get in touch with your inner reptile.

STUCK RECORD. As signs of a recession increase, a rational economic policy would involve some kind of stimulus that would help people who are struggling the most. But, as this NY Times editorial notes, for the Bush administration, the correct answer to any question is tax cuts. It seems to escape their notice that if cutting taxes for the rich was the road to the promised land, we'd have gotten there a while back.

WHO'S COUNTING? The Drum Major Institute, that's who. Here's their 2007 Injustice Index.

ICED OUT. From Sunday's Gazette-Mail, here's an item about a WV scientist's first hand evidence of global warming. The vested interests that run WV think denial is the answer, but I don't think that will help them much in the long run either.

WORD TRAVELS. Here's a review of a book about mountaintop removal in WV all the way from the LA Times.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

GOOD CROWD, BAD CROWD

Caption: This is a bad crowd.

Large groups of people have a pretty bad reputation in many circles.

The Christian existential philosopher Soren Kierkegaard said "The crowd is untruth."

In 1841, Charles Mackay wrote the popular Extradordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, wherein he said,

Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.

Our old pal Nietzsche said that "Madness is rare in individuals - but in groups, parties, nations, and ages it is the rule."

Freud, in Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, saw in any crowd a potential mob, noting that

when individuals come together in a group all their individual inhibitions fall away and all the cruel, brutal and destructive instincts which lie dormant in individuals as relics of a primitive epoch, are stirred up to find free gratification.

Gustave Le Bon, an earlier writer who influenced Freud, said "In crowds it is stupidity and not mother wit that is accumulated."

Erich Fromm, in Escape from Freedom described the ways people sometimes seek to evade anxiety by seeking submersion in a larger group.

The dangers of the egotism and imperialism of groups was the theme of the great theologian Reinhold Niebuhr's classic Moral Man and Immoral Society (although Niebuhr had some doubts about the morality of individuals as well).

Earlier series and posts in this blog looked at the problems caused by obedience to authority and conformity.

Some interesting things have been written recently, however, that talk about the good side of groups. But that will keep until tomorrow. As Scarlett said, "Tomorrow is another day."

THIS COULD GET INTERESTING. West Virginia native and country music star Kathy Mattea is starting to speak out about mountaintop removal mining and climate change, as Ken Ward reports in today's Charleston Gazette. She is currently working on a project of coal-related music.

ATTACK OF THE GIANT PENGUINS. This is not a burning issue of our time, but scientists have discovered a 5 foot tall penguin that lived 36 million years ago in Peru. This baby had bigger jaw muscles than the current crop and a foot long beak.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

WHERE HAVE ALL THE (GOOD) THEOLOGIANS GONE?

Caption: Seamus McGoogle is still working on his theological masterpiece.

Say all the bad stuff you want to about the 20th century, but it did produce some good theologians. They were thoughtful people of faith who spoke to a large public audience of believers and non believers and had a significant positive impact.

Three in particular were big ones for El Cabrero. In no particular order, they included Reinhold Niebuhr, the Jewish theologian and philosopher Martin Buber, and German emigre Paul Tillich. Each came from a specific tradition (Calvinist, Hasidic, and Lutheran, respectively) but had something to say to people from widely different traditions.

I'm not sure we have anybody of their caliber today, but maybe I'm missing something.

Niebuhr (1892-1971) put sin back on the map. Here's a good profile of him by the late Arthur Schlesinger from 2005. I've had the privilege of learning from some people who were taught by him and consider myself a second-generation student. Niebuhr is an excellent antidote for personal and national self-righteousness and we need him now.

Martin Buber (1878-1965) is best known for his work I and Thou, which deals with human relationships with other people, nature and the spiritual world. I had to hit it three times (once with a commentary) before anything sank in but it was well worth the effort. His other biblical and philosophical writings are worthwhile as well.

And then there was Tillich (1886-1965), a German theologian from the Lutheran tradition who came to the U.S. as a refugee from Nazi Germany. But he'll keep till tomorrow...

CARING FOR VETERANS. Many veterans have been and will be returning from Iraq with serious mental health issues. According to this item from the Washington Post, the outlook isn't good that they'll get the timely help they need.

LONG STRANGE TRIP. Here is an op-ed by yours truly recapping the 10 year fight to raise the minimum wage. And here is a good editorial from the Saturday Gazette about inequality.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED