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After Religion Fizzles, We’re Stuck with Nietzsche
It is hard to muster much sympathy over the implosion of the Catholic Church, traditional Protestant denominations or Jewish synagogues. These institutions were passive as the Christian right, which peddles magical thinking and a Jesus-as-warrior philosophy, hijacked the language and iconography of traditional Christianity. They have busied themselves with the boutique activism of the culture wars. They have failed to unequivocally denounce unfettered capitalism, globalization and pre-emptive war. The obsession with personal piety and “How-is-it-with-me?” spirituality that permeates most congregations is undiluted narcissism. And while the Protestant church and reformed Judaism have not replicated the perfidiousness of the Catholic bishops, who protect child-molesting priests, they have little to say in an age when we desperately need moral guidance.
I grew up in the church and graduated from a seminary. It is an institution whose cruelty, inflicted on my father, who was a Presbyterian minister, I know intimately. I do not attend church. The cloying, feel-your-pain language of the average clergy member makes me run for the door. The debates in most churches—whether revolving around homosexuality or biblical interpretation—are a waste of energy. I have no desire to belong to any organization, religious or otherwise, which discriminates, nor will I spend my time trying to convince someone that the raw anti-Semitism in the Gospel of John might not be the word of God. It makes no difference to me if Jesus existed or not. There is no historical evidence that he did. Fairy tales about heaven and hell, angels, miracles, saints, divine intervention and God’s beneficent plan for us are repeatedly mocked in the brutality and indiscriminate killing in war zones, where I witnessed children murdered for sport and psychopathic gangsters elevated to demigods. The Bible works only as metaphor.
The institutional church, when it does speak, mutters pious non-statements that mean nothing. “Given the complexity of factors involved, many of which understandably remain confidential, it is altogether appropriate for members of our armed forces to presume the integrity of our leadership and its judgments, and therefore to carry out their military duties in good conscience,” Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien, head of the Archdiocese for the Military Services, wrote about the Iraq war. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, on the eve of the invasion, told believers that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was a menace, and that reasonable people could disagree about the necessity of using force to overthrow him. It assured those who supported the war that God would not object.
B’nai B’rith supported a congressional resolution to authorize the 2003 attack on Iraq. The Union of American Hebrew Congregations, which represents Reform Judaism, agreed it would back unilateral action, as long as Congress approved and the president sought support from other nations. The National Council of Churches, which represents 36 different faith groups, in a typical bromide, urged President George W. Bush to “do all possible” to avoid war with Iraq and to stop “demonizing adversaries or enemies” with good-versus-evil rhetoric, but, like the other liberal religious institutions, did not condemn the war.
A Gallup poll in 2006 found that “the more frequently an American attends church, the less likely he or she is to say the war was a mistake.” Given that Jesus was a pacifist, and given that all of us who graduated from seminary rigorously studied Just War doctrine, which was flagrantly violated by the invasion of Iraq, this is a rather startling statistic.
But I cannot rejoice in the collapse of these institutions. We are not going to be saved by faith in reason, science and technology, which the dead zone of oil forming in the Gulf of Mexico and our production of costly and redundant weapons systems illustrate. Frederick Nietzsche’s Übermensch, or “Superman”—our secular religion—is as fantasy-driven as religious magical thinking.There remain, in spite of the leaders of these institutions, religiously motivated people toiling in the inner city and the slums of the developing world. They remain true to the core religious and moral values ignored by these institutions. The essential teachings of the monotheistic traditions are now lost in the muck of church dogma, hollow creeds and the banal bureaucracy of institutional religion. These teachings helped create the concept of the individual. The belief that we can exist as distinct beings from the tribe, or the crowd, and that we are called on as individuals to make moral decisions that can defy the clamor of the nation is one of the gifts of religious thought. This call for individual responsibility is coupled with the constant injunctions in Islam, Judaism and Christianity for compassion, especially for the weak, the impoverished, the sick and the outcast.
We are rapidly losing the capacity for the moral life. We reject the anxiety of individual responsibility that laid the foundations for the open society. We are enjoined, after all, to love our neighbor, not our tribe. This empowerment of individual conscience was the starting point of the great ethical systems of all civilizations. Those who championed this radical individualism, from Confucius to Socrates to Jesus, fostered not obedience and conformity, but dissent and self-criticism. They initiated the separation of individual responsibility from the demands of the state. They taught that culture and society were not the sole prerogative of the powerful, that freedom and indeed the religious and moral life required us to often oppose and challenge those in authority, even at great personal cost. Immanuel Kant built his ethics upon this radical individualism. And Kant’s injunction to “always recognize that human individuals are ends, and do not use them as mere means” runs in a direct line from the Socratic ideal and the Christian Gospels.
The great religions set free the critical powers of humankind. They broke with the older Greek and Roman traditions that gods and Destiny ruled human fate-a belief that, when challenged by Socrates, saw him condemned to death. They challenged the power of the tribe, the closed society. They offered up the possibility that human beings, although limited by circumstance and human weakness, could shape and give direction to society and their own lives. These religious thinkers were our first ethicists. And it is perhaps not accidental that the current pope, as well as the last one, drove out of the Catholic Church thousands of clergy and religious leaders who embodied these qualities, elevating the dregs to positions of leadership and leaving the pedophiles to run the Sunday schools.
These religious institutions are in irreversible decline. They are ruled by moral and intellectual trolls. They have become arrogant and self-absorbed. Their sins are many. They protected criminals. They pandered to the lowest common denominator and illusions of personal fulfillment and surrendered their moral authority. They did not fight the corporate tyrants who have impoverished us. They refused to denounce a caste of Christian heretics embodied by the Christian right and have, for their cowardice, been usurped by bizarre proto-fascists clutching the Christian cross. They have nothing left to say. And their aging congregants, who are fleeing the church in droves, know it. But don't think the world will be a better place for their demise.
As we devolve into a commodity culture, in which celebrity, power and money reign, the older, dimming values of another era are being replaced. We are becoming objects, consumer products and marketable commodities. We have no intrinsic value. We are obsessed with self-presentation. We must remain youthful. We must achieve notoriety and money or the illusion of it. And it does not matter what we do to get there. Success, as Goldman Sachs illustrates, is its own morality. Other people's humiliation, pain and weakness become the fodder for popular entertainment. Education, building community, honesty, transparency and sharing see contestants disappeared from any reality television show or laughed out of any Wall Street firm.
We live in the age of the "Übermensch who rejects the sentimental tenets of traditional religion. The Übermensch creates his own morality based on human instincts, drive and will. We worship the "will to power" and think we have gone "beyond good and evil." We spurn virtue. We think we have the moral fortitude and wisdom to create our own moral code. The high priests of our new religion run Wall Street, the Pentagon and the corporate state. They flood our airwaves with the tawdry and the salacious. They, too, promise a utopia. They redefine truth, beauty, morality, desire and goodness. And we imbibe their poison as blind followers once imbibed the poison of the medieval church.
Nietzsche had his doubts. He suspected that this new secular faith might prefigure an endless middle-class charade. Nietzsche feared the deadening effects of the constant search for material possessions and personal hedonism. Science and technology might rather bring about a new, distorted character Nietzsche called "the Last Man." The Last Man, Nietzsche feared, would engage in the worst kinds of provincialism, believing he had nothing to learn from history. The Last Man would wallow and revel in his ignorance and quest for personal fulfillment. He would be satisfied with everything that he had done and become, and would seek to become nothing more. He would be intellectually and morally stagnant, incapable of growth, and become part of an easily manipulated herd. The Last Man would mistake cynicism for knowledge.
"The time is coming when man will give birth to no more stars," Nietzsche wrote about the Last Man in the prologue of "Thus Spoke Zarathustra." "Alas! The time of the most contemptible man is coming, the man who can no longer despise himself."
"They are clever and know everything that has ever happened: so there is no end to their mockery." The Last Men indulge in "their little pleasure for the day, and their little pleasure for the night."
The consumer culture, as Nietzsche feared, has turned us into what Chalmers Johnson calls a "consumerist Sparta." The immigrants and the poor, all but invisible to us, work as serfs in this new temple of greed and imperialism. Curtis White in "The Middle Mind" argues that most Americans are aware of the brutality and injustice used to maintain the excesses of their consumer society and empire. He suspects they do not care. They don't want to see what is done in their name. They do not want to look at the rows of flag-draped coffins or the horribly maimed bodies and faces of veterans or the human suffering in the blighted and deserted former manufacturing centers. It is too upsetting. Government and corporate censorship is welcomed and appreciated. It ensures that we remain Last Men. And the death of religious institutions will only cement into place the new secular religion of the Last Man, the one that worships military power, personal advancement, hedonism and greed, the one that justifies our ruthless callousness toward the weak and the poor.
341 Comments so far
Show AllHedges nails it for me, as a former seminarian who no longer attends Church either. Our religious institutions' silence, and in many cases, support for the invasion of Iraq, cemented it for me. The Church is an irrevelant institution.
Sad, because at a time when we desperately needed a strong anti-war voice, it failed miserably. And still does. The Church's leadership talks tough on "safe" issues such as abortion but does not dare touch the subject of naked aggression on the part of the US against a sovereign country.
"The Church's leadership talks tough on "safe" issues such as abortion but does not dare touch the subject of naked aggression on the part of the US against a sovereign country."
Just like our politicians. The church is part of the communications component of the machinery which rules us. The clergy will say things that strike emotional chords, to keep the tithings coming in, but will not say anything that upsets those with the power to cut off their funding and influence.
Excellent piece!
"Education, building community, honesty, transparency and sharing see contestants disappeared from any reality television show or laughed out of any Wall Street firm. "
I heard a news piece this morning that stated that the US population is growing older and less educated and that we will have to rely on educated immigrants to take over.
I especially like the part about building community. Not looking to and/or blaming our current "leaders", but building community where we are.
"Curtis White in "The Middle Mind" argues that most Americans are aware of the brutality and injustice used to maintain the excesses of their consumer society and empire. He suspects they do not care."
I agree, but suspect that it is not only that we do not care, but that we actually do not know what to do about it. We can't see that we, individuals, must walk away from this culture and create a new one - without leaders or priests or rabbis or imams. Just us.
"As we devolve into a commodity culture, in which celebrity, power and money reign, the older, dimming values of another era are being replaced. We are becoming objects, consumer products and marketable commodities."
And aren't we, Common Dreamers, in the same boat? Haven't we allowed ourselves to fall into the same trap, albeit from the opposite standpoint of pointing our fingers at these things? Aren't we, too, shackled to the same things we decry?
Thank you Chris Hedges for your bleak but honest assessment of our "Last Man" stand. As long as "progressives" keep playing in the same sandbox as the rest, we will not be part of the solution.
"And aren't we, Common Dreamers, in the same boat? Haven't we allowed ourselves to fall into the same trap, albeit from the opposite standpoint of pointing our fingers at these things? Aren't we, too, shackled to the same things we decry?"
I guess so. I still think everyone has good points although some can be clumsy in presenting it. Maybe we're all trying to flee from one lost soul and are yet locking ourselves into another without our realizing it. What we need is a sense of diplomacy and understanding, something that has disappeared ever since GWB was president with this administration also faking and spoiling the concept. I don't mind training myself to be a diplomat even on this site. I think of it as practice and I wished that everyone else would try it too. We progressives and liberals just might stop being the problem if we do. I should perhaps email Hedges and ask him to write an article on his take on diplomacy in general.
Diplomacy, max? Or, do you mean civility?
Civility, we need. But we are not diplomats, we are citizens and people. It is our job to support and/or rebel depending on the context. With civility, but with honesty, clarity, and forcefulness if necessary.
I do believe that we need to stop circling the wagons and firing inward. However, what we don't need to do is talk nice, we need to act.
Civility too I accept but sometimes it might take diplomacy to get to civility when a conflict has gone too far out of hand for either side of the conflict to think of civility. How many times in our lives have we been in conflicts where only a third party can get us back to resolving conflicts peacefully after those conflicts have gone out of control?
Max! Stop looking to others to save your bacon! Look to yourself! Do you want to be diplomatic in your discussion with me, or civil?
Diplomacy is the art of negotiation. Civility is the art of disagreeing with respect.
I am not trying to negotiate with you, max, only to have a discussion. We will not progress with diplomacy.
Get out of your head, max - it's getting in your way.
"Do you want to be diplomatic in your discussion with me, or civil? "
Of course I want to remain civil with you. I was referring to resolving a conflict between two individuals where I would be the third party.
To get back to another statement you made "Max! Stop looking to others to save your bacon! Look to yourself!", are you suggesting that we ignore getting marginalized and keep blaming ourselves and not the perpetrators who are responsible ?
"...are you suggesting that we ignore getting marginalized and keep blaming ourselves and not the perpetrators who are responsible ?"
No, I'm suggesting you take responsibility for yourself to improve your lot (and that of others) despite the perpetrators. There have always been perpetrators and until humanity takes a giant leap in evolution, there will be perpetrators. Denounce them, but don't expect anyone to save you.
I am not expecting anyone to save the world, just to do their part. The first thing anyone must do is to stop looking at others for the solutions or for help. Help yourself and others and we will start to heal this world.
Listen, I have already taken responsibility for myself and have done what I can to improve some of my lot. I know that there is a long ways to go but when outside forces such as this administration, Congress, our state governments, etc... are marginalizing us no matter what we do to improve things, then what do you expect us to do, blame ourselves again and again? So what you are telling me is that we should "reward" the perpetrators and still punish ourselves? I will continue to work on helping myself and my wife along with as many others as possible all right but I will not have my efforts marginalized as used to be the case. The Religious Right and Washington along with Corporate America and the Military Industrial Complex are the biggest enemies that cannot be ignored and I do not see how we can carry on with our lives peacefully when those intruders are wrecking havoc on all of our lives recklessly. I will not have people call me "lazy" for asking that Hedges provide us his take on what he thinks his solutions are and have each of us look into it and compare that to each of our own.
You know what the problem with you "progressives" on this site is? Everyday, all you can do is talk about how bad Obama is doing 24/7/365/4. Ted is just giving you good advice to be the best you can be on your own merit. Stop worrying about trying to control what is beyond your control. You don't have the power to control the president directly and the president isn't the only one to blame. Governments have long been out of our control but that doesn't mean that we should just sit here and complain 24/7/365/4 like politically arrested infantiles. Why do you keep worrying about who will tear down your efforts when you don't sound like you are building them in the first place? That is the same question I ask everyone and they give the same kind of answers about trying but it never working. They have plenty of time to write big on this site but none of them sound like they're doing anything about it. How can you and most of you have the time to make any difference in your own communities if all you people do is spend more time turning this site into an anti-Obama choir ? We know President Obama did bad and everything is going bad but why should Chris Hedges give any of you his solutions when none of you are likely to try them? Why don't you use your own talents to come up with your own solutions and see how far you make it before asking someone else for their solutions? I get outside more often and help my local community on progressive ideas and I attend more community meetings than most "progressives" here. You won't know what you are missing unless you try. Who knows? You might be lucky to find a way to hold those perpetrators accountable when no one else has been as successful.
Who flagged that comment? I see nothing wrong with it. I'm sure CD will unflag it.
Ted: great comment and well stated. And Yes I prefer to think that many people know about the insane violence the Amerikan military perpetrates on brown skinned people:
But yes many just can't do much about it. That is why I often say that if you just Blah to a few people: Sometimes you will get through and those people will add to a million other acts of good,
That will have some effect. And why should we have to know that our acts of kindness will save the day and turn the Last Man to good side Isn't the beauty of life in not Knowing?
Keep on keeping on because the Struggle of life is all we may get in this life. And what a ride it can be.
FAST EDDIE - why does Chris Hedges have to give you the solution?
Don't you know that the solution is YOU: AND HOW YOU TREAT OTHER PEOPLE and MOTHER EARTH.
Thank you Chris Hedges- wow just look at the Posts poring in. I actually have something interesting to read today.
"why does Chris Hedges have to give you the solution?"
Quite right but I would think that Hedges could at least tell us what he believes to be the solution and let the readers evaluate.
I don't agree, Max. I so don't agree.
It's a trap to look for solutions outside ourselves. It is also lazy, not to mention unimaginative.
Hedges spoke his truth. If it resonates with you, then it is up to you to take whatever appropriate action you feel compelled to take. If you don't, then you don't, but that is completely up to you.
Children need to be shown what to do. Are we children?
The solutions are right in front of us. The Buddha taught us so, as have all the great wise ones. It is up to each of us to look within and take appropriate action.
I will give you this, max: Maybe it would help if people spoke of what actions they are taking. Maybe that would spark something in someone else. In that vein, here's what I am doing: I am expanding my garden. I am learning, practicing, and organizing permaculture. I am a member of a local Transition Towns group. I have been participating in a bi-weekly gathering of people to talk about our lives and to create more community. I am leading a group in financial integrity/intelligence so that we can live on less and be more mindful. I am a member of a local "barter" system. I am a member of a local co-op. There's more, but you get the drift.
Does that help?
Ted, I didn't say that we should not discard our own solutions and rely on the solutions of others but it would be good to compare and evaluate each of our solutions with those presented by others. That would help us see where we are going right and where we could use some improvements. I like what you are doing and I think I can incorporate some if not all of what you do as a solution. Likewise, it would be interesting to see what part of Hedges's solution each of us can agree and disagree on and reevaluate ourselves.
"Children need to be shown what to do. Are we children?"
True about children but as to your question, that depends on what we are being tested on. Our education is poor compared to other nations. Marriage and relationships is dirt poor compared to other nations. Our voting records overall for candidates is very poor ranging from voting for sellouts in Washington to very low voter turnout on local elections. I don't think we adults are children nonetheless but after my visits to the Far East, most children there make us American adults look like kids compared to them.
I don't look to Hedges for solutions, prefering to think for myself. For example, I reject the supernatural, which makes me a monist rather than an atheist. Without some ideas of what he, or we, might do, the article boils down to wonderfully articulate and obviously stimulating "wanking."
'Without some ideas of what he, or we, might do, the article boils down to wonderfully articulate and obviously stimulating "wanking."'
Eddie,
Would you believe him if he gave you some ideas?
Here's my idea: Do what you can do where you are. But here's the catch: Do it with others. Organize. Involve. Share. Inter-relate. Build community.
Ah, but here's the rub: So many will see my ideas and dismiss them as simplistic or trite. Instead, they will decry the fact that anyone with something good to say doesn't lay out action plans...and when someone does, people will then dismiss them as simplistic and trite... And on and on...
In short, those who have the will to do, do - those who don't, don't. Ideas and solutions have nothing to do with it.
[Here's my idea: Do what you can do where you are. But here's the catch: Do it with others. Organize. Involve. Share. Inter-relate. Build community.]
Remember that, now, as in all periods of human history, we will need help with the young and help when we're old. We are not islands, nor are we only individuals. One person would never solve the problems that we face as a species, but a thousand can. And eventually will.
Honestly, I'm not sure why my post about "solutions" provoked several negative replies. I'm getting a little tired myself, checking in and out of this thread over the course of the day, but I'm not looking for someone to tell me what to do, and I am doing what I can. I walk to my local farmer's market every Sunday (more or less than 50% of all our food comes from the market, depending on the season). I killed my TV (actually, I let it die and never replaced it). I play music with friends once a week, sometimes performing at the farmer's market. I spent 20 years of my life working on environmental problems, the results of which are minimal and depressing. I engage people in debate, sometimes with and too often without grace. I care for my aging mother with dementia. I'm doing a lot of doing, but I can't do anything without a motivating idea behind it, and problems require solutions (isn't "solving" a matter of "doing"?) Alas, I'm confused, but not so that I disagree with you (quite the contrary). Time to sign off for now, I guess.
"I heard a news piece this morning that stated that the US population is growing older and less educated and that we will have to rely on educated immigrants to take over." -- Ted Markow
I, too, have been reading and hearing that the U.S. population is incompetent, and therefore, the government needs to up the level of H1b Visas from the 65,000 number where it officially sits today. At one time, the number was officially about 200,000, but the unemployment of engineers and tech workers, with any number of degrees, rose to such high levels that Congress actually lowered the number back to the original 65,000. In addition, I have watched hearings on C-SPAN, where Bill Gates testified before Congress to the fact that U.S. workers aren't smart enough to do the jobs, and therefore, Congress needs to raise the number of H1b Visas again. However, I don't believe that U.S. workers aren't smart enough. Since I lost my job a little more than three years ago, I began to meet U.S. tech workers who keep up their credentials and education, and they haven't worked, steadily, for more than a decade. It's all about cheap labor and corporate power. At least, that's what I have uncovered in my own research. For more information on this issue, you can go to www.brightfuturejobs.com, a Chicago-based organization that is currently working hard on this issue. Donna Conroy is the director of the organization, and she is always interested in comments and ideas -- they are committed to changing the status quo.
Yesterday, my son told me -- his Ph.D. studies is in organizational psychology, OR, teaching corporations how to be more efficient and to make even more money. (I am dubious about his line of studies, and I have watched/listened to his mindset become more and more corporate over the past couple of years.) -- that corporations are going to have to start hiring older workers, like me, because we all still have to work. Of course, he hasn't been, actively, out in the job market for more than six years. His view is strictly from academia.
For decades, U.S. corporations have been weeding out independent thinkers with their "personality tests." (From The Organization Man, written by William H. Whyte, in 1956) In other words, they don't want people to think. They want obedience and people who will go with the flow, so to speak, people who will go along to get along.
And, if you have watched William Black's lecture on Wall Street, about the corporate structure, you already know that he documents the firing of honest men (mostly men) who blow whistles in the financial industry. They lose their careers.
https://webdisk.lclark.edu/econ/steinhardt2010/steinhardt2010.html
When we enter the fray, this is where we find ourselves, competing in order to win jobs -- the few jobs that are out there.
Ted, I haven't yet read the Curtis White book, The Middle Mind. The other day, I read something about the book, and I have added it to my list. Thanks!
Currently, I am reading the Simon Johnson book, 13 Bankers. From my reading, my distinct conclusion is that he is very worried. However, he is also advocating "fixing the system," which he labels as an oligarchy. He comes from the IMF, and therefore, he still believes in the system, that it can be fixed. I, myself, think it's the system that needs to be dismantled, and something else needs to replace it, some kind of system that is accountable, and serves the people, etc. A system that is more just, and transparent. To his credit, though, with each lecture I have watched over the past several months, Simon Johnson's angst seems to grow, and his eyes and face reflect more and more worry as NO reform legislation is passed by our misrepresentatives. He, himself, seems somewhat incredulous about how little they have even tried to do. The tone of his voice is definitely more urgent and pressing, and from his words, I conclude that he believes we will suffer another financial meltdown.
"Thank you Chris Hedges for your bleak but honest assessment of our "Last Man" stand. As long as "progressives" keep playing in the same sandbox as the rest, we will not be part of the solution." -- Ted Markow
I agree with your concluding statement! I was glad to see that CD chose to post the Chris Hedges article today. We can't pretend that these times are anything but bleak.
You would be interested, I think, in "Disciplined Minds: A Critical Look at Salaried Professionals and the Soul-Battering System that Shapes their Lives," by Jeff Schmidt (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2000).
I have to add my two cents worth about American workers not being smart enough to do tech jobs so they have to raise the number of H1b visas.
From my first hand experience I would be very careful about listening to Mr Gates or the head of any other large company concerning this issue. I have personally lived through an outsourcing situation where many highly educated American professionals with years of experience were laid off and their jobs were then sent over seas. This wasn't done because these people were incompetent, or couldn't do their jobs, (after all they had been doing them just fine for years), it was just that someone else in the world could do the work, to some passible extent, for less money.
Again from my personal experience, the foreign tech workers that I dealt with were at best as competent as their American counterparts, but in most cases they were not. Their main advantage was that they worked cheaper than an American could. I also find it interesting that the ability of a foreign worker to undercut an American worker is only exploited for lower level jobs. Those at the top never seem to see the wisdom of off-shoring/outsourcing jobs when it comes to their level.
In my own little part of the world, I know of around 75 highly skilled, long term American workers that are either looking for work, or are about to loose their jobs because of the outsourcing that I was part of.
Trust me with official unemployment at around 10%, and real unemployment/underemployment at around 20%, I doubt there are really that many tech jobs out there that you have to bring in someone on a H1b visa to do. Again I know this from first hand experience.
On a related note. As more and more companies rely on foreign/remote workers for the tech support, what will happen if for some reason they loose connectivity to those remote workers, either through natural disasters or man made ones? I know once the outsourcing I went through is complete, there is no way in hell my former company could keep all their systems up for any length of time with the skeleton crew that will be working there.
But Im sore the titans of industry have assured themselves, that their technology is foolproof and they will never experience such an outage. After all computers or planes never crash, and oil wells never leak uncontrollably. Those technologies never let us down so why should world wide internet communications ever fail us?
one of my buds works IT at a local defense contractor...a really big one...
his whole team was laid off, then a percentage (including my bud) were hired back by the subcontractor now providing the same services...
now, he works the same job, but for another letterhead, for less money and no bennies...
it has nothing to do with qualifications...
call it getting screwed...
A fairly similar thing happened to my crew. Outsourced to another company, had to interview for our own jobs like somebody just off the street. Fortunately the pay stayed the same, but there were no more raises. Luckily I was in a situation where I could leave on my own, and not have to play their game where they work you like a dog, then lay you off once they get your job fully off shored.
We live in a country that is basically eating itself middle class alive so the few at the top can make even more money. They already make more than they can spend in a lifetime, but it still is not enough. They want even more. Pretty sick and pointless when you think about it.
Sioux Rose
KAY: Great post. I especially resonate with the issues raised in your 4th paragraph as per personality tests used to weed out the independent thinkers. Do we not see the same when it comes to who gets media time? It's all about racing towards the mean. Maybe our times are the living embodiment of the LAW of averages, where what is average, as opposed to inspiring, is what all are to aspire to become... in the land of standardized parts, tests, norms, etc!
NC TOM: Great post, too. In your 6th paragraph, you raise chilling possibilities. I often think about these potential outcomes... the downside of outsourcing to foreign lands. The guy I date told me that he's lost union construction jobs due to the hiring of Mexicans here in Florida, a "right to work" state. He said they really can't cut sheet-rock the way he can, and they do a pretty uneven job. Sometimes unions are called in to fix the damage later. Sometimes not.
You should see some of the houses built by "migrant labor" or "undocumented labor" around here in south central PA. Horrid.
"consumerist Sparta." Already in the 50`s, the great lay psychoanalyst Erik Erikson stated that the main purpose of American mass culture was to create "consumer idiots"...
Being secular isn't always a blessing. UK and US are among the most secular nations and yet violence is at its worst. India is also among the most secular of nations but there is still a lot of religious conflicts on all fronts although the recent economy has sort of appeared to tame it. I am a Christian but I feel more comfortable converting to Hindu than I do to secular. Besides, since this nation is already a lost soul, wouldn't going even more secular make matters worse? I know Chris Hedges must be aware that nations that are very religious are also very authoritarian but I still think that working out some good compromises without conceding to tyranny, religious or atheist, could be worked out. All I want is a peaceful revolution.
It's not what you think it is.
"UK and US are among the most secular nations and yet violence is at its worst. India is also among the most secular of nations"
What do you base this on? Every study I've seen says that the U.S. is one of the most religious countries, especially among the "developed" countries where it's a real anomoly in that regard.
The US is nothing like the Arab nations and we're still free to speak against our government. Try that in Saudi Arabia or Iran and see how long it lasts. Here is a report from 2004 on the most secular of nations.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/wtwtgod/3518375.stm
I don't think that it has changed much in the last 6 years but I could be wrong.
Surely the Second Coming is at hand. It's been near a century since those words were written. The bleakness and truth of "The Last Man would mistake cynicism for knowledge" is all around us. Many here at CD use their cynicism as a security blanket, and often to ward off the tough choices necessary. I myself, only choose to occasionally rise above the frayed edge (That's my raised eyebrow, if you look closely).
Sorry to disagree, but Hedges' thinking on religion and morality is as cloudy and, frankly, whining as it was when he released "I Don't Believe in Atheists," a diatribe against atheism so repugnant and offensive it had to be retitled for re-release. I read it, and there is no more convincing argument presented in the book-length version than there is in this wandering piece of doo-doo.
As long as he continues to conflate morality with religion and amorality with science, he's never going to offer any sort of solution.
Bingo.
Thanks for the additional points. The modalities used by the oppressors include both technology (hard weaponry) AND religion (soft weaponry). Whatever it takes.
I can't help but feel, we're becoming Russian/Chinese? (Corporations are hoping Chinese). I also remember a lot of the criticism about the movie Avatar was about the predictability of the story (sad)! We are just caught, do we stop consuming and destroy the economy? Which people do we harm first? It's helplessness! We voted for change, but got mostly stays the same. Why the high rates of depression in "wealthy" countries? Suicide rates in Russia and Japan? A middle class largely borrowed now from the Chinese that are gasp...socialists! I think it has become farce. If it weren't for all the yoga shops opening up all over Minneapolis, I'd give up.
I don't know how socialist the Chinese government is these days. Given the fact that China is quickly turning into an environmental disaster and given the fact that the wealth seems to trickling down quite slowly, I would opt for government sponsored plutocracy. A plutocracy that is deep in bed with the global capitalists the world over.
Chris, I knew that it 'had to be you' who would first bring up and seriously discuss the intersection of the issues of; Empire, religion, and humanism.
Just last Friday I drafted this attempt to consider the same nexis of issues, and propose a hopeful positivism and alliance between true (non-perverted) religion and humanism (like yours) against this deadly Empire.
Any comments by you would be greatly appreciated:
“Toward a Unifying Theory of Religion and Humanism --- against Empire”
Within my last essay on a possible “Instruction Manual for De-fusing the Nuclear-Economic ‘Doomsday Machine’”, I used the short-hand of ‘analogy-thinking’, and at one point employed, I hoped, an attention-getting analogy between Flip Wilson’s humorous line “The devil made me do it”, and the suggestion that Obama apologize to the world for our setting-off that global economic/financial ‘Doomsday Machine’ WMD of derivatives, and saying “The Empire made us (US) do it”.
Initially, I had thought that such an analogy would merely be humorous and grab readers’ attention, but the miracle of analogy-thinking (thank God, and thank humanism) has now grabbed me like the song, “Fooled around and fell in love” --- and I can’t let go.
Yes, my playful ‘fooling around” with the magic of George Lakoff's ‘analogy-thinking’ has me in love with the seriousness of the analogy between “the devil made me do it” and “the Empire made US do it”, which opens up much more in the way of further ‘analogy-thinking’.
Actually, the ‘devil’ making or ‘causing’ us (the US) to do something bad precisely parallels (and is analogous to) ‘Empire’ in its deception, guile, untruth, and ‘divide and conquer’ methods of causing bad things to happen to countries, people, and the world --- which started me thinking about more analogies in history, philosophy, economics, politics, and war that are commonly viewed as ‘bad things’ by both religion and humanism.
I vaguely remembered an old quote from college about the Renaissance, Reformation, humanism, scientific inquiry, enlightenment, and rational thought “breaking off one of the poles of eternal duality”, and thus purportedly challenging religious thought (or at least the dogma that passed for thought) by the Roman church-centric imperial power that pre-dated modern nation-state empires. I remember, at the time, being concerned that it seemed to suggest that religion and enlightened scientific humanism were at odds.
However, when we look at the actual religious constructs of all major religions, their founding prophets, and their genuine teachings regarding the economic, political, and militarist tendencies and actions about the concentrated power and hierarchy of the empires they grew out of and often confronted (certainly Jesus v. Roman Empire), it is clear that the teachings and truth of religions have always been distinctly “anti-Empire”.
Certainly within contemporary thinking and writing on the topic of religions being supportive or antithetical to the hierarchical, hypocritical, and non-egalitarian powers and practices of empire, the position of religion against Empire is strong both historically and now.
Recently, Simon Johnson and James Kwak in “13 Bankers” as well as Joseph Stiglitz in “FreeFall” are aligned and note that all major religions have prohibitions against excessive or abusive financial/economic power over people, such as usury. The theologically trained and political-economic critic, Christopher Hedges, comes down very strongly on the side of all religions being anti-Empire in nature. Likewise, most modern writers from William Sloan Coffin to Dr. Martin Luther King who have seriously addressed the question of religion, judge it to be decidedly anti-imperial.
Naturally, some perversion of religion has been effected by many supposedly religious leaders to position, place, and rationalize the religion they claim to speak for as being some entrenched fundamentalism in the service of a temporal empire, which they more guilefully represent --- such as imperial religious leaders blessing crusades, or Calvinism endorsing unrestrained capitalism.
Post-Renaissance science and humanism while often being accused of being anti-religious and of “lopping off one of the poles of eternal duality” has much more often in its non-perverted forms been entirely supportive of true religious tenants --- with a long history of moral and religious believers among scientists and humanists like Einstein, Jacob Bronowski, Norbert Weiner and many others going out of their way to openly discuss, praise, and defend their spiritual and intellectually informed vision of a higher power within the vast complexity, beauty, and elegance of the systems and philosophies in which they are leaders. Such world-class scientists and humanists in every field are strongly suspicious of the underserved power of imperial elites and hierarchical thinking (or rather perversion of thinking to the desires of Empire).
Like the perversion of true religious precepts to serve the ‘will to power’ of Empire, the division and distortion of scientific and humanist “worldly philosophies” into the service of Empire for explosive weapons or economic advantage, or to tyrannize with mis-applied social sciences of deceit, represents a constant and dangerous threat to science and the humanities from physics and biology to economics, psychology and social sciences that can be abused to propagandize.
The common device of Empire, and those entrenched ruling-elites who choose to practice the deceit of ‘empire-thinking’ in distracting and abusing both genuinely ‘anti-empire’ religious influence and ‘anti-empire’ humanist influences is to misapply the influence which each have --- by “dividing and conquering”. Then through perverse money-power incentives and deceit, the honest strength, integrity, and truth of both the eternal poles of religion and humanism are tricked into harnessing these positive, progressive, and lively goals, values, and faith into nothing but extending the grip and death-spiral of Empire against our fellow citizens of the earth.
The greatest and gravest ‘divide and conquer’ technique of Empire has been precisely to drive a wedge and seed division between those “eternal poles of duality’ that are represented by the “Worldly Philosophers” (Heilbroner’s description of humanists) and what are sometimes inaccurately referred to as the ‘other-worldly philosophers’ (of the world’s great religions). As is clearly revealed on closer and truthful examination, the humanists are not only ‘worldly’, but also typically strongly religious, and the religious, like Christ himself, are not only ‘other-worldly’ but strongly concerned with social justice here on earth. Instead of the false and contrived ‘divisions’ claimed by Empire separating religions and scientific humanism, the two poles of eternal faith and truth are actually strongly linked by a broad and common distaste and distrust of Empire --- as shown by the 80% of Americans that Pew proved distrust the disguised corporate/financial/militarist empire behind their own government (and media).
Religion, science, and humanism are inherently ‘democracy-oriented’ and practice ‘democracy-thinking’ in the best sense of free-will, liberty, intellectual integrity and equality --- whereas, Empire practices the opposite (although it obviously likes to disguise that fact).
Empire (by whatever name it hides) is inherently elitist, seeks ever greater entrenched inequality, and thinks in authoritarian terms. However, like the injustice and elitism that Empire seeks to disguise (particularly in America, which has the highest GINI Coefficient of Income Inequality in the world) Empire has recently shifted its tyrannical and oppressive strategy of authoritarianism from the older and more obvious and overtly hard ‘Orwellian’ techniques that can now only be used in the territories, to the far more subtle, sophisticated, and softer shackles of ‘inverted totalitarianism’ (as defined by Sheldon Wolin).
Recently, I was rereading Jacob Bronowski’s amazingly humanist and religious faith in “The Ascent of Man” (1973), and it struck me in a speeding “analogy-thinking” moment that religious belief, faith, and informed scientific and humanist conviction in the ‘ascent of man’ seems strongly to be exactly the opposite analogy to Francis Fukuyama’s epochal “The End of History and the last man” (1992), which details the collapse of the Soviet “evil Empire”, and seems to be suggesting that all history and any ascent of man would stop with the entrenchment of a penultimate form of political-economic end-game he calls “capitalist liberal democracy”.
However, Fukuyama’s sophisticated reasoning and terminology fell victim to a cabal (or evolving political-economic Empire) of neocons and their future ‘Emperor-President’ (which is what Andrew Bacevich aptly calls the selected George W. Bush). In a dark ironic twist, the famously “incurious” student took to repeating only the phrase ‘capitalist democracy’ (whatever that moron meant by that oxymoron), and thus the perversion of humanist intellectual effort was placed in the service of a new ‘evil Empire’ --- because all empire is evil.
The boy-emperor parroting the phrase ‘capitalist democracy’ has long caused me to think of another analogy to the great John Maynard Keynes (of whom the incurious emperor probably never studied at the imperial Harvard Business School, when he passed through on the way to the White House), but Keynes famously said, “Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.”
Fortunately, a decade and a half later Fukuyama, like all honest humanists with intellectual integrity carefully revised his thinking and published “America at the Crossroads – Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy”. Hopefully, at today’s crossroads, America will turn back from the road to Empire, and get back on the road to democracy. But it is clear that great damage has already been done.
Ron Suskind famously reports in his fabulous, honest and revealing “One Percent Doctrine” about the Cheney imperialist regime, that Bush attended, that:
“In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.
The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''
Such absolute contempt about cutting off the very humanist principles of intellectual enlightenment that have lead the ‘ascent of man’ (and History) since the Renaissance, merely to substitute a hubristic and non-democratic Global Empire is breath-taking in its arrogance --- and runs diametrically opposite to the eternal pole of reason, rationally moral thought, and the anti-Empire posture of humanism.
But it is also diametrically opposed and dangerous as arrogant Empire to the genuine religious principles and beliefs of all major religions --- including the millions of multiple religions abroad and here at home that Empire is always willing to slaughter, tyrannize, and economically oppress to maintain the Empire.
Thus both cooperative poles of eternal duality, religion and scientific humanism, have strong reason to unify and ally themselves in solidarity with the progressively evolving history and people of our world in a Global ‘anti-Empire’ People’s Movement against the ruling-elite Global corporate/financial/militarist Empire which still (after Cheney) controls our country by hiding behind the façade of a Two-Party ‘Vichy’ sham of democracy and equally ‘Vichy’ media deceit ---- that would bring tears of admiration to the now dead eyes of Hitler’s fascist Empire, Stalin’s ‘evil Empire’, and Caesar’s thousand year Empire.
Neither religion nor scientific humanism has any stake with Empire, but rather with each other.
Alan MacDonald
Sanford, Maine
Note; If this scant and initial draft about the hopeful prospects of defining a religious and humanist coherence and co-operation in assuring and educating each essential duality; religion and scientific humanism, that there is no conflict between us and amply reason to join our causes against Empire, then I will hope that others, more skilled than I, will further develop ideas, examples, and more understandable explanations of how the great common aspects of our historical ascent of religious faith and humanist knowledge and progress can be enhanced and combined in a unifying theory against the certain dead-end of global Empire.
Copyright 2010
A very complete, not so scant comment. However, drafts, ideas, conflicts, empires, skills, cause, understanding, explanations, religion, knowledge,progress and all intellectual concepts about the previous and others, are appearing inside of that which is unified to it self and the parts to it. A few moments of undirected attention will expose and confirm this silent wakefulness. Then the discussion becomes one of expressing that which is here and full, instead of it being a search.
Chris, I would be interested to get your take on the Kagen nomination and the further right ward shift of the supreme court.
Is this article by Hedges a bit contradictory or at least confusing?
He writes the obit for religion and then proceeds to mourn the loss of morals? Where do morals come from? If religion doesn't provide them and they are intrinsically part of human nature does that not make us unique as living things on this planet?
There is only two paths. There was a Creator that orginated life (which explains our moral compass) and the universe OR there is no Creator and everyting happened by 'insert preferred origin belief here'.
This leaves only two results. If God is something dreamed up by mankind what is the value of morals in society? Why do we care and monkeys don't? It is then survival of the fittest. It is kill or be killed. It is personal profit above your neighbors welfare. If there is no one to answer to...
But conversely, if there is, that means the truth is out there. You just have to look for it, be open minded and not look to flawed human reasoning for insight.
What has flawed human reasoning brought us? It has brought us failed human experiments in governance and rule of every stripe and color that have only reinforced a Bible truism at Jeremiah 10:23:"...that to earthling man his way does not belong. It does not belong to man who is walking even to direct his step."
If we lose all moral guidance, we become no better or different than monkeys that eat their young and cannabilize each other. That is what is happening now. While not directly cannabilizing each other, it is being done indirectly through various means, predatory captialism, war machines, environmental destruction and much more.
Hedges ignores the weight of Jesus influence on human history. He preached for a few years and left an indelible mark on the world. If his message is lived by it can change the world. The problem is, no one really wants to live by it. They want their cake and eat it too. Difficult choices would have to be made and people in general are not prepared to make them. But at least be honest and say that instead of trying to explain away our inherent belief in something greater than ourselves so you can rationalize your choice.
A New World___ Very good comments on Hedges dreary take on our society. It gets a little tiresome listening to people trying to blame all religious institutions for our problems when it is only a misguided few causing the trouble. That is also the case for most of our organizations, (Congress, corporations, political parties etc). There are millions of good Christian people out working and helping our country every day and should be appreciated, not dissed as dummies believing in fairy tales. The churches have had to cope with the new ideas of greed, materialism, and selfishness like everyone else. We must not judge all people by the actions and words of a few that are causing our present dilemma.
Kernelz,
I understand the dissapointment that people feel towards the worlds religions. I understand the frustration at the obvious hypocrisy in those same religions. The acts commited by these supposed religous men are beyond comprehension and repulsive. I understand the hypocrisy in governments and their leaders that claim to be Christian and then support violent warfare as a means to an end, the supposed Christian nations that rape and pillage the environment as a means to an end.
I get all those things and they deeply offend me too. But that doesnt mean the truth does not exist out there. I will say it again, if Jesus' message was followed to the letter and principle the world would be a different place. What 'men' are doing in the Bible's name does not change the Bible's true message. If I decided to start killing people in my biological fathers name it doesnt change what kind of man he is or was. It just makes me a killer.
That is the crux of the problem, the acts commited by these men are not reflective of the values and principles that Jesus taught.
To be Christian is to be Christ-like. No human can perfectly follow his example, but we can try to do the best we possibly can now. That would include carefully studying the Bible's message to make sure not just ourselves but everything we support, carefully follows it's guidance. We cannot pick and choose what parts of it's message we follow.
Any Christian church or organization has one responsibility and that is to follow the message of Jesus to the letter. That is how they should cope with new ideas, old ideas...any ideas. Anything else is watering down it's message to tickle the ears of those listening. That is what has happened, again following the prophetic words of Paul in 2nd Timothy 4:3,4: "There will be a period of time when they will not put up with the healthful teaching, but, in accord with their own desires, they will accumulate teachers for themselves to have their ears tickled: and they will turn their ears away from the truth."
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That would include carefully studying the Bible's message to make sure not just ourselves but everything we support, carefully follows it's guidance. We cannot pick and choose what parts of it's message we follow.
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We cannot pick and choose what parts of it's (sic) message we follow.
Really? Would you like to think long and hard about what you have just written? Every single word of the bible is truth. Every. Single. Word.
Okay, then. No picking and choosing. To do otherwise would be blasphemy!!
What is your point Kent?
That I believe that every single word of the Bible as truth? Thank you, I do believe that and try to live my life accordingly. As mentioned, no one can perfectly do so, I readily admit to being far from perfectly being able to do so, but that doesnt change the truth in the Bible. It doesnt change it's message.
I believe you are repeating things I have already said, 'no picking and choosing' etc. YES and YES.
How many concubines and slaves do you own?
A careful, not knee-jerk, study of the Bible reveals the changes in God's dealings with mankind. Jesus replaced the old law covenant God had with the Israelites. While there are some bedrock principles carried over into what is known as the New Testament or the generations beginning with the life of Jesus, Jesus' teachings replaced that previous arrangement with Israel. This signfied a new relationship or covenant with mankind.
If someone honestly wants to examine the Bible for what it is there are avenue's available to do that. I am not going to get into philosophical debates over everything you find objectionable in the Bible. If you or anyone else honestly wanted to examine these things barring preheld prejudices, I would do so. I have a feeling that is not the case. However, being imperfect I have been wrong before.