The Weird World of Occult America -- How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation
By Alexander Zaitchik, Killing the Buddha
January 28, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/145468/
If witch-burning Puritans are the original jocks of American history, then the mystics surrounding Johannes Kelpius are the first goths. While the rest of the British colonies were still dutifully worshipping their angry Christian god, Kelpius and his followers—who fled Austria to settle in Philadelphia during the late seventeenth-century—busied themselves with astrology, alchemy, Kabbalah, and other “dark arts” with tangled roots in the Italian Renaissance, the Rosicrucian Enlightenment, and various (often fabricated) antiquities. We meet Kelpius early in Mitch Horowitz’s Occult America: The Secret History of How Mysticism Shaped Our Nation, an uneven but always interesting account of 400 years of New World Strange. Among the several misconceptions Horowitz seeks to dispel, the most foundational is the idea that Colonial America provided shelter only for persecuted Christian sects. Almost from the beginning, North America was also home to a fair number of those who, like Kelpius, had more arcane spiritual interests.
Horowitz never claims that these beliefs were as formative an influence as Christianity in the making of America, but after finishing his book, one can’t help but wonder if maybe Ouija boards don’t belong next to King James in every motel room. Horowitz ably chronicles how occult traditions have, over the centuries, deeply and consistently influenced the American mainstream—sometimes entering the mainstream themselves in the process. Many of the figures that populate Horowitz’s narrative will be unknown to the uninitiated, but their impact is illustrated by the frequent appearance of more familiar names. Mormonism’s founder Joseph Smith, after a childhood in the Hudson Valley’s famously heterodox “Burnt-over District,” was at the time of his death studying Hebrew and Kabbalah. Henry Ford was a fan of the New Thought leader Ralph Waldo Trine, and he often gave visitors copies of Trine’s In Tune With the Infinite. Frederick Douglass left open the possibility that a magic “hoodoo” root (not to be confused with “voodoo”) helped him secure victory against a cruel slave master.
One of the more surprising vignettes involves Henry Wallace, the New Deal figure best remembered today for his doomed third-party challenge to Harry Truman in 1948. As Horowitz shows, it wasn’t Wallace’s alleged ties to Communists that brought a premature end to his political career; it was his relationship with a shadowy Theosophist “guru” named Nicholas Roerich.
As often as not in Horowitz’s history, mysticism meant money. Occult America offers numerous examples of hucksters popularizing esoteric ideas to make a buck. Almost all did so by preaching variations on the profoundly American idea of “the power of positive thinking” (or, in the first formulation, “the power of affirmative thought”). It first came to prominence in Jacksonian America, when a Maine clockmaker named Phineas P. Quimby came to believe he had cured his tuberculosis simply by refusing to believe in it. Quimby’s insight, combined with the ideas of Mesmerists and Swedenborgians, gave birth to the movement known as New Thought. Almost a century later, an Idaho druggist named Frank Robinson would build on New Thought premises to found and grow the world’s eighth largest religion, Psychiana, largely by selling memberships (with a money-back guarantee) through mail-order magazine ads. Robinson’s paying adherents received lesson plans that mixed mind-healing, prayer, and good old-fashioned Emersonian self-reliance. Ernest Holmes would employ a similar model to build the still-extant Church of Religious Science. By the mid-twentieth-century, New Thought had been further mainstreamed and repackaged for mass consumption in the form of best-selling books by Dale Carnegie, Napoleon Hill, and—most famously—Norman Vincent Peale.
Among the forgotten stories Horowitz tells is the role the occult played in the progressive social movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The most famous nineteenth-century Theosophists, Spiritualists, and trance mediums preached a radically democratic view of religion, society, and individual empowerment that crossed barriers of gender, religion, and race. Many were active in the fight for women’s rights, the abolition of slavery, and desegregation. “Spiritualism has inaugurated the era of woman,” declared the Spiritualist suffragette Mary Fenn Love in 1853. Twenty years later, a trance medium named Victoria Woodhull became the nation’s first female presidential candidate, nominated by a coalition of suffragists, abolitionists, and religious free thinkers who counted a wide array of occultists in their number.
Horowitz believes that this historical partnership between the occult and progressive politics has been consistent up to the present. He convincingly knocks down the trendy idea that the Third Reich was an occult phenomenon. “However tantalizing some may find it to conceive of Hitler as a practitioner of black magic,” Horowitz writes, “it is fantasy.” It turns out Hitler had no more patience for ancient Vedic philosophy or Aryan mysticism than he did for Marxism. He just thought the Indian symbol of karma and rebirth looked good on uniforms.
If Occult America is hurt by anything, it is its own ambition. By trying to cover the grand sweep of American history in less than 300 pages, the book is inevitably dense and busy with characters, movements, and ideas constantly being introduced, sketched, and pulled away. There is a good reason that Catherine Albanese’s far more comprehensive work, A Republic of Mind and Spirit: A Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion—which is changing the way scholars tell the history of American religion—runs nearly 650 pages. Without much of a chronological or thematic structure, Occult America often reads more like an encyclopedia than a narrative. (But an encyclopedia that’s missing a few pages: Where’s Wilhelm Reich? Robert Anton Wilson? L. Ron Hubbard?) Horowitz’s account of the Ouija board is fascinating, as is the story of Gandhi’s early involvement with Theosophy. But the book would have benefited from a shorter timeframe or a tighter thematic focus.
Because he is busy covering so much ground, Horowitz never really pauses to ask or explore the larger questions behind his history. Why have Americans been continually drawn to and inspired by this unruly family of philosophies? Why did Spiritualism sweep America, and then the globe, in the nineteenth century? As a veteran and respected voice for esoteric ideas, Horowitz understands their appeal better than most. But in Occult America, he settles for too little.
These ideas and movements have existed and continue to thrive, he writes, for the same reason as any religion: because they provide people with “some of the most moving and deeply affecting experiences of their lives.” It is an answer that is as simple as it is unassailable.
Monday, February 1, 2010
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Have aeons of natural selection hardwired human beings to be religious?
http://www.mercatornet.com/articles/view/the_new_revelation/
Denyse O'Leary | Thursday, 31 December 2009
The new revelation
Have aeons of natural selection hardwired human beings to be religious?
The recent spate of articles and books purporting to explain religion without the idea that God exists and communicates with man has produced some interesting specimens. In an article under the intriguing title of "Satan, the great motivator", journalist Michael Fitzgerald reports that: "A pair of Harvard researchers recently examined 40 years of data from dozens of countries, trying to sort out the economic impact of religious beliefs or practices. They found that religion has a measurable effect on developing economies -- and the most powerful influence relates to how strongly people believe in hell."
Most likely, belief in hell correlates with the idea that one's actions matter in the long run. Fitzgerald outlines research on how religion aids social development, principally by creating greater levels of public trust. We learn, for example, that ultra-Orthodox Jews dominate New York’s diamond trade "because of levels of trust based on religion."
However, this leaves two important questions unanswered. In a religiously divided and intolerant society, religious-based trust covers only "true believers" -- those of a different religion are often treated with distrust and hostility. This is hardly a recipe for social development, or even social peace. In North America, religion increases trust because of the historically high level of tolerance as well as commitment.
For example, the millions who shop at the immensely popular discount chain WalMart probably don't know that in 1991 (the year before his death) founder Sam Walton gave $6 million, including an endowment of $3 million for annual awards to new church developments, to share the Christian faith. They would not have minded if Walton were an Orthodox Jew sending the money to Israeli hospitals or a devout Muslim helping to fund the travelling Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit. This is not due merely to heedless consumerism among the chain's predominantly lower middle class customers. Rather, their level of intergroup trust is high. Indeed, intergroup trust in North America is so high that it is sometimes abused, as when the nineteen 9/11 terrorists took advantage of the fact that most Americans did not distrust Muslims as such.
The other nagging question is, should we pursue religion for the sake of prosperity? You never read that in the Bible, quite the opposite. "Be on your guard against all kinds of greed," Christ said. "A man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions." If people want religion for prosperity, wouldn't it be organized hypocrisy, propped up by fear of hell? People who have a loving relationship with God do not fear hell.
Meanwhile, in the New York Times, Nicholas Wade has tried to reconcile people of faith to the claim that they are "hard-wired" to believe because Darwin's natural selection favours belief. Wade, a science reporter for The New York Times and the author of The Faith Instinct: How Religion Evolved and Why It Endures, writes,
That religious behavior was favored by natural selection neither proves nor disproves the existence of gods. For believers, if one accepts that evolution has shaped the human body, why not the mind too? What evolution has done is to endow people with a genetic predisposition to learn the religion of their community, just as they are predisposed to learn its language. With both religion and language, it is culture, not genetics, that then supplies the content of what is learned.
In other words, it was genetic predisposition and culture, not revelation. Wade comforts his religious readers with the fact that some Darwinists entertain the idea of "group selection" -- long denounced by the majority of Darwinists, who favour the "selfish gene". If so, group cultural practices might favour a religious group:
... group selection has recently gained two powerful champions, the biologists David Sloan Wilson and Edward O. Wilson, who argued that two special circumstances in recent human evolution would have given group selection much more of an edge than usual. One is the highly egalitarian nature of hunter-gatherer societies, which makes everyone behave alike and gives individual altruists a better chance of passing on their genes. The other is intense warfare between groups, which enhances group-level selection in favor of community-benefiting behaviors such as altruism and religion.
Well, David Sloan Wilson is an atheist and Edward O. Wilson wavers between atheism and deism -- in the meantime, he patronizes people of faith by inventing theories about how religion evolved: "Humans have an innate tendency to form religious belief. It has a lot of beneficial influences. It helps people adjust to their mortality and it binds communities tightly together . . . to have evolved such a powerful tendency and to hold it unto death, that looks like a biological adaptation."
It looks like he is the diplomatic wing, operating by suavity rather than stridency. But it is hard not to notice the arrogance and condescension these people feel for those who have come to the rational conclusion that God exists, based on the fine tuning of the universe, the design of life, and their own encounters with God, to say nothing of changed lives.
E.O. Wilson has been trying to find "common ground" with Christians in recent years. But what common ground does Wilson hope for? To him, there is no revelation, and faith does not arise from an encounter with God. Rather, we have an "innate tendency" to form beliefs -- just as a squirrel has an innate tendency to gather nuts in the fall and a spider has an innate tendency to eat her mate. Based on recent events in many nations, people of faith might better focus on maintaining or introducing freedom of thought, conscience, and belief. There is no common ground with evolutionary psychologists.
Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain.
Denyse O'Leary | Thursday, 31 December 2009
The new revelation
Have aeons of natural selection hardwired human beings to be religious?
The recent spate of articles and books purporting to explain religion without the idea that God exists and communicates with man has produced some interesting specimens. In an article under the intriguing title of "Satan, the great motivator", journalist Michael Fitzgerald reports that: "A pair of Harvard researchers recently examined 40 years of data from dozens of countries, trying to sort out the economic impact of religious beliefs or practices. They found that religion has a measurable effect on developing economies -- and the most powerful influence relates to how strongly people believe in hell."
Most likely, belief in hell correlates with the idea that one's actions matter in the long run. Fitzgerald outlines research on how religion aids social development, principally by creating greater levels of public trust. We learn, for example, that ultra-Orthodox Jews dominate New York’s diamond trade "because of levels of trust based on religion."
However, this leaves two important questions unanswered. In a religiously divided and intolerant society, religious-based trust covers only "true believers" -- those of a different religion are often treated with distrust and hostility. This is hardly a recipe for social development, or even social peace. In North America, religion increases trust because of the historically high level of tolerance as well as commitment.
For example, the millions who shop at the immensely popular discount chain WalMart probably don't know that in 1991 (the year before his death) founder Sam Walton gave $6 million, including an endowment of $3 million for annual awards to new church developments, to share the Christian faith. They would not have minded if Walton were an Orthodox Jew sending the money to Israeli hospitals or a devout Muslim helping to fund the travelling Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit. This is not due merely to heedless consumerism among the chain's predominantly lower middle class customers. Rather, their level of intergroup trust is high. Indeed, intergroup trust in North America is so high that it is sometimes abused, as when the nineteen 9/11 terrorists took advantage of the fact that most Americans did not distrust Muslims as such.
The other nagging question is, should we pursue religion for the sake of prosperity? You never read that in the Bible, quite the opposite. "Be on your guard against all kinds of greed," Christ said. "A man's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions." If people want religion for prosperity, wouldn't it be organized hypocrisy, propped up by fear of hell? People who have a loving relationship with God do not fear hell.
Meanwhile, in the New York Times, Nicholas Wade has tried to reconcile people of faith to the claim that they are "hard-wired" to believe because Darwin's natural selection favours belief. Wade, a science reporter for The New York Times and the author of The Faith Instinct: How Religion Evolved and Why It Endures, writes,
That religious behavior was favored by natural selection neither proves nor disproves the existence of gods. For believers, if one accepts that evolution has shaped the human body, why not the mind too? What evolution has done is to endow people with a genetic predisposition to learn the religion of their community, just as they are predisposed to learn its language. With both religion and language, it is culture, not genetics, that then supplies the content of what is learned.
In other words, it was genetic predisposition and culture, not revelation. Wade comforts his religious readers with the fact that some Darwinists entertain the idea of "group selection" -- long denounced by the majority of Darwinists, who favour the "selfish gene". If so, group cultural practices might favour a religious group:
... group selection has recently gained two powerful champions, the biologists David Sloan Wilson and Edward O. Wilson, who argued that two special circumstances in recent human evolution would have given group selection much more of an edge than usual. One is the highly egalitarian nature of hunter-gatherer societies, which makes everyone behave alike and gives individual altruists a better chance of passing on their genes. The other is intense warfare between groups, which enhances group-level selection in favor of community-benefiting behaviors such as altruism and religion.
Well, David Sloan Wilson is an atheist and Edward O. Wilson wavers between atheism and deism -- in the meantime, he patronizes people of faith by inventing theories about how religion evolved: "Humans have an innate tendency to form religious belief. It has a lot of beneficial influences. It helps people adjust to their mortality and it binds communities tightly together . . . to have evolved such a powerful tendency and to hold it unto death, that looks like a biological adaptation."
It looks like he is the diplomatic wing, operating by suavity rather than stridency. But it is hard not to notice the arrogance and condescension these people feel for those who have come to the rational conclusion that God exists, based on the fine tuning of the universe, the design of life, and their own encounters with God, to say nothing of changed lives.
E.O. Wilson has been trying to find "common ground" with Christians in recent years. But what common ground does Wilson hope for? To him, there is no revelation, and faith does not arise from an encounter with God. Rather, we have an "innate tendency" to form beliefs -- just as a squirrel has an innate tendency to gather nuts in the fall and a spider has an innate tendency to eat her mate. Based on recent events in many nations, people of faith might better focus on maintaining or introducing freedom of thought, conscience, and belief. There is no common ground with evolutionary psychologists.
Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain.
Monday, December 28, 2009
This Week in God
This Week in God
By Steve Benen, Washington Monthly
Posted on December 26, 2009, Printed on December 28, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/144812/
In the last TWIG edition until the new year, the God Machine took note of E.J. Dionne Jr.'s column this week on the ways in which religion and politics didn't cause as big a stir as in previous years.
It is 2009's quiet story -- quiet because it's about what didn't happen, which can be as important as what did.
In this highly partisan year, we did not see a sharpening of the battles over religion and culture.
Yes, we continued to fight over gay marriage, and arguments about abortion were a feature of the health-care debate. But what's more striking is that other issues -- notably economics and the role of government -- trumped culture and religion in the public square. The culture wars went into recession along with the economy.
The most important transformation occurred on the right end of politics. For now, the loudest and most activist sections of the conservative cause are not its religious voices but the mostly secular, anti-government tea party activists.
It's important not to overstate the case. Clearly, the religious right still exists, and conservative activists still rely on matters of faith to deny gay Americans basic civil rights and to restrict American women's reproductive rights. Sen. Ben Nelson's (D-Neb.) often incoherent demands about indirect abortion funding very nearly killed health care reform.
But overall, Dionne's analysis sounds right. The U.S. embrace of the culture war becomes more notable when the country is in otherwise fine shape. That hasn't been the case for several years, and as a result, even Republicans are shifting their attention away from a religio-political agenda. Note, when GOP leaders started a rebranding effort, they ignored culture-war issues entirely, and when Republicans talk about trying to retake Congress, it's not because they intend to work on school prayer and Ten Commandments displays. The religious right's threats no longer seem to scare GOP leaders as they once did, giving the movement less influence.
It prompted Dionne to conclude that "the cultural and religious conflicts that have persisted were debated at a lower volume" this year. God bless us, everyone, indeed.
Also from the God Machine this week:
* A woman jumped a barrier and knocked down Pope Benedict XVI before he delivered his traditional Christmas Day greetings, raising a new round of questions about the Vatican's security procedures.
* Former President Jimmy Carter hopes to make amends with the Jewish community, and issued an apology this week. "We must not permit criticisms for improvement to stigmatize Israel," Carter said in the letter. "As I would have noted at Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, but which is appropriate at any time of the year, I offer an Al Het [a prayer said on Yom Kippur] for any words or deeds of mine that may have done so."
* Former Sen. John Danforth (R) of Missouri, who is also an ordained Episcopal priest, has created a new Center on Religion & Politics at Washington University. "Chancellor Mark Wrighton said the center, which will open in January, would seek to deepen the academic understanding of the connections between religion and politics and encourage civil discourse in which people 'in a respectful society' can hold different views."
* And I was pleased to see that L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican's newspaper, considers "The Simpsons" acceptable entertainment. "Homer finds in God his last refuge, even though he sometimes gets His name sensationally wrong," L'Osservatore said. "But these are just minor mistakes, after all, the two know each other well."
By Steve Benen, Washington Monthly
Posted on December 26, 2009, Printed on December 28, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/144812/
In the last TWIG edition until the new year, the God Machine took note of E.J. Dionne Jr.'s column this week on the ways in which religion and politics didn't cause as big a stir as in previous years.
It is 2009's quiet story -- quiet because it's about what didn't happen, which can be as important as what did.
In this highly partisan year, we did not see a sharpening of the battles over religion and culture.
Yes, we continued to fight over gay marriage, and arguments about abortion were a feature of the health-care debate. But what's more striking is that other issues -- notably economics and the role of government -- trumped culture and religion in the public square. The culture wars went into recession along with the economy.
The most important transformation occurred on the right end of politics. For now, the loudest and most activist sections of the conservative cause are not its religious voices but the mostly secular, anti-government tea party activists.
It's important not to overstate the case. Clearly, the religious right still exists, and conservative activists still rely on matters of faith to deny gay Americans basic civil rights and to restrict American women's reproductive rights. Sen. Ben Nelson's (D-Neb.) often incoherent demands about indirect abortion funding very nearly killed health care reform.
But overall, Dionne's analysis sounds right. The U.S. embrace of the culture war becomes more notable when the country is in otherwise fine shape. That hasn't been the case for several years, and as a result, even Republicans are shifting their attention away from a religio-political agenda. Note, when GOP leaders started a rebranding effort, they ignored culture-war issues entirely, and when Republicans talk about trying to retake Congress, it's not because they intend to work on school prayer and Ten Commandments displays. The religious right's threats no longer seem to scare GOP leaders as they once did, giving the movement less influence.
It prompted Dionne to conclude that "the cultural and religious conflicts that have persisted were debated at a lower volume" this year. God bless us, everyone, indeed.
Also from the God Machine this week:
* A woman jumped a barrier and knocked down Pope Benedict XVI before he delivered his traditional Christmas Day greetings, raising a new round of questions about the Vatican's security procedures.
* Former President Jimmy Carter hopes to make amends with the Jewish community, and issued an apology this week. "We must not permit criticisms for improvement to stigmatize Israel," Carter said in the letter. "As I would have noted at Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, but which is appropriate at any time of the year, I offer an Al Het [a prayer said on Yom Kippur] for any words or deeds of mine that may have done so."
* Former Sen. John Danforth (R) of Missouri, who is also an ordained Episcopal priest, has created a new Center on Religion & Politics at Washington University. "Chancellor Mark Wrighton said the center, which will open in January, would seek to deepen the academic understanding of the connections between religion and politics and encourage civil discourse in which people 'in a respectful society' can hold different views."
* And I was pleased to see that L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican's newspaper, considers "The Simpsons" acceptable entertainment. "Homer finds in God his last refuge, even though he sometimes gets His name sensationally wrong," L'Osservatore said. "But these are just minor mistakes, after all, the two know each other well."
Jesus Hated War -- Why Do Christians Love It So Much?
Jesus Hated War -- Why Do Christians Love It So Much?
By Gary G. Kohls, Consortium News
December 28, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/144818/
When Gulf War I ended (during George Bush the Elder’s presidency), General Norman Schwartzkopf, the field commander, triumphantly proclaimed, “God must have been on our side!”
Such statements aren’t unusual for glory-seeking dictators, kings, princes, presidents and generals, regardless of what religion justified their particular war, but I cringed when I heard this self-professed Christian warrior claim God’s blessings on the war that made him famous.
In his memoir, It Doesn’t Take A Hero, Schwartzkopf claimed that he kept a Bible at his bedside throughout the war.
I cringed knowing that, according to the biblical Jesus, God is never on the side of the victors. The God of love that Jesus revealed was on the side of the victims, the oppressed, the starving, the sick, the naked, the meek who were victimized by unjust power.
Jesus’s God would not be on the side of the war-makers, but on the side of the peacemakers, the compassionate and long-suffering ones who work to prevent killing and to relieve the suffering of the victims of war.
I cringed when I heard Schwartzkopf claim God’s blessings on the carnage that he helped orchestrate because similar claims have been used to rationalize killing throughout history, from ancient times to some of the darkest days of the modern era.
As the German Nazis went about their systematic purging of any and all leftist or anti-fascist groups – Jews, socialists, homosexuals, liberals, communists, trade unionists and conscientious objectors to war – they insisted that God was on their side, too.
Adolf Hitler claimed that he was doing God’s will. German soldiers, both in WWI and WWII, went into battle with the words “Gott Mit Uns” (God With Us) inscribed on their belt buckles.
Invoking “Gott Mit Uns” didn’t work just on the uneducated, brain-washable and obedient citizens and conscripted soldiers of Germany. The slogan also convinced most of the educated Protestant and Catholic clergymen to comfortably proclaim from their pulpits that Hitler’s wars were endorsed by the Christian God, and therefore every military action could be justified and carried out without guilt.
Most Germans wanted to believe that Hitler’s wars had to be fought for some higher purpose, a master plan that they trusted would benefit them all by creating “Lebensraum” (living space), which would mean security for the pure Aryan race.
Aggression as Defensive
In the Nazis’ up-is-down world, the propagandists convinced average Germans that Hitler’s wars were purely defensive (“the sword has been forced into our hands”). The terrorizing of foreigners in a neighboring country, in order to steal their land, was the patriotic thing to do.
Convincing the German public to engage in murder for the state took a lot of diligent work from Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment.
Goebbels had to persuade the Germans that their neighbor’s land and oil and mineral resources could legitimately be taken by any means necessary in order to realize the Fuhrer’s dream of the “Thousand-year Reich,” where perpetual peace for the privileged German people would finally be realized.
The “collateral damage” done to the innocent civilian-victims of Europe and the Soviet Union, was felt to be unavoidable, and the “disappearances” of the non-Aryan “Untermenschen," mentioned above, was orchestrated with conscienceless bureaucratic efficiency.
Bishops, priests and pastors, most of whom had taken an oath of allegiance to Hitler, told their parishioners that it was their Christian duty to join the military and fight and kill for the Fuhrer.
Resentment also played an important role in the swastika-waving terror. Most of the street-fighting militias loyal to the Nazi party’s politics were WWI veterans who had been rendered unemployable by years of horrific trench warfare experiences.
They were justifiably angry about their joblessness, poverty, physical disabilities, mental ill health, traumatic brain injuries, hunger, all worsened by the hyperinflation and impoverishment that go hand in hand with the huge costs of having standing armies and fighting perpetual wars.
Many of these unemployed veterans rushed to join the militia groups for the food, shelter and camaraderie, perhaps not realizing that they were helping to create the chaos that would destroy the liberal democratic Weimar republic, an action that would lead the world into another world war that would ultimately turn out to be suicidal for Germany.
Most German churches cooperated with, or at least did not vocally oppose, Hitler’s agenda. Pastors cheered the Fuhrer from swastika-draped pulpits or they stood by silently as the concentration camps and prisons filled with those suspected by the Gestapo of not being supportive of the regime.
All efforts to resist came too late, for the people who objected to the dictatorship were leaderless and unschooled in any nonviolent resistance actions. They had no Gandhi or Martin Luther King and were totally unprepared to act en masse.
Blessed Wars
Though Hitler’s Nazi regime represented an exceptional form of horror in the industrialized slaughter committed during the Holocaust and related mass killings, it must be acknowledged that other countries, including the United States, have undertaken actions that have destroyed other populations and cultures, often with the blessings of religious leaders.
In the last two decades, the two Bush administrations mounted wars in the Persian Gulf region that had the consent (or acquiescence) of the majority of U.S. church leaders, with prayers from Billy Graham in the White House the night before the invasions began.
Virtually all Christian evangelical, conservative and many mainstream church leaders and their congregations were active supporters of the Bush wars.
Only four American Catholic bishops voted in opposition to Bush the Elder’s Gulf War I (at an annual conference of U.S. Catholic bishops). In Gulf War II, Pope John Paul II declared that the war was contrary to the teachings of Jesus, but most American Catholic leaders and parishioners ignored the pontiff’s warnings and supported the war. Most American Protestants did the same.
Yet, General Schwartzkopf and both Presidents Bush are in “good” company when it comes to believing that God is on their side in war. All U.S. presidents and presidential candidates in recent memory, even President Obama, end their speeches with “May God Bless the United States of America,” the equivalent of the German military’s “Gott Mit Uns.”
My Veterans for Peace friends are of the opinion that modern war amounts to legally sanctioned, highly organized mass murder and that basic training is psychological rape with serious, often permanent consequences for everybody involved: the victims, bystanders and maybe especially the soldiers.
And today, the killing is not just done by soldiers on the ground who can see the “whites of their eyes.” War is now often done from a safe distance by the high-tech “soldiering” of high-altitude bombing, supersonic jet fighters, long-range missiles (many of them computer-guided from unmanned drones), and radioactive DU armor-piercing ordnance that will continue killing for many centuries into the future.
The victims of this kind of lopsided modern warfare (for which the human targets have no defense) regard these tactics as cowardly acts.
Bureaucracies of Death
These days, wars are started and perpetuated by a huge conglomeration of war profiteers: corporations (and their lobbyists), government bureaucracies (that obediently follow orders from above), the handlers of pro-war politicians and the financial underwriters of their campaigns, the ruling class, and the Department of War/Defense which has, as job # 1, the planning and orchestrating of current and future military conflicts, whether originating from real, imaginary or invented threats.
A major unasked question is “what should be the role of religion (specifically Christianity) in the starting and perpetuation of politically motivated wars?”
If war-makers mix religion and politics by invoking God’s blessings on the cannons and the cannon fodder, shouldn’t the churches, which are supposed to be the consciences of the nation, apply core Christian ethical principles to the war question and refuse to cooperate with the slaughter of fellow children of God?
Sadly, for the past 1,700 years, Christian churches have not done so. They have largely failed in their moral obligation to teach and live the Golden Rule and the Sermon on the Mount.
One only has to read the gruesome history of the many “holy wars” and atrocities committed in the history of Christendom, including the Crusades, the Inquisitions, the wars of the Reformation and counter-Reformation, the various genocides including the Nazi Holocaust.
While the churches have played key roles in the promotion and cover-ups of these brutalities, the churches have not been alone. Whitewashes and excuses have often come from politicians, pundits, “embedded” journalists and co-opted history-writers, especially the authors of high school textbooks.
Recall how, when military spokesmen try to explain away the deaths of non-combatants in these wars, they invoke the term “collateral damage” (the euphemism for the unintended killing and maiming of innocents in wartime) and quickly dismiss those deaths by spouting the unconvincing phrase that Schwartzkopf and all other apologists for war use: “we regret the loss of innocent life.”
And they piously mouth these equally insincere words: “our thoughts and prayers are with the families of the victims.” The same rote phraseology too often comes from the lips of religious leaders.
Christ’s Teachings
How can the legalized mass slaughter of war, often progressing to the point of genocide, be a part of a Christian tradition that started out with a small group of inspired, oppressed and impoverished peasants who were trying to live by the highly ethical, nonviolent teachings of their pacifist leader?
Interestingly, the active pacifism of the early Christian church did prove to be successful – and even practical. During the first few centuries of Christianity, enmity and eye-for-an-eye retaliation were rejected. The Golden Rule and the refusal to kill the enemy were actually taught in the church.
Gospel non-violence was the norm, so the professed enemies of those communities of faith were not provoked to retaliation because there was nothing against which to retaliate. Rather, enemies were befriended, prayed for, fed, nourished and embraced as neighbors – potential friends who needed understanding and mercy.
The church survived the persecutions of those early years and thrived, largely because of its commitment to the nonviolence of Jesus. It was not until the church was co-opted by the Emperor Constantine in the early 4th Century that power and wealth changed the priorities of church leaders.
Today however, it is obvious that the vast majority of professed Christians have been misled, intentionally or unintentionally, into believing that they can immerse themselves in un-Christ-like realities like war and killing and somehow still be following the gentle Jesus.
Today, American Christianity is at risk of going the way of the pro-war “Christianity” of pre-Nazi and Nazi Germany, which may in the long run discredit the faith much the way Christianity lost credibility among many Germans because their churches and church leaders facilitated those destructive wars.
The vast majority of Germans before World War II were baptized members of a Christian church, but since WWII ended church membership has fallen sharply and the number of Germans attending weekly worship services is now estimated to be in the single digits.
The psychological and spiritual wounding of the soldiers and their families in the two world wars stripped the German churches of their moral standing.
Those PTSD-afflicted ex-church-going combat veterans who lost their faith in the wars, along with their traumatized families, found out much too late that they had not been warned by the very institutions that theoretically should have courageously and faithfully taken on the heavy responsibility to teach private and public morality.
Many Germans who survived the wars felt betrayed by their churches and therefore had no inclination to try to reclaim their lost faith. The churches sank toward irrelevancy.
The world would have been far better off if the Christian leaders of the world had been faithful to the ethical teachings of the gospels and quit making blasphemous appeals to God on behalf of war, whether with those “Gott Mit Uns” belt buckles or the “God Bless America” political sloganeering.
By Gary G. Kohls, Consortium News
December 28, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/144818/
When Gulf War I ended (during George Bush the Elder’s presidency), General Norman Schwartzkopf, the field commander, triumphantly proclaimed, “God must have been on our side!”
Such statements aren’t unusual for glory-seeking dictators, kings, princes, presidents and generals, regardless of what religion justified their particular war, but I cringed when I heard this self-professed Christian warrior claim God’s blessings on the war that made him famous.
In his memoir, It Doesn’t Take A Hero, Schwartzkopf claimed that he kept a Bible at his bedside throughout the war.
I cringed knowing that, according to the biblical Jesus, God is never on the side of the victors. The God of love that Jesus revealed was on the side of the victims, the oppressed, the starving, the sick, the naked, the meek who were victimized by unjust power.
Jesus’s God would not be on the side of the war-makers, but on the side of the peacemakers, the compassionate and long-suffering ones who work to prevent killing and to relieve the suffering of the victims of war.
I cringed when I heard Schwartzkopf claim God’s blessings on the carnage that he helped orchestrate because similar claims have been used to rationalize killing throughout history, from ancient times to some of the darkest days of the modern era.
As the German Nazis went about their systematic purging of any and all leftist or anti-fascist groups – Jews, socialists, homosexuals, liberals, communists, trade unionists and conscientious objectors to war – they insisted that God was on their side, too.
Adolf Hitler claimed that he was doing God’s will. German soldiers, both in WWI and WWII, went into battle with the words “Gott Mit Uns” (God With Us) inscribed on their belt buckles.
Invoking “Gott Mit Uns” didn’t work just on the uneducated, brain-washable and obedient citizens and conscripted soldiers of Germany. The slogan also convinced most of the educated Protestant and Catholic clergymen to comfortably proclaim from their pulpits that Hitler’s wars were endorsed by the Christian God, and therefore every military action could be justified and carried out without guilt.
Most Germans wanted to believe that Hitler’s wars had to be fought for some higher purpose, a master plan that they trusted would benefit them all by creating “Lebensraum” (living space), which would mean security for the pure Aryan race.
Aggression as Defensive
In the Nazis’ up-is-down world, the propagandists convinced average Germans that Hitler’s wars were purely defensive (“the sword has been forced into our hands”). The terrorizing of foreigners in a neighboring country, in order to steal their land, was the patriotic thing to do.
Convincing the German public to engage in murder for the state took a lot of diligent work from Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment.
Goebbels had to persuade the Germans that their neighbor’s land and oil and mineral resources could legitimately be taken by any means necessary in order to realize the Fuhrer’s dream of the “Thousand-year Reich,” where perpetual peace for the privileged German people would finally be realized.
The “collateral damage” done to the innocent civilian-victims of Europe and the Soviet Union, was felt to be unavoidable, and the “disappearances” of the non-Aryan “Untermenschen," mentioned above, was orchestrated with conscienceless bureaucratic efficiency.
Bishops, priests and pastors, most of whom had taken an oath of allegiance to Hitler, told their parishioners that it was their Christian duty to join the military and fight and kill for the Fuhrer.
Resentment also played an important role in the swastika-waving terror. Most of the street-fighting militias loyal to the Nazi party’s politics were WWI veterans who had been rendered unemployable by years of horrific trench warfare experiences.
They were justifiably angry about their joblessness, poverty, physical disabilities, mental ill health, traumatic brain injuries, hunger, all worsened by the hyperinflation and impoverishment that go hand in hand with the huge costs of having standing armies and fighting perpetual wars.
Many of these unemployed veterans rushed to join the militia groups for the food, shelter and camaraderie, perhaps not realizing that they were helping to create the chaos that would destroy the liberal democratic Weimar republic, an action that would lead the world into another world war that would ultimately turn out to be suicidal for Germany.
Most German churches cooperated with, or at least did not vocally oppose, Hitler’s agenda. Pastors cheered the Fuhrer from swastika-draped pulpits or they stood by silently as the concentration camps and prisons filled with those suspected by the Gestapo of not being supportive of the regime.
All efforts to resist came too late, for the people who objected to the dictatorship were leaderless and unschooled in any nonviolent resistance actions. They had no Gandhi or Martin Luther King and were totally unprepared to act en masse.
Blessed Wars
Though Hitler’s Nazi regime represented an exceptional form of horror in the industrialized slaughter committed during the Holocaust and related mass killings, it must be acknowledged that other countries, including the United States, have undertaken actions that have destroyed other populations and cultures, often with the blessings of religious leaders.
In the last two decades, the two Bush administrations mounted wars in the Persian Gulf region that had the consent (or acquiescence) of the majority of U.S. church leaders, with prayers from Billy Graham in the White House the night before the invasions began.
Virtually all Christian evangelical, conservative and many mainstream church leaders and their congregations were active supporters of the Bush wars.
Only four American Catholic bishops voted in opposition to Bush the Elder’s Gulf War I (at an annual conference of U.S. Catholic bishops). In Gulf War II, Pope John Paul II declared that the war was contrary to the teachings of Jesus, but most American Catholic leaders and parishioners ignored the pontiff’s warnings and supported the war. Most American Protestants did the same.
Yet, General Schwartzkopf and both Presidents Bush are in “good” company when it comes to believing that God is on their side in war. All U.S. presidents and presidential candidates in recent memory, even President Obama, end their speeches with “May God Bless the United States of America,” the equivalent of the German military’s “Gott Mit Uns.”
My Veterans for Peace friends are of the opinion that modern war amounts to legally sanctioned, highly organized mass murder and that basic training is psychological rape with serious, often permanent consequences for everybody involved: the victims, bystanders and maybe especially the soldiers.
And today, the killing is not just done by soldiers on the ground who can see the “whites of their eyes.” War is now often done from a safe distance by the high-tech “soldiering” of high-altitude bombing, supersonic jet fighters, long-range missiles (many of them computer-guided from unmanned drones), and radioactive DU armor-piercing ordnance that will continue killing for many centuries into the future.
The victims of this kind of lopsided modern warfare (for which the human targets have no defense) regard these tactics as cowardly acts.
Bureaucracies of Death
These days, wars are started and perpetuated by a huge conglomeration of war profiteers: corporations (and their lobbyists), government bureaucracies (that obediently follow orders from above), the handlers of pro-war politicians and the financial underwriters of their campaigns, the ruling class, and the Department of War/Defense which has, as job # 1, the planning and orchestrating of current and future military conflicts, whether originating from real, imaginary or invented threats.
A major unasked question is “what should be the role of religion (specifically Christianity) in the starting and perpetuation of politically motivated wars?”
If war-makers mix religion and politics by invoking God’s blessings on the cannons and the cannon fodder, shouldn’t the churches, which are supposed to be the consciences of the nation, apply core Christian ethical principles to the war question and refuse to cooperate with the slaughter of fellow children of God?
Sadly, for the past 1,700 years, Christian churches have not done so. They have largely failed in their moral obligation to teach and live the Golden Rule and the Sermon on the Mount.
One only has to read the gruesome history of the many “holy wars” and atrocities committed in the history of Christendom, including the Crusades, the Inquisitions, the wars of the Reformation and counter-Reformation, the various genocides including the Nazi Holocaust.
While the churches have played key roles in the promotion and cover-ups of these brutalities, the churches have not been alone. Whitewashes and excuses have often come from politicians, pundits, “embedded” journalists and co-opted history-writers, especially the authors of high school textbooks.
Recall how, when military spokesmen try to explain away the deaths of non-combatants in these wars, they invoke the term “collateral damage” (the euphemism for the unintended killing and maiming of innocents in wartime) and quickly dismiss those deaths by spouting the unconvincing phrase that Schwartzkopf and all other apologists for war use: “we regret the loss of innocent life.”
And they piously mouth these equally insincere words: “our thoughts and prayers are with the families of the victims.” The same rote phraseology too often comes from the lips of religious leaders.
Christ’s Teachings
How can the legalized mass slaughter of war, often progressing to the point of genocide, be a part of a Christian tradition that started out with a small group of inspired, oppressed and impoverished peasants who were trying to live by the highly ethical, nonviolent teachings of their pacifist leader?
Interestingly, the active pacifism of the early Christian church did prove to be successful – and even practical. During the first few centuries of Christianity, enmity and eye-for-an-eye retaliation were rejected. The Golden Rule and the refusal to kill the enemy were actually taught in the church.
Gospel non-violence was the norm, so the professed enemies of those communities of faith were not provoked to retaliation because there was nothing against which to retaliate. Rather, enemies were befriended, prayed for, fed, nourished and embraced as neighbors – potential friends who needed understanding and mercy.
The church survived the persecutions of those early years and thrived, largely because of its commitment to the nonviolence of Jesus. It was not until the church was co-opted by the Emperor Constantine in the early 4th Century that power and wealth changed the priorities of church leaders.
Today however, it is obvious that the vast majority of professed Christians have been misled, intentionally or unintentionally, into believing that they can immerse themselves in un-Christ-like realities like war and killing and somehow still be following the gentle Jesus.
Today, American Christianity is at risk of going the way of the pro-war “Christianity” of pre-Nazi and Nazi Germany, which may in the long run discredit the faith much the way Christianity lost credibility among many Germans because their churches and church leaders facilitated those destructive wars.
The vast majority of Germans before World War II were baptized members of a Christian church, but since WWII ended church membership has fallen sharply and the number of Germans attending weekly worship services is now estimated to be in the single digits.
The psychological and spiritual wounding of the soldiers and their families in the two world wars stripped the German churches of their moral standing.
Those PTSD-afflicted ex-church-going combat veterans who lost their faith in the wars, along with their traumatized families, found out much too late that they had not been warned by the very institutions that theoretically should have courageously and faithfully taken on the heavy responsibility to teach private and public morality.
Many Germans who survived the wars felt betrayed by their churches and therefore had no inclination to try to reclaim their lost faith. The churches sank toward irrelevancy.
The world would have been far better off if the Christian leaders of the world had been faithful to the ethical teachings of the gospels and quit making blasphemous appeals to God on behalf of war, whether with those “Gott Mit Uns” belt buckles or the “God Bless America” political sloganeering.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
The Old Testament and the War Crime in Gaza
http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/the-old-testament-and-the-war-crime-in-gaza-by-gilad-atzmon.html
The Old Testament and the War Crime in Gaza
Gilad Atzmon
GiladAtzmon.html
Thu, 08 Jan 2009 12:12 EST
To mark one year to the Israeli Christmas Massacre I re-post a text I wrote in early January 2009.
"You will chase your enemies, and they shall fall by the sword before you. Five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight; your enemies shall fall by the sword before you."Leviticus, Chapter 26, verses 7-9
"When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations...then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them and show them no mercy."Deuteronomy 7:1-2,
"...do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them...as the Lord your God has commanded you..." Deuteronomy 20:16
There is not much doubt amongst Biblical scholars that the Hebrew Bible contains some highly charged non-ethical suggestions, some of which are no less than a call for a genocide. Biblical scholar Raymund Schwagerhas found in the Old Testament 600 passages of explicit violence, 1000 descriptive verses of God's own violent actions of punishment, 100 passages where God expressly commands others to kill people. Apparently, violence is the most often mentioned activity in the Hebrew Bible.
As devastating as it may be, the Hebrew Bible saturation with violence and extermination of others may throw some light over the horrifying genocide conducted in Gaza by the Jewish state. In broad daylight, the IDF was using the most lethal methods against civilians as if their main objective is to 'destroy' the Gazans while showing 'no mercy' whatsoever.
Interestingly enough, Israel regards itself as a secular state. Ehud Barak is not exactly a qualified Rabbi and Tzipi Livni is not a Rabbi's wife. Accordingly, we are entitled to assume that it isn't actually Judaism per se that directly transforms Israeli politicians and military leaders into war criminals. Moreover, early Zionists believed that within a national home Jews would become 'people like all other people', i.e., civilised and ethical.
In that very respect, Israeli reality is pretty peculiar. The Hebraic secular Jews may have managed to drop their God, most of them do not follow Judaic law, they are largely secular, and yet 94% of them interpret their Jewish identity as a genocidal mission. They have successfully managed to transform the Bible from being a spiritual text into a bloodsoaked land registry. They are there, in Zion i.e., Palestine, to invade the land and to lock up, starve and destroy its indigenous habitants.
Accordingly, it seems as if the artillery commanders and IAF pilots that erased northern Gaza were following Deuteronomy 20:16 they indeed did ".. not leave alive anything that breathes." And yet, one question is left open. Why should a secular commander follow Deuteronomy verses or any other Biblical text?
Some very few sporadic Jewish voices within the left are insisting upon telling us that Jewishness is not necessarily inherently murderous. I tend to believe them that they themselves consider their words as genuine and truthful. But then one may wonder, what is it that makes the Jewish state brutal with no comparison?
The truth of the matter is actually pretty sad. As far as we can see, Zionism is the only secular ideological and political Jewish collective around and as it happens, it has proved once again that it is genocidal to the bone. As far as genocide is concerned the difference between Judaism and Zionism can be illustrated as follows: while the Judaic Biblical context is soaked with genocidal references, usually in the name of God, within the Zionist context, Jews are killing Palestinians in the name of themselves i.e., the 'Jewish people'. This is indeed the ultimate success of the Zionist revolution. It taught the Jews to believe in themselves. To believe in the Jewish state. 'The Israeli' is Israel's God.
Accordingly, the Israeli kills in the name of 'his or her security', in the name of 'his or her democracy'. The Israelis destroy in the name of 'their war against terror' and in the name the 'their America'. Seemingly, in the Jewish state, the Hebraic subject reverts to mass killing as soon as he finds a 'name' to associate with.This doesn't really leave us too much room for speculation. The Jewish state is the ultimate threat to humanity and our notion of humanism.
Christianity, Islam and humanism came along with an attempt to amend Jewish tribal fundamentalism and to replace it with universal ethics. Enlightenment, liberalism and emancipation allowed Jews to redeem themselves from their ancient tribal supremacist traits. Since the mid 19th century, many Jews had been breaking out of their cultural and tribal chain. Tragically enough, Zionism managed to pull many Jews back in.
Currently, Israel and Zionism are the only collective voice available for Jews. The merciless offensive against the Palestinian civilian population does not leave any room for doubt. Israel is the gravest danger to world peace. Clearly the nations made a tragic mistake in 1947 giving an emerging volatile racially orientated identity an opportunity to set itself into a national state. However, the nations' duty now is to peacefully dismantle that state before it is too late. We must do it before the Jewish state and its forceful lobbies around the world manage to pull us all into a global war in the 'name' of one banal populist ideology or another (democracy, war against terror, cultural clash and so on). We have to wake up now before our one and only planet is transformed into a bursting boil of hatred.
The Old Testament and the War Crime in Gaza
Gilad Atzmon
GiladAtzmon.html
Thu, 08 Jan 2009 12:12 EST
To mark one year to the Israeli Christmas Massacre I re-post a text I wrote in early January 2009.
"You will chase your enemies, and they shall fall by the sword before you. Five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight; your enemies shall fall by the sword before you."Leviticus, Chapter 26, verses 7-9
"When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations...then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them and show them no mercy."Deuteronomy 7:1-2,
"...do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them...as the Lord your God has commanded you..." Deuteronomy 20:16
There is not much doubt amongst Biblical scholars that the Hebrew Bible contains some highly charged non-ethical suggestions, some of which are no less than a call for a genocide. Biblical scholar Raymund Schwagerhas found in the Old Testament 600 passages of explicit violence, 1000 descriptive verses of God's own violent actions of punishment, 100 passages where God expressly commands others to kill people. Apparently, violence is the most often mentioned activity in the Hebrew Bible.
As devastating as it may be, the Hebrew Bible saturation with violence and extermination of others may throw some light over the horrifying genocide conducted in Gaza by the Jewish state. In broad daylight, the IDF was using the most lethal methods against civilians as if their main objective is to 'destroy' the Gazans while showing 'no mercy' whatsoever.
Interestingly enough, Israel regards itself as a secular state. Ehud Barak is not exactly a qualified Rabbi and Tzipi Livni is not a Rabbi's wife. Accordingly, we are entitled to assume that it isn't actually Judaism per se that directly transforms Israeli politicians and military leaders into war criminals. Moreover, early Zionists believed that within a national home Jews would become 'people like all other people', i.e., civilised and ethical.
In that very respect, Israeli reality is pretty peculiar. The Hebraic secular Jews may have managed to drop their God, most of them do not follow Judaic law, they are largely secular, and yet 94% of them interpret their Jewish identity as a genocidal mission. They have successfully managed to transform the Bible from being a spiritual text into a bloodsoaked land registry. They are there, in Zion i.e., Palestine, to invade the land and to lock up, starve and destroy its indigenous habitants.
Accordingly, it seems as if the artillery commanders and IAF pilots that erased northern Gaza were following Deuteronomy 20:16 they indeed did ".. not leave alive anything that breathes." And yet, one question is left open. Why should a secular commander follow Deuteronomy verses or any other Biblical text?
Some very few sporadic Jewish voices within the left are insisting upon telling us that Jewishness is not necessarily inherently murderous. I tend to believe them that they themselves consider their words as genuine and truthful. But then one may wonder, what is it that makes the Jewish state brutal with no comparison?
The truth of the matter is actually pretty sad. As far as we can see, Zionism is the only secular ideological and political Jewish collective around and as it happens, it has proved once again that it is genocidal to the bone. As far as genocide is concerned the difference between Judaism and Zionism can be illustrated as follows: while the Judaic Biblical context is soaked with genocidal references, usually in the name of God, within the Zionist context, Jews are killing Palestinians in the name of themselves i.e., the 'Jewish people'. This is indeed the ultimate success of the Zionist revolution. It taught the Jews to believe in themselves. To believe in the Jewish state. 'The Israeli' is Israel's God.
Accordingly, the Israeli kills in the name of 'his or her security', in the name of 'his or her democracy'. The Israelis destroy in the name of 'their war against terror' and in the name the 'their America'. Seemingly, in the Jewish state, the Hebraic subject reverts to mass killing as soon as he finds a 'name' to associate with.This doesn't really leave us too much room for speculation. The Jewish state is the ultimate threat to humanity and our notion of humanism.
Christianity, Islam and humanism came along with an attempt to amend Jewish tribal fundamentalism and to replace it with universal ethics. Enlightenment, liberalism and emancipation allowed Jews to redeem themselves from their ancient tribal supremacist traits. Since the mid 19th century, many Jews had been breaking out of their cultural and tribal chain. Tragically enough, Zionism managed to pull many Jews back in.
Currently, Israel and Zionism are the only collective voice available for Jews. The merciless offensive against the Palestinian civilian population does not leave any room for doubt. Israel is the gravest danger to world peace. Clearly the nations made a tragic mistake in 1947 giving an emerging volatile racially orientated identity an opportunity to set itself into a national state. However, the nations' duty now is to peacefully dismantle that state before it is too late. We must do it before the Jewish state and its forceful lobbies around the world manage to pull us all into a global war in the 'name' of one banal populist ideology or another (democracy, war against terror, cultural clash and so on). We have to wake up now before our one and only planet is transformed into a bursting boil of hatred.
Friday, December 18, 2009
The Objects of Our Devotion: Spiritual-Need Marketing
http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Objects-of-Our-Devotio-by-Judith-Acosta-091217-229.html
December 17, 2009
The Objects of Our Devotion: Spiritual-Need Marketing
By Judith Acosta
"I totally don't know what it means. But I want it." Jessica Simpson
A survey was just conducted to gauge the religious and spiritual propensities of Americans. As one might have guessed without having spent all the money and time, we are a fairly religious country. Diversely so, but religious nonetheless. The vast majority of Americans believe in a Supreme Being or higher power whom they call God.
So where did the road bend and twist? When did Americans go from a devotion to God to a devotion to things? In advertising circles, which is essentially the crank shaft of our economy, it is a truism that the American is a demanding consumer. "Give us what we want," is the credo. But it appears that what they want is a product. We have gone from one nation under God to one nation under Wal-Mart. We worry about extending youth and bodily life instead of considering the importance of making our limited time here meaningful. And the worst part as I see it and the point of this article is that we have come to believe that meaning and having are, if not entirely equal, then at least run parallel. This is a profound and pervasive delusion that is also both simultaneously destructive and systematically distracting. So much so that corporations have put their billions into marketing campaigns that specifically target and capitalize on these delusions.
The delusions are:
1) The product can save me.
2) The product has meaning and therefore can give my life meaning.
3) The product can help me belong to a tribe.
4) The product or service or brand can make me lovable.
Of course, none of the products on the market today and none of the products anyonecan possibly conceive of will ever meet the deeper needs of a human being (which are distinguished from basic needs such as food, shelter, clean air and clean water) because those deeper needs are for love, belonging, and meaning. Who in their right mind would consciously believe that a pair of shoes or a car or a skin cream could ever do that? Yet, we buy and behave as if we did believe it.
Naturally, the marketing experts know this. They reach into our hearts to pull on the strings of our deepest longings so that we buy what they have to sell, knowing it will never satisfy those longings, secretly happy in that knowledge because it means we'll have to keep buying, scooping up more and more in a fruitless search for salvation that can never, ever come from this world. Ever.
I am not a theologian. I'm a psychotherapist near Albuquerque, NM. But I think this is idolatry in the purest sense of the word. In watching and treating people who suffer from profound anxiety, ennui and depression, I have come to the conclusion that God did not forbid idolatry because He was petty or needy. An Omnipotent Being does not need our worship or devotion. He prohibited idolatry because it is, in fact, delusional, and it will make us miserable. It will never satisfy us or make us happy in the way He wants us to be deeply happy, which could never be accomplished with a short shot of dope. If my assumption is true, then what we are missing is not just happiness but a contentedness and emotional sure-footedness that is bone-deep and fills us with joy on each inhalation. What we are accepting in exchange for this soul satisfaction is a house full of gadgets we have no time to use, closets full of designer labels and lives littered with broken relationships.
But we keep saying "no" to joy and "yes" to stuff. It is more than ironic. It is befuddling and tragic. But it is true and made possible by an exceedingly savvy and complex understanding of human nature in marketing executives who keep leading us into their stores and away from the Promised Land. I would like to make clear, here, that I do not believe that devotion to God and a healthy economy are mutually exclusive. I think an economy based on deception and delusion, however, is.
How do they do it? There are principles that apply almost universally in board rooms around the world. Marketing a new product is approached in just about the same way whether the group is meeting in Tokyo or New York.
Become the atmosphere: This is a phrase used to describe the infusion of brand recognition into our culture, to surround people with "Nike," for instance, so that when they think they need new sneakers, the first thing they'll think of is that brand. It has unfortunately become increasingly difficult to take command over the general economic "atmosphere" because of the quantity of clutter in the environment. There are so many products and so many messages, we are surrounded by such a huge amount of information that the task for marketing managers and creative directors is now much more sophisticated and complex.
One woman in the documentary, The Persuaders, said "Consumers are like roaches. You spray them and spray them and spray them." Eventually, she explained, they become inured so you have to do something radically different to make them roll over.
Advertisers are shameless creatures. I know this not only because of their general reputation but because I worked as a copywriter. They are willing to do almost anything to break through the clutter of advertising and product promotion that they themselves created, fabricate any plausible untruth to attract our attention, take advantage of any scandal so long as it shocks and sells. That is the bottom line.
Create a culture of need: This is market-ese for inventing a culture around a product, an image that not only creates a pseudo-need, but promises a new way to meet it. That brand new ailment restless leg syndrome is a perfect example of that. Who in human history has not experienced some restlessness due to stress, lack of exercise, too much exercise or overtiredness? It is a newly identified "syndrome" that people are easily convinced is a real disease that they must have because they're restless, too, and now they must convince their doctors to prescribe the only drug that actually treats this new condition. And so it goes.
Give products texture and life: By imbuing ordinary toiletries and household products with emotional energy (happiness, softness, kindness, sexuality, sensuality, friendliness, availability, etc") the advertisers are able to make that product resonate with people's emotional lives and secret needs. What differentiates one product from another now is not for the most part quality or some massive technical advantage. How much difference is there between high-end hiking boots or between a pair of jeans made by Levi's and one made by Wrangler's? Besides the occasional issue of fit, it is hugely emotional. It's not what the product does. It's what it means and by extension what it says about us to the world.
Create a culture of fear: The media (news, editorial and advertising) has been promoting viral fear for many years, both subtly and overtly. We are told to be afraid of attack, mega-volcanoes, being unattractive, body odor, illness, death, asteroids, wrinkles and social rejection (to name but a few). If we are sufficiently afraid and are presented with a possible solution, a way to banish the demons of anxiety and self-doubt, we'll buy it. Many of us become so afraid we are willing to put ourselves into irreversible debt to deflect it. And the thing we are most afraid of not belonging, being shunned, being seen as inferior or unworthy is precisely that which they are best at manipulating by making the product an extension of the self, thereby giving the illusion of value to a fragile and porous self that must continually seek out external buttresses to give it cohesion.
I used to think this use of fear to send us careening into retail stores was a manifestation of abject sociopathy, that the conscious manipulation of viral fear was intentional, malicious and controllable. But the other day I realized something that literally made me run into the other room for my pen and paper (yes, I still use them). These advertisers and marketers honestly can't help themselves any more than they can help selling fear because they're fearful. They are as much a product of the culture they created as everyone and everything else. (This reminds me of something I wrote in The Worst is Over: Be careful what you say. You're listening.) They sell fear because that's what they buy. Advertisers can't stop spreading viral fear because, in one marketer's words, they're terrified of being eaten alive by the competition. It doesn't get more limbic than that, does it?
Market to the American soul: It might amuse you to know that marketers actually use the term "Pseudo-spiritual marketing." What does this mean? Here are some terrific examples of spiritual marketing strategies and creative concepts that were illuminated in the documentary, The Persuaders. Nike: mystical transcendence through sports and sports attire. Starbucks: community similar to the one we see in the show, Cheers, not home and not work, yet sympathetic, warm and companionable. Benetton: diversity and cheerful coexistence. When they sit around a table banging out strategies and campaign slogans, they use expressions like "making a spiritual bond with a product" and "channeling the inner brand." The brand becomes the church and the product the icon.
Give the product an IMAGE: This means that campaigns will skillfully and persuasively present the product as more than it is. It's not a bitter tasting drink, it's a social lubricant. It's not a just a washer/dryer, it's a part of your real sophisticated yet practical self. It's not just a car, it's an integral demonstration of your personal narrative, which may translate thus: I drive a Hummer, therefore I am"And I am successful, tough, yet refined. A complex being, I am, I am. Such a complex being I am. The product is no longer a product but redefined as mystery, as intimacy, as meaning, as cult, as success, as comfort, as our due.
Facilitate entitlement, no matter what a person's financial means: Offer loans, no pre-payment options, leases with hidden clauses, no interest deals for three years, no payments for two years. Make it easier than it should be to buy luxury items for which they have no real need and make the consumer feel they not only need the product, but that it is their right to have it. If a product is identified with the "self" then it we don't have far to go to feel fear about not having that product.
Entitled to be Happy: The Pursuit of the Ridiculous.
One of the most significant of the American pathologies is our confusion over the American creed. We have taken "pursuit of happiness" to mean the right to "be" happy. Since Romanticism's debut on the American intellectual game board and the Utopian notion that perfection is possible here on this earth, we have been entranced with a false sense of mortal power and, subsequent to that, of entitlement. If we can have it, then shouldn't we? Because we've additionally confused products with self and having with happiness, we find ourselves in the mess we are now in. We are so entitled and so afraid of not getting that to which we believe we're entitled we go into debt to get it. Or we steal. Or we sue.
There is an expression that goes something like, "that which you gaze upon, you become." This is certainly true in motorcycling, where it is understood at least in racing circles that you (and your bike) go where your eyes are pointed. I remember many years being warned by a friend, "If you ever see me go down, keep your eyes on the road and pull over slowly. Don't let yourself watch an accident." I never forgot that and have applied it to all areas of my life. What we see all day at the supermarket checkout, on packaging, on television, on cable and in movies is fame, beauty and money. A study was done with young people to find out what was most important to them and they reported the results we should have expected and hardly needed to go to all that trouble studying: fame, beauty and money.
There are two problems as I see it:
1) Americans don't just want what they see, they covet it. As a result they feel they should have it, that it is their right to have it and if they don't have it then something is vitally wrong with them. Their fear, once again, is that someone will find out they are "less than" ( less than perfect, less than expected, less than beautiful, successful or sexy) and that they will then be shunned, chased out of the pack and left for dead.
2) It has become an iconic need, a substitute for meaning, God and love.
We are saturated with more distraction than any other creature in history. We are surrounded by more cures, more opportunities, more checkouts and more choices than ever before. We are told that this, that or the other thing is the answer we've been waiting for. Until the next one comes along. But instead of answering our questions or satisfying our needs, all that they have succeeded in getting us to do is avoid the first and most important question of all: What does it mean and why do we want it? I sincerely doubt that Nike has anything to offer on that score.
December 17, 2009
The Objects of Our Devotion: Spiritual-Need Marketing
By Judith Acosta
"I totally don't know what it means. But I want it." Jessica Simpson
A survey was just conducted to gauge the religious and spiritual propensities of Americans. As one might have guessed without having spent all the money and time, we are a fairly religious country. Diversely so, but religious nonetheless. The vast majority of Americans believe in a Supreme Being or higher power whom they call God.
So where did the road bend and twist? When did Americans go from a devotion to God to a devotion to things? In advertising circles, which is essentially the crank shaft of our economy, it is a truism that the American is a demanding consumer. "Give us what we want," is the credo. But it appears that what they want is a product. We have gone from one nation under God to one nation under Wal-Mart. We worry about extending youth and bodily life instead of considering the importance of making our limited time here meaningful. And the worst part as I see it and the point of this article is that we have come to believe that meaning and having are, if not entirely equal, then at least run parallel. This is a profound and pervasive delusion that is also both simultaneously destructive and systematically distracting. So much so that corporations have put their billions into marketing campaigns that specifically target and capitalize on these delusions.
The delusions are:
1) The product can save me.
2) The product has meaning and therefore can give my life meaning.
3) The product can help me belong to a tribe.
4) The product or service or brand can make me lovable.
Of course, none of the products on the market today and none of the products anyonecan possibly conceive of will ever meet the deeper needs of a human being (which are distinguished from basic needs such as food, shelter, clean air and clean water) because those deeper needs are for love, belonging, and meaning. Who in their right mind would consciously believe that a pair of shoes or a car or a skin cream could ever do that? Yet, we buy and behave as if we did believe it.
Naturally, the marketing experts know this. They reach into our hearts to pull on the strings of our deepest longings so that we buy what they have to sell, knowing it will never satisfy those longings, secretly happy in that knowledge because it means we'll have to keep buying, scooping up more and more in a fruitless search for salvation that can never, ever come from this world. Ever.
I am not a theologian. I'm a psychotherapist near Albuquerque, NM. But I think this is idolatry in the purest sense of the word. In watching and treating people who suffer from profound anxiety, ennui and depression, I have come to the conclusion that God did not forbid idolatry because He was petty or needy. An Omnipotent Being does not need our worship or devotion. He prohibited idolatry because it is, in fact, delusional, and it will make us miserable. It will never satisfy us or make us happy in the way He wants us to be deeply happy, which could never be accomplished with a short shot of dope. If my assumption is true, then what we are missing is not just happiness but a contentedness and emotional sure-footedness that is bone-deep and fills us with joy on each inhalation. What we are accepting in exchange for this soul satisfaction is a house full of gadgets we have no time to use, closets full of designer labels and lives littered with broken relationships.
But we keep saying "no" to joy and "yes" to stuff. It is more than ironic. It is befuddling and tragic. But it is true and made possible by an exceedingly savvy and complex understanding of human nature in marketing executives who keep leading us into their stores and away from the Promised Land. I would like to make clear, here, that I do not believe that devotion to God and a healthy economy are mutually exclusive. I think an economy based on deception and delusion, however, is.
How do they do it? There are principles that apply almost universally in board rooms around the world. Marketing a new product is approached in just about the same way whether the group is meeting in Tokyo or New York.
Become the atmosphere: This is a phrase used to describe the infusion of brand recognition into our culture, to surround people with "Nike," for instance, so that when they think they need new sneakers, the first thing they'll think of is that brand. It has unfortunately become increasingly difficult to take command over the general economic "atmosphere" because of the quantity of clutter in the environment. There are so many products and so many messages, we are surrounded by such a huge amount of information that the task for marketing managers and creative directors is now much more sophisticated and complex.
One woman in the documentary, The Persuaders, said "Consumers are like roaches. You spray them and spray them and spray them." Eventually, she explained, they become inured so you have to do something radically different to make them roll over.
Advertisers are shameless creatures. I know this not only because of their general reputation but because I worked as a copywriter. They are willing to do almost anything to break through the clutter of advertising and product promotion that they themselves created, fabricate any plausible untruth to attract our attention, take advantage of any scandal so long as it shocks and sells. That is the bottom line.
Create a culture of need: This is market-ese for inventing a culture around a product, an image that not only creates a pseudo-need, but promises a new way to meet it. That brand new ailment restless leg syndrome is a perfect example of that. Who in human history has not experienced some restlessness due to stress, lack of exercise, too much exercise or overtiredness? It is a newly identified "syndrome" that people are easily convinced is a real disease that they must have because they're restless, too, and now they must convince their doctors to prescribe the only drug that actually treats this new condition. And so it goes.
Give products texture and life: By imbuing ordinary toiletries and household products with emotional energy (happiness, softness, kindness, sexuality, sensuality, friendliness, availability, etc") the advertisers are able to make that product resonate with people's emotional lives and secret needs. What differentiates one product from another now is not for the most part quality or some massive technical advantage. How much difference is there between high-end hiking boots or between a pair of jeans made by Levi's and one made by Wrangler's? Besides the occasional issue of fit, it is hugely emotional. It's not what the product does. It's what it means and by extension what it says about us to the world.
Create a culture of fear: The media (news, editorial and advertising) has been promoting viral fear for many years, both subtly and overtly. We are told to be afraid of attack, mega-volcanoes, being unattractive, body odor, illness, death, asteroids, wrinkles and social rejection (to name but a few). If we are sufficiently afraid and are presented with a possible solution, a way to banish the demons of anxiety and self-doubt, we'll buy it. Many of us become so afraid we are willing to put ourselves into irreversible debt to deflect it. And the thing we are most afraid of not belonging, being shunned, being seen as inferior or unworthy is precisely that which they are best at manipulating by making the product an extension of the self, thereby giving the illusion of value to a fragile and porous self that must continually seek out external buttresses to give it cohesion.
I used to think this use of fear to send us careening into retail stores was a manifestation of abject sociopathy, that the conscious manipulation of viral fear was intentional, malicious and controllable. But the other day I realized something that literally made me run into the other room for my pen and paper (yes, I still use them). These advertisers and marketers honestly can't help themselves any more than they can help selling fear because they're fearful. They are as much a product of the culture they created as everyone and everything else. (This reminds me of something I wrote in The Worst is Over: Be careful what you say. You're listening.) They sell fear because that's what they buy. Advertisers can't stop spreading viral fear because, in one marketer's words, they're terrified of being eaten alive by the competition. It doesn't get more limbic than that, does it?
Market to the American soul: It might amuse you to know that marketers actually use the term "Pseudo-spiritual marketing." What does this mean? Here are some terrific examples of spiritual marketing strategies and creative concepts that were illuminated in the documentary, The Persuaders. Nike: mystical transcendence through sports and sports attire. Starbucks: community similar to the one we see in the show, Cheers, not home and not work, yet sympathetic, warm and companionable. Benetton: diversity and cheerful coexistence. When they sit around a table banging out strategies and campaign slogans, they use expressions like "making a spiritual bond with a product" and "channeling the inner brand." The brand becomes the church and the product the icon.
Give the product an IMAGE: This means that campaigns will skillfully and persuasively present the product as more than it is. It's not a bitter tasting drink, it's a social lubricant. It's not a just a washer/dryer, it's a part of your real sophisticated yet practical self. It's not just a car, it's an integral demonstration of your personal narrative, which may translate thus: I drive a Hummer, therefore I am"And I am successful, tough, yet refined. A complex being, I am, I am. Such a complex being I am. The product is no longer a product but redefined as mystery, as intimacy, as meaning, as cult, as success, as comfort, as our due.
Facilitate entitlement, no matter what a person's financial means: Offer loans, no pre-payment options, leases with hidden clauses, no interest deals for three years, no payments for two years. Make it easier than it should be to buy luxury items for which they have no real need and make the consumer feel they not only need the product, but that it is their right to have it. If a product is identified with the "self" then it we don't have far to go to feel fear about not having that product.
Entitled to be Happy: The Pursuit of the Ridiculous.
One of the most significant of the American pathologies is our confusion over the American creed. We have taken "pursuit of happiness" to mean the right to "be" happy. Since Romanticism's debut on the American intellectual game board and the Utopian notion that perfection is possible here on this earth, we have been entranced with a false sense of mortal power and, subsequent to that, of entitlement. If we can have it, then shouldn't we? Because we've additionally confused products with self and having with happiness, we find ourselves in the mess we are now in. We are so entitled and so afraid of not getting that to which we believe we're entitled we go into debt to get it. Or we steal. Or we sue.
There is an expression that goes something like, "that which you gaze upon, you become." This is certainly true in motorcycling, where it is understood at least in racing circles that you (and your bike) go where your eyes are pointed. I remember many years being warned by a friend, "If you ever see me go down, keep your eyes on the road and pull over slowly. Don't let yourself watch an accident." I never forgot that and have applied it to all areas of my life. What we see all day at the supermarket checkout, on packaging, on television, on cable and in movies is fame, beauty and money. A study was done with young people to find out what was most important to them and they reported the results we should have expected and hardly needed to go to all that trouble studying: fame, beauty and money.
There are two problems as I see it:
1) Americans don't just want what they see, they covet it. As a result they feel they should have it, that it is their right to have it and if they don't have it then something is vitally wrong with them. Their fear, once again, is that someone will find out they are "less than" ( less than perfect, less than expected, less than beautiful, successful or sexy) and that they will then be shunned, chased out of the pack and left for dead.
2) It has become an iconic need, a substitute for meaning, God and love.
We are saturated with more distraction than any other creature in history. We are surrounded by more cures, more opportunities, more checkouts and more choices than ever before. We are told that this, that or the other thing is the answer we've been waiting for. Until the next one comes along. But instead of answering our questions or satisfying our needs, all that they have succeeded in getting us to do is avoid the first and most important question of all: What does it mean and why do we want it? I sincerely doubt that Nike has anything to offer on that score.
God's Divine Sperm? Lib Church Shakes Up Story of Jesus' Birth
By Tana Ganeva, AlterNet
Posted on December 17, 2009, Printed on December 18, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/www.alternet.org/144643/
A progressive New Zealand Church wants you to know that not all Christians are lame. To that end, they've put up a billboard displaying a post-coital Mary gazing longingly at the sky (that's where God lives), while Joseph lays next to her looking dejected. It reads "Poor Joseph. God was a tough act to follow."
The purpose of the billboard, according to St. Matthew's website , is to highlight the absurdity of literal Biblical interpretation. "The Christmas billboard outside St Matthew-in-the-City lampoons literalism and invites people to think again about what a miracle is. Is the miracle a male God sending forth his divine sperm, or is the miracle that God is and always has been among the poor?" writes Vicar Glynn Cardy.
Here's some more really nice, smart stuff from Cardy:
The Christmas billboard on a local fundamentalist church sums up this thesis. It reads: “Jesus born 2 die 4 u!” His birth was just an h’orderve before the main Calvary course.
No doubt on Christmas Eve when papers print the messages of Church leaders a few of them will serve up this fundamentalist thesis wrapped in a nice story.
Progressive Christianity believes the Christmas stories are fictitious accounts designed to introduce the radical nature of the adult Jesus. They contrast the Lord and Saviour Caesar with the anomaly of a new ‘lord’ and ‘saviour’ born illegitimate in a squalid barn. At Bethlehem low-life shepherds and heathen travelers are welcome while the powerful and the priests aren’t. The stories introduce the topsy-turvy way of God, where the outsiders are invited in and the insiders ushered out.
Progressive Christianity doesn’t overlook Jesus’ life and rush to his death. Rather it sees the radical hospitality he offered to the poor, the despised, women, children, and the sick, and says: ‘this is the essence of God’. His death was a consequence of the offensive nature of that hospitality and his resurrection a symbolic vindication.
The site describes some of the tenets of progressive Christianity. Here's an interesting one:
Invite all people to participate in our community and worship life without insisting that they become like us in order to be acceptable (including (including but not limited to):
o believers and agnostics,
o conventional Christians and questioning sceptics,
o women and men,
o those of all sexual orientations and gender identities,
o those of all races and cultures,
o those of all classes and abilities,
o those who hope for a better world and those who have lost hope
Pay attention creationists! And Catholic Church! And U.S. Evengelicals! And some of the really bitchy atheists that spit on all forms of religious belief!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
