I just read the Communist Manifesto for the first time. This pamphlet adds so much clarity to our social situation, and we could learn much from thinking along the lines of bourgeoisie and proletariat.

As a starting point, I saw Michael Moore's "Sicko" a few days ago. This movie fit so well with Marx's general argument against capitalism: when the means of production, the capital, accumulate in the hands of a few, it is only a matter of time before everyone else is put in subjugation. Control of the means of production is power: if you have it or if you work for the man who does, it provides a livelihood. But when you have a company built on super-efficient, mechanized production (as companies surely will so that profit can be maximized), less labor is needed (and even the labor that is left is often unspecialized so that men become so many cogs in a machine). Necessarily, many are left in destitute positions and the rich get richer.

I can attest that there is a wide disparity between rich and poor. It is clear that the discrepancy is widening dramatically as time goes by. The fact is that many people need lots of help, and though there are some in positions to help many of those in need, most don't (and none seem to help as much as they could). Marx gives a reason why, and it is one of his most important insights into the nature of capitalism: an economic framework based on self-interest and self-focus degrades how we view each other. He says that "no other nexus between man and man" remains other than "naked self-interest". "Egotistical calculation" is the icy water that drowns any other approach to decision-making. Capitalism has "resolved personal worth into exchange value."

Much of the Communist Manifesto propounds courses of action that I cannot agree with, and indeed strike me as self-defeating. (For example, Marx asserts that the oppressed class, the proletariat, must rise up and finally defeat their oppressors and, by defeating its rival class, can also abolish its own position of hypocritical supremacy.) I disagree with a large majority of Marx's solutions. But, as the Manifesto asks, "does it require deep intuition to comprehend that...man's consciousness changes with every change in his material existence?" In other words, it is readily apparent that a system based on self-interest will breed men who are thoroughly self-interested.

And it is now that your mind should turn to the torn and wretched fabric of our current economy. Is this argument not intensely and eerily relevant?

Consider a health care industry who at every turn must interact with and solicit support from insurance providers. It is a perfect picture of a profit-driven echelon of elevated individuals welding enormous power over vast numbers of dependent people.

However, the plot has become more convoluted than Marx could have dreamed due to the proliferation of debt. The market economy met every need of the common man long ago; but according to Marx, the controlling class of the elevated few can only remain in control by constantly revolutionizing both the means and the ends of production. It is at this point that the burden is on capitalists to invent products and convince us we need them. Welcome to the age of marketing, of commercials and celebrity endorsements and sales executives; we are very familiar with this epoch, aren't we? And we have now mastered the art of convincing ourselves that we need 'this' and 'that' (at least until the new 2.0 versions are out) so completely that we have exhausted our means. Our consumption has outpaced our income; we cannot logically spend money we do not have, but we have found another way to accomplish it. And now, banks and other money-lending corporations (headed by these same elevated capitalists) literally control our future incomes. As Marx would say, those who control the means of production (and are already therefore in control of the masses) have now found a way to control the majority of its income (both present and future); if you are a have-not, this is an undeniably scary recipe (either a true have-not with bad credit or an illusory have-not saddled in debt).

The Communist Manifesto offers a clear narrative in which to place America today; the relevance of its arguments and the light it sheds on our current economic condition is a refreshing break from the cacophony of jumbled and disjointed opinions forced through American air waves.

For an interesting Christian perspective on this topic, see Rob Bell's discussion of the term 'anti-kingdom' in his new book "God Wants to Save Christians". Also, Michael Moore's discussion with retired British Parliament member Tony Benn in the special features section of Sicko; he expounds on how money has become a religion.

I think it's important for people to consider themselves in historical perspective, and I've been thinking recently that this is harder and harder to do. I just finished reading Angels and Demons, and despite the many liberties it takes with both science and history, it brings up some solid points about how the past two hundred years have drastically tipped the scales in favor of science. Because of the scientific advances of a short amount of time, conventional wisdom has long since proved inadequate; this is one of the reasons for the modern movement. Can you imagine living in a world that didn't understand the causes of lightning, that couldn't explain why children inherited certain traits of their parents, that understood so little of the human body that certain types of death were attributed to madness? How much differently would we regard ourselves (and a religion that asserted our utter centrality in the grand scheme) if we believed that Earth was the center of the universe?
It is more and more difficult to believe that God is the reason for lightning, and since I now believe that my body operates according to the laws of science and it would be illogical for it to suddenly stop, it is harder to believe that God sustains me and that he does so for a purpose.

Max!

William Butler Yeats

A great quotation from William Butler Yeats, a poet whom I hold close to my heart because he is tattooed on my arm. So hopefully he stays close to my heart...

"When I try to put all into a phrase I say, 'Man can embody truth but cannot know it.' The abstract is not life and everywhere draws out its contradictions. You can refute Hegel but not the saint."

This is sort of what I was discussing a few posts ago and it jives with what I've been learning lately; I guess I'm just increasingly interested in that practical active God-fearing saint.

A Tragedy

Imagine two men sitting in a library.

The first man clearly thinks he is teaching, speaking with an air of genius superiority and delivering didacticisms in the reclined manner of a vanguard who is at the forefront of his profession. This man expects his words to be regarded as ascendant profundities by his hearers.

The second man is pitched forward, leaning into the lecture with evident wholeheartedness. His mien conveys fascination in the subject matter and gratitude for the experience. It is apparent that the listener desires to be nowhere in the world but rooted to his chair by the lengthy discourse being provided by this clearly brilliant scholar.

Now, be sure to catch aaaaaaall the sarcasm, and you have secured a proper allegorical depiction of my current British Literature course.


I don't want to spend my time concocting bull shit, but if I must, at least let me do it for free.

A few weeks ago, I started working at Starbucks (that's a Rorschach statement to bloggers, I'm sure). This company consistently ranks near the top of lists that measure employment desirability, and part of the reason why is the thorough training process; a solid 8 days are reserved merely for training, and I can tell you that much of that time is spent educating a new hire about the nature of coffee: how it grows, what the coffee distribution process looks like, how to sample a coffee and with what it should be paired. During training, I became unshakably aware of something: my brain has the palate sensitivity of strong and sturdy plywood. As other baristas around me commented with appreciation about the refreshing floral notes and robust body of whatever unpronouncible African coffee was being sampled, I focused on the searing blisters developing on my tongue due to what I considered an impractically hot beverage. I'm not joking - I nearly drowned during my first coffee tasting. You're supposed to smell the coffee pretentiously (or at least I smell my coffee pretentiously. Which is actually pretty difficult; it's not easy to smell with pretense), but I sniffed too deeply and began choking on the distinctive cocoa bouquet I was supposed to be appreciating. This is accurately microcosmal of my first eight days.

That said, I've managed to learn that coffee appreciation is the ability to notice the complex interplay between various palate components. On one sip, notice body; on the next sip, pay attention to acidity. And it is at this point that my blog once again becomes about books, so let those eyes roll.

I notice the same complexity, the same interplay between ideas, the same need to take multiple 'sips' in order to approach from another perspective. I just read Hemingway's short story "Hills Like White Elephants", and it can be read from beginning to end any number of times and it has this organic way of creating something new; how does Hemingway use symbolism? How does he use language to manipulate his reader's emotions, and what does he do with them once captivated? I've heard of a university course named "Twice-Read Novels". I think this sort of class is a great arena to learn the tools of literary composition, and it acknowledges the fundamental motion, the inherent activity, of literature.

The fourteenth English mystic Julia of Norwich had a vision of a tiny hazelnut seed rotating in her palm, and she asserted that it was a true representation of the world (specifically, because it was created and maintained by God). Within a component of the system is found the system itself; and to me, this is the resplendent and ineffable beauty of literature (and art more generally). Within a part we find the whole, ever-expansive and dynamically active.

This is another in a series of attempts to elucidate my basic beliefs. I feel a siren call towards writing, but I don't know what to say, whom to write to, or why I should. Hopefully, simple practice will help pull it all together....

Poems...

Reading some poems for homework and I came across some fascinating ones I thought I'd post...the first two are both nineteenth century Roman Catholic priest Gerard Manley Hopkins.

God's Grandeur
THE WORLD is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;	5
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;	10
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs—
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Pied Beauty

GLORY be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;	5
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:	10
Praise him.

And this one is a satirical chastisement of gossipy women by ee cummings. so you know it's good.

the Cambridge ladies who live in furnished souls

are unbeautiful and have comfortable minds

(also, with the church's protestant blessings

daughters,unscented shapeless spirited)

they believe in Christ and Longfellow, both dead,

are invariably interested in so many things—

at the present writing one still finds

delighted fingers knitting for the is it Poles?

perhaps. While permanent faces coyly bandy

scandal of Mrs. N and Professor D

.... the Cambridge ladies do not care, above

Cambridge if sometimes in its box of

sky lavender and cornerless, the

moon rattles like a fragment of angry candy.

That's all - love this stuff. Take that as a personal comment or a threatening command.

I was driving to Starbucks tonight (I work at Starbucks now - what a good job it is!) tossing around the light and frothy subject of whether or not religion is manufactured by humanity or not, and do you know what hit me? I started considering that, inasmuch as Christianity manifests itself in a truly selfless way, I believe it. I think that's why we get so frustrated by consumer comfortable Christianity and pastors in the 95 American wealth percentile and salesman evangelists: what's so supra-human about protecting number one? Scientific materialism would say that our psyches are conditioned entirely by our evolutionary history, and even though there are a thousand places in my life where I find it so easy to believe this, how do the true examples of 'turning the other cheek' fit into that? In some ways, religion is more compelling than science is easy because it's more difficult to explain the occasional holiness in man than his prolific brutality. If I am truly interested in seeking out answers rationally and analytically, if I am truly searching scientifically, then the exception of man's charity should keep me searching (even if his selfishness proves to be the rule on my every side). And it is in this place that Christ begins to speak: turn the other cheek, the last shall be first, give a thief more than he attempts to take, love your enemies.

At the end of the day, the crucial question is this: Is religion merely a complicated form of selfishness (a desire for self-preservation in one's relation to an omnipotent God), or is it something more?

Epiphany

Dear world,

It hit me today. I have such a tortured relationship with writing, and with most things, because I am simply too self-involved. I'm a remarkably selfish and self-conscious person.

So, I'll write when I can, but in the meantime I'm going to try and figure that out.