Category: Culture

Swept Under the Rug

On By JonathanIn Culture, East & West2 Comments

I was changing trains on the Madrid Metro when I noticed a large advertisement splashed across the tiled walls of the subway tube. There are, of course, numerous ads of all sorts on the Madrid Metro, but this particular one caught my eye: it portrayed a European- Spanish perhaps- woman reclining on a couch, with a look of contented pleasure on her face. Well she would be- her couch was set in an airy-looking room of a vaguely oriental feel, with a view of the ocean out the windows, palm trees and sand dunes leading out to the azure sea. Coming from under the rug, behind the furnishings, and from the edge of the scene were brown hands, holding food, a telephone, clothes, and so on- all the comforts, I suppose, a well-heeled person needs whilst on vacation. The sign was advertising tourism to Morocco, the country I had only recently departed from. While I’ve forgotten the exact words that were splayed across the top of the picture, their gist was to describe an enchanting, comfortable Morocco- that is, not only exotic, but accessible, unlikely to jar or in any way disturb the average Western visitor. Finally, the ad was produced by a Moroccan tourism board- a government agency, if I remember correctly.

I reflected further on the ad’s message as I made my way south from the airport to the bus station, passing several more copies along the way. Perhaps my conclusion reads too much into the ad, but I don’t think so- rather, as so often happens, advertising and art (which seem to merge into one these days anyway) reflect the popular image, by defining and re-offering it in order to sell a product- in this case, a whole country. But here’s what I saw in the image:

There were Moroccans in the picture, to be sure- they were vital to the ad’s message- but they were utterly invisible, at least as real people. Each of the Moroccans depicted in the ad was nothing but an extended arm, offering a service to the wealthy tourist- services that merely existed as services, delivered by ‘natives’ hovering out of sight, who need not interfere with their particular personalities- all that was swept under the exotic-looking rug. Their existence is necessary, the ad implied, for without them Morocco would merely be exotic and not comfortable- but only so far as the natives both existed and were faceless, unobtrusive, offering whatever was needed. They were not even allowed to be a part of the scenery- not even as quaint natives in turbans or head scarves, dancing and playing music. Even this stereotyped role was denied the nameless, faceless servants. Not even bodies were allowed- only arms protruding from the dark. The message was clear: come to Morocco, and no native will disturb your experience. No threatening Other need disrupt your exotic vacation by intruding his presence. Our natives are only here to please, and only in a very particular and completely non-threatening, comfortable way. There is no room for, say, sexual tension, for cultural tension, of any sort- bodies, souls, all, are removed from the scene.

Is this image ‘true’? That is, does it represent the actual experience of the Western tourist to Morocco? I don’t know, to be honest- my traveling in Morocco was of the ‘budget’ sort, which meant I traveled and stayed, as a general rule, with Moroccans. Even if I had wanted to, I could not escape experiencing Morocco and its people, on some level, on the terms of the place and its inhabitants. I was- thankfully- hard up against the ‘real’ Morocco quite often, which was, as in any country, at times deeply satisfying and enriching, and at other times frustrating and wearisome. But Morocco never appeared faceless to me; the ‘natives’ were not background filler- and nor would I desire (or be able to afford!) such a thing. But perhaps for the tourist with greater financial leeway, the image has a good deal of truth: from the vantage point of the tour bus and the five star hotel behind walls and gates, Morocco- the flesh-and-blood Morocco- becomes a mere backdrop, a barely existent thing, that flashes by in a two-week tour of tourist sites and fancy hotels, flitting from airport to beach to Marrakech to Fez and back to the airport. The goal, perhaps, is to avoid unnecessary contact with ‘natives,’ except those few who are ‘presentable.’ Whether or not the individual tourist wants this, it is the pre-packaged experience, no doubt genuinely desired by many.

Perhaps this is an inevitable process for all places that are so deluged with the tourist industry: the ‘local’ is squeezed further and further into a proper role, or, as in the ad- and I daresay in all to many tourists’ actual experience in Morocco, and elsewhere- out of the picture altogether, except as a completely anonymous provider of services, and a blur out the window or at the edge of the tour group in the Medina. And if tourism tends to begin by making the native a part of the scenery, perhaps its culmination is to push him out of the scenery altogether. This has been the process in the creation of many a game preserve or national park, here in the United States and across the planet: the local must in the end be reduced to the background, non-existent at the centre, relegated- if at all- to the edge of the preserve, selling handicrafts and t-shirts, lest he spoil the view we pay to come and see.

That brings up one final, disturbing aspect of the ad in question: it was produced by Moroccans, albeit from an official agency of some sort. Indeed, all over the world, the imaginative and often times literal marginalization and exclusion of the ‘native’ is carried out, not by foreign conquerors or even business interests, but by the compatriots of the ‘natives.’ Why is this? Part of it, no doubt, is in fact a reflection of the ‘colonization of the mind’ spoken of by post-colonial theorists: the assimilation and application of European stereotypes and mentalities by the colonized themselves. But perhaps more often, it is simply an outworking of the realization by the powerful that this sort of marginalization can work to the benefit of pre-existing powerful interests, both in business and in the State. And it is defensible, particularly to the very Westerners one is courting: the guilty Western’s conscience can be salved by telling him that his tourism is somehow aiding the poor, developing the economy (lining tax coffers and supporting the bureaucracies as well, of course). Sure, the government ran poor farmers off of their land to build a national park for rich Westerners to admire endangered species in, but in so doing they’re protecting the Earth, preventing global warming no doubt. And besides, there is plenty of land elsewhere- what are a few disenfranchised poor people? With time they will disappear from the scenery anyway. If the State, as it does in Fez, seizes common ground in the Medina and uses its citizens money to host high-brow ‘cultural events,’ well, the common ‘native’ can’t appreciate such things anyway. And for many States, they would prefer that foreign visitors not pay much attention to the locals anyway, and certainly not listen to them- they might hear too much. Adopting and reinforcing the stereotypes of the West can be quite beneficial for the powerful few.

But coming back to the ad in the Metro: I think the faceless servers are ultimately indicative of the whole sweep of our globalized world. We managed to avoid so many faces: the worker who puts together our cheap goods, the high-school kid taking our order at Wendy’s, the telemarketer trying to sell us insurance, the commuter in the car next to us on the way home. It’s easier that way, Lord knows- less messy, as dealing with people to their face, even in our own comfortable cultural space, is difficult. How much more difficult in those exotic countries that we’d like to vacation in, if only the natives would be unobtrusive. Our neighbor at home is nearly invisible- it only follows that we would truly reduce our neighbor across the sea to invisibility. We avoid, mostly unconsciously, the faces of our neighbors, whether at home or abroad: and if do not even see our neighbor’s face, how are we to fulfill the command to love our neighbor?

Fruit and Leaf

On By JonathanIn Culture, PhotosLeave a comment

Our family has been sharing a large vegetable garden with our neighbors, which has helped alleviate rising food prices. I missed the planting and most of the tending due to my sojourn in North Africa; I’ve gotten to help out with the harvest however, and will continue to do so until I leave for graduate school in a month and a half. While corn is growing more expensive by the week, we’re well supplied with our own stocks; in a couple weeks the tomatoes and beans will be coming in, and perhaps in tandem with them the figs, which are in abundance this year.

Below are a few photos from the garden:

On Religious Pluralism

On By JonathanIn Culture, East & West, Gospel, PhilosophyLeave a comment

The following is a paper I wrote last year for a Philosophy of Religion class. I came back across it the other day while re-arranging files and folders and thought it would make a decent blog posting (at some point I will try to integrate the footnotes into the blog post). Reading back over it I saw some things I think should be worded differently and considered more carefully; however, my basic criticisms of religious pluralism as a realist philosophy of religion still stand. The question of the intersection and conflict of truth claims in religions is a terribly important, and, I think, quite difficult one to deal with, if one is committed to a realist view of truth in religion, and is equally committed to honest appraisals of all religious traditions. As I freely confess in the paper, I do not suppose myself to have arrived at completely satisfactory solutions.

*

Religious Pluralism Considered

He [a Brahman] enquired why God sent the Shastras if they were not to be observed. I answered how do you know that God sent the Hindu Shastras, did he send the Mussulmen’s Koran also? He answered that God had created both Hindus and Mussulmen, and had given them different Ways of Life. I said then God could neither be wise nor unchangeable to do so, and that all such foolish Worship was unworthy of either God or Men.

*

There’s an airline plane
Flies to heaven everyday
Past the pearly gates…

Well a lot of people guess
Some say no and some say yes
Will it take some and leave some behind?

*

1. Introduction: Few questions in either religion or philosophy have so much real-world weight as the question raised by the numerous religious systems of humanity. The nature of religious truth claims is not only a concern for the individual faced with competing religions, but is also an issue for entire nations and peoples faced with conflicts often colored by deeply engrained religious disputes. Religious pluralism, or, more accurately, religious diversity, is brought to the fore most acutely in the direct conflicting interaction of two religions, as in the instance above taken from the journal of the early nineteenth-century Baptist missionary William Carey. It is also an issue in what Basinger refers to as “inter-system” differences within broad theistic systems, such as questions within Christianity over the nature of the ultimate eternal state of humans, a question that finds echo in Woody Guthrie’s “Airline to Heaven.” With the spread of globalism along with the post-Cold War resurgence of religious belief, particularly in the public-sphere, the issue of religious truth claims, exclusivism, and the possibility- or impossibility- of somehow reconciling competing religions remains an absolutely vital one, in terms of both philosophical and practical concern.

In recent years the idea of religious pluralism has arisen as a possible means of reconciling seemingly conflicting traditions, and has been much espoused as a way to integrate religions into a peaceful pluralistic society. Briefly put, religious pluralism, as advocated by John Hick and others, posits an ultimate and ineffable Real that is the focus of all religious traditions. All religions are veridical for the religious believer, offering means of relating to the Absolute in some way. All religions, Hick asserts, are equally competent in turning believers from “ego-centric” lives to “other-centric” lives, centered on the ineffable Real. Pluralism does not deny that there are differences between religions; rather it says these differences and the impossibility of properly reconciling them are proof that they are all partakers of the Real, and the best solution in this life is to take a tolerant agnostic approach to these differences.

But does pluralism in fact offer a cogent and acceptable solution to the very manifest problem of religious diversity? And if it does not, how is one to deal with the issue, while maintaining a realist view of truth and the veridical value of religion? While it is, unsurprisingly, not difficult to find serious problems with religious pluralism, offering an alternative solution is difficult. Therefore this paper will first present significant negative issues with pluralism before offering a (tentative) alternative.

2. Differences Between Religions: One of the principal problems with religious pluralism is that it has a tendency to approach religions from a decidedly generic standpoint: talk of “religions” ultimately replaces talk of Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism, for example, in such a way that the language of those traditions is collapsed into seemingly common terms. For example, St. Gregory of Nyssa and Lao Tzu both speak of ineffability in dealing with “the Absolute”; Christianity and Buddhism both encourage self-renunciation; therefore, they must share certain common referents. Despite ostensibly recognizing differences between religions, religious pluralism ultimately fails to take these differences seriously, in as much as it cannot ultimately affirm both the truth-value of traditions (such as those traditions claim for themselves) and their equal validity in terms of veridicality, without somehow laying claim to a vantage point more exalted in its relaying of ultimate truth than the religions under consideration.

When we examine the claims of a given religion, including both doctrinal propositions and the content of religious experience, we find what are truly serious differences in the basic approach to and understanding the “Real an sich.” Perhaps the most obvious and important would be the difference between conceptions of God- or Brahman, or the Absolute- as personal or non-personal. This is a major division between Eastern and Western philosophy and theology, and it cannot be made to vanish easily. Further yet, some Buddhist traditions deny any sort of Real or Absolute at all, rather describing reality as ultimately Emptiness and Nothingness. And all Buddhist traditions, if they posit an Ultimate of any sort at all, conceive of it radically differently from Western religions, alongside a radically different concept of noncontradiction than underlies all Western theologies and philosophies. It is true that both speak of ineffable reality in some sense. However, in the first place, as Ward notes, if one is presented with an ineffable X and an ineffable Y, one is not therefore obliged to suppose them identical. In fact, by very point of ineffability the question arises as to whether one could say anything at all about the two ineffables, including whether they were two, or one, or more: much less whether they were somehow identical- a very significant quantification indeed!

Further, concepts of ineffability vary greatly. In the Western traditions the ineffability of God does not mean that He is unknowable in an ultimate sense; if that were so theology would be pointless. Rather, the doctrine of God’s ineffability is quite specific in what it delineates. It is quite different from Hick’s conception of ineffability, in which he says of the Real that is unknowable- we cannot ascertain whether it is one or many, personal or non-personal, and so on. But this immediately raises another important question: how then can Hick or anyone else speak of the Real, if it is truly ineffable as he describes? And even supposing his language about it (assuming it to be a monad of some sort, simple or otherwise) is correct, how can he know that different religious traditions are speaking about the same thing if the thing being spoken about cannot be properly spoken of? We might add that pluralism could itself be described as another religious tradition, which therefore, by its own logic, cannot itself claim to absolute and exclusive truth- though surely it must claim that, contra other religious traditions which assert the exclusiveness of their claims to truth and understanding the Real (or whatever their ultimate “referent” is).

In the classic story of the elephant and the blind men often used as an analogy of religious pluralism, the King and his attendants are able to see the entire elephant. However, if all traditions are in fact blind men feeling the elephant, it is impossible for any to say what all are feeling: to do so would presuppose some kind of superior vantage point. Yet such a vantage point is destroyed by pluralism, for it would entail a very specific exclusivist claim to religious knowledge vis-à-vis the Real. Pluralism cannot offer such a vantage point without devalidating its own claims, as it- bravely, it might be added, in contrast with the blasé relativism that is current in much of academia- seeks to uncover some Ultimate Referent within all religions, that has ontological and epistemic reality. But to do so brings in internal contradictions that cripple the arguments from within.

On a similar tack we may examine Hick’s appeal to soteriological experience as a means of identifying a single Referent for all religions: “The great world religions, then, are ways of salvation. Each claims to constitute an effective context within which the transformation of human existence can does take place from self-centeredness to Reality-centeredness.” But again, Hick must contend with a wide variety of “salvation experiences” that, while having some similarities, ultimately have very different ultimate referents and means. Even if we could establish, as Hick argues- and there is workable ground for the argument- that the moral and spiritual “fruit” of various paths to salvation are equally brought about by the different traditions, it would not determine that they are all being wrought by the same Reality. As Ward notes, a-religious movements and processes can produce “salvific” fruits on par with world religions, yet it would a considerable stretch to say that they are tapping into the Divine power of the Real. Considering only religions, it is still highly improbable to suppose that the salvific “referent” of different religions is the same if we take the claims of those religions seriously and do not have access to a superior vantage point outside of those experiences that would allow a somehow unfiltered view of the Real and its relation to religious traditions.

3. Pluralism as Emasculation of Religion: A common charge of pluralists is that non-pluralist forms of religion are vehicles for maladroit intolerance at best, violence and oppression at worst: “Exclusiveness regards universality as the extension of its own particularity and seeks to conquer other faiths. Inclusiveness, though seeming generous, actually co-opts other faiths without their leave. Both exclusiveness and its patronizing cousin inclusiveness may even be forms of theological violence against neighbors of other faiths…”

Certainly, the history of religions gives ample evidence of various forms of violence being enacted against members of dissenting views; to recount them here would hardly be germane. However, while it may, on the surface, appear that pluralism solves for a more open and tolerant faith, it can itself be just as pernicious a vehicle for “theological violence.” This is best demonstrated through an examination of the decidedly exclusivist message of Christ and the Early Church, but can be just as readily extended to the actions of other faiths, particularly in those religions which Ramachandra refers to as “dissenter traditions,” such as Christianity and Buddhism, both of which emerged as counterpoints or protests against the traditions they originally inhered in. Christianity was from its inception a decidedly radical faith, and was able to stand as witness against injustice, including injustice codified by religion. Christianity was not content to proclaim Christ as Lord and God alongside Caesar- the State- as Lord and God; instead, it held forth Christ alone as Lord and God- an explicit and exclusivist claim of orthodoxy- which meant an explicit subversion of the State and its illusions of divine power, along with all its attendant coercion and violence- an expression of orthopraxy flowing directly from orthodoxy.

To offer a contemporary example, Christianity in modern times has often spoken against the caste system that inheres as orthopraxy in that grouping of religions broadly defined as Hinduism. While Buddhism to a certain extent acted as an acute dissenter religion in response to the systematic violence of the caste system, historically it tended to relegate itself to “spiritual” concerns and, while fundamentally questioning the caste system, largely left it intact. However, in recent years both Christianity and Buddhism, acting self-consciously as dissenter religions, have spoken out against the injustices perpetrated against the dalits of India in the name of Hinduism. In so doing they both are declaring that the truth-value of their religious claims is superior by virtue of being a correct judgment on the nature of reality, contra the truth-claims of Hinduism. The committed pluralist, by insisting on the relative value of all religions’ truth claims and refusing to judge between them, must also insist that judgments by Christianity or Buddhism upon the injustices of caste oppression are in fact illegitimate acts of “theological violence.” That the proclamation by Christianity of the injustice of a given religion’s tenets or practices is indeed a form of “theological violence” is perfectly admissible, in light of Christ’s declaration that he was coming with “a sword”: the “violence” of confronting unjust belief systems and directly challenging their validity.

A pluralism which disbars the truth-claims of Christianity (as any pluralism which seeks to establish a supra-religious ontological reality must do) disbars its meaningful contact with people, cultures, and religions outside of it: “Only if the Christian faith is truth does it concern all men; if it is merely a cultural variant of the religious experience of mankind that is locked up in symbols and can never be deciphered, then it has to remain within its own culture and leave others in theirs.” This applies not only to Christianity, it might be noted: strict pluralism must ultimately leave all religions essentially emasculated, their truth claims- which are at root claims about the very nature of the world and man’s place in it- evacuated of their original meaning in favour of the new construction offered by modern theologians and philosophers.

And if truth is denied in a religion- truth meaning the claims of one religion about reality vis-à-vis others- religions are left mere artifices, empty Wittgensteinian language games whose relation to higher ontological reality is only incidental and is not in fact true to the content of the religions themselves. One must then question the ultimate value of religious experience, since its relation to ultimate ontological and epistemic reality is impossible to ascertain beyond very vague generalities, and the vital force of religions in the world is largely removed. Religious pluralism does violence of its own in not taking individual traditions- as noted above- on their very serious terms. While these implications cannot of themselves conclusively condemn pluralism as a theory, they must give us pause, and they do adequately address the charge that exclusivism is somehow inherently a negative force or agent of theological evil (leaving aside the somewhat obvious question of how and why we define “evil”).

4. An Alternative in a Moderated Exclusivism: Religious pluralism is therefore by any means a highly problematic solution to the problem of religious diversity. What then are other tenable solutions? It may be, as suggested by the famous arguments David Hume presents, in Of Miracles that no religions at all are true, the position of the agnostic or atheist. On a similar level one might embrace the arguments of Averroes and consider religious “truth” to be of a different sort than, say, mathematic truth. This would reduce religion to mere taste, in a way similar to Hick’s appeal to a phenomological understanding of religion. At least in Hick’s rendering, there is some, if unclear, relation of religions to the “the Real.” To demarcate religion into its own category of truth unrelated to the world is to essentially deconstruct religions- since all major religions make, whether through explicit orthodoxy or implicitly through orthopraxy, specific claims about the nature of the world. All religions hold, ultimately, to some sort of realist view of truth. Thus an Averroes-like theory would not in fact somehow “preserve” religion and thus solve the issue, but would lead to the same results as flatly denying the validity of all religions.

Outside of denial of any religious validity, some sort of exclusivism is likely in order if one is to suppose any realist truth value to religious experience can be apprehended (it may be that truth is more or less equally mixed through all religions; but how one would go about ascertaining this is highly problematic). A word about the word “exclusivism” is in order first. Any view concerning religions- including, as noted above, religious pluralism, is in some way “exclusivist” if it holds to any sort of realist view of truth and the principle of noncontradiction. However, in terms of religions, it will here mean a religion which views itself as containing either the fullness of truth or at least containing more truth than all other systems; the exclusivist viewing her religion as being the normative one for evaluating all others (the possession of some sort of normative core, even a very “stripped down” one, being ultimately necessary for making any truth claims at all). This may or may not entail judgments on the ultimate eschatological destination of those in other systems; nor must it entail its absolute validity with no truth-value in other systems. Other systems, however, cannot be seen as being ultimately normative.

That exclusivism need not obsesively concern itself with every charge of “religious imperialism” has already been demonstrated; but can the exclusivist justify her exclusivism and its truth-claims when confronted with the reality of other equally exclusivist traditions? Per the views formulated by the so-called school of Reformed Epistemology, an exclusivist can reasonably hold to her views and rationally justify holding them. However, whatever the merits of Reformed Epistemology’s arguments- and they are considerable- ultimately those arguments do not proffer an adequate way of dealing with the issue of truth, and can lead one into the same cultural and philosophical faux passé as religious pluralism and Averoeism, but one in which different religions operate in their own sealed departments. Instead, the exclusivist is obliged at the very least to consider the claims of other religions and examine the basis of his own claims if he is to hold to a realist view of his exclusive claims and meaningfully engage other religions. This examination may well entail, as Quinn suggests, “thinner theologies” that reconsider some propositions and hence reduce conflict between religious systems, without forsaking the exclusivist’s claims. Not only must such a questioning and examination not entail a forsaking of one’s normative beliefs, but it may well lead to a strengthening and revitalization of those beliefs.

It is important to note that exclusivism- say, for our purposes, Christian exclusivism- does not by any means entail denying truth-content and even divine veridicality in other religions. Rather, it may embrace what is sometimes referred to as “inclusivism,” in the sense employed by Cardinal Ratzinger: “The true meaning of what people call ‘inclusivism’ becomes apparent here: it is a matter, not of absorbing other religions externally, on the basis of a dogmatic postulate, as would do violence to them as phenomena, but of an inner correspondence that we may certainly call finality: Christ is moving through history in these forms and figures, as we may express it.” This is distinct from pluralism, which views all religions as equally veridical; the exclusivist may allow for veridicality in other religions, but only in some sort of correspondence with her religion. Such a view, as Ratzinger notes elsewhere, has the advantage of being concerned with religions on an individual basis, and thus avoids the tendency of pluralism to seek overly broad generalizations. This sort of “exclusivist inclusivism” allows for genuine interaction between religions and cultures without leading to the emasculation of religion that pluralism tends towards; the exclusivist, it is true, will be obliged to enter into conflict, not only with the beliefs of others, but even her own. If, however, our desire is to maximize truth, such conflict, when approached with an openness to truth whilst solidly grounded with a definite and internally consistent normative core, can give much greater basis for honestly examining religious traditions and their truth-validity.

But can one determine the absolute validity of one’s religion vis-à-vis other traditions? This is the basic question; it might existentially be phrased for our purpose, “Why remain a Christian- why not embrace Islam or Buddhism?” Adler suggests that investigation of religious truth can operate from the background of previously established truths in the realm of “transcultural” truths, such as in science and mathematics. This approach can certainly lend some aid to establishing the ongoing rationality of one’s exclusivist faith; so could any number of arguments, whether historical, experiential, or otherwise, that might be marshaled, in favour of Christianity versus other systems. However, at the end of all such arguments, it cannot be denied that faith is absolutely necessary, even if perhaps not via the existential starkness of Kierkegaard; there is no absolute middle ground on which equally intelligent and honest people can, without question begging, absolutely “prove” a given religion. This however- in correlation with broader epistemological concerns- need not serve as an absolute defeater for those who hold to an exclusivist position, particularly when the serious problems of religious pluralism are considered (to say nothing, due to the scope of this paper, of the religious agnostic’s problems). Instead, it should, as Baringer urges, lead to further careful consideration of beliefs and refined philosophical reflection. The question of religious diversity is by no means a settled or even particularly well-defined one in contemporary philosophy; considering its importance in the modern world however it is certainly one deserving of greater consideration and development.

Bibliography

Adler, Mortimer J. Truth in Religion: The Plurality of Religions and the Unity of
Truth. New York: McMillan Publishing Company, 1990.

Basinger, David. Religious Diversity: A Philosophical Assessment. Aldershot:
Ashgate Publishing, 2002.

Ibid. “Religious Diversity (Pluralism).” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy (Spring 2006 Edition). Edited by Edward N. Zalta. URL = .

Carey, William. The Journal and Selected Letters of William Carey. Edited and
collected by Terry G. Carter. Macon: Smyth and Helwys, 1999.

Chenchiah, P. “Wherein Lies the Uniqueness of Christ? An Indian Christian
View.” In Readings in Indian Christian Theology. Edited by I. R. S. Sugirtharajah and Cecil Hargreaves. London: SPCK, 1993.

Guthrie, Woody. “Airline To Heaven.”

Hick, John. “Religious Pluralism and Salvation.” In The Philosophical Challenge
of Religious Diversity. Edited by Philip L. Quinn and Kevin Meeker. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Hume, David. “Of Miracles.” In The Philosophical Challenge of
Religious Diversity. Edited by Philip L. Quinn and Kevin Meeker. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Platinga, Alvin. “Pluralism: A Defense of Religious Exclusivism.” In The
Philosophical Challenge of Religious Diversity. Edited by Philip L. Quinn and Kevin Meeker. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Ramachandra, Vinoth. Faiths in Conflict: Christian Integrity in a Multicultural
World. Downers Grove: Intervarsity Press, 2000.

Ratzinger, Joseph Cardinal. Truth and Tolerance: Christian Belief and World
Religions. Translated by Henry Taylor. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004.

Quinn, Philip L. “Towards Thinner Theologies: Hick and Alston on Religious
Diversity.” In The Philosophical Challenge of Religious Diversity. Edited by Philip L. Quinn and Kevin Meeker. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Samartha, S. J. “The Cross and the Rainbow: Christ in a Multireligious
Culture.” In Readings in Indian Christian Theology. Edited by I. R. S.
Sugirtharajah and Cecil Hargreaves. London: SPCK, 1993.

Schilbrack, Kevin. “Religious Diversity and the Closed Mind.” In The Journal of
Religion, Vol. 83, No. 1 (Jan., 2003).[JSTOR]. URL =
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=00224189%28200301%2983%3A1%3C100%3ARDATCM%3E2.0.CO%3B2-O>.

Ward, Keith. “Truth and the Diversity of Religions.” In The Philosophical
Challenge of Religious Diversity. Edited by Philip L. Quinn and Kevin Meeker. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

The Peasants Are Blogging

On By JonathanIn Culture, History1 Comment

Over at Reason.com David Harsanyi critiques a book by one Andrew Keen, a self-described “veteran Silicon Valley entrepreneur and digital media critic.” Not having read (or previously heard of) Mr. Keen or his book, I instead perused his article on the Weekly Standard, Web 2.0.

Now, I have critiqued the internet before, here, and here. All forms of communication have limitations- as Plato likes to remind us, writing has all sorts of problems; old Papias expressed his dislike of written manuscripts in favour of the spoken, “living” Apostolic word. However, there is criticism and then there is criticism. Mr. Keen’s criticism is, I am afraid, utterly ridiculous, not to mention glaringly elitist and statist. In essence, he complains that the internet is unseating “elite” media in favour of user-created, democratic media, and that this is a Very Bad Thing. Thus his argument is two-layered: the first half is, I think, largely correct (though caveats must be inserted), as it is merely factual. The second half- the value judgment he makes- is downright nonsensical when we consider the standards he employs. But first the factual half of the argument.

Mr. Keen discusses the new “buzzwords” being used to describe what the internet does- democratization, redistribution of intellectual capital, that sort of thing. And indeed the internet is perhaps the ultimate engine for decentralized culture, decentralized commerce, decentralized politics, and so on; though cell phone technology is almost if not equally important. The internet is accessible to the masses, almost everywhere in the world. Even in places (such as mainline China) where the elites seek to restrict the content they view as “subversive” the internet is still available, and between the methods of getting around the restrictions, and the sheer volume of users and information, statist elites are finding it increasingly difficult to control information. And once a statist elite loses control of information, they also tend to lose control of a great many other things.

Besides being an agent of freeing information from statist control, as is the case in totalitarian societies, the internet also allows greater diversity of information and material outside of the “mainstream” media conglomerates that previously dominated the market. A much greater number of people are empowered to create and distribute material, from political and cultural commentary to music to poetry. At the same time people can also produce and dissimulate pornography, urban legends, and artless rants: the internet is a genuinely free-market, open to anyone with a connection and a computer. To Mr. Keen this is an unalloyed nightmare:

It [the internet ethos] worships the creative amateur: the self-taught filmmaker, the dorm-room musician, the unpublished writer. It suggests that everyone–even the most poorly educated and inarticulate amongst us–can and should use digital media to express and realize themselves. Web 2.0 “empowers” our creativity, it “democratizes” media, it “levels the playing field” between experts and amateurs. The enemy of Web 2.0 is “elitist” traditional media.

What is the result? Traditional media- newspapers, networks, big record labels, are in “free-fall.” This means- and here is the great gaping hole in Mr. Keen’s value-judgment- that aesthetic standards are in free-fall, that culture is descending into the abyss. Because without network television, billion-dollar studios, and giant music labels, culture will die, replaced by all those unwashed masses on the internet. Without Plato’s cultural statists regulating what we should listen to, watch, and read, the world of culture and art is caput, dead, silenced, lost in the “flat noise of opinion–Socrates’s nightmare.”

But for Mr. Keen’s argument to hold water we must accept one very big assumption: that “big media” (for lack of a better catch-all) has been producing good, viable material. That this is not the case is the basic gist of Mr. Harsanyi at Reason, but I shall offer some additional input of my own, if only because Mr. Keen’s arguments make for a very easy and enjoyable target.

As I read his exaltation of big media, I asked myself, Has the man turned on his television or radio lately? Scanned the magazine rack at the check-out aisle? Watched a big-budget Hollywood film? Where is this high culture and flowering of art that is being destroyed by the internet? We’re supposed to lament the fall of network television because art and culture will die with it? Is this man serious? To take the example of music: I can turn on my radio and listen to hours of commercials and filler-noise, with some mass-manufactured pop-rock/hip-hop/pop-country/pop-Christian-schmaltz squeezed in between the commercials. The “artists” featured on the machine-generated radio stations are featured on the big labels Mr. Keen venerates, which I may purchase at my local big-box mart. If, deciding to be a Marxist rebel, I use the internet to listen to and perhaps purchase music by independent artists, I may select from a nearly unlimited number of artists, some well-established, some known to me, their home-town, and twenty people in Wisconsin. Certainly there’s a lot of worthless stuff out there, but there is also a vast amount of incredibly good music, very little of which would be available to me without of the internet- with the possible exception of NPR (which Mr. Keen likely despises as well). The wide-open free market of the internet allows globalization to develop and operate on a much more person-centered, localized basis than globalization powered by “big media” and big business. And while there is a great deal of artless crap out there, it does not have the corporate big-media backing that, say, Brittany Spears has. Good cultural products operate on a more or less equal basis with the bad; the biggest problem for the good art is finding effective methods of diffusion. Yet even with the vast size of the internet, positive cultural and artistic diffusion- the good sort of “globalization from below”- frequently and significantly takes place.

For example, I can listen to folk musicians from, say, Macedonia, who put their music out for listeners all over the world, without a giant corporate intermediary. I come across them because I heard them mentioned on someone’s blog; I like them, purchase some of their music, and perhaps blog them myself or mention them to my friends via word-of-mouth, or send them an mp3 or two. Some of my friends like what they hear and the process continues, allowing the musicians to increase their listenership and continue making music. This is globalization at its best: people sharing in an open, free market, operating on their own terms, without some powerful intermediary running things and imposing bland uniformity. The globalization powered by big media generates a real leveling of culture- McDonalds trumps the local. With the internet, local, vital manifestations of art and culture can cross boundaries and mingle with other local manifestations, without either trumping the other.

Now, will our Macedonian band ever become famous on par with, say, Bono? Probably not. Will the lack of such fame prevent them from playing and sharing their music with all who want to listen? No. Will the lack of fame prevent them from producing good art? No. Does access to fame and a giant label good art make? If you believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn…

The same is true of other forms of culture, from film to political commentary. The internet provides immensely more room for genuinely good art, even if it does not assure that it will have as large an audience or impact as it deserves. But traditional big media tends to level art and culture into bland or vulgar homogeneity.

Finally, there is the claim that the internet is one big echo-chamber, that we bloggers- among others- are merely fishing for accolades and amens. Hardly: one of the enjoyable things about blogging is hearing from people with vastly different perspectives, even if you disagree vehemently with them. The internet is a vast forum for ideas, and to use the internet is to be exposed to them and forced to interact, even on a very basic level, with those ideas. In my own experience I have had many an idea challenged in large part because of ideas I encountered for the first time on the internet. There is no controlling agent here, no dominant orthodoxy, no propaganda engine telling us what to think and say.

It is fear of this liberty, this openness, that has- so far- defined the internet, that is really driving Mr. Keen. He writes that without an elite media we will lose our memory: what he is really afraid of is the loss of the elite’s ability to control that memory. For the internet’s brand of “globalization from below” could well mean- though it is by no means assured- the preservation of genuine memories, of the history and identity of real people, from here in rural Mississippi to the new ghettoes of Baghdad to the villages of rural China. It could mean that localized, personalized art and culture drawn from a vast diversity of sources will trump the artless products of big media. It could even mean that the elites and authoritarians that seek to control and exploit the lives of people all over the globe will be thwarted. The internet has great potential as an engine of democratic, subaltern change- whether it will continue to be such remains to be seen, however.

Some More Music

On By JonathanIn Culture, East & West, Music1 Comment

After posting my favorite album list, I thought of several other musicians whom I came across this year and really enjoyed or noticed for one reason or another, but didn’t put on my favorite list for the sake of symmetry (top-ten is cleaner-looking than top-thirteen and a half).

First off: a new record label specializing in East European bands; its nom de plure is, appropriately enough, EastBlok Music. They only have a few bands signed as of yet, and only a handful of those are available here in the States as of yet. Included in the later category is the Hungarian band Little Cow: the only band in my music library, so far, with the word “cow” in their name. According to EastBlok’s website, Little Cow- in Hungarian- was the year’s improbable smash hit, with their- equally improbably titled- single Cyber Boy (on their album I’m In Love With Every Lady). You can’t make this sort of thing up. Little Cow’s sound is fun indie-pop with a smattering of traditional instruments for backing, with odd mouth-music (noises? Musical vocalizations?) bouncing around alongside as well. The title track starts out fairly slow and melodic, but builds to almost frantic energy levels at the end; the weird vocalizations in the background pulsing right along.

I’ve also gotten to listen to another group put out by EastBlok, called Shukar Collective, based out of Romania. On their 2007 album Rromatek they mix Roma trad sounds and samples with down-beats and trance, and while they’re not the only trad/electronica fusion to operate in the Balkans arena (German artist Shantel also released a Balkan-infused electronica album this year), the Collective does a good job balancing modern electronic synth and sampling with the music of traditional instruments and singing. The quality is a little mixed- some of the tracks drag along a little- but overall Rromatek is a well-executed project.

And while we’re on the subject of ethnic fusion music, I can’t forget Brooklyn-based hip-hopper and all-around mensch SoCalled, who released Ghettoblaster this year, the follow-up to his great 2005 project The SoCalled Seder. I’ve only downloaded two tracks (and saw a music video from the album on WorldLink TV), but they’re both pretty kosher. Oy. Music like this could easily be schmaltzy kitsch, but SoCalled knows how to pull it off without inducing wincing. His delivery could be more effective, but I mean how many Yiddish hip-hop tracks are you going to find?

Finally, moving back to the orbit of more normal music, one of my favorite new bands this year is a group from Southern California, Delta Spirit- but you wouldn’t know it from listening to them. They sing songs about New Orleans, social justice, life and death, with a driving up-beat Americana sound that has nothing ironic or droll about it. I first heard them play as an opening act at a concert in New Orleans; a couple months ago they played at Hattiesburg’s own Thirsty Hippo, delivering up some wonderfully blazing harmonicas and funky percussion among other things. Good solid stuff.

A Midrash

On By JonathanIn Culture, Politics2 Comments

There is a well known midrash about the two brothers, one who had a family and the other who was single, who each night would deliver wheat to each other. The one with the family rationalized: I am so fortunate to have a family, my brother has nothing, let me at least give him extra wheat.

The single one rationalized: I have no need for all this wheat, my brother has a family, he needs it more.

One night they met while delivering the wheat to each other, hugged and cried. The place they met became the site of har habayis [Temple Mount].

A modern version of this midrash has it that the brothers each night go into the others’ field to take wheat. The single brother rationalized: My brother is so fortunate to have a family. I have nothing, Let me at least enjoy a larger portion of wheat. The brother with the family rationalized: I have a family, I need more wheat, so I will go to my brother’s field and take wheat from him. One night they met, fought, and the site of their meeting became the Knesset.

From The Distributed Republic

Penny Justice

On By JonathanIn Culture, Gospel, Politics1 Comment

Came across this today: PennyJustice, a nifty new project by Bill Powell. From the About page:

But actually living justice day in and day out is turning out to be not only difficult, but ridiculously complicated. We have managed to combine an extreme social isolation with an unprecedented global supply chain. Who sewed the shirt on your back? She could easily have been paid a wage so low that even her country deems it illegal. But no one’s enforcing that law, and she’s on the other side of the world. It’s not like you can walk into a store and look for the tag that reads, No men, women, or children were harmed in the production of this merchandise. Or can you?

Meanwhile, we’re drowning in obvious wealth, but are often surprisingly poor in friends, economic security, good work, clean food, streets that are beautiful, or even bearable, and the ability to get anywhere interesting without strapping ourselves into a two-ton transport vehicle. What are we supposed to do about any of this?

Read on and see. People are working out answers all over the place. I’ve been hunting for a few years now, and it finally occured to me to start linking them together in one place. I hope to hear what you’ve found too.

My Ten Favorite Albums From 2007

On By JonathanIn Culture, MusicLeave a comment

In any given year a lot of very good music is recorded and released for sale, all over the world. A very small percentage of it makes it into my hands. And while I listen to all sorts of music, a brief perusal of my iTunes library will reveal that folk, traditional, and alt-country are pretty dominant; likewise, the following list is pretty heavy in those categories. All of which means my range as a music critic is fairly restricted. So, with those caveats out of the way, here are my ten favorite new albums of 2007, arranged in alphabetical order:

1. A Hawk And A Hacksaw And The Hun Hangár Ensemble: A Hawk And A Hacksaw And The Hun Hangár Ensemble. I reviewed this wonderful EP-length album a while back here, and my praise still stands. While I’m not aware of any free legal tracks available online for download, you can download and watch two performances by A Hawk And A Hacksaw at the excellent French website Take-Away Shows.

2. Andrew Bird: Armchair Apocalypse: There are very few songwriters out there who can pull off such sheer verbal cleverness with grace like Andrew Bird. And even fewer songwriters can whistle as prodigiously as Mr. Bird. Armchair Apocalypse is Andrew Bird at his best. It also contains the only song I’ve ever heard that has as its subject the ancient Scythians, and also manages to references the Thracians and Macedonians.

Heretics

3. The Arcade Fire: Neon Bible: The New York Times did a write-up on The Arcade Fire for crying out loud, as have countless other people, so I don’t really need to pile on any further. A good album, if not a great one.

Neon Bible (another Take-Away Show)

4. Iron and Wine: The Shepherd’s Dog: A superbly beautiful album, with some songs that are reminiscent of Sam Bean’s previous, more mellow work. Most of the songs however are a marked departure from that mellowness, in favour of a more up-beat, wider-ranging, more deeply textured music, with influences pulled from all over the world (without, however, sounding kitschy).

5. The National: Boxer: Another endlessly lauded album, but still very good. Where Iron and Wine has “gone electric,” The National this year eased off all the lurching around and yelling, and instead turned out a moving, lovely album.

Fake Empire

6. Okkervil River: The Stage Names: Hyper-literate alt-folk (for example: mandolin-driven songs about Beat poet John Berryman) done very well. While treading the dangerous ground of self-reference and ironic allusion The Stage Names still manages to be sincere and not simply (yet another) exercise in insider irony by indie rockers with mandolins and accordions. I saw Okkervil River perform in New Orleans a couple months ago and can report that they are as good live as recorded.

Our Life Is Not a Movie Or Maybe

7. Robert Plant and Alison Krauss: Raising Sand: I just got a hold of this album, so I’ve yet to give it a good thorough listen. From what I’ve listened to so far though it’s excellent: Alison Krauss has long been a fine musician, but on this album she has gone beyond her previous work, with a richer, well-matured sound. Robert Plant’s not too bad on here either.

8. Southeast Engine: A Wheel Within A Wheel: A band I came across this year for the first time, Southeast Engine is an alt-country (with plenty of rock driving things along) flavored outfit from Athens, OH, and while comparable to Wilco among others, these guys have their own distinct take on Americana. They also deal with issues of Christian faith, and take delight in Biblical allusions and themes. “Oh God, Let Me Back In,” a meditation and prayer of repentance, is particularly moving.

 Quit While You’re Ahead

9. Various Artists: Songs Of Defiance – Music Of Chechnya And The North Caucasus: This is, so far as I know, the only currently available recording of Chechnyan traditional music out there. According to a write-up in the Times, it was actually recorded outside of Chechnya, due to the less than ideal conditions inside the region at present. The producer instead looked up Chechnyan artists scattered around Russia and the Caucasus region to give a sampling of traditional music from the troubled break-away province. The results are wonderful. The most sublime tracks on the album are delivered by Cherim Nakhushev who sings with an incredibly emotional, plaintive voice that sent chills down my back the first time I listened to him.

10. Wilco: Sky Blue Sky: Not Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, to be sure, but still quite good, and still Wilco, just with less static and weird noise. Instead, Jeff Tweedy keeps the raspy vocals and throws in some introspective, mellow ballads, but lets in a lot more sunshine and bright guitars and general happiness. The songs are certainly simpler, both lyrically and musically, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. This is the sort of album you want to have playing on a summer day while driving with the windows down.

What Light

On Literacy

On By JonathanIn Books, Culture3 Comments

These days it is pretty much cliché to write about the decline of literacy. However, while there are counterpoints to the argument, the cliché exists because literacy really is on the decline, and has been for some time- though the extent of that decline and its implications are still open to debate. Likewise, it is cliché to talk about the debilitating impact of television on literacy, and intelligence overall: but here also the cliché is grounded in reality. Caleb Crain examines the much-vaunted decline of literacy, and, most interestingly, discusses how literate reading influences the way we think and act, in his article in the New Yorker, Twilight of the Books. The article turns quite depressing at the end, as Crain contemplates a post-literate world:

And he may have even more trouble than Luria’s peasants in seeing himself as others do. After all, there is no one looking back at the television viewer. He is alone, though he, and his brain, may be too distracted to notice it. The reader is also alone, but the N.E.A. reports that readers are more likely than non-readers to play sports, exercise, visit art museums, attend theatre, paint, go to music events, take photographs, and volunteer. Proficient readers are also more likely to vote. Perhaps readers venture so readily outside because what they experience in solitude gives them confidence. Perhaps reading is a prototype of independence. No matter how much one worships an author, Proust wrote, “all he can do is give us desires.” Reading somehow gives us the boldness to act on them. Such a habit might be quite dangerous for a democracy to lose.

I might add that a loss in literacy is not only dangerous for democracy- it is dangerous and destructive for human culture as a whole. Reading is an engaging activity: it demands that the reader employ his imagination and rational thought in constructing the images given by the words and arranging the arguments presented. The literary world is one open to the reader for examination, for digestion, for expansion. Good literature will not only engage the reader in the text itself: rather, it will compel the reader to act on her own. Good literature inspires, in the true meaning of the word, further creative activity as the reader goes out from the text with new visions, ideas, and a sharpened intellect.

Craig mentions the possibility that the internet will continue literacy, but notes that the increasing preponderance of streaming media- a la YouTube- is seriously undercutting that possibility. Besides this, while I obviously enjoy the internet and think it a valuable asset for a literate culture, it simply is not a replacement for more traditional forms of literacy. Serious digestion of involved arguments and ideas is considerably more difficult via a computer- if only because reading a screen is- to me anyway- much more wearisome than reading printed text. But more importantly, the ease of access that the internet entails also means that the reader’s attention is more easily distracted, and less able to focus upon a single narrative structure or protracted line of argument. The internet serves many useful purposes, but I doubt that even in its text-based, “traditional” form it can replace the written, published text.

At any rate, I plan on being a part of the “reading caste” for as long as my eyes can make out the text on the page, and I will continue to purchase books- including those ridiculously long nineteenth century British novels- as long as they’re sold. Which reminds me of one advantage of being a reader: books- quite good books- can still be had very cheaply, much more cheaply than cable or satellite or a ticket to the cinema- an advantage of increasing importance in an economy of ever-rising prices. Reading is a cheap hobby, but the payoff (excuse my elementary-school teacher cliché-ness!) is immense.

That Is No Country For Old Men

On By JonathanIn Culture, Film, Philosophy2 Comments

That is no country for old men. The young
In one another’s arms, birds in the trees,
-Those dying generations- at their song,
The salmon-falls, the mackerel-crowded seas,
Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long
Whatever is begotten, born, and dies.
Caught in that sensual music all neglect
Monuments of unageing intellect.

William Butler Yeats, Sailing to Byzantium

The sparse, often un-nervingly silent landscape of the Coen brother’s latest film, No Country For Old Men, is- as others have already properly noted- truly no country for old men- or for any man, in fact. From the desolate wind-swept panaromas of the West Texas borderlands at the opening of the film to the equally desolate panaromas of human depravity and violence, the Coen brothers present an unflagging and unsparing examination of just how dark human hearts can become, and just how dark and hopeless the world can appear to those caught in the ensuing maelstrom. The result is a gorgeous, unsettling and provoking film that has rightly earned considerable praise and consideration as of late. The cinematography is magnificent, the acting top-notch, but most importantly, the film has something to say, and what it has to say is worth listening to and thinking about.

Before I examine (some) aspects of the film in further detail, I must warn against spoilers- if you haven’t seen the film but intend to, you’d best not read further.

The film is set physically in 1980’s West Texas, at the border with Mexico. The border runs through the film, though more as background and plot device than as a central symbol (as it is in another movie featuring a West Texan Tommy Lee Jones, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada). The central landscape of the film, however, is the morally desolate country that lies like a cloud upon every part of the film’s physical landscape. The two landscapes- the spiritual and the physical- blend into each other, such as when Llewynn Moss peers through his binoculars at the circled pick-ups and prostrate bodies. The circled pick-up trucks, the drug job gone bad, also opens up another important symbol: the evil and the violent operating upon each other, and spilling out into the entire world around. No one is safe in this country. The highways, the arteries of any modern nation, are pervaded by the killer Anton Chigurgh, who moves like a disease from one automobile to another, sending the rejected host up in flames.

Yet Chigurgh is not an anomaly; he does not represent an exception. He is only the apex, the ubermensch who has emerged from the nexus of violence and evil, wielding his own inner logic and rationality as singular as his physical weapon, yet clearly related to the broader, chaotic and violent landscape he is a part of. While he seeks to create his own world, having rejected all other systems, he is not immune to the world- perhaps some small measure of hope. Moss wounds him with his shotgun, and he is badly injured in the startlingly random car-crash. He too is, ultimately, a part of the same “dying generation” as the rest. As a symbol, Chigurgh stands for death, death not as a pseudo-spiritual “part of life,” but death as the result of the Fall, death with all its satanic, destructive overtones lended to it in Christian theology. Indeed, Chigurgh as symbol-of-death is a very apt demonstration of what is meant by death being “the enemy.” Evil is not, as we would like to believe, merely some entirely random, unpersonalized force “out there.” Rather, evil- while truly chaotic and random- has its own internal illogical logic, its own irrational rationality, and is extremely personal, even while ultimately destructive of personality. Hence Chigurgh has no real purpose beyond his drive to destroy, to be the will-to-power for the sake of that power and nothing more. He does not care about money, or drugs, or sex, or any of those things. He has principles, but they are self-created principles.

Herein lies another reality that we moderns (or postmoderns rather) are uncomfortable with: Chigurgh is not evil because of drugs or money or guns, as a fellow law officer suggests to Sheriff Bell. Certainly, he reflects and embodies the violent world he is a part of, but the suggested things do not drive him, and are not the “cause” of his evil. They are the external manifestations of internal realities.

Chigurgh- and by extension death, evil, and the whole destructive environment- can be opposed. Yet none of the film’s characters succeed in opposing him, not ultimately. Moss is weighted by his greed for wealth and his own hubris, caught in the “sensual music” for the most part. Having become caught in the self-devouring world of violence, he must ultimately subcomb to it- not by Chigurgh’s hand, but in a sudden, off-screen act of violence delivered by nameless characters. The well-meaning and insightful sheriff is ultimately out-matched and concedes defeat, retreats.

Indeed, the symbols of decency- Sheriff Bell, the various elderly victims of Chigurgh, and Moss’s wife- are unable to stem the tide of evil. They are either oblivious to the dark world around them, or they are unable to find the means to confront it. Instead, the country is pervaded by drug-runners and the violence that swirls around them, respecting no borders at all. The two groups of young men in the film- the suggested heirs of the country in Yeat’s poem- are perhaps the saddest figures in the film. They are at once oblivious to the extent of the violent chaos around them, yet self-absorbed and nearly amoral. They stand staring at the destruction, responsive only to pleasure. The two boys who assist Chigurgh have some level of decency left in them, yet it is obvious (more so in the book) that they too are self-absorbed, a part of the amoral landscape.

If we are left with what is ultimately an uninhabitable country, is there any hope? The film only offers glimpse and slight possibilities- nothing to give any great motivation. However, the pervading theme- the brute strength of evil, and the seemingly insurmountable difficulty faced in confronting it- should serve as a reminder that indeed, no man can truly vanquish evil. We require, not the wise old sage (as valuable as he may be), or a postmodern antihero, but a New Man Who can fully defeat that very old enemy Death, in all its manifestations and across all countries.