Category: Culture

A Contemporary Litany (In Traditional Language)

On By JonathanIn Culture, Politics, SatireLeave a comment

Oh _____ (Insert name(s) of Deity(ies) of choice), we concede
That verily mistakes,
Most grievous mistakes even, were made:
Let it not effect our approval ratings, we beseech Thee.

We concede
That, through no fault of our own
Our intelligence sources were, alas, misleading:
Let it not effect our approval ratings, we beseech Thee.

We concede
That there were cetain failures in forecasting:
Let in not effect our approval ratings, we beseech Thee.

We concede
That regretable logistical errors were made:
Let in not effect our approval ratings, we beseech Thee.

We concede
That admininistrative incidents, verily,
Might have been handled with greater discretion:
Let it not effect our approval ratings, we beseech Thee.

We concede
That things were said that perhaps
Should have been said differently
As befit the situation:
Let it not effect our approval ratings, we beseech Thee.

We concede
That there were apparently (slight) discrepancies
Between the things said
And the things as they may have transpired:
Let it not effect our approval ratings, we beseech Thee.

Verily, regretable mistakes were made,
Though responsibility is,
As befits the inscruitable cosmic causality,
Attributable to No One in particular,
Still we concede most heartily:
Mistakes were made-
Wherefore we say
Let it not effect our approval numbers, we beseech Thee.

Another Somalia

On By JonathanIn Culture, Politics1 Comment

Coming from the former British Somililand is a surprisingly encouraging story of local people rebuilding their lives, renouncing war, embracing decentralised government, and generally improving economic and social conditions:

 When the sun rises over the craggy hills of Hargeysa, it sheds light on a different kind of Somalia.

Ice cream trucks hit the streets. Money changers, unarmed and unguarded, push cash through the market in wheelbarrows. Politicians from three distinct parties get ready for another day of debate, which recently included animated discussion on registering nomadic voters.

It is all part of a Somali puzzle: how one area of the country, the northwest, also known as Somaliland, can seem so peaceful and functional — so normal, in fact — while the rest continues to be such a violent, chaotic mess.

‘Somaliland is an overlooked African success story‘

All of this has been done, as the article notes, largely without any outside intervention or interference. Instead, local people- many of whom are rural and illiterate- have been crafting governance and an economy with a combination of traditional cultural forms and elements of Western democracy. All without contingents of Western troops or bucketloads of Western aid, or even legions of specialists and advisors. Imagine!

The State Knows Best

On By JonathanIn Culture, PoliticsLeave a comment

Wolfgang Drautz, consul general of the Federal Republic of Germany, said that “the public has a legitimate interest in countering the rise of parallel societies that are based on religion or motivated by different world views and in integrating minorities into the population as a whole.

“If we are to achieve integration, not only must the majority of the population prevent the ostracization of religious minorities or minorities with different world views, but minorities must also remain open and engage in dialogue with those who think differently or share different beliefs,” he said.

3rd Reich Homeschool Prohibition Defended

All of which means, of course, that the State cannot tolerate world views that challenge its basic presuppositions. Secular pluralism means, not actual tolerance for minorities, religious or otherwise, but the facade of tolerance that denies and assualts the heart of a religious or ethnic minority’s identity. ‘Minorities remaining open’ means they must deny the validity of their truth claims, if a religious minority, or deny the importance of cultural, economic, and political identity if an ethnic minority. Above all they must accede to the demands of the centralizing State, which cannot brook serious dissent.

However, dear fellow citizens of the free world, remember: the State is your lord and saviour, knowing all things, and concerned only with your well-being and prosperity. Your true enemy is ‘Islamofascism’…

Greening of the Desert

On By JonathanIn Culture, PoliticsLeave a comment

 

In this dust-choked region, long seen as an increasingly barren wasteland decaying into desert, millions of trees are flourishing, thanks in part to poor farmers whose simple methods cost little or nothing at all.

Better conservation and improved rainfall have led to at least 7.4 million newly tree-covered acres in Niger, researchers have found, achieved largely without relying on the large-scale planting of trees or other expensive methods often advocated by African politicians and aid groups for halting desertification, the process by which soil loses its fertility.

Recent studies of vegetation patterns, based on detailed satellite images and on-the-ground inventories of trees, have found that Niger, a place of persistent hunger and deprivation, has recently added millions of new trees and is now far greener than it was 30 years ago.

Read the rest: In Niger, Trees and Crops Turn Back the Desert 

This is an encouraging and enlightening story in a number of ways: it’s an example of poverty alleviation through local initiative and local control. Local farmers recognized serious problems with their land (because, surprise! they live their lives there) and set to solving them (again, surprise, because they depend upon the land for their livelihood). The importance of genuine capitalism, in which real people own real property, is also very evident in this story: particularly in relation to the change in attitudes towards trees:

Another change was the way trees were regarded by law. From colonial times, all trees in Niger had been regarded as the property of the state, which gave farmers little incentive to protect them. Trees were chopped for firewood or construction without regard to the environmental costs. Government foresters were supposed to make sure the trees were properly managed, but there were not enough of them to police a country nearly twice the size of Texas.

But over time, farmers began to regard the trees in their fields as their property, and in recent years the government has recognized the benefits of that outlook by allowing individuals to own trees. Farmers make money from the trees by selling branches, pods, fruit and bark. Because those sales are more lucrative over time than simply chopping down the tree for firewood, the farmers preserve them.

This change could take place because real people in a real local community now owned the trees and could sell them within a local economy. I doubt whether this would be as effective, or effective at all, if they were tied into a globalized market, which would not accomodate the relatively small-yield most of these farmers acquire from their trees. At any rate, the importance of property-rights is clearly evident: state ownership- even if in the name of ‘the people’- generally means no one owns anything, which means a divestment of concern.  

Occasional Remarks on Technology and Teenagers

On By JonathanIn Culture2 Comments

Over the weekend I had the opportunity to supervise- if that’s the correct word- a group of seventh and eighth graders at a youth retreat at a rural (but increasingly suburban) church outside of Jackson, MS. I was recruited by a recently graduated friend with connections to said church; I am not particularly adept with teenagers, but tend to accede to requests for my service nonetheless, and did so this time. Fortunately the kids- five boys actually- were very well-behaved and listened attentively and followed instructions, didn’t fight or use abusive language, got along with each other wonderfully, and in general made for a good weekend (though with little sleep).

I fear, however, that some of their good and manageable behavior was attributable, not to their upbringing and resulting good manners, though these kids obviously possessed it, but to the fact that they had two Play Station IIs to entertain themselves while we were at the host family’s house. In retrospect I rather wish I had proscribed the things except for a very limited time, but, well, frankly, I enjoyed not having to supervise anyone after having engaged in various activities and such all day. So I played on my computer or read a book while the kids played video games.

But these kids- all of whom, I should make clear, are very much from rural backgrounds, though suburbia is fast encroaching on the area- not only engaged in video games, but also used their cell phones continually. This was true primarily of the older, high school kids, but both the eighth graders in my group had expensive looking cell phones which they used to send text messages continually- including while playing video games- or at least attempting to do both. When done with video games and ready for bed, the seventh graders more or less drifted off to bed, but the two eighth grade boys spent at least an hour or two on the internet, primarily engaged with their Myspace pages. The next day cell phones were again an ever-present reality, again, primarily among the older kids, but even with the junior high kids. This included text messaging friends who were in the same room. 

All of this is, I am sure, no surprise to any reader who hasn’t been living in a cabin in the woods for the past few years. However, the full extent to which technology has penetrated the lives of even junior high kids had not been so evident to me before- I’m simply not around teenagers that often (I might note that most of what I’ve said applies pretty well to many college students). Many of these teenagers were employing or anticipating employing some form of electronic media all day: media which involves basically indirect communication, communication by rudimentary language, without the full array of sensory expression and reception, communication divested of its, well, human contexts. And the electronic entertainment likewise only employs limited aspects of sensory involvement and participation. The full range of human imagination and physical apparatus is simply not involved, nor can it be. The dangers of such integration of pervasive technology into teenagers’s- and increasingly, younger children’s- lives should be obvious enough. I wonder whether in the future people will be able to communicate and express themselves without a massive array of electronic media and devices. These technologies fundamentally disbar whole ranges of the human experience, which are lost out in the constant background roar of technology begging for attention and use. They are also calculated towards profit for a limited number of entities, whether through ongoing use or through the continual development and trotting out of new and improved gadgets for purchase. With every increase in gadgetry, other forms of life are creepingly excluded. As I mentioned earlier, the kids in my group were all rural, and fortunately still engaged in distinctively rural forms of childhood like hunting, camping, and such. The electronic gadgetry has no connection with such things, but rather is exclusionary, offering brighter and flashier things in competition, things with no intrinsic connection to any place, but especially inimical to rural communities based on outdoor activity and local participation and family involvement. It is also dangerous in relation to Christianity- extensive electronic entertainment serves as a massive enticement, obviously, but perhaps more fundamentally the breakdown in communication means that conveying the Gospel- which involves the totality of one’s humanity- becomes yet more difficult. And all of this is true without even considering the content of the entertainment or what is being communicated- that would be a whole separate issue (happily, the boys in my group seemed to be fairly judicious in their choices, no doubt reflective of the strength of their families, all of which were- remarkably- as yet unfragmented by divorce).

And in discussing this, I cannot exclude myself: I use the internet extensively, and enjoy my generic mp3 player. I really don’t like cell phones, but that has more to do with my dislike of talking on the phone than any ethical or otherwise standards (I also don’t have text messaging, which still surprises some of my friends).  Still, I spend a great deal of time using technology that is in many ways fragmentary of human interaction and culture.

I wonder what the end result of a society that is every day plunged deeper and deeper into dependancy upon electronic media, and upon the latest gadgetry, no matter what its impact upon our humanity. And likewise I wonder what can be done to break this dependancy. At the least, things like reading books, talking to people- face to face no less!- discouraging endless use of electronic media, recognizing that, like so many things, technology must be employed in moderation, and must be subordinate to man, and not the other way around. The Gospel injunction against endless accumulation and unabrogated investment in possessions is a strong corrective; we must have the willingess to take it seriously and apply it in our own lives, and encourage teenagers and children to do the same. And there must be a willingness to say no to technology sometimes- whether in regards to ourselves, or parents with their children. Even from my limited experience with kids, this isn’t easy- I’ve pacified my little brother more than a few times with the internet or television- but surely the sacrifice of temporary comfort and ease is preferable to raising another generation addled by fragmenting technology and obscenely pervasive electronic media.

Traditional Afghan Music

On By JonathanIn Culture, Music3 Comments

Here are a couple of nice sites pertaining to different aspects of traditional music from Afghanistan, which, before its descent into mass chaos and warfare in the waning days of the Cold War, was home to vibrant traditions of music reflecting the nation’s ethnic and cultural diversity.

The Afghan Music Project is the result of efforts by two Berkeley students to collect recording of traditional musicians in the post-Taliban Afghanistan; their site includes a nice video detailing their project.

Music in the Afghan North is a collection of material collected before the Soviet invasion and subsequent destruction of much traditional culture- first by the Soviets (folk ballads and such can be quite subversive of international socialism) and later by the Taliban. The music quality here is naturally somewhat lo-fi, but some of the pieces are quite enjoyable and accessible, besides their cultural and historical significance.

Mere Training or Indulgence

On By JonathanIn Culture, PhilosophyLeave a comment

“The problems of education are merely reflections of the deepest problems of our age. They cannot be solved by organisation, administration, or the expenditure of money, even though the importance of all these is not denied. We are suffering from a metaphysical disease, and the cure must therefore be metaphysical. Education which fails to clarify our central convictions is mere training or indulgence. For it is our central convictions that are in disorder, and, as long as the present anti-metaphysical temper persists, the disorder will grow worse. Education, far from ranking as man’s greatest resource, will then be an agent of destruction, in accordance with the principle corruptio optimi pessima.”

E. F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful 

Theodore Dalrymple on Speech and Freedom

On By JonathanIn Culture, PhilosophyLeave a comment

La Rochefoucauld said that love of justice in most men is only fear of suffering injustice. By analogy, love of free speech in most men is only fear of being shut up. If they were a bit stronger than they are, they would just have monologues, the most pleasurable of all speech forms. Who among us has not taken part in a conversation in which his principal concern was with what he was going to say next, hardly bothering in the meantime to listen to the others, except to await a pause into which he may interject his wonderful words?

Freedom and Its Discontents

As Dalrymple goes on to affirm- and the teaching of Scripture and Tradition affirms- the rooted danger to conversation- whether person to person or in the context of broader society and culture- is found in our own hearts, in our own- sinful!- inclinations. We are, in our fallen condition, egotistical creatures, and for creatures that express themselves principally through speech, that means guarding our ‘right’ to speak. The fragmentation that occurs afflicts every aspect of our lives, as we retreat from the other into the self-sure domains of our own reasoning and understanding.

The insertion of the Word Incarnate is ultimately an act of interjection into our closed-off conversations: Christ is ‘the Word spoken in silence,’ Who does not trumpet Himself, does not go on television and scream over a panel, does not order His disciples to put up propaganda boards all over Palestine, or form pressure groups to shout down the opposition. Instead, His enemies seek to silence His life-giving Word, and work together- their desire to stiffle the discourse of the Other united in one target- to crucify Him and put His words in the grace. Yet He is resurrected and sends His disciples out into the world, without gold and silver to act as lobbyists, still speaking the truth and trying to listen- to God and to the other.

On Reading

On By JonathanIn Books, Culture, University Life1 Comment

The role of literature is to mess with time, to establish its own time, its own rhythm. A new agenda for literary studies should open up the time of reading, just as it opens up how the writer establishes his or her rhythm. Instead of rushing by works so fast that we don’t even muss up our hair, we should tarry, attend to the sensuousness of reading, allow ourselves to enter the experience of words.

What I am asking myself to do is to step out of the grid of time, to experience works of literature anew. What I am asking you to do is to slow reading down, to preserve and expand the experience of reading — at any level, be it in elementary schools, high schools, colleges, or graduate seminars. What I am asking for is a revolution in reading.

Time for Reading

Amen.

The Queen

On By JonathanIn Culture, FilmLeave a comment

Over the weekend I watched The Queen, which, happily, is up for awards this Oscar season. I’ll spare a plot summary, and rather suggest that it is a film well worth watching- a fine, if slow in places, story arc, with good witty dialogue and some lovely cinematography- any film with big sweeping shots of the Scottish Highlands gets some appreciation from me, whatever its other merits.

The most interesting aspect of the film I thought was its portrayal of value-shift, as manifest in the orgiastic public overflow of emotion in response to Diana’s death. The Queen finds herself unable, at first, to simply accept that people are actually acting this way- she insists for some time that the newspapers are merely sensationalizing the story; upon coming to accept the public’s true feelings she believes they will quickly pass. When that does not happen she finds herself truly perplexed at the shift in value in British society- not only in the excessive emoting, but also in the apparent lack of respect for even the vestiges of tradition and protocol. This includes British religious attitudes. In one scene Tony Blair is conversing with the Queen’s secretary, who tells Mr Blair that the Queen understands herself to have been appointed by God to her position. Mr Blair reacts to this statement by contemptuously asking, “What does God have to do with it?” However, where many other films would lead us to applaud such a progressive attitude, The Queen casts an unfavourable light upon such flippancy and, if you will, vulgarity. We are led to believe that perhaps there is something to be said for tradition, honour, values, and the rest. This is a refreshing perspective to be seen in a movie, particularly one being screened on the local mega-plex.