Christian apology by a non-Christian

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

A person's position is usually far more complex than could be revealed in a few written posts on a forum.

Most people, I think you might agree, do not have the time or the interest to come to terms with what informed them, what made them what they are. The question here, I think, is one of 'causation'. What has put us in motion? What is that motion? For me, I got the clearest sense of the idea of 'causation' when I read Chomsky's 'Year 501: The Conquest Continues'. It is an exercise in a form of 'historical revisionism' (but what historiography is not, ultimately, revisionist?). I would imagine that you would be drawn to such a view of history, especially in the Americas. You seem to have a pretty basic Marxian orientation (and this is not 'bad' just a fact).

But in regard to that book, I conceived of it like a narrative dealing in slow motion as it were of the bow of a ship cracking into a pier, and slowed down as I say to the split second before the bow strikes. And then with agonizing detail the first contact, the indentation, the creak of metal against wood, then the bending, the splintering, the ripping, the reaction. Such was the European invasion of the Americas. What is terrible and horrible to meditate on is the after-effects. There is nothing and no action that stands outside of the 'corral' of original causation. There is impact and then there is endless chains of reaction to impact and that impact (the continuing conquest) continues and will continue until an equal or greater force comes to bear against it, or that directs it to other ends. But the Force that is operating cannot be diminished, just modified.

The point of mentioning this is only really to point to that strange fact of 'causation'. We all exist in a sort of mire or perhaps 'splintering' is a good word, and this is what we call 'our life'. We cannot ever really *see* causation unless we are aided to see it. It is a perspective that has to be cultivated, isn't it?

What I am trying to get at is a perspective with which we can see ourselves, and in this sense understand the motions of history but also a way to grasp 'Christianity'. There will come a point where nothing can be *decided* by any of this, it is more that a whole situation is laid bare.

I suppose though that it would be inevitable that a definition of 'hierarchy', in the sense that I mean it, would at some upper point refer to something that is unmoved. All movement does sort of imply an 'unmoved mover'. But in truth the idea can function well only in the world of ideas, without recourse to a 'God' or 'transcendent'. And the idea is interesting and perhaps even 'powerful': we have the capacity to look at ourselves from a certain height, but that gaining this height is not a 'common' ability since, by definition, 'mass-man' is unconscious man, a man who is moved along, who does not know what informed him, what made him him.

So, it is more the notion of 'upper' or 'superior' that is spoken of---a sort of possibility. True, I extend the notion of hierarchy beyond this and state openly that I place certain Values in a higher category. Also 'ways of being'. Attitudes. Actions. Nevertheless I have to own the fact that I am defending certain, specific hierarchies of values. It seems to me that all the worst and all the best have been put into the world by causal forces and that our life occurs in this *stream*.

This is an unlikely conversation and you are an unlikely interlocutor if only insofar as you do not accept (it would seem) on any level the basic predicate of a Transcendent as a point of reference within Creation. How would you be able to entertain any aspect of my convoluted discourse then?

But this is pretty exactly what the *issue* is. The Issue that is floating around out there in the idea-realm. It is not an easy conversation by any means. And it is true too that in dealing with persons involved in such a view-structure you are dealing with persons who spin their little webs of mystery, and this flies in the face of so many asserted truths.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

It's okay if you want to be a monk...

I am saying something a little different. I am saying that one of the huge, determining forces in European history has been monasticism. And that in Protestant culture the same tendency or inclination is expressed not in monastical retreat but in defining unique ways to live values in this world. And I am further asserting that *everyone* reading here on this thread has been influenced, in one way or another, by monastic and (in the sense I am describing it) Protestant-sectarian modes of living life, defining value, and importantly---very importantly I think---defining oneself distinctly from a mindless, cruel, murderous, violent, unconscious social and economic present that grinds people up like in a machine. I am taking the position that huge swaths of persons have felt the need to literally define the Reality they desire to live in; to make choices even if 'spurious' or 'impossible' about how they will live life, and under what terms. And that doing this is an *imposition* of a radically different set of values onto the canvass of the world, and that it is very clearly linked to a group of core Christian values and definitions: to an 'essence' if you will that can fairly be described as Christian. And the reason I am doing this is because I think that Christianity does not know how to turn around and to see itself. It doesn't really know what it is, where it came from, what moves it, nor where it is going.

And it is not really that I want to be a monk, it is that to survive in a world directed by (what may fairly be called) forces of madness, or delirium and recklessness, we need a sort of spiritual structure around us that is, indeed, a structure derived from 'monasticism', because this is where whole systems of values were first defined within the European context, and these have not left us and function still. It is a way to make life 'holy' and valuable, and a way to valuate persons over mechanisms. Naturalism as I see it would tend to diminish personhood as a 'supreme value' and to turn persons into cells within an organism. In the sense that I mean it, a Christian (and it is largely Christian) definition of self represents the final domain of personal property! Myself. My being. My life. My values. Me seeing. My acting. This is pretty heavy stuff. For those who are inclined toward 'religious life or 'spiritual life' and who can define a Transcendent, everything depends on just how far-reaching these terms can be extended. Fundamentalism stops on the first rungs, but at 'upper levels' these Ideas function in very different ways. I would assert their 'radical importance'. (Which is, I suppose, what I am attempting with my apology, but I am doing it a little subversively; sneakily if you wish!)

[Skip]

I'm not a huge fan of eurocentrism. The tragedy of the Americas is that this long-drawn-out conquest came so late in the development of mankind that there is no time to remediate or overlay with grand accomplishments the genocide and slavery at its foundation.

See, i believe life is a good thing. I believe that learning about it, preserving and improving it ought to be enough of a challenge; ought to hold our attention and focus our energies. Imaginary playmates in esoteric head-games is surplus to requirements. Not harmful in itself (The central ideas of Christianity hark back to values that worked for a much longer time than civilization existed.) just unnecessary. I think we'd do better to put that brain-power toward controlling the destructive side of our nature. Yes, i know that finding or inventing supra-human values is supposed to help with that, but it hasn't, so far; it's only given us more excuses to behave as badly as we can, and often want to.

I do admire the Dalai lama and Desmond Tutu and have some glimmer of respect for the latest incarnation of Peter - even though he's probably just doing Ratzinger damage control. I like Ojibway legends, Konrad Lorenz and Kurt Vonnegut. I'm not a Marxist - just a melancholy empath; a big-brained, soft-shelled animal nearing the end of its all-too-brief sojourn on an awesome planet that my clever, creative, colourful species is killing, and there is nothing i can do about it.

If you can, or think you can, i wish you all success.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

We are thrown into things we really do not and cannot understand. It is pretty overwhelming.

I am not attempting a rescue-mission for the world. I do think that greater knowledge of 'all that has informed us' is good medicine.

If all questions just end at the point where Skip is discontent or inconsolate, how will I be able to develop my thesis?

Samuel Beckett wrote: 'I can't go on, I'll go on'. That's my mood.

We are ALL informed by Marxian ideas and concepts. He's like Darwin in that sense: he gets into everything. Are you aware of your Marxian leanings? It is pretty evident in what you write.

[Skip]

Aw shit, i'm aware of every-damn-thing. 'S why i sleep little and drink much.
Fortunately, it's intermittent; 's why i enjoy long walks, dogs and Willy Nelson.

[tillingborn]

...i can't accept 'better' and 'higher' as a designation for someone who just sits and thinks about stuff that we doesn't demonstrably exist. I can't value that above people who grow food, build houses and sew underwear.

I value thinkers, inventors and innovators; i value artists, designer and performers.
After i've eaten and found my secure, comfortable bed.

Quite right too. Skip, I salute you. I must admit, I have done more than my fair share of sitting around thinking, but I am immensely grateful to the people who got up and actually made the seats. There have always been intellectual snobs; for example Heraclitus, who by referring to a *stream* I suppose Gustav was alluding to. Heraclitus was known as the 'obscure', which is saying something for an ancient Greek philosopher, it was his habit to write at the limits of intelligibility, because he thought only the cleverest were worthy of his message.

If there is a war between religious and secular factions, it's a political war. You won't influence it with reason or with spirituality: it's about controlling Mass man.

In the UK, the Church, the Law and the military have always been headed by the aristocracy, if you can't control people's minds, lock them up and if all else fails, send in the army. I'm exaggerating a bit, but although the situation is slightly different in the US, in that a lot of the people who set it up had their own religious agenda that got them into trouble in Europe, I don't imagine there are many top lawyers or students at Westpoint who started life in the ghetto or a trailer park.

We are thrown into things we really do not and cannot understand.

Well you don't make it any easier by locking yourself in an ivory tower.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Hello there Tillingborn. If anything, and in the context of the 'apology' I am attempting, it is not an ivory tower in which I'd lock myself up in but (and let's not explode at the seams or anything, people!) but a religious institution of higher learning. Keep in mind that in these contentious conversations that deal on such hot subjects (a defense of religiosity in an atmosphere of secularism intensified) it will often happen that people will form camps and poles and, once established, work themselves into their respective corners and effectively derail conversation.

I am very interested in working out a sort of platform for religious life within a practical context. What I have alluded to previously are the ways that certain very Christian ideas have operated and still operate in culture, in art and importantly in social movements. I don't think you can interpret, say, the essential message in the song Get Together as a military-state march under religious banners.

I know that by referring to hierarchy and also to 'special knowledge' and to upper echelons in a gnostic sense that I will automatically rouse reaction. I anticipated that.

Also there may really require a place for 'contempt for humanity' in a general sense. It would be a great course title, wouldn't it? 'Contempt'. Aldous Huxley wrote that if we really removed all the filters and could look at man in his horrible nature we would either annihilate ourself or desire to annihilate mankind! True, it may have been a passing mood but I suggest that we must at least take into consideration that peculiar way of looking at our world.

Still, I am not defining a misanthropic position, not by a long shot. Anyway, a good motto for what I am attempting to get at might be: Practical Living, High Thinking.

I should have been a Jesuit...

[tillingborn]

Hello there Tillingborn. If anything, and in the context of the 'apology' I am attempting, it is not an ivory tower in which I'd lock myself up in but (and let's not explode at the seams or anything, people!) but a religious institution of higher learning.

Fair enough. What exactly do you propose should be taught?

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

What exactly do you propose should be taught?

The presentation of the question is odd. You could have said 'What do you propose should be taught?' but with your phrasing there is an oddly operative 'exactly' there!

• What exactly are you proposing. What exactly are you up to? What exactly are you trying to do?

Although the question is obviously a little baiting, I am aware that 'these days' and 'out there' floating around there is occurring a huge and on-going battle between persons attempting to defend a conceptual relationship to the notion of 'God' and those who have made up their mind otherwise. I am largely convinced that the argument is essentially between a rationalistic/naturalistic position (a very sane, necessary and good position in many but not all ways) and a rather brutal and I also think destructive Christian fundamentalism. The so-called Culture Wars take place in that domain. People come forward and assert their fundamentalism, arrogantly assuming it represents genuine spiritual life of a Christian order, when in fact it is entirely debatable that this is so.

In fact, it could successfully be argued that these various brands of fundamentalism are almost precisely NOT what Christianity is about or should be about. If only by the simple fact that, in the Stories, this 'Jesus' took a radical position against a fundamentalist power-structure and by his actions upturned the status quo, one has a model for an ever-changing, ever-evolving relationship to whatever it is we mean when we refer to 'God' or 'divinity' or 'supreme being' or 'Reality'.

In fact the theological and existential possibilities within an energized, self-aware Christian theology are in many ways quite spectacular. Obviously this is my opinion. Obviously I am taking the stance that there are many, many things within those traditions that need and require preservation, and in the low-level conversation with atheists---atheists who also have given up thinking things through with a little more consideration and intelligence---I am taking the position that a more proper study of the formation of European culture in the Mediterranean context is required.

Christian concepts and values are interwoven so completely throughout culture and literature and language that, I suggest, they will never be disentangled. In this precise sense even the 'atheistic' argument is really a branch of an essentially theological argument.

Now, it has recently been suggested that to linger on these questions or to dwell on them is non-different from and even inferior to 'sewing underpants' or fashioning stools and has been equated with retreat into an 'ivory tower'. To be frank I find such an argument if not a little silly also a little asinine. It seems to me a little 'cute' too. I do not think that this is the proper mood for discussion of such important matters as how man defines himself in the Cosmos; of what his underlying and informing relationship to Reality will be/should be. Nor his relations with his fellows, nor the ethics he defines and lives by, nor the notion of the power of his individual acts, nor of man's power to define his present, to influence his present.

The argument about 'underwear production' is the sort of argument put forward by consumer and mercantile apologists who declare that their productions (underwear, iPhones, cheeseburgers, freeways, plastic containers for food storage, cinematographic entertainment) actually stands on a platform of valuation equal to what are called the Great Ideas. This in itself represents a form of debasement. These sorts of ideas poured out of the mouths of evangelistic marketeers of consumer goods and is a branch of salesmanship, a perversion oddly enough of the sermonic power of theological persuasion. There is a strange relationship that can be traced between the Billy Graham-style revivalism and the rhetorical trickery of marketing and advertising. Propaganda-marketing-rhetoric-persuasion-manipulation, etc. etc., I am sure you can make the connection.

But I suggest there is certainly a level of 'sermonic persuasion', which is in fact a form of 'preaching' in the Prophetic sense, which can be and is deeply relevant to our present. This would be the point where Christian theology and apologetics has all the power and relevance to speak about ourselves, our present, our activity, our future, and more.

So, the question 'What exactly do you propose should be taught?', would be quite exactly answered by the sort of statements and propositions that I have just made! The purpose, of course (if it isn't obvious), is to demonstrate that a conscious Christianity (if that is one's bag) is entirely capable of divesting itself of ridiculous and falsely pious fundamentalistic costumes of hypocrisy and engaging honestly with the present. I would also suggest that it is still an issue of 'battle' with 'principalities and powers', but the notion of the 'demonic' (as well as the divine) must be brought into the present in a new way. And this of course links to the idea---the fact really---of the monastical aspect within Christian life, the life of the Church, and the cultural life of Europe. Indeed all ideas about life and value have been moulded and formed within a 1500 year European history. It is possible to define a meditative, conscious, positive, humanistic, value-rich, liturgical relationship of man-to-cosmos, man-to-man and man-to-God, if you will, on a platform that stands outside or perhaps 'above' a sheer, unconscious materialism with its ever-spinning carousel of inane images and sensations but also something we sense as careening out of control, as dangerously delirious in fact. The horror, at least in the American sense, is that under the bright and fascinating images is operating a death-machine of literally monstrous proportion. And these are the fundamental structures to which we are linked? Our 'faith life' like a silly, ridiculous smiley-face, rises out of this ground?

I make the suggestion, but it is much more of a statement, that the better life is available to us when we live out of a higher platform within our own intellect and spirituality, and that this essential 'experiential relationship' is really what we are talking about when we employ the term 'God'. If we are NOT speaking about 'God' in that way, we are not, I don't think, speaking genuinely (and not 'Christianly').

Another aspect of 'education' of the sort I would propose (and this education would not really be able to begin until a person came to be about thirty years of age and in this sense is lost on the very young) would be a revisit of 'our traditions' but from the platform of a post-postmodernism. For example, I suggest that we have been 'mangled' by postmodernistic rhetoric, which has really done a number on our 'souls', but that especially because we have been fractured and divided we do not have clues how to bring ourselves back together again. So, 'education' as I propose it would involve itself in that specific question: What does wholeness mean? Is it desired? Is it achievable?

And this brings me back to a particular point in time which, I assume, is relevant to everyone reading here: the post-war era. Also quite specifically the Sixties and everything that has spun out of that, and which is still spinning. This has to do with a generation that was propelled into searches of discovery of 'value' and 'substance' and 'sustainability'. My argument is that, in the most essential sense, a whole culture or perhaps one should say 'the bulk of a generation' went out on a sort of Vision Quest but one very much under the aegis of 'Christian possibility'.

I refer again to the popular song because in a very real sense this is where one finds the hymnic value expressed. These are the New Hymns. I would not say that I 'defend' an emotive, hymnic rhapsodic relationship to theology---indeed it must be thought through with greater precision and 'seriousness'---but I certainly suggest that the value-content is very real, and quite powerful, and almost totally Christian. I also suggest that it is the individual's relationship to life through 'sentiment' (and this really means fulness of being, or total relationship and includes activity and intellect, mind and biology) that is the fundamentally important domain of man and the 'locale' where 'spirituality' occurs.

Cf:

The Half-Remarkable Question.
The Circle is Unbroken.
Time After Time.
The Tinker's Coin.

Excuse the cheesy imagery in the second. As to the third, what is curious is that it is a love song (written by Cindi Lauper) which, in strict terms, is incoherent! It is profoundly sentimental and depending on delivery could verge into pure emotional schmaltz. But expressed on another level, at least I think so, it deals on quite profound and 'Christian' sentiments. And those sentiments are unmistakenly registered, assimilated.

Obviously, the 'call' of divinity to an 'incarnated soul'. And in this it is unique and also profoundly linked to not only a total tradition of spirituality but is an expression, however adolescent it might be in this case, of monastical yearning (if you'll permit such an expression). What this might also mean, and indeed I think it does mean this, is that even in relationships, or especially in relationships, the Christian message has profound meaning. The way that we relate to other people, the way our souls are formed is 'essentially Christian'. I make these statements in other places and catch hell for it...but it is how I see things.

I am trying to point out that 'genuine sentiment', ethical and moral value, can and do go much further than stultified fundamentalism. It becomes an interesting 'task' or assignment to read literature, to hear music, to see people relate to one another, and to understand how profoundly 'our very notion of self' has been influenced by Christian spiritual traditions.

[tillingborn]

Hymns eh? Here's one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1G1y7_r8bE
Anti-pope by the Damned. It contains the observation 'Religion doesn't mean a thing, it's just another way of being right wing'. Bit of a simplification, but fundamentally true. Everything you say reeks of dreary conservatism, the reactionary traditionalism:

Obviously I am taking the stance that there are many, many things within those traditions that need and require preservation,

the elitism,

and in the low-level conversation with atheists---atheists who also have given up thinking things through with a little more consideration and intelligence---

the implied superiority of European culture,

I am taking the position that a more proper study of the formation of European culture in the Mediterranean context is required.

Christian concepts and values are interwoven so completely throughout culture and literature and language that, I suggest, they will never be disentangled.

More's the pity. As you say, the last 1500 years of European History have been conducted in the context of Christianity. Have a look, it isn't very pretty.

I am trying to point out that 'genuine sentiment', ethical and moral value, can and do go much further than stultified fundamentalism. It becomes an interesting 'task' or assignment to read literature, to hear music, to see people relate to one another, and to understand how profoundly 'our very notion of self' has been influenced by Christian spiritual traditions.

This isn't really a problem for Europe; as I said, we packed most of our religious nutters of to the 'New World'. The ones that remain tend to be timorous beasties who when told to Foxtrot Oscar, politely do so. If you work hard at it, you will find people who agree with you enough to do as you suggest, but as you have discovered there will always be others to challenge you. It's what keeps fundamentalism in check.

[Skip]

the argument about 'underwear production' is the sort of argument put forward by consumer and mercantile apologists who declare that their productions (underwear, iPhones, cheeseburgers, freeways, plastic containers for food storage, cinematographic entertainment) actually stands on a platform of valuation equal to what are called the Great Ideas.

Formally register exception to this interpretation of my argument (I have no objection to being called asinine.)
The position i actually stated is: Having great ideas or highly specialized skills should not, in my estimation, put you in a privileged class above the working people whose moral matrix you hope to illuminate.
For the record.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Here's one for you, tillingborn. Ha Ha Ha. Better than f&*%$# 'California Dreaming'. But the funny thing is that California Dreaming is in its way a rebellion song. It comes first and then the rest.

It is very true what you say, at least in some senses, about 'conservatism' except that I would not call it 'dreary' necessarily. I have definitely been exploring positions that are often labeled 'conservative', but really, it is unfair to equate it with 'political reaction' or the political right wing. Usually when the Labels are brought out, potential conversations---the potential for conversation---is the first casualty. My personal view is that, if only to make communication more interesting for those who read, we should really try and explore other's positions and 'see where they are coming from'. To say 'bit of a simplification, but fundamentally true' is not in fact true. It is a misrepresentation if only because it is quite possible for a defined Christianity to function extremely critically of the status quo and of so much that we understand as right wing, certainly Thatcherism (speaking to your pole). I would actually say that to be 'authentic' and true to its roots, Christianity could not function as a state religion, or blend with nationalism, or militarism. The real 'unit of value' for authentic Christianity must be the individual, the person, and personal value placed at the very center. If that is done, a Christian critique of structures and mechanisms takes form but in a special way.

The critique offered by the punk bands, as I see things, is in line at least in some sense with the Prophetic railing against complacency. It certainly fits in to the mood of 'contempt' and is attractive in that sense. Here is an interesting tune: Positive Noise-Darkness Made Visible. A twist on Ephesians 5:13!

Still, I never had the sense though that the punk mood could really connect with anything constructive. Great critique though.

Personally, I do not accept such a designation as 'reactionary traditionalism' without a better-constructed argument about what is being reacted to. There certainly is such a thing as 'traditionalism' and 'reaction' and we all know something about that. But it also seems to be the case that reaction against (in the punk sense) is in its own way just another form of reaction. It is like a cracked pot that can't hold water.

Still, you are absolutely right about 'elitism', but in the original sense of the word. I hold to and defend to the 'truth' that what is sophisticated and valuable in life---in all fields---is by nature 'elite'. It could be art, science, technology, philosophy: to advance in any field, to attain to substantial things in any field, is by definition to achieve an elite position. In some sense the term is meaningless. An especially good car mechanic is in an elite.

...the implied superiority of European culture.

This is a problematical rephrasing of what I myself would say. Certainly Europe had seen itself as 'superior' in the 18th and 19th century sense. It was definitely a predicate. In an environment that desires to rectify the mistakes of notions of 'superiority' there is a valid critique of 'Europe'. But I would suggest that even that mood of critique is oddly connected with Christian values: the possibility of self-analysis, self-correction, etc.

I am not here to defend European culture, though, in that exact sense. What I do note, however, is that European political forms, political ideals, and most definitely scientific and technical skill that originated exclusively in Europe have remodeled every aspect of human culture on the planet. It just seems wise to retrace that development, to understand it, to be able to compare it to other cultures and to fairly describe what is both positive and negative about it. That is a different undertaking than some sort of Nazi-like superiority trip. Still one has to acknowledge that 16th and 17th century Europe went out into the world with a sword and those processes still continue. Europe too was conquered by Rome and 'civilized' and we are the outcomes of that. What does a person do?

As you say, the last 1500 years of European History have been conducted in the context of Christianity. Have a look, it isn't very pretty.

Yes, I know much of that as do so many of us. But there is no culture that exists or has existed that has not conducted itself similarly. It has been in the 'nature of things' for cultures to conquer other cultures. All the glory of Indian culture (the Indian sub-continent I mean) is essentially the story of conquest and assimilation, imposition and influence. Would this mean that all the high aspects of Indian culture are to be dismissed?

What I am indeed trying to get at is the 'animus' (a negative, somewhat blind, vengeful spirit) that for a group of different reasons seeks to attack and destroy something, this thing called 'Christianity'. One has to examine the moods and the motives for such an undertaking. And that 'destructive' animus is also a part of 'who we are' and 'what is going on' in us and around us. To know more about that, to understand too its links with 'nihilism', is a very good idea. But it is not undertaken in the act of smashing something. It is undertaken with another mood and end altogether, as I see things. And yet all of this is part of the conversation as I would bring it forward.

This isn't really a problem for Europe; as I said, we packed most of our religious nutters of to the 'New World'.

It is significantly true what you say. And how odd it must be that the nutters, somehow, created the most revolutionary political and economic system that the world had yet seen, for good or for evil! What a bizarre problem when you think about it. And Rock and Roll and naturally Punk music derives from nutter hyper-religious spirituals run through a Pentecostal amplifier! New Orleans jazz was in some sense a sort of 'punk' rebellion in its time and context. The endless moulding energy of America, is it just mania?

I know tillingborn that you desire to corral me into the specific camp you hold in your mind and 'I'm sorry' that I am not obediently just going there for you. All these issues are infinitely more complex.

Formally register exception to this interpretation of my argument (I have no objection to being called asinine.) The position I actually stated is: Having great ideas or highly specialized skills should not, in my estimation, put you in a privileged class above the working people whose moral matrix you hope to illuminate. For the record.

First of all I did not say that I had any 'moral matrix' to illuminate. I could actually have a totally 'destructive' agenda as far as you know. I don't think that I do, to be truthful, but can we really really know where our ideas lead?

But still, in fact, 'the world' does not at all or in any sense agree with your value-imposition, Skip. It says, in fact, nearly completely the opposite. Specialized skills and in general 'knowledge' seem always to put people and classes into rulership positions. I cannot think of anything in social life that seems more inevitable.

But again you place things in a Marxian frame.

And to describe an argument as 'asinine' is not to describe the person as asinine. I certainly don't think of you that way.

To be frank I find such an argument if not a little silly also a little asinine.

[tillingborn]

And how odd it must be that the nutters, somehow, created the most revolutionary political and economic system that the world had yet seen, for good or for evil!

Well it wasn't just nutters that were shipped off and it wasn't just to what became the USA. I think your claim about the 'most revolutionary political and economic system' needs qualification at least, and probably revision.

What a bizarre problem when you think about it. And Rock and Roll and naturally Punk music derives from nutter hyper-religious spirituals run through a Pentecostal amplifier! New Orleans jazz was in some sense a sort of 'punk' rebellion in its time and context.

Almost every form of popular music has its roots in rebellion; the irony being that this usually includes a wish to establish a specific identity, an elite of a sort.

The endless moulding energy of America, is it just mania?

From the bottom of my heart I thank the many great Americans who have enriched my life. Same goes for everyone else.

I know tillingborn that you desire to corral me into the specific camp you hold in your mind and 'I'm sorry' that I am not obediently just going there for you. All these issues are infinitely more complex.

It's a fairly nebulous camp I hold in my mind, but you are in there somewhere. I would have to change my mind if you could persuade me that you are a non-Christian, although I think none the worse of you for it.

[Gustav Bjornstrand]

Well it wasn't just nutters that were shipped off and it wasn't just to what became the USA. I think your claim about the 'most revolutionary political and economic system' needs qualification at least, and probably revision.

Oh, right, I forgot: the Aussies.

Correct me on my history but for where else did your nutters set sail for? And by religious nutters I take it to mean 'the pilgrims'. Did any normal people come along with them?

One of the things that I notice in talking to both you and Skip is that when I attempt to 'describe things as they are', y'all object stridently. I have the sense that the two of your prefer a form of 'politically correct revisionism' than honest history. When I said 'most revolutionary political and economic system' I meant it not in the sense of nationalistic pride or of patriotism, but as a statement of fact. Next to the French revolution the US declaration of independence and the republic's economic organization, for good or for evil, was indeed a 'revolutionary' event, and the nation that grew out of it has influenced the course of the world. This is stuff you'd find in de Toqueville. It is not a devaluation of other peoples. Other people just did different things.

And I think you also misunderstand me when I speak about American 'energy' and 'mania'. For a host of reasons, reasons that can be uncovered and described, that republic was established in such a way and under such conditions that a bizarre kind of 'energy' percolates there. It is not a wrong to describe differences. Differences exist. It is not intellectually advisable or honest to level everything out in the rearview mirror. The US is a unique republic and is infinitely distinct from, say, Mexico or Uruguay. These unique differences are both good and bad. But they exist and are real.

Qualification is exactly what I am attempting here, and also of course in my 'apology' for Christianity. What I find interesting, though strange indeed, is how this effort becomes almost 'intolerable' to some folks. It is that itself that interests me. I am not sure 'you' have the self-consciousness to really understand why this 'revanche' exists in you. But that in itself is a very interesting topic to me. I think self-resentment and self-contempt are unexplored topics.

What I am trying to do is put many different things out on the table. What 'you' appear to desire to do is dismiss the table ab initio. Why do you appear in this space? What interests you in a thread dedicated to 'Christian apologetics'?

It's a fairly nebulous camp I hold in my mind, but you are in there somewhere. I would have to change my mind if you could persuade me that you are a non-Christian, although I think none the worse of you for it.

I don't understand. Mustn't you take a definite and radical stand against 'conservative reactionaries'? If I were one, wouldn't you have to think the worse of me for it? Just think of all the horrors I would be defending.

I am not sure if you can internalize what I am expressing in these pages. The culture(s) that have produced us are so fundamentally Christian, and so deeply wedded to that, that is is impossible to separate it out. Though I really do think this is true---a basic and fundamental truth, a simple and verifiable fact---I don't think it should serve you to feel such animus toward me because simply because I articulate it. I do feel there is a hugely positive aspect to the Christianity of our cultures though.

Here's an odd band for you.

[Skip]

But still, in fact, 'the world' does not at all or in any sense agree with your value-imposition, Skip.

I never intended or pretended or aspired to speak for "the world" and its concurrence is inessential. I stated my personal views, and you misrepresented them. It was not my argument that you found silly, but your translation of it into a Marxist-industrialist frame to which i do not subscribe.
I ask you politely to stop doing so.

You seem to have no trouble both placing us in palisaded encampments and explaining us - psychoanalyzing, even - on very slight acquaintance. A classier guy than me could see that as unwonted familiarity. Yet, in explaining yourself, you have been inexact to the point of coyness. My interest began to flag by page 4; now i'm just following along, because..... Damned if i know, but you probably do.