Today an essay, "What I Learned from Radio," under Essays in the website.  FK

Today, an essay "Dumb, Dumb, and Dumber" under "Essays" on the website.  FK

The last essay, "Shooting Star," has reminded me of one of the great weaknesses in social theory; that is, it does not include our "natural" - in  a spiritual sense - inclinations.  From Wilhelm and Baynes "I Ching" - hexagram 25: Innocence (The Unexpected):

   "Man has received from heaven a nature innately good, to guide     him in all his movements.  By devotion to this divine spirit within       himself, he attains an unsullied innocence that leads him to do      right  with instinctive sureness and without ulterior thought of  reward and  personal advantage.  However," (it is added), "not  everything  instinctive is nature in this higher sense of the word, but  only that  which is right and in accord with the will of heaven."

The last part had to be put in, and is something to discuss for its own sake, but for now, I wish to concentrate on the first part.  Note that "Man" has received his nature from heaven - that is, from a spiritual realm.  But in the social sciences, the argument forever goes back and forth like a ping pong ball between "nature or nurture," that is, between whether one's behavior is decided by DNA, ones upbringing, or a combination of the two.  Moderates on the issue choose the latter, which should suffice to satisfy, but it does not.  Twins, for instance, raised by the same parents in the same house often diverge greatly in both attitudes and deeds, which has caused the moderates to torture the issue to death to no satisfaction.  Anecdotally, I had identical twin neighbors when growing up, and one, from early on, was extremely effeminate, while the other was an all-out macho sportsman, right from stage one.  The former, after much pain, found that he was a homosexual.  The latter joined the marines, married, and continued as he was before.  
What is missing, in my opinion, is the spiritual factor.  Unfortunately, it cannot be measured by current models, and so is absolutely ignored in the sciences; but, once again, because the models cannot pick something up does not mean that that "something" does not exist.  Rather, it means that there is something incomplete about the models.  The evidence for this third factor in determining our nature is overwhelming on the individual level.  Nearly every parent understands that a child is born to a certain disposition - and they often wonder how brothers, say, can be so different.  "They were born that way," is how we put it, giving no clue as to the causal factors - but I stand by the I Ching in my belief that there is a spiritual third leg to our being and our destiny.  

The problem for adults is, how can we find this spiritual destiny after so many years of "nature and nurture" working on us?  The ancients, the religious, and the New Agers have always been concerned with this.  Dream work, astrology, prayer, use of the Tarot or I Ching, meditation, hypnosis - all of these and more have been used to "find ourselves." But in the "Shooting Star" I look for this other avenue - our earliest, pre or borderline-linguistic memories.  These are most likely to be unaffected by other factors.  They are difficult to find or work with, because they have little or no anchor in language, but it can be done.  I think that in these, or at least in one or a few of them, we might find our spiritually intended destiny, that which is "in accord with the will of heaven." It will have the right feel to it - it should fit like a shoe.  And what it will say will not be "become a dentist," but something else, in the language of this pre-human world: care for others, or for plants; explore new regions, meet new people; follow a path of numbers or logic or things to a truth you can feel but do not yet know.  

And so, I think we all have our "shooting star."  It is out there in the woods, that is, in the world not made by Man.  For some it is so clear that it follows them from birth like a puppy.  For the rest of us, we have to search, and perhaps for many of us, it is the search that is our destiny - where we find that our particular search has been our destiny all along, if we had only known it.  FK   

  

Am beginning a new book, "Heretics and Heroes" by Thomas Cahill - an author who is able to simplify a vast array of history for the casual reader.  This is good for me, usually, but towards the beginning of the book he discusses Columbus's exploitation of the Americas in terms of what is called the Black Legend, and it is a  point in history with which I was once an expert.  Overall, the book is about how the medieval period ended and the modern era began, something I have been concerned with in this blog on many occasions, as it also marked the beginning of the turn from the spiritual to the material.  In Cahill's account of the Spanish exploitation of the Indians, he highlights a pivotal point in that change, but for a reason different from the one I wish to explore. 

The Black Legend controversy is Spain's answer to the charge that its Inquisition and enslavement of the Americas was as brutal as historians (largely from Northern Europe) said.  The Spanish apologists claim that the north, especially a very hostile England, either exaggerated or holy fabricated the horrors - to make the Spanish Empire look bad.  A history professor of mine in undergrad years sided with the Spanish - but my own subsequent research largely verified the legend - the Spanish, indeed, had been horrendous, as Bartolome de las Casas, a Spanish priest, confirmed in his extensive notes during the 16th century.  In effect, many of he conquistadors were criminals who could not abide by the laws of Spain - and the Spanish royalty was far more concerned with accumulating wealth for power than with any sort of human rights.  Where the Legend becomes complicated is in comparing the North's own colonial enterprises favorably with Spain's.  

In America we have all too many of these comparisons, and they don't come out favorable to us.  Unfortunately, this has led to a Black Legend of its own, with racist overtones - against the Europeans.  And this is the second point of the title to this piece, "hole in the dike." In the past half century, we have more and more taken a certain posture on national morality for granted - which states (more and more emphatically) that Americans of old (Euro Americans by in large) were greedy and immoral and murderous.  This largely ignores a more populist nation than Spain's, whose citizens were much more responsible for national policy - and who, by and large, were not any more "greedy and immoral and murderous" than anyone else - or were even less so.  Laura Ingram of "Little House on the Prairie" fame was a much more common personage than General Custer.  Yet the American Black Legend not only persists, but is codified in hate-crime laws and affirmative action policies aimed particularly  at Europeans, as if the very DNA is  satanic.  

And this is the fissure, the hole in the dike.  Consider: it is NOT universal law that has condemned European behavior during the colonial period and beyond, but rather European morality itself.  It was, for instance, at the insistence of the European, and later American, powers that slavery was outlawed worldwide.  Elsewhere, it existed in every civilized (complex)  society in the world, with little or no fanfare or complaint.  Even in the New Testament, slavery is simply taken for granted.  But it was in the consideration of the New Testament, particularly the golden rule of treating others as one would like to be treated oneself, where the fissure was formed.  While the political mind was often kept blissfully schizophrenic about such matters, more and more people began to see the discrepancies between power and Christianity, which was magnified many fold in the colonial period.  In this, the average citizen became more and more confused about the righteousness of his own culture.  Many began a tradition of self (cultural) hatred, which has found a comfortable home in modern Marxism, with its racist and sexist emphases.  

In short, the European and Euro-American cultures had within themselves the very seeds of their destruction - with a lust and means for power countered at the core by a moral condemnation of those desires.  Now we have a hole in the dike that is spreading beyond repair - so that even the moral roots of the culture are demonized for their evil designs (although well-hidden at times) for hegemony and control.  

It is anyone's guess what is coming to replace this (and I could go on and on with guessing, but will save that for other blogs), but within this short history of colonial Europe we can see the larger history of civilization itself.  Once any society moves beyond the family, or band, level, it becomes, in Anthropological terms, "diachronic," that is, mobile and mutable.  Such an atmosphere of  change is brought about, as the theory goes, by imbalances of power that are built into the system.  Whether or not this is the case, it is true of civilized society - that it carries the seeds of its own destruction within itself.  

How to make a balanced, long-lived and healthy society?  That is what many are reaching for today, including many of the European self-haters who are actively trying to destroy what is left of Euro culture.  But it has always seemed to me that it can never be achieved by haters - and never, especially, by power.  It has to come from the spirit.  To affect that, spirit must be raised at the popular level.  This may be helped by aiding the sick and the poor, so that they might rise above the level of mere survival, but at heart and at all times, it must be the spirit that is entrained.  That is what is at the heart of the New Age and all the worthy religions, and what we talk most about here.  Paradoxically, it was spirit that helped cause the Euro hole in the dike - and it can only be with spirit that a society can be made that is not so torn.  However, it will be a long time coming before China, say, installs the Dali Lama as leader of the East - another factor to consider, for what is sought now must be, of necessity, global in extant; global without power hierarchies - certainly a miracle requiring spirit.  FK                                  

Today an essay, "Shooting Star," under Essays in the website.  FK