It’s been a strange summer of disrupted plans and unplanned excursions, the latter being attempts to patch over the former, with the default being camping trips to state forests and pilgrimages to the always-faithful cabin in the UP. So you will note irregular postings which will probably continue into September, as lemons are stubbornly being turned into lemonade. Who do I blame the most for those lemons: the virus, the amoral news media, the immoral politicians, or the ignorant and frightened masses?
Or maybe myself. Time will tell, but this last week was spent up at the cabin, where I heard the book-on-CD, Explorers of the Nile, by Tim Jeal. Oh, the Dark Continent! It went so well with my readings of the Old Testament for its barbarities and cruelties, from god-like perverse kings to the outrages of the Arab-Swahili slave traders. The book should be read by every Black Lives Matter supporter who imagines that the evils of slavery were invented by white slavers in Anglo America. They will discover, if they can bear it, that those evils existed in Africa during and long before – and long after – the American experiment in exploitative racism. The list of casual cruelties is endless. Read the book for the disgusting details.
But this is not about blame, which has become such a useful, if dishonest, tool in current political discourse and action. Rather, it is about the nature of ourselves, we of all colors and geographical backgrounds.
We have visited these grounds before: what is Man? Is he the harsh force of nature as depicted by Hobbes, that man whose life is “brutish and short”? Or is he the benevolent Bambi in the woods, if only the yoke of civilization had not been placed on his shoulders, as Rousseau the raconteur wished to tell us a few years before the triumph of the guillotine? In Africa we have a sometimes-surprising glimpse of that nature through the outlook of the many explorers who sought fame and adventure in attempting to discover the source of the Nile, something sought since the time of the Pharaohs. Some, like Richard Burton, thought that, ultimately, the black savage was irredeemable. Some, like David Livingston, loved him but wished to convert him to a better way through Christianity. And some, like John Speke (the one who discovered the source, though this was clouded by his co-adventurer and later enemy, Richard Burton) found this “savage” so much more refreshing than civilized man, who was in his opinion was cowed and tamed to a degree in which life itself was not really worth living. For this reason above all he had become an explorer.
But the cruelties. While certain of our citizens burn buildings to protest the brutality of Western Civilization – the same hypocrisy I found in the old days of the Vietnam War “peace” movement – they do not realize that most of the ideas that they hold dear about human rights and anti-racism came about through the Judaeo-Christian religions. The people of the Old Book were every bit as brutal as the warlord chiefs and slavers of 19th century Africa, and the iron hand of the Roman Empire did nothing to further soften them. Rather, it was the voice and edicts of their god, who has become for many of us our God, which civilized them in the manner in which civilization means compassion and mercy. But messed up? How many times have we heard of - or experienced ourselves – the neurosis which defines much of modern life? It is this mess of unhappiness, propelled by inner feelings of guilt and worthlessness, which John Speke wished to escape, even at the expense of his health and ease.
In a different way, our revolutionaries in the street are fighting to relieve themselves of the boredom and comfort of their controlled lives by destroying their source, even as they fling around empty notions of justice. It is not justice that they really seek, but freedom from civilization. I know – I have been there, although I have never thrown a Molotov cocktail at anyone. I tried to shirk the yoke of civilized decency in my youth, which led to what I have written (wait for the plug) in my book, Dream Weaver. I, too, believed in the goodness of humans if only we were set free – from capitalism, from religion, from school, or from whatever seemed handy at the time.
Of course, our current revolutionaries have no intention of setting YOU free. And that is the way it works without our notion of civilization. With no eternal moralities to confine us, we would be less neurotic, but so much more selfish. In the days before the maturation of Christianity – and we might include some other religions based on compassion – the strong controlled the weak. They controlled them as much as they wanted too without having to think of others as people equal in worth to themselves. Those others were commoners, or of different ethnicities, or of darker skin or, as we are seeing now, of the lighter variety. There was no eternal one-ness, only a one-ness of the ego of the honorable lord-high mucky-muck and his chosen cronies in race, family, or ideology.
What do we find from the explorer days of the Dark Continent? It may or may not be Man-in-the-rough, as there were true nations in central Africa, which only technological Europe of the time could call primitive. But it is Man without compassionate religion, Man without realization that all humanity is his brother and sister. As the explorers tell us, life in Africa was freer and lither in personal expression, but far more brutal and usually shorter. There, the morally compassionate could not live for long with the other, the natural ego-centered self. At that time there was no real choice to be made. As one African chief told an explorer, “The good are only good because they are weak. Once they become strong, they become bad.” But now, because of that pesky thing called the moral conscience, there is a choice.
It is seldom that we have the chance to fully compare the ‘other’ to our own side, but in in our current world of doubt and tumult, we now can. History tells us that we cannot have both equality and moral relativism at the same time, for without that inner morality, the strong always end up abusing the weak. Fortunately, we are still able to choose which direction we want. Such books as Explorers in Africa show us the consequences of our choice – that there is no path that we might take that will fully satisfy our human nature. However, it is clear, at least to me, that one choice leads to a more mature and greater truth than the other. Hopefully, we are grown-up enough in this liminal time of history to make the right decision.
It’s been a strange summer of disrupted plans and unplanned excursions, the latter being attempts to patch over the former, with the default being camping trips to state forests and pilgrimages to the always-faithful cabin in the UP. So you will note irregular postings which will probably continue into September, as lemons are stubbornly being turned into lemonade. Who do I blame the most for those lemons: the virus, the amoral news media, the immoral politicians, or the ignorant and frightened masses?
Or maybe myself. Time will tell, but this last week was spent up at the cabin, where I heard the book-on-CD, Explorers of the Nile, by Tim Jeal. Oh, the Dark Continent! It went so well with my readings of the Old Testament for its barbarities and cruelties, from god-like perverse kings to the outrages of the Arab-Swahili slave traders. The book should be read by every Black Lives Matter supporter who imagines that the evils of slavery were invented by white slavers in Anglo America. They will discover, if they can bear it, that those evils existed in Africa during and long before – and long after – the American experiment in exploitative racism. The list of casual cruelties is endless. Read the book for the disgusting details.
But this is not about blame, which has become such a useful, if dishonest, tool in current political discourse and action. Rather, it is about the nature of ourselves, we of all colors and geographical backgrounds.
We have visited these grounds before: what is Man? Is he the harsh force of nature as depicted by Hobbes, that man whose life is “brutish and short”? Or is he the benevolent Bambi in the woods, if only the yoke of civilization had not been placed on his shoulders, as Rousseau the raconteur wished to tell us a few years before the triumph of the guillotine? In Africa we have a sometimes-surprising glimpse of that nature through the outlook of the many explorers who sought fame and adventure in attempting to discover the source of the Nile, something sought since the time of the Pharaohs. Some, like Richard Burton, thought that, ultimately, the black savage was irredeemable. Some, like David Livingston, loved him but wished to convert him to a better way through Christianity. And some, like John Speke (the one who discovered the source, though this was clouded by his co-adventurer and later enemy, Richard Burton) found this “savage” so much more refreshing than civilized man, who was in his opinion was cowed and tamed to a degree in which life itself was not really worth living. For this reason above all he had become an explorer.
But the cruelties. While certain of our citizens burn buildings to protest the brutality of Western Civilization – the same hypocrisy I found in the old days of the Vietnam War “peace” movement – they do not realize that most of the ideas that they hold dear about human rights and anti-racism came about through the Judaeo-Christian religions. The people of the Old Book were every bit as brutal as the warlord chiefs and slavers of 19th century Africa, and the iron hand of the Roman Empire did nothing to further soften them. Rather, it was the voice and edicts of their god, who has become for many of us our God, which civilized them in the manner in which civilization means compassion and mercy. But messed up? How many times have we heard of - or experienced ourselves – the neurosis which defines much of modern life? It is this mess of unhappiness, propelled by inner feelings of guilt and worthlessness, which John Speke wished to escape, even at the expense of his health and ease.
In a different way, our revolutionaries in the street are fighting to relieve themselves of the boredom and comfort of their controlled lives by destroying their source, even as they fling around empty notions of justice. It is not justice that they really seek, but freedom from civilization. I know – I have been there, although I have never thrown a Molotov cocktail at anyone. I tried to shirk the yoke of civilized decency in my youth, which led to what I have written (wait for the plug) in my book, Dream Weaver. I, too, believed in the goodness of humans if only we were set free – from capitalism, from religion, from school, or from whatever seemed handy at the time.
Of course, our current revolutionaries have no intention of setting YOU free. And that is the way it works without our notion of civilization. With no eternal moralities to confine us, we would be less neurotic, but so much more selfish. In the days before the maturation of Christianity – and we might include some other religions based on compassion – the strong controlled the weak. They controlled them as much as they wanted too without having to think of others as people equal in worth to themselves. Those others were commoners, or of different ethnicities, or of darker skin or, as we are seeing now, of the lighter variety. There was no eternal one-ness, only a one-ness of the ego of the honorable lord-high mucky-muck and his chosen cronies in race, family, or ideology.
What do we find from the explorer days of the Dark Continent? It may or may not be Man-in-the-rough, as there were true nations in central Africa, which only technological Europe of the time could call primitive. But it is Man without compassionate religion, Man without realization that all humanity is his brother and sister. As the explorers tell us, life in Africa was freer and lither in personal expression, but far more brutal and usually shorter. There, the morally compassionate could not live for long with the other, the natural ego-centered self. At that time there was no real choice to be made. As one African chief told an explorer, “The good are only good because they are weak. Once they become strong, they become bad.” But now, because of that pesky thing called the moral conscience, there is a choice.
It is seldom that we have the chance to fully compare the ‘other’ to our own side, but in in our current world of doubt and tumult, we now can. History tells us that we cannot have both equality and moral relativism at the same time, for without that inner morality, the strong always end up abusing the weak. Fortunately, we are still able to choose which direction we want. Such books as Explorers in Africa show us the consequences of our choice – that there is no path that we might take that will fully satisfy our human nature. However, it is clear, at least to me, that one choice leads to a more mature and greater truth than the other. Hopefully, we are grown-up enough in this liminal time of history to make the right decision.
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