#but an ontological threat to humans’ faith in their capabilities

[daydreamerdrew]

The Incredible Hulk (1968) #245

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New Post has been published on https://passingbynehushtan.com/2019/04/17/christ-and-transcendence/

Christ and the Noun Norming of Transcendence: A Prophetic Think Tank

Noun Norming Transcendence?

This is about Christ and Transcendence, and whether we believe those two should be together.

The meaning of Christ’s parables is in our churchy exegesis for centuries is all over the place. Why?

In the reading of these interpreters, it is clear that they never reflect on this and that they might be sharing a view of the Bible that is so twisted that through this noise, it never can be presented as the one “revelation” it declares of itself. When I say it’s all over the place, I don’t only mean that there are just a lot of different horrible interpretations. I mean, they are using one bad interpretation that is all over the place.

In this day’s meditation, I pause to reflect on the ultimate example of what it means for a thing to be hiding in plain sight. To put it another way, what it means to beat, spit on, insult and murder the most important entity in this universe in a way that makes it appear as his praise and exhalation, with ourselves as his faithful people.

We have grown to think that all of the kind of work produced to bring to understanding everything that God intended is surely somewhere within Calvin, Augustine, Aquinas, Barth, Warren and an innumerable host of thinkers. Within this swarm of such intelligent and earnest witnesses, surely they can’t all be wrong? But any human that would utter such a thing does not know his own species.

We are wired as much for deception as we are truth mining. Our raw and unique intelligence and ability are matched by the means and the extent to which we are capable of both triumph and self-degradation. It should be no wonder that our main means of deception would not only be constructed in such a way as to be easily exposed and thrown down as beneath us, but done so that it will never, for a host of reasons, be known as deception at all.

So it is with our hermeneutics in respect to the Bible, and within metaphysics in general. Because the questions have such gravity, because they raise possibilities that bear on life and death issues that go far beyond only those of the body, we are naturally more likely to run from them in any way we can than to seek them. The greater the threat to peace of mind and self-aggrandizement, the more likely the ferocity and determination will be to ensure that if the questions are entertained as important at all, they are fully domesticated and under the firm control of that self-focus. We do this lest they are allowed to escape and tear us.

Voltaire is Dead

I understand why those that think that the Bible isn’t a revelation, that its kind of unintentionally like Voltaire’s Candide, as a fiction coming to act as a takedown of metaphysical optimism. I don’t agree, but I understand. They are just trying to be consistent in their materialism. If the Bible is only a novel religious work reflecting the superstitions of ancient agrarians in the Middle East, not a revelation but only the result of a synthesis of the surrounding superstitions, then why would it be thought more authoritative and culturally manipulable than Voltaire?

But in this, Candide too succumbs to the priority of these same cultural forces of expressions over great propositional meanings. Its underlying philosophy of “cancel metaphysics and leave nothing in its place because modern man does not need it “is increasingly in style. But Voltaire’s great mid-18th century style makes it arcane and not very entertaining except as a museum piece reflecting a long history of hostility to all things that hint of religion and philosophy. Why do we read the Bible then like we do Voltaire, so dishonest in being consistent about our declarations of faith in Christ by turning around and reading Christ’s revelation as he would Candide?

The Bible is nothing if not of the strongest opinion that it is evidence of Transcendence. If we treat the Bible human art in any way, a product of the imagination and craft, it doesn’t have to have to work at being only one among many others of creativity and human credulity. It’s a done deal that it will fast wilt and be put behind a glass case and occasionally brought out into the light, admired as a historical artifact, and put back into its corner. This is happening now.

How this process starts the Bible’s slide into irrelevancy or proof of the ignorance of religion is not that we wake up at some point and think “Oh, this is a story from 3000 years ago by ignorant agrarian peasants in the Middle East.” It starts with something like, “Oh, its clear that they are using this word as a symbol of another idea, but we choose to have no genuine transcendent optimism, making it only as it appears or how it makes sense to us instead.” It’s pretty slick, a charge passing unrecognized as not worthy of serious attention, but we revel in it while increasingly lost is the Bible on the shelf with Candide and thousands of other stories.

Norming Transcendence

Here are some examples from our famous interpreters on some well known NT passages. The Parable of the Lost Coin:

that is like God; and the human instinct which prizes lost things, not because of their value, but because they are lost, has something corresponding to it in the heart of the Majesty of the heavens.1

Of the parable of the Wise and the Foolish Builders:

This rock is Christ; and conscionable hearers are living stones built upon him2.

Then, for the Parable of the 10 Virgins, there is this kind of thing you find all over, back hundreds of years, and is a staple of pedestrian Christian spirituality:

The five virgins who have the extra oil represent the truly born again who are looking with eagerness to the coming of Christ. They have saving faith and have determined that, whatever occurs, be it lengthy time or adverse circumstances, when Jesus returns, they will be looking with eagerness. The five virgins without the oil represent false believers who enjoy the benefits of the Christian community without true love for Christ.3

Do you see the underlinings? Can you detect anything in common among the usage of these words, or, for that matter, any that you care to read in any commentary, particularly in respect to what substantiates the underlying concepts? Just look over them and think about it a second, and you might come to a great revelation. Finished?

Ok, look, I’ll give you a hint if you don’t see it.

Now you see it….

The great Christian deception of the ages is not occultism, the New Age, heterodoxy in all its forms, easy-believism, Catholicism and Protestantism, or, as we define it, “sin.” Yes, “sin” is the great deceiver. Any of these at least has the potential for standing as one of its instances to a degree. But I say there is a bigger degree, even more than throwing the Bible into the round file and saying its not a transcendent document but some hoax. A much more profound and purer reason for the Bible becoming to the world funny or of mild spiritual entertainment.

This kind of sin is perpetrated by those that are in the church and hold the Bible with trembling hands, claiming to revere that amazing document. But where is the practice is not most surprising, in Church, but how, and that is way, way not what you think. In fact, it so difficult to expect or accept that it’s easy to see why we can never take it seriously, and it continues to eat us unopposed.

The great sin is the sin, as with our use of the word “sin” itself,  of generalization noun norming. This sin is the one transgression most insidious and long-lasting, more erosive, most elusive because even for those that are genuinely looking for the footprint of God in the world it represents a kind of subconscious cultural training against them finding it. Cultural training that makes Christ very, very difficult to see or understand.

What is the norm?

“Generalization noun norming” is my phrase. A norm of course is:

a. A pattern regarded as typical of something: a neighborhood where families with two wage-earners are the norm.

b. A standard or expectation established for a given enterprise or effort: journalistic norms.

c. A pattern of behavior considered acceptable or proper by a social group: “he violated the norms of his community.”

Generalizing a noun is making the word apply to the broadest range of meaning when it has a narrow, technical meaning. If you use it normed you can say you know the concept behind it, but only its category, not it’s specific content. You do this by using the word in an unqualified sense. It’s a subconscious strategy to avoid the implications of an idea that would otherwise impact our self-esteem when allowed its full power.

Think its really nothing? We are as much calculating machines as we are beings with a love of things beyond the world and ourselves. But, to us, its a cruel and very sneaky kind of judgment, and highly suspect, that we would forever be seen by how far we are willing to love and accurately calculate, regardless of where it takes us, and what is most important beyond our hands and heads.

In so many ways and in the smallest of decisions we play, we play Chess and must play Chess because nothing we do is outside of reality or our own consciences. We have to fight directly against matter, others, and ourselves, and win. The question is if this also describes an essential struggle with Truth.

Playing Chess

In Chess, we play against another person, and we play to defeat him, giving us a sense of pride and accomplishment if we do, and a sense of diminishing and defeat if we don’t. Your willing to lose, but the loss is inconsequential with anything above the ontology of chessboards and people. Stakes can be high, but only so high.

In this game, we confined are we to a square piece of cardboard with usually plastic game pieces. On this quest for good feelings against another person, the good players know all the rules and the moves. They are adept in knowing what kind of move the opponent will be forced into two or three steps ahead of a certain one of his.

In a game of self, not of truth for itself, what is all-important is the implications of a move against your human opponent before being made. If you want to win, there are certain moves you cant make. We ask if we are led first by the personal implications of our progress toward the highest conceivable conception of “reality” or only after we agree to be directly confronted by it.

If so, that would not be a game, not Chess, because that would mean placing ourselves in imminent danger of that reality. It would be a moral decision, that what something ultimately means to us is only important after that meaning, what could be the most dangerous thing imaginable, shows itself within striking distance or, perhaps, within absorbing distance. Make your choice. These stakes are too high for most.

On the one hand, facts have to determine what we do. Not being prepared or in line with reality finds us at a disadvantage to it and in danger.  Think about the reality of a coming Winter, in the wilderness without shelter, and thinking about what our next project should be. Do we ignore that winter implication because, well, we just don’t feel like making a shelter? If we do, we will probably die.

On the other hand, if your family is with you, you may not care for yourself but, to be human or not a sociopath, you surely do care for them. Do you allow them to die as well?

Building a Cabin, building a faith

But beyond this example of the beyond of yourself, you also have a beyond of reality in which you inevitably turn when you finish that cabin and are safe. If you’re well being, and that of your family, is encompassed only by a daily grind of hauling water, hunting, cooking, eating, having sex, and sleeping, are you still human in relation to higher loves? Having been released from the threat posed by the encroachment of the environment, do you have a spiritual/mental environment within which you should act with things removed from that physical environment? No? Expressing love for your wife is stupid? Is Art stupid? Reading a book is ridiculous? Are you human, really?

Of course, who would disagree with this, even the most hardened atheist? But our problem is not with the things that make us human outside of the external reality which we can hold in our hands and make ourselves. What we have a problem with is the things beyond them, which do not have reality as we know it except by the want to see and know what is not reality as we know it. Are we human only kinds of machines, androids that create and maintain the world in which we were programmed? Or, can it be said that if there is a definition of human beyond the present reality, it fulfilled only by a human set on something real that is above the present subjective and objective reality?

Of course, but what if we are scared of such unknown things, in that foreign place, above the present reality that may threaten present reality? A reality putting at risk such as the pride in our finished cabin, the ultimate love for our wife and children, the supreme beauty of the quilt you made, which makes “Little Women” little and of importance relatively non-existent by comparison. Candide?

Here is what you do. You know that the idea of God, non-contingent reality, an entirely external morality far above ours, and all the thoughts around Him, are uniquely human. But the human of Candide is as far as you want to go? 

Easy, just make sure that when you think about matter, you don’t allow “mind” or “spirit.” When you think what encompasses morality, you don’t allow sex or a moral judgment of a proposition in the mind. When you think about “cabin” and “quilt, think about only things such as other cabins and quilts of higher and lower quality. When you think about “love,” you think of your dog but not about “God.”  And, when you think about “God,” make sure that the idea bounded by nothing higher than “God,” the private, voluntary notion, and surely not exclusively revealed only by a work that is no higher than what we already do for and in ourselves.

Consequences

Bible dictionaries do this rampantly. The staff represents “authority” or “power.” The lamb represents “meek” or “messiah” or “sacrifice.” Blood is “death” or “life.” They typically refuse to narrow them down, and in theology, our divines are obsessive about the need to norm their concepts before launching into a philosophy session about them. Its the conversion of transcendent love and faith into a game of Chess, because you know the move will be your defeat.

“Faith” renders through their many words as faith in objects, people, or ideas. “Law” comes out as only about the Decalogue, the moral and ceremonial commands to perform. “Justification” at the end lies there at your feet like a small squashed animal, speaking only about some kind of imputation of some kind of righteousness by some kind of faith in Christ before it expires.

But we also find this kind of thing all the time in casual, everyday discourse, even in reverse, in making a word that is of a general application into a technical one. For example, “prejudice” and “discrimination.”

Few people who reflect on the increasing lack of ability of people to critically think and exercise the ability to distinguish opinion from fact think its because we have lost the words used to describe the problem. They seem to believe that the only serious kind of discrimination is discrimination of one race against another, or a pre-judging of someone because of their race. You no longer “discriminate” between all and any truth claims, or “prejudge” anyone before you know them, but only for one kind of claim and person. Any wonder why someone holding such a view of discrimination has little doubt that they are wrong and feel they are the victimized by prejudice, not the victimizers by prejudice?

Squelching the general sense of prejudice makes people sure that their retooled, technical, and self-serving form of prejudice need not be disturbed by charges of prejudice because now, under their term, it’s only the other guy who is being prejudiced. But they will never see this because you no longer have a universal moral responsibility to eschew prejudice about everything when your pet complaint about prejudice is about people’s attitudes toward bodies alone.

Our religious norm: the technical to the general

Its the same for the norming from technical to the general, either casually or when speaking technically. This is harder to talk about because it seems so innocent, but trust me, its more like Damien from The Omen: a sweet child, except when he’s murdering people by the power of Satan.

Generalizing noun norming is, for example, with the meaning of our idea “love.” Everyone has their idea about it. It’s emotional. It’s sex. It’s doing things for people. Its a memory of someone. It’s your pomeranian getting excited when he sees you. As I say, it’s natural and vital during normal discourse to flatten the idea and make it into a universal so that everyone won’t get lost trying to resolve idiosyncrasies by a long discussion. We want to get to the point.

But what if the point of love is what love is ultimately, and if love is nothing if not having a fixed and ultimate sense? I think if we really knew that ultimate sense and really believed it, we could never use “love” in a general sense again. Whether we use it by placing a qualifying idea next to it is not nearly as important as if we think that it can’t have meaning without it.

Why entomologists are more spiritual

In technical papers, for example, as one by an entomologist about malarial mosquitoes, there would be hundreds of nouns used to construct sentences, and you’re not going to go to the trouble to get anal on every word. Still, when you want to describe a specimen collection run and tell other entomologists what you antigen assay tested for in a particular pool, you’re not going to say you just tested “Anopheles,” but include its species, such as Anopheles Gambiae. You’re going to be real darn sure. Otherwise, the information is useless, because only knowing the genus will not establish the exact subject of your test within the 430 species Anopheles genus and malaria.

Would that we thought that our genus of biblical concepts was worthy of such care, but nay, because, to be honest when we talk about what is the most important kind of information imaginable, which concerns eternal life and death, we just don’t care.

With the Bible, the priority is not what greases the skids of conversations about “love,” but about what love means transcendently, eternally, ultimately. If you insist on taking it in only the culturally relevant or personal sense, you may have a lot of conversations about love but few, if any, about what the Bible reveals about it. Then, you’re never going to know if you truly, essentially, love anything or not, and die that way. Do we agree so far?

Generalizing noun norming, as I define it in the context of biblical hermeneutics and theology, is a kind of fundamental idolatry.

Little clay gods

In classical idolatry, your focus is on little clay objects that represent the God that is the object of your devoted attention. You have to believe that this little clay object is infinitely more important than it is when, in reality, it is, well, no higher than dirt, and neither is your god. Your imagination is the most important thing because you have no real revelation of your god, which the clay object is to represent. Nevertheless, you call your devotion of the god through the clay thing faith, and when that’s the case, anything you use to mediate your relation to your god, objects, actions, words, are the stuff of mere clay.

The idol is like a word, a mediatory device between you and your god, normed and made common by the crucial influence of a clay object because there is no essential, crucial proof of the god it represents. You have made faith common because your common emotions and fantasies have to have preeminence above all in the absence of a real God. Idolatry is an unintended admission by you that there is no god, only your hardened and ultimately worthless faith in one.

But this is the time in history when we are supposed to be holding real insight of God transmitted by Him. We know this, so what do you do if you still want to play pagan? You seek by the use of language to cut off an essential but unwanted or threatening meaning from a crucial word, but by pretending that the revealed but provocative idea lies behind it, one that we know is revealed but don’t find useful or very spiritually sexy. We pretend it’s still vital, important, and indispensable to us.  Our clay is “love,” and this transcendentally represents nothing.

Why?

For the life of me, I will never understand why the OT and NT are without the slightest doubt quintessentially prophetic documents, placing the revelation of Messiah from the prophets thematically central, but to us, they are not quintessential. Why is this messianic prophecy is not taught as our ultimate faith motivation and revelation of God behind all of our religious, NT words and ideas? At the same time and the same degree, however, this messianic prophecy is sure something we would not like to lose.

The original prophetic meaning of a concept like “love” may have fallen out of cultural relevance, along with the overriding prophetic principle in faith, but the urge to honor and entertain it is still palpable and essential. I find this fascinating. Jesus, Christ, Messiah, God, faith, work, Cross, sin, seed, door, believer. These words and names are all known to be prophetically emphasized, coming from prophecy and its Person,  or are themselves unambiguously prophetic of Jesus. We nevertheless insist on making them only general, personal, physical, or emotional designations and seem proud of it!

I’ll get to the idolatry part more in a minute, but for now, religion does not want to get rid of the idea/word “sin” altogether, or that would be the destruction of the belief system entirely. But we seem to know from a casual reading of the NT that sin is quintessentially disbelief that Jesus is the Messiah of the prophets, that it’s stubbornly tied to messianic prophecy. However, you still want to talk about sin only in the generic sense, as mostly a physical action. But without its Hebrew prophetic connection, what kind of sin do you really have except that which has every other religion in the world? We know this, and we have to keep messianic prophecy, but would rather use the flattened idea principle of sin as a kind of religious status symbol.

Norming the parables downward

You norm words downward so that anytime you use it or think about its biblical meaning you don’t quite get it without more very honest work. It’s such a pain! We want it so open, so potential, diffuse, flattened, and puerile that you can easily substitute in your head the need to know its real meaning with whatever you wish. Sin need not be quintessentially a particular kind. It can be anything, such as adultery, stealing, faithlessness in the Pope, some line-item conclusion in the Westminister Confession, impatience, missing a Holy Day of Obligation, not tithing, murder, kicking your dog, anything you want. When it can be anything, it will, in time, be nothing, and pagan, and worthless.

In the interpretations of the parables I quote above, if you noticed, in the first example, I underlined these:

lost things

lost

heart

majesty of the heavens

In the second:

rock

Christ

conscionable hearers

living stones

The Third:

truly born again

looking with eagerness

saving faith

false believers

love of Christ

These are all used in our commentaries normed, not messianically technical.

The question for all of these is: what kind of biblical words and ideas are these, how and why?

What you see above are mere labels, not meanings. They invite meaning but have no power on their own of supplying it, so they should we treat them that way?

Well, you say, we use the biblical context to determine that meaning? Ok. What “Bible,” the noun normed one?

“Rock” is “Christ.” “Christ is a rock because he is firm, steady, strong, unmovable.” Fine. Why?  We don’t like this question. Our preference is that it is not dealt with in a discussion of the “rock” and “Christ,” because if we were honest about it, we would be subject to a meaning in which we are not interested and want. We prefer to make us those built on “sand.”

He is a rock, in the same way that God’s prophetic Word of Him is a rock: immovable and set for sure fulfillment. Guaranteed to come to pass. Remember, Jesus Christ is the Word, the “Word” made “flesh?”

How about the noun “lost.” How? Why? “Well, they are people who don’t “trust” or “believe” in God.”

Or, in my considered view, those that believe but have been led astray by evil, essentially anti-revelational religionists. Do you then reply as I want of you, “ok, why are they anti-revelational?” as you should since I just used a general term? No.  Again, we don’t go there. It’s locked away in the mystery of unrevealed “sin” and “revelation” because if we confronted it, we would have to include ourselves as members of the lost.

“Saving faith.” Why? How? What kind? About what is this faith?

“Well, you believe in God, you have a relationship with Christ, you believe the Bible.”

Ok, what is it about a person that allows him a “true” relationship with Christ? What in the Bible are you talking about that you quintessentially believe? What do we know about Christ other-worldly and proven, out of which the definition of a proven, other-worldly influenced faith constructed? We don’t go there because the hyper-generalized idea of faith puts these questions far from us and much closer to our happiness.

“False believers.” Why are they false, in an ultimate and most important sense?

“Well, they don’t believe in God, in Christ, but they pretend to be.”

Ok, how do they pretend? What are the truths that they ultimately avoiding that makes them false? We don’t go there, because it leads in the one direction that would make us conclusively the false believers of which we complain.

What’s the problem?

Of course, there is a possibility that there is nothing noxious in this. We speak in generalizations all the time, during any casual talk. If our friend introduces one that seems out of context, if he is a normal person, we expect that he will develop it and explain it shortly.  There would be no charge of deception or dysfunction, witting or unwitting, in any of this if these words were somewhere qualified later in the interpretation. But there never is any such qualification in our commentaries. When we use “believer,” for example, we take his motivation for granted as coming from just about anything pertaining to God or moral goodness, when the aspect of specific biblical motivation in belief, or faith, is the driving force behind it.

But we also do this kind of thing in a direct and more obvious way:

“He wasn’t in his right state of mind.” “When he saw the video, it killed him inside. It hurt him. He was crying all weekend. He knows it’s him. He just didn’t remember.” “He was high on drugs.”4This is the mother of a 20-year old videotaped brutally beating to death a 68-year-old man because he would not give him his money.

“He is troubled and has gone through a lot in his life. He has been challenged, and often times, he did not act the best. He made bad choices and went around with the wrong people.” This mother’s son was a sadomasochistic serial killer. The idea is that, although you may speak something true, you choose words that prevent you from confronting the truth when what you love is something else.

We are talking about a faith formed by refusing something fundamental, true and positive in a way that allows us to relate to and receive benefit from what is left after refusing it. What is left is only a universal, lawlessly inclusive and innocuous religious system of mundane aphorisms, but its better than the truth because it’s so hurtful or uninteresting.

It’s somewhat like the opposite of Hindu’s talking about its millions of deities as “symbols or aspect of Brahman.” This allows them to keep the religion without both the annoyance from conservative pagan sensibilities and modern ideas about anthropomorphizing God when for thousands of years Hinduism spoke of them only as gods5. But here, Christianity refuses its fundamentals not because they are ridiculous and patently false, but, curiously, because they are not.

It can only happen with Christianity because it speaks of a definition of sin from a revelation of history, not out of the imagination. Christianity has real spiritual threats and blessings, not fake ones. But the most powerful of them must be subsumed under inferiors so that we can continue to play with it. The dirty little secret about mankind is that he does not want more than anything else that truth head-on. He wants deflected views only because then pareidolia can become its sufficient interpreter.  He wants the truth, but not really because if he saw and solved real spiritual realities they would be put away and made unavailable for use for his feelings. His fear of it is either expressed by his explicit revulsion of it or, if he is able to turn it little, he can use it for praise in it, and himself,  that would not be possible otherwise.

Vital Idolatry

Now, I say this is a vital kind of idolatry. Its retooled and purified for the modern age, That is because the essential nature of idolatry, which we practice, is the taking of the symbol as the meaning, such that, when we have the symbol, here the word or the idea,  we don’t really need whatever it represents. This is especially true when the meaning is of metaphysics, hidden, distant, extreme, specialized, intangible, dismissable, but with a comfortable residence in consciousness. The old talismanic religions place god in your pocket, instantly available for all your needs by just holding that carved symbol and saying a prayer. But here, the sin is not playing around with a physical idol as the primary transmitter of God’s meaning, but a conceptual one.

Now, we can reread Christ’s parables and interpret without a general noun norming of the keywords about spirituality? Can we, just once, consider that Christian meaning is inflexibly and always with an anti-prosaic source and aspect to real faith consciousness?

The interesting thing about Christ’s parables is his genius in his use of keywords, each one acting as a parable: a supernatural meaning hiding behind a common figure of speech. A parable is a revelation, but deliberately normed for the express purpose of drawing out unbelievers who want the interpretation also normed as, earth-bound generalizations, so that the apparent symbol can be put the same as the natural, cognitively apparent and useful meaning.

But this also draws to Christ only those that know that the Ancient of Days did not come into the world to reveal to us that he only wants us to be nice to people, go to one’s place of assembly and not be mean and squish bugs, like all the pagan faiths. That the Good Samaritan is not ultimately about being physically nice, but spiritually, in raising up and caring for the Truth, the transcendent meaning of which I speak that is beaten down by the world. Jesus’ washing of the feet of his disciples is not about being humble in leadership.

Parabolic flattening

The parable is for those who know that morality is not normed, but very, very specific and biblical and centered on first the scriptural Messiah, not ourselves and our natural inclinations. Parables are ultimate meaning hidden behind a language that intentionally suggests that there is a choice to be made to show the difference between evil choice and righteous choice. Carnal religion believes that there is no such choice except more of what they already love: the world and themselves.

Luke 17:6 (KJV) And the Lord said, If ye had faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye might say unto this , Be thou plucked up by the root, and be thou planted in the sea; and it should obey you. 7But which of you, having a servant plowing or feeding cattle, will say unto him by and by, when he is come from the field Go and sit down to meat? 8And will not rather say unto him, Make ready wherewith I may sup, and gird thyself, and serve me, till I have eaten and drunken; and afterward thou shalt eat and drink? 9 Doth he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him? I trow not. 10So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do.

Christ speaks about the fundamental duty of the disciple of the Messiah. The italics are just those that jump out at me as most in need of interpretation out of generalization norming. If we were to take this as it is, it is certainly no parable, such as with the  following interpretation:

If you had but a small measure of faith, it would overcome all temptations; even those, the conquering of which may be compared to the plucking up of trees, and planting them in the ocean6

How prosaic! The meaning is not anything hidden. It’s not a sod or even a remez. To Thomas Coke here, it’s clearly p’shat, the direct and simple meaning, although it is a parable! I don’t single him out. This is standard to one degree or another.

If such interpretation is the most God expects us to get out of it, it is hardly justified by Christ to call these things parables or a revelation.

What kind?

What kind of faith in Christ is he talking about, really?

What is inspiring, growing, motivating this faith?

What is its content?

Coke and his brethren don’t say. If God gives us a challenge and we don’t want it, we just interpret the challenge as something easier so that we can say we have accomplished it. “Small measure,” “large measure,” “temptations,” conquering,” it’s all elementary now because we decide the rules.

Here is the parable. All of these generalized words reduce to a kind of quintessential faith that God requires for a relationship with him and salvation.

“Faith” is a faith in the messianic oracles of Jesus Messiah, who is the same as this his Word. “Small,” as used by Coke above, does not mean “little faith” as he has it. To him, it does not imply a humble, unassuming prophetic revelation compared to the boastful, loud and prideful basis of the false, human and pagan one. To him, it implies “little faith.” But to Jesus, if you “have” this faith quantitatively, you have it qualitatively: an amount of a kind of faith. If you have it in both senses, you can discern amazing and unexpected truths from the scriptures pertaining to Christ. Even so much as taking the fig tree, the symbol of Christ and the people of his Kingdom, and realizing that it is promised by God that it will be fulfilled, or “planted” in the nations, or completely unexpectedly and outside the little sphere of Israel. It’s an impossible notion but is predicted.

The parable moral effects he expects of Christ’s historical realization of the words of the prophets, which are from the Father, upon the human receiver. It’s about the expected kind of religious rule he expects, and it’s not a rule of people or normed ideas or traditions, but the new Messianic revelation of Him. Christ historically fulfilled this only that we can have faith in Him acceptable to God. He didn’t fulfill it so you can have faith without a transcendent content and believe saving faith is characterized by any quantity or quality you so choose.

Christ and Transcendence: putting him first, really

Now, this carries over to the relationship between the believer and Gods’ prophetic Word.  The first, the believer, is Christ’s exclusive servant of religious principle in the work of the interpreter and of the Word. That Prophetic Word is one’s transcendent, informational and ultimate informational boss. For the latter, you have a minimum obligation, unlike the belief of the Pharisees who call themselves servants of Messiah/the Word but are not. The Word/Christ is revealed for all claiming the Hebrew religion, and all religion, Lord of any conception of righteous faith. The servant’s minimum obligation is to put the Word/Christ, not only “Christ” the person, of first priority in their religion. Not after it, like the Sadducees, Scribes and Pharisees do. If you keep this normed to only the Person of Christ, then you do exactly what Christ is warning: putting yourself before him.

When you do this, and only when you do this, placing Holy knowledge the equal of Christ in your conception of morality, you realize that in relation to that Prophetic Word you’re very small. Your only source of happiness and duty is mining and disseminating his knowledge, not distributing a personal concept. Any personal concept held up as a focus of religion without the attributing facts that make it real and moral, in this case, only supernatural facts, is that idolatry I spoke about. A normed Christ is the greatest sin imaginable because the greatest failure of moral duty is when God’s origin, nature, mission, and redemptive plan is thought secondary to an image, an idea, a notion, a symbol. Secondary to what is alone nothing.

The idea is, as is always, that we hold up nothing to represent God that is transitory, carnal, limited, prosaic, contingent, normed, or anything not demonstrated and not proven openly to all of its Transcendent origin, and by nothing that Christ himself did not credential his own origin and nature upon. We are not supposed to answer the blessing of the choice Jesus gives by interpreting the prosaic, parabolic aspect of the parable as the ultimate value in the pursuit of the truth it hides. The parable is not given to us so that we can give back to him a turd instead of our illumination. It’s not given for us to prove our hatred of the truth. That is supposed to be for the world to display through their understanding of the parable.

Don’t noun norm, but read it as the prophetic context demands as intended by Christ.

Lost things are not “lost things,” giving you a choice as to what they are. They are first the precious, irreplaceable truths of Messiah from the Old Testament. Find them, because they are lost in our noun norming Church. Lost in the Church and almost impossible to find are also those that believe in Jesus from a knowledge of the words of these prophets and can articulate that effectively without the assumptions of revelation from a Carl Barth or a Billy Graham. Find them, or participate in the destruction of the Church as it noun-norms itself into oblivion.

The heart is not an unqualified “heart,” meaning you can supply it with whatever motivating content you want. “Heart” is the spiritual core of the person, where lies emotion, reason, volition, motivation, and faith, all of which are animated by the prophets of the Messiah and his fulfillments of their words alone. Don’t say you have a “heart” for Christ but don’t know them or that they are not that important, they are only over there in “apologetics,”  unless you want to say you have a heart for Christ but he is not important.

Majesty of the heavens? Majesty is not a normed majesty in heaven. It is for a particular reason that the God of faith is majestic. See above.

Rock. Not only the Person of Christ but the entire prophetic revelation of Him, the mystery once hidden and now revealed, the informational entity of Christ. Don’t norm “him” and don’t norm “it.” “Rock” as Jesus is secure, firm, true, proven, demonstrated, eternal, just as is the revelation of messianic prophecy.

Christ. It’s not Jesus’s last name for only his person. It means “Messiah,” for his titled, prophetic, fulfilled credentials as Savior of the world. Do you know his person but don’t know these, and think those things about him are all that relevant? Then you have a normed Jesus, not the real one.

Conscionable hearers?  Do you have a conscience? By what? Is it a normed conscience, or are you able to narrow it down? If not, you may have a conscience, but it’s more suited to Islam and Hinduism than Christianity as Christ taught it. Christ is a particular heavenly person. Do you have a particular kind of Christ conscience, motivated by something transcendent as biblically specific as Christ is a person?

Living stones. The little stones are related to the big Rock that is Messiah. Is your idea of “stone” normed, meaning in your mind just a general analogy to another general analogy to Jesus? Or, does “stone” have a relation to the prophecy of Psalms 118:22? The tried and sure to come to pass Word of Christ that is rejected, along with his Person, as the cornerstone of the Temple and the Church?

Truly born again. How and by who and what? Are you born again without knowing?

Looking with eagerness. To what, specifically. Not some Jesus event, but the events predicated?

I’ll leave this last for you since we speak of knowledge:

“Ignorance is the curse of God, knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven.”7

Where is Voltaire?

Voltaire’s Candide is fiction, a funny little play, designed as a mock of that which we are supposed to believe. But in fiction and in casual conversation, you don’t have to worry about noun-norming. Its the definition of something that is not serious, cursory, dismissive, prosaic, bromidic, conversational, artful, and convenient.  Its the equivalent of fiction. It’s also harmless. But if your speaking of Christ, don’t noun-norm “knowledge,” admitting that you are satisfied with knowing nothing, especially if Christ ever from Scripture asks you, “but who do you say that I am?”

I assure you after he reacts to your faith statement, you won’t be yucking it up like reading an 18th-century French novella unless its where Voltaire is now, where any laugh, if it were possible, is drowned out by the screams.

see When I Survey the Wondrous Nace part 1

  Expositions of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren (1826-1910) ↩

Commentary on the Old and New Testaments by John Trapp, edited by W. Webster and H. Martin.5 Volumes, 1654 ↩

http://www.gotquestions.org/parable-ten-virgins.html#ixzz34qgDnhOK ↩

http://evgrieve.com/2014/05/report-murder-suspects-mother-says-her.html ↩

http://hinduism.about.com/od/history/a/neohinduism.htm ↩

A Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke, LL.D, 1803 ↩

Shakespeare, “Henry IV,” pt. ii, Act iv., Sc. 7 ↩

[jason5577]

SCORSESE’S ‘SILENCE’ IS ONE OF THE GREATEST JEWISH FILMS EVER MADE

Sure, it’s about Portuguese Jesuits in Japan, but the movie’s theological message is one we should all embrace

By Liel Leibovitz Tabletmag.com January 30, 2017 • 12:00 AM Martin Scorsese’s #Silence, which tells the story of two 17th-century Portuguese Jesuits who travel to Japan to find their missing mentor and spread their imperiled faith in a land that bans it, may very well be among the greatest Jewish movies ever made.

Ignored, foolishly, by the Academy in this year’s Oscars race, and celebrated, rightly, by Catholic commentators for being a pure and profound meditation on faith, the film is not only a masterwork but also one we Jews would do well to take seriously. That’s because the idea at the core of the film is the thick theological trunk both Jews and Catholics share, and with which both have wrestled for millennia: the problem of doubt.

What use have two missionaries for uncertainty? As the film begins, very little. Rodrigues, played by Andrew Garfield, and Garupe, inhabited by Adam Driver—both young actors deliver such searing performances that make you worry a little that they may collapse before they make it to the end of this long movie—start out by insisting that their order dispatch them to Nagasaki. There, they hope to find and retrieve their mentor, Father Ferreira, who is rumored to have given into the Shogunate’s inquisition, renounced his faith, and married a Japanese woman. Garupe and Rodrigues refuse to believe that the man who instructed them in the teachings of Christ is capable of apostasy. They’re not so much adamant as uncomprehending: When Garupe says the account of his teacher’s downfall is simply not possible, you are looking at a man who seems ontologically incapable of entertaining the thought.

Before too long, however, the pair arrives in Japan, and their certainty is watered down by a landscape described—by Rodrigo Prieto’s stunning cinematography as well as by several of the characters themselves—as a watery marsh unable to sustain surety of any sort. The authorities, fearful that Christianity is merely the vanguard for the West’s colonizing appetites, ban the religion and hunt down its followers, with none more prized than the foreign padres who preach it. Before too long, Garupe and Rodrigues are both captured, and are offered mercy at a small cost: If they step on an image of the Christ, they and their followers will be spared.

For nearly three hours, the two wrestle with apostasy and its physical and metaphysical consequences. To pressure the padres even further, the authorities torture their innocent Japanese flock in horrendous ways, including dipping men and women in pools of boiling water or tying them to a cross in the ocean and waiting for the ebb and flow of the tide to drown them slowly, over many days. The padres pray to Jesus, but he, as you might’ve guessed from the film’s title, remains silent.

Shusaku Endo, the Catholic Japanese writer on whose novel of the same name the movie is based, meditated on that silence and found it deafening. “Behind the depressing silence of this sea, the silence of God,” he wrote, “the feeling that while men raise their voice in anguish, God remains with folded arms, silent.”

What is there to say when the Almighty says nothing as his creations suffer and die? It is, of course, a question Christian and Jewish theologians—from Augustine to Martin Buber—have grappled with mightily. Buber’s offering remains one of the most intriguing. Meditating on the question of theodicy—the attempt to explain the existence of evil in light of God’s absolute goodness—both before and after the Holocaust, Buber argued that God was very much like the sun: always present, forever burning bright, but frequently eclipsed from human view. When night falls, we’ve no choice but to wait for another dawn, and, meanwhile, rethink our relationship with the Creator.

Most of Buber’s argument revolved around a meditation on the Book of Job, the densest tale in a volume thick with them. Job, Buber argued, found himself at an impasse with the Lord, and emerged instead with something far more sustainable than metaphysics: the gift of an all-too-human religion.

“Instead of the ‘cruel’ and living God, to whom he clings,” Buber wrote of Job, “religion offers him a reasonable and rational God, a deity whom he, Job, does not perceive either in his own existence or in the world, and who obviously is not to be found anywhere save only in the very domain of religion.” Unlike God, who is ultimately unknowable, religion is something a man’s mind may grasp. And religion, of course, cannot be followed privately. It requires community. Job, Buber writes, isn’t one man; “Behind this [Job’s] ‘I,’ there stands the ‘I’ of Israel.”

It takes Father Rodrigues a while to come around to a similar point of view. Arrogant and cerebral, he questions the purity of his followers’ faith. Do they yearn for the small, makeshift crosses he gives them because they cling to objects rather than to dogma? And is their willingness to die for their belief merely the result of a simplistic interpretation of Christ’s teaching? Nowhere is Rodrigues’ approach more evident than in his relationship with Kichijiro (the sublime Yosuke Kubozuka), a cowardly local guide who betrays Rodrigues several times, yet returns each time to ask for the padre’s forgiveness. “Do you even understand what absolution means?” the imperious Rodrigues roars, but everything about their relationship suggests that Kichijiro understands it far better than the Jesuit. He knows that absolution isn’t an escalator to the heavens but a conversation starter between two humans here on Earth. Kichijiro is afraid, lonely, weak. He fails often, and when he does what he seeks is not so much the grace of an unknowable God but the warmth of a present fellow man. Only after Rodrigues witnesses and suffers enough violence does he finally understand this notion. When he does, he apostatizes, just as his Japanese inquisitors—and American spectators seated at the multiplex—knew he would.

Had he abandoned his faith? Had God abandoned him? In the hands of a lesser film director with a more limited religious imagination, the answer would’ve been yes. But Scorsese knows better. He’s learned from that other great modern Catholic artist, G.K. Chesterton, a thing or two about the mechanics of uncertainty. “The materialist,” Chesterton wrote in his book Orthodoxy, “is sure that history has been simply and solely a chain of causation, just as the [lunatic] is quite sure that he is simply and solely a chicken. Materialists and madmen never have doubts.” True believers, however, do, and it’s doubt that helps them break through. “I did try to found a little heresy of my own,” Chesterton writes in the same book, “and when I had put the last touches to it, I discovered that it was orthodoxy.”

What Rodrigues ends up with, then—I’ll leave Garupe’s fate a mystery for the benefit of anyone who may yet see the movie—isn’t heresy but orthodoxy reconfirmed along Buber’s lines, a religion based on quiet contemplation and the cultivation of community. He reconnects with his old teacher, Ferreira, who had indeed taken a Japanese wife and chose to surrender to the regime rather than die a martyr. Together, the two spend the rest of their lives working together in silence for the inquisitor, sifting through the cargo of incoming ships in search of Christian contraband. But they have not abandoned their religion, merely reconstructed it in a different way.

How? Again, Job is a useful guide. As his sits and suffers, the book tells us, his friends Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar approach and see the magnitude of his sorrows. They walk up to their aggrieved pal, and instead of offering any theological explanation, they merely sit beside him in silence. “They sat with him seven days and seven nights,” the book goes on, “and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great.” Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, like Ferreira and Rodrigues, know that sometimes, when faced with immense and incomprehensible suffering, the only thing to do is look not upward but sideways, to your friends and loved ones who are right there, suffering beside you. Even Jesus agrees: As the movie nears its end, Christ speaks to Rodrigues, assuring him that he’s never been silent but that he was there all along, right beside his faithful emissary, suffering with him.

Of course, Jews and Catholics still approach destiny differently. “To the Christian,” Buber mused, “the Jew is the incomprehensibly obdurate man who declines to see what has happened; and to the Jew, the Christian is the incomprehensibly daring man who affirms in an unredeemed world that its redemption has been accomplished. This is a gulf which no human power can bridge.” But in Scorsese’s Silence, both faiths converge and, for a brief, ethereal moment, affirm that godliness is always present, even when it’s unseen, and that a true person of faith always believes, even—or especially—as he or she is grappling with doubt. Uncertainty, after all, is “in every true discernment that is open to finding confirmation in spiritual consolation.”

The man who spoke this last line is the Holy Father himself, Pope Francis. Discussing Silence with Scorsese at the Vatican, the pontiff said the film “bears much fruit.” It sure does: In the last moments of the movie, as a now-aged Rodrigues passes away and is burned in a traditional Buddhist funeral, the camera enters his cylinder-like coffin and zooms in on his hand. There, clasped tight, is a small wooden crucifix. Through doubt and violence, persecution and anguish, external threats and internal tumults, religion remained unshaken, faith stayed strong, and God never more present as he’d been in his silence. *** Liel Leibovitz is a senior writer for Tablet Magazine.

>#Silence Movie 2016 #AndrewGarfield as #PadreRodrigues

#BestActor performance! By far better than his performance in #HacksawRidge

#SilenceMovie 2016 #Scorsese #BestDirector #AndrewGarfield #BestActor #Oscar #worthy #YōsukeKubozuka as #Kichijiro #YoshiOida as #Ichizo #ShusakuEndo #ShinyaTsukamoto as #Mokichi #adamdriver , #AndrewGarfield , #IsseiOgata , #LiamNeeson , #martinscorsese , #Silence , #TadanobuAsano #YôsukeKubozuka #SilenceandBeauty #MakoFujimura

picture of Andrew Garfield by Paramount Pictures

[mr-mo-life]

Sustainability is Not Enough — A Call for Regeneration

We are privileged to be alive at a pivotal moment in human history where all the settled assumptions of the last two centuries are up for renegotiation. New economic, political and social paradigms are evolving right now in response to the converging crises of climate change, energy insecurity, and global economic instability. While undoubtedly alarming, the realities of our historic moment also present a window of opportunity to lay the foundation for a new set of social and ecological relations rooted not just in sustainability, but in regeneration. As educators we can play an important role in preparing our students to play a constructive role in this regenerative project.

In 2007, the American think-tank Center for a New American Century published a report called The Age of Consequences: The Foreign Policy and National Security Implications of Global Climate Change, which explored the ramifications of climate change for the security of states.  The report takes its cue from Winston Churchill’s observation in the late 1930s in relation to Nazi Germany: “The era of procrastination, of half-measures, of soothing and baffling expedients, of delays, is coming to a close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences.”  The “Age of Consequences” report saw in our present time that “we are already living in an age of consequences when it comes to climate change and its impact on national security, both broadly and narrowly defined.”

Of course the findings of this report, broadly speaking, are not new.  As early as 1972, Donella Meadows et al’s famous study The Limits to Growth warned of a peak in food production and industrial output around about now after a long lead time of natural resource depletion.  Our time has been labelled with other monikers such as the Anthropocene, the Age of Limits, and the Long Emergency, among others, whose commonality is the identification of our time as a period of great societal transition, driven by related ecological, economic and political threats.  The phrase ‘Age of Consequences’ is apt descriptive term for our time because it conveys the idea that human societies are experiencing the bitter harvest sown by the ecological, economic and political contradictions of two centuries of industrialisation.

The symptoms of the Age of Consequences are beginning to re-shape the modes of production, economic systems and the relationships of power that spring from them. Our political institutions, founded on the basis of nineteenth century ideologies and class conflicts, struggle with emerging ecological, social and economic upheavals that are as tectonic in scale as those that accompanied the Industrial Revolution.  The sustainability discourse that has come to dominate discussions about development and environmental protection is an inadequate response to these tectonic shifts.

Sustainability vs Regeneration

The classic definition of sustainability was articulated in 1987 by the World Commission on Environment and Development, chaired by Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland, in a report entitled Our Common Future: “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” Our Common Future argued that economic growth was the key to reducing ecological degradation and that economic development could provide the jobs, money and infrastructure necessary to reduce environmental harms and satisfy the development needs of poorer countries. Because this definition of sustainability was compatible with the hegemonic political mantra of economic growth and development, it has become the dominant environmental discourse in public policy and business.

Unfortunately, the Our Common Future interpretation of sustainability is conceptually flawed, based on the idea that sustainability occurs at the intersection of environment, society and economy as if those systems are separate entities.  This interpretation is symptomatic of a problematical ontology in which humans are conceptualised as separate entities from the natural world, an ontology that underpins the ideologies of limitless growth to which our politicians, financiers, captains of industry and the educational institutions that support them are captive.

This leads us to the recurring question in global environmental politics: can development and environmental protection always be harmonised? The unpalatable political reality is that protecting the environment inevitably incurs economic costs. Sustainable development has been accused of being a massaged compromise that does not demand the transformative economic reform or the change in worldviews and social practices required to prevent ecological collapse. Sustainable development is also accused of having an unwarranted faith that technology can overcome environmental problems without any accompanying social and cultural change. Its harshest indictment however is that despite over two decades of advances in sustainable development, aggregate growth in ecological degradation continues.

Environment, society and economy as nested systems

We require a more appropriate definition of sustainability which considers the environment, societies and economies as ‘nested systems’.  Economies are social constructions of human societies, which are themselves dependent on the natural environment in which they exist.  As the natural world changes, so inevitably must the human systems nested within it.  We urgently need to face the inescapable reality that we live on a finite planet.  All our material wealth, all of the goods we consume, is made with resources that have been extracted from the Earth.  There are limits to the amount of resources we can extract and the amount of waste we can pollute, beyond which the biological processes of the planet (and therefore human societies that depend on them) come under threat.  Consequently, human societies, along with the economies that facilitate the exchange of goods and services within and between them, can only grow to the extent that the physical limits of the natural world will allow. As ecological economist Erick Zenceysuggests, a system is sustainable if it doesn’t undercut the ecological pre-conditions of its existence.

Given the advanced stage of environmental degradation which has been shown to be undermining the pre-conditions for human life, sustainability as a goal is unlikely to be enough. We also need to reverse processes of environmental degradation and restore the ecosystems that support us to a healthy state. As environmental development expert Herbert Girardet has stated, we need “an environmentally enhancing, restorative relationship between humanity and the ecosystems from which we draw resources for our sustenance.”

Regeneration in Practice

A regenerative practice for our time starts with a change in consciousness.  As a foundation, our regenerative project needs to recognise our inter-dependence with each other and with the natural world.  It should mitigate the causes and respond adaptively to Age of Consequences problems.  It should involve not only acts of omission, commission and protest (a la traditional activist models) but also active construction of viable new economic and social systems.  It should send tangible political, social and market signals to existing institutions and give its practitioners leverage in relation to these structures.  It should undercut the material and political power of the vested interests in the old economy that are driving ecological degradation.  It should draw on the insights and experience of other social justice movements through networked interaction, creating a momentum for justice across all segments of our society.  It should establish a practical model of right living and in so doing, demonstrate a constituency for change for others to adopt and political institutions to react to.  It should be the embodiment of Gandhi’s dictum “be the change you want to see in the world.”

A holistic, regenerative politics for our time will be mutually-reinforcing across these five elements.

There are a number of tools we might use to “change facts on the ground,” a phrase that’s more often used in military-strategic contexts, to put our regenerative project into practice.  Recognising theoverwhelming scientific evidence that business-as-usual economic development is ecologically destructive, these tools combined hold the promise of changing altering economic production systems and the economic and political relationships that emerge from them, such that we can mobilise a constructive, regenerative response to the maladies of the Age of Consequences.

For example, self-sufficient local food production and local-scale renewable energy technologies, deployed using ecologically sound design principles (such as permacultureand agro-ecology) could help people and communities re-establish sovereignty over their means of subsistence. Gift economies could facilitate the exchange of goods and services without any explicit agreement for immediate or future rewards, ideally taking place in recurring gift exchange that circulates and redistributes wealth throughout a community and serves to build societal ties. Cooperative organisational models could help to re-localise economic production and have proven capable of democratising internal organisational decision-making and increasing the resilience of individual businesses to economic shocks. Zero marginal cost technologies, which are infinitely or close to infinitely replicable at no cost, could allow people to locally manufacture and disseminate useful products across communities at a fraction of the price that similar products made and distributed through global production chains are sold for.

Collectively, these interventions could reduce the economic imperative for people to engage in wage labour to acquire the money (and debt) necessary to obtain those products from market transactions.  They could reverse our alienation from many of processes of economic production upon which we depend and help us step away from having to participate in ecological destructive economic activities out of need to earn a wage.  There is scope here for increased levels of personal freedom and community autonomy if these changes proceeded in a positive direction, with profound implications for the distribution of political power.  As permaculture co-creator David Holmgren has argued, the way the global middle class chooses to live is their biggest political leverage point.  People who are saddled with debt and dependent on market transactions for their subsistence do not possess that leverage and are often reduced to shouting at politicians to legislate for positive environmental change.

Political activism is good, but activism + right living is better.

If successful, a holistic regenerative project of this kind creates political pressure on governments to take bolder positions in international multilateral forums like the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and gives them room to manoeuvre in their negotiations with other countries.  Similarly, the demonstration effect can work to influence people in other countries through a networked contagion, creating the same pressure for bolder action among several negotiating parties.

It is not possible to change the facts on the ground, to implement a regenerative practice, by acting alone.  It is sobering to recognise the systemic short-comings that leave us vulnerable to chaotic social upheaval in the Age of Consequences.  Many people have a strong aversion to being cogs in the many vertically stratified hierarchical institutions that have come to dominate our lives.  The overwhelming urge is to escape the system, strike out on our own.  This is a seductive dead end; when we remember that we exist interdependently with other humans and the world around us, it is obvious that the escapist urge is flawed.  A more appropriate adaptive response is to cultivate networks of trust and reciprocity with fellow travellers. Networks overcome problems of scale for grassroots activities, without need for large hierarchical institutions and speed up organisation and information dissemination.

We stand today straddling the juncture between two different worlds.  We stand with one foot in a dying paradigm, in a global capitalist economy largely powered by fossil fuel energy and underpinned by ideologies of rapacious neoliberal economics, the cancerous ideal of perpetual economic growth and ontological separation from everything non-human.  Our other foot stands in an emerging post-growth society based on sustainable existence within the natural world on which we are entirely dependent.  Given the scientific evidence of global environmental degradation, it is not hyperbole to suggest that the perpetuation of our society as we know it and possibly even the survival of the species itself depend on the timely success of the transition from the old model to the new. As educators we are failing our vocational duty if we do not prepare our students for the serious environmental realities of our time.