Forward Civilizations

Just because those who promise to single-handedly save the world turn out to be fascist dictators, does not mean the goal of social justice is not worthy, nor that we are absolved of the responsibility to work for the greater good.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks in his book "Not in God's Name" looks into the phenomena of killing for the sake of religion and religious extremism.  While some believe that we have to get rid of religion because of this Sacks puts the blame not in religious tradition but in the human heart - which he points out, is the most deadly weapon of mass destruction.

While I haven't read the book I did listen to the whole hour of  Tapestry when Sacks was interviewed. I was taken by his expressed reverence for life, by his tolerance of different view points including atheism.

As a scholar he is able to articulate the ages where humanity left God and pursued "the will to power". He pointed out that although we live in nature we have evolved to a consciousness of our effect on nature. Therefore power cannot be separated from responsibility without us losing our humanity?  Is this what Sacks means by our relationship to God? It's probably deeper than my interpretation.

I tend to see religion as having been misused to preach the supremacy of an institution, a race, a gender. When a religion becomes a mass movement the ruling elite re-interpret the doctrine in favour of consolidating their own power and their position. In listening to Sacks I understood that this misrepresentation is mostly due to our human tendency to put our selves into the centre of all things.

All stories are about how the narrator views him or herself as the interlocutor of meaning, and the many ways in which they are tripped up, thrown off their path of righteousness.  However, it is too late to interview Abraham, Jesus or Muhammad, so we have to find the wisdom in our doubts and experiences, to retrieve meaning.  The thing is we are so often wrong, we are limited, and our views must be fed with new information and examined. And what about God? 

I think the key point in Rabbi Sacks' interview is that we are in relationship to a higher power. God does not control me because I have free will, therefore anything I choose to do can be for the good of this planet and my community but I cannot claim to know what God thinks.

A way in which we might move beyond our own obsession with power is to understand that life and truth is beyond the time and place our small lives inhabit.  The clamor of extremism and a shallow fundamentalism is due to the arrogance of our species to think we have the hotline to the universe.

Religions who preach chauvinism of any kind pander to the vanity and fears of its congregation and so remove us from the whole story. Ideology that demands obedience to a certain doctrine cuts off our dialogue with the unfolding universe.

Our task is to be human, to think, to feel, to speak, to listen, and to love life, even though we don't know the outcome or the ending. Does this mean we can't help but create stories on the beginning and the end as all religions do?

Sturm und Drang

Broadchurch is a TV crime drama about a community in Dorset, UK. I watched series 1 and 7 of 8 episodes of series 2, before I decided not to watch any more.

The crime was committed in the first episode of the first series. 11 year old Danny went missing and was found murdered, and I thought the series would be about who killed him and why. Most of series 2 takes place in the courtroom, but most of the focus is on the trauma visited upon the families and neighbours of this small community. By the fifth episode I begin to wonder why the drama is drawn out so long.  There are long scenes on beaches, in homes, in caravans, including screams, shouts and accusations as just about everyone is blamed.

In fact as I look back over the series I would say this drama is more about whose fault it is. Our need to accuse others for making us miserable rather than giving compassion to our loved ones who have survived, seems to upstage all else. Pulled into an eternal power struggle with the world, viewers may well sit on the edge of their  lazy-boys clenching teeth as tears and blood spill out across the screen while the coastal tide rolls in and out.

But rather than knit the plot together, the show kept giving us more characters, violence, spite and despair, and I found I had forgotten the original plot, and the question of who killed Danny and why. I become suspicious of the intentions of the drama and suspicious of my own addiction to wanting to find out how it ends. What is the point of all this sturm und drang?

There is plenty of evidence in the world that we suffer from the harm done by those who we think we should trust but who get caught up in their own struggles. It's beginning to look like a predictable Punch and Judy show played over and over again.  In the news, on radio, on television, on social media, at dinner parties, and in the bedroom.

From here it looks like our brains are wired for destruction, rage, and disappointment. But the program is funded by corporations who have their own agenda. Is it beneficial for the market when TV dramas show humanity as being dysfunctional and powerless?

On a parallel issue I think of national security and how we deal with threats. Brahma Chellaney in the Globe and Mail article "How to shut down jihad factories" gives us a brief history of the rise of jihadist organizations that have attacked unsuspecting citizens in the Middle East, Europe, and America from the 1970's. "With Western support, tyrannical oil monarchies in Riyadh, Doha and elsewhere were able to ride out the Arab Spring, emerging virtually unscathed. Saudi Arabia has faced little international pressure, even on human rights."  But rather than look at the role our military industrial complex has played, we are urged to hate and turn away from the causes, we are urged to remain in a state of collective powerlessness, leaving the task to "experts". 

Pretty much like the people of Broadchurch who are groping for ease of pain but who cannot find it from one another or the professionals who are there to fix it.

Surely it's our ignorance that perpetuates injustice, war, terrorism and violence, whenever we vote for politicians who offer false but easy answers that allow us to repeat the mantra "It's all your fault". Were the characters of Broadchurch somehow guilty of looking for the scapegoat rather than piece together the events that led to Danny's untimely death?