Look7777777 – Culture Watch – 2008.07.30

Nie wstępowałem do państwa, nie przyrzekałem państwu żadnej wierności, ani tym bardziej nie godziłem się na jego finansowanie. Dlatego, gdy państwo finansuje działania (jak mordowanie dzieci) i organizacje, z którymi absolutnie zgodzić się nie mogę, mam absolutne prawo odmówić finansowania organizacji zwanej państwem. Oczywiście, podkreślę to kolejny raz, nie mam szansy zrobić tego otwarcie. Państwo może niestety zmusić mnie przemocą, pozbawiając własności i/lub wolności. Odpowiedzią na taką przemoc może być tylko partyzantka, czyli wykorzystanie całej wiedzy, umiejętności i możliwości, by zachować jak najwięcej własności i wolności.

[...] Unikanie podatków i innych form finansowania organizacji, która działa wbrew mojej woli, moim zasadom i na moją szkodę jest nie tylko moralne, jest moim obowiązkiem.

Jan Kowalski (Rolnik z Doliny), Moralność unikania danin publicznych, http://rolnikzdoliny.salon24.pl/79945,index.html

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BRILL
You know, in guerilla warfare, you try to use your weaknesses as strengths.

ROBERT
Such as?

BRILL
Well... if they're big and you're small, then you're mobile and they're slow. You're hidden and they're exposed. You only fight battles you know you can win. That's the way the Vietcong did it. You capture the weapons and you use them against them the next time. That way they're supplying you. You grow stronger as they grow weaker.

Conversation between Edward 'Brill' Lyle and Robert Clayton Dean. From the movie Enemy Of The State (Tony Scott, 1998).

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It is our view that a flourishing libertarian movement, a lifelong dedication to liberty can only be grounded on a passion for justice. Here must be the mainspring of our drive, the armor that will sustain us in all the storms ahead, not the search for a quick buck, the playing of intellectual games or the cool calculation of general economic gains. And, to have a passion for justice, one must have a theory of what justice and injustice are — in short, a set of ethical principles of justice and injustice, which cannot be provided by utilitarian economics.

A passion for instantaneous justice — in short, a radical passion — is . . . not utopian, as would be a desire for the instant elimination of poverty or the instant transformation of everyone into a concert pianist. For instant justice could be achieved if enough people so willed.

A true passion for justice . . . must be radical — in short, it must at least wish to attain its goals radically and instantaneously. Leonard E. Read, founding president of the Foundation for Economic Education, expressed this radical spirit very aptly when he wrote a pamphlet I'd Push the Button. The problem was what to do about the network of price and wage controls then being imposed on the economy by the Office of Price Administration. Most economic liberals were timidly or "realistically" advocating one or another form of gradual or staggered decontrols; at that point, Mr. Read took an unequivocal and radical stand on principle: "if there were a button on this rostrum," he began his address, "the pressing of which would release all wage and price controls instantaneously, I would put my finger on it and push!"

The true test, then, of the radical spirit, is the button-pushing test: if we could push the button for instantaneous abolition of unjust invasions of liberty, would we do it? If we would not do it, we could scarcely call ourselves libertarians, and most of us would only do it if primarily guided by a passion for justice.

The genuine libertarian, then, is, in all senses of the word, an "abolitionist"; he would, if he could, abolish instantaneously all invasions of liberty, whether it be, in the original coining of the term, slavery, or whether it be the manifold other instances of State oppression. He would, in the words of another libertarian in a similar connection, "blister my thumb pushing that button!"

The libertarian goals are "realistic" in the sense that they could be achieved if enough people agreed on their desirability, and that, if achieved, they would bring about a far better world. The "realism" of the goal can only be challenged by a critique of the goal itself, not in the problem of how to attain it.

Actually, in the realm of the strategic, raising the banner of pure and radical principle is generally the fastest way of arriving at radical goals. For if the pure goal is never brought to the fore, there will never be any momentum developed for driving toward it.

Murray N. Rothbard, Why Be Libertarian?, http://www.mises.org/story/2993

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W tradycji judeochrześcijańskiej Bóg jest Stwórcą różnym od swego stworzenia. Z miłości, przez moc Słowa, jak mówi Biblia, daje On początek stworzeniom. „Wyrywa je z nicości” i powołuje do istnienia.

Na Wschodzie nie ma rozróżnienia pomiędzy mistykiem i bóstwem, do którego on dąży. Następuje całkowite połączenie i mistyk zanika w bezosobowym boskim bycie. W mistyce judeochrześcijańskiej jakkolwiek daleko można dojść na drodze miłosnego złączenia, różnica między mną a Bogiem istnieje zawsze, ponieważ chodzi o związek miłości, a aby zaistniała miłość muszą być dwie różne osoby. Te osoby spotykają się coraz głębiej, ale więź między nimi nie wyklucza ich indywidualności.

A więc pomiędzy pojęciem Boga judeochrześcijańskiego i pojęciem bóstwa Wschodu istnieją przede wszystkim różnice ontologiczne. Bóg chrześcijan, znany z Objawienia, jest osobą, a nie bezosobową wibracją. Wzywa człowieka do związku miłości, jest zainteresowany tym, co czyni człowiek, wkracza w dzieje człowieka, żeby objawić mu swoją miłość. Bóg różny od swego stworzenia, Bóg osobowy pragnie miłości swego stworzenia.

Jest coś fascynującego w tej szczęśliwości z dala od wszelkich cierpień. Rzeczywiście, po pozbyciu się pragnień cierpienie znika. Ale znika też możność przeżywania tego, co jest podstawowym motorem istnienia – znika pragnienie kochania i bycia kochanym.

Przypominam sobie, że w tych doświadczeniach, skądinąd głębokich, jakich doznaje się praktykując hinduizm, w stanie nirwany tęskniłem za jakimś rodzajem kontaktu, w którym mógłbym się w pełni rozwinąć, tęskniłem za związkiem pewnego szczególnego spełnienia, który nazywamy miłością.

Boję się używać [...] określenia [„miłość”], bo dzisiaj słowo miłość odmieniane jest na tyle sposobów, że już nie wiadomo, co ono znaczy. Ja rozumiem miłość jako smak nieskończonej wolności w momentach niestety przelotnych, kiedy udaje mi się wyjść poza moje granice w kierunku drugiego człowieka, być do dyspozycji drugiego człowieka, gdy udaje mi się zapomnieć o sobie, ponieważ zupełnie otwieram się na drugiego.

Wydaje mi się, że te chwile mówią coś bardzo ważnego o mnie samym, mówią o mnie prawdziwym. Odnalazłem to potem u autora z XII wieku – Wilhelma de Saint Thierry. Jako istota ludzka, jestem istotą ekstatyczną, staję w prawdzie tego, czym jestem, gdy uda mi się wyjść poza mój egoizm i kiedy wychodzę drugiemu naprzeciw. Myślę, że wszyscy przeżyliśmy podobne doświadczenie. Są to chwile, kiedy kosztujemy nowej wolności, radości, głębokiego szczęścia, które może współistnieć z cierpieniem. Nie odnajdujemy tego w hinduizmie. Gdzieś w środku tego doświadczania spokoju, którego doświadczałem w hinduizmie, żywe było we mnie pragnienie przeżywania takiego rodzaju doświadczeń.

I właśnie w tym momencie zdarzyło się coś, co poruszyło moim życiem. Pewnego dnia ktoś przybywający do guru z wizytą zapytał mnie: „Pan był chrześcijaninem w młodości. Jezus, kim On teraz jest dla pana?” W chwili kiedy wypowiedział słowo „Jezus” doświadczyłem takiego rezonansu w głębi mojej duszy, że jak gdyby obudziłem się. Odkryłem, że ten Jezus, którego chciałem wyłączyć z mojego życia, czekał cały czas z nieskończoną cierpliwością. Bardzo trudno jest mówić o takich doświadczeniach, ponieważ pozostają poza czynnikiem racjonalnym, ale jeśli miałbym to wyrazić i zinterpretować, myślę, że powiedziałbym, iż Jezus powiedział do mnie: „dziecko, ile jeszcze każesz mi czekać?” Patrzył na mnie z nieopisaną czułością, nie osądzając mnie, ani nie skazując. Nie czułem się też jak dziecko przyprowadzone do domu przez rozzłoszczonego ojca. Doświadczyłem wtedy tylko nieopisanej czułości i miłosierdzia, Kogoś, kto kochał mnie z całego serca i był gotowy iść za mną bez końca, w nadziei, że pewnego dnia zwrócę na Niego wzrok. I dam Mu to, czego oczekuje – moje spojrzenie lub słowo miłości.

Poruszyło mnie to do głębi. Powiedziałem sobie: ten, którego szukam na końcu świata, jest bardziej mi bliski niż ja sam, jak mówił św. Augustyn. On jest w głębi mojego serca i czeka jak pokorny sługa. Zrozumiałem, że moje szczęście i moje życie mają sens jedynie w tym związku, w którym byłem kochany i mogłem kochać.

Rodziłem się, a Bóg nie kazał mi znikać w oceanie, przeciwnie, przychodził do mnie, abym się narodził jako osoba. Bo to, że jestem osobą, jest mi dane, abym mógł kochać.

W stanie nirwany tęskniłem za miłością, Wywiad z o. Jacquesem Verlindem, http://www.opoka.org.pl/varia/sekty/bog_wschod.html

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. . . the great ideals of the past failed not by being outlived (which must mean over-lived), but by not being lived enough. . . . The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, What’s Wrong With The World, Part One: The Homelessness of Man, Chapter V: The Unfinished Temple, http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/whats_wrong.html

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Evidence of sexual chaos is everywhere. Not a day passes without several of my patients providing ample testimony of it. For example, yesterday I saw a woman who had tried to kill herself after her daughter, nearly 16 years old, moved out of her home with her eight-month-old child to live with her new 22-year-old boyfriend. It goes without saying that this boyfriend was not the father of her baby but a man she had met recently in a nightclub.

The mother was 14 when the father, age 21, made his entrance. On discovering that she was pregnant, he did what many young men do nowadays in such a situation: he beat her up. This not only relieves the feelings but occasionally produces a miscarriage. In this case, however, it failed to do so; instead, the father was caught in flagrante delicto (that is to say, while beating her) by my patient, who promptly attacked him, managing to injure him so severely that he had to go to the hospital. While there, he and she did a little informal plea-bargaining: she would not inform on him for having had sex with an underage girl, if he did not press charges against her for having assaulted him.

My patient subsequently spent what little money she had upon her grandchild's clothes, stroller, crib, bedding, and so on, even going $1,500 into debt to fund its comfort. Then her daughter decided to move out, and my patient was mortified.

Mortified, that is, by the absence of her grandchild, for whom she thought she had sacrificed so much. This was the first objection she had made in the whole affair. She had not considered the sexual conduct of her daughter, or that of either of the two men, to be in any way reprehensible. If the father of her grandchild had not turned violent, it would never have crossed her mind that he had done anything wrong in having sex with her daughter; and indeed, having done nothing to discourage the liaison, she in effect encouraged him. And her daughter had behaved only as she would have expected any girl of her age to behave.

It might be argued . . . [that] when it comes to sexual misdemeanor there is nothing new under the sun, and history shows plentiful examples of almost any perversion or dishonorable conduct. But this is the first time in history there has been mass denial that sexual relations are a proper subject of moral reflection or need to be governed by moral restrictions.

To the 1950s audience it would have been unnecessary to point out that, once a child had been conceived, the father owed a duty not only to the child, but to the mother; that his own wishes in the matter were not paramount, let alone all-important, and that he was not simply an individual but a member of a society whose expectations he had to meet if he were to retain its respect; and that a sense of moral obligation toward a woman was not inimical to a satisfying relationship with her but a precondition of it.

. . . there are many young people yearning for precisely the certainties that they feel obliged to mock: young women who hope to find a man who will woo her, love her, respect her, stand by her, and be a father to her children, while there are many men with the reciprocal wish. How many times have I heard from my patients of their aching desire to settle down and live in a normal family, and yet who have no idea whatever how to achieve this goal that was once within the reach of almost everyone!

Revolutions are seldom the spontaneous mass upheaval of the downtrodden, provoked beyond endurance by their miserable condition, and the sexual revolution was certainly no exception in this respect. The revolution had its intellectual progenitors . . . [who] were not the kind of people to take seriously Edmund Burke's lapidary warning that "it is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that men of intemperate minds cannot be free": on the contrary, just as appetites often grow with the feeding, so the demands of the revolutionaries escalated whenever the last demand was met.

No one seems to have noticed . . . that a loss of a sense of shame means a loss of privacy; a loss of privacy means a loss of intimacy; and a loss of intimacy means a loss of depth. There is, in fact, no better way to produce shallow and superficial people than to let them live their lives entirely in the open, without concealment of anything.

There is virtually no aspect of modern society's disastrous sexual predicament that does not find its apologist and perhaps its "onlie" begetter in the work of the sexual revolutionaries 50 or 100 years earlier. It is impossible to overlook the connection between what they said should happen and what has actually happened. Ideas have their consequences, if only many years later.

Explaining their decision to part from the mother or father of their children, my patients routinely tell me that they do not experience with her or him the bliss they clearly expected to experience . . . The possibility that their union might serve other, slightly more mundane and other-regarding purposes has never occurred to them. That depth of feeling is at least as important as intensity (and in the long run, more important) is a thought completely alien to them. With no social pressure to keep them together, with religious beliefs utterly absent from their lives, and with the state through its laws and welfare provisions positively encouraging the fragmentation of the family, relationships become kaleidoscopic in their changeability but oddly uniform in their denouement.

The Dionysian has definitively triumphed over the Apollonian. No grace, no reticence, no measure, no dignity, no secrecy, no depth, no limitation of desire is accepted. Happiness and the good life are conceived as prolonged sensual ecstasy and nothing more. When, in my work in an English slum, I observe what the sexual revolution has wrought, I think of the words commemorating architect Sir Christopher Wren in the floor of St. Paul's Cathedral: si monumentum requiris, circumspice.

Theodore Dalrymple, All Sex, All the Time, http://www.city-journal.org/html/10_3_urbanities-all_sex.html

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Soundtrack to Deus Ex: Zodiac by Steve Foxon, http://www.sfsounds.co.uk/html/dx__zodiac.html

Look7777777 – Culture Watch – 2008.07.25

Odeszliśmy od modelu rodzin osiadłych przez dziesiątki lat w jednym miejscu, wielopokoleniowych, spędzających ze sobą dużo czasu, jedzących ze sobą wspólne posiłki, pracujących razem. Było wówczas wiele okazji, by przekazywać dobre wzorce rodzinne, dla których panowało nie podlegające dyskusji uznanie.

Bycie dobrym rodzicem nie jest stanem. Jest raczej pewnym procesem, który dokonuje się w czasie. Możemy porównać to do pracy, gdzie niezależnie od wykonywanego zawodu zawsze musimy się kształcić. A wielu rodzicom wydaje się, że już jakimś rodzicem jestem, kiedy przyjąłem jakieś założenia, coś słyszałem. Tymczasem musimy sobie uświadomić, że my dobrymi rodzicami się stajemy poprzez nasz rozwój, który musi być świadomy i przez nas kierowany. Powinniśmy się rozwijać w byciu coraz lepszymi rodzicami.

Dużo osób mówi, że rodzina jest najważniejsza, ale to tylko teoria. W praktyce zdarza się, że pod pretekstem pracy i zarabiania na rodzinę, zaniedbujemy ją. Często zdarza się u ojców, że pracują dłużej niż muszą. Natomiast tak naprawdę nie podejmują głębszej refleksji nad tym, co dla rodziny jest najważniejsze: kupienie jakichś dodatkowych rzeczy, czy też spędzenie czasu z dziećmi. Tu powstaje cała masa różnych wybiegów, głównie związanych ze sprawami materialnymi. Tak naprawdę zamiast dawać dzieciom czas, kupujemy dla nich rzeczy.

[...] okres do trzeciego roku życia jest bardzo ważny. Niektórym wydaje się, że wystarczy, by takie dziecko było najedzone, wypoczęte i umyte. Jednak dziecko w tym czasie rozwija się w niesamowitym tempie, również w obszarze cnót, w obszarze dobrych nawyków.

Nawyki są czymś do pewnego stopnia od nas niezależnym. Posiadając nawyki często działamy w sposób półautomatyczny. Np. jeśli teraz nie przeklinamy, to nie dlatego, że musimy co chwilę się od tego powstrzymywać, ale po prostu nie mamy takiego nawyku. A są osoby, które taki nawyk mają, i muszą z tym walczyć.

Więc jeśli dziecko ma wyrobiony [...] nawyk sprzątania własnego pokoju, to źle czuje się w pokoju nieuporządkowanym. Ale jeżeli nie ma nawyku sprzątania, to będzie się źle czuło w pokoju uporządkowanym.

To samo dzieje się z kwestią jedzenia. Posiłek może być rytuałem rodzinnym w określonym czasie i miejscu, ale dla innych służy jedynie zaspokojeniu głodu w danym momencie. W telewizji oglądamy dziś dużo reklam czekoladek czy jogurtów, które uczą nas odruchu: jesteś głodny, to rzuć się na jogurt i zaspokój swój głód. I jeżeli ktoś w ten sposób działa, wówczas życie rodzinne sprowadza się do tego, że wszyscy siedzą przed swoimi ekranami i coś jedzą.

[...] kto nie otrzymał dobrych wzorców, będzie musiał wykonać jako rodzic większą pracę. Z drugiej strony wcale nie ma gwarancji że ktoś, kto otrzymał dobre wzorce, nie zejdzie na złą drogę. Ale pierwsza zasada brzmi: zawsze rodzice mogą się poprawić. Ale muszą sami walczyć w tym, czego chcą dla swoich dzieci, inaczej będą niewiarygodni.

Nawet dorośli, którzy twierdzą, że nienawidzą swoich rodziców, przyznają, że rodzice zawsze w ich głowach pozostają jako pewien punkt odniesienia. Rodzicem swoich dzieci jest się na zawsze. Nie przekonamy dzieci słowem, mówiąc: Bądź uporządkowany. Nie nauczy niczego ojciec, jeżeli prosi by syn jadł wszystko, a sam ma trzy ulubione potrawy, które żona gotuje dla niego osobno. Ani matka mówiąca, że trzeba rezygnować ze swojego zdania, ale wyrzucająca innych sprzed telewizora, kiedy jest ulubiony serial.

Poza tym rodzice muszą działać razem, mieć wspólny front. Bez tego szanse powodzenia wychowawczego spadają dramatycznie. Dziecko dostrzega niespójność i boleśnie ją odczuwa. Jeżeli pewne rzeczy dziecko może załatwić u mamy, a nie u taty, to będzie zawsze chodziło do mamy. To uczy cwaniactwa, ukrywania.

Ważna też jest kwestia autorytetu rodziców. W domu muszą obowiązywać pewne zasady, które obowiązują wszystkich oraz są przestrzegane przez rodziców zawsze i w ten sam sposób. W takiej sytuacji dziecko czuje się bardzo dobrze, bo jest ona jasno określona. Dziecko wcale nie czuje się lepiej, gdy da mu się całkowitą swobodę. Oczywiście, ma ono naturalny odruch, który jest ukierunkowany na to, żeby badać granice, ale nie znaczy to, że jak je przekroczy, będzie bardziej szczęśliwe. Dzieci, którym wolno wszystko, są głęboko nieszczęśliwe, bo nie rozumieją tego świata, nie czują się bezpiecznie.

Jak być dobrym rodzicem, Wywiad z Januszem Wardakiem, http://www.opusdei.pl/art.php?p=24910

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LA Takedown is the prototype for the more famous Heat.

“This guy is a megablast.” Spoken without irony, this could be a dangerous line, the line to sink a shaky, badly-scripted film. But in a Michael Mann film, such a line is entirely appropriate. Mann’s heroes say things like this. They call people ‘pal’, ‘sport’, ‘slick’, ‘flash’, ‘my man’, and – most recently – ‘homey’. They kick doors down, then march into the victim’s kitchen and drink his coffee and eat his toast. They yearn for a cosy little family routine, but even more, they hunger after truth, meaning, honour.

While Pacino and (the excellent) DeNiro are big names, and do much for the film’s [Heat’s] epic feel, they are also too old. Takedown’s Hanna and McLaren have the reckless, unburdened passion of youth; they are nel mezzo del cammin, in the middle of their lives, old enough to know who they are, but not yet old enough to be saddled and weighted by this knowing.

Alex McArthur, McLaren in Takedown, is the real star of the film, an odd-looking guy with slightly disturbing eyebrows. Like DeNiro he can act without really doing much; his stillness, introversion, are a good foil to Hanna’s brash, volatile energy. . . . He commands each scene with the hint of a contained, controlled anguish, the more powerful as it is unexplained in a still young man. The care with which he speaks, “I’m a salesman, I sell swimming pools”, his watchful, disturbed eyes, suggest a life broken and put back together, and the strong will holding the pieces together. This is not a man who relaxes; but his tension is directed inward, into places neither we nor the other characters will ever know.

In Heat, where Eady chooses to go with McCauley, he acts upon a sudden whim, to kill Waingro. The choice has no real weight. In Takedown, McLaren has nothing much to live for, he has been rejected by Eady, and so he goes to kill Waingro because, after all, he no longer has any reason to play safe. “I’ve got all the time in the world, pal” he says to Waingro, having nothing else, nowhere else. It is not a blip, an aberration against his habitual caution, as in Heat: it is the expression of his fate, it stands for who he has become after Eady’s rejection.

Many felt Heat’s ending to be weak, formulaic. Macauley first endangers himself by going after Waingro, then, seeing Hanna outside the hotel, flees like a frightened rabbit, leaving Eady behind. His character has lost its consistency, its rigour, and his choices (to take Eady with him, to kill Waingro, to run away) have no weight, are determined not by his will, but by circumstance or whim. Takedown’s McLaren, by contrast, acts only upon his determined will, and so nothing is accident, nothing is whim or chance – his end has the finality and inevitability of Greek tragedy.

Elberry, LA Takedown, http://elberry.wordpress.com/2006/10/31/la-takedown/

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[Annie Dillard wrote:] One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.

Kelly @ Love Well, The Writing Life, http://lovewell.blogspot.com/2008/06/writing-life.html

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Jakie są [...] punkty wspólne pomiędzy feudalizmem a kapitalizmem państwowym? Po pierwsze struktura społeczeństwa dziś jest prawie idealnym odzwierciedleniem tej średniowiecznej: 1%, który stanowią najbogatsi – państwowcy i, co ważniejsze, lobbyści (używając terminologii Sama Konkina: nadpaństwowcy) – jest odpowiednikiem władcy (monarchy) i jego najbliższego otoczenia (które, wbrew powszechnemu mniemaniu, miało ogromny wpływ na prowadzenie polityki tak wewnętrznej, jak i zewnętrznej), czyli najwyższych urzędników i rady królewskiej; 9% – to ci, którzy korzystają na istnieniu państwa w nie mniejszym stopniu niż opisany wyżej 1% – jest to klasa średnia państwowców, nie mająca takich pokładów energii i przedsiębiorczości, żeby przebić się do elity, będąca ekwiwalentem szlachty, tj. posiadaczy ziemskich; wreszcie pozostałe 90% – klasa wyzyskiwana, „niewolnicy”, a dawniej: chłopi i w znacznej mierze mieszczaństwo. Co więcej, ta ostatnia grupa społeczna trzymana jest za „zasłoną niewiedzy” przez klasy znajdujące się wyżej na drabinie. Sprzyja to alienacji poszczególnych klas i tworzeniu się swoistej nadbudowy, „zaprojektowanej w ten sposób, aby legitymizowała władzę klasową” (Hans-Hermann Hoppe, Analiza klasowa: marksizm a szkoła austriacka).

Po drugie, w obu systemach występuje tzw. triple helix (potrójna spirala). Feudalizm spajało porozumienie władców, szlachty (feudałów, wielkich posiadaczy ziemskich, magnatów) i Kościoła, kapitalizm zaś: polityków, wielkiego biznesu i intelektualistów. Każda z tych grup korzysta na działalności pozostałych, gdyż dobrze zdaje sobie sprawę, iż może utrzymywać swoją pozycję tylko w sytuacji, gdy status quo pozostanie niezmieniony. Bez owego porozumienia żaden z tych systemów nie mógłby istnieć.

Po trzecie, podział społeczeństwa jest zawsze zalegalizowany, tj. znajduje odzwierciedlenie w obowiązującym systemie prawnym, bez znaczenia, czy jest to prawo zwyczajowe (występujące w dużej mierze w średniowieczu), czy stanowione (będące podstawą w kapitalizmie państwowym). Tak w wiekach średnich, jak i dziś mamy do czynienia z rozróżnieniem na stany uprzywilejowane (dawniej: szlachta i duchowieństwo; obecnie: państwowcy i nadpaństwowcy) i nieuprzywilejowane (dawniej: mieszczaństwo i, przede wszystkim, stanowiące większość społeczeństwa chłopstwo; obecnie: serfs, czyli reszta populacji).

Po czwarte wreszcie, można zauważyć pewną paralelę pomiędzy prawem własności w feudalizmie i w kapitalizmie [państwowym]. Mianowicie, owa zbieżność występuje w charakterze praw własności (własność podzielona) i sposobie ich nabywania (umowa, w której strony nie mają takich samych praw).

Zgodnie ze zdrowym rozsądkiem [własność prywatna] powinna być to taka kategoria własności, która podlega osobie fizycznej (prywatnej), a także umożliwia nieograniczone cieszenie się produktami swojej pracy. [W kapitalizmie państwowym] [b]ędzie to odpowiadać w znacznej mierze rzeczywistości, jednak nie do końca. Co prawda, dana osoba jako właściciel jest uprawniona, zgodnie jeszcze z prawem rzymskim, do posiadania i używania rzeczy, do pobierania z niej pożytków oraz do rozporządzania nią, jednak nie są to uprawnienia absolutne. Przykładowo, nie można zgodnie z prawem nabywać narkotyków, nie można pobierać z rzeczy maksymalnych pożytków (podatki) czy nie można nawet posiadać rzeczy, jeśli państwo tak postanowi (wywłaszczenie). Czy te ograniczenia pozwalają w ogóle uznać własność prywatną za „prywatną”? Przecież, jeśli jakaś instytucja może wskazać jednostce, co jest dla niej lepsze i rozkazać wykonanie danej czynności, to oznacza to, że taka instytucja ma pierwotne prawo do własności jednostki i produktów jej pracy. Aplikując terminy właściwe dla feudalizmu, stwierdzamy, iż państwo (będące seniorem w tym stosunku) ma dominium directum, a wasalowi-lennikowi przysługuje tylko własność użytkowa (dominium utile).

Krzysztof Śledziński, Prekarium, http://liberalis.pl/2008/01/04/krzysztof-sledzinski-prekarium/

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At the Easter vigil, on Saturday, March 22, [2008] the pope [Benedict XVI] baptized at the basilica of Saint Peter, together with six other men and women from four continents, a convert from Islam, Magdi Allam . . . With his baptism – and with confirmation and communion immediately afterward – Allam took "Cristiano" as his second name.

As a Muslim, because of his vigorous criticism of "an Islam that is physiologically violent and historically conflictual," Allam has been the object of death threats in the past. For five years, he has lived under the protection of an armed guard, and lives in a secret location in the north of Rome, with his wife Valentina and their little son Davide.

His criticisms are not aimed solely against Islamism. On various occasions, he has denounced "the moral surrender, the intellectual obfuscation, the ideological and practical collaboration with Islamic extremism on the part of the West."

. . . Allam has repeatedly denounced another widespread fear in the Church: the one according to which in Muslim countries – where apostasy is sometimes punished with death – baptism ceases to be practiced, and in Christian countries converts from Islam are kept hidden.

With the baptism administered publicly to him by the pope at the Easter vigil, Allam hopes that these "catacombs" can be left behind.

[Magdi Cristiano Allam wrote:] It is thanks to Catholic religious that I acquired a deeply and essentially ethical conception of life, in which the person created in the image and likeness of God is called to carry out a mission that is situated within the context of a universal and eternal plan, aimed at the interior resurrection of individuals on this earth, and of all humanity on the Day of Judgment, which is founded upon faith in God and in the primacy of values, and based upon the meaning of individual responsibility and the meaning of duties toward society. It is by virtue of a Christian education and a shared experience of life together with Catholic religious that I have always cultivated a profound faith in the transcendent dimension, just as I have always sought for the certainty of the truth in absolute and universal values.

His Holiness has launched a clear and revolutionary message to a Church that until now has been excessively prudent in the conversion of Muslims, abstaining from proselytizing in Muslim majority countries, and remaining silent about the reality of converts in Christian countries. Out of fear. The fear of being unable to protect converts in the face of their condemnation to death for apostasy, and the fear of retaliation against Christians living in Muslim countries.

And so, now Benedict XVI, with his testimony, is telling us that we must overcome fear and have no qualms in affirming the truth of Jesus with Muslims as well.

For my part, I say that it is time to put an end to the presumption and violence of Muslims who do not respect the freedom of religious choice.

. . . I hope that from the historic gesture of the pope and from my witness they [Muslim converts to Christianity who are forced to hide their new faith] may derive the conviction that the time has come to emerge from the darkness of the catacombs, and to confirm publicly their will to be fully themselves.

Sandro Magister, The Story of a Convert from Islam – Baptized by the Pope at St. Peter's, http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/195566?eng=y

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On August 28, [2005] the archdiocese of Los Angeles held a conference at Mater Dolorosa retreat center in Pasadena, titled, "A Christian Understanding of Islam."

Hussam Ayloush from the Council on American Islamic Relations gave his opening address and introduction. "I can come [to this conference] knowing," he said, "that this is not an attempt to convert each other. I think we are beyond that."

Shaikh Khan explained that Muslims believe Islam is a way of life. "We do not understand the concept of giving to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's. We can't separate politics in religion, because in our sense Caesar is God." He went on to explain that Islam is a complete system that governs every way of living, from religion to daily living and law. Muslims follow a law called shar'ia, which is derived from the Qur'an (or Koran). "Islam governs and guides every process in life."

[Srdja Trifkovic said:] The true face of Islam is the shar'ia, the introduction of the tax on non-Muslims, and persecutions by Islamic government . . . Islam spread through the ancient world by jihad, misrepresented in the western world as one's simple religious struggle. But it is a struggle against non-Muslim religions. . . . the community that is not Muslim is invited to convert to Islam. If it refuses, it is then invited to accept Muslim overlords and pay the tax as a cost for remaining Christians or Jews. The third option, if they don't accept that, is the sword. In Islam there is no natural law or morality, and all is based on the Qur'anic text and the example of the prophet, the Haddith.

Ryan Grant, Jihad, A Beautiful Concept?, http://www.losangelesmission.com/ed/articles/2005/0510rg.htm

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[T]here is enough truth in the devout Muslim’s criticism of the less attractive aspects of Western secular culture to lend plausibility to his call for a return to purity as the answer to the Muslim world’s woes. He sees in the West’s freedom nothing but promiscuity and license, which is certainly there; but he does not see in freedom, especially freedom of inquiry, a spiritual virtue as well as an ultimate source of strength. This narrow, beleaguered consciousness no doubt accounts for the strand of reactionary revolt in contemporary Islam. The devout Muslim fears, and not without good reason, that to give an inch is sooner or later to concede the whole territory.

The older generation is only now realizing that even outward conformity to traditional codes of dress and behavior by the young is no longer a guarantee of inner acceptance (a perception that makes their vigilantism all the more pronounced and desperate). Recently I stood at the taxi stand outside my hospital, beside two young women in full black costume, with only a slit for the eyes. One said to the other, “Give us a light for a fag, love; I’m gasping.” Release the social pressure on the girls, and they would abandon their costume in an instant.

. . . the problem begins with Islam’s failure to make a distinction between church and state. Unlike Christianity, which had to spend its first centuries developing institutions clandestinely and so from the outset clearly had to separate church from state, Islam was from its inception both church and state, one and indivisible, with no possible distinction between temporal and religious authority.

. . . the legitimacy of temporal power could always be challenged by those who, citing Muhammad’s spiritual role, claimed greater religious purity or authority; the fanatic in Islam is always at a moral advantage vis-à-vis the moderate. Moreover, Islam—in which the mosque is a meetinghouse, not an institutional church—has no established, anointed ecclesiastical hierarchy to decide such claims authoritatively. With political power constantly liable to challenge from the pious, or the allegedly pious, tyranny becomes the only guarantor of stability, and assassination the only means of reform.

The indivisibility of any aspect of life from any other in Islam is a source of strength, but also of fragility and weakness, for individuals as well as for polities. Where all conduct, all custom, has a religious sanction and justification, any change is a threat to the whole system of belief. Certainty that their way of life is the right one thus coexists with fear that the whole edifice—intellectual and political—will come tumbling down if it is tampered with in any way. Intransigence is a defense against doubt and makes living on terms of true equality with others who do not share the creed impossible.

Not coincidentally, the punishment for apostasy in Islam is death: apostates are regarded as far worse than infidels, and punished far more rigorously.

. . . the anger of Muslims, their demand that their sensibilities should be accorded a more than normal respect, is a sign not of the strength but of the weakness—or rather, the brittleness—of Islam in the modern world, the desperation its adherents feel that it could so easily fall to pieces.

[Muslim] prisoners [in Britain] display no interest in Islam whatsoever; they are entirely secularized. True, they still adhere to Muslim marriage customs, but only for the obvious personal advantage of having a domestic slave at home. Many of them also dot the city with their concubines—sluttish white working-class girls or exploitable young Muslims who have fled forced marriages and do not know that their young men are married. This is not religion, but having one’s cake and eating it.

The young Muslim men in prison do not pray; they do not demand halal meat. They do not read the Qu’ran. They do not ask to see the visiting imam. . . . The young Muslim men want wives at home to cook and clean for them, concubines elsewhere, and drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.

What I think these young Muslim prisoners demonstrate is that the rigidity of the traditional code by which their parents live, with its universalist pretensions and emphasis on outward conformity to them, is all or nothing; when it dissolves, it dissolves completely and leaves nothing in its place.

Islam in the modern world is weak and brittle, not strong: that accounts for its so frequent shrillness. . . . The fanatics and the bombers do not represent a resurgence of unreformed, fundamentalist Islam, but its death rattle.

Theodore Dalrymple, When Islam Breaks Down, http://www.city-journal.org/html/14_2_when_islam.html

Look7777777 – Culture Watch – 2008.07.18

Many sympathetic commentators, who didn’t bother to read the speech [Benedict XVI’s Faith, reason and the university: memories and reflections given at the University of Regensburg on September 12, 2006], concluded that the main point of Benedict’s address was to denounce the use of violence in the service of religion. That is certainly a good secondary lesson to take from his remarks, but the full text makes it very clear that Benedict, like the emperor [Manuel II Paleologus], was using the example of violence simply to introduce his broader point: that “not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God’s nature.”

For a dialogue to take place, three conditions are necessary:

First, both sides must be interested in pursuing the truth, which requires acknowledging that there is such a thing as truth and that it can be known (or at least approached) through reason.

Second, both sides must represent their own positions truthfully (which also requires that those positions be expressed rationally), and without any intent to deceive. And

Third, each side must be able to take the other’s claims at face value, as truly representing the other’s position.

In De Potentia, St. Thomas Aquinas contrasts the Muslim view of physical causality with the Christian one, pointing out that Muslims believe that Allah interposes himself at every point in the chain of causality, while Christians believe that natural objects can act under their own power.

Few people, however, have explored the moral implications of the Muslim understanding of physical causality. To take Aquinas’s example, if I were to take this lighter and apply the flame to this sheet of paper, everyone in this room would assume that, everything being normal, the paper would ignite—and it does. It took no special act of God to cause the paper to burn; in fact, all other things being equal, it would have required His intervention to prevent a fire, just as He intervened when Nebuchanezzer threw the three youths into the furnace. According to the Muslim view, however, when I strike the lighter, Allah has to decide whether the flint will spark, and whether the spark will ignite the fuel. When I apply the flame to the paper, Allah must decide whether the paper will ignite. If it does catch fire, it is because Allah willed that each in this series of natural acts would occur; if it does not, it is because Allah willed that the paper would not burn.

Just as Christians believe that we are made in the image and likeness of God, Muslims see themselves as a reflection of Allah. And as we wish to conform our will to God’s Will, they attempt to conform their wills to Allah. But here, the similarities end. If Allah’s will, unlike God’s, is not bound up with rationality, then the discerning of that will takes a very different shape. In attempting to understand God’s Will, Christians can turn to the world around us, to natural law, to history, to tradition. We see the rationality—the consistent reasonableness—of God’s Will in the world that He created. But in Islam, the appearance of order is only that—an appearance. To the extent that the created world seems rational, it is only because Allah wishes it to appear so. His will could change at any moment, however—and the new order, or lack thereof, that he would create would be just as “right” as this one.

. . . logos, Pope Benedict reminds us, also means reason. “In the beginning was Reason”—not the modern, narrow, scientific conception of reason, which places reason at odds with faith, but the classical and medieval conception of reason, which accepts faith as the “evidence of things not seen.”

Where Islam is in power, it must dominate, to the exclusion of any other faith. The God of Christianity loves man, so much so that He sent His only Son to die for us; and He wants us to love Him in return, freely and unreservedly. Allah, in his capriciousness, demands total submission to his will, and so sharia is not a law of love, but of fear. For Christians, the fear of God is only the beginning of wisdom; it is charity—love—which is the bond of perfection.

Scott P. Richert, Pope Benedict XVI and Islam: Allah the Irrational, http://www.takimag.com/site/article/pope_benedict_xvi_and_islam_allah_the_irrational

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[...] nasz ulubiony prezes NBP Skrzypek [...] [usiłuje] ostatnio zmniejszyć inflację metodą najczęściej stosowaną – zmianą metody jej liczenia.

NBP zwięźle zawiadamia, że od czerwca [2008 r.] będzie używał „nowej miary inflacji bazowej” po wyłączeniu cen żywności i energii. Oops, to od razu wyostrza uwagę... „W ramach nowej miary inflacji bazowej z koszyka CPI wyłączane będą – oprócz cen żywności i napojów bezalkoholowych – także ceny energii, na które składają się ceny paliw oraz ceny nośników energii (gaz, energia elektryczna, opał etc.)” – ujawnia komunikat.

Jak widać, NBP nauczył się w końcu czegoś od Amerykanów. Wyrzuć z koszyka inflacyjnego wszystko, co rośnie, i oznajmij, że inflacja jest zero. No dobrze, może niezupełnie zero, bo to zanadto podejrzane. Ale co na przykład na przyzwoite 3%? Wygląda akurat w sam raz. Co, jeszcze za dużo? No to wywalmy jeszcze coś, co wzrasta! Zdaniem prezesa Skrzypka będzie to dostosowanie polskiej metodologii do praktyki międzynarodowej. Absolutnie. Z tym, że ujęlibyśmy to bardziej bezpośrednio – skoro inni kłamią jak bure suki, to i my nie będziemy gorsi.

Cynik9, Masowanie inflacji, czyli zasieki na tygrysy, http://dwagrosze.blogspot.com/2008/06/masowanie-inflacji.html

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Only this Christmas I was told in a toy-shop that not so many bows and arrows were being made for little boys; because they were considered dangerous. It might in some circumstances be dangerous to have a little bow. It is always dangerous to have a little boy. But no other society, claiming to be sane, would have dreamed of supposing that you could abolish all bows unless you could abolish all boys. . . . the modern mind seems quite incapable of distinguishing between the means and the end, between the organ and the disease, between the use and the abuse; and would doubtless break the boy along with the bow, as it empties out the baby with the bath.

. . . the first and most self-evident truth is that, of all the things a child sees and touches, the most dangerous toy is about the least dangerous thing. There is hardly a single domestic utensil that is not much more dangerous than a little bow and arrow. He can burn himself in the fire, he can boil himself in the bath, he can cut his throat with the carving-knife, he can scald himself with the kettle, he can choke himself with anything small enough, he can break his neck off anything high enough. He moves all day long amid a murderous machinery, as capable of killing and maiming as the wheels of the most frightful factory. He plays all day in a house fitted up with engines of torture like the Spanish Inquisition. And while he thus dances in the shadow of death, he is to be saved from all the perils of possessing a piece of string, tied to a bent bough or twig. When he is a little boy it generally takes him some time even to learn how to hold the bow. When he does hold it, he is delighted if the arrow flutters for a few yards like a feather or an autumn leaf. But even if he grows a little older and more skilful and has yet not learned to despise arrows in favour of aeroplanes, the amount of damage he could conceivably do with his little arrows would be about one hundredth part of the damage that he could always in any case have done by simply picking up a stone in the garden.

Now you do not keep a little boy from throwing stones by preventing him from ever seeing stones. You do not do it by locking up all the stones in the Geological Museum, and only issuing tickets of admission to adults. You do not do it by trying to pick up all the pebbles on the beach, for fear he should practise throwing them into the sea. You do not even adopt so obvious and even pressing a social reform as forbidding roads to be made of anything but asphalt, or directing that all gardens shall be made on clay and none on gravel. You neglect all these great opportunities opening before you; you neglect all these inspiring vistas of social science and enlightenment. When you want to prevent a child from throwing stones, you fall back on the stalest and most sentimental and even most superstitious methods. You do it by trying to preserve some reasonable authority and influence over the child. You trust to your private relation with the boy, and not to your public relation with the stone. And what is true of the natural missile is just as true, of course, of the artificial missile; especially as it is a very much more ineffectual and therefore innocuous missile. A man could be really killed, like St. Stephen, with the stones in the road. I doubt if he could be really killed, like St. Sebastian, with the arrows in the toyshop. But anyhow the very plain principle is the same. If you can teach a child not to throw a stone, you can teach him when to shoot an arrow; if you cannot teach him anything, he will always have something to throw. . . . The truth is that all sorts of faddism, both official and theoretical, have broken down the natural authority of the domestic institution, especially among the poor; and the faddists are now casting about desperately for a substitute for the thing they have themselves destroyed. The normal thing is for the parents to prevent a boy from doing more than a reasonable amount of damage with his bow and arrow; and for the rest, to leave him to a reasonable enjoyment of them. Officialism cannot thus follow the life of the individual boy, as can the individual guardian. You cannot appoint a particular policeman for each boy, to pursue him when he climbs trees or falls into ponds. So the modern spirit has descended to the indescribable mental degradation of trying to abolish the abuse of things by abolishing the things themselves; which is as if it were to abolish ponds or abolish trees.

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, Fancies Versus Fads, Chapter: The Terror of a Toy, http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/Fancies_Versis_Fads.txt

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Being married to a man is one thing, but raising five of them is quite another. I remember staring in disbelief at my blue pajama-ed infant son over a decade ago and being overcome with terror. A daughter had been familiar territory, but what did I know about raising one of these?

I learned by doing, though. By doing, I learned not only something about what these boy creatures were like, but also something about myself: that, even if I don’t always understand their inner workings, that even if I might never share their particular passion for switchblades, I love boys. I love their boyish passions, their whole-hearted generosity, and their fiery sense of justice. It is through my own family that God continues to challenge me to grow, to change, and to appreciate more fully the vastness His creation.

Before I left for my run the other day, Dan demonstrated how to flip open the jackknife. You know, for when the bad guy attacked.

“Okay,” I consented. “Now show me how to close it.”

“You don’t need to know that,” my logical man explained. “You’ll leave it in him.”

Danielle Bean, Oh Boy, http://insidecatholic.com/Joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1338&Itemid=48

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Cæremoniale Episcoporum (Liber I, XII.5.) [says]: "In the interior also, if it can be done, the walls of the chuch shall be covered with rich hangings (aulæis), the tribunes however with pure silken ones, or nobler curtains, in the colour of the other paraments, according to the quality of the feast." – a reader from Malta has sent in some spectacular images of churches in Malta and Gozo in festal decorations. We may give thanks to God that the Catholic people of Malta has preserved and kept alive this precious heritage.

Gregor Kollmorgen, More on Wall Hangings for Solemn Liturgical occasions – the Splendour of Malta, http://thenewliturgicalmovement.blogspot.com/2008/06/more-on-wall-hangings-for-solemn.html

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. . . any realistic barrier to the wholesale "chipping" of Western citizens is not technological but cultural. It relies upon the visceral reaction against the prospect of being personally marked as one component in a massive human inventory.

Today we might strongly hold such beliefs, but sensibilities can, and probably will, change. How this remarkable attitudinal transformation is likely to occur is clear to anyone who has paid attention to privacy issues over the past quarter-century. There will be no 3 a.m. knock on the door by storm troopers come to force implants into our bodies. The process will be more subtle and cumulative, couched in the unassailable language of progress and social betterment, and mimicking many of the processes that have contributed to the expansion of closed-circuit television cameras and the corporate market in personal data.

A series of tried and tested strategies will be marshalled to familiarize citizens with the technology. These will be coupled with efforts to pressure tainted social groups and entice the remainder of the population into being chipped.

An increasing array of hypothetical chipping scenarios will also be depicted in entertainment media, furthering the familiarization process.

In the West, chips will first be implanted in members of stigmatized groups. Pedophiles are the leading candidate for this distinction, although it could start with terrorists, drug dealers, or whatever happens to be that year's most vilified criminals. Short-lived promises will be made that the technology will only be used on the "worst of the worst." In fact, the wholesale chipping of incarcerated individuals will quickly ensue, encompassing people on probation and on parole.

Employers will start to expect implants as a condition of getting a job. The U.S. military will lead the way, requiring chips for all soldiers as a means to enhance battlefield command and control — and to identify human remains. From cooks to commandos, every one of the more than one million U.S. military personnel will see microchips replace their dog tags.

Following quickly behind will be the massive security sector. Security guards, police officers, and correctional workers will all be expected to have a chip. Individuals with sensitive jobs will find themselves in the same position.

In situations where the chips are clearly forced on people, the judgments will deem them to be undeniable infringements of the right to privacy. However, they will then invoke the nebulous and historically shifting standard of "reasonableness" to pronounce coerced chipping a reasonable infringement on privacy rights in a context of demands for governmental efficiency and the pressing need to enhance security in light of the still ongoing wars on terror, drugs, and crime.

At this juncture, an unfortunately common tragedy of modern life will occur: A small child, likely a photogenic toddler, will be murdered or horrifically abused. It will happen in one of the media capitals of the Western world, thereby ensuring non-stop breathless coverage. Chip manufactures will recognize this as the opportunity they have been anticipating for years. With their technology now largely bug-free, familiar to most citizens and comparatively inexpensive, manufacturers will partner with the police to launch a high-profile campaign encouraging parents to implant their children "to ensure your own peace of mind."

Special deals will be offered. Implants will be free, providing the family registers for monitoring services. Loving but unnerved parents will be reassured by the ability to integrate tagging with other functions on their PDA so they can see their child any time from any place.

Any prospect of removing the chip will become increasingly untenable, as having a chip will be a precondition for engaging in the main dynamics of modern life, such as shopping, voting, and driving.

The remaining holdouts will grow increasingly weary of Luddite jokes and subtle accusations that they have something to hide. Exasperated at repeatedly watching neighbours bypass them in "chipped" lines while they remain subject to the delays, inconveniences, and costs reserved for the unchipped, they too will choose the path of least resistance and get an implant.

In one generation, then, the cultural distaste many might see as an innate reaction to the prospect of having our bodies marked like those of an inmate in a concentration camp will likely fade.

Kevin Haggerty, One generation is all they need, http://www.thestar.com/sciencetech/article/136744

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JC DENTON
How about a report on yourself?

MORPHEUS
I was a prototype for Echelon IV. My instructions are to amuse visitors with information about themselves.

JC DENTON
I don't see anything amusing about spying on people.

MORPHEUS
Human beings feel pleasure when they are watched. I have recorded their smiles as I tell them who they are.

JC DENTON
Some people just don't understand the dangers of indiscriminate surveillance.

MORPHEUS
The need to be observed and understood was once satisfied by God. Now we can implement the same functionality with data-mining algorithms.

JC DENTON
Electronic surveillance hardly inspired reverence. Perhaps fear and obedience, but not reverence.

MORPHEUS
God and the gods were apparitions of observation, judgment, and punishment. Other sentiments toward them were secondary.

JC DENTON
No one will ever worship a software entity peering at them through a camera.

MORPHEUS
The human organism always worships. First it was the gods, then it was fame (the observation and judgment of others), next it will be the self-aware systems you have built to realize truly omnipresent observation and judgment.

JC DENTON
You underestimate humankind's love of freedom.

MORPHEUS
The individual desires judgment. Without that desire, the cohesion of groups is impossible, and so is civilization.
The human being created civilization not because of a willingness but because of a need to be assimilated into higher orders of structure and meaning.
God was a dream of good government.

A conversation between JC Denton and Morpheus AI. From Deus Ex, a computer game released in 2000.

Look7777777 – Culture Watch – 2008.07.05

[Phil] Spector was most famous for his production technique, the “Wall of Sound.” To achieve it, he piled layer upon layer of superfluous sound onto each recording, ornamenting lead vocals with near constant background vocals, choirs oohing and ahhing, strings, horns, two basses, several guitars, and a host of echo and doubling effects.

Spector considers himself another Wagner, but he was more of a musical Hitler. For him, the Wall of Sound was about control. By eliminating any hint of silence in a recording, he forced the listener to be completely passive, free from that moment of anticipation that permits the mind to fill in the next blank. To listen to a Spector production is to be “immersed” in Phil.

On a broader level, we live in Spector’s Wall of Sound. Not a single second of our lives is meant for silence. We have our iPods, cellphones, TVs, web browsers, and radios. And everyone else has his, too. The car in the next lane has its subwoofer, as does the kid down the street. Outside the window at work, the sound of RPMs rising and falling continues throughout the day. Inside the office, the hard drive spins and the cooling fan whirs, the landline rings and the copier turns. The mouse clicks, the keys click, and we click through the pages on the web browser, filled with embedded commercials, songs, audio clips from films. Then these sounds follow us home. And even at night, when the sound of passing engines and mufflers is less frequent, we can hear the click of the thermostat, the furnace lighting, the fan springing to life. Our Wall of Sound culture delivers noise at such a decibel level that, even in our few quiet moments, the reverberations of songs (“I can’t get that tune out of my head”) fill our quiet moments. Yet we crave sound so much that we purchase noise machines to help us sleep.

What we do not want is silence. Silence is awkward—makes for awkward pauses. And we are comfortable enough with our Wall of Sound that we assume this has no effect on our ability to hear.

. . . the goal of silence is not merely to eliminate noise: It is to hear the voice of God. And in order to hear, we have to have “ears to hear.”

The culture of Christendom was a culture of leisure, because Christianity is a religion first of sound, and then of sight—of word before image. This is no iconoclasm: It is only to say that, in the economy of grace, the image serves the word. For all of their splendor and majesty, the great cathedrals of the West are designed chiefly to evoke silence and, thus, focus the attention of the hearer on the Gospel.

Our media culture, flanked on all sides by the Wall of Sound, is only bound by the limits of its own technology and the perversity of those who use it. And our noisy technology has gone to great lengths to eliminate the natural barriers of place from every aspect of life.

The naked individual lives in a fantasy world in which he is free from all outside influence. Our noisy machines make us independent of others by doing their work.

. . . that independence remains a mere illusion. For with the loss of “oral culture” . . . came the loss of memory, of place, of identity. We exchanged mediators for media. We must now trust people whom we will never see, whose real voices we will never hear, to tell us what’s important; they discern for us the signs of the times. They fill our ears with words, which only adds to the noise.

Silence shatters the illusion of independence, breaking down our Wall of Sound that protects us from Reality. When our souls are still, we can no longer drown out the voice of conscience or, more importantly, of the Logos. Yes, grace is required for us to answer the call of God; but we have to turn down the TV to hear the telephone ringing.

I do wonder, though: If our culture is surrounded by a Wall of Sound, who is our Phil Spector? Who are we taking our cues from? Surely, it must be someone who is desperate for us not to hear, or believe, the voice of God. Someone who wishes to immerse us in himself. Someone who wants us to be altogether passive, easier to control. Someone who would say, “It’s not about the Song, it’s about me.” That sounds like the one who said in the beginning, “Did God really say?” and “You will not surely die” and “Your eyes will be opened” and “I think I killed somebody.”

[G.S. said:] I would suggest that the distinction to be made is not between sound vs. silence, but rather noise vs. harmony.

Neither sound nor silence can be identified as categorically good or categorically bad — rather, each is a good in some particular contexts, while bad in others.

Aaron D. Wolf, Wall of Sound: Noise as the Basis of Culture, http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/?p=245

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Tamten nie mógł tego wiedzieć, czym jest prawdziwa miłość. Niczym z tego, co pokazują w filmach. Prawdziwa miłość odmienia cię całego i przestraja tak, że poza tą jedną, jedyną kobietą już nikt ani nic już dla ciebie nie istnieje. Tylko jej skóra ma smak, który budzi w tobie pożądanie. Tylko jej głos, jej ruchy, jej ciało zachowują powab, pozostają zdolne rozpalić w tobie ogień. Inne kobiety bledną, zlewają się z tłem, niegodne uwagi, i dopiero wtedy, gdy ten stary frazes, że nie widzi się poza swą żoną świata, stanie się prawdą – dopiero wtedy można poznać, czym jest naprawdę miłość i bijąca z niej siła.

Chłonął jej dotyk, w ciemności pełnej szeptów i złotawych pobłysków dalekiego światła na jej skórze. Szeptał jej imię, całując jej ramiona, piersi... Jeszcze jedna rzecz, o której jego prorocy kłamali. Ci nieszczęśni, biedni ludzie, którzy obijają się o siebie w klatce życia i natychmiast odskakują, którzy wciąż próbują z kimś nowym, którzy tak mocno wierzą w swoje prawo do szczęścia i stale sobie powtarzają, jak bardzo im się ono należy – ci nieszczęśni ludzie nigdy go nie odnajdą. Będą próchnieć od środka, będą wmawiać sobie, że to, co mogą mieć, krótka rozkosz, przelotny nastrój, że to jest właśnie tym, czym być powinno – i nie będą mogli zrozumieć, co tracą i dlaczego. Może właśnie stąd tyle w ludziach szaleństwa; nikt ich nie nauczył, że szczęście nie bywa przynoszone podmuchem losu, że trzeba budować je codziennie z najdrobniejszych spraw, uśmiechów, zgromadzonych rzeczy i codziennych rytuałów. Że trzeba zakląć każdą szczęśliwą chwilę we wspólnym życiu, jak w krysztale, aby płonęła wiecznie. I że nie wolno słuchać fałszywych proroków miłości, którzy nigdy jej w życiu nie znaleźli i nie wiedzą, czym może i powinna ona być.

Rafał A. Ziemkiewicz, Pieprzony los kataryniarza, Warszawa 1999, s. 246-247

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Ultimately, abortion, homosexuality, contraception, and widespread fornication are not merely things brought about by social activists seeking to destroy public morality. Every generation has those, but not every generation has lived through the hell of the last 200 years. The above are things brought about not because social activists convince us to do them, but because big international money is behind them.

We can produce all the studies we want showing that abortion is bad, that the fetus is fully alive and certainly aware of the fact it is being gruesomely murdered. We can make all the links we want between abortion and cancer, the pill and cancer, the psychological effects of both, but it doesn't matter because money is backing abortion . . . It will not end until we dismantle the inordinate power of big business and the industrial media complex.

Ryan Grant, Why I don't normally write on life-issues, http://athanasiuscm.blogspot.com/2008/06/why-i-dont-normally-write-on-life.html

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Sądzę, że powód mniejszej znajomości postaci św. Józefa jest głębszy niż fakt, że Ewangelie mówią o nim niewiele. Jest to raczej efekt jego własnej decyzji, by pozostać na drugim planie, by być dobrym cieniem Maryi i Jezusa, by być dla nich parasolem przyjaźni, troski i czułości, by być dyskretnie obecnym po to, aby osoby, które najbardziej pokochał, czuły się najmocniej chronione i bezpieczne. Dla św. Józefa było oczywiste, że im dojrzalsza i silniejsza jest miłość mężczyzny do żony i dziecka, tym bardziej on sam pragnie pozostać w cieniu i ukryciu.

Postawa Józefa potwierdza, że jest on człowiekiem wiary i modlitwy. W obliczu zaskakujących losów Maryi i Jej Syna, Józef nie kieruje się własną spontanicznością czy mądrością, lecz pozostaje wsłuchany w głos Boga i posłuszny woli Bożej do końca.

Józef i Maryja stopniowo odkrywali sens ich wspólnej historii i wolę Bożą wobec nich. Obydwoje potrzebowali czasu, by dorastać do zadań i do formy życia, do której Bóg ich powołał.

Józef uświadamia wszystkim mężom i ojcom wszystkich czasów, że to, czego najbardziej potrzebują ich bliscy, to ich miłość i obecność, a nie stworzenie jakichś zewnętrznych warunków wygody czy materialnego dobrobytu.

Ofiarowanie Jezusa w świątyni jest gestem głębokiego zawierzenia Józefa wobec Boga. W tym geście Józef przypomina wszystkim, że każdy rodzic, który dojrzale kocha swoje dziecko, przynosi je do Boga, gdyż wie, że Bóg jest jeszcze wspanialszym Rodzicem, który bardziej rozumie i dojrzalej kocha dziecko niż jego rodzice. Powierzenie dziecka opiece Bożej, przyprowadzanie dziecka do Boga, pragnienie, by Bóg to dziecko adoptował, to szczyt miłości i mądrości rodziców w każdych czasach.

Józef wie już tak wiele o tym niezwykłym Dziecięciu, ale nadal zdumiewa się Jego tajemnicą. To kolejne zadanie ojca: zdumiewać się tajemnicą dziecka.

Józef nie waha się ani chwili. Natychmiast bierze ze sobą Żonę i Jej Syna i ucieka do Egiptu. Z pewnością nie ma pieniędzy, ani miejsca, w którym mógłby się schronić w obcym kraju. Ucieka nie wiedząc, jak długo pozostanie na wygnaniu. Po ludzku rzecz biorąc jest w sytuacji rozpaczliwej. Jednak Józef nie rozpacza, gdyż wie, że znajduje się pod opieką Boga i jest pewien swojej miłości do tych, których chroni.

Józef może uratować Jezusa tylko dlatego, że posłuchał głosu Bożego i że nieustannie współpracuje z Bogiem. W obliczu jego postawy można postawić pytanie: ileż dzieci, iluż nastolatków zostałoby uratowanych, gdyby ich rodzice nie próbowali wychowywać swoich dzieci i troszczyć się o nie jedynie własną mocą, lecz gdyby przyprowadzali te dzieci do Boga i u Boga szukali mądrości oraz siły, by wychowywać i chronić swoje dzieci przed zagrożeniami zewnętrznymi i wewnętrznymi.

Józef — podobnie, jak każdy dojrzały rodzic — wie, że nawet [...] dziecko [przerastające rodziców w horyzontach myślenia i działania] nie przestaje być dzieckiem. Ono nadal potrzebuje mądrości rodziców i wsparcia z ich strony. Również wtedy, gdy rozumie bardzo dużo z tajemnicy życia i szlachetnego postępowania. Słów, których najbardziej potrzebuje, słów prawdy, a zwłaszcza słów miłości, nie może dziecko wypowiedzieć do samego siebie. Musi usłyszeć je od tych, którzy je najbardziej kochają.

Józef i Maryja znajdują Jezusa w świątyni, a nie gdzie indziej. Oto najlepszy sprawdzian odpowiedzialnego wychowania: odnajdowanie własnych dzieci w świątyni, odkrywanie, że żyją one w obecności Boga, że słuchają głosu sumienia, że są zaprzyjaźnione z Tym, który je najpełniej rozumie, kocha i chroni.

ks. Marek Dziewiecki, Święty Józef – psychospołeczny portret dojrzałego mężczyzny, http://www.opoka.org.pl/biblioteka/T/TS/swieci/s_jozef_mezcz.html

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The online world has its own cliches and truisms, none so haggard as the belief that reliable written communication is impossible without frequent use of emoticons, better known as the "smileys." . . . Emoticons are the electronic equivalent of spin doctors: commonly inserted at the end of a sentence that is meant to be interpreted as sarcasm, or, in general, whenever the writer fears his or her prose may be about to jump the iron rails of literalism.

. . . emoticon users all proffer the same rationale for the smiley tic: since the streams of ascii characters flowing across the Internet (usually described as "cold," "mechanistic," etc.) cannot carry body language or tone, the missing cues must be supplied through punctuation.

Never addressed by such people is the question of how humans have managed to communicate with the written word for thousands of years without strewing crudely fashioned ideograms across their parchments. It is as if the written word were a cutting-edge technology without useful precedents. Some hackers actually go so far as to maintain, with a straight face (:-I), that words on a computer screen are different from words on paper--implying that writers of e-mail have nothing useful to learn from Dickens or Hemingway, and that time spent reading old books might be better spent coming up with new emoticons.

Other smiley partisans maintain that, since many messages are tossed off extemporaneously, the medium has more in common with talking than writing, hence the need for emoticons. This neatly sidesteps the awkward fact that what these people are engaged in is, in fact, nothing other than plain old writing and reading, and that, as always, they may have to invest some time and effort in the act if they don't want to mess it up.

. . . members of the anti-smiley underground constitute something of a secret subculture; they can find each other only through lengthy exchanges of smiley-free messages, growing more certain with each unadorned sentence that they have found a fellow traveler.

The irony is, Net culture was unusually literate. The pioneers of the Net were hackers, people who routinely spend twelve to sixteen hours a day editing text, and whose favorite leisure-time activity is inhaling fantasy and science fiction novels by the pallet load. These people are no strangers to words. . . . in hacker argot, the emoticon is a "kludge," a hasty and inelegant patch on a problem that's too difficult to solve just now.

[Later Neal Stephenson wrote that he no longer agrees with the above text.]

Neal Stephenson, Smiley's people, http://www.spesh.com/lee/ns/smiley.html

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BRILL
See, the government's been in bed with the entire telecommunications industry since the '40s. They've infected everything. They can get into your bank statements, your computer files, your e-mail, listen to your phone calls.

ROBERT
My wife's been saying that for years.

BRILL
Every wire, every airwave. The more technology you use, the easier it is for them to keep tabs on you. It's a brave new world out there.

Conversation between Edward 'Brill' Lyle and Robert Clayton Dean. From the movie Enemy Of The State (Tony Scott, 1998).

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[N]iewolnictwo w stanach południowych nie było wcale „produktem rynku”, ale raczej rezultatem ingerencji państwa i to nie „rynek”, ale prawodawstwo państwowe było odpowiedzialne za jego zyskowność.

[...] praca wolnego człowieka jest bardziej produktywna niż niewolnika, a jeśli do tego ma być tańsza „w eksploatacji”, to nic nie stoi na przeszkodzie, aby „rynkowo” wyparła droższą konkurencję. I rzeczywiście do pewnego stopnia miało to miejsce.

Południowi plantatorzy byli w pełni świadomi faktu, że ich niewolnicy nadają się tylko do wykonywania relatywnie prostych czynności. Każda bardziej skomplikowana praca wymagałaby wykształcenia, a to z kolei nie tylko zwiększałoby koszty posiadania niewolnika, ale także stwarzało ryzyko, że – mówiąc wprost – ów zmądrzeje i zapragnie wolności. Z tych właśnie powodów w latach 1790-1810 stopniowo wzrastała liczba wyzwalanych niewolników, którzy powiększali grono wolnych robotników i tym samym jeszcze bardziej zwiększali konkurencję dla niewolnictwa, przyczyniając się do kolejnych wyzwoleń. Gdyby temu samonapędzającemu się rynkowemu procesowi pozwolono spokojnie funkcjonować przez kolejne lata do roku 1860, trzeba by uwolnić dwa razy więcej niewolników, niż w ogóle ich było. Jednakże w 1800 r. stopa wyzwoleń znacznie się obniżyła, a w latach 1830-1860 spadła nawet do zera za sprawą stanowych przepisów, które zabraniały zwracania wolności niewolnikom.

Jakkolwiek trudno może w to uwierzyć, prawo własności do kupowanego niewolnika nie było wcale nieograniczone, gdyż krępował je wydawany przez legislaturę stanową zakaz wyzwolenia go, niezależnie od warunków, na jakich miałoby się to odbyć. Niewolnik nie mógł się wykupić, a właściciel nie mógł, pod groźbą srogiej kary, zagwarantować mu wolności nawet w testamencie. Niewolnicy byli więc tak na dobrą sprawę własnością legislatury stanowej.

Juliusz Jabłecki, Ekonomika niewolnictwa i wyzwolenia, http://www.mises.pl/287