rioting young men are vulnerable young men by Elliott Leigh Tucker on Tuesday, 09 August 2011 at 00:56
ive been working with this client group for at least 7 years. Angry young men are vulnerable young men. Destruction is not acceptable. But with no job, no hope, no chances. This is how they communicate. Broken families. Broken lives. Ours is a Polarised society. Of haves and have nots. we need to listen rather than judge them as animals. It might be too late. But the only way is to find means to allow the vulnerable to express their pain in non destructive ways. Such as projects i run and support. And society needs to hear what they are saying. One thing is that they mostly seem to target the capitalism that enslaves their desire to consume. And the empty meaninglessness of consumption leads to destruction. for humanity to act out pain, to try find its soul in the darkness.
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* * Jennifer Nelson, Rachel Godfrey, Charlotte Kane and 8 others like this. *
Elliott Leigh Tucker: as an example of the fight agains enslavement is the targeting of bettin shops. And how there are multiple bettin shops in poor areas, that feed off gambling addiction, that life is down to chance and tempting away cash from those who dont really have
09 August at 01:25 · LikeUnlike · 1 person
Adam Coffer: Young men who have a choice
Adam Coffer: Idealism. You serve out an enormous insult to the "young men and women" who are choosing not to resort to mindless violence. There is no "cause", no agenda, they are simply mustering anger amongst disaffected youths to see which area can "o...utdo" the last. This is not the first generation to suffer deprivation. That does not render social/economic inequality right, but armchair sympathy and Facebook love is not going to kill nor cure this. This is utter criminality, nothing more sophisticated. o Elliott Leigh Tucker: your responses might be facebook armchair but on the rest of my page i posted a few movies from projects i have been running for years. Where we try and teach young criminals a bit of self awareness and responsibility
o Adam Coffer: that, in a nutshell, is my point. and as you know, I am enormously proud of you for that. but you dillute this effort and work (for the record, I too work with youth charities in this country and abroad)by essentially forgiving, indeed almo...st condoning, the actions of thugs and criminals under the cloak of a "justifiable cause". This is not a socio-economic debate nor the result of a state-enforced disenfranchisement. Tis is the result of criminal and thuggish minds not having been brought up with discipline or aspiration, of a state that has been too tolerant and not educated morality. i repeat, this is not the first generation to suffer deprivation. Our forefathers fought to achieve more-- not to take it from others but to mirror those who had it.
# Oren Greenberg: Just to offer a contrasting opinion, I find Elliot's deep understanding and compassion above to amplify the enormous value of his work.
# Elliott Leigh Tucker: im not condoning at all. But the public responses are typically just as ignorant. Calling them animals or to just shoot them, lock them up in a dungeon or something. The goverment cut the youth justice board and other charities that fund pr...ojects for young offenders. This is what you get in place of that. Societ is a balance. There is nothing for these young men. Other parts of society cant just shut themselves off in secure ivory towers - we have to see society as balance that is out of balance and we all need to be responsible in some way
Adam Coffer: i agree, entirely and despise the bandwagon response just as much. BUt ultimately this has now become an evil situation, aimed only at causing trouble and pain. That is a worrying starting point for recovery. You cannot help people who don't want to be helped.
# Elliott Leigh Tucker: the filmmaker luis bunuel said that in the bowels of capitalism lies fascism. this will probably be the response of society. to show its power and brutally lock up 15 and 16 year olds. and this will begin their descent into crime. they make... the choice to loot. but is it a free choice? if they have no father? or their stepfather beat the crap out of them as a kid. or they live in some squalid housing estate smoking weed every day to nullify their pain. they cant just be seen as animals and then placed a pawns in the justice system. they need some kind of role modeling and projects where they can gain healing, learn skills and build their confidence as human beings.
Wednesday at 10:26 · Like · 3 people # Adam Coffer: and as for those of identical background who chose not to riot? You neglect to recognise that much of what has occurred is, in fact, "organised" crime; to cite the vile creature who was interviewed on Sky last night "we are doing it because we can get away with it. Because there are no police here". Wednesday at 16:27 # Jake Coe: I like your thinking on this Elliott. This is similar to a discussion that I have been having. I think that regardless of whether we look upon the rioters with compassion or not, punishing them without offering any healing will only amplify the amount of future criminals. Wednesday at 22:54 · Like · 1 person # Jake Coe: it seems to me that by pouring blame onto the rioters, (who obviously do have a degree of responsibility) people are neglecting to look at their own responsibility in this. We all play a part in society. I hope that these events might make people more aware of their roles. I admire the work that you do Elliott, and it's making me think about what I can do to work towards useful solution. Wednesday at 23:01 · Like · 1 person # Adam Coffer: Intolerable how people spout socio-idealism to seek to blame anyone except those who choose to carry out the actions they have. Wednesday at 23:27 · LikeUnlike # Elliott Leigh Tucker: im sure you know as a father ad. and im saying this seriously not patronising. its a comment of respect - that children act out or mimic adults and other role models around them. so just blaming these kids and coming down really hard on the...m is not solving the problem. its the communities and families they dont really have. thats why they form gangs, as types of psuedo families of kinship. and the other influence is society. and the obsession to consume. so they rob electronic shops. our leaders have raped other countries throughout history (and still do) so kids out of control rape the high street. why doesnt government redirect the millions supporting the fight against the taliban on working with kids out of control on our own doorstep. Wednesday at 23:58 · LikeUnlike # Adam Coffer: I don't disagree with much of what you have written El, nor do I dispute that these kids need help- altho much of what has occurred has been "organised" and "premeditated". But I cannot accept that parents, children, gangs need not take res...ponsibility for their actions. It is too easy and futile to say, continually, that its Blair's, Thatcher's, Cameron's, Churchill's fault. The financial argument if flawed as budgets simply cannot run in that way. I believe the neglect, lack of policing, oppressive architecture, lack of investment in sports/leisure facilities, are certainly contributing to the negativity that festers. But you must not forget the hundreds of thousands of young people trying to do good, be morally sound and achieve better, from similar or identical environments. Our forefathers came here with nothing. They weren't all saints. There will have been some who did bad things. But the constant was that they were trying to achieve better, for their future generations. Thursday at 00:11 · LikeUnlike # Elliott Leigh Tucker: for sure there is a lot of apathy and self hatred out there. as you say they need to want to change first. they need to realise that they are vulnerable and are causing damage to exorcise their pain. that would be part of a therapeutic proc...ess and they would need to consent to that. in some ways it runs really deep. that our is a lonely selfish society. spiritually empty. totally different to our grandfathers. not many people looted during the blitz. today if they get the chance to rob, then they will take for themselves. its sad. but its also sad how maybe all of us just sit back and watch it online. maybe adding to the fear and the emptiness. i feel these kids are symbolic of a wider malaise. these are the stupid ones. running around town centres in front of cctv cameras. but they dont care for their lives. their lives are cheap. because society sees them as hoodies and asbos and feral. check out asbotv on youtube. maybe its the intelligent ones of us that are just as responsible. sitting back and watching it all like a movie. Thursday at 00:31 · Like · 1 person... # Jake Coe @Adam, I find it interesting that you see things in such a polarised way. Accepting our own responsibilities and looking at reasons for what is happening does not negate the responsibility of the rioters. These people must be made accountable for their actions, but labelling them as sub-human is not helpful to anyone. Thursday at 08:50 · LikeUnlike # Adam Coffer: I find it interesting that a protective instinct perhaps- which in itself is not a bad thing- would you to label me (or I presume those who do not share your unrequited sympathy, rightly or wrong) polarised; moreover, i cannot find any reference above to sub-humans. It is important to accept that other opinions are just that- not Black nor White. Thursday at 08:58 · LikeUnlike # Adam Coffer: Further to the above, you do not know me so cannot possibly be aware of the multitude of factors that I consider to reach various opinions. I simply refuse to accept a doctrine or mantra or restrictive argument. Life unfortunately is not that simple. Neither 'bang them all up" nor "invest in them" suffices. Thursday at 09:02 · LikeUnlike # Jake Coe: ok, I read 'vile creature' as sub-human. So, what would suffice? Thursday at 09:05 · LikeUnlike # Adam Coffer: That individual is vile. I assume you did not see it. their actions have been vile; their motives- vile; it is abhorrent to witness such disdain and lack of care or consideration for others. I will not be persuaded otherwise. But you are t...aking that moral perspective to mean that I- or those like minded- assume that this is entirely their "fault" or "blame". You must not restrict fluidity of language to cultivate your argument.
read in Lamentations, “How doth the city sit solitary… she that was great among the nations… she weepeth sore… her friends have dealt treacherously with her.”
A
pulsating hum vibrates from the basement as I descend the stairs. As
the sound rises and the light darkens, I can’t help but worry that I
have embarked upon a cult. I was informed that the Moishe House is a
hub of alternative Jewish practice, but I now question just how
‘alternative’ these practices will be? Will I discover a crowd
preparing rituals with skull bones and incense? Or perhaps an enclave
of hippies will be dancing around a fire?
As I enter the
heart of the humming, I am relieved to find a serene atmosphere with
elements characteristic of a Tu’Bishvat seder. An alluring glow of
candlelight illuminates the spread of fruit, wine and humming
participants arranged on the floor. However, I still decide to perch
beside a good exit route, purely as a contingency plan. The seder was
comprised of four sections, representative of the four calendar
seasons. Each section was traditionally marked with specific fruit and
wine. But being the Moishe House, the event was additionally framed
around aspects of spirituality, creativity and social justice. Writing
letters to your local MP, listening to the harmonic sounds of a
didgeridoo (yes, a didgeridoo) and pretending to grow into a tree,
appear to be the norms at this festive occasion.
Having
never previously heard of the Moishe House, I was remarkably surprised
by the high attendance. Mainly consisting of twenty-to-thirty year
olds, the house seems successful in their aim to reconnect the Jewish
youth to religion. The forum is strictly non-denominational, one’s
Jewish affiliation is unquestioned here; it solely endeavours to bring
an exciting and creative twist to Jewish traditions. The five
individuals who reside at the house were incredibly friendly and
welcoming. The guests were also inviting to the newcomers, and
interested to discuss common interests. Overall, there seemed to be an
unconscious emphasis of acceptance, the acceptance of others, of
religion, and even of my cynicism.
The seder culminated
with music and dance, where participants were able to disperse and
break their silence, which had been mandatory during the event. I
decided to depart at this stage, more open-minded than when I had
entered. The entire episode had been eye-opening; there seems to be an
array of youth today seeking alternative Jewish experiences. This
encompasses the dynamic growing Jewish arts-scene that has emerged in
the community. But I still wonder what draws individuals to the Moishe
House? Are they merely wandering Jews seeking enlightenment? Or, in the
words of a fellow guest, do people just want to feel like they part of
something? Regardless of the implications, the Moishe House exists and
welcomes anyone who wants to participate in their unconventional
experiences. Just remember to retain an open-mind.
Chinyere Nwobani : Could you please answer these questions from
your religious stand point. It's research for a project. 3.1 State how
one faith tradition would explain the purpose of human life. 3.2 State how one faith tradition would explain the purpose of d...eath.
Elliott Leigh Tucker: mainstream jewish tradition seems to suggest
that life is for the purpose of mitzvot (good deeds commanded in the
torah) to spread light, give to humanity and tikkun (rebuilding the
sparks of holiness in the world to allow more holiness in)....
so one of the main modern teachers the Lubavitcher Rebbe suggests its
about transforming what is dark into light, by redeeming souls/people
from their darkness and changing their nature (because ultimately
everything and everyone has a spark of holiness in it, its just often
hidden). in terms of death, the kabbalistic tradition speaks about
'gilgul' - reincarnation. that the good deeds done in the physical
world are the only thing that promotes the soul in the afterlife. that
there is a soul afterlife of varying dimensions - celestial realms -
'this world is but a corridor to the next'. and if the soul needs to
continue its journey back to the Ultimate Source, then it might need
more lifetime(s) to do this.
2012 is of major significance to our lives. 2012 is no doomsday or apocalyptic event that some parts of the media and web are exclaiming. this is nonsense.
this guide aims to give a chilled and pleasant look at a seminal moment in human and cosmic civilisation.
the basic premise, arrived from personal development, searching, questing and psychic exploration is that 2012 will be an enlightening moment for many people and is an important part of human development.
it will represent the crystallisation of some of the spiritual or heavenly non physical realms into our physical world. this is only the beginning of a huge change in human awareness. but it needs to happen in order to set up the rest of the journey.
so what will this involve? well many people will become far more sentient beings. that is many of us will become more psychically aware. we are already doing this. time and human activity is speeding up to a crescendo in order to reach this moment. we find ourselves really rushing around, with moments flying past us, grabbing opportunities and negotiating the meandering course of our lives. communication is essential and really strong. vibing someones intentions and motivations will become second nature.
as we attain this higher level of activity, we will become more attuned to it. people will speak to us psychically, there will be numerous moments of synchronicity - bumping into people you know randomly or thinking of someone before they call you on the phone. these will happen often that they will defy probability. they will happen more frequently and be of stronger effect.
some people may get psychic callings, body buzzing, pulses of energy. if you do dont worry. dont react immediately. contemplate it and put it on your to do list to get sorted in the following week. analyse what you need to do. trust your instinct.
we will also be more psychically aware in the costs and effects of our choices. being able to negotiate complex tasks swiftly and effortlessly. we will be able to envisage end goals and avoid bad outcomes through improper choices.
dreams will become more potent and full of messages. these are important and should be noted down and studied. sleep is also important, make sleep and sleep preparation a special ritual to you. try to sleep without work materials or electrical equipment (especially switched on phones and laptops) in your bedroom if you can.
the influence of past lives is important but not essential. one should not dwell too much on this as it can become confusing to the current reality. so a few unusual occurances may pop up. this is unique to each person and requires its own long term gentle analysis. however, it can also give a guide to current preferences and behaviour. a qualified hynotherapist that you trust is recommended for any serious issues.
unfortunately some people wont be able to handle the change. it may be too confusing for them for where they are at in their life path. they may be doing a lot of wrong to people and/or have a bad karma from something nasty. so they will become confused and panic. they will probably get caught up in strange mundane tasks in the hope that they are doing something but not really dealing with it. so they might wander round a bit and be in a bit of a muddle. maybe with funny clothes on too.
its up to you how much you want to get involved directly, but i would advise requesting the local council or government to do more.
in terms of yourself. be a good person. give to people who need, not just randoms. be charitable. keep yourself fit and healthy. try and meditate, do yoga, swim or something at least in the morning and evening, at least once a day. eat fresh healthy food. look after your body. care for your family. stick together. if you are a bit more clued up, give to others you know who need advice but don't patronize or overhype things. dont use these events to manipulate other people. karma will be very strong at this point in time, it will all come back to you.
the last thing to say is that there will be a lot of energy transference with people you know. connections will build. if not already, try to form safe and sound communities that are pro-active and help others in need. not closed off groups. go out and do good deeds. spend time together in your community, look after one another and spend quality time together. what is important is who you are and your own vibe on things. ignore media hype. it really will become crazed bullshit by hectic people in a sweaty office.
part of the power of the ninja comes not from themselves but from the fears of those around them. but another very important source of power comes from the ninja's own shadow. here, rather than giving away the energy if the shadow, it is retained - via accepting their own negative and inferior qualities rather than denying them or pushing them away. it takes tremendous courage to face our own shadow side, to admit that we have qualities of being that we wish we were free from, to acknowledge our inferior sides. we all want to be strong, powerful and secure not the opposite. however, strength is not gained by ignoring our weaknesses, but by seeking them out, working with them and correcting them. facing the shadow does, indeed, take courage. it also takes genuine discipline and it certainly does not include repression. however, as difficult as it is to face the shadow, once it has been faced, an interesting thing happens. we see that the shadow side of ourselves is not all negative. from our former, limited ego perspective we only thought it was. indeed , we suddenly find that the shadow also contains energies and characteristics that could be of tremendous benefit to us, only they are often in a form with which we are not entirely comfortable. the important idea is that values, qualities and energies that are needed by consciousness are in the shadow. and the ninja intuitively knew this. they knew that to survive they would have to marshall all available sources of inspiration and strength. this included the aggressive strength rejected and thrown into the darkness of the shadow. true, such strength often results in conflicts with morality and is difficult to integrate with more peaceful tendencies, for it is often in an inaccessible form, but it is only salvageable if the shadow is faced and accepted. ironically, not only does the shadow contain strengths that have been rejected because they are viewed a negative, but it actually contains positive qualities that have never been recognised. but again, these aspects of psyche can never be approached and integrated with the personality if the shadow is refused entry to consciousness. it is only when we begin to realize that the darkness within us deserves to be listened to - indeed, needs to be nurtured and given appropriate expression - that we can begin to approach wholeness.
from 'mind of the ninja; exploring the inner power' kirtland d. peterson
17For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. 18But be glad and rejoice for ever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight. 19I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and delight in my people; no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it, or the cry of distress. 20No more shall there be in it an infant that lives but a few days, or an old person who does not live out a lifetime; for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth, and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed. 21They shall build houses and inhabit them; they shall plant vineyards and eat their fruit. 22They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat; for like the days of a tree shall the days of my people be, and my chosen shall long enjoy the work of their hands. 23They shall not labour in vain, or bear children for calamity;* for they shall be offspring blessed by the Lord— and their descendants as well. 24Before they call I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear. 25The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, the lion shall eat straw like the ox; but the serpent—its food shall be dust! They shall not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain,
“There's
probably no movie more responsible for the birth of the modern horror film than
George
A. Romero's "Night of the Living Dead". It established the
foundation upon which modern horror is built and set the standards by which it
is judged.”
“Along with PSYCHO, Night of the
Living Dead must surely rank as one of the most influential horror films of the
60's.”
“Night
of the Living Dead
helped to loosen the reigns of the "gothic era of horror" (which was
sending it into a downward spiral) by modernizing the setting for fear to that
of today's world.”
“Night
of the Living Dead is the quintessential "zombie" movie. It helped
to establish the modern-day mythology of the "flesh-eating zombie."
Prior to "Night", nearly all zombie movies dealt with voodoo as the
primary vessel for reviving the dead. In turn, these zombies served, as
mindless slaves, their human masters. In contrast, Romero's zombies were
"true monsters" - creatures of destruction. They lived (again) to
feed on the living. They served no one, but the instinct that drove them.”
“What I've always enjoyed about
this movie is what I call its "public domain" factor; for years, this
movie was seen on late night TV, bad cable channels, etc. Growing up, it truly
made you feel like this was everybody's movie.”
Critic Danny Peary stated, in his
book "Cult Movies", that the zombies aren't people you'd want to
spend any time with before they became undead because they "wear dumpy
clothes and walk around as if they'd just downed a fifth of bourbon".
Zombie
movies basically begin with the wonderful 1932 film White Zombie, starring Bela Lugosi,
and found it’s next serious incarnation in the Val Lewton-produced I Walked
With A Zombie (1943, directed by Jacques Tourneur). But those
first movie zombies were fairly benign, more or less content just to skulk and
look scary. You’d never see an early zombie having brunch on someone’s
intestines back then, nor was the zombie’s role as a cannibal really even an
issue until the advent of the modern zombie.
After the Big One - WWII - and,
specifically, the dropping of the atomic bomb on Japan, Hollywood (and its
bastard child - drive-in cinema) presented audiences with fantasy worlds
representing post fallout - exemplified by the nuclear ramifications of wiping
out Hiroshima. Of course, this event had devastating implications and the
realization was that, even though America dropped the bomb, its effects were
relative. We, in the good ol' U.S. of A., were not immune to the possibilities
of becoming victims of a nuclear winter.
This paranoia of apocalyptic
destruction was fuelled not only by mushroom cloud newsreels but by the movies.
Especially movies shown in the heartland of America - at midwestern drive-ins
pumping the imaginations of impressionable kids and commie fearing adults
everywhere.
As movies moved away from
gigantic nuclear fuelled ants ("Them!", 1954), grasshoppers
("Beginning of the End", 1957), and lizards ("The Beast from
20,000 Fathoms", 1953), cinema moved toward a more 'realistic'
anti-nuclear stand immersing characters in situations that didn't seem as
outrageous as, say, "Godzilla, King of the Monsters" (1956).
In other words, beginning in the
mid- '50's ( "Kiss Me Deadly" [1955] ), the characters caught up in
apocalyptic situations were written with a strong psychological disenchantment
of humanity as opposed to the dated and wooden dissertations spouted by Peter
Graves in "The Beginning of the End" hoping to 'save' humanity rather
than flee from it.
Franklin J. Schaffner's
"Planet of the Apes" (1968) is an interesting comparison to Night of
the Living Dead.
Whatever the case, Romero's
intent was to emulate the old EC comics of the '50's with "Night of the
Living Dead" and many of those comics delved into the deadly effects of
nuclear fallout. For Romero, however, the mass zombification of humanity just was. The reasons weren't overt yet, about a
quarter into the film, Romero shows a television interview with a scientist who
claims that the 'disease' was caused by astronauts who had recently come back
to Earth from a lengthy space trip.
The excuse is as feasible (or
feeble) as any other for the spread of some bizarre virus. Whether its nuclear
fallout or space spores ("Invasion of the Body Snatchers", 1978),
sexual infection ("Shivers", 1975) or infected skin grafts
("Rabid", 1977), the results are all the same
- the rise of a marauding race of bloodsuckers and flesh eaters.
The ramifications of "Night of the Living Dead" are far
more gruesome than those of any of the '50's paranoid reactions to fallout.
Romero has stated that his film is, in fact, a parable. That it represents the
fate of mankind, that man is terrified of himself and that to destroy another
human being is a potent way of destroying yourself. Its a narcissistic
viewpoint but one filled with self-loathing. Romero ups the anti-humanitarian
ante and throws an addiction to mass consumerism into the zombie mash in his 1979 "Night" sequel, "Dawn of the Dead".
“Romero
somehow manages to remind us that the zombies that are slowly gathering around
the house are still out there even when not explicitly showing them to us.
Somehow, on his tiny budget, he manages to create a convincing world where the
things that lie off screen are still threatening. He warps our collective fear
of the dark into a dread that what we can’t see might be worse than we can
imagine. Even though the house’s inhabitants are successful in beating back one
wave of the undead, we’re left uneasy because we know that more will soon
replace them. “
“Light. Night. A small grey room, a pale grey, the colour of
a herring gull’s wings. Eternal limbo, at least eventless, tolerably nothing.
If it had not been for the two women staring down.
Obscurely reproached by the closer and more requiring face,
it made another unwilling deduction: for some reason it was a centre of
attention, an I of sorts. The face smiled, descended, with a mixture of the
solicitous and the sceptical, concern tainted with a perhaps involuntary
suspicion of malingering.
‘Darling?’
With another painfully swift and reducing intuition it
realized it was not just an I, but a male I. That must be where the inrushing
sense of belowness, impotence, foolishness came from. It, I, it must be he,
watched the mouth glide down like a parachutist and land on his forehead. Touch
and scent, this could not be film or dream. Now the face hovered over his.
Whispered words issues from the red orifice.
‘Darling, you know who I am?’
He stared.
‘I’m Claire.’
Not at all clear.
Your wife, darling, Remember?’
‘Wife?’
The most strangely alarming yet: to know one has spoken, but
only by the proximity of the source of the sound. The brown eyes hinted at
appalling depths of conjugal betrayal. He tried to attach word to person,
person to self; failed; and finally shifted his eyes to the younger and more
distant woman on the other side of the bed – who smiled as well, but
professionally and indifferently. This person, hands in pockets, trimly
observant, wore a white medical coat. Now her mouth also gave birth to words.
‘Can you tell me your name?’
Of course. Name! No name. Nothing. No past, no whence or
when. The abyss perceived, and almost simultaneously, its irremediability. He
strained desperately, a falling man, but whatever he was trying to reach or
grasp was not there. He clung to the white-coated woman’s eyes, abruptly and
intensely frightened. She came a step or two closer.
‘I’m a doctor. This is your wife. Please look at her. Do you
remember her? Do you remember having seen her before? Anything about her?
He
looked. There was something expectant in the wife’s expression, and yet hurt,
almost peeved, as if its owner resented both the stupidity of the procedure and
his silent stare. She looked nervous and tired, she wore too much make-up, the
air of someone who has put on a mask to prevent a scream. Above all she
demanded something he was not able to give.”
1 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As men moved eastward, [a] they found a plain in Shinar [b] and settled there.
3 They said to each other, "Come, let's make bricks and bake them thoroughly." They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth."
5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower that the men were building. 6 The LORD said, "If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other."
8 So the LORD scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel [c] —because there the LORD confused the language of the whole world. From there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth.
THE ROOTS OF BABYLON
Babylon is an important Rastafarian term, referring to human government and institutions that are seen as in rebellion against the rule of JAH (Zion), beginning with the Tower of Babel. It is further used by some to mean specifically the 'polytricksters' who have been oppressing the black race for centuries through economic and physical slavery. Rastafari is defiance of Babylon, sometimes also called Rome — in part because of the 1935 Italian invasion of Ethiopia, then ruled by Rastafari's 'Living God,' Haile Selassie I, and partly because as the head of the Roman Catholicchurch the Pope is considered an opponent of Selassie I and Rastafari. Babylon the Great and Whore of Babylon are apocalyptic terms from the book of Revelation that may have been used to describe the pagan Roman Empire, which often persecuted Christianity. Babylon is also sometimes used by some Rastas with the more specific meaning of "police", insofar as they are seen as executive agents of Babylon's will.
The concept of Babylon plays a central role in Rastafarian Ideology: There is only one other word Rastafarians use with more frequency and passion, and that is the name of their Majestic Ruler, Haile Selassie. People who have even a mild interest in reggae understand what"Babylon"means, yet the roots of the word"Babylon"remain unknown to the masses. To gain a better understanding of this term, it is necessary know the full history of Babylon, which starts 6000 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia.
The popular use of the word"Babylon"can be difinitively traced to Marcus Garvey's teachings, which liken the Afro-Caribs in the West to the Jews Exile into Babylon. The institution of slavery created tremendous suffering for those that were enslavedin both of these cases. Many people in Jamiaca are still suffering, due to the successor of slavery, which is racism and poverty. The Bible contains many stories of slavery that describe the hardship that was endured in ancient times, as well as the eventual emancipation from the hardship. Rastas have found much applicable meaning from within the Bible, and it is only natural that they identify with the Jews in Babylon, who faced much of the same obstacles that they themselves face. By labeling the source of their own oppression as"Babylon", the Rastas shed more light on the fact that opression is in fact taking place. This definitive name gives the oppression that they face a center, or a heart, which can be targeted easier. Instead of saying"Injustice must fall","Poverty must be alleviated", or"Jamaican legislation must represent its people", a Rasta need only say"Babylon must fall". When this centralized, encompassing word is used, it provides the Rasta with a target to be passionately against, and increases his sense of unity with his people.
The word Babylon is by no means an arbritary word that is used to describe oppression. Babylon was one of the first power structured cities to ever stand on Earth. It is quite clear that there is much to be learned about this mythical city that will help us to better understand the modern"Babylon system". I believe that the modern definition of Babylon describes a type of mentality that is common to all the institutions that are labeled as being"Babylon". However, the essence of what this midframe is can be most closely encountered through the study of the real Babylon as it grew, prospered and fell thousands of years ago.
In a valley in the dry desert region of the world that is now Iran, Babylon not only grew to a formiddable size, but also thrived, even amidst many changing factors. Babylonia was located between two rivers- the Euphrates, and the Tigris (hence the rivers of Babylon). Through simple irrigation, the Sumerian people of the desert were able to make use of the otherwise desolate land for some basic agriculture. Agriculture proved to be succesful, but the Sumerians desired more than just sustenance. Trade with other peoples became a very strong influence in the development of the city. To trade with foreign peoples was a very difficult and dangerous task. As a general rule, the larger the trading caravan was, the safer it was. This tendency is one of the factors that promoted the growth of villages into cities. The resources and securities of a large and centralizated population were viewed as desirable. The first people in the area were the Sumerians, who had been living in bands. These Sumerian people developed the first Monarchy to ever exist, along with the first written language (Cuneiform). A complicated legal system, religion, and culture subsequently developed under the monarchy. Their first City States formed between 4000 and 3000 BC. These City-States went through various stages of conflict and collaboration. But within the next hundred years, a people called Akkadians migrated up the Arabian penisula. The Akkadian people battled the Sumerian peoples, and eventually they controlled all the City-States. This forceful take-over is particularly interesting, because of the high degree of Sumerian influence that remained after they were conquered. The Sumerian Cities were taken by the Akkadians, yet the Akkadians ended up absorbing much of the Sumerian culture, laws, and religion, and letting go of their own culture. It has been theorized that this was the case because the Sumerian peoples system of operating a city was effective, and much of its culture was complimentary to the oprations of the city.
The original"Babylon system"is exposed to us as something was somewhat self-perpetuating. These bold new cities in Babylon couldn't possibly function without Beaurocracy. Beaurocracy was a new concept. In order to the feed the city people who worked, but didn't produce their own food, there needed to be middle men. These middle men had the task of figuring out the ammount of food that needed to be grown, etc. And this is where written records became of high importance. The writing style began as heiolyphic-like pictures, and quickly evolved into cunieform- a letter system consisting of wedge shaped scrapes. This new field that emerged; the field of record keeping and beaurocracy, can be considered to be the most influential role in creating what we call the"Babylon Mentality". The Babylonians saw this element of calcuting and coputing as a most important pursuit, and it quickly became a predominant mentality in the cities_. The Babylonians avidly pursued facts, numbers, measurements, workings, etc. They developed a complicated astrologocal charts, and detailed anatomony charts through observation.
"For these observers, whose knowledge was deeply rooted in primitive ideas, the heavenly bodies which they studied over the centuries were living gods, whose ordered movements in space, correctly interpreted, could be used as a guide in the daily activity of men."(Babylon-The old Babylonian era)
The Babylonians were solely concerned with the material aspect of living, and the way that they practiced religion mirrors this tendency. The first records of any written language are traced back to about 5000 BC in Mesopotamia. This language was originally used for accounting purposes and continued to develop throughout the era in which Babylon stood. The scientific, logical mentality that governed their lives, extended into, as well as received from, their religion. They were, in fact, a very religious and superstitous people, but the deities they believed in had concrete ties to the realm of physicality. Babylonian people believed in Polytheism. To believe in multiple Gods seems slightly absurd to the modern person. However, the effect it had on its people is similar to the increasingly popular modern religion known as Atheism. It becomes apparent how the"Babylon Mentality"of the modern Rastafarian vocabulary has a truthful synonomity with the Ancient Babylon's way of thinking.
It is important to look at the context in which the kingdom of Babylon stood in order to better understand what it stands for and what its final outcome was. The era surrounding about 1600 BC serves as a good point by which the different Empires of the past can be understood in relation to eachother. Many other great Narions grew powerful soon after Babylon did. In the 1600's BC:
-Babylon was already large and powerful nation, under King Hamurabi's rule
-The Mycennean (Greek) Empire was growing to significant power.
-Rome did not yet exist, nor did the Mesoamerican civilizations (such as the Mayans)
-Ancient Egypt was at that the beginning of its great empire, already with Pharoahs, pyramids, and hyroglyphics.
-It was at this time that the Jews wandered from their homeland to Egypt due to famine, and were taken by the Egyptians as slaves.
Egypt has a particular relevence to the topic of Babylon. The Biblical book of Exodus is written almost solely about the Jewish enslavement in Egypt. For this reason, Egypt can be looked upon as another"Babylon". The most obvious difference between Egyptian opression and Babylon oppresion is the fact that the Jewish people came to Egypt on their own accord, but in the Babylonian scenario, the Jews were captured and brought into slavery. Looking at both cases, it becomes apparent that ancient Egypt was just as oppressive as the ancient Babylon. However, there is one quality that makes Babylon different from this other great nation that like Babylon, rose, prospered, and fell. Babylon valued the pursuit of knowledge of the world, where the subjective perception of the individual is secondary. This mentality promotes the creatrion of efficiency and innovation. Also, this non-acknowledgement of the self can in fact create a superficially unified (but unified non-the-less) people. City life creates changes in the way that its residents think, and view themselves. This is the same tendency that is later seen in Mycennean culture, as well as Roman culture.
The term Babylon is used in Rasta terms with much negative connotations. It is something that they are radically opposed to. Corruption, politics, police, laws, and cities are often reffered to as"Babylon". Although it is possible to see these mechanisms as having qualities that are detrimental to the well-being of any society, there are elements of oppresion that take shape through these various creations of civilization. These mechanisms were created out of necessity, else civilization would fall apart. (Note: It is quite possible that there are benefits of living in more natural, smaller bands of people, but we will assume that in the Mesopotamian era, people valued the security and various facilities of city life.) There are oppressive aspects of police, politics and laws that cause them to be labeled as Babylon, although it is not true to say that these insitutions where created with the intent of harm. The harm that is brought about stems from the institution's ignorance or insesitivity to the suffering that is created. Ignorance and insensivity are not always syncronous with evil and malice- many times they are the necessary first steps to wisdom and higher intuition. However, it is not my intention to defend these mechanisms of civilization, because it can be argued that these institutions are still oppressive, 4000 years later.
The materialistic nature of Ancient Babylon provides us with sharp contrasting element to the Rastafarian Ideology. Rastafarian religion places high value on the natural world as something that should be lived in harmony with, but not controlled. The Rastafarians believe that they should live their life as Jah intends is to be lived. The emphasis here is on the personal, subjective understanding of one's purpose in life. The ancient Babylon mentality that is prevalent today, has many contrary elements to Rastafarian ideology. For example, modern society values its members according to their wealth, and ability to work in a"professional"setting. The Babylon mentality sees daily life as serving a utility, but does not place importance on the experiential and mystical elements of living.
Babylon is an important Rastafarian term, referring to the white patriarchy that has been oppressing the black race for centuries through economic and physical slavery. Rastafarianism is defiance of Babylon. I and I is a complex term, referring to the oneness of Jah (God) and every human. Rastafarian scholar E. E. Cashmore: "I and I is an expression to totalize the concept of oneness, the oneness of two persons. So God is within all of us and we're one people in fact. I and I means that God is in all men. The bond of Ras Tafari is the bond of God, of man. But man itself needs a head and the head of man is His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia." The term is often used in place of "you and I" or "we" among Rastafarians, implying that both persons are united under the love of Jah.
Egyptian Masters say the Soul is a Living Star
Bring the Living Star into the dark and Illumination will transmute the dark.
This is the simple truth. This is Real Magic.
What if we were all versed in this simple
Intention—
This Simple Truth—
To turn trash into Treasure—
On this beautiful planet
Upon which we all
Live and breathe
And have our Being. This is Real Magic of course.
Asher was angry. Ever since he was a child, he felt that he had not been understood. This was something he had really got used to…he just shut himself off and created his own worlds. As he sat with his toys, he created planets, laws, customs, cultures, people, characters, heroism and wars. All built up into an ordered system of different forces meeting and clashing, huge battles and momentous moments of victory.
But now…what did these count for. He had an imagination but it could not find a home. So it turned back upon itself and attacked it’s source. Why don’t you set me free? It screamed. What am I supposed to do? Who am I?
Asher locked himself away, shunned by people who found him ‘different’ and ‘odd.’
The questions burst forth from him. What the hell is going on with the world? Why is it in such pain? Why can people not see the Real? Why do people act so fake? Why do we all bring ourselves down? Debasing ourselves?
So many questions…but asher was tired. So he leant back on his chair and began to sleep. As he leant back he drifted into his dreams, so fatigued and jarred from his mental battles.
He was in a glorious field. The sun was shining and there was silence apart from a light wind. The grass was shimmering and clicking with crickets embedded deep inside it. He moved and sat under a tree and watched the motion of field, rippling and swaying.
He still did not feel completely comforted. Still the questions emerged from his lips. He whispered them to himself. Where am I going? What is my path? Am I doing the right things? Do I do it from the heart or from my own ego? Am I helping to build the world or to destroy it? Am I being true to myself or am I running from something? Am I myself or living as another? Do I know myself? Are all my thoughts real or am I confused?
All the questions spilled out of asher’s mouth and he began to notice something. That as they poured forth, the air near his mouth began to quiver and wobble, like the rising heat from a distant road. Asher was astonished and blinked hard…he looked again. There was something forming from the layers of energy, they were becoming curved and then began to pair off. Before he knew it, each of the morcels of movement had become tiny, flapping wings…which suddenly became bleached with colour, like ink being soaked from a large fountain pen on a jotting pad. So many different colours, flashing in the sun, a million light particles bouncing off and making the tiny wings glow.
A swarm of brightly coloured butterflies now hovered before asher, who reached his hand toward them…but they drew away, becoming a concave vessel around his hand. Asher grabbed again, but the butterflies moved away in time again. Asher kept trying, but could not get near them.
The swarm began to depart and asher started to follow, picking up a solid pace as the tiny butterflies all danced in the air across the lush field. Asher chased and chased them, jumping across a river, over a fence, through some deep mud…all the time the butterflies evaded his capture.
Asher was beginning to get frustrated and with a burst of energy, he leapt into the air in an attempt to grab the little creatures. He missed and came falling back down to earth, but he was determined and merely jumped back to floor into a crouch. For asher, unbelievably, leapt into the air and felt that he was cushioned…that he could fly close to the butterflies. Now the little butterflies seeing this, turned upwards towards the clouds and began to dash away. But asher was climbing higher and higher, floating in the air.
The butterflies turned vertical towards the heavens, climbing further…but still asher followed, undaunted by the prospect of falling back down to earth.
The butterflies flitted away, as asher made another grab, now coming close to cloud, which they entered. The moisture formed beads in asher’s hair and eyebrows and he screwed his eyes tight as he had a gentle wash of tiny water droplets.
Sprinting out of the cloud, asher was in a different place. A dreamscape with a cloud lining reaching toward the sun, painted with an amber light as the sun was setting in the east. In the moment that asher looked with awe, he lost sight of the butterflies, who had made a sharp getaway.
Asher was tired, and leaned back on a cloud, which had solidified for him. He looked around the sparse landscape and there was silence…the song of the heavens.
As he fell back he saw a little swarm of butterflies coming back towards him, they swooped and dipped over his head, asher turned around to follow them and got up ready. But as he looked back he noticed something in the distance. He noticed a person, a girl with long brown hair.
Asher rushed over to her…
‘hello?’ said asher.
The girl was startled to see someone.
‘what are you doing here?’ she said. ‘I have never seen anyone here before.’
‘I just followed these butterflies, somehow I was transported up to here? How did you get here?’
‘I always come here, since I was little, my dreams allow me to fly…but I do not understand.’
‘what is that?’ replied asher.
‘that I can fly in my dreams, but It was only supposed to be when someone was not looking.’
‘well, you are not flying now are you?’
‘true, I do not think I want you to see me flying…it might be strange. No-one has seen me fly before, especially not a stranger.’
‘so how are we the only ones up here?’ said asher.
‘I don’t know, I thought this was my special place, in my dream. I did not know I had to share it with anyone.’
‘maybe it doesn’t just belong to you.’ Said asher.
As he said that, the cheeky butterflies came dashing back over their heads.
Asher looked at the girl, she was very beautiful.
‘shall we follow them?’
the girl hesitated and then grabbed asher’s hand. They took off, tracking the butterflies. They headed higher and higher.
‘have you been this high?’ asher asked.
‘not really, I just like hopping from cloud to cloud. I have tried a few times, but I starts to get too dark and different. It makes me feel weak.’
The pair continued. Asher was oblivious to the magnitude of the place to where he was going. The girl tugged on his arm.
‘I don’t think we should continue much further. They could soon see the dissolution of sky revealing the constellation of the universe, the stars twinkling and dancing.
‘what is the problem?’ asher said. The energy wind was becoming so forceful that he had to shout to be hard above the noise.
‘we might die here.’ Said the girl. ‘if we die here, then we will die for real.’
The butterflies were ahead of them and were gradually fading into the distance, still sparkling from the sun in the east.
The couple slowed down and looked at the butterflies depart.
‘you will never catch them.’ Said the girl as the couple began to float back down towards the cloud dreamscape.
‘why not?’
‘because they are the questions.’ She said.
‘the questions never meet the answers.’
‘why not?’ replied asher indignantly.
‘because it is not time yet, not for a while.’
The girl looked at asher and touched his face with her hand.
‘You are the first one to come here. That is your role and that is very special. You must bring others here.’
‘how do I do that?’ asher cried.
‘you must do that in the same way that you came here. You have learnt the route, now you must teach others.’
Asher looked at the girl. she was so serious, which made her even more attractive. But he understood. The girl stopped on the cloud platform, but asher continued. He continued to float back down to the field, waving goodbye as the girl disappeared into the plateaus of the cloud world.
Asher floated back to the field, that was still quiet and the sun was still shining. He leaned back and looked at his hand in the grass and clenched it tight.
‘I must go back there to find this girl.’ asher said.
When fission hits you, there is nothing quite like it man.
It strikes, I mean – it really strikes, completely unexpected and like a huge scorpion tail – locking back and whipping out, whipping you into a wild and uncontrollable spin.
Cutting through the air, I plunge into a deep cool pool, so deep that at first one thrashes around like cat in a thorn bush – the fear strikes and the pain is intense.
A gut wrenching pain, a pain so deep that it screams at past ancestors.
Everything comes together for that one moment and there – with such clarity, one can see, really seeing – without seeing but seeing with a feeling of knowing and hearing the cries of it all.
It is frightening and it strikes deep at the emotions but one cannot extricate oneself from the inevitability of it all. One yearns for this experience above all else, even if it is unlike anything known before.
There it can be seen – in its purist glory, its entirety, its unity. It is so massive and deep. I am speechless from its magnitude. My tongue is ripped from my mouth. I stand there dumb and shivering, an insignificant spectator.
There I can feel the heat of it on my face, it drives me into a crazy obsession – I question everything – myself, my life, my faults.
I feel all the pain there ever is and it stabs me again and again and again.
Sparks fly and fire flashes, I continue to spin a frenzy and I lay awake all night long - just thinking and being. I feel such pain - the disattachment, the severance and cries to be re-engaged. There is sobbing all around me of the lost ones.
I heard their screams, intruding upon a party where I am not invited – and they look at me with confusion – I do not belong.
I am back, sitting alone, deep in my thoughts or my thoughts deep in me. I am still trembling now from the journey – where a mere tiny sliver opened itself up and bared all.
‘Well, you wanted to see…here you go!’
I am left whimpering in the corner.
Eventually, things subside. I can look with fresh eyes, I can rationalize and I can objectify. I can remove and rub out the experience – and I am sad, that these are so rare and so fleeting but they leave such footprints. We have to move on, I wish I could stay but we have to move on. As a result, we humanize it - and lose what it was all about.
But they are all worth it. I loved it. Even through the pain I can see what it was, a tremendous gift – a personal enlightenment.
And I return to the audience, from leaving my part on the center stage.
in the hebrew tradition, one thing that is never spoken about is the mind. the bible only describes specific actions, events and visions. jacobs inner poetic love for rachel is not described, he just demonstrates it through accessing superhuman energy and pushing the rock off the well. we never get the inner psychology of the characters, this gives the interpreters a field day in discussing the inner reasoning of the biblical personalities. it is indeed part of the mysterious beauty of the bible.
rarely we get a slim mention, such as pharoah hardening his heart. firstly he wasnt a hebrew. and then the info is so limited that the commentaries go to town on the meaning.
on the other hand, greek literature and narrative is full of passionate excitement describing the inner world of the characters - their human foibles. weaknesses, jealousy, lust. the interplay of the gods is a complex web of intrigue. this inner world is the underworld. and is an essential part of greek folklore. through semitic eyes, it is a perversion from truth. the jewish heroes are straight, tam simple, clean. but the greek world is full of irony, complexity and contradiction. orpheus, the poet, enters the underworld to find dead eurydice alive. its the forbidden twisted world that is loved by the greeks, that is the animus for their art. and jean cocteaus filmic interpretation of this linked it to a homoerotic fantasy.
this world and its continued spiritual prevalence, is the world of lies, the world of edom/babylon/exile that needs to be seen through to find the completion of homeland/zion. as picasso says - art lies to reveal truth.
when the jewish characters do have to fight, it is very much a fight with the fragmented distorting energy of the underworld. this is where truth is threatened by overdosing on reality, the golden calf, multiple gods, decadence, human sacrifice. keep it simple, keep it real. say no. dont give in. its the straight down the line energy that makes the tzaddik true. its hard to be simple in life.
traditional normative judaism never speaks of inner psychology. you dont get frum jews on jeremy kyle speaking about their battle for their mental state. its seen as explicit, immodest and a cheapening of the human condition. this is the underworld and you dont chat about it. you dont get decent jewish art. because jewey jewish art is made by happy people and westernised artists need to have sold off their soul in a faustian pact. happiness is found through practical dedication to God. completion & unity. ritual is all one needs. obviously this can get out of hand when one sees the ways taboos can be treated in the orthodox world, where guilt, anxiety and paranoia emerge. but again these are signposts to the underworld and must be avoided.
freud of course was the ultimate heretic. he sensualised or fetishized human psychosis. even trying to do so for the jewish tradition in his text moses and monotheism. he suggested that human experience was built on repression, infantile psychosis and neuroticism.
he was the ultimate heretic but also the ultimate postmodern jew. an orthodox woody allen.
what he gets at is near to the truth. the law being the law can only be given to give a mask to reality. to crystallize it, to make sense of it. nature is blind, seemingly chaotic. the greeks believed in the random futility of existence, their theatre being forever tragedy. but the jewish experience was to make order of chaos, to focus and harness the wild beast of creation.
for the law to have meaning there must be wildness. hassidut speaks of making oneself a desert. not a fat trifle to stuff your face but to make oneself hefke - ownerless/disconnected - in order to accept the torah. maybe this is the secret to hassidic wedding dances. the torah was given in the desert, in the complete wildness once the polytheistic egyptian system had been destroyed by the plagues.
torah law is an inbuilt magical system to protect oneself from the blind and relentless forces of the dark. its the antidote to this. to make sense of the chaos.
one custom lost to jewish tradition was the almost shamanic dance of death performed at weddings in the ashkenazi world. the irony of a death dance at a wedding, the supreme symbol of life, is a powerful omen to the finitude of existence but also the inversion of the jewish experience.
to really know the law, to know obligation, to know the word 'no' the true human experience may only arrive at its fullest civilised enlightened understanding when it has exhausted its feral streak - the freudian thanatos death drive. judaism only emerged when pagan society had nearly destroyed itself through human sacrifice. this is an unfortunate lesson for humanity. because essentially the wisdom of creation contains the inner logic of the law. morality is divine will. it can be deciphered via inner logic. knowing via intuition what is right is a gift of inner sight. inner sight being the yetzer hora/yetzer tov. the law is as innate as breathing.
but humanity being humanity may only learn through transgression. or through the mad dance of the mask wearer.
‘And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth,
And daughters were born unto them,
That the sons of God
Saw
The daughters of men
That they were fair (good)
And they took them wives
Whomsoever they chose’
‘young people of the opposite sex…grow accustomed to attend to different objects and to make comparisons; imperceptibly they acquire ideas of merit and of beauty which produce sentiments of preference. The more they see one another, the less they can do without seeing one another still more. A tender and sweet sentiment steals into the soul and at the least obstacle becomes an impetuous frenzy; jealousy awakens with love; discord triumphs, and the gentlest of all passions receives sacrifices of human blood.’
Rousseau
THE PARADOX OF BEAUTY
The sons of god are led by their eyes toward visible feminine beauty. Who can blame them. Throughout the animal world nature uses superficial looks in bringing the two sexes together. The love of the beautiful takes on still greater importance for humans, we become mindful of death and necessary decay. The beautiful lures us into regarding it as a bulwark against death, a haven from the ugliness of disintegration. The beautiful beckons, promising permanence and happiness: the beautiful seems to us to be the skin of the good. Yet appearances are often deceiving on the side of the viewer and the viewed. Imagination, coloured by human hopes, often distorts what we see. Beauty may exist only in the eye of the beholder, while artful beautification hides underlying plainness or worse: beauty may be less than skin deep.
Even apart from such distortions, the pursuit of the beautiful may be altogether a dead end. Appreciation of the beautiful may inspire the soul, but efforts to capture it leave one unfulfilled – even when seemingly successful. For what do we really have if and when we ‘possess’ the beautiful? Can a beautiful wife really satisfy our soul’s longings for the eternal or the good? Does union with a beautiful woman make us any less ugly or less perishable?
The visibly beautiful, through its harmonious and well-proportioned appearance, always seems to promise some underlying goodness. Were it able to deliver on its promise, the love of the beautiful might bring us to the good and hence to our felicity. But as experience teaches, the promise is only infrequently fulfilled; what strikes us as beautiful is rarely yoked to the good. Nonetheless we persist, seduced by the next beauty into believing that this time we shall gain our heart’s desire. We willingly allow ourselves to be betrayed by the testimony of our eyes; we naturally and repeatedly mis-take the beautiful for the good.
We seem to have a natural predilection for the aesthetic; we are drawn to the beautiful and repulsed by the horrible in nature—even though it is difficult to define the exact parameters of each. creation? This is not the result of study or understanding, but a natural inclination with which we seem to be endowed. It is true that the term “beautiful” can indicate a variety of things and lacks a clear or simple meaning. Almost everything can be seen as beautiful by someone, or as reflecting his or her particular point of view. But there are enough people who seem to be affected in a similar way by certain visions to make us think that “beautiful” is real and has been programmed into the human personality. It is possible that one of the reasons we are endowed with an innate sense of beauty is to enable us to stand with wonder and awe at the creation, or at least at those moments which, in an almost miraculous way, direct us to the beauty of the divine craft. If we have been robbed of the miraculous moment, if we do not see anything in the workings of God’s world other than the causal principle, if “uncertainty” does not create the option of awe, then perhaps we have to turn to beauty--the special quality of the creation which takes our breath away and leaves us enraptured with wonder. It may be that beauty and the aesthetic moment provide the only possible contemporary entrée to discovering God’s love in the creation. The beautiful sunset is really there. The snow-capped mountains are really there--they inspire in us the notion that creation is perfect and appropriate for us and us alone. This feeling is often useful in tefillah, and it may be one of the reasons that the medieval kabbalists in Safed went out into nature to greet the Sabbath Queen.
Difficult though it may be to define the subject of aesthetics, there is no doubt that we are impressed by “beauty” (or its opposite). But there is one further point. We are not simply given the gift of perceiving a beautiful landscape or moment; we are able as well to reproduce that beauty or moment in a variety of ways.
The ruah memallela (this term as synonymous with man’s “godly” spirit and general creative capacity—including music, arts) enables man to practice his appreciation of aesthetics in creation in a number of ways. We are able, for example, to recreate the sunset, or the highlands of Scotland, by painting and reproducing God’s world as art. Art (or poetry or music) becomes an interpretation of the aesthetic feeling within us. We take note of the sunset, deciding that it is a vision that has meaning and that leaves an impression, and we try to reproduce it as art.
Art as a human endeavor is an attempt to connect to that aspect of creation determined bythe aesthetic consciousness to be beautiful. Art represents the world of beauty (in the sense that it inspires wonder) but also necessarily interprets it. Art does not reproduce the feeling of awe that exists in the created world. Strictly speaking, that would not be possible, nor would there be any point in its being done. Art presents its own experience of the beauty of the creation as seen through the eyes of the artist, and, finally, through the eyes of the observer of the artist’s work. Art is about becoming part of the wondrous experience of gazing on beauty. The wonder of the world as created is sufficient; the enterprise of the artist is to restate it and to make it his or her own, in some way. If we learn to look at the work of art in the proper manner we should be able to connect to this human vision of beauty, which originates in God’s created world but insists that beauty must ultimately be seen, reflected, or interpreted bythe human view. This can be understood from the opposite perspective. The literary critic Cleanth Brooks spoke of the “heresy of paraphrase.”
In following an argument by the Italian critic and philosopher Benedetto Croce, Brooks posited that the meaning of a poem (or any work of art) consists in what is not translatable. The meaning of the poem is connected to the disposition of the words, their arrangement, and their rhythm. There is a sensoryside to the poem as a work of art. You don’t just read the poem; you experience it. To alter any of the above (by translation for example) is to produce another work, which may or may not have merit as art. A poem is like a sunset in that it is rooted in a sensory experience. But the poem uses special talents that are indigenous to the human being. Words, rhythm, order, and meaning are all things that give the poem its structure and produce aesthetic merit and the quality of wonder. Looking at the divine sunset in nature encourages us to produce our own sunset; to use words, music, and the plastic arts to reproduce, and then to express in a personal way, the sunset that is God’s gift of beauty. Further, the sunset we have produced, written of, or painted, becomes in itself an object of wonder and amazement. If it is true that for the believing person a sunset can be inspiring, if the natural beauty we encounter tells us that we are experiencing God’s love and should reciprocate, then it may also be true that the representation of the beauty in nature through art grants us entrée into the special experience of God’s love, seen through the prism of human creativity. This notion is expressed by Joseph Conrad in the preface to his 1897 novel The Nigger of the Narcissus:
[The artist] speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain; to the latent feeling of fellowship with all creation…
“God gazed into the Torah and created the world” Zohar, Terumah 161a-b.
(Published article in Encyclopedia of German Literature)
Around the turn of the 19th century, the concept of irony, which as a rhetorical figure and mode of discourse had been part of the repertoire of European writing since antiquity, was substantially modified to assist in the solution of crucial Romantic problems. Taking its name from the Greek eironeia ("dissimulation"), irony consists of purporting a meaning of an utterance or a situation that is different, often opposite, to the literal one. Its intellectual and didactic function lies in its oppositional nature, which requires a constructive independent involvement from the addressee, who must infer the latent meaning. It was this oppositional nature and the constructive reaction it demands that attracted the Romantic thinkers. []The Romantic endeavour to avoid one-dimensional approaches in its search to achieve a vision of totality utilized irony to express opposites together without neutralizing them. Romantic irony aims at a perpetual dialectic dynamic that does not allow its own process to stop. The roots for the need to do this lie in Romantic literary theory, which is closely linked to Romantic philosophy (i.e., German Idealism), in this case especially J.G. Fichte’s subjective idealism, as expressed in his Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre (1794-95; Foundation of the Science of Knowledge). Contemporary theorists of irony include Karl Solger and Adam Müller, but most of the theoretical foundation for this concept of irony has been attributed to Friedrich Schlegel, whose definition of (Romantic) literature in his seminal 116th Athenäums-fragment (1798; Athenaeum Fragment) as "progressive Universalpoesie" (progressive universal poetry), a perpetual all-inclusive process that "ewig nur werden, nie vollendet sein kann" (can only be perpetually becoming, never be completed to perfection), demands a means by which this can be achieved. This means is irony, which he defines in the 108th Lyceums-fragment (1797; Lyceum Fragment) as follows:
In it [irony] everything should be all jest and all seriousness, everything guilelessly open and deeply hidden. . . . It contains and arouses a sense of the indissoluble antagonism between the absolute and the relative, between the impossibility and the necessity of complete communication. It is the freest of all licences, because through it one transcends oneself, but at the same time it is the most prescribed, because [it is] absolutely necessary.
This elevates irony from the confines of belonging to an arsenal of rhetorical devices to the independent status of a means of philosophical inquiry and revelation. It is obvious that this theory is, because of its abstractly all-inclusive claims, difficult to pin down into a concrete definition or to put into literary practice. To a large degree this is its audacious point: by offering the means for its own explosion, it guaranteed its very indestructibility in a never-ending process of reflective distancing. As such, Romantic irony is the intellectual response of the (Romantic) human mind finding itself alone and without external guidance in an infinitely complex and ultimately unknowable world in which the only way to assert any kind of independence and authority is to engage in the conscious act of hovering between opposites (which irony allows), affirming and negating at the same time. Although the paradoxical totality afforded by this approach strives toward divine omniscience, it equally engenders the absolute relativity of all values and opens the door to nihilism. A melancholic, even desperate, viewpoint developed quickly that understands irony as a last resort to make bearable the Romantically contradictory experience of existence, which, in its negative manifestation, finds expression in the notion of Weltschmerz (see Melancholy). []Romantic irony found its most immediate and tangible expression in the authors’ practice of distancing themselves from their writing by casting an ironic question mark over the assumed universal claim to authority - that "this is how it is" - of what is being expressed. This leads to a plurality of values regarding content and to a perspectivism regarding the approach to content. Schlegel saw Romantic irony realized in Goethe’s Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1795-96; Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship) and tried his own hand at it in his novel Lucinde (1799; Lucinde). Other examples can be found in the works of Ludwig Tieck, E.T.A. Hoffmann, and the theoretical and literary writings of Jean Paul. However, far from being limited to these Romantic contemporaries, this kind of literary irony has exerted a pervasive influence on 19th- and especially 20th-century literary theory and practice. It occupied the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard at the beginning of his philosophical career and is evident in the work of Heinrich Heine. Importantly, it has been recognized as having paved the way for modernist approaches to literary writing as found, for example, in Thomas Mann’s or James Joyce’s work; for much structuralist thought; and for modern theories of communication with their emphasis on the arbitrary nature of the relation between the signifier and the signified. However, the early 19th-century developers of this notion of irony did not see themselves as its inventors. Schlegel pointed to Socrates, Boccacio, Cervantes, and Shakespeare as practitioners of this ironic approach, from whom he gleaned his ideas and with whose works as evidence he sought to establish this approach as archetypal rather than merely historical. This, however, must not detract from the historical quality of this concept occurring at this particular juncture in intellectual history: it emerged within the shift from Enlightenment to Romanticism, when the prevalence of Enlightened forms of classical irony, present in the employment of the much-prized 18th-century wit, had made it an easily available basis from which to develop a modified concept to address the newly developed intellectual situation, in which the universal certainty of the Enlightened frame of mind had been replaced by the self-conscious "Romantic" awareness of the persistent possibility of doubt. In the former situation, irony could be used to make visible definite answers and solutions and in the latter to reflect the shifting movements of an ever-progressing intellectual inquiry.
["Yes," according to Fred Hechinger. This is from THE NEW YORK TIMES, Sunday, February 13, 1972.] * * * * * A LIBERAL FIGHTS BACK by Fred M. Hechinger Liberals, said Malcolm McDowell, star of "A Clockwork Orange," hate that film. The implication is that there is something shameful in the liberals' reaction -- that at the very least they don't know the score. Quite the opposite is true. Any liberal with brains *should* hate "Clockwork," not as a matter of artistic criticism but for the trend this film represents. An alert liberal should recognize the voice of fascism. "Movies don't alter the world, they pose questions and warnings," said Mr. McDowell. This is close to the truth. Movies reflect the mood of the world because they pander to the frame of mind of their potential customers. During the Depression years, Hollywood offered those eye-filling and mind-soothing productions that took a despondent public's thoughts off the grim realities. Occasionally, the diverting tinsel was laced with some "Grapes of Wrath" realism. During and after World War II, Hollywood reflected the American mind with an outpouring of syrupy patriotism and comic-strip anti-Nazism. Minor modifications allowed the technique to be adapted, as in "The Manchurian Candidate," to the subsequent spirit of the Cold War. More recently, the movies, chasing the youth buck, have wallowed in campus revolution, alienation, radical relevance and counter-culture. The plastic greening of Hollywood did little, one must agree with Mr. McDowell's thesis, to alter the world: it was merely the industry's frantic attempt to keep abreast of society's changing script. It is precisely because Hollywood's antennae have in the past been so sensitive in picking up the national mood that the anti-liberal trend should indeed "pose questions and warnings," though not in the manner intended either by Mr. McDowell or by Stanley Kubrick, "Clockwork's" director. * * * * * The bad seeds had been sown during the period of mindless youth-culture exploitation. Anthony Quinn, who played Zorba the Prof in "R.P.M.," that ersatz ideological movie about the campus revolt, was the anti-liberals' perfect prototype of the superannuated, well-intentioned but ultimately ineffectual, obsolescent, self-destructive liberal. "Getting Straight" delivered the same cumulative message. The liberal in "Easy Rider," a pathetic, confused drunk, was intended to show the fate that ultimately awaits the bleeding hearts. Even his death, at the hands of fascist bullies, carefully avoided being either heroic or central to the picture's mood. Too bad about the fuzzyminded fellow, but what can you expect. . . The script writers were accurately picking up the vibrations of a deeply anti-liberal totalitarian nihilism emanating from beneath the surface of the counter-culture. They were pandering as skillfully to the new mood as they had earlier to the Stars and Stripes Forever. Now the virus is no longer latent. The message is stridently anti- liberal, with unmistakably fascist overtones. Listen to Mr. McDowell: "People are basically bad, corrupt. I always sensed that. Man has not progressed one inch, morally, since the Greeks. Liberals, they hate 'Clockwork' because they're dreamers and it shows them the realities, shows 'em not tomorrow, but *now*. Cringe, don't they, when faced with the bloody truth?" This is more than a statement of what Mr. McDowell considers to be a political fact. There is a note of glee in making the liberals cringe by showing them what heads-in-the-clouds fools they are. If they were smarter, would they not know "the bloody truth" and, one must conclude, adjust to it with a pinch of Skinnerian conditioning? Is this an uncharitable reading of Mr. McDowell's -- and the film's -- thesis? The thesis that man is irretrievably bad and corrupt is the essence of fascism. It underlies every demand for the kind of social "reform," that keeps man down, makes the world safe for anti-democracy through the "law and order" ministrations of the police state. It might be possible to dismiss the McDowell weltanschauung as the aberration of an actor dazzled by critical acclaim and dabbling in political ideology. But he, in fact, accurately echoes his master's voice. "Man isn't a noble savage, he's an ignoble savage," says Stanley Kubrick. "He is irrational, brutal, weak, silly, unable to be objective about anything where his own interests are involved . . . . And any attempt to create social institutions on a false view of the nature of man is probably doomed to failure." If this is the motion picture industry's emerging view -- as it seems to be, not only in "Clockwork" but in a growing number of films such as "Straw Dogs" and even, on the precinct rather than the global level, "The French Connection" -- then what sort of social institutions are to be built on that pessimistic, antiliberal view of man's nature? They will -- they must, if logic prevails -- be the repressive, illiberal, distrustful, violent institutions of fascism. "We hold these truths to be self-evident . . . " Ridiculous! "Government by the people . . . " Absurd! Jefferson, not to mention Christ, were clearly liberals who could not face "the bloody truth." It takes the likes of Hitler or Stalin, and the violence of inquisitions, pogroms and purges, to manage a world of ignoble savages. * * * * * That is the message lately flashed from the screen. The inherently antiliberal nihilism of Hollywood's counterculture phase was the subliminal preparation -- filmland's Weimar Republic -- for the ugly "truth" to come. Mr. McDowell, in trying to find some socially redeeming value (as the courts put it when describing "good" pornography) in "Clockwork's" violence, muses that "*maybe* that will lead to something actually being done about street crime." What might that "something" be? Surely not anything cooked up by those liberal "dreamers" who cringe when faced with "the bloody truth." More likely a dragnet arrest of all those people who look like trouble. How else would one sensibly deal with ignoble savages? "Straw Dogs" may have been even more perceptive in picking up the neo- fascist message. Its symbolic man is the confused, nonviolent, cringing, idiotic, nonvirile liberal who in the end is redeemed -- by what? By proving his manhood through savagery among the savages. Liberals, Awake! Be as lip-smacking bloody as anybody. That will take care of the street crime problem, too. And perhaps make the trains run on time. Some of us unreconstructed liberals will, of course, continue to hope that the industry has for once picked up the wrong vibrations, that it is for the first time misreading the nation's mood; that the majority of Americans do not believe, as those who unleashed the stormtroopers and the M.K.V.D. and the RedGuard said *they* believed, that Man the Beast will be conquered and domesticated only through the purifying powers of violence. Optimism is the incurably silly liberal quality which the new celluloid realism considers ludicrous. One prays that American moviemakers may identify in the popular mood some of those vibrations that led to the creation of "The Garden of the Finzi-Continis." Europeans who knew fascism apparently still believe that the evil and the violence, rather than being inherent in man and thus inevitable, became dominant only because the few succeeded in ruthlessly turning violence into political power over the many. The liberals were not without blame, but they were not the villains. In the end, their faults seemed excusable when measured against the monstrosity of those who regarded men as ignoble savages. The liberal makers of "The Garden of the Finzi-Continis" do not seem to have cringed at the bloody memory of those black days in Europe when, antiliberalism having triumphed, the human vermin crawled out of the clockwork. If there is anything to make American liberals cringe here and now, it is the possibility that, in a reversal of history, Europe may this time be more sophisticated than America about the nature of the fascist threat. This is why American liberals have every right to hate the ideology behind "A Clockwork Orange" and the trend it symbolizes. (submitted by J.M.) * * * * * [Kubrick and Malcolm McDowell didn't agree with Hechinger's view. This is Kubrick's letter to THE NEW YORK TIMES, in reply to Hechinger's charge. It was printed on February 27, 1972, section 2, pp. 1 & 11. McDowell's reply in the same issue follows.] * * * * * NOW KUBRICK FIGHTS BACK By Stanley Kubrick LONDON "An alert liberal," says Fred M. Hechinger, writing about my film "A Clockwork Orange," "should recognize the voice of fascism." They don't come any more alert than Fred M. Hechinger. A movie critic, whose job is to analyze the actual content of a film, rather than second-hand interviews, might have fallen down badly on sounding the "Liberal Alert" which an educationist like Mr. Hechinger confidently set jangling in so many resonant lines of alarmed prose. As I read them, the image that kept coming to mind was of Mr. Hechinger, cast as the embattled liberal, grim-visaged the way Gary Cooper used to be, doing the long walk down main street to face the high noon of American democracy, while out of the Last Chance saloon drifts the theme song, "See what the boys in the backlash will have and tell them I'm having the same," though sung in a voice less like Miss Dietrich's than Miss Kael's. Alert filmgoers will recognize that I am mixing my movies. But then alert educationists like Mr. Hechinger seemingly don't mind mixing their metaphors: "Occasionally, the diverting tinsel was laced with some 'Grapes of Wrath' realism," no less. It is baffling that in the course of his lengthy piece encouraging American liberals to cherish their "right" to hate the ideology behind "A Clockwork Orange," Mr. Hechinger quotes not one line, refers to not one scene, analyzes not one theme from the film - but simply lumps it indiscriminately in with a "trend" which he pretends to distinguish ("a deeply anti-liberal totalitarian nihilism") in several current films. Is this, I wonder, because he couldn't actually find any internal evidence to support his trend-spotting? If not, then it is extraordinary that so serious a charge should be made against it (and myself) inside so fuzzy and unfocused a piece of alarmist journalism. * * * Hechinger is probably quite sincere in what he feels. But what the witness feels, as the judge said, is not evidence - the more so when the charge is one of purveying "the essence of fascism." "Is this an uncharitable reading of . . . the film's thesis?" Mr. Hechinger asks himself with unwonted, if momentary doubt. I would reply that it is an *irrelevant* reading of the thesis, in fact an insensitive and inverted reading of the thesis, which, so far from advocating that fascism be given a second chance, warns against the new psychedelic fascism -- the eye-popping, multimedia, quadrasonic, drug-oriented conditioning of human beings by other beings -- which many believe will usher in the forfeiture of human citizenship and the beginning of zombiedom. * * * It is quite true that my film's view of man is less flattering than the one Rousseau entertained in a similarly allegorical narrative - but, in order to avoid fascism, does one have to view man as a *noble* savage, rather than an ignoble one? Being a pessimist is not yet enough to qualify one to be regarded as a tyrant (I hope). At least the film critic of The New York Times, Vincent Canby, did not believe so. Though modestly disclaiming any theories of initial causes and long range effects of films - a professional humility that contrasts very markedly with Mr. Hechinger's lack of the same - Mr. Canby nevertheless classified "A Clockwork Orange" as "a superlative example" of the kind of movies that "seriously attempt to analyze the meaning of violence and the social climate that tolerates it." He certainly did not denounce me as a fascist, no more than any well- balanced commentator who read "A Modest Proposal" would have accused Dean Swift of being a cannibal. Anthony Burgess is on record as seeing the film as "a Christian Sermon" - and lest this be regarded as a piece of special pleading by the original begetter of "A Clockwork Orange," I will quote the opinion of John E. Fitzgerald, the film critic of The Catholic News, who, far from believing the film to show man, in Mr. Hechinger's "uncharitable" reading, as "irretrievably bad and corrupt," went straight to the heart of the matter in a way that shames the fumbling innuendos of Mr. Hechinger. "In one year," Mr. Fitzgerald wrote, "we have been given two contradictory messages in two mediums. In print, we've been told (in B.F. Skinner's 'Beyond Freedom and Dignity') that man is but a grab-bag of conditioned reflexes. On screen, with images rather than words, Stanley Kubrick shows that man is more than a mere product of heredity and-or environment. For as Alex's clergyman friend (a character who starts out as a fire-and-brimstone spouting buffon, but ends up as the spokesman for the film's thesis) says: 'When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man.' "The film seems to say that to take away man's choice is not to redeem but merely to restrain him; otherwise we have a society of oranges, organic but operating like clockwork. Such brainwashing, organic and psychological, is a weapon that totalitarians in state, church or society might wish for an easier good, even at the cost of individual rights and dignity. Redemption is a complicated thing and change must be motivated from within rather than imposed from without if moral values are to be upheld." "It takes the likes of Hitler or Stalin, and the violence of inquisitions, pogroms and purges to manage a world of ignoble savages," declares Mr. Hechinger in a manner both savage and ignoble. Thus, without citing anything from the film itself, Mr. Hechinger seems to rest his entire case against me on a quote appearing in The New York Times of January 30, in which I said: "Man isn't a noble savage, he's an ignoble savage. He is irrational, brutal, weak, silly, unable to be objective about anything where his own interests are involved . . . and any attempt to create social institutions based on a false view of the nature of man is probably doomed to failure." From this, apparently, Mr. Hechinger concluded, "the thesis that man is irretrievably bad and corrupt is the essence of fascism," and summarily condemned the film. Mr. Hechinger is entitled to hold an optimistic view of the nature of man; but this does not give him the right to make ugly assertions of fascism against those who do not share his opinion. I wonder how he would reconcile his simplistic notions with the views of such an acknowledged anti-fascist as Arthur Koestler, who wrote in his book "The Ghost in the Machine," "The Promethean myth has acquired an ugly twist: the giant reaching out to steal the lightning from the Gods is insane . . . When you mention, however tentatively, the hypothesis that a paranoid streak is inherent in the human condition, you will promptly be accused of taking a one-sided, morbid view of history; of being hypnotized by its negative aspects; of picking out the black stones in the mosaic and neglecting the triumphant achieve- ments of human progress . . . To dwell on the glories of man and ignore the symptoms of his possible insanity is not a sign of optimism but of ostrichism. It could only be compared to the attitude of that jolly physician who, a short time before Van Gogh committed suicide, declared that he could not be insane because he painted such beautiful pictures." Does this, I wonder, place Mr. Koestler on Mr. Hechinger's newly started blacklist? It is because of the hysterical denunciations of self-proclaimed "alert liberals" like Mr. Hechinger that the cause of liberalism is weakened, and it is for the same reason that so few liberal-minded politicians risk making realistic statements about contemporary social problems. The age of the alibi, in which we find ourselves, began with the opening sentence of Rousseau's "Emile": "Nature made me happy and good, and if I am otherwise, it is society's fault." It is based on two misconceptions: that man in his natural state was happy and good, and that primal man had no society. Robert Ardrey has written in "The Social Contract," "The organizing principle of Rousseau's life was his unshakable belief in the original goodness of man, including his own. That it led him into most towering hypocrises must follow from such an assumption. More significant are the disillusionments, the pessimism, and the paranoia that such a belief in human nature must induce." * * * Ardrey elaborates in "African Genesis": "The idealistic American is an environmentalist who accepts the doctrine of man's innate nobility and looks chiefly to economic causes for the source of human woe. And so now, at the peak of the American triumph over that ancient enemy, want, he finds himself harassed by racial conflict of increasing bitterness, harrowed by juvenile delinquency probing championship heights." Rousseau's romantic fallacy that it is society which corrupts man, not man who corrupts society, places a flattering gauze between ourselves and reality. This view, to use Mr. Hechinger's frame of reference, is solid box office but, in the end, such a self-inflating illusion leads to despair. The Enlightenment declared man's rational independence from the tyranny of the Supernatural. It opened up dizzying and frightening vistas of the intellectual and political future. But before this became too alarming, Rousseau replaced a religion of the Supernatural Being with a religion of natural man. God might be dead. "Long live man." "How else," writes Ardrey, "can one explain - except as a substitute for old religious cravings - the immoderate influence of the rational mind of the doctrine of innate goodness?" Finally, the question must be considered whether Rousseau's view of man as a fallen angel is not really the most pessimistic and hope- less of philosophies. It leaves man a monster who has gone steadily away from his nobility. It is, I am convinced, more optimistic to accept Ardrey's view that, ". . . we were born of risen apes, not fallen angels, and the apes were armed killers besides. And so what shall we wonder at? Our murders and massacres and missiles and our irreconcilable regiments? For our treaties, whatever they may be worth; our symphonies, however seldom they may be played; our peaceful acres, however frequently they may be converted into battlefields; our dreams, however rarely they may be accomplished. The miracle of man is not how far he has sunk but how magnificently he has risen. We are known among the stars by our poems, not our corpses." Mr. Hechinger is no doubt a well-educated man but the tone of his piece strikes me as also that of a well-conditioned man who responds to what he expects to find, or has been told, or has read about, rather than to what he actually perceives "A Clockwork Orange" to be. Maybe he should deposit his grab-bag of conditioned reflexes outside and go in to see it again. This time, exercising a little choice. ================= MALCOLM McDOWELL OBJECTS, TOO TO THE EDITOR: This letter is in reply to Fred M. Hechinger's article, which was prompted in part by an interview that I gave to Tom Burke. I am an actor, not a philosopher - nor, thank God, a journalist. If a New York Times interviewer questions me on philosophical, social or political issues, he must expect to get answers that are inspired by feeling and intuition, rather than by the steely logic of a Fred M. Hechinger. But my comment on the sentimentalism of the "liberals" was not gleeful - it was *despondent*. (If I had been writing an article instead of replying to questions, I would have put the word "liberal" in quotes.) As an actor, of course, I spoke emotionally - from a violent emotional reaction to the violence and hysteria with which New York assails any visitor, and a violent and emotional reaction against the complacency or cowardice of "intellectuals" too scared to face or to interpret the harsh allegory which I believe Mr. Kubrick's picture to be. To call "A Clockwork Orange" fascist is as silly as to say that "if . . . " preached violence. But some people will never read the writing on the wall. Your humble narrator and friend, MALCOLM McDOWELL London.
Words streamed out from an invisible mouth, took on life and came towards me. They twisted and turned before me, changing their shapes like slave girls in their dresses of many colours, then they sank into the ground or turned into an iridescent haze in the air and vanished, making room for the next. For a little while each hoped I would choose it and not look at the next.
but what happened was different, completely different from what I imagined. My skin, my muscles, my body suddenly remembered, without revealing the secret to my brain. They made movements that I had not willed, had not intended. As if my limbs no longer belonged to me!
All at once, when I took a few steps into the room, I found myself walking with a strange, faltering gait. That is the way someone walks who is constantly in fear of falling forward on to his face, I said to myself.
Yes, yes, yes! That was the way he walked! I knew quite clearly: that is the way he is. I was wearing an alien face, clean shaven, with prominent cheek bones; I was looking at my room out of slanting eyes. I could sense it, even though I could not see myself.
Assume that the man who came to you and whom you call the Golem signifies the awakening of the dead through your innermost spiritual life. Each thing on earth is nothing but an eternal symbol clothed in dust.
How is it possible to think with your eyes? Each shape that you see is a thought in your eye. Everything that takes on shape was a ghost before.
I felt ideas, which until then had been firmly anchored in my mind, tear themselves loose and drift like rudderless ships on a boundless ocean.
He continued to look at me:
‘Anyone who has been wakened can no longer die; sleep and death are the same.’
‘…can no longer die?’ a dull ache gripped me.
‘two paths run bedside each other: the Path of Life and the Path of death. You have taken the Book of Enoch and read it. Your soul has been made pregnant by the path of Life,’ I heard him say.
‘Let me take the path that all men take, the Path of Death!’ Everything within me screamed out loud. His countenance froze in an expression of deep earnestness:
‘Men do not take any path, neither that of life nor that of death. They drift like chaff in the wind. . in the Talmud it is written, ‘before G-d created the world he showed the souls a mirror , wherein they could see the spiritual sufferings of existence and the joys that followed. Some accepted the suffering. But others refused and G-d struck them out of the Book of the Living.’ But you are taking a path and you have set out on it of your own free will, even if you are no longer aware of it. Do not grieve; as knowledge comes gradually, so does memory. Knowledge and memory are the same thing.’
The big bang? God’s madness, his loneliness. His paradoxical realization that that is all there is and ever was. The result was the most cataclysmic reaction ever known. The smashing, clashing and fragmentation was so supernal that the parts spread to the furthest corners of the cosmos. The opportunity for the tiny finite result was to gradually attempt to rescue these lost pieces, to return to the initial innocent harmony that was, in a very distant past, once known.
loneliness
the patriarch Jacob, was once before and famously alone, at night, at the border between Canaan and Aram, the night of his wondrous dream at Beth-El.
But on that occasion, he was not said “to be alone [levado]” – it was not good, said the Lord, that the man should be alone (Genesis 2:18).
“Alone,” has two meanings, one weak and lowly, one high and mighty. Here they seem to be combined. Though Jacob is literally alone and seemingly frightened, he has voluntarily made himself alone. Moreover, his subsequent conduct will be anything but weak. He will successfully fight alone in the dark in a foreign place against a being greater than himself, relying only on his own strength and as a result he will win a new and lasting name. No-one ever again will fight such a battle. The memory of this unique battle will inform the newly named Children of Israel, who will be derivatively but permanently marked by this nocturnal suffering.’
The potter of all potters locked himself away in his tall
studio.
He remained there, time after time, perfecting his creative
techniques.
There was never a man so dedicated to his work. He was such
a perfectionist that even if he created a pot that was nearly to his
satisfaction, he would destroy it and begin again.
To many this was an unbelievable means of working – but it
fired up the potter, winding him up like a coiled spring and he poured his
frenzied energy slowly out onto his glorious works.
The potter made one pot after another, each one large and
more complexly beautiful than the one preceding it. However, he destroyed each
one and began all over again.
It is not right, said the potter to himself. The distance
between his mental image the real image was still too far. But is the gap not
infinite? How many pots will need to be made before even the real image is in
sight of the mental one?
He kept going, undeterred by the gnawings of his own
conscience. Slowly but surely the pots formed themselves into something a
complex and sophisticated he was looking for. Many parts separated but linked,
organically flowing into one another.
From then on he began to see that the pots he made should
not be destroyed but he kept them in his studio.
Soon his pots were becoming incredibly beautiful – tall,
elegant and grand. Arching over his head
As he placed them in other corners of the room the pots sat
and watched quietly.
He made new ones and the old pots got jealous.
Look at him making all those.
What are we lesser now?
The other pots murmured agreement, whilst the potter was
busy plying his hands, grafting and flowing over the clay.
The pots assembled together, lets get rid of some them they
said.
On the seventh day, when the potter rested –
The studio was quiet. The typical noise of the wheel was
absent. The room was serene and silent.
the pots crept up and saw the new ones there. Without a
second thought, they smashed them to pieces, crushing their smoothness to dust.
The potter retuned from his rest. He saw the destruction
that had been caused and was sad. He looked at the pots, now still, resting
against the wall. He quinted with his eye…
I know what you did, he said. I know and I will not forget.
The potter got back to his work and began turning the wheel.
The remaining pots were keen to see what he was to produce
and peered up from their now distant corner. The potter was not making his
usual pots…he was making something else…
Once the poitter was finished, he moved over to the pots
resting against the wall, they stood frigid but almost shivered in
anticipation…
The potter leant over and on each one he placed a lid
stopper. Firmly ramming it into the lips of the tall pots. He was finished for
the day.
The pots all looked up at their new additions and their new
additions spoke back to them. Not before long, they grew to like their
lids…they no longer felt the same level of loneliness.
As the potter continued on his daily work…he no longer
destroyed or saw the destruction of any of his work, he work had found
completion. The pots he created became a patchwork mosaic of colour, thousands
of millions of pots…all together swaying in the harmony of the cosmic wind…
The cosmic wind you ask?
As the view drifts out of the window of the lonely studio, a
face watches. Peppered with stars and encircled by orbiting planets it the
potter of all potters. This studio was his final creation, he had destroyed
many to get her, almost tearing an enormous hole in himself through
frustration…
He looked and saw that it was all good. There was peace in
his eyes, completion.
There was once a terrific knight, who had a wonderful suit of armour. He used to travel far and wide winning contest after contest. He appeared as a great warrior. He had an incredibly quick set of reflexes and he based his fighting strategy on speedy, sudden contests.
He was undefeated and tossed away every challenge.
However, deep beneath the armour the knight was a scared young man. No-one could see him inside this suit so they took him upon face value and anyway, what did they care – they were far too busy with their own lives.
Well the time came when all the battles were won and everyone got on without fighting and began to work. Well, it was not that they actually got on. Everyone had to act in a certain way to fit into a fragile castle system of give and take. However, the system became so full that only those who had a stern attitude and socially-manipulative manner got by.
Now the knight saw all this. He was rather stuck what to do. He had a beautiful shiny suit of armour but it was useless for the tasks that everyone was now doing. He looked around but everyone was too busy to listen to him and were too concerned with their foothold in the castle system that was up and running.
The knight sat in his heavy suit and fell into a deep and foreboding sleep. There he saw himself sat upon the top of the system…everyone was operating around his beautiful words and everything that dripped from his lips was held in awe.
The knight awoke to a startle. The dream was very intense and seemed very real to him but alas he knew that it was only a dream and feared that he could not live up to it. He feared that it was one of those dreams that everyone has before they entered the castle to work in the system. They were the dreams that cry and sob and that leave us at night, like the slamming shut of the drawbridge on the castle gates.
The knight was so sad that he cried. He could not stop tears rolling out of his eyes…he tried but just could not stop it. He cried so much that the tears dripped all over his suit of armour. They slid everywhere and seeped into each joint. There was so many tears that they caused the suit to go rusty and the knight could not move! He was rigid and bound.
The knight tried to do something to attract people’s attention but those who were in the castle could only wave and give messages of support. There was no-one who could come and wrench the suit off him.
However, one day a beautiful princess drifted by. The knight called for her to help and the princess, not only beautiful but incredibly gracious and humble, came up to his visor and asked the knight what the matter was.
As the princess approached, the knight said that he had become trapped by his armour and was unable to move, but when he saw the inexplicable radiant beauty of the princess he jerked suddenly. The princess was scared and ran off but as she turned, she missed that the force of the jerk had caused the knight’s armour to crumble.
The knight regained his composure and called out to the princess but she ran so fast that she could not hear him. But now the knight was uncovered for the first time in a long while. He started to wander around but shivered due to the cold and was afraid. He was unsure where to go or what to do. So the knight roamed into the wilderness and began to think. He was so frustrated with himself that he scared away the princess and thought about the incident again and again in his head. He thought so much that his mind started to go in circles, driving him mad. He was very angry and wished that he had never cried so his suit would not have got stuck like it did.
But the grievances of the knight did not advance him any further and now, not only was he cold and bare but was far away from everyone in the castle and lost in some ridiculous wilderness.
The knight kicked out in frustration at a rock, the rock bounced onto another rock and caused this one to flip up into the air very high. It came down and was split open by the hard floor. The knight marvelled at this little moment but started to move on his way. However, as he did a sparkle caught his eye. Inside one half of the stone something was glistening! The knight was intrigued and looked closer. There before his very eyes was a pure and incredible diamond!
The knight’s eyes widened with amazement and he reached out. He grabbed the stone and pulled out the diamond, which was perfectly formed. He held it up to the sun and admired its structure, it was perfect. He was so glad to have found it and placed it in a pocket close to his heart.
The knight wandered around for a long time. He was alone but he knew that he had been given an incredible gift. He was prepared for meeting the princess and decided that if he ever found her, he would give her the diamond as a measure of her incredible beauty.
This gladdened his heart and made his face shine. The knight continues to wander to this day…he is yet, though, to have found the princess. But if you are ever in a wilderness, like many, then you may hear his call; like a song bird…calling the princess. He still hopes and dreams that she may, in the quietest of quiet moments, be able to hear his sound.
I thought you may have been thrown in here for something
less naïve.
Who are you?
I am the one who also had the ideas but they were to far. I
was battered by the indignant pecking and battering of the masses.
What are you talking about?
I was like you, once. A man with ideas, a man with hopes and
with dreams. but they were too good. You can’t be too good. You upset the apple
cart, the order of things. The system whips back against you, punishing
you.You can’t go too fast, too
far – it causes things to backlash.
How do you know all this?
I can see it in your eyes, you are a loner like me. You
reached with upper levels but you took a back route, a sneaky path. They don’t
like it you know.
The
new man looked down saddened. You have spoken my thoughts.
There was once a man who lived in a box. All day and night he sat in his box, as happy as a sand boy. He liked his box, it felt secure, but after a while he began to feel unfulfilled with it. He had a strange feeling that the world was more than just the walls around him. The man was motivated to start looking around his box. As he was searching he discovered a small door! He managed to dust it off and prise it open…
Through the door the man found many people. But the people were not interested in him; they were all too busy looking in mirrors. They were fascinated and were endlessly looking at themselves, turning one way and then another. They admired what they saw and were adoringly pruning their hair. The man eventually got bored and felt uncomfortable, so he climbed back into his box.
The man spent several weeks there, but the fact that he was aware of an outside place made him feel that he wanted to go ‘exploring’ again. The man hunted around again and found another door! The man scratched the door out and managed to heave it open. The door opened and the man found someone standing on a soapbox. This someone was speaking and speaking. He would not stop. He was speaking so much that he had thick white spittle in the corners of his mouth. The man tried to talk to this person again and again but the someone speaking couldn’t hear him, he was too busy talking! The man returned back through the door to the sanctity of his box, disillusioned and upset.
The man sat back in his box and pondered. He deliberated there for a few weeks what to do. He was so distraught that people hadn’t noticed him. It made him feel very insecure of himself. However, now he had seen there were doorways, he decided to go for another one. The man picked himself up and began to explore. Soon enough, he found a third door! Again the door was scuffed out and hauled open.
The man crawled through and found a really hectic place. There was a lot of activity! All the people were standing and tearing into one another. They were arguing and screeching at each other. Their faces were red and flustered. The man screamed out at the people there but again to no avail. They were all too busy asserting themselves. The man thought it was interesting that while everyone was quarrelling so much, they were not listening to each other at all.
The man decided to return and crawled home to his box. There he lay and contemplated his life. He was very upset. He had invested the time and energy to visit these places and gained nothing from any of them. Nobody had wanted to know him.
The man lay down and soon he fell asleep. Whilst he was asleep he had a terrific dream. He dreamt that the top of his box burst off to reveal a shaft of light, like a column, leading up to the sky. The man looked up. Above was a wondrous kingdom, full of sparkling energy and life. People with wings were excitedly looking down at the man and were pointing. They were so excited to have discovered him. The man enjoyed the attention they gave him.
Suddenly the man awoke. He looked up and only saw the top of his box. He realised it was all just a dream, but deep down the man felt that there was something outside his box. He was, however, eternally unsure whether he would ever be able to find it.
"in a world full of darkness, i wont turn out my light" UB40
the ego is the darkness we possess. the self serving, self indulgence that we live by. an inability to change, to adapt and see with a deeper clarity, with a deeper truth. the world is a confusing place, bristling with temptation, trickery and if you want to find it - hatred. we live in the postmodern age where there are no more clear answers to our values. no clear direction for us to follow. we seem to wander, being attracted by the shiniest, or most garish thing that attracts our attention.
so we firm up, to self preserve. we tred our well worn paths that were familiar, that we know as safe. we stay away from fear, from the unknown. we shut up shop.
no, you say - the world is whatever you want it to be! well im afraid it is not. there is a verve of transformation, of political happenings, of social change that is real. the poor are really poor. the cities speak of those who have and those who dont. we can live a secluded lie, surrounded by happy cheery people who support our every word and thought, or one can choose to keep going out there, to see the state of society as it really is. to see the extremes, to see the downtrodden, to see those who have no-one speaking for them. to constantly challenge oneself with the unfamiliar and with strangeness.
for that is the artist. to walk the path alone. to many he seems aloof, inward even absurd. but in truth he is the chameleon, the ever changing mirror. for those he meets, he wears their own mask and dances back at them. giving them their own mirror of confusion, dancing their own sexual desire or manipulation. dancing their own dance of death in their very face. the true artist is a vessel. to reveal uncomfortable truths. to challenge. to strike. and where necessary to cause damage to shake reality of its convolutions or of its bourgeois contempt.
there are those who see and those who dont. and for those who dont what they will be given is their own blindness, as they stumble in the dark like a friday night drunk on the high street.
yea, this is all too much, too intense. fuck off and go on a holiday
Jacob’s wrestling as a vibrating literary paradigm for a Jewish male identity crisis
And Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until the breaking of the day.
Genesis 32:25
A thrust and squirm in the dust of the floor, crunching amid branches strewn across the forest canopy. They are both entwined, knotted around each other - almost loving-hostile and in close confrontation - face to face.
Their exhausting encounter, morphing into an eternal struggle, becomes a blurring wrestle – tight and controlled – almost a single entity. They writhe to a hum – a sound of flux, of quivering, radiating through the entire episode.
Jacob wrestles with his dark adversary in this infamous biblical excerpt. The origin of the man is unknown, but traditional commentary alludes to the dark guardian angel of Esau.
This deeply moving nocturnal struggle, punishing like no other, is a potent metaphor for the contemporary Jewish male. This is a broken man in a netherworld, who is struggling to the near depths of his soul for redemption, for his maleness and for his true identity.
We face many struggles; the world lays battered after terror attacks, war is on the rise, postmodernism and assimilation eat away at our communities and society lies bewildered at the chaos enveloping it.
Thus, this battle is not only a biblical paradigm but also a striking symbol for a current human malaise. We are lost in the contorted woods, like Jacob – struggling for our identity in a post Holocaust world. Gasping in this twilight zone we long for redemption, for a unified self, where others may see us shine. This will be a place where our actions and thoughts are pure and without blemish.
Esau, as Jacob’s brother, is a shadowy inverse of his twin. He knows the deepest facets of his soul and every weak point. He fires his hand into the rawest wounds and tears at the weakest bonds. Jacob feels like he cannot go on, but does. You feel like there is no light at the end – but dawn will come.
Do Jews have Heroes?
Is Jacob a hero in our post heroic world?
The orthodox feminist commentator, Daniel Boyarin, makes the point that the
Jewish male was defined as the very opposite to the knight in shining armour of romantic culture.
The Eastern European ideal of a gentle, timid and studious Jewish male – the edelkayt –
is rooted in the maleness of the Babylonian Talmud.
This Rabbinic male was often misunderstood as sexually unappealing, unattractive
and sexless in their gentleness.
It was within European culture that traits such as activity, domination and aggressiveness
were seen as manly. Commonly, gentleness and passivity were seen as emasculate or effeminate.
It was ‘men whose deepest sexual desire does not involve dominance of women (rape)
must be in some way physically deficient.’
The concept of heroism is reduced in Jewish tradition (beneath the will of Hashem of course)…
often resulting in the Jewish male being seen in more unsavoury means by those who fail
to understand us.
The Filthy Wanderer
The old world maintained the anti-Semitic stereotype of the wandering Jew; the Jewish male as a filthy lost nomad. He is displaced, sterile, searching and crying for home…calling in the wilderness.
The film ‘Zelig’ by Woody Allen almost perfectly fits this stereotype. It tells the comic story of a man, Leonard Zelig, who moves from place to place with an extraordinary ability to adapt and assimilate to his surroundings. This human chameleon can change colour and size at will. He is not too far distant from the Hip Hop Jewish DJ Tim Westwood or even Ali G. - white middleclass Jewish boys turned black. Theirs is a dislocated and defunct identity; whilst struggling to find a home it latches on and reapropriates a slice of popular culture it finds around it. Even in my past work as a youth counsellor in Jewish schools, I have seen many young Jewish boys who speak, walk and talk like they are black. Is this a masochistic desire to return to the ghetto? Or the echo and scarring of hundreds of years being enslaved there?
The unfortunate cynicism and decadence of North West London, being where I grew up, is also a place struggling with much confusion and exile.
Philip Roth fired with precision in his infamous character Alex Portnoy; a silver tongued sexual predator, obsessed with the appendage between his legs.
Described as the "masturbation" novel, often quoted is the critic who wrote: "Yeah, I'd like to meet the author ... but I don't wanna shake him by the hand..."
Detailing the shortcomings of his upbringing, Portnoy's paradox as an adult is that the women he esteems are unexciting in bed and the women who excite him sexually disgust him too. Thus, Portnoy constructs for himself an identity bursting with self-loathing.
Alex Portnoy experiences one cultural system of gender in conflict with another;
what his complaint underscores is both the anxiety this conflict produces vis a vis gender identity
and the appropriative and destructive force that displaced anxiety has for others,
especially women, who come into contact with it. It is this defensive-aggressive tactic of
certifying manhood through phallic swaggering and misogyny that is so prevalent in NW London.
These Jewish boys see shicksas for shtupping and becks for moaning. They love the slim bodies, the dripping jewellery, the coloured and tinted hair. The girls are coated in vanity, dolled up and swamped in perfume – to allure a new batch of lawyers and accountants to be at the local neon lit bar in Stanmore.
Jacob’s encounter is tinged with repressed homoeroticism. Touched in the groin by his nightmarish assailant, the Jewish male’s path to redemption is possibly though confronting his own sexuality.
Amidst the plethora of Jewish singles where do they look for union? It seems they may be looking no further than themselves; their partner being their own sexual organs. Are the current generation losing the ability to know love?
Much of the posturing and intoxicated male manipulation of the Jewish and non-Jewish girls steams with homoerotic repression.
Do Jewish men really like Jewish girls? Does bourgeois London love others or only themselves? Thus the very deconstruction of the postmodern age is the going inside of oneself, like a drug trip – a personal mental experience.
My grandma tells me that we don’t know relationships like we used to. Getting married in her late teens she built connections of such depth that are far removed from what we may know today. I hope that in the internalising of ourselves we might find a new strand of energy.
Thus, Jacob’s wrestling plays as an inner struggle; a struggle with the parts that we don’t talk about to others; the loneliest aspects of our humanity. Reaching this forbidden place, in the frantic Kafkaesque alienation of postindustrial society, it seems that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
So this leaves the male in a pretty weak and pathetic position: A male gazer, a feeble closet sex addict who lusts for women but can’t find the satisfaction.
The Exodus to a New Superman
The male had to reassert himself…and did…
Leon Uris emerged with ‘Exodus’ - the antithesis to what he calls "obnoxious" literature. He claimed, "I wrote Exodus because I was sick of apologizing - or feeling it was necessary to apologize. The Jewish community of this country has contributed far more greatly than its numbers - in art, in medicine and especially literature."
From its inception, the idea behind Exodus and Zionism itself was the transformation of the social,
political, economic and psychological profile of the Jews of Europe, the creation of the "New Jew",
a "Muscle Jew" who would be the antithesis of the pejoratively "feminized" Diaspora Jew.
The political and economic transformation which led to the creation of a Jewish homeland
in Palestine required the construction of a physically fit "New Jew," who upon arrival,
would take up arms to defend himself, his community and what he believed was his land.
The gendered reference to the "Muscle Jew" illuminates the connection between masculinity
and Zionism and the invisibility of women in Zionism. The dynamics between masculinity
and the nation suggests that the constriction of nation was simultaneous to the construction
of masculinity in Israel. Jewish nationalism must be understood as a masculine project.
The writings of Theodor Herzl, the modern father of Zionism, explicitly reveal a
gendered contempt for European Jewry. After visiting friends on June 8, 1895 he wrote,
"they are Ghetto creature, quiet, decent, timorous… Will they understand the call to freedom
and manliness?" Clearly, for Herzl manliness and freedom were closely tied together,
and both were connected to militarism. For Herzl, the most important idea of Zionism
was to teach Jewish men to reclaim the masculine past of the nation.
This was necessary because years of life in the Diaspora had emasculated the Jews.
The Zionist muscle Jew developed as the anti-thesis to the edelkayt.
This new superman icon was the very archetype that was maligned within the rabbinic world
and seen as goyish – with traits such as exhibiting physical strength,
martial activity and aggressiveness as well as contempt for and fear of the female body.
Assimilation for European Jews was a sexual and gendered enterprise,
an overcoming of the political and cultural characteristics that marked Jewish men as a ‘third sex.’
Boyarin claims Jews were the queer in the world.
Thus, he adds, Zionism was a return to phallustine, not to Palestine.
It is impossible to separate the question of Jewishness from the question of homosexuality.
In that world, passing, for Jews, entailed homosexual panic, internalised homophobia
and ultimately aggression.
Jewish heroes of the Bible were turned into mimics of gentle heroes by the Zionist camp.
The desire to be apart from Aryan types led directly to an embodiment of it.
Thus, emancipated Jews became desperate to remake the Jewish male in the image
of the Anglo-Saxon as the ultimate white male of their world. Herzel became Moses
and Zionist gymnastic movements took the names of Jewish warriors.
Zionism, in Freudian language, was a mode of repressing and overcoming Jewish homosexual
effeminacy.
As the Israeli army anthem sings, "Shir Hapalmach," with its vow in reborn Hebrew fitting perfectly:
From Metula to the Negev From the sea to the desert: Every boy is good with a gun, Every boy on his guard duty.
However, the final battle looms large. As dawn breaks, Jacob still writhes with his adversary and the enemy is now close. The ultimate danger of such a trauma is that the bullied may become the bully and even worse…the abused may become the abuser.
Esau and Dionysian Anarchy
Dionysian anarchy is the spiritual root of fascism; the polar opposite to Hebraism. Derived from the Greek mythological understanding of unbounded liberation and rooted in paganism, it is a worship of frenzied ecstasy and subversive power. It is a bloodlust of animalistic dominance.
As the biblical scholar Avivah Zornberg notes, it is the character of Esau who ultimately embodies this fascist impulse. Born as a red, hairy baby, his life is one bursting of complication and chaos. His erectile, mangled hair expresses the inwardness of fear and excitement, charged to a bristling and paranoid nervous system.
Esau was manic upon hearing he was supplanted by his younger twin Jacob. He was a man of the field; a hunter who was vacant, empty of meaning, cut adrift from the intentional energies of life and conscious of his own vitality only in destroying it.
Esau, as a sufferer of deep angst, is a leisured, unoccupied person, roaming the fields. He is the prototype to ancient Greece and Rome. He holds the alienated and disintegrated consciousness of one for whom all the noble privileges and promises of life have dissolved in blood. Subsequently, he becomes the analytical mind, obsessed with the unreality of existence, intuited with the rhythm of his despair.
Out of this darkness grows a cancer, the blackest evil that can be imagined; the Dionysian Impulse. It is path to madness, a polarised love of beauty and of the ugly. This eternal stoic pessimism is driven by a fascination with blood and death, exploding from the deranged ecstasy of strength and power.
One pole is animalistic, attached to the demonic ‘goat-god.’ The other is tragic, longing for both beauty and ugliness, pleasure and pain. It is a complex self-knowledge, where self-deception is a constant hazard.
Connected to the Nietzschean concept of the ubermensch, Zionism’s reliance on the Jewish superman is dissolving – simply due to its unJewishness. The question is what will replace it.
The controversial film ‘The Believer’ suggests this ultimate struggle for oneself. It mirrors the Kabbalistic concept of interconnected alternatives that define themselves through their dark opposite – good/bad, pleasure/pain, body/soul. The protagonist of the movie, Danny Balint is hideously a Jewish neo-Nazi.
What is Nazi? What is it really? Why did a movement of people rise up and cause such terror to us?
For me, there is something of an inversely warped choseness. The Nazi’s said they were God’s true people - not the Jew, placing us at the lowest rung. Like the dark angel, springing from Jacob’s own lineage, they are a dark inversion of truth. Created through a terrifying predatory shadow, they hunt us through the woods. Like the ogre in many horror films, it is a monstrous collusion – born out of hysterical paranoia turned back on itself. It is a chaotic madness, an inversion of the self poured on others. It was a cancer of humanity.
Like Jacob and Esau, this toxic strain originates from the same seed and as with Amalek, must be annihilated at all costs. It will manipulate and manifest itself as alternate forms, but it is a cancer that still lives.
Where Daniel’s struggle is between two poles – Jew or Nazi, it is like bouncing between the ultimate tension – life or death, softness or hardness. For Fascism is pure hardness - disease ridden, bitter and putrid – without compassion for anything unlike itself. Nietzsche, constantly exulting upon the beauty of hardness, only ends in a chaotic bloodlust. Like his late descent into insanity, there is no avenue for this route.
As Heschel says, the world is maintained through law but moved forward with love. It is the serenity and softness of love that the Jewish male needs to discover again. Do we love? Do we know passion? Have the years of alienation of exile dimmed our spiritual senses, like Jacob groping in the forest wilderness?
For dawn breaks and the sun’s rays finally kill the shadows. Through the mist, Jacob is redeemed from his encounter. He is given his new name – Yisrael, he who struggles with God and man. Jacob slowly stumbles out of the forest and falls into the arms of his loving family. Upon the subsequent confrontation with the real Esau – he finds love even then to embrace his brother.
It is this journey that can guide us in these difficult times. For the route home is our inner path. Along the way are the many struggles we have inside our own hearts and minds as we lie in the darkness, waiting for the warmth of the sun to stir and enliven us once again.
This is the way of our contemporary world. Whether its terrorism, rapid climate change or economic fears…the world seems to turn and shift day by day through fear and the fear of fear.
Screaming headlines from the media seem to suggest that the world has fallen into a dark confusion…with wars in distant places raging that seem to have no meaning…and no definable end.
Even more so…this sense of confusion and fear is further apparent in ourselves. Our own selves no longer have a secure sense of place, of time or of meaning. The virtual internet generation is redefining the nature of reality. We all ask, ‘Who am I?’ unable to find a sense of security and belonging.
We are neither sure whether our world or our own selves are becoming less human.
There are several ways to react to this provocation of identity. This article will look at one…the development of the alien other.
This article suggests that the alien other has become the method with which we express the confusion and fear of the contemporary world. It also argues that the expression of the alien in popular discussion is the root for racism and resurgent anti-Semitism. Ultimately, this line of thought exclaims:
spit & fire, fists & bombs
everything is the alien, so who are you?
the black man is the alien, so what about the jew
the jew is the alien, but really, now really
the alien is you.
The former British fascist party leader, Oswald Mosley, famously raged against the ‘aliens’ of the East End. This was before he was defeated at Cable Street. Everyone was aware that when he said ‘alien’ he was referring to the Jew.
The alien is something that comes from a distant place…either outer space or from a far away land. It is radically different in culture, language and in looks. However, it is also something that challenges our humanity. It is often similar enough to our own selves to provoke serious challenges to our own supposedly secure sense of being.
The aliens of science fiction link to this line of reasoning. From b-movies to modern day blockbusters such as ‘War of the Worlds,’ the science fiction film has often expressed the repressed fears of western society in what the future may bring.
1950s American science fiction was very much linked to The Cold War with Russia, the threat of the earth being destroyed by the atom bomb and the paranoia of strange emotionless hordes invading from a distant place.
The symbol of the alien invader is something far more implicit that just the question of whether extraterrestrial life exists. The alien is a metaphor. It is very important metaphor that expresses the idea of otherness and the feelings and fears toward otherness.
Throughout our society, from fears of immigration to hysteria over terrorism, the concept of otherness drives a shadow in our imagination. Otherness creates the warped perception that wherever we are and whatever we are doing – we are susceptible to attack and in danger of something lurking in the darkness. This is because anything different to ourselves is often perceived as a threat, it unsettles the conformed way in which we see the world and our way of life.
In Ridley Scott’s seminal film ‘Alien,’ the dark black sexualised alien monster – designed by the gothic artist HR Giger, represents repressed fear and desire. Its long phallic tale curls under its victims, before it implants a cancerous parasite in its prey – making them unwitting carriers of more terror. This also fits with the Italian appellation of the cultural creature of nightmares…the bogeyman – l’omo nero – literally the black man.
There is often a link between alien otherness and darkness. Gothicism represents a dark dystopian world of eternal confusion and shattered mind. Gothicism, with its close parallels to our current dominant mode of thinking – postmodernism, is the narrative expression of fear and desire – of broken morality. This is the world of shadows that formulates the idea of the exotic alien – a call to Edward Said’s ‘Orientalism’ – the otherness from parts of the world that seem human but are so seemingly different to ourselves in mind, culture and tradition.
In Gothic Anti-Semitism, the alien Jew was traditionally a shylock type character – dark, ugly, nefarious and hideous. There is even evidence to suggest that the character of Dracula was based upon anti-Semitic folklore – such as the blood libels.
On a lighter note, there is something of the other in the nature of the Jew that makes it stand aloof from society, see in objectivity what others cannot see and in being able to make huge currents of change in the world.
The magical alien of Spielberg’s ‘E.T.’ constantly asks to phone home – similar to the notion of Jewish prayer in exile. We also phone ‘home’ in a spiritual sense as we pray toward Jerusalem.
The concept of the alien is littered throughout biblical text, in how one should relate to the stranger.
In Shemot (23:9), Hashem commands us: ve’ger lo tilchatz, ve’atem ye’datem et nefesh ha’ger ki gerim heyitem be’eretz Mitzrayim – Do not oppress a ger; for you know the feelings of a ger[literally, "you know the soul of a stranger"], for you were gerim in the land of Egypt. The simple translation of ger in this context is ‘stranger’ or, perhaps, ‘resident alien.’
In Vayikra (16:23-24) and elsewhere, the Torah goes even further, instructing us to proactively overcome basic human nature with the mitzvah of ahavat ha’ger, to love the stranger and alien: ve’ahavta lo kamocha, ki geirim he’yitem be’eretz Mitzrayim – You must love him [the ger] as yourself, for you were gerim (aliens) in the land of Egypt.
As well as the repeated emphasis on the stranger in biblical law, According to the Talmud there are no less than 36 – 46 references in the Talmud to the protection of the "stranger."
The Torah suggests that the alien is indeed different, but he/she was created in the image of G-d and must be respected as though it is oneself. The Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks notes in his writings that ‘Why should I not hate the stranger? Because the stranger is me.’
Thus, the very nature of the alien is highly provocative. It is something that is so different to our own selves…but not different enough. It quite easily slips into a scapegoat for our own crimes and vices.
It is the most difficult thing to admit to our own faults. To undergo the severe process of self-analysis and practical change is often too hard to do. Therefore, the removing or ‘abjection’ of the alien is often the root of racism.
The writer Julia Kristeva suggests that as the process of self denial persists, the body then ‘abjects’ this negative state onto an innocent other. This process, like an aborted foetus, is the excretion of all the crap of the mind onto an alien, something strangely similar but dissimilar to ourselves.
Kristeva also describes abjection as an operation of the psyche through which subjective and group identity are formed by excluding anything that threats one's own (or one's group's) borders. Therefore, the abjection often occurs to positively reinforce a group membership that the individual might be part of.
It is quite common, for example, for Jewish people to label their fears and paranoia onto Muslims (often fostered due to a history of conflict and the perceived scale of terrorism in the world). The psychology of otherness makes one place even more of their own internal repressed psychology onto the other, which makes the other gradually appear even more demonic and disturbing, even more dangerous.
The idea of the Torah and of the Chief Rabbi is that the alien cannot be defeated by security measures and alarm systems. The alien is something within us…it is part of us…and is us.
This can mean two things, either the alien represents an unknown part of ourselves or that the alien is an inner expression of our own self projected outward.
The movie‘Contact’ with Jodie Foster suggests that the journey into space to find the alien is ultimately a journey into the infinite self. Space is a metaphor for the soul. Throughout every century, the journey toward the divine, according to the mystics, is the journey into the self.
Thus, the alien is the alien part of ourselves. Everything is our own perception. The further we go in life toward discovery and communication, is the further we venture into our own deep mental and spiritual space.
The Jewish philosopher Martin Buber suggested that the essence of religious faith was a relationship with the other…whether this represented another person, G-d or our own self. Martin Buber’s I and Thou (Ich und Du, 1923) presents a philosophy of personal dialogue, in that it describes how personal dialogue can define the nature of reality. Buber’s major theme is that human existence may be defined by the way in which we engage in dialogue with each other, with the world, and with God.
Therefore, the alien becomes the Jew in this religious appraisal. The fear of the alien is misperception and confusion. The alien is the unknown in ourselves…it is not the part we need to fear but the part we need to love. In this place lie the secrets to our humanity and the source for discovering new parts of our inner psyches. The alien provides the lack, our deficit…it can supply the tikkun (rebuilding) of our own self.
Taken to its highest meaning…the alien becomes messianic. The redemptive and life affirming alien is rather like ‘E.T.’ This alien transforms the world and its inhabitants toward The Good.
This process causes order to flow from disorder and helps enforce morality, natural law and ideally the will of G-d – cosmic justice.
The mystical parts of Judaism remind us that we are still a people in exile and our own selves are in exile. We are not living in paradise. The world is in a state of brutal chaos, teeming with war. Mystical Judaism teaches us that we are all exiled from our true unified and Godly self. The journey of life is to find and know the alien in ourselves, to unify the fragmented parts of ourselves and to make ourselves one.
Exile is the central feature of our Jewish expression. We are living in the fourth exile since the destruction of the 2nd temple and the Roman expulsions of the Jews. Exile is also critical to the eternal journey of the Jewish people in the Bible, the journey of the alienated Israelites from exile in Egypt to reach home.
In the spiritual state of becoming closer to G-d one should constantly attempt to reconnect to parts of ourselves we find strange, fighting through our fears.
Thus, moving from an exiled self to a redeemed one.
The aim is to be aware of these parts of ourselves that we project onto others. Often these are subtle feelings of inadequacy and dismissal because these are linked to a failure to believe in our own self as a source of redemption.
According to the mystics, we can control our reality, but only if we are in control. We are not solely in control, this is down to God of course – but if we believe strongly enough, and we act in a humble way toward others and see ourselves as the source of all bad feeling around us – then our world can be transformed. The alien otherness becomes a unified part of ourselves and finally we are rebuilt in the image of God – the unified Oneness that interconnects to every living thing on this planet.
The streets are dark and covered in filth. Chicken bones,
gristle and blue plastic bags, dragged into a dance by a passing car. People
writhe spasticated in the streets. Drunk up to their eyeballs with toxins, blocking
out whatever vestiges of self ever existed. Whatever they are hiding from, they
have hidden themselves so well that their bodies have become walking corpses.
They exist as the living dead.
Gloating eyes dart in sharp angles. Deep bass drum beats emerge
from cars like death knells. Bleating horns sing in a messy orchestra of
entropy. And there are the sirens…the constant cry of Hackney…another
emergency…another one has fallen…another statistic.
At night there is another world. This twilight zone of crossings,
sits in silence - half petrified of itself and half relieved…that there is
quiet and relative peace. Tramps drift like ghosts in the shadows, sleeping
where they fall. Metal shop shutters glisten in the amber phosphorus glow.
I saw another person fall today. They lay twisted against
the metal railings, in the middle of the busy high street. They always fall
where they can be most noticed. The only cry for help in a helpless world. The
police turned the body over, prodding like a schoolboy touching a frog in a
biology specimen class.
The cackle of laughter, the trill of a ringtone, DVD DVD?
The latest movies before the Hollywood machine has even begun marketing their
wares…direct from a Chinese sweatshop.
The amazing thing is…even amid the chaos and desperation…is
that people still live and work. Not completely. Many young men drift by their
days stoned, holding up their sagging tracksuit bottoms. But many stlll get by.
Pushing their prams, delivering their post, dragging their pitbulls on tight leads.
The poor are far from glorious, draped in cheap jewellery,
tight vest tops and acne. Puffing fags in unison, the women collect their
washing before drifting back to their cramped flat for another instalment of
the home shopping channel.
This is all late capitalism. The meaning of industry is
gone…the meaning of need is finished…merely the raping of the urge. The urge to
consume…the urge to do something…the urge to buy something new that offers a
facile compromise to feeling renewed. Just stick it on the fucking credit card
and it will all be ok.
The grip of the drug has pulled these lost minds into a
wandering oblivion. States of mind are clasped tight into a corner of the
brain. Dwindled ambition and cynicism do a dance of death. They all meander across
the pavement, catching a bus here and there…to meet a friend, to have a smoke,
to collect some money from a wayward husband, to find a place to go.
Hackney Town Hall shivers like an embarrassed president. It
is a large white building that stands aloft over its kingdom similar to a
colonial mansion. Its pleasant cafes and idea stores are an insult to the
deprivation of the area. As long as the town square looks pleasing, with a few
fairy lights in the trees, the scrawled slurred graffiti scrubbed off on a
regular basis, then its all ok. They even have the nerve to set up an open
market to ‘adopt a Hackney baby’ a conveyor belt of unwanted infants, the
product of over sexualisation, immigration, desperation and failed
contraception.
The beggars and addicts align the street corners and
doorways. Who the fuck has done anything about them? Their faces deflated,
their bodies bent over and crippled. Their clothes matted and soiled. They half
look at you but stare into the abyss. Eyes sunken and lost, filthy hands, a
life turned to sludge. What was their story?
I gave one guy a pound late one night. He was crying and
desperate. He said in a confused ramble that he needed to get to Reading. I saw
him a few days later still wandering the streets, his eyes white and bulging,
off his face.
This wander can go on forever. But I have never seen this
thing in people. Where there is no redemption, no hope, no nothing. Everything
has been lost. The most pitiful state of being. Not life, not even death – but
a stagger through nothingness…a detachment from any reality, from any
existence. It is almost animalistic, no longer aware of itself as human…with
empathy, love and knowing. People live as dead, in limbo. Hope is a place that
called them long ago and has forgotten the route back.
Lost and discarded. It causes sufferance in dreams…strange
surreal complexities of meaning? Its sometimes screams at them deep in the
night, a cold sweat. But it leaves them just as quick. Back to the logjam of a
new day, passing time like clockwork. It all means nothing. Head somewhere and
do something. Fuck knows. Its all gotta be for something someday.
isn't it what we all dream of...a true connection...another person staring back at you...the touch across the divide, contact between the metaphysical abyss that separates us...our physical bodies joining with the fabric of the cosmos. and even more...this person being the most incredibly special person that one can dream of...the most spectacular human being alive...a life that gives life...a sacred breath...a beautiful silence...because it is a knowing of completion...the totality of creation...of humans doing as humans do...love love love. isn't this the meaning of everything? no matter who you are, where you stand, how you think, everybody knows, this is the only thing that matters?
all the fragmentation that we encounter. that removes us from our true selves. that divides us. that drives the ego. that causes pain and suffering. all the shit, crap. backstabbing, jealousy, lust desire - the world of the animals. nature out of control. but then in love...all this chaos envelopes into a tight bundle...a place of safety...of warmth...of meaning...of reality...like an eternal embrace...a return to the womb but with the spark of regeneration, light spinning out in spectral waves, the hope of potential, the possibility of wonder, the crystallisation of dream.
is the touch of the divine? like a tiny gentle kiss. saying i'm there. i'm here. see me. know me?
imagination dances to a new tune. the fusion of souls, of minds, of possibility. the wonder of something never ever seen before. the unbelievable is believable. you can see it, a palace, draped in millions of lights, millions and millions of lights. we are not talking about any ordinary love. this is a love of complete ascention...as in the psalms...each song, each line, each word was a droplet of honey to get the soul closer to the infinite. for the journey is always, the journey is the destination...of constant becoming...to walk with someone to this place...a palace of souls...the garden...
it reveals itself and hides again just as quick...
for the place of love, the mystery, the hidden and concealed, shrouded in questioning, to not know, to relinquish control, to let go, to discover anew...to reach a place that has never been experienced before, by nobody.
that is what its about ladies and gents. create a new world.
The transmigration of souls, or reincarnation, is not part of mainstream
Judaism. In the Bible, there is no emphasis on the afterlife, but references to
the spirits of the dead do exist. For example, King Saul goes to the Witch of
Endor to communicate with the spirit of his mentor, the prophet Samuel.
However, the spirits reside in a place of their own, and do not enter other
bodies in any shape or form.
The Talmud refers to the spirits of the dead and to exorcism, but again the
concept of transmigration is not stressed. The earliest versions are traced to
various non-Jewish sources, including Greek, Indian, Gnostic, Christian, and
the Islamic Mutazila sect. The concept entered Judaism in earnest only during
the 8th century.
Medieval Jewish scholars objected to it, believing (as many continue to
believe today) that any type of mysticism is extremely dangerous, and can
influence and contaminate not only one's pure religious faith, but his or her
very life. There is some truth to that; cults, with their brain-washing
techniques, are a good example of how mysticism can deteriorate. Nevertheless
the concept of transmigration developed and found serious followers, and by the
12th century it became an established part of the Kabbalah. The 16th century
schools of mysticism embraced it, including the Safed circle headed by Isaac
Luria. When Hasidism developed, the belief took final hold. There is a vast
body of Jewish literature that dwells on the transmigration of souls, and it
spans the centuries mentioned above. In this entire body of myth and legend, which
includes books, folktales, and plays, the souls described can be roughly
divided into three forms, depending on each soul's origin and intent.
The first form is the Gilgul, which is the Hebrew word for
"rolling," but means, in this context, the transmigration of the
soul. Generally, it is represented as a natural sequence in the life of the
soul, who must occupy various bodies to learn the many lessons it needs before
it can be free to reunite with God. The soul simply enters the body at birth (not
at conception), just as the infant is about to leave the mother's body, and
prepares to live whatever normal life span has been allotted to it.
Special situations require a different approach to transmigration. The
second form of transmigration is the Dybbuk, a disembodied spirit
possessing a living body that belongs to another soul. There are various
origins attributed to these spirits. The earliest description usually hinted
that they may be nonhuman demons. Later it was assumed they were the spirits of
persons who have died. The dybbuk may be the soul of a sinner, who wishes to
escape the just punishment meted to it by the angels of the grave (see the
article Afterlife)
who seek to beat them, or to avoid another form of soul punishment, which is
wandering the earth. A dybbuk may seek revenge for some evil that was done to
it while it lived. Alternatively, it may be lost, and will enter a body simply
to seek a rabbi who would be able to help it and send it on its way. The living
person may or may not know that a dybbuk is occupying his or her body, or it
may be tormented by it. This depends on the intent of the possessing soul.
The third form is the Ibbur. The literal translation of the word from
Hebrew means "impregnation." Ibbur is the most positive form of
possession, and the most complicated. It happens when a righteous soul decides
to occupy a living person's body for a time, and joins, or spiritually
"impregnates" the existing soul. Ibbur is always temporary, and the
living person may or may not know that it has taken place. Often the living
person has graciously given consent for the Ibbur. The reason for Ibbur is
always benevolent -- the departed soul wishes to complete an important task, to
fulfil a promise, or to perform a Mitzva (a religious duty) that can
only be accomplished in the flesh.
colours...images...text...ideas...concepts....meanings...truths? pour forth from an invisible place. but it is a place of seeing that cannot be seen. its known, intimately. but too often its taken for granted...misused, disrespected, ignored. from this doorway...a tiny sliver of light...a piercing dot...a shimmering sliver...shines sublimity...embellished if harvested into a spectral array...a fan of splayed light, a phantom of energy. this is the eye of the mind. i 'see' it now. now it is known to me. its skin rolls upwards, the lid peeling back. fluid drains away. the pupil pulls focus. light dancing on the retina. the eye looks back at me. staring, fixing its gaze, swivelling on metaphysical tendons. i can see it. it can see me. eye and eye. I and I. the mirror...of the soul. take its images...its beautiful gifts...dripping in sparkling jewels and rubies...sketch them down...revealing the secrets and whispered truths. connected meanings beyond typical logic. poetry. pure poetry like milk and honey. infinite messages, meanings of all meanings. meaning layered into the contours of the soul, etched into expression and driven into our breaths, pauses, moments of silence. the eye sees it all, reveals it all. but the question is always. if you look...do you want to see?
our urban dwellings. non places - coffee lounges, tv screens, computer terminals, station platforms, generic shopping centres. slow creeping sanitisation and everything gradually smeared in slime and carbon. the city looms large. clogged in smoke and invisible shit that we slosh around our lungs. towers peering over our shoulder. straight lines. yellow lines. white lines. red lines. zig zag lines. lay lines. leg lines. leg dust. wearing away the floors. walking. concrete. dust. drilling. gabbling. munching bagels. rustling newspapers. pigeons hopping & dancing. necking coffee. the labyrinth that is the tube. chasing tails. turning like a dizzy ratfink. move left right up down. you don't really know where you are going. just move. jerk an arm or a leg. moving something for God's sake. at least look like you are making an effort. move a limb, makes some sweat. make someone laugh. text a girl. do something to make sense of the mistyness. go to point A. then to B. pick something up from C. return to A for a cuppa. then go via B to return something to D. repeat this once a week for 2 months. then move onto phase2 where you can do the same thing in another country.
eat something. with chips and salad. chips cos you like them. salad because it looks healthy.
talk to someone. say something. say it again because the other person did not hear you because they were talking about themself. say it again. say it in a different way. eat your phone. eat it. kiss it. caress it. play a game on it. scroll up and down the internet. why not because you can. lick your phone. stare at another persons text message on the bus. I LIK U BCOS U AVE SXY SX. stare at strangers. they look back. away. and back again. stare into the unknowingness. who are you. dont know. never will. hello. goodbye. fleeting imaginations. flickers of nothing that never will be.
At the core of many of the biblical Jewish stories is the idea of the paradox...something unfathomable.
It may be the mysterious story of the akeidah, where abraham is commanded to sacrifice his beloved son isaac or the mysterious story of Jacob wrestling alone with the angel (in anticipation of meeting his estranged brother esau and the looming threat of fratricide).
The primal jewish experience is the confrontation with the great mystery.
Many of my films have a similar feeling. Some are positive aspirations of being jewish, whilst other consist of a struggle for faith.
The very hebrew term Israel translates as 'one who wrestles with God and man.'
The early jewish experience is a struggle against the void, to attempt to comprehend the great vast infinite oneness that exists out there. One cannot fully understand it, but the evolution of the law makes sense of this energy, shaping and harnessing it into a layer of clarity and protection.
Therefore, the early biblical encounters are pulsating with drama, but still full of metaphysical gloom... where the dawn of judaism begins to encounter the deeper meaning of itself and the way forward toward a new spirituality.
The true jewish experience is to maintain an eternal light, that whatever is turning upside down in the world, there is a voice of reason, sanity and conscience.
The picture is far from perfect, but this is the ideal. Even if it means standing against the grain and saying what people do not want to hear, the jewish experience is a constant struggle to find order from chaos. A battle that rages eternal.
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