I cannot stress enough that grammar is important: Capitalization is the difference between helping your Uncle Jack off a horse & helping your uncle jack off a horse.
John Gray
The Myth of Progress
With the Reformation and the rise of ‘post-millennialism’ in seventeenth-century Protestantism, this myth gave way to one that was more human-centred. The belief that evil would be destroyed in an apocalyptic end-time was supplanted by the conviction that evil could be slowly diminished in history, Jesus would still return and rule over the world, but only after it had been transformed by human effort. Emptied of its transcendental content, this Christian myth is the source of modern meliorism – the idea that human life can be gradually improved. Unlike the dominant view of history in the ancient world, which recognized improvement but accepted that what had been gained would over time be lost, the modern neo-Christian belief in progress asserts that human life can be made better cumulatively and permanently.
Another element was important in the formation of this secular faith. Gnosticism entered into the religion of humanity via the belief that salvation was achieved by acquiring a special kind of knowledge. In the classical philosophies of the ancient world, this knowledge was a type of mystical insight acquired through the practice of contemplation. In modern times it was knowledge gained through science. In each case it was believed that knowledge could bring deliverance from evil.
The modern myth of progress came into being as a fusion of Christian faith with Gnostic thinking. It is worth noting that while modern meliorism claims to be based in science, the idea that civilization improves throughout history has never been a falsifiable hypothesis. If it had been, it would have been abandoned long ago.
For those who believe in progress, any regression that may occur can only be a temporary halt in an onward march to a better world. Yet if you look at the historical record without modern prejudices, you will find it hard to detect any continuing strand of improvement. The triumph of Christianity brought with it the near-destruction of classical civilization. Libraries and museums, temples and statues, were demolished or defaced on a vast scale in what has been described as ‘the largest destruction of art the world has ever seen.’ Everyday life was hemmed in with unprecedented repression. While there was nothing in the pagan world of the liberal concern for individual freedom, pluralism in ways of life was accepted as a matter of course. Since religion was not a matter of belief, no one was persecuted for heresy. Sexuality was not demonized as it would he in the Christian world, nor were gay people stigmatized. While they were subordinate to men, women were freer than they would be once Christianity had triumphed.
Today everyone is sure that civilization has improved with modern times. As we are forever being reminded, the medieval and early modern eras were wracked by wars of religion. But faith-based violence did not fade away with the arrival of the modern age. From the French Revolution onwards, Europe and much of the world were caught up in revolutions and wars fueled by secular creeds such an Jacobinism and communism, Nazism and fascism, and a belligerently evangelical type of liberalism. In the twenty-first century a potent source of faith-based violence has emerged in Islamist movements, which blend ideas borrowed from Leninism and fascism with fundamentalist currents from within Islam.
It is true that slavery and torture were flaws of pre-modern societies. But these practices have not disappeared. Slavery was reintroduced in the twentieth century on a vast scale in Nazi Germany and the Soviet and Maoist gulags. Slave auctions in the so-called Caliphate established by the Islamic State in parts of Iraq and Syria were advertised on Facebook. Human trafficking flourishes throughout much of the world. Torture has been renormalized. Banned in England in the mid-seventeenth century and in Europe by the Hapsburg empress Maria Theresa in the late eighteenth, the practice was revived by the world’s pre-eminent democracy when George W. Bush sanctioned it in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.
Instead of being left behind, old evils return under new names. No thread of progress in civilization is woven into the fabric of history. The cumulative increase of knowledge in science has no parallel in ethics or politics, philosophy or the arts. Knowledge increases at an accelerating rate, but human beings are no more reasonable than they have ever been. Gains in civilization occur from time to time, but they are lost after a few generations.
A commonplace in the ancient world, this is impossible for secular humanists to accept, or in many cases comprehend. They realize that the progress of civilization is not inevitable and no sort of perfection achievable. Humanity advances inch by inch, they say; the march to a better world will be long and hard. What these secular believers cannot digest is the fact that gains in ethics and politics regularly come and go – a fact that confounds any story of continuing human advance.
When secular thinkers tell the history of humankind as a story of progress, they flatter themselves that they embody the progress of which they speak. At the same time, they confirm that their view of the world has been inherited from monotheism. It was only with the invention of Christianity than a history of humankind began to be told. Before that point, there was no universal history. Many stories were told – the story of the Jewish people, the Greeks, the Romans and multitudes of others.
Modern thinkers say that telling history as a story of all humankind marks an advance. But along with Christian universalism came a militant intolerance – a trait that Christianity transmitted to its secular successors. For neo-Christian believers, any way of life that fails or refuses to fit into a story of progress can be regarded as sub-human, exiled to the margins of history and then consigned to extinction.
Like the Christian monotheism from which it sprang, secular humanism is a garbled mix of Jewish religion and Greek philosophy. For Plato – the fountainhead of Gnosticism in western philosophy – the world of passing time is a veil that conceals a changeless spiritual reality. The Bible suggests a different view. In the Old Testament, contingency – the arbitrary fact that things happen as they do – is an ultimate reality. God created the world, and intervenes in it as he pleases.
These views of the world support diverging conceptions of human salvation. For those who follow Plato, humans are exiles from eternity; freedom consists in ascending from the realm of shadows and leaving behind the illusion of being a separate, time-bound individual. In biblical accounts, salvation is not an escape from contingency but a miraculous event in the contingent world. It was some such event that Jesus expected when he announced the kingdom of God. Those who were saved would not be assimilated into an eternal spirit but would be brought back from the grave as corporeal human beings.
These Jewish and Greek views of the world are not just divergent but irreconcilably opposed. Yet from its beginnings Christianity has been an attempt to join Athens with Jerusalem. Augustine’s Christian Platonism was only the first of many such attempts. Without knowing what they are doing, secular thinkers have continued this vain effort.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/15/arts/jeff-koons-rabbit-auction.html
Friday, May 17th, 2019
Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan passes legislation legalizing same-sex marriage and limited joint-custody rights, making Taiwan the first state in Asia to do so. President Tsai Ing-wen has indicated her intent to sign the bill. (Reuters)
Trump unveils new immigration plan On Thursday, President Trump revealed his new proposal to revamp parts of the country’s immigration system, seeking to offer more opportunities for immigrants with certain skills or job offers who are proficient in English and pass a civics test. Trump unveiled the plan, which was developed by his son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner, at a ceremony in the Rose Garden. The proposal cuts back on family-based immigration and calls for construction on Trump’s long-promised southern border wall, but does not address the legal status of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients. Trump suggested he did not believe the plan could become law in the near future, and said “we will get it approved immediately after the election.” Source: The New York Times
Trump looks to avoid Iran war as Bolton reportedly pressures him otherwise President Trump is in disagreement with his top officials over how to handle escalating tensions with Iran. In a Wednesday morning Situation Room meeting, Trump told Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan that he does not want war with Iran, The New York Times reports. Then on Thursday, when asked if the U.S. is “going to war with Iran,” Trump said “I hope not.” That comes in contrast to implications from Trump’s hawkish National Security Adviser John Bolton, and it has Trump calling out to other advisers to complain about Bolton, CNN reports. The reported infighting follows reports of the administration reviewing a plan to send up to 120,000 troops to the Middle East amid what military officials characterize as “credible” threats to U.S. interests. Source: CNN
Famed architect I.M. Pei dies at 102 I.M. Pei, the world-renowned architect who designed the glass pyramid at the Louvre in Paris and the Museum of Islamic Art in Qatar, has died, his family announced Thursday. He was 102. Born in China, he came to the United States in 1935, and after graduating from Harvard, started designing high-rise buildings with William Zeckendorf’s New York City firm, Webb & Knapp. He launched his own firm, I.M. Pei & Associates, in 1955, and went on to have a storied international career, designing the John F. Kennedy Library, the East Building of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland. Source: The New York Times
‘Aniara’ Review: A One-Way Ticket Into the Abyss
Doom can seem romantic on the page, where the reader has room to roam. But witnessing it here is depressing. Kagerman and Lilja thoughtfully constructed their film, yet they leave nothing for the mind to do besides consume unrelenting tragedy. Society crumbles, filth accumulates in hallways, beloved characters succumb to despair. The viewer is as trapped as the would-be colonists.
At times, the commitment to bleakness feels artistically admirable. The film unblinkingly faces the void, and it refuses to console the audience, which has come along for the ride. But mostly, this is a movie that simulates the experience of losing the will to live, a daunting premise even for the bravest voyagers.
Thursday, May 16th, 2019
Forty-seven insurgents and five Egyptian soldiers are killed in a gunfight in the Sinai Peninsula. (Al Jazeera)
Mayor of New York City Bill de Blasio announces he is running for the Democratic Party’s nomination to be President of the United States in the 2020 presidential election. (The Guardian)
U.S. President Donald Trump proposes a new immigration plan based on merits such as college degrees and skilled trades and less on family ties. (The New York Times)
U.S. federal agents raid the Venezuelan embassy to evict Code Pink protesters, at the request of National Assembly leader Juan Guaido. They had been staying at the embassy at the invitation of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who is locked in a dispute over the presidency with Guaido. Maduro’s government considers the raid to be a violation of the Vienna convention. (Reuters)
Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar of the Tobruk-based House of Representatives meets with Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and has scheduled a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron for next week. (Reuters)
Wednesday, May 15th, 2019
United Nations Secretary GeneralAntónio Guterres says Pacific island nations are “running out of time” in regards to climate change and global warming effects. (Radio New Zealand)
The United States Department of State orders all non-emergency, non-essential government employees at the S. Embassy in Baghdad and Erbil consulate office to leave Iraq amid heightened tensions in the Persian Gulf between the United States and Iran. (Reuters)
More Below The Fold
Zulu Kilo 