Tag Archives: ISIS

Commonplace Thoughts of a Residual Welshman: Remember to Smile

tomb-of-unknown-soldierWith all the sad stuff going on in the world today, maybe there is no time for fun anymore. We saw the gruesome images on TV of the brutal terrorist attack in Manchester, read of the tragic mudslides in Sri Lanka, and we shall be loath to forget the slaughter of the Coptic Christians in Egypt at the hands of the ISIS. And, to top it off, it is Memorial Day weekend, a somber but beautiful holiday that celebrates the sacrifice of every soldier for our country, now and in the past.

In truth, it has been a horrific week, a horrific season, a horrific year, not just for American soldiers and citizens but for the world. And someone may ask, where is God in all this? Where is joy? Where are families, smiles, hugs, and fraternal warmth? Friends are divided against friends politically—even in universities, once places of reflection, now hotbeds of controversy, as traditional core requirements are eliminated or vastly reduced and truth itself is called into question with Nietzschean fervor. Perspective is the watchword of the day, followed by an intense understanding of individual rights, heightened sensitivity to microaggressions, a “report it” mentality when it comes to potentially offensive language, a demand for safe spaces and, most amazing of all, a strident unwillingness on the part of students (e.g. Evergreen State students) even to listen to, let alone consider, countervailing points of view; there, the protests began, hilariously, in a part of the Evergreen campus known as Red Square. Did these students fail to see the irony in that?

beersBut is it hilarious? No. Yet we are humans, and we do, I think, find a way to find fun and frivolity in the midst of frustration. Beer often helps. I don’t mean merely the medicinal effect of beer, for obviously there is some aspect of beer’s intoxicating side effect that can alleviate the woes, to some extent, though in fact, as alcohol is technically a depressant, it brings you down lower than you might have been had you never touched the stuff. So, no, I’m not talking about the alcoholic properties of beer. Rather I’m speaking about its social dimension and even its spiritual heritage.

The latter property is, of course, peculiarly strong among the Welsh. Now I realize that there have been many Italian monks in Norcia and Swiss monks in St. Gallen and Belgian monks of the Abbeye Cistercienne of Rochefort that have been engaged in spiritual brewing. Their attention to Benedictine rules for brewing is reflected, perhaps, for teetotalers and jelly lovers, in the way that the Trappist monks of the St. Joseph Monestary in Spencer Abbey make the most delicious jams. But that is not beer. And the Welsh love their beer as they love their rugby. De gustibus non disputandum.

dragon-ale-canBut King Henry VIII, who is perhaps best known for his predilection for polyamory or more precisely iterative digamy, in particular, in 1536 dissolved the Welsh monasteries and shut down the monastic brewing tradition in fact throughout the United Kingdom. Still, the Welsh were not dead in terms of beer. Of course, in time, Felinfoel, a hamlet on the edge of Llanelli, Carmarthenshire, saw the rise of a new brewery, if a secular one, and with it the birth of Double Dragon Ale, in cans no less. Now that’s Welsh beer at its finest. After all, Llonion in Pembrokeshire, the county smack next to Carmarthenshire is well known to be the source of fine barley, while Maes Gwenith, which comes from Gwent county [east of Carmarthenshire—Monmouthshire on the map], is famous for its wheat used in the brewing process. s-wales-mapAccording to the not-always-reliable-but-handy Wikipedia, Gwentian wheat’s excellence is even mentioned in Llyfr Coch Hergest (Jesus College, Oxford, MS 111), a manuscript written shortly after 1382, one of the most important medieval books written in Welsh.

But, tasty as Double Dragon Ale may sound to some you, none of this is the fun or frivolity with which I opened this blog and meant to assuage, to some small extent, the recent ills of humanity. Rather we shall leave that to the Germans. For it is German ingenuity that I found funny, funny in the midst of sadness and woes. It’s funny because that ingenuity has produced a communal project that will result in widespread enjoyment, for at the very time Americans are laying a pipeline for oil through controversial lands, the Germans are laying a pipeline for beer beneath solidly German soil. Now I know this sounds incredible, but it has been reported as one hundred percent true—not fake news, and perhaps not even news at all, but funny nonetheless. pipelineThe target date for the completion of this important public work is August 2017, and it will allow for an underground river of beer across the county known as Schleswig-Holstein to be delivered to the town of Wacken, which each year holds a grand celebration known as Wackenfest. This pipeline will allow for the steady flow of over 400,000 liters (sic) of beer, a spectacular feat meant to address, I suppose, the Schleswig-Holsteinians l’amour de boire la bière, or as the Germans themselves say, die große Lust Bier zu trinken.

So, I leave you with this thought, one stemming from the strict rules of St. Benedict to the unfortunate closing of the monasteries by the sexually wayward King Henry to the resurgence in Felinfoel of not one but two dragons, to a new feat of German engineering: may you find time to smile on this Memorial Day weekend, a day to remember to do so, even as it is a day to remember our country’s heroes. A toast to those who have served and continue to serve, a toast with a Double Dragon Ale or some suitable substitute!

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Commonplace Thoughts of a Residual Welshman: True North and the Moral Compass

Gorgias
Gorgias of Leontini

Moral relativism is not new. It has been around since Gorgias of Leontini (in Sicily) arrived in Athens in 427 BC, and really even before that. In his Protagoras, Plato interpreted the teacher of the same name’s dictum, “Man is the measure of all things,” to be an advocacy of moral relativism, i.e., that any human being is capable of determining what truth is from a personal vantage point. In other words, from the mid-fifth century B.C. on, Protagoras’ view competing with the notion of a moral absolute was established, an early form of phenomenalism that suggests that a single individual deems true what is true for that person. It would quickly devolve into an essentially nihilistic view expressed by the Sicilian sophist Gorgias in his now lost (but preserved piecemeal in two other sources) treatise entitled On Non-Existence which suggests that nothing exists (i.e., being has no existence) or, if it were to exist, what it consists of would be impossible to know, explain or be understood.[1] (Coincidentally, these are the very opinions most of my agnostic friends advance about God).

Protagoras
Protagoras

The most important aspect of Gorgias’ argument—what he has successfully transmitted to the modern age—is that there is no such thing as an objective point of view, for each individual’s point of view is precisely that—individual. And that is where his argument dovetails with Protagoras, and it is on that confluence that I want to focus this blog, for I met a man in Italy who happened to be advancing essentially the same argument as that of Gorgias and Protagoras.

Now a disclaimer: normally these kinds of conversations happen to me on an aircraft but this time it was at a bar. Still, the argument, which I am paraphrasing here, was worthy of any aircraft: it was stated in very anti-platonic terms (but of course, as it is essentially a sophistic argument) that since there is no objective vantage point, all moral codes are constructs. No one can say whether any is better than another or, for that matter, which is good at all, since even the notion of good is a construct. Put metaphorically, there is no “north”; there is only an agreed upon direction that many folks say is north, but if even one person should say that north is not north, then there can’t be a true north. Or, even if there is a true north, it is not knowable, as each person interprets the direction “north” in his or her own way.

compassOn this view, the question of what north is ultimately becomes a preference—do I find north preferable or not? I may have my own ideas about north, but those are just my ideas, constructed for me, most likely, out of the worldview that I inherited. So, even if I say I prefer my interpretation of north I cannot discount another person’s interpretation of north, which might really be east, or south, or west, or some other direction. I cannot say to that person, “No, if you go west when you’re intending to go north it will be quite dangerous for you. I really want to dissuade you from taking the wrong direction.”

And the reason one should not do that, according to the view of the man at the bar, is because we ourselves actually can’t possibly “know,” however certain we may feel about it, where north really is; we only know what we prefer about what is called north and we may like (or simply be habituated to) our own “north” but we have to recognize that someone else’s west might serve just as well as a north as our own north does.

This sounds clever, and at first blush, even generous. Let’s start with the positive: it is generous and very “non-judgmental”—so much so, though, that even when it sees someone going the wrong way, it doesn’t intervene on the principle that true north is not a knowable concept. To press the north analogy just a bit, one might say, “AftWrong wayer all, true north is not precisely magnetic north, which itself differs from grid north. So, who is to say what ‘north’ really is anyway?” And thus it is that the person who has thoroughly adopted this mindset can’t intervene when someone is going the wrong way on the principle that he or she should not presume to know that his own way is the right way. He prefers his direction, but it is only a preference.

The only comfort I can find in this argument really is that it is an old one; as Solomon wrote (though obviously not in Latin), nihil novum sub sole, and he was right, there is nothing new under the sun. The relativistic argument has been recycled nowadays and fobbed off as new, sc. post-modern. But really it is very un-modern, a bit humdrum, and in any case very old. And it is also countered not only by the obvious—that we do exist and that there is a such a thing as life, liberty and happiness, honor, dignity and worth—but by the fact that north itself does exist, entirely independent of us, our point of view, or even whether or not our compass should be working properly. While what we call “north” may vary both in terms of precisely where it is (as magnetic north does move a bit) and by what it is called—the Chinese (Mandarin) word for north is Bei, Japanese is Kita (though the symbol [北] for both is virtually the same, since the Japanese calligraphic kanji is based on Chinese Hanji), Hebrew is tzafon, Hungarian is északi; yet despite all these differences, north is, in the end, indeed northward, however tautological that may sound. Since that is true, it is especially important to call attention to the direction in which north lies when we find a person heading west but thinking that he is going north, who we know is clearly sailing into dangerous waters.

Thus it is not ethnocentric cultural superiority to say to the cannibal that it is simply wrong to kill and eat one’s fellow human being. Nor is it a matter of going too far to say that if one sees a woman being beaten by a man, it is good, even necessary to intervene. It is not wrong to tackle a bad guy who is running from the police, not wrong to prevent a terrorist from being successful in his attack (if it should fall to one’s lot to be in a position to do so), not wrong to stop any act of sheer evil. It is not the case that we should say to ourselves, “But I can’t know what the precise motives of that person happen to be, nor can I say that this or that person’s version of right and wrong are the same as my own, so I can’t and shouldn’t intervene.” We are not hardwired to conform to the non-interventionist “prime directive” of the old Star Trek series—the consistent failure to do which, by the way, made Captain Kirk the admirable hero of the series; indeed, do we not innately wish to do precisely what Kirk does?

Mother Theresa
Mother Teresa

Thus, we are born with an internal compass that suggests to everyone from every culture a sense of right and wrong and those of us who can recognize true north, actually have a kind of moral obligation—for we ultimately believe in morality, that morality is something given to us by a higher power, by God himself—to direct lovingly, wherever possible, those who are so far off track, whose moral compass is so broken, that they are likely to render harm to themselves or others. Is that ethnocentric cultural superiority? Someone might try to make that argument, but the moral code I am referring to as “north” has been transmitted by the votes of what G. K. Chesterton calls the “Democracy of the Dead,”[2] handed down in many cases by wise teachers like Socrates, Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., and, most recently, Mother Teresa of Calcutta.  All of those individuals had a pretty good idea of the direction in which north lies.  And what has been demonstrated for us by their example is instilled in us, ultimately, by God.

In closing, what can we learn from my friend at the bar? Well, first, we should recall that his ideas are not new: they are very old. They devolve from Protagoras and Gorgias. Second, we can learn that while being empathetic and seeking to understand as best as one can, the point of view of another is certainly a good thing—love your neighbor as yourself is an unqualified command—that does not mean that to do so we must deny our God-given internal compass. (And one should be very careful here, for if we deny it long enough, we may corrupt it or simply lose it, as so many of those who have joined the ranks of ISIS clearly have.) Rather, let us gage our journey by the North Star which means, from time to time, if we are following the internal compass aright, we may even have to direct others trying to find their way on the same path on which we are going. I am heading north; please feel free to join me.

[1] This treatise, by the way, enjoys the highly ironic title Περὶ τοῦ μὴ ὄντος ἢ Περὶ φύσεως, which, when translated, means “‘On Not Being’ or ‘On Nature’,” the latter of which the former clearly undermines.

[2] G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (1908), p. 85.
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Commonplace Thoughts of a Residual Welshman: While the World Has Its Way


Reagan quote“I know in my heart that man is good. That what is right will always eventually triumph. And there’s purpose and worth to each and every life.” —Ronald Reagan

This quote is one of Ronald Reagan’s most famous. I would love to be able to assert its veracity unequivocally. I would love to pip something in passing like, “God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world.” And though you will see that, if I can’t bring myself to agree with Robert Browning, in the end I will agree at least with some of what the former president says here.

Yet while I wish I could say that the world is a good place, I simply can’t. I can’t when I read a news article about a gentle soul like Lamiya Aji Bashar, an 18-year-old Yazidi girl who was held and sexually abused by her ISIS captors. Her story was a headliner in a number of news outlets; you may already know it. Shrapnel from a landmine that went off as she successfully escaped her last abuser cost her vision in one eye. Yet she remained thankful that she had escaped at all. It was impossible for me to read her story without my soul convulsing. It is impossible to write this this without my soul doing so again.

But let me return to Ronald Reagan’s quote. Though his first sentence suggests otherwise, it soon emerges that what he really means is that mankind is not so good as the president is purporting, after all. For when he says in his second sentence that right will always triumph, he clearly implies a struggle. And the reason for a struggle is because of the badness, the wrongness that right must prevail against.

women and ISISYet in this life, right does not always prevail. How many petty dictators exist today? In how many countries is human thriving and creativity deliberately oppressed? In how many cultures are women viewed merely as property, a commodity to be used, abused, and cast aside? They are told that their sole function is to have babies or worse, merely to be objects of men’s desire. In some cases, the milder ones, they are ordered to cover themselves when they breastfeed; in other cases, not at all mild, they are told they have the wrong religion, are told to cover their entire bodies, in others, are often denied a proper education; in others, are prohibited from driving.

Some of my friends think I’m going too far when I say that were a young man to ask me for my daughter’s hand in marriage I would say, “No, for I don’t own her. You and she must make that decision.” Is that going too far? Perhaps, but there’s a point behind it. That aside, in regard to the litany of abuses that precedes this panoply of pedantry and many more unstated cruelties toward women, children and even men, if humankind were fundamentally good, surely this would not be the case. But we are not fundamentally good. We are seriously flawed.

Seriously. A friend of mine even says we human beings are depraved from top to bottom. And he just might be right. Whatever goodness abides in us from our Creator was corrupted thoroughly by our first parents. And if you don’t believe that, well then believe this: you and I are pretty screwed up. We are part of that very human race that took the eye and, worse, the innocence of a sweet girl in northern Iraq. We have made our own immoral decisions. We must own up to our own perverse evil if we are to do anything at all about the evil perversity of the world. It’s too easy to point (or flip) our finger at religious zealots. It’s a lot harder to point the finger at ourselves.

Let’s just say we do decide to do that, to admit that we are a part of the problem. Then what? Well, let’s look at the last bit of Reagan’s bon mot: “… right will always eventually triumph. And there’s purpose and worth to each and every life.” If theWales win over Belgiumre are truly purpose and worth to every person’s life, which I am certain is the case, then what about the words leading into that idea, “right will always eventually triumph”? This isn’t a matter of the recent victory of Wales over Belgium or the unfortunate loss of Wales to Portugal, or the basketball victory of the slightly outmatched Cleveland Cavaliers over the Splash Brothers (who have since added a third) that we’re talking about here. No, Reagan’s words are about the looming human problem of right against wrong, good versus evil. And as I mentioned at the opening of this blog, triumph implies a fight, one harder than anything a sports team, even a noble one, can engage in.

So where amidst all this gloom does this leave us, even while the world has its way with those who cannot defend themselves? Perhaps it actually offers us a clarion call to engage in the struggle to protect and rescue the innocent, not to stand idly by while the helpless are tortured and abused. Some say, “America cannot be the world’s police force.” I say merely that, “what is right will always eventually triumph. And there’s purpose and worth to each and every life.” And each and every life has a name. The one about whom I have written, about whom I had to write in this blog, is Lamiya Aji Bashar.

Lamiya


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