Big Bang Theory

Anarchy A to Z:
a guide to understanding our history unfolding for the anesthetized and apathetic

G is for God. 

   God. Some of us love it. Some of us love to deny its existence. Some of us see it in a sunset. Some of us are inspired to spill blood for it. Anarchists are no proponents of religion. No Gods, no masters is their battle cry, but we have to recognize the centrality of religion, even in a secular society. Understanding what god is can help liberate us from fear.

   Two distinct pathways developed early in human history. The first was to subscribe certain natural phenomena to acts of a deity, a power unknown. These were often anthropomorphized, but not necessarily. God, in all religion, explains the origins of human life. Even the most complex sciences cannot explain the origin of energy, although they certainly refute the Creation myths of all religious traditions. The second pathway declared that it was not a pluralist society of gods that dictated the unknown, but a single entity. This conceptualization emerged with a tribe of herdsman that relied on this single entity to explain distinct but varied topography and flora. As they travelled, the mystery of the world could not be explained as the individual domains of individual gods. The awe of the mysterious was more accessible to the pastoralist, lest we suspect Abel’s fruit was rotten.

   Monotheism dominates global religion. This is largely due to the success of imperialism and imperial systems, and political systems of control. As Rome dissolved slowly, as the U.S. will in turn, its last rulers attempted to pacify the steppe peoples by instituting Christianity. Constantine created laws to loosen discrimination against Christians and severed many of its ties to Judaism. Islam surfaced as a desert spin on Christianity, without the “son of god” falsity. If we add the Protestant Reformation to this mix, the omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient god of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition is continually evolving enterprise. It was an enterprise based on fear of the unknown, and it employed the control mechanism of fear.

   Before the Westphalian order, before the cornerstone of nationalism had been laid, God served Western civilization’s greatest inspiration for violence. And it still does today. Now, religion is not dormant by any measure. All one has to do is turn on Fox News and watch God’s.Own.Party battle it out for the title of most pious one. The antiMuslim, antisecularist rhetoric is a problem, and one might argue perfectly aligned with the end game of American fascism. Indeed, it is imperative we understand how fear has given way to the behemoth of the state, releasing it to proliferate and legitimize existing systems of hierarchy and injustice and to trample on individuals so long as it allows us the illusion of control over the things we can’t explain. However, if we ever want a just society, we have to abandon fundamentalism in all things. Religious fundamentalism serves the public’s interest not at all and the human history’s, even less. Yet, the biological wiring of fear causes us to turn to religion and God for our answers to our greatest philosophical questions. And in these questions, we may find the idea of god, neither as a master nor a vengeful spirit demanding submission to its will, not as the antithesis of reason, but as a path to a social revolution.

   In investigating the anthropological origins of statism, I entertain the idea that the priestly classes of our earliest civilizations were the first states--although without the modernity of ideas like sovereignty. Atheists can, however, choose to view God as the executrix of absolute power and dismiss the idea as contrary to the fundamental tenants of anarchy, but that too would be to resort to secular fundamentalism. We must recognize that human beings want answers that are not there. States, like god, fill a void inherent in every human being. They help dispel fear. Therefore, if we expect to end injustice and create the world we want to live in, we cannot ignore one of the most basic human responses to biological fear.

  A much more useful way to conceptualize god is contained in Robert Jensen’s All My Bones Shake. While we seek justice, the end of empire and ecological balance, we need to stop squabbling over the existence and nature of god and instead focus efforts on much more constructive pursuits. Simply replace the word “god” with “mystery” and fear disappears. Our inhibitions will become much more malleable. Mystery itself is relegation to powerlessness, an acceptance that not all things can be controlled or explained. To abandon the injustices of global predatory corporate capitalism, we need to accept that we did not get it right the first time. If we want to remake the world, we have to accept that we may not get it right this time either. The future is a mystery and we’d do well to accept it.

   The world would be unjust without the state and without capitalism. But if we view god as the mystery in the universe—a word to describe the indescribable—then, we can begin to erect a social consciousness and a culture of justice. We cannot right the wrongs we witness simply by pushing power from one class to another. We cannot redress the disparities we have created by changing the tax code. We cannot plant a forest big enough to reconcile their rape if we do not plant the seeds of something bigger… and brighter.

   We need another big bang. We need a moment where we cleanse ourselves of fear and bias. But we can’t calculate our way there. We need to turn inward, to an individual spirituality, to reconnect with what we have already lost. If we can accept that we do not have the answers to remedying our crises, we can simply accept that exist. If we embrace the mystery of the unknown, we can begin to reflect on the present and get to work doing something—anything at all!—about the coming shit storm.

Prepping the soil and planting seeds: a to do list for 2012

I've been compiling a list of things to do. Most I won't accomplish. Hopefully I can track my progress here. But only if I can get past number one.

1. Write more and write better. I read a lot, but writing is so much more socially productive. Since I've basically decided to procrastinate my thesis until next winter, I endeavor to tackle some of the more interesting projects in my mind and on various scraps of paper scattered around my house. As for writing better, I need to tone down the habituated academic prose. I am aware that what I write sounds pretentious. And I can only blame myself for subduing the rational and empirical to the emotional and creative. Indeed, emotions are very human, and very powerful when channeled properly. 

2. Get religious. Or perhaps, spiritual. Robert Jensen's All My Bones Shake has transformed my disdain for religion into a flame of hope. I always prodded my mother to connect stewardship of the environment to Christian doctrine. Disappointed in her failure to engage in anything remotely progressive, I must do it myself. I get a little added benefit of spiritual and intellectual growth in the process. Given the current state of global affairs, this can only be a good thing.

3. Engage the church: Related to number two, I need to compile a comprehensible message--as I advocate elsewhere--to reach the broadest audience possible. My crippling skepticism that the  ignorant huddled in their subdivisions will ever turn an ear to the Great Struggle must begin in the common thread that even the secular can't avoid. Whether we like it or not, whether we agree or not, Christianity is at the center of of our popular imagination. Perhaps only second (or third) to the illusion of the individual and narratives of progress. The Church, in the letters that comprise most of the new testament, is everyone. So if you can't reach the people through religious framing than the corporate media has already won.

4. Plant the seed: Both figuratively and literally. I suppose the madman isn't mad, but actually sane in a sea of insanity. All of the above is just soil conditioning to prepare for this goal. To get the hands dirty, gardening and tending to plants is the surest way to build a sustainable society of equally invested members, a community. Of course, I'll plant my own, but I plan to solicit faith and community based organizations and test the waters. If one or two bite, the seeds are planted. Also, some folks from Occupy Dover are down to reclaim a downtown plot as our own. The length to which we carry this highly symbolic act of disobedience is yet to be discussed. Still, consider this. If progress is our narrative, then guerrilla gardening isn't even disobedient, but the continuation of a long tradition of expropriating land from those who choose squalor for otherwise productive land. Further, the slow--or not so slow--decline of the fossil fuel era will only hasten the need for local food production. Lastly, downtown Dover is a food desert, and for the fiscal conservative kicking the inside of my chest, good food reduces health costs, improves educational potential and alleviates budget pressures from fixed income and poor residents. As an added bonus, community gardens provide little islands of public space in a wasteland of privatization, supports decentralization and self-sufficiency, and essentially tells the government to fuck off. The last of which is critical if we are ever to transition to a peaceful, people-powered, egalitarian--and I would never refrain from saying--anarchist society. 

It's winter. But I have a lot of work to do. And sitting here for a half hour shows I care to invest a little energy in the project.

Peace through love,

Faith enterprises and the new political order

 Communities no longer boast the strength they once had. McCarthy and the Cold War can be blamed for our destructive suspicions of neighbor, friend, or congregation member. In exchanging our churches for a welfare state, we have designed a political system that is destined to fail. Not only is it important to criticize the religious right for its moral prophesy, it is also crucial to remember that we are just as guilty of denying the political pluralism.

"WalMart" box churches -- where we purchase salvation at wholesale prices -- are the worst perpetrators in the selective interpretation of the Bible. Those of us who have a cultural tie to religion but do not practice must remember that there is still a valuable ethic proposed by the Bible. In fact, every religion offers a moral code by definition. We must try to not scoff and dismiss those who speak of morals in secular government. But at the same time, we must be angry. We must overturn the tables in temple of the hypocrites and naysayers. Morality has a place... In reality, biblical morals (not those twisted to the agenda and profit goals of the evangelical leadership) have a beautiful place in this society.

Liberation philosophy is a small, and therefore usually overlooked, movement in the Catholic church. It takes the teachings of Jesus to heart. It aims to align political and social goals. It leaves faith to the individual, but demands social justice. For those at the megachurch rallies waving their pickets plastered with the false idols of aborted fetuses, they do not see the simple connection between the present and the two thousand year old message. According to the Christian doctrine, there are only two commands: to love your god and to love your neighbor.

Red Scare aside, it is time to seriously reflect on the latter. Religion in this sense has a very real place in the new political order. "Fags" and "baby killers," Muslims and the divorced; these are the enemies that Falwells and Robertsons erect to distract the religious masses from the true enemy of the pious. Poverty should be the church's enemy, abuse of the Lord's living temple should bring the holy to an angry chorus. Sure, churches have charities, but there is always some motive, whether to gain tax breaks or converts, there is always something in it for the religious leadership. But if you, the religious ones, believed in this conviction, you might find the rift between church and state might shrink. You might find that the nonobservant might be willing to discuss some of your political ideas, and we might begin to work together, because identifying a common goal is what  has been absent in the political dialogue between god fearing red states and 'hedonistic' blue states. Let's unite under the moral goal of ending suffering and let the church take the lead. Thus we solve two goals: we give a purpose to the religious in a secular political system and we eliminate the financially  burdensome and bureaucratic mess we call the welfare state.

 [28 JAN 08]