Human distrust and decline of genuine dialogue

Human relationships, for Hobbes, can only exist legitimately within the normal conditions created by sovereign action. The necessity of the state is based on an assumption that distrust is rampant and insoluble.[1] With no assurance that others will not betray him, man cannot freely enter into contract with his fellows. The laws and structures of the modern state are constructed, through the common consent of its constituents, to alleviate this innate distrust between men.[2] The relation between ruler and subject operates on the assumption that the subject trusts the sovereign, because the sovereign secures the normal conditions under which the individual subject can be free and secure from potential external and internal threats.[3]

The individual, under such conditions, engages in the task of seeing-through and unmasking others. Living under the scope of political illusions – composed of grandiose threats, individuals attempt to expose the questionable allegiance of those who express dissent. Buber notes that these challenging spirits, who respond to the actual conditions of life, attempt to help a civilization towards change. But often, they are categorized as internal threats. This ‘sport’, as Buber calls it, is the site where the individual can indulge in a confirmation of itself vis à vis an object of his unmasking.[4] This self-confirmation of the individual withers away the “immediacy of togetherness” between people, leading them to retract into a crude individualism.[5] Buber would contend that this presumption of distrust draws one back only into oneself, neglecting I-You relation integral to human relationships.[6]

“Life is not lived by my playing the enigmatic game on a board by myself, but by my being placed in the presence of a being with whom I have agreed on no rules for the game and with whom no rules can be agreed.”[7] (BMM 197)

For Buber, unbridled suspicion and skepticism “strengthen what gives rise to suspicion, and even create new reasons for it”.[8] The distrust between people is exacerbated when they fail to acknowledge the demand of the hour, of the moment in which they live, in short, when they live solely for individual contentment. Those who disengage seek life in an illusory peace. “War has not produced this crisis,” Buber writes, “It is, rather, the crisis of man which has brought forth the total war and the unreal peace which followed.”[9] This crisis of man is the proliferation of distrust, an inability to genuinely engage or relate with others.[10] Distrust, hence, is the ground that breeds the disengaged individual.

At the end of “Society and the State”, Buber contends that thoughtful engagement is the primary means to resist the effects of propaganda. He posits social education as a means for thoughtful engagement between persons to destabilize the dominance of the political principle.[11] Buber places social education as an “exact reverse” of propaganda, which seeks to ‘suggest’ a ready-made will to members of society.[12] “Social education,” he writes, “seeks to arouse and develop in the minds of its pupils the spontaneity of fellowships…with the development of personal existence and personal thought.”[13] The danger of propaganda, as Buber notes, is that it proliferates a belief that the will of the sovereign is derived from the “innermost being” of citizens.[14] Propaganda help individuals to internalize “ready-made truths” as if they are immutable, and hence helps cultivate the passive, consenting citizen integral to the domination of the political principle. Propaganda facilitates an impersonal connection to ‘truths’ and social education, as Buber sees it, allows for personal engagement – to allow human beings share in the presentness of a shared existent condition.

In his essay “Instead of Polemics”, Buber calls on his fellows to become engaged with the problems that face their contemporary hour, “We must take upon ourselves repeatedly and continuously the hardest task: responding to both demands at the same time, the demand of the moment and the demand of truth”.[15] Actual life cannot be detached from the genuine relations. The ‘social principle’, as stated above, is animated by ‘social spontaneity’ – which brings forth the creative potential of human relations. In Hobbes, the sovereign, as legitimate representative of the will of the multitude, becomes the single decision-maker or the Great Definer.

In the Introduction to Leviathan, Hobbes refers to the state as an “Artificiall Man”, and in which “Sovereignty is an Artificiall Soul, as giving life and person to the whole body”.[16] Men authorize the sovereign to act on their behalf, because when each and every man acts without restraint – as he does in the state of nature – he pursues personal interest to the detriment of others. The multitude cannot define a common interest, since in its natural state it is nothing but a chaotic mass of particular interests ceaselessly in conflict. The sovereign, who is instituted as representative of the state, acts on behalf of citizens. Indeed, the sovereign brings the state to life, because without the sovereign, as Quentin Skinner points out, the state ‘is but a word’.[17] Buber, however, contends that the ‘political’ cannot be equated to the actual life between man and man. The dominant political principle subordinates society to the State; namely the assumption that in the absence of the state, there can be no society – since men harbour an innate distrust for each other.

The spontaneity of social engagement helps to produce a genuine transformation of society; allowing human fellows to respond to a varying contemporary condition rather than react to a priori doctrinal truths. As intimated in Chapter 3, any universal dictums regarding human action have force only if agents submit to them unconditionally and thoughtlessly. An individual who submits unconditionally is also one who inscribes and imposes universal dictums onto human reality. If tHoHohe ‘social principle’ were to stand in relation with the ‘political’, Buber argues that thoughtful and engaged human activity creates the world anew. Rather than indulge in the “empty abstractions” peddled in the name of the political, he implores human beings to engage with actual life.[18]

Norm and Exception: The Limits of Community?

The ostensible need for the sovereign to provide meaning and security for human society exacerbates the domination of the ‘political principle’. The domination of the ‘political principle’ entails the accumulation of ‘political surplus’ by the sovereign.[19] The justification of this ‘political surplus’ is derived from “the external and internal instability, from the latent crisis between the nations and within every nation, which may at any moment become an active crisis requiring more immediate and far-reaching measures”.[20] Buber contends that these potentially catastrophic crises invariably lead to the dominance of the political principle, because such crises threaten the existence of both the state and its citizens. In this section, we will further explore this point by explicating a response to Carl Schmitt’s conception of the political.

Carl Schmitt begins his book Political Theology with a devastatingly concise definition of sovereignty: “Sovereign is he who decides on the exception”.[21] Schmitt goes on to elaborate that the definition of sovereignty “must therefore be associated with a borderline case and not with routine”.[22] For him, the essence of the state’s sovereignty is not a monopoly over violence or coercion, but a monopoly to decide.[23] What does this “monopoly to decide” entail? The sovereign decision decides on the existence of the state, and by proxy, the existence of individual citizens. Hence, the sovereign decision is also an existential decision – one regarding life and death. Schmitt’s definition invariably places the sovereign state in a dominant place above society; namely that the sovereign decision defines the limit-conditions of society. While the latter can only exist under legal norms, the former is freed from all normative ties.[24] “The rule,” Schmitt writes, “proves nothing; the exception proves everything: It confirms not only the rule but also its existence, which derives only from the exception.”[25]

On a substantive level, a threat to the state is also a threat to the political. Without the sovereign decision, i.e. one regarding friend and enemy, the state cannot exist; hence the political does not exist.[26] Schmitt, possessing an extraordinarily sharp intellect, clearly states the grounds for the modern state. The ever-present possibility of threat provides the state its raison d’être. He clearly draws the limit-conditions of the politics, namely the borders under the aegis of sovereign authority. The ‘political surplus’ possessed by the modern state is justified in light of these ever-present threats.

Schmitt’s account of sovereignty poses a problem similar to one inherent in Hobbes: what are conditions for society? The limit-conditions of society for Schmitt are defined by the sovereign’s extra-ordinary preparedness to transgress those limits. Hence, as he articulates in Political Theology, a conception of legality that derives its authority solely from existing legal norms, much like Schmitt’s contemporary Hans Kelsen does, according to Schmitt, disregards the transgressive act of the decision.[27] “The exception in jurisprudence is analogous to the miracle in theology”, writes Schmitt.[28] The transgression of norms, done through a sovereign decision about the exception, is by definition an irrational act, an act that destroys both the normative limits and the norms. The legal norms cannot legislate for the decision to transgress its own limits, because that would be a move incongruent with the rational principles upon which norms are founded. The sovereign decision, hence, must be one “transcendent” of the existing legal order, made with authority not bound to the norms, i.e. comparable to a miracle from above. Hence, order does not come organically from associational ties. Schmitt’s criticism of associational theory attests to this – according to him, these theories have no conception of sovereignty, and by proxy, presupposes the existence of normal conditions for associative interaction without confronting the limit-conditions that ground them in a concrete situation.[29]

So the question can be posed to Buber: does dialogical thought operate solely within normal conditions? At the heart of this question is ultimately a question regarding the antimony between dialogical thought and the violence of the modern world. The problem of violence is not conjured away in Buber’s thought. Living in the It-world, the potential for violence is part of the unforeseen.[30] The work of dialogue involves a courageous turn to another, knowing full well the stakes involved in doing so. In his essay “The Validity and Limitation of the Political Principle”, Buber formulates a response to Schmitt – although never explicitly mentioning his name.[31] He reiterates that the state draws it cumulative monopoly over political power “on drawing profit from a…latent exceptional condition”[32]. This exceptional condition, however, cultivates the collective fear and anxiety of a group of individuals, exacerbating the mutual distrust between people. Unable to turn to each other in a spirit of openness and mutuality, fragmented individuals look to the Leviathan, the mortal God, or the sovereign-miracle for redemption. Such a turn towards the political illusion facilitate the domination of the political principle.

“Many states decree the division of mankind into friends who deserve to live and enemies who deserve to die, and the political principle sees to it that what is decreed penetrates the hearts and reins of men.”[33]

In I and Thou, Buber contends, “Nothing can doom man but the belief in doom…”[34] Those who subscribe to the essentiality of enmity only deepen the crisis of trust between people. This breakdown of interhuman trust alienates people from “presentness”[35]; allowing the crisis of man, a failure to trust and speak genuinely, to reach critical extremes. Once one sees no other way, when the illusory becomes reality; there is no option other than capitulation, allowing one to be dominated ostensibly for one’s own good.[36] As noted in Chapter 3, I-Thou relationship provides the space for personal transformation, as well as addressing and transforming the It-world. For Buber, the creative engagement that unfolds in the realm of the dialogue challenges stagnant It-world conceptions. It is through genuine dialogue that the limits of It-world causality are confronted and transformed.

Schmitt, in theorizing about limits, presupposes the dominance of the political principle by equating the political to the pre-eminence of the state.[37] As a leading jurist in Weimar Germany, a staunch critic of liberalism, and eventually a prominent intellectual figure of Nazi Germany, Schmitt transgresses Hobbes by contending that society on a whole must be politicized by the sovereign decision on the exception. In doing this, Schmitt pares the antinomical relationship between society and the state present in Weber’s thought down to a single concern: sovereignty. In facing the world in its factuality, people think about the paradoxical nature of human existence and see the world with a degree of complexity. Buber’s ‘narrow ridge’ – an approach that rejects homogenous unity or a radical relativism – shares affinities with Weber’s antinomical thought. While Buber calls on all those share in an existent human condition to consider the paradoxes that arise in actual life, Schmitt’s account reserves this ability to grasp complexity to the sovereign, who alone is able to decide on the exception – and by proxy, possesses the ability to decide on matters of life and death. Through this move, he perverts Weber’s account of ethics in pursuit of a homogenized collective.[38] While Weber sees the relationship between responsibility and conviction as an antinomy, Schmitt believes that a leader of pure conviction can bring into being a pure Volk.[39] Whereas Weber carved a sphere for social relationships separate of politics[40], albeit subordinate to the dominant political principle, Schmitt advocates total politicization of society in anticipation of internal and external threats. According to David Dyzenhaus, Schmitt sees politics as “a matter of elite determination with the aim of eliminating all internal enemies”, and believes that the glory of politics is cultivated in “the utter homogeneity of the nation state ready to do battle with other nation states”.[41]

In his “The Question of a Single One”, Buber provides a response to Schmitt. He critiques Schmitt’s indiscriminate definition of ‘enemy’, noting that the so-called ‘inner foe’ or ‘rebel’ works towards transforming and changing the society that he is a part of, to be differentiated from the ‘external foe’, who has no interest in preserving, much less advancing, the society.[42] Buber contends that order cannot be imposed upon a society, once and for all. For him, order is cultivated throughout the history of a commonwealth by the living persons of dialogue who constitute it.

“This striving, this wrestling for the realization of true order – wrestling between ideas, plans, outlines of true order – wrestling between ideas, plans, outlines of true order that are so different, but also a wrestling that is simultaneously common to all, not known, not be expressed – constitutes the political structure’s dynamic of order.”[43]

Hence, according to Buber, Schmitt’s equation of politics to a “homogeneous dynamic of order” is deeply erroneous, purging the transformative concrete relationships between man and man, and leaves the fate of a society to sovereignty’s ability to bring about a “judgment of God”[44]. Not surprisingly, Buber notes in the Foreword to Between Man and Man that “The Question of the Single One” attacks the life-basis of totalitarianism.[45] In “People and Leader”, Buber directly addresses the horrors of Nazi Germany. Writing in response to Hitler’s contention that “leader and idea are one”, Buber exposes the hideous cost demanded by the dream of united homogeneity, fully cognizant of the fate of his people.

“The leader alone knows the goal, but there is no goal. The leader embodies the idea, but there is no idea. The ‘superior race’ decides, and those who include themselves in it decide who belongs to it – provided that they are in power…’There is always’, according to Hitler, ‘only the fight of the racially inferior lower stratum against the ruling higher race.’”[46]

Dyzenhaus insists that any worthwhile scholarship on Schmitt’s political theory should seriously address the latter’s anti-Semitic views.[47] He contends that Schmitt’s conception of the political, intimately related to the apparent need for internal homogeneity, contributed to the radical exclusion of Jews from Germany society.[48] This need for homogeneity, for a unified Volk, legitimates the sovereign decider – who guards against internal and external threats through his ability to decide on the exception. The sovereign decider, hence, unites the Volk in preparation for triumph the conflict-duel, wherein triumph confirms that the “judgment of God” was destined to be theirs, willed into being by sovereign authority.

In “People and Leader”, Buber laments the rise Hitler and Mussolini to power – the rise of the man who thinks he has become God. Once the role of leader believes that he is “becoming God”, his position is contingent upon the production of docile and uneducated followers, rather than critical and “enlightened” subjects. “Successful leading without teaching,” he writes, “comes near to destroying all that makes human life seem worth living.”[49] If the role of citizens is merely to follow – legitimating the authority of the sovereign through capitulation, they are simply instrumental to the power of the “successful leader” or master demagogue. Rather than facilitating the space for education or enlightenment, as Kant believes his “enlightened sovereign” does, a leader, merely successful in the obtaining and sustaining power for power’s sake, provides only propaganda, in order to retrench and strengthen his sovereign grip on political surplus. The “successful” leader creates an environment advantageous to his exercise of sovereignty. And in the case of the sovereign decision on the exception, these conditions are emergencies and threats – exaggerated by propaganda or utterly fabricated – coming from internal and external sources.[50]

The architecture of totalitarianism constructs a radically insecure condition, where the sovereign, and the sovereign alone, can ostensibly assure order and security. Simply put, such an environment leaves individuals to live in radical distrust of all others within society. Under such conditions, people approach each other with suspicion, with the intention of seeing-through the intentions and exposing potential threats to the established order. As Buber notes in “Education and World-View” (1935), education allows people to approach the world in its actuality – to allow them to distinguish between appearance and reality.[51] But as noted earlier, once individuals are left simply as individuals, alienated from his fellows and unable to engage the world in its presentness, the grip of political illusion grows ever stronger.

Let us revisit two points made in sections 2.3.3 and 2.3.4 above. First, Buber believes that the simple immediacy of togetherness is the most effective form of action. And second, he posits this form of action – which unfolds through direct and immediate relationships – destabilizes the political illusions reinforced by state propaganda, precisely because immediacy makes present the world in its actuality. As we recall from his stirring article “A Tragic Conflict?”, people must come to understand and deal with the real conflicts that arise between groups, rather than be frightened into inaction – trusting political mechanisms more willingly than interhuman immediacy – and allow exaggerated illusory conflicts to consume life.

Buber considers Schmitt’s transposition of the classic duel situation onto political conflict to be indicative of, what he calls, “political surplus conflict”. If an ‘enemy’, including ‘inner foes’, needs to be annihilated for the sake of assured peace and security, spaces for meeting and human contact in society would become radically politicized. These politicized spaces, indicative of the growing grip of the political principle over society, are not places conducive to social education and meeting. On the contrary, they are simulated public spaces; designed to reinforce political illusions, galvanize individuals in support of the state’s Cause, and strengthen the grip sovereign authority has over society.[52] The mass political rallies of Nazi Germany are examples of these simulated public spaces. “The totalitarian mass marks not only the end of personal life, it is also the end of the life of a people,” writes Buber.[53] The point Buber conveys is that these simulated public spaces destroy any possibility for social spontaneity between persons, by stimulating and manipulating an individuated emotional attachment to Nation and People. Social spontaneity, as we recall, is rather integral to the transformative encounters between people. Hence, left alienated from fellow human beings, isolated from human contact and meeting, individuals are forced to find a false confirmation in the collective, i.e. homogenous unity, concocted by political propaganda to unify and galvanize a group in opposition to a common enemies.

In “Community and Environment”, Buber makes the following contention.

“The secret longing of man for a life in reciprocal mutual confirmation must be developed through education, but the external conditions it needs in order to finds its fulfillment must also be created. The architects must be set the task of also building for human contact, building surroundings that invite meeting and centers that shape meeting.”[54]

For Buber, simulated public spaces are not simply the result of political machinations, but are a consequence of the tacit and explicit compliance of citizens to sovereign authority. If we recall section 2.4 above, Buber contends that any normative valuation of “what should be” should not be detached from a critical and fundamental relationship to the existing condition of humanity.[55] Through this contention, Buber makes two points. First, the “architecture” of spaces conducive to human meeting cannot be left to political forces external to immediate human relationship; and second, the building of spaces for human meeting are built upon the critical relationship to a shared existent condition. As demonstrated above, the spaces for social education cannot be left simply to sovereign authority, which manipulate such spaces in an effort to reinforce its own grip on power. Buber notes that those bound to the body politic and aware of the personal responsibility for human address should strive to make the “crowd no longer a crowd”.[56] “Even if he has to speak to the crowd he seeks the person, for a people can find its truth only through persons, through persons standing their test,” writes Buber.[57] This courageous turn toward other persons is fundamental to the creation of public spaces. If the simulated public space is the crowd or totalitarian mass, the genuine space for human meeting comes to being through the courageous personal address – working to revive personhood in the midst of the crowd. And, as noted in Chapter 3, although this address at times may end in mis-meeting and the failure of dialogue, the price of silent capitulation is far more calamitous.

At the beginning of his 1953 address entitled “Genuine Dialogue and the Possibilities of Peace”, he engages with implications of the Holocaust. In the course of his reflections of the German people, he expresses reverence and love for those who stood up and spoke out against the horrendous crimes.

“There appears before me…some who have become as familiar to me by sight, action, and voice as if they were friends, those who refused to carry out the orders and suffered death or put themselves to death, and those who learned what was taking place and opposed it and were put to death, or those who learned what was taking place and because they could do nothing to stop it killed themselves. I see these men very near before me in that especial intimacy which binds us at times to the dead and to them alone.”[58]

In the course of the address, Buber reiterates that a human voice addressing his others in a spirit of mutual trust moves the life of humanity towards transformation.[59] A great and lasting peace, in his estimation, cannot be achieved in ignorance of human relationship.

Peace is not achieved through the imposition of sovereign authority over a group or many groups of people. The sovereign, accepted by Hobbes and Schmitt as the central guarantor of internal peace and stability, provides only an illusory peace. The purgation of an internal ‘political surplus conflict’, accomplished through the consolidation of political power, including emergency powers, claims to impose peace upon the innate and limitless enmity between men. But this assumption that man is innately evil is in of itself an illusory conflict – one that pits man against his own humanity.[60] In the Third Reich, the sovereign power, in the person of the Führer, creates a homogenous and unified populace through the force of its executive will, secures peace for the polity by purging and annihilating internal foes, and it seeks to defeat external enemies, i.e. external ‘evils’, in cultivating global peace for the Aryan race. Dreams of ‘great peace’ have been based on a similar fascination with sovereign power, hinging on a dominant political principle.

Buber writes, “The great peace is something essentially different from the absence of war.”[61] The great peace is not Pax Romana or its contemporary variant, Pax Americana. The proliferation of imperium does not lead to peace; it only prepares the way for future conflicts that drive humankind closer to the brink of annihilation. It is only through the cultivation of trust between peoples that humanity can take on the difficult task of engaging the world in its presentness – which presents paradox and contradictions that demand genuine human thought – rather than indulging in visions of an illusory peace.

Conclusion

Buber begins the Afterword to Between Man and Man with the following quote:

“In all ages it has undoubtedly been glimpsed that the reciprocal essential relationship between two beings signifies a primal opportunity of being, and one, in fact, that enters into the phenomenon that man exists. And it has also ever again been glimpsed that just through the fact that he enters into essential reciprocity, man becomes revealed as man; indeed, that only with this and through this does he attain to that valid participation in being that is reserved for him; thus, that the saying of Thou by the I stands in the origin of all…human becoming.”[62]

Buber indicates that the dominance of the political principle effaces the possibility for human becoming, deprives persons of those creative and transformative encounters integral to actual life. Buber’s thought, however, does not attempt to dissolve the antimony between state and social. His thought, well aware of the necessity of the It-world, does not seek to do away with the political principle. He wishes only to free social spontaneity from the dominant grip of politicization. Schmitt’s definition of sovereignty, however, does away the possibilities of social engagement and community.[63] Schmitt envisions a wholesale politicization of society. In this politicized society, individuals are accepted as “friend” if they legitimate sovereign authority, adhere sovereign decisions, and reinforce the homogenous composition of the polity. Others who question the decisions of the sovereign or are, by virtue of their ethnicity or beliefs, repugnant to the sensibilities of the homogenous unity are considered ‘inner foes’ to be excised. Life, through engaged and participatory activity, is foreign to Schmitt’s definition of absolute sovereignty, since order is supreme above all.

In a brief article entitled “Abstract and Concrete”, Buber responds to criticisms that his address to Carnegie Hall entitled, “Hope for this Hour” dealt with an “abstract philosophical” question rather than a “concrete political” one.[64] He rebuts by contending that his work appeals directly to the genuine concrete – the actual life of actual persons, which has become “smeared over and crusted with the varnish of political fictiousness”.[65] Of course, this response is reflective of Buber’s approach to modern political thought. In returning to a point explored in Chapter 1, abstractions are the result of indiscriminate politicization, often used to unite and galvanize a group of citizens, whose tacit consent to a collective cause also legitimates the political surplus wielded by sovereign authority. And within the text of “Abstract and Concrete”, Buber once again calls for a thoughtful response to crisis – in his context, the Cold War – rather than merely reinforcing political mechanisms.[66] He believes that transformation of the situation starts with those who will “begin to speak with one another – not as pawns on a chessboard but as themselves, partakers of human reality”[67].

As this chapter showed, it is the thinkers who reinforce the dominance of the political over society – Schmitt, and to a lesser extent, Hobbes – who are dealing in abstractions. In spite of Schmitt’s rhetorical fixation on real and concrete situations, namely the conditions which the sovereign exception addresses, his thought relies on the almost otherworldly ability of the sovereign formulate the decision on exceptions – in response to grotesquely exaggerated political conflicts. Buber defiantly envisions the decision as a work of dialogue unfolding between persons. The act of decision is made on the most elemental existential level, a response to a human voice, responding to the address of a fellow, and responding to existent conditions.[68] Decision, hence, is not simply a singular “miraculous” ordinance of a sovereign. Schmitt’s conception of “the political” sharpens the sovereign decision into a decision regarding life and death. The decision, motivated by the urgent necessity for it, is left to the sovereign. If individuals continually delegate a personal responsibility for response, the crisis of man is pushed to the verge of total annihilation.

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[1] “And because the condition of Man…is a condition of Warre of every one against every one; in which case every one is governed by his own Reason; and there is nothing he can make use of, that may not be a help unto him, in preserving his life against his enemyes; It followeth, that in such a condition, every man has a Right to every thing; even to one anothers body. And therefore, as long as this naturall Right of every man to every thing endureth, there can be no security to any man, (how strong or wise soever he be,) of living out the time, which Nature ordinarily alloweth men to live.” Hobbes, p. 190

[2] “The final cause, end, or designe of men (who naturally love Liberty, and Dominion over others) in the introduction of that restraint upon themselves (in which we see them live in Common-wealths) is the foresight of their own preservation and of a more contented life thereby; that is to say, of getting themselves out from that miserable condition of Warre which is necessarily consequent (as hath been shown) to the natural passions of men, when there is no visible power to keep them in awe and tie them by fear of punishment to the performance of their covenants and observation of those laws of nature…” Hobbes, p. 223

[3] “For by this Authoritie, given him by every particular man in the Common-wealth, he hath the us of so much Power and Strength conferred on him, that by terror thereof, he is inabled to forme the wills of them all, to Peace at home, and mutual ayd against their enemies abroad.” Hobbes, p. 227-28

[4]Buber, “Hope for this Hour,” Pointing the Way, p. 224

[5] Buber, “Hope for this Hour,” Pointing the Way, p. 224

[6] In “Hope for this Hour”, Buber contends that the need for confirmation (or recognition) exists for modern man. However, he seeks confirmation in two ‘false ways’. These two false ways, according to Buber, is confirmation by oneself or confirmation within a collective to which he belongs. Buber, “Hope for this Hour”, Pointing the Way, p. 225

[7] Buber, “What is Man?”, Between Man and Man, p. 197

[8] Buber, “We Must Grant the Arabs Truly Equal Rights”, p. 298

[9] Buber, “Genuine Dialogue and the Possibilities of Peace”, from Pointing the Way, p. 236

[10] “The man in crisis will no longer entrust his cause to conversation because its presupposition – trust – is lacking.”

[11] “Society and the State”, p. 176

[12] “Society and the State”, p. 176

[13] “Society and the State”, p. 176

[14]“…to implant in their minds the notion that such a will (ready-made will) derives from their own, their innermost being.” “Society and the State”, p. 176

[15] Buber, “Instead of Polemics, from Mendes-Flohr, p. 271

[16] Hobbes, p. 81

[17] Refer to Skinner, “The purely artificial person of the state”, in Skinner, Visions of Politics: Hobbes and Civil Science, pp. 177- 208

[18] “The represented will not be bound with their representatives in empty abstractions, through the phraseology of a party program…but concretely, through common activity and common experience.” Buber, “Comments on the Idea of Community”, A Believing Humanism, p. 92

[19] “All forms of government have this in common: each possesses more power than is required by the given conditions: in fact, this excess in the capacity for making dispositions is actually what we understand by ‘political power’ […] I call it the ‘political surplus’. “Society and the State”, p. 174

[20] “Society and the State”, p. 174

[21] Carl Schmitt, Political Theology, p. 5

[22] Schmitt, Political Theology, p. 5

[23] Schmitt, Political Theology, p. 13

[24] “The exception reveals most clearly the essence of the state’s authority. The decision parts here from the legal norm, and (to formulate it paradoxically) authority proves that to produce law it need not be based on law”. Schmitt, Political Theology, p. 13

[25] Schmitt, Political Theology, p. 15

[26] “The concept of the state presupposes the concept of the political.” Schmitt, The Concept of the Political, p. 19

[27] “Kelsen solved the problem of the concept of sovereignty by negating it. The result of his deduction is that “the concept of sovereignty must be radically repressed.” Schmitt, Political Theology, p. 21

[28] At the start of the third chapter of Political Theology, Schmitt argues that all significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts, because of their systematic structure. In short, he appears to be contending that the theological concepts that the Enlightenment tried to do away with the ‘irrational’ concepts of sovereignty, such as the exception, or, in other words, to banish the miracle from the world. Schmitt, Political Theology, p.36

[29] Schmitt, Political Theology, p. 25

[30] “Good can be maximized not through the rejection or conquest of evil but only through the transformation of evil, the use of its energy and passion in the service of good.” Friedman, p. 15

[31] “Already at the beginning of our historical period we saw teachers of the law appear who, obedient to this trait of the times, defined the concept of the political so that everything disposed itself within it according to the criterion ‘friend-enemy’, in which the concept of enemy includes ‘the possibility of physical killing.’ The practice of state has conveniently followed their advice.” Buber, “The Validity and Limitation of the Political Principle”, Pointing the Way, p. 216

[32] Buber, “The Validity and Limitation of the Political Principle”, p. 216

[33] Buber, “The Validity and Limitation of the Political Principle”, p. 216

[34] Buber, I and Thou, p. 107

[35] “Ideas and values cannot become presentness for us, and every experience, even the most spiritual, can yield us only an It.” Friedman, Martin Buber: The Life of Dialogue, p. 70

[36] “Whoever is overpowered by the It-world must consider the dogma of an ineluctable running down as a truth that creates a clearing in the jungle. In truth, this dogma only leads him deeper into slavery of the It-world.” Buber, I and Thou, p. 107

[37] “What characterizes an exception is principally unlimited authority, which means the suspension of the entire existing order. In such a situation, it is clear that the state remains, whereas law recedes. […] The existence of the state is undoubted proof of its superiority over the validity of the legal norm.” Political Theology, p. 12

[38] Legal theorist David Dyzenhaus provides a brief, yet incisive, account of this in his book, Legality and Legitimacy: Carl Schmitt, Hans Kelsen, and Hermann Heller in the Weimar, pp. 14-15

[39] “And, according to Schmitt, the idea of the Volk has substance only when it is understood to refer to an utterly homogenous group.” Dyzenhaus, p. 14.

[40] Weber, “The Profession and Vocation of Politics,” Weber, “The Profession and Vocation of Politics”, Weber: Political Writings, p. 369

[41] Dyzenhaus, p. 95

[42] Buber, “The Question of a Single One”, Between Man and Man, p. 87

[43] Buber, “The Question of the Single One”, Between Man and Man, p. 88

[44] When addressing the “possibility of physical killing” central to Schmitt’s thesis, Buber contends that Schmitt transposes the classic duel situation onto public life. The conflict between two sides, as in the duel, is absolute, a conflict that must end in the destruction of the other. But the point Buber makes is very interesting. “Every classic duel is a masked “judgment of God”. In each there is an aftermath of the belief that men can bring about a judgment of God. That is what Schmitt, carrying it over to the relations of people to another, calls the specifically political.” Buber, “The Question of the Single One”, Between Man and Man, p. 86

[45] However, he adds, “the fact it could be published with impunity (in 1936) is certainly to be explained from its not having been understood by the appropriate authorities”. Buber, “Foreword”, Between Man and Man, p. xi

[46] Buber, “People and Leader”, Pointing the Way, p. 159

[47] In order to debunk Schmitt apologists, Dyzenhaus explicates Schmitt’s anti-Semitic views. He concludes that any honest and serious scholarship about Schmitt’s work views must deal frankly and fully with the latter’s anti-Semitism. Dyzenhaus, pp. 98-101

[48] Schmitt’s friend/enemy distinction is tied to his idea of substantive homogeneity, and was produced in a context where, as Schwab recognizes, these ideas had to end in the Jews being excluded from German society in some radical way. Dyzenhaus, p. 101

[49] Buber, “People and Leader”, Pointing the Way (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957), p. 149

[50] Evelyn Cobley, in her interesting study about the relationship between postmodernism and totalitarianism, outlines how Hitler gained totalitarian control through the simulation of threats, i.e., the threat of Communism and the compromised allegiance of Jews to the German Reich, combined with a manipulation of legal precedents,, i.e., 1923 Ebert decree on ‘emergency situations’, gain the upper hand on the ‘apparent’ crises. Evelyn Cobley, Temptations of Faust: The Logic of Fascism and Postmodern Archaeologies of Modernity (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), pp. 206-09

[51] Buber, “Education and World-View”, Pointing the Way, p. 105

[52] Evelyn Cobley reads Arendt’s work as positing fascist totalitarianism not as a return to traditional despotism, but an attack on those traditional forms. She cites that traditional authority rested on the power of landed gentry; hence lines of power were present and an integral part to traditional despotism. But the point Arendt makes is that the very destruction of these traditional forms facilitated Hitler’s simulation of public space, hence controlling the channels of oppression and quashing the channels for resistance. Evelyn Cobley, Temptations of Faust: The Logic of Fascism and Postmodern Archaeologies of Modernity (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), pp. 226-27

[53] Buber, “People and Leader”, Pointing the Way, p. 155

[54] Buber, “Community and Environment”, A Believing Humanism, p. 95

[55] Buber, Paths in Utopia, p. 7

[56] Buber, “Questions of the Single One”, Between Man and Man, pp. 74-75

[57] Buber, “Questions of the Single One”, Between Man and Man, pp. 75-76

[58] Buber, “Genuine Dialogue and the Possibilities of Peace”, Pointing the Way, p. 233

[59] “Peoples must engage in talk with one another through their truly human men if the great peace is to appear and the devastated life of the earth renew itself.” Buber, “Genuine Dialogue and the Possibilities of Peace”, Pointing the Way, p. 235

[60] “In Schmitt’s view all “genuine” political theories presuppose that man is “evil”…” Buber, “Questions of the Single One”, Between Man and Man, p. 89

[61] Buber, “Genuine Dialogue and the Possibilities of Peace”, from Pointing the Way, p. 235

[62] Buber, “The History of the Dialogical Principle”, Between Man and Man, p. 249

[63] Buber, Paths in Utopia, p. 40

[64] “Among the statement that have reached my ears concerning my Carnegie Hall address, were some critical ones that have caused me to reflect. Almost all of them had the same import: I dealt with the ‘cold’ world war as an ‘abstract philosophical’ question instead of a ‘concrete political’ one…” Buber, “Abstract and Concrete”, Pointing the Way, p. 230

[65] Buber, “Abstract and Concrete”, Pointing the Way, p. 230

[66] “It is up to those on both sides who have not yet fallen into the total politicization to reflect on themselves, and in so doing reflect in wholly unphilosophical concreteness on existence.” Buber, “Abstract and Concrete”, Pointing the Way, p. 231

[67] Buber, “Abstract and Concrete”, Pointing the Way, p. 231

[68] “Harkening to the human voice, where it speaks forth unfalsified, and replying to it, this above all is needed today. The busy noise of the hour must no longer drown out the vox humana, the essence of the human which has become a voice. This voice must not only be listened to, it must be answered and led out of the lonely monologue into the awakening dialogue of the peoples.” Buber, “Genuine Dialogue and the Possibilities of Peace”, from Pointing the Way, p. 235

Political machinery

"Enmeshed in the political machinery, we cannot possibly penetrate to the factual. Enclosed in the sphere of the exclusively political, we can find no means to relieve the present situation; its 'natural end' is the technically perfect suicide of the human race."

-Martin Buber
"Abstract and Concrete"
Pointing This Way, 230

Phantom Threat?

Israel vows to pacify Hezbollah

"Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the campaign against the militants would continue "as long as necessary" to free its captured soldiers and ensure Hezbollah is not a threat."

Sounds eerily familar. How can you ensure that Hezbollah is no longer a threat? Bomb the living shit out of the whole of Lebanon apparently. Lebanese president Lahoud has even offered diplomatic talks. But if the plan is to "purify" the region of Hezbollah, I guess nothing will stop you. Man, the whole region might end up being a crater after this most recent crisis is done with.

Set it ablaze

"I am afraid of the truth...One must be silent, if one can't give any help...For that reason, all my scribbling is to be destroyed."

-Franz Kafka

A politics of de-politicization

"To a certain extent there are real conflicts of interests between all groups - national, religious, economic, social - which live together. As long as these conflicts are dealt within the domain of life itself, solutions are found. These solutions may take the form of negative compromise with both sides narrowing their demands, but may also take the form of positive, synthetic, creative compromise, that is, the creation of new life circumstances which require cooperation and make it possible. Matters are different if the conflicts pass from the domain of life to the domain of politics, and are different to the extent that politics overpowers life. What then happens is what I call political "surplus" conflict. Politics, seeking to retains its domination of life, has an interest in treating the interests of the various groups as if they were irreconcilable. But since this is in fact not so, politics has to make it so. And it accomplishes this by heightening the real conflict of interests to the point that it becomes non-real, albeit furnished with all the terrible force of political illusion. The politics of a group produces within its members a sense of conflict with proportions much greater than those of the real conflict, and accords it a different, seemingly absolute, character. The difference between the real conflict and the politically induced imagined conflict is what I have referred to as political "surplus" conflict. Although this surplus has real vital influence on the politically active part of the group, by political propaganda this segment gains total hegemony over all the others; that it, it achieves the dominance of life by politics."

- Martin Buber
"A Tragic Conflict?"
May 1946
From A Land of Two Peoples, p. 187

"Here I stand, I can do no other"

"For truly, although politics is something done with the head, it is certainly not something done with the head alone. On this point the conviction-moralists are entirely correct. But whether one ought to act on the basis of an ethics of conviction or one of responsibility, and when one should do the one or the other, these are not things about which one can give instructions to anybody. There is just one thing one can say in these times of excitement - not, you believe, a thing one can say in these times of excitement - not, you believe, a 'sterile' form of excitement (although excitement is not always the same as true passion) - if, suddenly, conviction-politicians spring up all around, proclaiming, 'The world is stupid and base (gemein), not I. Responsibility for the consequences does not fall on me but on the others, in whose service I work and whose stupidity or baseness I shall eradicate', then I say plainly that I want to know how much inner weight is carried by this ethic of conviction. For it is my impression that, in nine out of ten, I am dealing with windbags, people who are intoxicated with romantic sensations but who do not truly feel what they are taking upon themselves. Such conduct hold little human interest for me and it most certainly does not shake me to the core. On the other hand it is immensely moving when a mature person (whether old or young) who feels with his whole soul the responsibility he bears for the real consequences of his actions, and who acts on the basis of an ethics of responsibility, says at some point, 'Here I stand, I can do no other.' That is something genuinely human and profoundly moving. For it must be possible for each of us to find ourselves in such a situation at some point if we are not inwardly dead. In this respect, the ethics of conviction and the ethics of responsibility are not absolute opposites. They are complementary to one another, and only in combination do they produce the true human being who is capable of having a 'vocation for politics'.

- Max Weber
"The Profession and Vocation of Politics"
367-368

He's a what?!?

Idol of the Crowds (1937)

Plot summary:

Retired hockey player Johnny Hansen (John Wayne), in order to make money to enlarge his chicken farm, returns to the game and leads his team into the championship series. Just before the series starts, he is offered a bribe to throw the games but refuses. An attempt is made on his life which results in Bobby (Billy Barrud as Billy Barrud as usual), the team's mascot, being injured.

The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place

The very utterance, "instrumental post-rock genre", would make anybody cringe. But a band from Texas named Explosions in the Sky (Ibid.) are a reason why the genre may one day come into the mainstream. Of course, this particular band has had brushes with the mainstream limelight, most recently contributing all but a couple tracks to the "Friday Night Lights" movie soundtrack and had some speculating about their clairvoyant abilities after a 2001 release - erroneously thought to have come out September 10 - which had the words "This plane will crash tomorrow" scribbled on the album cover. But these guys produce some wicked music. After checking out their 2003 album, The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place, I can actually understand why instrumental post-rock might be appealing to plebs and bougies alike: the ability to listen to an album while doing other things, like reading, cooking, or fucking, and have the music contribute rather than detract from the activity. I can't really describe the album...it just has a different affect upon every listen. I just know it helps me focus, which is probably attributable to the fact that there are no subpar vocals tacked on to the music. I am not by any stretch a fan of the "instrumental post-rock genre". But, I have to admit that there's one quality album out there. One slight thing though about this album, it should have just been one track - everything flows too well to discern where one track ends and another begins. And yeah, they're Emo, but Emo in the just right amount. One of the reviews I came across - I think it was pitchfork - put this album into the proper perspective: serious, but never on the verge of self-parody. Good album, although the cover may be a tad cliche. Plus, I think you could do your taxes to it, be in a decent mood, carry the 1, and not get audited - which is always nice.

Camus in goal?

Camus - the goalkeeper?

The rest of the article was the usual mish-mash about the Outsider, the rebel figure, and the novel's affect on disaffected youth. Nothing new, although characterizing Camus as the laureate of the cool teenager is getting old. The real gem is that soccer jersey!

Vanity is a very widespread quality...

"Vanity is a very widespread quality, and perhaps no one is completely free of it. In academic and scholarly circles it is a kind of occupational disease. In the case of the scholar, however, unattractive though this quality may be, it is relatively harmless in the sense that it does not, as a rule, interfere with the pursuit of knowledge. Things are quite different in the case of the politician. The ambition for power is an inevitable means (Mittel) with which he works. 'The instinct for power', as it is commonly called, is thus indeed one of his normal qualities. The sin against the holy spirit of his profession begins where this striving for power becomes detached from the task in hand (unsachlich) and becomes a matter of purely personal self-intoxication instead of being place entirely at the service of the 'cause'. For there are ultimately just two deadly sins in the area of politics: a lack of objectivity and - often, although not always, identical with it - a lack of responsibility. Vanity, the need to thrust one's person as far as possible into the foreground, is what leads the politician most strongly into the temptation of committing one or other (or both) of these sins, particularly as the demagogue is forced to count on making an 'impact', and for this reason is always in danger both of becoming a play-actor and of taking the responsibility for his actions too lightly and being concerned only with the 'impression' he is making. His lack of objectivity tempts him to strive for the glittering appearance of power rather than its reality, while his irresponsibility tempts him to enjoy power for its own sake, without any substantive purpose. For although, or rather precisely because, power is the inevitable means of all politics, and the ambition for power therefore one of its driving forces, there is no more pernicious distortion of political energy than when the parvenu boasts of his power and vainly mirrors himself in the feeling of power - or indeed any and every worship of power for its own sake. The mere 'power politician', a type whom an energetically promoted cult is seeking to glorify in Germany as elsewhere, may give the impression of strength, but in fact his actions merely lead into emptiness and absurdity."

- Max Weber
"The Profession and Vocation of Politics"
Weber: Political Writings, 354

Mimesis and Derivation

Everything old is new...again. What once was stale is fresh again, with a new spin. There is creativity in paying homage...unless you're straight up jacking their shit - then you're Tarantino or Kobe or Elvis or whoever. Imitation is the highest form of flattery...unless you're completely biting their shit - then you're just being a fuckwad. Mimesis is an instinct ingrained within living creatures; survive, get some, pass on material, and all that stuff. Imitate what works. Pillage it and swear ignorance. Somehow, that's the law of the jungle...and of the rat race.

Everything's been done? Of course it has. Nothing is as groundbreaking as it claims to be. Some would say that the beauty of an experience can only be grasped through the eyes of a child who sees it for the first time. Art is the gaze...the gaze gives meaning. This is Rameau's nephew looking vapidly at a painting...or Baudelaire staring at his dark lover-slave's unshaven bush...or you staring at the television. Everything old is new again...or as Charles Manson says through the lips of Seth McFarlene, "If I haven't seen it, its new to me." Leave it to Charles Manson to convey - however esoterically - the point of that show's perpetual obsession with the 80's. "I love it, its new to me...or its new to me, again." Nothing is as fresh as the morning dew hugging blades of green grass - but let's not get romantic about it. Let's just admit it - there is no purity in the creative act. It is a derivation from sources that often go unacknowledged. For he who claims to be the Creator, the genius, or the radical is as generic as they come.

Are we doomed to be derivations - fated to produce imperfect copies of things done far better by superior talents? The vintage becomes the archtype...the plagarist simply a stereotype. Fuck that shit. On the shoulders of giants, my ass. You gotta know...you must know...its all been done before. Don't bite it. Don't reify it...and hoist it up as the idol-redux. Annihilate it! Overwhelm it! Push it to unknown horizons. Don't be like Tarantino and make a fucking scrapbook of "cool-hipster" shit. Don't do like Kobe and just be Mike. Can't just cover it in luccite or sprinkles or sacchrine and churn out homage and nostaglia. Free it from inanity, release it from repetition, help it make love to the absurd, embrace the insane...give it life, man. Give it life.

Kafka - A Little Fable

"Alas," said the mouse, "the world is growing smaller every day. At the beginning it was so big that I was afraid, I kept running and running, and I was glad when at last I saw walls far away to the right and left, but those long walls have narrowed so quickly that I am in the last chamber already, and there in the corner stands the trap that I must run into." "You only need to change your direction," said the cat, and ate it up.

-Franz Kafka

Thoreau - Civil Disobedience

"The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailors, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgment or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs."

- Henry David Thoreau
Civil Disobedience
Walden and Other Writings, 87

"I have paid no poll-tax for six years. I was put into a jail once on this account, for one night; and, as I stood considering the walls of solid stone, two or three feet thick, the door of wood and iron, a foot thick, and the iron grating which strained the light, I could not help being struck with the foolishness of that institution which treated me as if I were mere flesh and blood and bones, to be locked up. I wondered that it should have concluded at length that this was the best use it could put me to, and had never thought to avail itself of my services in some way. I saw that, if there was a wall of stone between me and my townsmen, there was a still more difficult one to climb or break through before they could get to be as free as I was. I did not for a moment feel confined, and the walls seemed a great waste of stone and mortar. I felt as if I alone of all my townsmen had paid my tax. They plainly did not know how to treat me, but behaved like persons who are underbred. In every threat and in every compliment there was a blunder; for they thought that my chief desire was to stand the other side of that stone wall. I could not but smile to see how industriously locked the door on my meditations, which followed them out again without let or hindrance, and they were really all that was dangerous. As they could not reach me, they had resolved to punish my body; just as boys, if they cannot come at some person against whom they have a spite, will abuse his dog. I saw that the State was half-witted, that it was timid as a lone woman with her silver spoons, and that it did not know its friends from its foes, and I lost all my remaining respect for it, and pitied it."

-Thoreau
Civil Disobedience
96-97

"No responsible person remains a stranger to norms. But the command inherent in a genuine norm never becomes a maxim and the fulfillment of it never a habit. Any command that a great character takes to himself in the course of his development does not act in him as part of his consciousness or as material for building up his exercises, but remains latent in a basic layer of his substance until it reveals itself to him in a concrete way."

- Martin Buber
"The Education of Character"
Between Man and Man, 135

What Enlightenment really is?

"The vision of "what should be" - independent though it may sometimes appear of personal will - is yet inseparable from a critical and fundamental relationship to the existing condition of humanity."

- Martin Buber
Paths in Utopia, 7

This quote can be related to Kant's "What is Enlightenment?". Kant posits that human freedom cannot exist without limits. Kant proposes a critical approach, i.e. freeing oneself from self-imposed immaturity. But, as he intimates in WIE, a critical approach to knowledge is not done in a space detached from "a fundamental relationship to the existing condition of humanity". However, Kant's qualifier - "obey and debate as much you want" - places a strict limit on such a critical relationship. Man, as he puts forth, remains beholden to the order that secures his very existence and stabilizes the world he lives in.

"But only a ruler who is himself enlightened and has no fear of phantoms, yet who likewise has at hand a well-disciplined and numerous army to guarantee public security, may say what no republic would dare to say: Argue as much as you like, but obey! ...A high degree of civil freedom seems advantageous to a people's intellectual freedom, yet it also sets up insuperable barriers to it. Conversely, a lesser degree of civil freedom gives intellectual freedom enough room to expand to its fullest extent." (Kant, What is Enlightenment?, Political Writings, 59)

Kant is fully aware of the paradoxical nature of this. In positing this, he inevitably concedes how he could not circumvent the set of assumptions put forth by Hobbes - namely that the state must be present to impose order, the grounds necessary for civilization. The Leviathan is not a beast, but a machine - a composition of individuals united in a grand collective.

"This spirit of freedom is also spreading abroad, even where it has to struggle with outward struggles imposed by governments which misunderstand their own function. For such governments can now witness a shining example of how freedom may exist without in the least jeopardising public concord and the unity of the commonwealth. Men will of their own accord gradually work their way out of barbarism so long as artifical measures are not deliberately adopted to keep them in it." (Kant, WIE, 59)

The limit Kant imposes on maturity is one he willingly inherited from Hobbes. The modern state or Leviathan - by definition - claims to deal with the existing condition of humanity by securing the conditions under which individuals can act freely.

"Thus once the germ on which nature has lavished most care - man's inclination and vocation to think freely - has developed within this hard shell, it gradually reacts upon the mentality of the people, who thus gradually become increasingly able to act freely. Eventually, it even influences the principles of governments, which find that they can themselves profit by treating man, who is more than a machine, in a manner appropriate to his dignity." (Kant, WIE, 59-60)

Of course, the assumption is that the sovereign is "enlightened", like Frederick the Great, in allowing his subjects to pursue enlightenment. The limitation to this is that governments and those who head them are not always enlightened and often percieve critical and contrary perspectives as "dangerous" to their own power - or under the cloak of legitimacy - detrimental to the existence of the nation-state. So in place of education, they provide propaganda. In place of maturity, they facilitate immaturity. The insecure sovereign, the insanely paranoid leader, is like Nero - invariably on the verge of setting his kingdom on fire, to purify it of those who oppose him. Kant's vision for enlightenment has never materialized. The situation is far more complex than "obey and argue as much as you want". The skillful duplicity of those in power throws a wrench in Kant's plans - placing the emphasis on OBEY, and negating the rest.

Freedom...

“Freedom…is actually the reason that men live together in political organization at all. Without it, political life as such would be meaningless. The raison d’être of politics is freedom, and its field of experience is action.” (Arendt, The Portable Hannah Arendt, p. 440)

A man locked shackles – shackles to which he gave consent – fell to his knees and shouted, “I want freedom more than life”. A passerby stopped, bent down, and whispered, “One can live, but not die, for freedom.” As the sun beats on his reddening brow, the man in shackles asks, “How can I live in order to find it?” The passerby replies, “Live rather than search and then you will be free,” and walks away.

Urge to kill...rising...rising

So when the summer heat gets to you this year, may this image provide some relief.

Thabo Mbeki

“Our greatest struggle is to raise the consciousness of the people.”

- Thabo Mbeki

Existential Mistrust

“The existential mistrust is indeed no longer, like the old kind, a mistrust of my fellow-man. It is rather the destruction of confidence in existence in general. That we can no longer carry on a genuine dialogue from one camp to the other is the severest symptom of sickness of present-day man. Existential mistrust is this sickness itself. But the destruction of trust in human existence is the inner poisoning of the total human organism from which this sickness stems.” Buber, “Hope for this Hour", Pointing the Way, p. 224

Pink Floyd

Time

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter away and waste the hours in an off hand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking
And racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in the relative way, but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone the song is over, thought I'd something more to say

- Mason, Waters, Wright, Gilmour
"The Dark Side of the Moon", 1973

Need job security?

Intrigued?

When there's no way out, the only way out is to give in?

Vietnamisation or Somaliasation?

Once you're knee deep in a pond of quicksand, can you extricate yourself from it without making things worse? Is this the situation confronting the U.S. as the war in Iraq is getting worse by the day? It is true that outright withdrawal of troops on moral and ethical grounds is an inadequate approach to address the mess that has already been made; Somalia - as Glucksmann notes - serves as a frightening example. The question is whether an administration that so enthusiastically propelled its country into war is approaching it prudently and effectively. Can insurgent resistance ever be quelled? Or does U.S. foreign policy around the world feed - for a lack of a better term - a vicious cycle? How does the tension with Iran or the problematic relationship with the Israel-Palestine situation make these problems even more pressing? The short answer to these questions is that these things do not help the situation in Iraq, but are not the central factors behind difficulties the U.S. military face in the region - which for the most part it has created for itself through miscalculations and a lack of foresight in strategy and planning.

True, it would be naive to believe that the U.S. government is utterly unaware of what is happening on the ground in Iraq. It would be too simplistic to say that if U.S. troops withdrew the Iraqi people would be restored to a romantic state of peaceful bliss. Honestly, Andre Glucksmann is absolutely correct that a rash withdrawal would leave Iraq open to civil strife and brutality. But, why has the presence of U.S. military been relatively ineffectual in curbing insurgent violence? Why has the U.S. troops engaged in the slaughter of Iraqi civilians as well - with at least one known incident at Haditha? Gluckmann did an inadequate job in philosophically differentiating between Saddam Hussein's tyranny and the potentially indiscriminate brutality of American "liberators". One was a decades-long regime of terror, or so the story goes. The other is supposedly a temporary price for gains to be made down the road.

Is the incident at Haditha an expression of metaphysical angst, of frustration about the escalating quagmire created by persistent insurgent resistance? Or does the insanity of Haditha reveal the repressed penchant for death and destruction, ingrained in soldiers who are conditioned for brutality - to fight against a homogenized enemy? When the line between insurgent and civilian is blurred, as is often the case in guerrilla war, do innocents appear to simply as enemies or potential enemies? Certainly, the question is not purely philosophical - indiscriminate killing is in essence an irrational act, but the philosophical question casts some light upon the rudderless war effort.

Do you stay or do you go? The dilemma is difficult to think through. Too bad those in the Bush administration have not given it much thought or have considered the paradoxes inherent in such a decision. Or if they have given it much thought, it has not shown in their actions in Iraq, as the American effort has held steadfast to winning a propaganda war at home - the highly publicized capture of Saddam Hussein in December 2004 and the recent "elimination" of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi on June 7, 2006 - rather than winning the war on the ground. The most disconcerting aspect of the war is the failure of U.S. strategy and tactics employed in waging the war - first, a lack of understanding about street fighting, recon and intelligence gathering, and guerrilla tactics necessary to weed out the roots of insurgent resistance - ironically the same shortcomings that doomed them in Vietnam, and second, the abysmal failure of the campaign for the "hearts and minds" of Iraqis, due largely to the paternalistic assumption that "democracy" and "freedom" means anything for the Iraqi people without some context to their everyday lives and culture. To put it bluntly, they have done a terrible job in selling the idea of a better future.

This first failure of strategy, ironically enough, is because the U.S. effort has overemphasized the ideological and semiotic developments within the insurgence, such as whether these insurgent groups are related to global terror organizations and the preoccupation with the particular acts of terror such as kidnappings, videos of beheadings, and such. The location of Zarqawi was an exception to this, because it revealed a degree of logistical sophistication and espionage. But, of course, a bold symbolic gesture was chosen over a more patient, prudent, and substantive strategy. Rather than capturing Zarqawi and his associates - possibly obtaining leads about the locales of "rival" insurgent groups and invaluable information about the insurgent resistance, the U.S. military resorted to a bold display of revanche by blowing him up and parading pictures of his corpse proudly, like an eight year old showing his playground chums a dead bird he found. What was accomplished through Zarqawi's death, apart from a brief revisit of the feeling of apparent accomplishment and achievement that occurred on that joyous "Mission Accomplished" fighter carrier and the infamous-famous "We got him!" press conference two years ago? If you are at war to reinforce self-esteem, you're in war for the wrong damn reasons.

In war, as Sun-Tzu put it elegantly, you must come to understand the adversary and the conditions of combat as well as you know yourself. The masterful general, as he puts it, is the one who wins the battle before it even takes place. Rather than going into Iraq with any nuanced long-term strategy - contingency plan upon contingency plan, the U.S. military went in to "shock and awe", raise the Mission Accomplished banner for the hometown "folks", and bumbled their way through the rest, resulting in many American soldiers being sent home in body bags and an even larger number of Iraqi civilians perishing.

So once you're there, you can't give in and say "the pinko-commie fuckwad protestors weakened our resolve and compromised our effort" or some other stilted attempt at deflecting blame. If the war is a necessity, as they contend, at least don't fuck it up with constant attempts at justifying being there in the first place. The point is to pacify the insurgency, not to bolster their resolve by creating martyrs. The purpose is to create conditions favourable to victory and stability, not to seek revenge for grudges. The way to victory - take that term with a grain of salt - is one of stealth, patience, and prudence. Arrogance, foolish impudence, and allowing revenge to motivate action leads invariably to defeat. The U.S. venture into Iraq has seemingly followed along the path of the latter rather than the former.

Nepal and Maoists

Nepal: the Maoist transformation's fuzzy logic

When change comes through the barrel of a gun, can the gun ever be laid down? It is difficult to imagine that the civil war dividing Nepal will come to an end without more and more bloodshed. A virulent populism - fostered by Maoist indoctrination of villagers to a culture of violent rebellion - can make peaceful compromise appear to be pathetic capitulation. "The People's War" demands that the means to violence be retained. And if the Maoists are to enter into "legitimate" means of national governance, disarmament appears to be a necessary requisite.
King Gyanendra's ill-advised attempt at seizing power on February 1, destroying the nascent elements of democracy in Nepal, provided further justification for the rebel forces and its populist supporters to justify the continued use of force. But that is the price of waging guerilla war; it becomes something much larger and pervasive than those who lead its efforts. Rebellion rallies around a common target - be it the king or the elites; but ultimately as Robespierre demonstrated during the French Revolution, terror can spin utterly out of control once the target of rebellion is apparently vanquished.

And as the French Revolution demonstrates, modern liberal democracies do not necessarily remove violence from their regimes. Particular claims to the use of violence are repressed; violent force and coercion, as Weber reminds us, is the exclusive domain of the sovereign state. And if one subscribes to Hobbes or Schmitt, the creation of the modern state requires violent means, to command the obedience of its citizens and entrench sovereign authority. Is this the fate of Nepal? Or was King Gyanendra - who inherited the thrown from his brother's massacred royal family - the best unifying symbollic sovereign figure, had he not made a futile grab at power? We must remember - however - that the emergence of the British (and somewhat by proxy, Canadian) parliamentary system went through the beheading of Charles I, civil war, the rise of Oliver Cromwell and his merry men, and a restoration of the monarchy as a largely symbollic figure.

The violent origins of what appears - at least to the general public - to be a rather banal institution are often forgotten. The violence that is perceived to protect it, such as wars in foreign lands to fight hostile forces hostile to "our way of life", is deemed legitimate. And from the arrests of potential plots on the Sears tower and the Canadian Parliament, the extension of state authority in protecting the nation-state can occur so subtly and with such stealth, that one will get used to having Big Brother peering over their shoulder - listening in, watching, or checking out their bank records. "That's how they protect us from external threats...defend our way of life...defend our freedom" is the justification. But at what point will the measures employed undermine and destroy any semblance of freedom? And at what point will the innocous veneer of the Great Protector peel away to reveal the bars of the iron cage?

Ratocracy and Enlightenment

Liberalism has failed to set us free. Indeed, it has enslaved us.

"Liberalism used to be dedicated to doubt, cynical about certainty and, above all, suspicious of power. All I am urging is that liberalism should start applying these attitudes as rigorously to its own powers and certainties as in the past it applied them to everybody else's." - Peregrine Worsthorne

The Enlightenment, as a friend told me, cannot be thrown out wholesale - the unfortunate baby and bath water analogy rears its ugly head here. It is a matter of redefining it - recovering the critical aspects of Enlightenment thought, rather than demonizing and rubbishing it. Rubbishing it requires no thought, no effort - it is the easy way out. Rethinking the Enlightenment and recovering aspects of it demands thoughtfulness and worthwhile labouring.

Peregrine Worsthorne is correct in pointing out how unfettered freedom - without respect to what Weber called an ethic of responsibility and conviction - leads to a "ratocracy", a meritocracy where sycophantism is rampant. The turn towards the private individual as the site of freedom - individual rights and freedoms as the end all and be all - feeds this ratocracy in business, in politics, in academia, in activism, and even in matters of the heart.

The courage to act is not natural to some and absent from others. It is not simply a matter of nature over nurture. We all possess that potential to learn, to act freely, to innovate, and to create. Education, hence, cannot simply be an accumulation of knowledge - formulae, facts, fictions, and what else. Education is not, as some contend, weeding out the weak and elevating the "strong" to their rightful place of status - guardians of knowledge, if one believes Plato. Education is between I and Thou, between you and me, between persons and the world they share. This is the legacy of the Enlightenment. May we heed Worsthorne's brief, yet inspired, comment and look to recover what freedom means in an age where liberty seemingly is currency for boundless pursuits of power and triumph - as individuals and as nation-states.

Fossil fuel fools

A more substantive list of ten

Some familiar suggestions from the world of popular science on what to do about the energy crisis.

Superstitions

Superstitions for the playoffs:

1) Hockey beard - or the best one can muster, i.e. Jarome Iginla circa June 2004.

2) Avoid uttering the term "bandwagon" or accusing fellow fans of fairweather fandom - no need for infighting.

3) Beer, pretzels, more beer - akin to a consensus builder in response to violations of 2)

4) Absolutely no fraternizing with the "enemy" - unless they offer to buy any of the items listed in 3); in that case, pose as friend, rob, and leave for dead.

5) Don't touch brooms.

6) Don't cross paths with black cats - unless it works for you, then please, do indulge.

7) Wear jersey only on off days or before the game, but never during the game when watching the game on TV. If the team jersey has some mystic connection to the team, do you really want the aura of couch potatoes and drunkards dragging down the crew? I think not.

8) If at the game, always wear the jersey - regardless of the state of its cleaniness or any odours it may produce. The aura is different at the game. It just is.

9) During the playoffs, one should loudly chant "Go (team) Go!" at the moment of sexual climax. Chances are that if your partner can tolerate you during the playoffs - i.e. consenting to any act of intimacy; this would be nothing.

10) For the Flames fans out there, the only thing that truly makes sense when the Flames are out of the playoffs is this particularly profound dictum: Anybody But The Oilers. This is true, even when anybody = Carolina.

And when the journey is done, kick back, down a few brews (hopefully something better than Bud Light), and ask yourself WWMCD?

Identical difference

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1204956,00.html

Theodore Junker, proudly displaying the American flag side by side with that of Nazi Germany, poses the question, if history is written solely by the victors, then what value does history hold? The account he provides is quite evidently derived from lingering propaganda. He found the twilight of his 87 years the best possible time - once the bulk of his life has already passed - to reveal his beliefs, to expose himself to the venomous attacks that are sure to follow. Of course his contentions that Nazi soldiers, according to him, were heroes, his refutation of the Holocaust, and his laudatio of Hitler are not particularly different from similar views expressed by neo-Nazis.

What is interesting is the symbollic value of those two flags hanging side by side at the heart of his supposed shrine to the truth. Each flag is the embodiment of a truth. In the end, only one won out and wrote the definitive account of what happened. The problem this farmer and former member of the SS broaches - apart from his own biases - is whether "history" is only one side of a story; the victorious account triumphs over the vanquished one. Of course, it is hard to think about this problem without finding oneself on the verge of an abyss. One cannot accept the propaganda inspired account Junker peddles, for it is patently false. But should the stilted account of the victors be accepted without question? True, what Junker wants to spread as Truth is indeed false, hideous, and hateful. But the mythology surrounding the flag on the left, is that not a cause of equally hideous sentiments? When the president of the United States publicly chide - or more appropriately, condemn - Mexican immigrants for not singing the national anthem in English, aren't those sentiments threatening to burst forth? Does it not present the possibility of radical exclusion or "necessary assimilation"? The unity and security of a nation is held proportional to the strength of its symbols, the voracity of its mythology, and the unanimous adherence to ritual and tradition. The nation must be believed to be resolutely righteous, the protector of universal ideals.

While Allied forces are seen as heroes in the eyes of history, there are instances of villainy. The firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo are the most common examples of this. The polarization of good and evil makes it imperative that slaughter be elevated to the level of heroism, rationalized and justified. Of course, some would ask, why question the story? The story is dangerous if it cannot be retold without variance. An unquestioned account fuels the polarization between good and evil; the elevation of the nation-state as the supreme defender of all that is good. Justify and rationalize - is everything permitted?

Junker has both flags up. He sees similarities between the dreams peddled by each. Freedom contra Will? Democracy and the Volk? Manifest Destiny and lebensraum? The destiny each ideology sees for itself involves a belief that history is ultimately of the side of the righteous, on their side. History, as Junker unwittingly demonstrates, is not truth or reality, but simply an instrument of power - possibly the most effective blow inflicted by victors of a struggle. But this specific blow is substantial; it constructs time and space, writes the story that is reality.

Ideas and Hockey

http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2006-06-14-ochser-en.html

"In many respects, though, sport is a theatrical simulacrum of the socio-economic system that imbues it with such undeserved significance. And in this way, the Latvian obsession with ice hockey reflects their obsession with appearances over reality. The team plays their roles as professional competitors. The fans play their roles as active spectators. The puck plays its role as reified value. And who wins in this scheme of things? That question really isn't worth answering."

Is this piece humourless? Perhaps. Let's begin with the clumsily conceived term "theatrical simulacum", which is at once redundant and obfuscating. If theatrical has already been set out, pulling out simulacrum is a tad excessive. Theatrical implies that the sport is somehow orchestrated and rehearsed and unfolds according to script, a liberal-capitalist script at that. Isn't that a rather crude analogy? What about improvisation? Changing on the fly? Picking off a pass up the middle and walking in to shelf the OT winner? The underdog team pulling a thrilling comeback victory through fierce forechecking, shotblocking, and transition break outs? The brilliant spontaneity of the game is not considered - evident in hockey, even more so than almost any other sport, because - well - sport is simply a spectator distraction according to Ochser.

True, fanaticism - i.e. hooliganism - such as that displayed by the Latvian fans who tossed all sorts of rubbish on the ice when their team were playing Team Canada is demonstrative of passion gone astray. It is indicative of the distraction becoming hyperreal, when the distraction simply exacerbate the baser individualizing impulses of people. But, time and time again, it has been proven that hooligans do not represent the actions of the majority of fans. The emptiness and valuelessness Oscher so easily ascribes to the sport of hockey is to be expected though. The checklist of modern cultural critiques can be ticked off easily. Violent? Sure, sometimes. Overt masculinity? Check. Commercialised? Yeah, hockey leagues need to make money too. Chasing after a "reified value"? Of course, so does basketball, football, baseball, rugby, and so on. Then again, isn't the reified value of the critic the appearance of boredom? Truly a chase for ever greater disinterest.

I appreciate hockey precisely because it makes no claim to aristocracy. It is not the sport of kings, like horse racing. It was a sport, at least in Canada, born on the ponds or home made rink on the farm. It was a sport played by labourers after work, by kids after school. Hockey is a social event, as participants or as fans. It is where people come together, rally around a sense of community. Sure, some may say it is an artificial source of community. But surely it is not a hollow one. It is a space for meeting - yes, for leisure and pleasure, but also to allow fellowship between people to develop and flourish. Hockey is something that is shared. As a Canadian, I know I share in the experience of hockey with others. The contention that sport is simply a simulacrum of a socio-economic system attempts a pseudo-Marxist flourish, borrowing "po-mo" phrases in the process, without thinking how the meeting of fans for a sporting event may bring about spontaneous encounters, to build relationships to deal with the larger and "serious" issues.

Tim Ochser provides an intellectual reflection on why hockey doesn't do it for him. That is fine. But it reveals the perspective he is writing from. It is from above, at least it is a perspective that wishes to be above. It is a space the critic so desperately wants to occupy. But in the process of critique, he neglects to consider that maybe, just maybe, the passion of Latvian fans invested in a supposed "hollow and empty", therefore insignificant, endeavour such as hockey fandom grows friendship and fellowship, the base upon which more substantive engagement comes to being.

Stanley Cup Champions...1989

I remember watching Game 6 of the 1989 Stanley Cup Finals with my brother and my father. Looking back, I think I was astonished how overjoyed my father was when Doug Gilmour put in an empty-neter. He had seen the Flames through the early days, the Flames of Kent Nilsson, Lanny MacDonald, Reggie Lemelin. He had witnessed disappointments against the Oilers and the Jets. He remembered Brian Skrudland's crushing 9-second OT goal in the 1986 Finals against the very same Montreal Canadiens. My dad was overjoyed, and only years later, would I understand why.

Having only fleeting memories of Flames seasons prior to 1988, I could honestly confess that the first vivid memory I have of the Flames was Game 2 of the Smythe Division Finals against the Oilers. That memory, of course, was Wayne Gretzky streaking in on left wing and blasting the OT winner over Mike Vernon's shoulder. It was quite an initiation to playoff disappointment. My dad told me, after the Oilers finished the sweep, that the Oilers are the best team, for now, and the Flames' time would come soon. I didn't know that soon would be the very next year. I did not understand how special 1989 truly was then. I thought the Flames would hoist the Cup for many years to come. I was spoiled by the success, and soon my optimism would come crashing back to earth.

But 1989 would grow ever more special for this Flames fan after having lived as a hardcore fan through the 'lean years', the years spanning from 1990-2004. Well, the early 1990s brought a great deal of regular season success for the Flames; finishing near the top of their division consistently, with the exception of 1991-92 when they missed the playoffs. All that regular season success only prepared Flames fans for crushing playoff defeats. 1990 - The L.A. Kings eliminate the Flames, defending champions, after a legitimate Flames goal is disallowed in Game 6, which is ended by Mike Krushelnyski in 2-OT. 1991 - Esa Tikannen scores an OT winner in Game 7 of the Smythe Division Semi-Finals. This ruined a magical moment in Game 6 when Theo Fleury scored on a breakaway in OT, and then pulled out the most overblown celebration in Flames history. 1993 - The Kings thoroughly beats the Flames in 6. 1994 - The Flames blow a 3-1 series lead by losing three straight OT games, capped off by a Pavel Bure's OT winner in Game 7. 1995 - Flames fail to close out San Jose, despite having a 3-2 lead in the series. The OT winner gets past a puzzled Trevor Kidd.

Did I mention that the Flames selected Trevor Kidd ahead of Martin Brodeur in the 1990 NHL Entry Draft? Or that they traded Doug Gilmour for Gary Leeman and change? Well, I just did, and these tidbits may provide explication for the futility the Flames would experience in the eight years following their 4-0 defeat to the Chicago Blackhawks in the 1996 playoffs. No playoff appearances. Draft picks ranging from Daniel Tkaczuk to Rico Fata. And the team was at one point in serious jeopardy of having to move from Calgary. The lack of playoff revenue, sagging attendence, and terrible mismanagement does that to a franchise. The team didn't move. The team survived. And 2004 happened. To Flames fans in my demographic, who lived through the lean years, that playoff run was truly miraculous. Even though the Flames came within one goal, or some would contend, one would-be Gelinas goal, from winning the Stanley Cup, I came to understand why my father was so unbelievably overjoyed after Doug Gilmour potted that insurance marker. They arrived. They made it. And he was there for that long journey. After having lived through the absolute lowest of lows for the Flames, 2004 was almost as sweet as 1989. Almost.

The image of Jim Peplinski and Tim Hunter hopping over the glass, in what looked to a seven-year old to be pajamas, to hoist the Stanley Cup with Lanny is one that will never be forgotten. So Happy Anniversary to Lanny and the 1989 Flames. To Hakan Loob, Joe Mullen, Joe Nieuwendyk, Theo Fleury, Gary Roberts, Al MacInnis, Mike Vernon, Ric Nattress, Gary Suter and the rest, thank you so very much.

The Great Stablizer

The hegemon stabilizes the world? Or does the hegemon arouse apocalyptic suspicion? The grand stabilizer is but a myth. What one side sees as the necessary and grand stabilizer for international order, liberal democracy, enlightenment, and so forth, the other condemns as the "great Satan", proliferator of tyranny, greed, corruption - assuredly both moral and ethical, and so on. So does the great hegemon bring stability? Or does it simply exacerbate strife and augment conflict?

Thus, when Australian PM John Howard reminds us of the "blackmail of the enlightenment", that freedom is possible only through collective capitulation, as global citizens and individual nations, to the great power - be it 'man' or 'hegemon', he states it as if it is truth - at once parsimonious and unshakeable. Order and stability, true, but at what price?

That's why they play the game

It’s not your time young man. We are the kings, guaran-sheed. Take the beating, and learn from it.

But that’s why they play the game.

Three games, at most four, and that’s all. You’re overmatched, inexperienced. You’re not ready for the crown young prince.

But that’s why they play the game.

Pay your dues. Suffer defeat. You are going to be better for it, youngster. The greatest of them all had to pay his dues, and so will you. This defeat was inscribed onto your fate long ago, accept it and wait your turn.

But that’s why they play the game.

He forges his own destiny. He is no facsimile. He is no rip-off. He’s legit. Conceding nothing and refusing the “inevitable”. It may shock the world, but he expects it. He demands it, of himself and of his mates.

That is why they play the game. That is why the game is beautiful, the spontaneity, the unexpected…great expectations coming to fruition.

Spread the word. He has arrived.

"Everything is shit anyway"

Optimists are idiots

Signs that you're a nihilist:

1) you have more than a hand full of black turtlenecks in your wardrobe

2) you have an obsession with cutting off johnsons

3) you believe in nothing

4) you watch Will & Grace with any regularity




To quote the dude, "That's a bummer man."

Max Weber on Journalism

"On the continent at any rate...the journalist shares with the demagogue, the advocate and the artist the fate of lacking any firm social classification. He belongs to a kind of pariah-caste which, in the eyes of 'society', is always gauged socially by those of its representatives who are of the lowest moral quality. Thus the strangest ideas about journalists and their work are widespread." (331-32)

"Few people are aware that a really good piece of journalistic work demands at least as good a mind as that of any scholar, above all because of the need to produce work immediately, to order, and because it has to be immediately effective, although produced under quite different circumstances from those of the scholar." (332)


"Whatever happens...a journalistic career remains one of the most important paths to professional political activity. It is not a path for everyone. It is certainly not one for weak characters, particularly not for people who can only maintain their inner balance in a situation of social and professional security."

"Although the life of a young scholar involves taking a gamble, he is surrounded by the firm conventions of his social position which keep him from going off the rails. A journalist's life, however, is essentially a gamble in every respect, and, what is more, one that is made under conditions which put a person's inner security to the test as few other situations in life do."

"What is surprising...is the fact that, despite everything, this section of society in particular contains such a large number of valuable and quite genuine people, many more, indeed, than outsiders tend to imagine." (334)

Max Weber, "The Profession and Vocation of Politics", Weber: Political Writings, p. 331-34.

Time before the Bang?

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329472602-117780,00.html

Trying to explain the origin of the universe is an odd endeavour. The Big Bang could be 14 billion years ago. How would anyone know? How can one understand 14 billion years or 986 billion years as anything but a hypothesis, a speculative figure formulated through the best mathematical resources available? The anthropomorphic Christian fundamentalist account, the 5000 year universe centred on the life of man, provides comfort; we have dominion over a world that is contingent on our existence. The main difference is that science is often open to debate about the particulars as well as the theories that produce them. Fundamentalism holds the particulars, the most minute minutia as True, period. But it has been shown again and again, the universe has existed long before we have. We have no dominion, only the opportunity to screw it all up. And, well, oh so many have tried so mightily to do that.

Secrets of the Bomb

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19010

The secrets behind the atom bomb were kept within a circle of physicists. Are they now common knowledge for any and all who seek it?

The precedent was set. Now the bomb, or aligning one's country to a nuclear "power", such is the case with Canada, is a requisite for national security interests. The race to the bomb, motivated by the assumption that the Germans were "close" to developing it themselves, was founded on rather erroneous intelligence. The breakdown of intelligence gathering exacerbates the anxiety that stirs within the insecure hegemon.

Fear justifies the use of irrational means in fulfilling "righteous" ends. But the tenuous situation that is called the nuclear age demands diplomatic communication. Muscular sabre-rattling is absent of poise or control. It capitulates to chaos, and shouts futilely at a silent universe. What is most integral for peace in an age of danger? The paradoxical answer is trust. Trust does not mean surrendering to the will of the "enemy", giving into every demand. That is not compromise, but capitulation. The imposition of a singular will onto the "other" is also devoid of trust. Trust means trusting the dialogue. Trust means that communication shall never break down, because dialogue continues as long as we exist. Listening to the claim of the other. Considering it and respond.

However, communication is not a debating society. The walls of the ivory tower, the fortresses of suburbia, or the avant-garde architecture of urban technicity is illusory protection. Understanding and trust does not lie in the superficial matrices of gesture and preception, criticism and commentary. Protest, but do not just protest. Commentary is often a profitable endeavor for the disingenous, committed to retrenching the lines, and exploiting vertiginous sources of fear. The trouble of "taking a position" is that it is difficult not to rage against contrary positions; to defend a singular truth, your truth. War cannot be adopted as a legitimate means for protesting conflict. Sitting on the fence, however, ignores the possibility of violence and the absurdity that is life.

Violence is a part of life, as bizzare as that sounds. The essentialist argument, however, is erroneous. It assumes violence is a cleanser, a purifier. The "Great War", the war to end all wars, was certainly anything but. Humanity, even though we are told otherwise, is not by nature either good and peaceful or evil and violent. The former, of course, is espoused by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who calls for a return to innocent origins. The latter is famously attributed to Thomas Hobbes, who describes man's natural state as being "nasty, brutish, and short". The Rousseauian account asserts violence as the product of modern civilization, as Hobbes places it within the natural being of man. We are not by nature either good or bad. It is how we respond to our circumstances that decides our fate.

War, one must remember, is the absolutely final resort. And even then, it cannot be seen as an absolute in of itself. Because if victory is judged to be legitimate at any cost, the conflict destroys the victors as it does the defeated.