So I'm thinking that the Pope should share the burden --for the sake of the "justice and peace and the dignity of the human person" we hear so much about-- and we should have a coupla thousand illegals move into the Vatican and set up tents and portopotties and campfires in the gardens. Lotsa room back there.
Africans... and a lot of Muslims. And then make sure there are "adequate
means for the redistribution of wealth" that His Holiness called for
the other day.
What a shining example it would be.
Delectatio morosa.
3 comments:
The papal apartments could also house a few squatters, for example, Roma, as per your posting Dec. 21. Martha's Vineyard would also be a proper locale for a lot of social housing.
More seriously, we should call the various white male capitalist etc elites on their arrested repentance. ... For decades I've thought how bogus white and putatively hetero male professors at elite institutions are for sort-of confessing that the power system, the culture, the civilization etc whose personnel they educated has been predicated on exclusion and oppression of women and sexual and racial minorities.
Well, perhaps so. But instead of insolently opening these elite institutions to women and minority students and even providing affirmative action and extra scholarships, the white male professors should have all taken long sabbaticals to study at the feet of women and minority scholars, since obviously the white males had no understanding of justice or were willing to impose injustice, even 'systemic' injustice. In fact, if they had had any decency they ought to have resign'd their positions of power and influence, just as a murderer has no right to live on the proceeds of the life insurance policies that he took out on his victim/s. The faculty of Howard University should have been invited to start teaching at Harvard University.
When the Allies de-nazify'd Germany, they didn't simply ask Nazis in positions of power to start serving liberal democratic or communist ideals.
Since even science isn't as 'neutral' as scientists like to fancy, even white male science and math professors should have taken a lot of time out to study at the feet of women and minority scholars on how to interpret science and mathematics. These white males should have all had to write repentance essays showing to the satisfaction of women and minorities that they understood the reality of the grave unjustices that they had committed directly and committed indirectly by educating the future lawyers and politicians of the American power system to impose misogyny and white supremacy and homophobia, not to mention assuming that cisgender identity is the norm.
Nietzsche warns us to enquire into what's really going on when an artist switches over to his opposite, as when Wagner switch'd from sensual paganism to Catholic asceticism (Genealogy of Morals iii ¶2). Was the previous sensuality real, or is the new asceticism real, or just what?
I suppose we should also enquire what's really going on when Harvard and the Vatican suddenly switch into an opposite statement on justice or at least start doing "critiques" of injustices. Or when the Democratic Party, the party of segregation and militarist empire expansion suddenly became ostensibly the party of "change" -- peace and justice and global cooperation and so on.
This isn't a kairos for anger in marginal whites against "Reverse Discrimination" but laughter at such flimsy 'hegemony.' If Harvard and the Vatican are now declaring that America and Europe have always been wrong, obviously the honours that America and Europe have handed out to those who scrambled ambitiously for them were worthless -- both the older honours and the newer honours, since the honour-givers remain the same.
Nietzsche proves that Wagner never had the courage for what he wish'd or maybe would like to have wish'd to say in his artistic statement. Evidently this is true of Harvard and the Vatican.
Or if this is an occasion for anger, then it is surely vs the injustices of expolitation and extermination -- which Harvard and the Vatican seem ready to confess to, except that without missing a beat in this comic opera they switch'd from celebrating the glory of America and Europe to critiquing America and Europe, with the exception of this or that 'heritage.'
Harvard priests whose academic training was for the sake of teaching young ambitious white males the workings of American political economy suddenly yet sort of unobtrusively begin doing critiques of American political economy, and they begin mentoring African-American youngsters and coeds.
Why do women and subaltern minorities give the white male establishment such an easy time? Do the white males still own these women and subaltern minorities? Or is the ownership somehow mutual? ...
I suppose this particular chapter of the Harvard etc comedy began when professors — that is, elite organization men — began writing critiques of "organization men." ... Organization men should live like semi-criminals -- they'd get laid more -- for example, by coeds studying at elite institutions.
The 'charisma' or 'glory' of Western civilization is declared zilch. Thus "beta" males, the functionaries of civilization, have no glory, including erotic glory or sex appeal. Besides, women now have their own successful careers in civilization (they're "organization coeds," I guess), so they don't need to marry in awe of civilization (or in awe of a good union wage -- since these jobs don't support a family any more).
But if the Church is now only a bunch of transients with no fix'd address -- pilgrims, vagrants, gypsies, et al -- why is it taking them so long to take leave of the world? They think the world stinks. They think the civilization they're in charge of stinks. Why are they still mucking around in the world? ... You're just passing through? Then pass through already!
Jesus wasn't a pilgrim in the world.
Regardless of the comedy, I suppose the most useful thing to do is to remark that cultural anthropology professors, women's studies professors, gender studies professors, liberation theology professors are "organization persons" — flunkies, functionaries, personnel units.
If they were seriously transgressive or dangerous, the Man wouldn't hire them, pay them salaries etc.
The military-industrial complex wasn't threaten'd by Daniel Bell, C. Wright Mills, Herbert Marcuse, et al, but presumably pre-approved their critiques and agreed that the power system should proceed without the burden of Christianity and Western civilization.
Perhaps what George Prankin Grant said of the beatniks applies also to Slavoj Zizek, Martha Nussbaum, Michel Foucault, Derrida, Edward Said, et al: they "titillate the status quo rather than threaten it" (Lament for a Nation, p. 80).
All the post-structuralist post-colonialist whatever now formatted into undergrads is merely footnotes to the original statement that "organization man" is both contemptible and oppressive, and ought to be desublimated. Calvin would be destabilizing. Porno proves that there're no higher longings.
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