My sister-in-law just texted me with a question about Rome. I lived there and have visited twice since...but not for a long time now...and she and my bro are making their first trip there this fall.
Got me thinking about The West, or what used to be called Christendom. Rome, like all of the West, is multilayered, literally. Beneath the Dominican church of San Clemente you can go down from the contemporary building (a 12th century structure with Baroque ornamentation) to a 9th century church, then lower to the streets of the neighborhood as it was during the times of the Caesars.
The city embodies the Roman assimilation of Greek culture and style and then the Christian city on top of that, and now the secular post-Enlightenment society that marbles through it (or vice versa). In Rome you find Athens and Jerusalem working out their vibrant and tense relationship. Further makes me think of identity: who we believe ourselves to be, part of what groups, what streams, what futures. Who our friends are and who our enemies. What our inherited pride is and what darkness we carry from our ancestors.
Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian, Germano-British...
I once tried to make a list of The Seven Cities of the West as a symbolic way of marking out what makes Western Civilization unique. It was hard to come up with just seven. (History and identity are never as neat as my Five mind would like them to be.) Athens and Jerusalem for sure. Then Rome, of course. Paris, London and Berlin...for the French, English and Germanic contributions. See, already we have seven. What about Madrid, which marked all of Latin America? And then for the northern New World: Washington and New York?
This leaves out the Slavic realm, both Catholic and Orthodox, with Moscow and Constantinople. Huntington separates these nations from The West.
And for the West's future? Los Angeles?
When "we" teach our history to our children, it is always from a particular point of view. When I was in grade and high school, even a bit when I was at Columbia, with its Core Curriculum, the great narrative arced from Athens, Jerusalem, Rome, through post-medieval Europe (Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment) to America. Now with the Post-Colonial and Globalist (Marxian) story in the ascendancy, that arc is seen mostly as a saga of oppression. White Westerners teach their children to be ashamed.
Got me thinking about The West, or what used to be called Christendom. Rome, like all of the West, is multilayered, literally. Beneath the Dominican church of San Clemente you can go down from the contemporary building (a 12th century structure with Baroque ornamentation) to a 9th century church, then lower to the streets of the neighborhood as it was during the times of the Caesars.
The city embodies the Roman assimilation of Greek culture and style and then the Christian city on top of that, and now the secular post-Enlightenment society that marbles through it (or vice versa). In Rome you find Athens and Jerusalem working out their vibrant and tense relationship. Further makes me think of identity: who we believe ourselves to be, part of what groups, what streams, what futures. Who our friends are and who our enemies. What our inherited pride is and what darkness we carry from our ancestors.
Greco-Roman, Judeo-Christian, Germano-British...
I once tried to make a list of The Seven Cities of the West as a symbolic way of marking out what makes Western Civilization unique. It was hard to come up with just seven. (History and identity are never as neat as my Five mind would like them to be.) Athens and Jerusalem for sure. Then Rome, of course. Paris, London and Berlin...for the French, English and Germanic contributions. See, already we have seven. What about Madrid, which marked all of Latin America? And then for the northern New World: Washington and New York?
This leaves out the Slavic realm, both Catholic and Orthodox, with Moscow and Constantinople. Huntington separates these nations from The West.
And for the West's future? Los Angeles?
When "we" teach our history to our children, it is always from a particular point of view. When I was in grade and high school, even a bit when I was at Columbia, with its Core Curriculum, the great narrative arced from Athens, Jerusalem, Rome, through post-medieval Europe (Renaissance, Reformation, Enlightenment) to America. Now with the Post-Colonial and Globalist (Marxian) story in the ascendancy, that arc is seen mostly as a saga of oppression. White Westerners teach their children to be ashamed.
5 comments:
The Seven Locales of Canada, without which Canada as a civilization is unthinkable, are pretty obvious, I'd think: Iberville, Sarnia, Lethbridge, Antigonish, Moosonee.
But about the oppression thing, my question is whether Vice-President Biden is absolutely comfortable with membership in the RCC whose hierarchy evidences consistent refusal to ordain women and gays, and consistent refusal to recognize LGBT partnerships as marriages. ...
If he were to come out as an "above His skies" official dissenter from the RC position on these things, this would free up the Democrats to go after Romney's Mormonism on these things.
Probably the president would follow, though from a protestant denominational federalism: each denomination or ecclesial community should decide to ordain women and gays, and recognize gay marriages.
Because obviously Christian churches should be expected to obey Christ's Golden Rule even more than the Christian state.
And in terms of culture-formation, Mr Biden's Catholic Church is presumably much more powerful than the ragtag and bobtail clutch of Dem and Rep politicians. If Christianity powerfully enculturated the meaning of marriage as including LGBT relationships even shameful states such as Mississippi would not be able to withhold the meaning of "marriage" from LGBT couples who opt to wish for that meaning.
I mean, why should Christians who believe in the Bible as reveal'd holy scripture be subservient to the American Psychiatric Association. Until 1973 we maintain that homosexual orientation isn't a gift from God, but when American Psychiatry changes its professional mind in 1973 we suddenly gradually discover that God affirms and celebrates LGBT sexuality.
Christians should show some real independentness from this-worldly culture, shouldn't we?
P.S. I don't see that the president need lose votes of black Americans because of his evolution. And not simply because at most any alienated black voters would simply not vote, rather than vote Republican.
What says it all to me is the white marble bust of some Dead White Guy (Benjamin Franklin?) in the background in the still photo I saw of the interview of the president -- even though the interviewer was by Robin Roberts, an African-American. ... It possibly feels as if the president and his interviewer were talking about stuff intended for whites, especially those historically related to filioque Christianity and western Judaism.
Basically a "coming out" (as a debutante, I must assume the language was selected for this implication, by a witty gay guy) gay life is SWPL.
The higher love occurs "on the down low" culturally for POC demographics, and even for whites who are Eastern Orthodox, Islamic, etc. I don't mean the unofficialness of alternative sexualities, usually occurring in parallel with a straight (path) marriage, means they are not real.
But the sermons we hear on the rich diversity of LGBT seems not to refer to a real effort in POC populations to institutionalize a charismatically legitimated gay identity express'd not with a parallel straight marriage. Individual POCs within the white gay community and down low POC subcultures semi-connected to official POC communities (e.g. perhaps that male choir members in some African-American denominations are assumed to be gay) do not mean POCs and Eastern whites don't maintain a cordon sanitaire around the "western white disease" of homosexuality as 'marriage' etc. ...
And since our aiôn of desublimation holds with Freud that civilization, marriage institutions, etc is thanatos, but rejects Freud's doctrine that thanatos is necessary, there is maybe little real enthusiasm among gays and lesbians for the blessing by patriarchal institutions.
This even in Anglo-Saxony with its residuum of unnuanced Calvinism -- as though our sexual selfhood can still be sanctify'd and moralized even though human economics is deem'd entirely in need of a government socialistic clampdown because individuals are irredeemably violent in our economic selfhood.
Certainly there is less and less enthusiasm for such blessing even among our hetero couples
It's perhaps not that the charisma of Christianity is sought for the union of two males or two females as spouses, but that if the union of a man and a woman can have such blessing then it ought to be extended to any gays or lesbians who want it. That, plus, reasonably, the 'bourgeois benefits' that have accrued to marriage (registration with the government, power of attorney, next of kin recognition etc).
The president said clearly that the bourgeois benefits aren't sufficient for the Christian state to properly value gay and lesbian couples. Does this apply only to white Christian denominations? Presumably so because -- in fairness (with individuals as exceptions) only white denominations or white denominational clergy have try'd to rally democratic opinion against gay marriage, just as only white denominations or white denominational clergy have urged political lesiglators to recognize as marriages gay and lesbian couples who wish such recognition.
POC denominations have basically stay'd out of this agôn, just as they basically have no internal activist movements seeking ordination for gays and blessings of gay and lesbian couples as marriages.
Getting rid of the Bible in the world, without losing its power advantages in this world, is a long march.
No doubt a sexuality subculture prefers not to be condemn'd by law (silence is preferable) or harrass'd by police or attack'd by thugs. But the absence of such penalties does not mean the subculture has gain'd the right to participate in determining the official cultural meanings of sexuality or-and love. In fact, a persecuted sexuality subculture may have more enculturating influence than a subculture that is ignored.
In terms of the changes of interpretation surrounding 1973 etc in Western and especially Anglo-Saxon cultural interpretation of 'sexuality,' the primary change seems to be the removal of Freud. His status in medical science made Oedipus complex, castration anxiety, sublimation, penis in V, id, ego, super-ego, ego ideal, etc more or less official understandings. His tremendous achievement was to preserve middle-class morality, work ethic, civilization, etc even despite the vista open'd into the unconscious, the underground.
The replacement psychologies of Jung and Hillman and the post-Jungians have not attain'd similar stature. Perhaps their proponents haven't sought such stature for their psychologies. They perhaps do not wish to preserve civilizational thanatos and sublimation.
As for medical psychiatry, it has press'd forward with biochemical mechanical treatments and behavioural and cognitive therapies that do not relate to the underground or require any sort of understanding of Greek myth, let alone Moses and monotheism.
A desublimational ouranian love that would dismay the Greeks enter'd the emptiness created by the rejection of Freud. So also desublimational geschlechtlich eros (heterosexuality in swinging, porno, etc etc). The only enemy that these desublimational eroticisms encounter'd in their target demographics was residual Judeo-Christian morals.
High-class residual white Christians supposed that gay sexuality would settle down and express itself in partnerships that would not upset the UCC. Low-class residual white Christians resisted, sometimes very vehemently and with an intense "threaten'dness."
But unless low-class white Christian hierophants wish to place in the world the revelations in the Bible on the meaning of 'man' 'woman' 'male' 'female' etc, homosexual legitimation won't be roll'd back into a closet or made to go 'on the down low.' At the same time, such Christianity has little or no charisma with which to bless sexual partnerships of any sort. ... "Does it matter? Everything," [tout est grace] concludes the country priest, dismissing the seven sacraments from the world.
The everything system is permissible, because nothingness is presented as the final unveil'dness. At first, nihilism -- European Buddhism -- was consider'd to be quite difficult. But it turns out to be easy, I guess.
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