Caesar Is Not Lord.

Vengeance is mine sayeth the imperialist, and the current iteration of that deadly reality is American. In reading international news sources, which I've done since childhood, I'm struck at how military intervention for "national interests" has become nearly ubiquitous across the planet. It seems every empire has arrogated unto itself the prerogative that belongs only to God when it comes to final judgement, life or death.

This is not a uniquely American behavior by the way, it's been true of every great empire across human history. But these last hundred years have seen US being the military top of the hill. And like every other empire, we gladly fabricate an appropriate mythology to fit our place in the political pantheon seemingly sensing that we are somehow uniquely immortal, unlike every other empire which has passed before us.

Caesar is not Lord.

The Rhetoric of Identity (and how to Identify that Rhetoric)

The answer to our country's problems isn't to return to some mythical past when all was well and everything was right (or left) in the world. The New Deal, the Great Society, the Reagan Revolution, Compassionate Conservatism, or even more recently, Yes We Can, are all but dim reflections of their times, broken as they are, each in their own way.

But neither is the answer to ignore all of these previous attempts to make things better. The rhetoric of each of these political and cultural movements were aspirational, even if rather transparently manipulative. But it's in this strange confluence of aspiration and manipulation that we need to analyse where we've come from and how we've gotten into the predicament we're now in.

Why do these rhetorical appeals work? In the ten Presidential campaigns I personally remember, along with many other campaigns for various products being sold to us, we've been sold an identity, a sense of who we are and our place in the great movement of history. We're told that if we join this campaign or buy this product, we'll find our true meaning and purpose for our lives. But if we don't come alongside this great movement of history and instead choose to go down another path, we're consigning ourselves not only to insignificance, but we're separating ourselves from the common identity that exists among our family and friends (or so the ad and campaign execs say).

And who wants that? In some way or another we all want to belong. It's a part of our being human that we join ourselves to various groups so that we can identify ourselves as a part of some larger whole. Even the lone wolf exults in their identity as a lone wolf because of the pre-existing myth of the lone wolf. Myths don't exist in a vacuum. They always serve a purpose.

But the question before us today is this: in light of the fact that we're being told that if we don't do....(pick your side)...all hell will break lose economically, politically, and possibly even cosmically, how can we step back and analyse the rhetoric being used and how it's being used so as to conflate the aspirational with the manipulative? In other words, how are we being bullshitted?

The classic bullshitter knows how to combine flattery with fear of failure, and hope with a sense of impending doom. Juxtaposing each in such a way that the victim...um customer...um voter has their emotions massaged to work up the response the purveyor wants from them. Either a vote, a sale, or a believer. Any will do. As long as they give their feasance to them. Or more importantly, to the ideal.

Can we cut through the deep rhetoric? Can we see beyond the silly semantics of salesmen telling us what we need before we know it ourselves? Can we recognize that all of this exists in us too as we see others behaving this way? Can we recognize ourselves as the bullshitter in chief before we accuse those we don't like of being the chief bullshitter?

You see, this is the Augustinian side of me coming out. It makes me a Christian skeptic, especially of myself. And I think it's my democratic side coming out too; in that I'm pretty sure we all have this in us. I could be wrong of course. But I doubt it. Only time will tell. And time seems to be telling.

Terrain

Would you want to live in a world of only plains? Or maybe a world filled with only mountains? Or even a world filled with only cities? Or only small towns? Or only the ocean? Would you want to live in a world with only vast stretches of desert? And of course we can extend this image to other areas of life: Would you want to only taste sweet foods? Only spicy foods? Only salty foods? Would you want to live in a world filled with only extroverts? Or introverts?

And here it starts getting trickier. Should we want to live in a world filled with only Christians? Muslims? Jews? Atheists? Liberals? Conservatives? Post-Modernists? Libertarians? And then what about those within our particular "camp" who still disagree? Shall we only live in a world filled with our particular "vision" of atheism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, etc, etc, etc.

We have a very natural human tendency to want to shape the rest of reality to our own already set beliefs and behaviors (can we say confirmation bias?). Thus we also tend to want the rest of reality to reflect our own sensibilities. We can do this either by outright rejecting any competing claim to the epistemological terrain or by reframing (and usually distorting) those competing narratives so that they end up suiting our own desires. I know this tendency well, since I've engaged in it on a regular basis myself.

I've lived in a number of different "terrains" both physically and ideologically and spiritually and emotionally. If I only ever saw a city landscape, I'd either get bored with it or see it as the only possible reality. And my all too natural instinct would be to either deify it or demonize it. In that sense, I guess I'm extremely grateful that though I did grown up in NYC, I also grew up on the south shore of Staten Island, which was and is still quite wooded and rural. So while we climbed trees and traversed many wooded paths, we also were a stone's throw from the concrete canyon of Lower Manhattan.

I often only half jokingly say we were the Beverly Hillbilly's of NYC.

But along with being culturally rural so close to a city environment, my family was also quite politically liberal in a very conservative neighborhood. We learned early on that not being in sync with the political majority held it own costs.

Another beautiful benefit of my very broken family was that we knew and interacted with those different than us. I was exposed to friendships with Jews, blacks, Latinos, Asians, the developmentally disabled, the homeless, etc. from early childhood. Though, in the midst of our own brokenness, it was always tempting to retreat into an interior reality blocked off from outside experience, experience, and I believe God, gave me a sense what it's like to walk in other people's shoes.

So again I appeal to my conservative friends to get to know and learn from liberal friends. And likewise, my liberal friends need to truly listen to what conservatives have to say and why. And on another spectrum, my atheist friends need to know more religious folks, so that you don't only see the caricatures presented by the supposedly "new" atheists. And of course, my religious friends also need to know, as in actually know, those who don't share your own convictions, and listen with a spirit of generosity to those who deeply differ.

So, for me at least, I choose to walk a path that includes mountains and plains, oceans and rivers, cities and towns, liberals and conservatives, atheists and believers. It doesn't mean I deny a particular sense and sensibility of reality. But it does mean that, even though we may deeply disagree, I will listen to you, because you do have something good and important to say to me.

So in this spirit, let's talk. Truly and truthfully.

Tim Keller on Civility

Grand Strategy with Charles Hill

This is an absolutely fascinating interview with Charles Hill about his new book, Grand Strategy, where he lays out a huge narrative arc of political thinking, going all the way back to the ancient Greeks and how they conceptualized the world. He touches on Homer, Aeschylus, Thucydides, the Aeneid, the Treaty of Westphalia, and on and on. A wonderful tour de force of Western intellectual history.



This is just the first ten minutes of the interview. If you want to watch the whole interview, just click on the lower right part of the video and that will take you to the main page where you can watch it in its entirety.