Posted on September 2, 2015
The Augustinian Dilemma
Posted on July 17, 2015
Girard on the Oedipus Complex
‘The convenient thing about Oedipal interpretation is that there is no better evidence for it than the absence of a murdered father except, of course, for the presence of a murdered father.’
—René Girard, “Superman in the Underground: Strategies of Madness-Nietzsche, Wagner, and Dostoevsky”
Posted on May 15, 2015
Inspired to Legislate
‘After having dwelled with [The One] sufficiently, the soul should, if it can, reveal to others this transcendent communion. Doubtless it was enjoyment of this communion that was the basis of calling Minos “the confidant of Zeus”; remembering, he made laws that are the image of The One, inspired to legislate by his contact with the divine.’
— Plotinus VI, 9:7 (trans. Elmer O’Brien
Detail from Raphael’s “The School of Athens” of the figure sometimes identified as Plotinus.
This is true natural law— not a set of abstract principles set into concrete form, but inspired legislation itself, that is, the law as a divine art.
Immediately after this, Plotinus admits that those that contemplate much often see themselves as above the city and this withdraw themselves from it, but it seems clear that while he finds this acceptable, it is higher to move from contemplation to its application to the human realm— to bring this realm into the harmony seen in the divine one.
Posted on May 15, 2015
The Truth Is in There
In college, I had an eccentric professor who was both a serious Catholic and an absolute believer in aliens. He thought that, not only were aliens real, but the government knew about their existence and had been engaging in detailed cover–up ever since. He was a very smart guy, and a decent lecturer, but this particular project of his probably did not help his professional reputation— it probably hurt it even more than his right–wing politics. Why? It singled him out as a crank, as a little too X–Files.
But, how much of a problem is being a crank, really? What makes people cranks? I’ve never been susceptible to the idea that there are aliens out there and the government knows about it, and thus have always suspected that belief in aliens is the expression of some other concern: the feeling that the government isn’t trustworthy, the search for meanings beyond impoverished materialist narratives, whatever. And it’s certainly clear that as you get to the political and philosophical fringes, you start having more and more believers in Roswell (or whatever) popping up…
Mulder hands Scully’s Cross necklace off to her mother in “Ascension” (S2E6)
A few weeks ago, my wife and I started watching the X–Files on Netflix. I watched the show when I was a kid, and it alternately scared and fascinated me, and the uneven, disordered way in which I was abled to see it left me with a very impressionistic picture of the show as a whole, leaving my imagination to fill in the many gaps I had been left with in the show’s “mytharc“.
Part of me was a bit reluctant to actually watch the show in full and as an adult, because I figured that however my childhood and teenage imagination had filled in the gaps was probably going to be more satisfying, more mysterious than the actual show. That could still be true, but having got midway through the second season, I find myself able to enjoy a lot about the show that escaped me— mostly the excellent performances by David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson that anchor the series.
But something stands out to me that previously escaped me: The show’s concern with belief in a broader sense. Mulder’s famous I WANT TO BELIEVE poster may have a picture of a UFO, but it’s clear that UFOs (and the paranormal more broadly) aren’t all Mulder wants to believe in— an early episode finds him in what seems to be an Episcopal or Catholic church, praying. Similarly, even the skeptic Scully retains a nominal attachment to Christianity even in the early episodes of the show, serving as a godmother and also wearing a Cross necklace that becomes an important link for Mulder during her absence for a period in the middle of the second season.
The show’s creator, Chris Carter, has said that The X-Files is in part about “a search for God”, and while the show goes down avenues not compatible with any traditional theology as it winds its way through its mythology, it does strike me as representing a certain openness to experience (whether expressed in the desperation to find meaning represented by Mulder, or the more cautious, but still genuine search of Scully) that was once associated primarily with the search for God/The One/Truth that now can find itself winding its way down any number of paths. It seems notable to me that The X-Files gets the details right on Christianity better than most entertainment products—an episode about a Pentecostal church with a real faith healer doesn’t have a crucifix or clerical collar in sight (a ubiquitous mistake on TV)—showing that the show is willing to treat traditional believers with something of the sympathy one would expect it to reserve for conspiracy theorists like Mulder or The Lone Gunmen.
Because it’s television, our hero is ultimately right about the actual forces behind the world: Aliens, government conspiracies, hostile elites willing to exterminate the human race to ensure their own survival. In the real world, plenty of people wanting to find the truth will end up down some very strange avenues. I don’t think there are aliens, or that there is a massive conspiracy guiding the course of modernity. But I can sympathize with why people would think that way, and don’t feel like I can write someone off for holding those sorts of views as long as they don’t dominate their thought to an obsessive, irrational degree. (So my old professor was still on the right side of this divide, but Joseph Farrell is not.)
I think it’s important for people on the fringes to be a bit kind when other people on the fringe express some weird views. In our current society where the scope of acceptable conversation is so narrow, people willing to break away from it are going to be more likely to hold to all sorts of other wild points of view. Not necessarily UFOlogy, but plenty of much milder incorrect beliefs as well. It’s the cost of doing business these days, though one wonders what would happen if we were able to turn that desire for seeing the outer machinery within.
Posted on April 25, 2015
Weaponized History
When I was in college, I had a professor who I guess we could call a denier of the Armenian Genocide. He questioned some of the death toll claims, some of the details of Ottoman military policy, and also argued that Armenian militia were killing Turks in the area under question.
For a moment, let’s pretend all of my professor’s claims were true. Maybe only a million, instead of half again that many were killed by the Ottomans. Maybe the Armenians were giving almost as good as they were getting— maybe better. Maybe the Ottoman military policy was to relocate and contain Armenian civilians, not massacre them. Does that mean there was no genocide of the Armenians?
I was born in 1985, so it’s hard for me to remember that the very word ‘genocide’ is younger than my grandparents, only dating from the Second World War. If genocide is just the organized slaying of one gens by another, it is almost as old gentes themselves; but it’s more than that, it’s the name of a crime— or at least the word aspires to name a crime. So the word has this dual quality; it names both a historical fact and a crime, and crimes call out for justice.
So when we’re told that it’s a disgrace that the United States government refuses to ‘recognize’ (in the form of some symbolic declaration) the genocide of the Armenians by the Ottomans the whole thing becomes ridiculous in multiple ways. If we read genocide as simply describing a historical fact, then recognition becomes another example of the trivialization of Congress; if we read it as a crime, it becomes hypocritical, as well, as even if there were living perpetrators to indict a century after the fact, the United States would have no intent of doing so, or of demanding that Turkey remit payments to the modern Armenian state or what–have–you. It becomes somewhat embarrassing that the only reason this isn’t being done is because of the US’s sordid relationship with Turkey and Sunni Islamic powers such as the Houses of Saud or Thani1, but that’s hardly here or there: The US government shouldn’t be in the business of writing history or prosecuting the historical grudges of foreign peoples. (That said, I can still sympathize with the Armenians’ desire to have this recognized because so many other peoples have been given the same ridiculous courtesy.)
So, was it genocide? Yes. But declarations of genocide by government are something else, they’re not quite the recognition of a crime, but they’re something more than simple historical fact–checking; such declarations are the weaponizing of history, and even beyond whether or not that should ever be done, it should only be done in the interests of the nation.
My professor was wrong, but so are the columnists moralizing about Washington’s failure.
- Note how the Thani monarchy’s in–house network puts scare quotes around genocide in this headline.
Posted on April 22, 2015
RoboCop vs. the Managers
2014 brought us another seemingly–superfluous reboot, this time of Paul Verhoeven’s RoboCop (1987); while the movie doesn’t measure up to the original, there are plenty of interesting elements, especially considering that it is a film that contains a critique of what not only made it, but made it so bland: The managerial ethos.
The film industry is one of much higher stakes than it was in 1987 when RoboCop was first made. In terms of 2014 dollars, the original film was made for about $27M; the reboot cost at least $100M. The reboot passed through theaters with little cultural impact (I don’t know anyone who went to see it), but it made over $240M, compared to an inflation–adjusted $111M for the original. In absolute terms (which are what matter for Hollywood), the 2014 version was more profitable, meaning that (whatever its flaws) we’re likely to see a sequel or at least another reboot.
The Verhoeven original functions as a sort of fable with sci–fi dressing; it isn’t actually very concerned with what makes RoboCop tick, with what (if anything) of Alex Murphy was really supposed to be left after he became RoboCop. In the original, making a cyborg is a way to overcome the imperfections of drones— to add a human element (or at least human conditioning). In the 2014 version, the actual workings of RoboCop are very much at issue, and the human element is seen as what is least desirable by OmniCorp, the fictional corporation responsible (in both versions) for Murphy’s transition into cyborg.
There are things the movie does right: It looks futuristic in a believable sense; the actors are mostly better (Gary Oldman brings a seriousness to the role of Concerned–but–Ethically–Compromised Scientist™); it fleshes out Murphy better so that the viewer can understand him a little better, rather than the original, which barely introduces him before we witness his drawn out, highly violent execution. (In a post–War on Terror nod, 2014–Murphy is blown up by an IED planted in his car.) The score, by Pedro Bromfman, is passable, and is at times reminiscent of Michael McCann’s main theme for Deus Ex: Human Revolution (a game which had quite a few nods to the original RoboCop); Bromfman wisely borrows the memorable fanfare1 from the original score by Basil Poledouris for the title and a crucial moment in the film (and again late in the closing credits). The only prop I found really unfortunate was the motorcycle, which just felt a bit too much like a blacked–out lightcycle from Tron Legacy.
The most interesting sequence in the film happens about midway through, with OmniCorp timing Murphy against one of their military drones in a hostage rescue scenario. Murphy carries out the scenario successfully, and much quicker than any normal man could. But, he’s noticeably less efficient than the drone. Murphy’s success does not matter. The fact that he can shrug off NATO rounds does not matter. His inability to measure up to an arbitrary managerial benchmark is seen as a real problem for a company which sees RoboCop as an answer to a PR problem. The argument that hostage rescue cannot be quantified by anything other than a successful rescue never even occurs to Oldman’s character, who acts as the closest thing OmniCorp seems to have to a conscience. So, they embark on a series of actions which destroy their project.
There’s a real fittingness to this being the hamartia of the RoboCop project in this particular film, as such managerial benchmarking, independent of all concrete assessments is exactly what led not just to this reboot, but this particular reboot. Consider this line from the movie’s Wikipedia entry:
‘Before starting filming, Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles revealed that Padilha called him to admit he was having “the worst experience of his life” and “for every ten ideas he has, nine are cut”. Padilha, according to Meirelles, says, “It’s hell here. The film will be good, but I have never suffered so much and I don’t want to do it again”.’
The research facility in which Murphy is rebuilt is in China. Why? It doesn’t seem to make any sense (this would be a project the US wouldn’t let happen in China), but you can see some suit at the studio or distributor saying that the screenwriters should work China in there somehow in order to appeal to the Chinese audience. Are Chinese audiences actually engaged by shoehorning their country (made to look like either wage–slaves to American corporate interests or backwards farmers, by the way!) into the film? Probably not, but I have no idea. Then there is the constant desire of the script to make explicit, in the mouths of its characters, what a better film would leave unsaid.
Despite Verhoeven’s leftist credentials, the original film has been condemned (or praised) repeatedly for being fascistic. It’s a pretty easy reading of the film; the only clearly leftist reading of the film focuses on its anti–consumerist, anti–corporate angles— but these are lines of critique that are fundamentally anti–bourgeois, and the far–left and far–right can shake hands over it. The movie definitely depicts RoboCop as sort of a conquering hero over the forces of anarcho–tyranny which govern its (and our) 21st century Detroit, and you can only read it as condemning the violence RoboCop dishes out by a reading which goes beyond the film itself. Not only that, however, its ultimate theme is about the triumph of a (great?) soul over the forces which seek to dehumanize and reduce him to an economic unit; when combined with Verhoeven’s deliberate Christ imagery, the film takes on a distinct bent which probably is fairly described as right–wing. However, in Veroeven’s film all this is allowed to be left unspoken. The technology is a mystery; RoboCop’s construction is a mystery; what of Murphy is left and how it overcomes is also a mystery. The film is about soul without the word ever being spoken.
Not so in the reboot.
After ‘failing’ the hostage scenario, Murphy is given a makeover into something more like the original RoboCop. Oldman’s character tells us, ‘Consciousness is nothing more than the processing of information’; and, after his makeover, during combat situations Murphy ‘believes he’s in control, but he’s not, it’s the illusion of free will’. So we have not only an explicit understanding of what is left of Murphy’s humanity this time around, we also have a theory of consciousness itself! But, just as in the original, something begins to assert itself against a yet further dehumanization of Murphy and we’re treated to this boardroom exchange:
‘ Something was interfering with our system— something beyond chemistry or physics.’
‘Like what, a soul?’
You can hear the suit: ‘You better tell people what’s happening, otherwise they’ll just be confused!’ or ‘Remember this has to play in Asia so we can’t assume the audience understands what you’re going for without explaining it.’ (For different reasons, Interstellar fell into a similar trap last year.)
Somehow, with all this talk about souls and technology, despite all the advantages, the actual soul in the movie was lost. The managers triumphed and nearly destroyed Alex Murphy, and they triumphed and nearly destroyed RoboCop, as well.
- Listen here. (It kicks in a little after the 1:30 mark.)
Posted on April 21, 2015
Archeofuturist Dreams
Guillaume Faye, Archeofuturism: European Visions of the Post–Catastrophic Age
I recently read two books by the French identitarian & New Right figure Guillaume Faye: Archeofuturism and Why We Fight
The book consists of five essays and a sort of short science–fiction fable— a vision of Faye’s ideal post–catastrophic world. The first essay is primarily an account of Faye’s apologia vs. the French New Right as defined by the circle around Alain de Benoist; when the book was first published in 1999, it marked a return to political writing for Faye after over a decade apart from direct political efforts. One of the more interesting elements of this essay is Faye’s conviction that the New Right misunderstood metapolitics and was too quick to abandon normal poltics; this contrasts somewhat with the rest of the book, where Faye seems to be awaiting TEOTWAWKI as much as any survivalist, only he calls it the ‘convergence of catastrophes’. What comes after the convergence? An archeofuturist order.
Faye introduces archeofuturism in the first essay as describing ‘a future society that combines techno–scientific progress with a return to the traditional answers that stretch back into the mists of time’ (45). At first glance, this seems trite: The thorough–going reactionaries of the right–wing are small in number (if they exist at all)— it’s hard to find those who really wish to turn back time or even significantly halt our technological progress. But, at times, defining a thing can make all the difference, and as soon as one does you have a word not just to describe metapolitical visions, but also crucial currents in modern culture. Archeofuturism can be found most obviously in science–fiction; Frank Herbert’s Dune or Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun
Archeofuturism is a romantic idea in its essence, even if it is less so in Faye’s vision; it synthesizes the escape from modernity with the Faustian myth. It does not retreat; it overcomes. Politics & propaganda need these kinds of visions as long as they do not become normative. No one is inspired to move by visions of retreat or mere preservationism; if admirers of Alasdair MacIntyre’s hopes for “another—doubtless very different—St. Benedict”3 such as The American Conservative’s Rod Dreher were ever to wonder if that vision could actually animate institutions, they would see this as well. The Benedictine monks who preserved texts in the Latin West did not do so because they were animated by a vision of cultural curation, but did that as a matter of course with their larger, positive religious vision. The monasteries were institutions to save souls, not to copy books. Similarly, if we wish to preserve the best of our civilization from decline & decadence, it will be as part of a broader project. Too much of our culture has already become a museum as it is.
Faye’s actual vision of the future proves less inspiring than the concept of archeofuturism itself, even if individual elements are appealing. By depicting the state from the point–of–view of a functionary, it seems like a more elegant, more honest version of our own managerial state; perhaps this is not fair to Faye’s vision, but the form of the managerial state cannot be separated from its outcomes. Other than this, we have a mishmash of science–fiction concepts to play with, none very well fleshed out. (My favorites are the revival of rail travel and airships as an alternative to the oil–driven modes of transport we have today. My least favorite are the chimeras.) It is a world divided between (as Faye puts it in another essay) Guénon and Nietzsche; for the mass of humanity there is something of an Amish–type existence, for the elite there is technological society, long life, travel, etc. The idea of formalizing such a divide seems fanciful, and I’m not sure how seriously Faye means it.
That said, Faye has a true gift for cutting down a particular issue and delivering interesting judgements. Thus the format of Why We Fight seems to suit him better (much of the book is dedicated to a ‘metapolitical dictionary’), but there are plenty of strong lines in Archeofuturism. I’ll leave you with just one: ‘The idea of “political correctness” is not based on any sincere ethical feelings or even fear of physical repression: it is based on intellectual snobbishness and social cowardice. Actually, it is about what is politically chic. The journalists and “thinkers” of the system are formulating a “soft” and bourgeois version of the Stalinist mechanism of domination: the risk is no longer ending up in a gulag, but of not being invited to trendy restaurants, of being barred from places that count and from the media, of losing one’s appeal in the eyes of beautiful girls, etc.’ (107)
- Faye’s English–language publisher, Arktos, has made both books available as part of the Kindle Unlimited program. If you qualify for the program, Amazon will give you a free month of it. I used this while traveling recently, which is why I finally got around to reading the books.
- e.g., ‘As for adult movies, I have been “on the other end of the camera” as an actor (why not?). I had a lot of fun, but felt sorry for the poor, frustrated viewers.’ (105)
- After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory
