Are people really are so impossible to enlighten?
Tarek Heggy seemed to be saying that although he works so that light will somehow get through, his hopes are rather low that it will!
Then there's that video...
The simple question of "Why is a group of Christians praying in a place "without a license" a problem for anybody" simply had no reasonable answer.
I'd understand it being a problem if you're a policemen charged with upholding the law (regardless how outrageous that law may be)... but if you're a layman who breaks a dozen laws a day, and then you get worked up enough about Christians praying "without a license" (ugh, I can't believe I'm actually arguing about this!) to commit acts of violence to stop it, and you happen to have tens or hundreds of like-minded people with you... then you can't possibly tell me it's because "they have no license" or "they're breaking the law"! And the "eye witness" was honest (ha!) enough about it to say his problem is "they're too few"!!!!
The fact that people can be so hateful, ignorant and illogical, and harm others because of that, cobined with the incredible notion that they can get away with it and even get official support from a senator to do it, makes Tarek Heggy too right! There seems to be a lack of will to change on the streets as well as in the top-floor offices.
Then to try & cheer myself up, I decided to read anything for G. K. Chesterton off the web.
It worked for a little while, too well in fact, that it made me think again about why almost nobody knows this guy
And that got me back into the pithole...
Because it seems that being insightful, compassionate, funny, wise and right doesn't necessarily lead to making a change at all!
and I started wondering (forgive my arrogance) if maybe I can be like Chesterton; but like Chesterton, would make no difference whatsoever in changing people or the events they cause to happen, so that it would lead to a brighter future.
That's a serious frustration because as I believe it, things and people on all levels must eventually and through providence, be enlightened.
and like Switchfoot put it, the tension is between how it is and how it should be.
that tension is... well... such a bummer!
2 things to comment upon here, the first for me is the business about Chesterton , it has to be noted that what's more intriguing than why he dropped out of the mainstream literary fashion, and remained a marginal figure in the academics, what's more intriguing is how fast that happened. that usually happens when the writer is of less than admirable literary qualities and more known for sensational aspects, but that of course is quite far from the truth when Chesterton is considered, even a literary critic as snobby-nosed as Harold Bloom has praised his work and added "The man who was Thursday" to his canon of western literature, so the question of his obscurity has nothing to do with his well-established literary talents, but they most probably have sth to do with 2 points:
ReplyDelete1) he was an outright, outspoken christian, and that particular characteristic is a perfect guarantee to kick any writer out of the writing spotlight, let's see, first he'd have to combat and win over the skeptical attitudes of the times, notice that, at his death, it was the high time for the "scientific" attitude in the public, that is, laymen who know next to nothing about the nature of science and the ideas behind the advent of the then-modern scientific notions (remember the joke about Einstein and Chaplin walking together in the street with Einstein lamenting that people are apprehensively greeting him because, unlike Chaplin who was hugged by the passers-by, nobody knows why the heck he's famous) and yet, those same laymen are ready to accept that science has finally triumphed over that pesky religion thing and it's about time for the common Joe and Jane to employ the "scientific principles" in their daily life, that particular attitude has lessened considerably since those times, and people are no longer willing to think of themselves as scientists when they can't tell the front from the backside of it, but that's only because that blind pride of the early 20th century has been replaced, specially among the youth, by a nihilistic contempt for whatever "society" thinks important, which applies also on religion !! and that brings us to the next fight Chesterton has to win, which is the counter-culture attitudes of the 60's (heavily supported by the leading artists of the time) in which it was more than fine to toss out every form of what they perceived as authority or control, incluing religion naturally!, then he'll have to fight and somehow win the battle against the post-60's defeatist wave that reulted from the eventual fall of the 60's "revolutionists" when despair mistrust became second nature to the modern man, and then, after all that, if he won all those battles, he'd still have to find himself a position in both public school libraries and literary academies by proving that his writing is not (God forbid) a clear, straight and full of form style, no, he must prove that he's a post-post-post postmodern writer who is convinced firmly well of the "inherent fallacy of the narrative" and the "loss of identity and multiple form in the traditional novel", direct narration must be tossed out, rounded well-defined characters should inexplicably change somewhere along the non-existing plot, and if a book of his is completely void of vivid descriptions of 18th century land-plotting techniques, or revolutionary movements organized by wheel-chaired numbnuts (i'm using real examples from the most critically acclaimed books around) then the book is not up to the current literary standard.
2) while at the time it was perfectly acceptable, today his writing would be considered pure antisemitism in the current liberally political-correctness atmosphere, u can't hope for your books to be read in schools when u write a book called "the Jewish problem" in which the problem is the Jews, not the misfortunes they have faced !.
the other thing to comment upon, which is the barbaric behavior u have aptly discussed, i think this is a far simpler matter to put into place (!), and u know it already, it is simply the loss of personal value that instills in each person the desire to relate unnaturally to a religion or a country or even a football team, people no longer believe that their own lives should be the center of focus in their lives, that they can't find a value or purpose in themselves leads directly to finding this value in what they are told is the most important aspect of their lives, so those people do not follow their religion in order to justify their existence in a religious context, but they are following it simply to make it the greatest religion on earth ! the focus became on the religion, not the individual, let alone the fact that, to be honest, while the above statement applies on any religion, Islam in particular does not exactly encourage individualistic attitudes, except only when it comes to what the individual can do to achieve eternal heaven...such as the actions described in the video.!
ReplyDeletethat was enlightening, especially the second comment. I didn't think of it like that, so thanks for the lead.
ReplyDeleteAs for Chesterton, I didn't know what the subject of the Jewish Problem was... thanks for the clarification.