Stephen Roney's Blog, page 211
December 20, 2020
O Holy Night
One of my favourites, and you can't sing it better.
Of Mice and Men
John Steinbeck is generally understood to be a man of the left. Of Mice and Men is commonly believed to be about the inequities of the capitalist system and the falsity of the American dream of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.
Yet the novel can actually be read as a condemnation of Marxism.
The novel is commonly said to be about the Great Depression. This fits the Marxist narrative; the Great Depression is supposedly a failure of capitalism. But in fact, there is nothing in the novel that refers to it, or could not have happened at any time before or since. The West has always been full of itinerant laboring men, ranch hands: cowboys. Some say it has to do with the evils of property ownership; but nobody in the novel actually owns any property, and the prospect of ever owning any is presented as something that never really happens. Even “the boss,” Curley’s father, is not the owner of the ranch, but its manager. The situation is not capitalism, but precisely the situation in a Communist/socialist country.
Lennie’s and George’s well-laid plan, the plan of the title, that gangs agley, of owning a little farm and “living off the fat of the land” sounds suspiciously like Marx’s earthly utopia, in which work would always be voluntary. They are even to achieve it by something resembling a “five-year plan.” Involving Candy putting up a disproportionate share of the purchase price: from each according to his means. The rich must pay their “fair share.” And it is, in the end, only a fantasy, unattainable—the Marxist dream is a fantasy. Or rather, it is attainable only after death. It is a vision of the Christian heaven. This is the whole point of Lennie’s death at the end of the book: he gets to “cross the river,” and his life of soft fur is on the other side. This inverts Marxism, which rejects religion as “pie in the sky when you die.” Steinbeck is countering this, calling Marxism the opiate.
Curley’s wife has a fantasy similar to that of the two ranch hands, of being a showgirl or a Hollywood star. And what impresses her most about the idea is, she notes, that she would no longer have to pay for things. “When they had them previews, I could have went to them, and spoke in the radio, and it woulldna cost me a cent, cause I was in the pitcher.” A specifically socialist image, of no longer needing money. But her low-class speech and malapropisms makes it clear to the reader that her dream is improbable, especially in those early days of the “talkie.” She has been conned by men of a higher social class looking for some quick sex.
Doesn’t her experience here suggest the experience of the proletariat, offered promises of stardom and an easy life from the Marxist intellectuals generally? They, of course, were never going to be allowed the levels of power. They didn’t have the education for it, did they? That would be left to a “vanguard” of experts. It all amounts to a sordid rape.
Everyone in the book has such a fantasy, with the sole exception of Slim, the artist. Everyone is in denial of reality, in favour of some utopian fantasy. At one point, Candy literally puts his arm over his eyes so as not to see; George or Lennie pull their hat brims down. A secondary theme of the novel, taking place just outside of Soledad, “loneliness,” is the need for companionship. But they crave companionship primarily because they need someone else to believe in their fantasy, in order to convince themselves that it is real. This is why George needs Lennie, and why, with Lennie out of the fantasy, he immediately sees the dream of owning a farm as impossible.
But conversely, and not to be missed, if someone seems to stand in the way of their fantasy, they spontaneously hate them. Lennie curses the dead puppy for dying, because this threatens his fantasy of tending rabbits on a farm. He feels no remorse for the puppy. Candy curses the girl Lennie has just killed, because her death threatens his fantasy of the farm. He seems to have no thought for her as a fellow human. Curley’s wife despises him because being married to him cannot be reconciled with her dream of becoming a movie star. Curley wants to fight any tall man, because they threaten his fantasy of being the alpha male.
This looks like an analysis of the dynamics of the communist movement, and leftist movements generally. They crave collectivism because they need it to confirm some fantasy which otherwise they as individuals would find hard to believe. Not just the fantasy of a work-free life of abundance on this Earth, living off “the fat of the land,” but fantasies of being a “master race,” or things like slavery being morally okay, abortion being morally okay, casual sex and walking out of marriages being okay. Leftism is a form of what psychologists call “denial.” Denial requires collectivism.
And this collectivism turns into discrimination, cruelty, violence and mass murder of anyone who stands, intentionally or inadvertently, in the way of the dream. Kulaks will be killed, or Jews, or priests, or Christians, or blacks, and so forth. The next big guy who shows up will be attacked. A puppy, or a lonely young girl, or a black man, will be scapegoated.
This is, in itself, perhaps a full explanation of human evil. The water snakes, with their periscope eyes, will just keep coming down the Salinas River.
At very least, if Steinbeck had set out deliberately to criticize socialism and leftism with a novel, he could not have done a better job of it.
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
December 18, 2020
Angels We Have Heard on High
The Salmon-Falls, The Mackerel-Crowded Seas
the saloFriend Xerxes recently summarized the common contemporary nature ethic: the Gospel of Pachamama. “Let’s be consistent. If God created life, then every form of life is sacred. Holy. Valued for its own sake.”
By that premise, not just salmon runs and butterflies, but mosquitos, fleas, lice, rats and cockroaches must be also celebrated. And God created COVID-19, and cancer. It too must have a right to exist and flourish. It must be valued for its own sake, not murdered with vaccines or radiation.
Xerxes misses an essential, a transcendent thing. We value some elements of nature, only some elements, for their beauty. The value of a salmon run, for example, aside from preserving a food source, is aesthetic. A river running red with salmon is a beautiful thing, as is a sunset, a mature male lion, or a waterfall. Beauty, along with Truth and the Good, is of intrinsic value.
But if and only if there are human beings around to see it.
Xerxes predictably trots out Genesis 1:26, in order to condemn Christianity.
“God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the sky, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
It is Christianity’s fault, therefore, that so many wonderful animals are getting killed. The Judeo-Christian God gave us permission, “dominion.” Without that sanction, of course, nobody would think of killing an animal. After all, animals don’t kill each other, do they? After all, anyone can see that there is far less pollution in non-Christian countries like China, or the old Soviet Union, or India. Right?
Right?
Bueller? Anybody?
Right?
What does “dominion” mean? Here’s a hint: Canada is a dominion, and this has not often involved the government killing its citizens wholesale. Like everything in the Bible, one must read Genesis 1:26 in context of other nearby verses. In this case, Genesis 2:15 clarifies what “dominion” means. “Yahweh God took the man, and put him into the Garden of Eden to cultivate and keep it.” We are to cultivate and keep nature: not destroy it, and not leave it alone. Make it beautiful. To turn the wilderness into a garden.
Broadly, this is what we do when we create art.
Without man, nature is barren.
December 17, 2020
A Bit of Christmas Music
A Blood Libel and a Public Lynching
The freshly-minted leader of the Canadian Conservative Party, Erin O’Toole, is suddenly in serious trouble. People are calling for his resignation. Unfortunately, he came dangerously close to semi-publicly telling the truth about Indian residential schools.
Of course, once found out, he quickly walked it back and denied everything. But in such cases, repentance is not enough. There can be no forgiveness or reconciliation. Ever.
The now-exposed racist actually said that the schools were intended to educate the Indians.
Imagine that—schools intended to educate. Who could have imagined such a lie?
No, in Canada, on pain of losing your job or even imprisonment, one must believe an elaborate conspiracy theory: that the Indian schools were actually always and solely, if secretly, intended for genocide—the term used repeatedly and insistently by one panelist in reaction to O’Toole’s blasphemy.
An odd sort of genocide, of course, considering that there are far more Indians in Canada now than there have ever been. They are the fastest-growing segment of the Canadian population.
And the founding document O’Toole was referring to, written by Egerton Ryerson, explicitly states that the students in the proposed residential schools were to be taught reading, arithmetic, geometry, history, chemistry, writing, drawing, music, bookkeeping, religion, and morals. That does sound rather like an education.
The “genocide” is supposedly “cultural genocide.” Nobody dies in this sort of genocide; a seeming contradiction in terms. That is, the schools were supposedly an effort to destroy Indian culture. To support this claim, the old quote was wheeled out by a panelist, that they were intended by “some politician” to “kill the Indian in the man.”
No Canadian politician ever said anything close to this. It is a misquotation instead of US General Richard Henry Pratt, the founder of Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania. What he actually said was “kill the Indian; save the man.” And in the speech where he said this, he pointed out that residential schools would not do this.
If the intent were ever to destroy Indian culture, fairly obviously, it would not have been the Indian bands themselves who demanded and partly funded them. The obvious way to do that, as Pratt pointed out, would not have been to set up separate schools for Indians; it would have been to integrate the Indians and have them attend the public schools. Rather, the residential schools were an attempt to retain a distinct Indian culture. It was taken for granted from the start that, having graduated, the students would remain on the reserves and live apart. That may have been a mistake; but it was the opposite to the common claim.
Modern radical leftists may be upset that the schools taught religion and morals. They may assert that this at least was an attempt to subvert Indian culture. Apparently they think Indian culture had no morals, and morals are a bad thing. This is both depraved and historically ignorant. Ryerson, in the founding document, specified that pupils attend the church of their own denomination, not that of the official denomination of each residential school. He could take it for granted, rightly, that Indians were Christian. Indeed, when the British took possession of Canada after the Battle of the Plains of Abraham, their first act in order to ensure peace with the Indians was to formally guarantee them the right to keep their Catholic priests. The first Protestant church in Ontario, in turn, was probably that built in Brantford by Mohawks emigrating from New York State. Without benefit, at the time, of clergy.
The current delusional attitude towards our history is profoundly prejudicial to Indians, and, at the same time, an extreme example of hate speech against Canadians of European extraction.
And the CBC, taxpayer-funded to provide information and sustain public discourse, is instead openly censoring and suppressing public discourse.
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
December 16, 2020
The Dominion of Nice
Kathy Shaidle calls it the Tyranny of Nice.
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/391685.php
Time for Some Christmas Music
Apocalypse Maybe Later
My Jehovah’s Witness friend Hadassah is of course convinced the world is about to end. She cites, for example, 2 Timothy:
“But know this: that in the last days, grievous times will come. For men will be lovers of self, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, unforgiving, slanderers, without self-control, fierce, not lovers of good, traitors, headstrong, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, holding the form of godliness, but having denied its power. Turn away from these, also. For some of these are people who creep into houses and take captive gullible women loaded down with sins, led away by various lusts, always learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. … Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution. But evil men and impostors will grow worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived.”
It does sound like the current situation.
But people who try to predict the end of days are going against the Bible itself. Jesus says “But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.” He will come, when he comes again “like a thief in the night.” Of such times of universal tumult as are cited in 2 Timothy, he says “See that you are not alarmed, for this must take place, but the end is not yet.” (Matthew 24). In other words, general chaos and the breakdown of order and morality are NOT signs of the end.
Jesus also said that those listening to him would not die before the End Times came: “Most certainly I tell you, there are some standing here who will in no way taste of death, until they see the Son of Man coming in his Kingdom.” And Paul wrote 2 Timothy not for a distant future, but to someone alive in his day.
I recall a bishop once saying that all millennial movements are manifestations of the Antichrist. I think this is true. Marxism is such a millennial movement. So is "climate change" environmentalism.
I think it is natural for the righteous among us, as we grow older, to develop the impression that the world is falling apart around us. This is largely because the world is always falling apart around us. Any serious study of history must realize this is so.
In our younger years, we refuse to see this. We must, after all, live in this world for a human lifetime or so, and so we are in denial. As we age, it becomes easier to accept that things are not getting a lot better. Although they are probably not really getting worse, the growing realization of how bad they are gives us this subjective impression. And so old men and women are inclined to see the world as going to hell. It is perhaps a part of the process of letting go.
The End Times are always with us. Although there will necessarily be an end of the world, just as there was a beginning, this is not of great significance to any one of us. The End of Days and the Second Coming that Jesus and Paul refer to in the Bible is our own physical deaths.
'Od's Blog: Catholic comments on the passing parade.
Children are Getting Shot in China
I teach some Chinese students online. This gives me a bit of a window on China.
Last week, one of my students did not appear for class. When I asked him about it this morning, he explained that he was sick from being vaccinated.
For Covid?
Yes.
Sick for how long?
A week.
He is eight years old.
Unless he is confused, this suggests that vaccination has become remarkably widespread in China--they are at the point of vaccinating eight-year-olds. Also, if an eight-year-old is sick for a week as a result, that's a pretty rough vaccination--considering eight-year-olds usually get little or no symptoms from the virus itself.
Why would they be vaccinating kids, if this is so? No doubt, to achieve herd immunity. Children could be carriers. Or little Adam may have the honour of being part of a test group to determine how children tolerate the vaccine.
It seems possible he has it wrong, and the vaccination was for something else. But this is a surprisingly strong reaction to a familiar and common vaccine.
