Francis Berger's Blog, page 154

An Intentionally Incompetent System Is Evil By Default

Last week a Viking river cruise ship sailing on the Danube River in Budapest struck a smaller sightseeing craft called the Mermaid. The smaller boat sank immediately, taking practically every one of the South Korean tourists on board with it. As far as I know, only seven people of the 35 people on board survived. The death toll is now officially at fifteen, and there are still at least as many "missing." High river levels, murky water, and swift currents have hampered efforts to recover bodies, but one was recently discovered 100 kilometers downstream from the accident scene.  

As tragic as all of this is, what makes it even more tragic is the piece of news I accidentally came across today that revealed the Viking river cruise ship's captain, who Hungarian authorities arrested shortly after the accident, had been involved in another boat collision in the Netherlands a mere two months before the fatal collision that sank the Mermaid in Budapest last week. Granted, the collision the captain was involved in back in April did not kill anyone, but there was damage to the ship and passengers did report minor injuries. Despite the incident, Viking Cruises decided it was perfectly acceptable to have the same captain continue sailing their fleet. 

Now before I am accused of writing an outrage post - something I promised I would no longer do - allow me stop and say no more about this particular incident. What interests me more is what this incident reveals and how incidents like these are now quite commonplace and will become increasingly more common as we move forward. Why? Simple one word answer - incompetence. Not innocent or accidental incompetence, but purposive and managed incompetence. 

Take a moment to consider the levels of incompetence this incident involves starting with the ship's captain and working our way up through the Viking Cruise company all the way to the various authorities and law enforcement agencies that all believed it was perfectly acceptable to allow a captain who had been involved in a fairly serious boat collision to continue sailing ships without as much as a whiff of question mark. 

The level of incompetence plaguing everything in the West is at pathological levels. Never in the history of our civilization have so many unskilled, unimaginative, untalented, unqualified, and uninterested people occupied positions requiring skill, imagination, qualifications, and interest. This could not exist unless there was some intentional system-building mechanism behind it all. And there is. Imagine that. An entire system intentionally built on a "solid" foundation of incompetence. 

Accidents can and do happen, even with qualified pros, but accidents such as the Mermaid sinking in Budapest should no longer be regarded as accidents, but rather as incidents; incidents that reveal a massive system of stupidity, apathy, irresponsibility, and ineptitude. Incidents such as the Mermaid sinking in Budapest will only increase as each carefully placed domino of deficiency falls and crashes into the one placed beside it. So prepare yourself for more boat sinkings, bridge collapses, airplane crashes, and countless other unimaginable horrors as the unqualified and inadequate continue to place their brethren into all sorts of positions where people's health and lives are at stake.

This is not about inept people in a  good, functioning, competent system. This is about inept people purposefully congesting an evil, malfunctioning, incompetent system with useless and inadequate people and policies. This systemic incompetence goes out of its way to interfere with the few competent people left in the system, the same people who have somehow managed to keep it all from descending into chaos.

Think of it as plate spinning. The competent within the evil, incompetent system can keep the plates spinning as long as the number of plates and the distances between them are manageable. But with each passing day, the number of plates increases, and the distances between the rods on which the plates are perched grows wider. Added to this is an army of useless zombies who do little more than knock the plates from the rods, sometimes accidentally, sometimes intentionally. 

It's too much.  The Good people are not be able to keep up. Many plates are slowing down and starting to wobble.

Brace yourself for more crashing plates. They're coming.

Update: Shortly after I finished writing this post, Viking Cruises released a statement claiming the captain responsible for the crash on the Danube River had not been in charge of the ship involved in the accident in the Netherlands. Viking Cruises claimed the captain in question had been on the vessel in Holland, but had not been serving as that ship's captain at the time. 

Apparently, Viking Cruises believes this information will somehow make them look better, which is presumably why they released it to the media. Yet if you take a moment to consider this statement it in fact accomplishes little more than support my idea of intentional systemic incompetence.

Viking Cruises has admitted it has more than one inept captain manning its fleet. This proves the Danube disaster captain is not a one-off event - that there are in fact probably many incompetent captains at the company. In addition, by releasing this statement to the public in the hopes it will somehow cast the company in a better light suggests the PR people at Viking Cruises are also incredibly dim and inept, despite their university degrees in communications. 

It's systemic. Period. 

No Brainer

Today was one of those "not in enough hours in the day" sort of days. This evening I had to choose between composing a blog post or playing with my son. The brevity of this post should indicate which I ended up choosing. I will make up tomorrow for it by either writing a substantial post or double posting.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go pretend I'm Godzilla and attack the Lego Tokyo my son has built in his bedroom. My son, in turn, will nobly attempt to defend the city with a wide range of weapons including a fleet of paper airplanes, assorted stuffed animals, and a rapid-fire Nerf gun. 

Something tells me that despite my best efforts Tokyo will likely survive and live to see the morning light.  

And My Sioux Name Would Be . . .

In the film Dances with Wolves, the Sioux tribe John Dunbar befriends give him a Sioux name based on what they witnessed in the following famous scene. I thought about this scene today when I went out for a run in the fields surrounding my village. I am by no means a running enthusiast. I have never felt inspired to enter races, join clubs, or run marathons. In fact, when time permits, I prefer going for long walks. Nevertheless, I do enjoy jogging in nature a few times a week. It's a good way to get my heart rate up a little and it helps me counterbalance my sedentary job where I often spend eight or more hours sitting behind a desk.

Running in the fields around my village is particularly enjoyable. The land is relatively flat and the scenery is lovely. For example, on clear days, I can see the Alpine foothills and the Schneeberg in the distance. Another positive is I always encounter many kinds of wildlife during a run, from cranes and ducks near the river flowing through the landscape, to the small clusters of red or roe deer grazing in the fields near the thickets. Occasionally, I inadvertently flush out some pheasants or catch the attention of the local fox, an intensely curious fellow that often stares at me from beneath the cover of an elderberry bush. But the animals I encounter most are rabbits, more specifically European hare. 

Though abundant in other countries, the European hare population in Hungary is relatively small. Having said this, they seem to be quite plentiful in my region because I never fail to encounter at least three or four during a run. Like the fox, the hares are often curious when they see me approaching and choose to dart away only when the distance between us is less than ten meters. Sometimes they decide to run in the same direction I am running, and for a half-a-minute or so it almost seems as if the rabbits and I are out for a run together. 

As a result, I have decided my Sioux name, were I ever honored with one, would simply have to be - Runs With Rabbits. 

Granted, it's not nearly as magical (or manly) as Dances with Wolves, but as far as I know, there are no wolves in Hungary. Besides, Runs With Rabbits would still be far better than the only other possible options - Breathes Too Hard or Sweats Too Much. 

Short Explanations for the Daily Bell Ringing in My Village

The church in my village, named after St. Stephen of Hungary, is a mere three hundred meters from our house, and the steeple is visible above the tree tops in the distance. The belltower is functional and marks the time with five distinct tolls from two different bells. Four higher pitched tolls note the passage of every quarter hour – one toll for quarter after the hour, two tolls for half past the hour, three tolls for quarter to the hour, and four tolls for the full hour. This is immediately followed by a deeper bell that marks the hour. In addition to this, the church bells toll daily for longer periods three times during the day.

Bell One – Get to Work, Peasants!

The morning bells serve as a communal alarm clock and ring at exactly five o’clock in the morning. They signaled it was time to head into the fields to begin the day’s work. Of course, very few of the village’s residents actually work in the fields today, but the morning bell ritual has remained. I personally like the morning bells, but I have read stories about residents in other, less-traditional villages and towns raising successful petitions against the morning bells and getting them stopped altogether. Luckily, the morning bells do not seem to bother anyone in my village, and it is my sincere hope that I will continue to hear them every day at dawn for as long I remain in this world.

Bell Two - Victory at the Siege of Belgrade

The noon bells, which are rung universally in Catholic and some older Protestant churches around the world, commemorates The Siege of Belgrade, an important event in European history that has been all but forgotten everywhere outside of Hungary.

In 1453, the Ottoman Turks conquered Constantinople and ushered in the end of the Byzantine Empire. After sacking Constantinople, the Turks turned their eyes toward conquering Europe. They initiated a campaign up the Balkans and sought to crush the Kingdom of Hungary before continuing their jihad against the rest of Christian Europe. Luckily for Europe, the Magyars decided to put up a fight and repelled the Ottoman onslaught from July 4–22, 1456. The Hungarian victory essentially ground the Ottoman advance to a halt and spared Europe from the Ottomans for seventy years.

During the battle, Pope Callixtus III ordered the bells of every European church to be rung every day at noon, as a call for believers to pray for Belgrade’s defenders, though the noon bell has since been attributed to the international commemoration of the eventual Hungarian victory at Belgrade. Apparently, news of the victory at Belgrade arrived sooner than the Pope’s order in some countries. As a result the ringing of the church bells at noon was thus transformed into a victory commemoration. The Pope never withdraw the order, and Catholic and the older Protestant churches continue to ring the church bells at noon to this very day.

Bell Three – Evening Mass or Time to Go Home to the Wife and Kids

The evening bell rings at seven in the winter and at eight in the summer and apparently marked the beginning of the daily evening mass a century ago, but daily evening masses have since dwindled to weekly evening masses. Nonetheless, the bells continue to ring every evening. People in my village now refer to it as the “time to stop drinking at the village pub and go home to the wife” bell.
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For reasons I cannot explain, I always yearned to live in a place where I could hear the ringing of church bells on a daily basis. Now that I live in such a place and hear church bells daily, I have a deeper understanding of why I had yearned for such a thing in the first place. 

Mednyánszky - Allegory of Death and New Life

I am continuing to make my through the work of László Mednyanszky (spelling of name varies) who I consider to be Hungary's best landscape painter. Known affectionately as the Wandering Baron, Mednyánszky also painted many portraits and scenes from the First World War. I have yet to examine his portraits and other paintings, but during my online searches, I stumbled upon an obscure study he painted some time toward the end of the nineteenth century.

Known only as "An Allegory of Death and New Life", this simple study is Mednyászky's only explicitly religiously-themed painting I have come across thus far. As far as I know, Mednyánszky never took this image beyond the visual notes phase. Perhaps he considered it too simplistic. s Or perhaps he feared he could not capture what he truly wanted to capture. Whatever the case, I find the simplicity he depicts here both alluring and uplifting, and I am certain the finished painting would have been both intensely moving and comforting.  Mednyánszky - A Study - Allegory of Death and New Life

Green Politics: A Radical Shift in Consciousness

In keeping with my goal of reducing mass media exposure, I have not read much or listened to much concerning the European Parliamentary elections that took place last week. Nevertheless, I am aware of the notable gains many Green parties made this time around, particularly in countries such as Germany.

Toward the end of last week, I caught a snippet of some media talking head praising the success of the Green Party as "a radical shift in consciousness" in Europe, one that was "very much needed."

Europeans, who have actively chosen to commit demographic suicide by refusing to have children, now strive to save the planet for "future generations."

Yeah, that's radical a radical shift in consciousness, all right.  

It is incoherent, strategically evil nonsense like this that has turned me completely off politics in the past month or two. The radical shift in consciousness the talking head referred to is no shift at all. Even if it can be qualified as a shift, it is a purely horizontal shift along the political spectrum. The Green Wave is, at best, a restricted shift in materialist thinking. These kinds of shifts solve nothing and do not address the core disease eating away at our terminally ill civilization. If anything, this radical shift will only exacerbate the disease and hasten, what has surely now become, our civilization's  unstoppable decent into full-blown chaos followed by an inevitable collapse. 

I will grant this much to the talking head - a radical shift in consciousness is needed above all else, but the only real radical shift would be vertical, not horizontal in nature. A true radical shift in consciousness would involve a shift toward deeper things and higher things. A true radical shift in consciousness would be religious in nature; more specifically, a true radical shift in consciousness would be Christian in nature. Not some rehash of Churchian doctrine, but a true Christian Renaissance inspired by a recognition of the divine within rather than mere obedience to the divine without. 

But Europeans are obviously not ready to commit to such a radical shift, regardless of how much it is needed. So cue the apocalypse and have faith in the idea that every new beginning stems from some other beginning's end.

Home Renovation

Three years ago I purchased an old house in a small village in western Hungary, and I have spent the last three summers renovating it. The major renovations – plumbing, electrical wiring, flooring, bathroom remodeling, kitchen instillation, interior remodeling, painting – were all completed the first summer. I dedicated the next two summers to roof repair, insulation instillation, and a furnace upgrade.

This summer I plan to tile the terrace floor and put some faux brick ceramic tiles on the terrace’s exterior walls. I also plan to convert one of the outbuildings on the property into a sort of summer kitchen, complete with an outdoor grill, oven, and fireplace. If I have enough time and money, I may begin to remodel my small brick barn and convert it into a workshop/storage space.

Working on houses runs in my family. For example, my father has built four houses in his life and has completed countless renovations projects as well. I helped him on three of the houses, which was a wonderful experience. It’s worth noting that my father is a chef by training, and I am still amazed by how he learned the ins-and-outs of construction and home repair in his spare time next to his full-time job.

I inherited some of my father’s skill in construction, but nowhere near the same level. This means my renovation efforts often take twice as long as they should and involve some humorous errors and omissions that often force me to backtrack, deconstruct the error, and start all over again. Needless to say, I leave potentially dangerous tasks like electrical wiring and plumbing to the professionals; otherwise, I try to do as much as I can myself. Though I have immensely enjoyed working on my house, I remember to keep it all in perspective and not obsess about it.

I say this because home construction and renovation has evolved into somewhat of a fetish in our contemporary world. The countless television programs focusing on house design, construction, house-flipping, and renovation attest to this. There is nothing inherently wrong with building and fixing up homes, but I suspect our current obsession with all things real estate has much to do with our spiritual emptiness and the rampant materialism of our societies. At best, building or fixing up a home provides some meaning in life– at least for a little while.

My father was ahead of the curve in terms of building and renovating. He built and sold homes as side projects in addition to his full-time job long before home construction became a hip and popular thing to do on television. To be sure, my father was motivated by profit when he built and sold houses, but it never developed into an obsession, and he never lost sight of the bigger picture. Although house building provided him with some meaning, he did not allow it to supersede higher meaning.

I keep this in my mind while I work on my own house during the summer. I avoid the “keeping up the Joneses” trap and only complete projects I can pay for out-of-pocket, which means my house still has plenty of bare light bulbs hanging on wires, unfinished trim, and under-furnished spaces. But I would rather complete the renovations as money allows than go into debt in exchange for some instant gratification.

And I suppose that is the best thing about my old house here in Hungary. Unlike the vast majority of homeowners in the West, I was able to buy my home with cash. Avoiding the mortgage trap was a lifelong ambition of mine, and after more than a decade of living in rented apartments, I am glad I have been able to achieve this goal. Having no mortgage means I possess the house rather than having the house possess me. And I will not allow it to completely possess me in any way, shape, or form, even in the midst of an enormous bathroom overhaul.

​This old house has given me some breathing room. It has allowed me to loosen the chains of material necessity a little, which in turn has allowed me to focus more time and energy on more important things. There is no way I would sacrifice that for the sake of granite kitchen countertops I cannot, at the present time, afford. No way at all. 

Choose Death. A Few Random Thoughts About the Film "Trainspotting"

Irvine Welsh became somewhat of a household name in the mid-nineties after his novel Trainspotting was adapted into a film starring Ewan McGregor. I first watched the film a few years after its release, and I recently re-watched the film again. It was a strange experience. On the one hand, I enjoyed story and the characters immensely. On the other hand, I found the premise and themes presented in the movie terribly depressing and nihilistic.

After I had watched the film in the nineties, I attempted to read Welsh’s novel upon which the movie is based, but I could not make it past the first thirty or forty pages. Unlike other readers who abandon Welsh’s fiction a few chapters into a novel, it wasn’t the Edinburgh vernacular slang style Welsh employs that made me back away, but the bleak brutality of Welsh’s nihilistic vision.

I once read a newspaper article or review claiming Welsh is obsessed by teleology and that his novels are all essentially teleological experiments in which Welsh explores the dark and desperate side of the human condition in an effort to find his characters’ ultimate purpose in life – their intrinsic telos. Though this sounds immensely noble, I do not believe Welsh has succeeded in finding any explanations for any of his characters’ goals or ends.

Like so many contemporary writers, Irvine Welsh gets what the problem of human life in the modern world is. This is nowhere more apparent than in the now famous “Choose Life” monologue the protagonist Mark Renton rifles off at the beginning of the film adaptation of Trainspotting. (The monologue in the novel differs slightly, but the message is essentially the same):

“Choose Life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a fucking big television, choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose good health, low cholesterol, and dental insurance. Choose fixed interest mortgage repayments. Choose a starter home. Choose your friends. Choose leisurewear and matching luggage. Choose a three-piece suit on hire purchase in a range of fucking fabrics. Choose DIY and wondering who the fuck you are on Sunday morning. Choose sitting on that couch watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows, stuffing fucking junk food into your mouth. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, pissing your last in a miserable home, nothing more than an embarrassment to the selfish, fucked up brats you spawned to replace yourselves. Choose your future. Choose life… But why would I want to do a thing like that? I chose not to choose life. I chose somethin’ else. And the reasons? There are no reasons. Who needs reasons when you’ve got heroin?”

Welsh clearly sees where the problems of modern life lie – materialism, mass consumerism, financial slavery, mass media addiction, alienation, aimlessness – but like so many other contemporary writers, Welsh refuses to acknowledge or accept the only antidote to the nihilistic wasteland he so poignantly recognizes and identifies. This is what made Trainspotting such a depressing film in the end.

The hapless characters try to escape their despair through heroin, which inevitable only deepens their despair. The protagonist, Renton, eventually overcomes his addiction, betrays his friends, and steals money from a drug deal in an effort to redeem himself and relaunch his life. Yet what does he ultimately choose? He Chooses Life. The job. The career. The washing machines and all the rest of it. In other words, Renton goes full circle and ends up fully embracing the materialistic nightmare he had spent the vast majority of the film trying to escape through drugs.

To me, this reveals Welsh either does not understand Reality or is openly antagonistic toward any notion of Reality. And this is not simply a case of an author creating characters who do not reflect the author’s actual worldview. When I watched Trainspotting and read what little I did of the novel, it became quite clear, at least to me, that Welsh’s characters are essentially mouthpieces of Welsh’s outlook on life, as the following excerpts from Trainspotting (the novel) demonstrate:

“Ah don’t really know, Tam, ah jist dinnae. It kinday makes things seem mair real tae us. Life’s boring and futile. We start aof wi high hopes, then we bottle it. We realise that we’re aw gaunnae die, withoot really findin oot the big answers. We develop aw they long-winded ideas which just interpret the reality ay oor lives in different weys, withoot really extending oor body ay worthwhile knowledge, about the big things, the real things. Basically, we live a short, disappointing life; and then we die. We fill up oor lives wi shite, things like careers and relationships tae delude oorsels that it isnae totally pointless. Smack’s an honest drug, because it strips away these delusions. Wi smack, whin ye feel good, ye feel immortal. Whin ye feel bad, it intensifies the shite that’s already thair. It’s the only really honest drug. It doesnae alter yer consciousness. It just gies ye a hit and a sense ay well-being. Eftir that, ye see the misery ay the world as it is, and ye cannae anaesthetise yirsel against it.”

“... Basically, we live a short, disappointing life; and then we die. We fill up oor lives wi shite, things like careers and relationships tae delude oorsels that it isnae aw totally pointless.”

As much as I enjoyed the film, the “resolution” Welsh’s story offers at the end is no resolution all. Deep down, Welsh seems to recognize this – knows it is a cop-out – but it is the only resolution he is willing to provide because he is utterly hostile to the only real resolution.

Hence, there are no answers, at least none worth considering. When Renton grins at the end of the film and happily claims to be Choosing Life, he is ultimately Choosing Death, and that is what makes Irvine Welsh’s vision of life – a vision of nothingness – so terribly saddening and, ultimately, unsatisfying.

If You - A Note to Self

​If you obsess over security, you will not be brave. If you crave comfort above all else, you will not be courageous. If you think and act only when convenient, you will not think or act heroically. If you experience constant anxiety, you will not be free to discover purpose. If you are not free to discover purpose, you will not create. And if you do not create, you will never experience life at its fullest. 

Berdyaev's Answer to Monism or Dualism? How About Both?

Monism or dualism? It’s an old argument. Do mind/soul and matter co-exist as one single entity or can mind/soul be separated from matter and exist separately? When I was younger, I bounced back and forth between these two possibilities, yet I could never comfortable remain on one side for too long without feeling the tug of the other side pulling me back. My essential problem was this – despite being essentially diametrically opposed, both monism and dualism made sense to me and both seemed necessary. I felt comfortable in both, and I often found myself questioning why both could not exist simultaneously.

I experienced the same dilemma when confronted with the nature of the world. Is the world essentially evil, fallen, and sinful? Or is it essentially good, redeemed, and sinless? The same holds true for immanence and transcendence. Is God inside or outside the world? As I pondered these questions, I once again found myself favoring the existence of both, but favoring both seems paradoxical and contradictory – a massive example of having your cake and eating it, too. Nevertheless, I have always felt intuitively comfortable within this inherent paradox, so much so that I very much doubt I could survive without it.

Nikolai Berdyaev also found comfort in the paradox I described above. In his book The Meaning of the Creative Act he explicitly states that the two contradictory sides are necessary for it is within them and the paradox they create that the final mystery of Christianity is to be found. The following selection of excerpts from The Meaning of the Creative Act present Berdyaev's views this seeming paradox. (Bold added by me.) 
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I know that I may be accused of a basic contradiction which tears apart all my sense of the world, all my world outlook. I shall be accused of the contradiction of combining an extreme religious dualism with an extreme religious monism. I accept such attacks in advance. I confess an almost Manichean dualism. So be it. The world is evil, it is without God and not created by Him. We must go out of the world, overcome it completely: the world must be consumed, it is of the nature of Ahriman. Freedom from the world is the pathos of this book. There is an objective source of evil, against which we must wage heroic war. The necessity of the given world and the given world are of Ahriman.

Over and against this stands freedom in the spirit, life in divine love, life in the Pleroma. And I also confess an almost pantheistic monism. The world is divine in its very nature. Man is, by his nature, divine. The world process is self-revelation of Divinity, it is taking place within Divinity. God is immanent in the world and in Man. The world and Man are immanent in God. There is no dualism of divine and extra-divine nature, of God’s absolute transcendence of the world and man.

I am entirely conscious of this antinomy of dualism and monism, and I accept it as insurmountable in consciousness and inevitable in religious life. Religious consciousness is essentially antinomic. In our consciousness, there is no escape from the eternal antinomy of transcendent and immanent, of monism and dualism. This antinomy cannot be abolished, neither in conscience nor in reason, but in religious life, in the depth of the religious experience itself. Religious consciousness experiences the world to the fullest extent, both as completely apart from God and as fully divine, experience evil both as falling away from divine reason, and as having an immanent meaning in the process of the world’s development.

A transcendent attitude towards God and towards evil are inevitable in religious experience. But equally inevitable in religious life is the attainment of the immanent truth and the immanent experience of God and the world. And in the final depths, every mystic experience passes beyond all the opposition between the transcendent and the immanent.

This kind of radical, revolutionary, implacable dualism leads to the final monism of divine life, to the divinity of man. This is the whole mystery of Christianity. Through the heroic dualism, through the contrast of the divine and “the world” man enters into the monism of Divine Life. Everything in the world must be lifted on the Cross. Thus, the divine development is realized, the divine creativity. Everything external becomes something inward. And the whole world is my way.

This antinomy is given in religious experience. Only childishly-immature, simple, frightened consciousness is afraid of this antinomy: it is always dreaming of some idealization and justification of evil in the immanent-monistic thesis of antinomy. 

The final human mystery is the birth of God in man. The last mystery of God is the birth of man in God. And this mystery is the one and only mystery: for not only has man need of God, but God has need of man. In this lies the mystery of Christ, the mystery of the God-man.