Monday 11 October 2010

CULTIVATING INDIFFERENCE

"Numbness is also an emotion, and when cultivated and pondered, a very fine one "- Z. von Roretz

When you cultivate indifference you don't concede to big business, you don't get entangled in brokering for either side, unions, workers or industrialists.  None of them should have any bearing on the Ekklesia, Senate, or House of Lords.  The politician should primarily be  philosopher, indifferent to these parties and deferred to by them.  Tony Benn is an example someone who's entire understanding is based on Puritan righteousness, Cromwellian democracy, forms of English cant completely uninformed by Heraclitus, Plato or Aristotle - who were indifferent, informed and engaged seamlessly.  Philosophising does not necessarily result in a tenacious and dynamic society.  England has undoubtedly fared better over the centuries without any philosophical bent, but now as big business, so pragmatic in it's application, so methodical in it's logic dictates the terms, we need Sophia.  Its certainly odd that educated people not interested in politics "because its a waste of my time" are allowed to vote with their poor derivative opinions.  


afterword
T.B. says that Marx was like an old testament prophet.  I agree, although without the powers of Elijah or Moses, and with all the bigotry of Leviticus.   There is a reason the gospels are in the New testament:  because the old testament became a fundamentalist, male-orientated statement of aggression and domineering stultification.  This is why Christ was the new testament, the liberator, why John was the Revelator.  
Back to Benn;  Puritan righteousness begun possibly in England with Wycliffe, which led from the Lollards then much later the non-conformist Diggers, Ranters, Levellers and Fifth monarchists. The trouble is they believed they had found truth over and above the prevailing society and its Lords and leaders.  It was bible-based interpretation underlying their beliefs.  Their interpretation which could contradict others and which could be also be countered by the Bible itself.  So, its an intellectual argument in which faith was subsidary.  Are they not as those reffered to in Luke (18:9) "which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others".  Oh..& the English civil war was helped by a huge obsession with the year 1666 (just 'round the corner).  The end was nigh (Yet it always was thus).   The downside with all this setting oneself up alone, brooding with your own conscience,  only finding righteousness, is that it leads to losing touch with human condition, compassion and thus, humanity (community) and the embrace of sheer ego. It could be argued that inversely it begins with opting out of human community, the anti-social which only can produce anti social behaviour (futile schisms based nothing more than self-assertion).  
Marx, like an old testament prophet, like Luther, thought the people, as a mass, were idiots.  They needed the prophet to show them righteousness and to command them to stop worshipping idols.  This leads us directly to Cromwell.  Of course the Nazi's were predominantly voted in by a Lutheran majority populace...and Luther himself ended his days bawling for jewish blood to be spilled, publishing possibly the first properly anti-semitic book, asking for their shops to be torched, because they just wouldn't drop their jewishness for his church, the church of christ without the virgin.  Methinks, not a coincidence.  One does notice that Lutherans are pretty mum about it though.    

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