Ross Douthat, the conservative columnist at the NY Times, author of Bad Religion, thinks the capitulation of the Republicans will be a teachable moment for them, and that the catastrophe that this has been for the GOP will better it moving forward.
I disagree. I’m more skeptical about our ability to learn.
I’m currently preaching my way through Exodus and I’m in the middle of the plagues.
When I started this journey I had to decide how many weeks to be in the plagues. Many preachers do one sermon for most of them, why go on week after week on blood, frogs, gnats, flies, boils, hail, etc.? I decided to do a few weeks in the plagues. I’m not disappointed I did.
The most interesting character in early Exodus is not really Moses, it’s Pharaoh. Once Moses stops trying to sandbag Yhwh and starts delivering the bad news the attention all goes to Pharaoh.
Yhwh, plague by plague is piling up catastrophe upon Pharaoh and all his magi seem able to accomplish, at least early on, is to add to the mess. “Moses does blood, here have more blood. Moses does frogs, we can do frogs too!” Pharaoh’s magic men can’t undo the plagues or stop them.
Poor Pharaoh is left to ask intercessory favors of Moses to relieve his homeland’s apocalypse. Moses does so, but always with the warning “your new-found appreciation for Yhwh’s power and determination had better bear fruit in letting the people go to worship him in the desert or things will get worse still.”
Once the heat is off, again and again, Pharaoh’s heart hardens and it’s back to plan A: keep the Hebrew laborers and try to maintain the status quo.
I’ve been enjoying Luc Ferry’s “A Brief History of Thought” and this week got to his take in Heidegger.
All of the above can be debated at length, but what is certain and what Heidegger enables us to understand, is that liberal globalisation is in the process of betraying one of the most fundamental promises of democracy – how collectively to make our own history, to participate in it and have our say about our destiny, and to try and change it for the better – because the world which we are entering not only ‘escapes’ us on all sides, but turns out to be devoid of sense: stripped of meaning and of direction.
Each year, your mobile phone, your MP3 player and computer games change, along with everything else around you: their functions multiply, they become smaller, their screens get bigger or become coloured, and so on. And you know that a product which does not keep in step is going to fail. Unless it follows suit. It is not a question of taste, of one choice among others, but a necessity without choice, in which survival is at stake.
In this sense, we could say that in today’s world of globalised capital which places all human activities in a state of perpetual and unending competition, history is moving beyond the will of men. Competition is becoming not only a form of destiny, but, what is more, there is nothing to suggest that it is moving in the direction of what is better. Who can seriously believe that we shall have more freedom and be happier because in a few months the weight of our MP3 players will have halved, or their memory doubled? In accordance with Nietzsche’s wishes, the idols are all dead: no ideal, in effect, animates or disturbs the course of things, only the absolute imperative of change for the sake of change. To use an ordinary but suggestive image: as a bicycle must keep going in order not to topple over, or a gyroscope must keep spinning to remain on its axis, we must ceaselessly ‘progress’; but this mechanical progress induced by a struggle for survival can no longer be integrated within a grand design. Here too, the transcendental bias of the great humanist ideals Nietzsche mocked has well and truly disappeared – so that in a sense it is indeed Nietzsche’s programme that has been accomplished to perfection by globalised capitalism – as Heidegger suggested was the case.
Ferry, Luc (2011-12-27). A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living (p. 207). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Pharaoh can’t relent because the relenting would mean he must accept the unacceptable. Pharaoh’s world must go on even if it is covered with flies, pummeled by hail and stripped bare by locusts. Only death will stop him. He will harden his heart again and again, even after he lets them go. Walter White (Breaking Bad) isn’t much different from Pharaoh, and neither are both sides in this dispute. Pharaoh is us given enough power and an empire to maintain.
The Dems and Reps that actually see that default and shut down are irresponsible must keep feeding the system as it is even though neither has any clear idea where all of the debt (unfunded wars, insane military spending, unsaved-for entitlement liabilities etc.) will be covered.
The Tea Party sees reducing the land to flies and corpses as an acceptable price to pay in the name of their “liberty”. Everyone agrees that reducing government services to others is acceptable, but the others get to vote too so services are not reduced. Pork is evil, unless the pork is mine.
The “reasonable” may relent in the heat of the moment but once the boils scab over and the hail melts away the status quo (or the status quo of the struggle in the case of the Tea Party) must be maintained.
The picture of humanity in the Bible is that we paint ourselves into a corner again and again. Pick your paint job. Is our spending unsustainable? Yes. Is stopping the spending unthinkable? Yes. The beast must be fed.
In Revelation 17 the prostitute and the beast first seem to be in alliance. At the end of the chapter the beast turns on the prostitute, make her desolate, naked, consume her and burn her with fire. This is the way of empire. We can’t live with her, we can’t live without her. Chapter 18 is the lament for the loss of Babylon, an ironic counterpoint to Isaiah 60.
Leadingchurch.com 
Pharaoh, Heidegger and the Shutdown
Ross Douthat, the conservative columnist at the NY Times, author of Bad Religion, thinks the capitulation of the Republicans will be a teachable moment for them, and that the catastrophe that this has been for the GOP will better it moving forward.
I disagree. I’m more skeptical about our ability to learn.
I’m currently preaching my way through Exodus and I’m in the middle of the plagues.
When I started this journey I had to decide how many weeks to be in the plagues. Many preachers do one sermon for most of them, why go on week after week on blood, frogs, gnats, flies, boils, hail, etc.? I decided to do a few weeks in the plagues. I’m not disappointed I did.
The most interesting character in early Exodus is not really Moses, it’s Pharaoh. Once Moses stops trying to sandbag Yhwh and starts delivering the bad news the attention all goes to Pharaoh.
Yhwh, plague by plague is piling up catastrophe upon Pharaoh and all his magi seem able to accomplish, at least early on, is to add to the mess. “Moses does blood, here have more blood. Moses does frogs, we can do frogs too!” Pharaoh’s magic men can’t undo the plagues or stop them.
Poor Pharaoh is left to ask intercessory favors of Moses to relieve his homeland’s apocalypse. Moses does so, but always with the warning “your new-found appreciation for Yhwh’s power and determination had better bear fruit in letting the people go to worship him in the desert or things will get worse still.”
Once the heat is off, again and again, Pharaoh’s heart hardens and it’s back to plan A: keep the Hebrew laborers and try to maintain the status quo.
I’ve been enjoying Luc Ferry’s “A Brief History of Thought” and this week got to his take in Heidegger.
All of the above can be debated at length, but what is certain and what Heidegger enables us to understand, is that liberal globalisation is in the process of betraying one of the most fundamental promises of democracy – how collectively to make our own history, to participate in it and have our say about our destiny, and to try and change it for the better – because the world which we are entering not only ‘escapes’ us on all sides, but turns out to be devoid of sense: stripped of meaning and of direction.
Each year, your mobile phone, your MP3 player and computer games change, along with everything else around you: their functions multiply, they become smaller, their screens get bigger or become coloured, and so on. And you know that a product which does not keep in step is going to fail. Unless it follows suit. It is not a question of taste, of one choice among others, but a necessity without choice, in which survival is at stake.
In this sense, we could say that in today’s world of globalised capital which places all human activities in a state of perpetual and unending competition, history is moving beyond the will of men. Competition is becoming not only a form of destiny, but, what is more, there is nothing to suggest that it is moving in the direction of what is better. Who can seriously believe that we shall have more freedom and be happier because in a few months the weight of our MP3 players will have halved, or their memory doubled? In accordance with Nietzsche’s wishes, the idols are all dead: no ideal, in effect, animates or disturbs the course of things, only the absolute imperative of change for the sake of change. To use an ordinary but suggestive image: as a bicycle must keep going in order not to topple over, or a gyroscope must keep spinning to remain on its axis, we must ceaselessly ‘progress’; but this mechanical progress induced by a struggle for survival can no longer be integrated within a grand design. Here too, the transcendental bias of the great humanist ideals Nietzsche mocked has well and truly disappeared – so that in a sense it is indeed Nietzsche’s programme that has been accomplished to perfection by globalised capitalism – as Heidegger suggested was the case.
Ferry, Luc (2011-12-27). A Brief History of Thought: A Philosophical Guide to Living (p. 207). HarperCollins. Kindle Edition.
Pharaoh can’t relent because the relenting would mean he must accept the unacceptable. Pharaoh’s world must go on even if it is covered with flies, pummeled by hail and stripped bare by locusts. Only death will stop him. He will harden his heart again and again, even after he lets them go. Walter White (Breaking Bad) isn’t much different from Pharaoh, and neither are both sides in this dispute. Pharaoh is us given enough power and an empire to maintain.
The Dems and Reps that actually see that default and shut down are irresponsible must keep feeding the system as it is even though neither has any clear idea where all of the debt (unfunded wars, insane military spending, unsaved-for entitlement liabilities etc.) will be covered.
The Tea Party sees reducing the land to flies and corpses as an acceptable price to pay in the name of their “liberty”. Everyone agrees that reducing government services to others is acceptable, but the others get to vote too so services are not reduced. Pork is evil, unless the pork is mine.
The “reasonable” may relent in the heat of the moment but once the boils scab over and the hail melts away the status quo (or the status quo of the struggle in the case of the Tea Party) must be maintained.
The picture of humanity in the Bible is that we paint ourselves into a corner again and again. Pick your paint job. Is our spending unsustainable? Yes. Is stopping the spending unthinkable? Yes. The beast must be fed.
In Revelation 17 the prostitute and the beast first seem to be in alliance. At the end of the chapter the beast turns on the prostitute, make her desolate, naked, consume her and burn her with fire. This is the way of empire. We can’t live with her, we can’t live without her. Chapter 18 is the lament for the loss of Babylon, an ironic counterpoint to Isaiah 60.
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Husband, Father of 5, Pastor