Month: October 2018

Hondurans “Crossing Over” into the United States Are Today’s “Hebrews”: They Are God’s Chosen People!

Refugee Caravan

Readings for 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time: Jer. 31:7-9; Ps. 126: 1-6; Heb. 5:1-6; Mk. 10: 46-52

Today’s Gospel reading centralizes spiritual blindness and the nature of the cure Jesus offers. By extension, it provides perspective on the caravan of more than 6000 Central Americans (mostly Hondurans) currently approaching our southern border.

True: on the surface, the episode is simply about Jesus working yet another miracle – this time for the sightless beggar called Bartimaeus. However, in reality the story represents two fundamental biblical paradigms — one describes the true nature of conversion. The other identifies God’s “Chosen People.”

Let me unpack all of that.

Begin by recalling the relevant story as written by Mark.

A blind man is sitting by the roadside. His garment is spread out on the ground before him. The cloak invites passers-by to throw a coin on its fabric. Bartimaeus hears that Jesus is near accompanied by a large crowd. So, he cries out, “Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me!”

Jesus’ followers try to shut the man up. But the beggar won’t hear of it. He shouts even louder, “JESUS HAVE PITY ON ME!”

Finally, Jesus hears the blind man’s voice over the crowd’s din. He calls him over. The man jumps up and throws aside his garment (his only source of income). [In other words, unlike the Rich Young Man Mark presented two weeks ago (MK 10:17-30), this specifically poor man has no trouble renouncing everything he has and confronting the Master empty-handed.]

So, Jesus asks, “What would you have me do?”

The man responds, “I want to see!” Jesus replies, “Your faith has saved you.” So, the blind man is given sight. He then follows Jesus “on the way” of non-violent compassion.

Bartimaeus, then, is a model of conversion.

In performing this wonder, Jesus was acting as compassion itself. As a prophet, he was following in the footsteps of Jeremiah whose words we read in this morning’s first reading. There Jeremiah was a spokesperson for a God announcing good news specifically to women, their children, the exiled, blind, and lame. As today’s readings from the Book of Psalms recalls, that God makes such people’s dreams come true, and turns their tears to laughter, not to guilt and shame.

And that brings me to the Honduran Caravan presently approaching our borders. They say that this caravan of more than 6000 people, mostly from Honduras, constitutes the largest mass exodus we’ve ever seen in this hemisphere.

When I say “Exodus,” I’m choosing my words carefully. The word is loaded, as it recalls the key Jewish Testament paradigm I mentioned earlier. The word reminds us of the original “Exodus,” when a motley horde of slaves stormed the borders of what we now call Palestine.

For Jews today, that first Exodus was the beginning of Hebrew history. In fact, the word Hebrew means the people who cross-over or pass through. Again, that refers to the origins of the ones who thought of themselves as The People of God – as God’s chosen ones. According to their tradition, the Hebrew refugees were God’s chosen ones — God’s favorites.

The Cross-Over People were seeking land. They thought of themselves as on a divinely-inspired mission to take possession of acreage from those who had too much of it. The refugee-invaders believed that the earth belongs to God, and that God’s intention is a world with room for everyone – not just for those who have sufficient resources to claim ownership of the Great Commons God created.

However, such claims made no difference to rich Canaanite landowners. Like many today, they had appropriated the Great Commons as their own. And in doing so (at least according to the Cross-Over People) they transgressed God’s fundamental intention.

As would-be followers of Jesus, self-proclaimed Christians (as well as all Jews) should be the first to recognize and welcome today’s Cross-Over People as contemporary Hebrews.

Moreover, in the case of Hondurans, we should be clear in drawing connections between our government’s oppressive policies that have created the conditions the Hondurans desire to escape. Our government has treated them the way the Egyptian Pharaohs treated their Hebrew slaves. To wit, remember:

• The decades-long support of the United Brands (now Chiquita) Banana company against workers seeking higher wages and better living conditions.
• The wars waged by the U.S. in Central America all during the 1980s.
• The Central American Trade Agreement (CAFTA) that disemployed small farmers and removed protections from workers throughout the region and in Honduras specifically.
• The United States-supported military overthrow of the democratically elected Honduran government in 2009
• U.S. support of the current Honduran president who was elected in a fraudulent election.

With all of this in mind, our prayer today should be, “Lord, I want to see. Help me to ignore those (including those claiming to be your followers) who would shut me up. Lord, let me hear instead the voices of the poor, the widows, orphans, and refugees. Cure my blindness to the true identity of your people. Help me to voice my fearless support for the Honduran refugees.”

Against Individualism: a Review of Theodore Adorno’s Essay “On Subject & Object”

Army

This is the second “homework” essay that I’ve written in connection with a course on critical theory that I’m taking at The People’s Forum in New York City. As I mentioned last week, the course is taught by Stanley Aronowitz and is called “The Frankfurt School and the Paradoxical Idea of Progress: Thinking beyond Critical Theory.”

This week’s reading, our second from Theodore Adorno was entitled simply “On Subject and Object.” It was extremely abstract and difficult to understand. So, during the class I proposed the following question for Stanley. I said,

“I truly admire Adorno’s brilliance. And I appreciate how spending hours trying to decipher his meaning can yield a satisfaction and kind of pleasure for intellectuals who enjoy solving world-puzzles. In addition, I recognized that the expenditure of such time and effort can certainly lead one to think more deeply and to appropriate insights that might not emerge from grappling with more easily understandable prose.

However, who besides the intellectuals just mentioned can suffer these texts? Who, besides the exceedingly few, has the energy to endure them? Their ideas are obscured, not clarified, by references, vocabulary, and tone that comes off as pretentious, elite and even obscurantist.

If they are truly interested in world-changing praxis (as critical theorists claim) why write like this, rather than in a more accessible manner?”

Stanley’s response to me was direct. He said, “The text is so difficult because Adorno is writing for me, not for you.” He went on to explain that our author was actually quite adept at writing for ordinary people in very engaging ways. Adorno frequently spoke on the radio during the 1930s, and was very popular. However, when authoring essays like “On Subject and Object,” his audience turned out to be philosophers familiar with the entire works of Kant, Heidegger, Hegel, Freud, Marx, and others. Stanley himself falls into that category — I, not so much. Hence my difficulties and those of my classmates.

In any case, and for what it’s worth, here is my attempt to “translate” into concrete language what I understood from grappling with this Adorno text myself.
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The Need for Greater Objectivity
(A review of Adorno’s “On Subject and Object”)

In our contemporary culture, the forces of capitalism, advertising, and consumption all lionize individualism. Standing out from the crowd, doing-your own thing, and writing your own story are sold as paramount forms of being human. Outside one’s own family, any kind of collectivism is perceived as a threat.

Even the military claims to be a vehicle empowering enlistees to “be all that you can be.” In the end, however, those who sign up inevitably discover that all the army allows them to be are pawns whose highest aspiration is not individual development, but reduction to sameness, conformity, and blind obedience in the service of an organization whose main purpose turns out to be killing and breaking things.

Apparently, it’s the same for everyone. In psychological terms, those the culture has encouraged to be autonomous subjects – whatever their line of work – are reduced to objects not only on the job, but at home and even in their recreational activities. We all end up doing what we’re told within parameters that stifle (in Theodor Adorno’s words) pure spontaneity and originary apperception. That is, our systemic structures frustrate what we’re told is our absolutely dynamic principle (255).

But is that our fate as humans – universal objectification and individual frustration (247)? Why is it so difficult to be a subject and so easy to be reduced to object-hood?

In his essay “On Subject and Object,” Adorno takes up those questions. In short, his answer is, “Well, it’s complicated . . .” (245). You see, he argues, individualized subjectivity (as understood by the dominant culture) isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. In fact, it leads to isolation, self-captivity and ultimately to the domination of others (246, 252, 257).

However, there is another form of subjectivity –one more authentic than encouraged by our culture – that recognizes a dialectical relationship between subjectivity and objectivity. Appropriating that subjectivity, so to speak, should be our life’s objective.

Moreover, being an object should not be entirely vilified. Ironically, and properly understood, it should be embraced as humankind’s salvation, as the prerequisite for achieving authentic subject-hood and the peace we all desire. To achieve peace, Adorno observes, the individual must selectively subordinate self to collective (247). In that dialectical process of on-going give-and-take between subjectivity and objectivity, lies our salvation.

In other words, “On Subject and Object” is written against the popular understanding of overriding individualism. Adorno’s basic argument is that the individual cannot be understood apart from society. This is because the individual is actually the product of society – and this according to the insights provided by linguistic analysis, evolutionary theory and biology, along with reflection on personal experience, philosophy, and, above all by critical theory.

Adorno considers those sources one-by-one.

• Language: Adorno begins his analysis linguistically. He points out that what we call “subject” is intelligible only in its relationship to “object.” Or more clearly put, the very terms “subject” or “individual” make sense only in relationship to humanity at large. Similarly, any reference to a particular person as such presupposes the concept of human species from which subjects distinguish themselves. Even personal names such as “Stanley” or “Michael” are employed to separate the individuals so-called from presupposed others. In other words, our very language reveals a dialectical relationship between individuals and society. The dialectic suggests that the collective is more important than generally recognized in our highly individualistic culture (245).
• Evolutionary biology supports that suggestion. Contrary to origin myths found in all cultures, human beings did not emerge full-fledged (246-247, 258). Rather (as works-in-progress) they developed gradually from lower forms of life. Even then, and for millennia, their primary identification remained with group, clan, or tribe (258). Only gradually did any concept of individual emerge. And only in the last few centuries, with the surfacing of capitalism – with the emergence of homo oeconomicus – did individualism and its ideological emphasis on subject become primary (248). Put otherwise, evolutionary biology testifies to the fact that any notion of subject contains within it a certain objectivity; deep down, it has a core of object (250). The subject was produced by the collective.
• Personal experience as a primary criterion of truth (252, 254) supports the relevant conclusions of evolutionary biology. For years in childhood and adolescence, none of us can really fend for ourselves, but are dependent for survival on family and tribe. Confronted by a hostile environment, human beings are much more ill-equipped to survive than other creatures. Instead, we require a kind of rudimentary social cooperation with others of our species even to defend ourselves from less developed counterparts. All of this signals a priority of species over individual subjects (258).
• Philosophy since the Enlightenment has obscured such primacy. The “Copernican turn” of Immanuel Kant emphasized human subjectivity as never before (251, 254). Till Kant, conventional wisdom typically imagined the process of knowledge as the result of a knowing subject confronting an object “out there” (246). For Kant, however, inborn categories of knowledge fundamentally shaped all objects perceived by the subject in question. In a sense, then, on Kant’s analysis, the human subject actively constituted reality (255).
• Critical Theory, however, along with the general sociology of knowledge has called Kant’s radical subjectivity into question. True: critical theorists (like Adorno himself) agree that human beings do in fact interpret reality according to subjective categories. However, those categories themselves are produced by society. Specifically, and increasingly since the middle of the 18th century, they have been manufactured by capitalist ideology (248, 250-254). That ideology has deformed humans into individual subjects pure and simple. On the one hand, it has made them captives within themselves (252, 257). On the other, it has set them against the collective as they seek to impose their sovereign wills upon the group (246). War is the unavoidable upshot.

Conclusion

Adorno is interested in peace, not war (247). Yes, he wants to affirm subjectivity, spontaneity and originary apperception as our absolutely dynamic principle. However, on his view, absolutizing the subject over-against the collective fetishistically reifies and deforms human beings (251). It sets them against each other and creates a tragic situation where it is indeed possible for army propagandists to convince the young that they can reach their highest potential by killing their brothers and sisters and by destroying the latter’s homes, schools, churches, hospitals and factories.

Only by de-emphasizing individual subjectivity, by recognizing the priority of human community, by retaining a dialectical understanding of subject’s relationship to object, and of individual to species, can such tragedy be averted.

Jesus’ Supreme Court: His Preference for Blasey-Ford’s Style over Brett Kavanaugh’s

Kavanaugh

Readings for the 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time: Is. 53:10-11; Ps. 33:4-5, 18-19, 20, 22; Heb. 4: 14-16; Mk. 10:35-45

Like many of you, perhaps, I’m still reeling in the aftermath of the confirmation hearings of Brett Kavanaugh.

I bring this up because of today’s Gospel reading. There two of Jesus’ disciples, the sons of Zebedee, actually make application for a much higher Supreme Court than any SCOTUS we might imagine. James and John ask to sit one on Jesus’ right hand and one on his left, when he “comes into his glory” precisely (as Matthew puts it) to judge the 12 tribes of Israel (MT 19:28). They want to be Supreme Court justices on steroids! James and John want power – the highest they can imagine.

How male of them! How patriarchal!

But Jesus’ response is surprising. It’s surprising, because it indicates that Jesus’ idea of judicial power is not masculine power-over, but servant leadership – something more, well . . . feminine. It is not what Bret Kavanaugh sought, but what was demonstrated in the attitude of Christine Blasey-Ford.

To get what I mean, please recall the final day of the Kavanaugh hearings. It was a perfect portrayal of patriarchal judgment contrasted with servant-leadership.

In the Senate chambers, Republicans – all of white men; many quite elderly – enjoyed tremendous power-over. And they could do for Brett Kavanaugh exactly what James and John wanted Jesus to do. In fact, they could give Kavanaugh much greater power-over the rest of us than even the senators themselves possess.

In doing so, they appeared to sit in judgment, not over Judge Kavanaugh, but (ironically) over a bright sensitive woman, who displayed the qualities that Jesus highlights in his statement on judicial leadership. Her testimony was a model of dignity, restraint and self-sacrifice. She explained that she had decided to put her own life and the safety of her family in danger to fulfill what she considered her patriotic duty.

And the way she carried herself as a witness bore out the truth of her words. Her answers to her questioners were always on point. There was no hint of self-promotion, defensiveness or ad hominem claims about her own virtue, intelligence, or scholarly accomplishments. Instead, she spoke sincerely and sometimes through quiet tears.

Her dignified manner and humble words stood in sharp contrast to Brett Kavanaugh’s blustering patriarchal harangue. He did what patriarchs typically do and what women could never get away with. He played “poor-me,” shouted indignantly, huffed and puffed, wept uncontrollably, accused, and talked over his interrogators. He evaded answers, changed the subject when he found questions uncomfortable. He bragged shamelessly about his accomplishments, virtue, and hard work. He “proved” his case by appealing to the testimony of Mark Judge, the very man Dr. Ford had identified as Kavanaugh’s accomplice in the crime she alleged.

If it weren’t so tragic, it would have been quite comical. On “Saturday Night Live,” Matt Damon made that point as you’ll see here:

Just imagine if Dr. Ford had acted similarly! Game over in that case.

Yet, in the final analysis, the aged patriarchs sitting on their thrones of judgment over one of their own dismissed Dr. Ford out-of-hand. They chose to believe Brett Kavanaugh. As I said, they actually turned the tables. They gave the impression of sitting in judgment over the accuser rather than over her alleged assailant; they proceeded as though Kavanaugh himself, not Dr. Ford, was the victim-of-the hour. They found his absolute denials convincing as (like Clarence Thomas, Bill Cosby and Bill Clinton before him) he predictably and emphatically denied any wrongdoing.

To put a finer point on it: the patriarchs gave every indication that they would believe Bill Cosby if (similarly to Kavanaugh) he argued, “How dare you accuse me of rape! I’ve played Cliff Huxtable. And your accusations don’t coincide with the image I’ve believably cultivated over the years. Millions have looked up to me as a fatherly role model. I’ve received honorary degrees for my work. So, I couldn’t possibly violate women. Cliff Huxtable certainly wouldn’t do that. It’s preposterous to believe I would! I’m Cliff Huxtable!”

Put otherwise, the all-male Republican panel followed a theatrical script aired 27 years earlier (and countless times in western history) when Anita Hill, accused another SCOTUS candidate, Clarence Thomas, of habitual sexual harassment. And they were led in their skepticism by the president of their men’s club (and of the country), who himself has gleefully admitted his general habit of objectifying and assaulting women, and who has been accused by many of quite particular sexual misconduct.

As if he could be trusted in such matters, the man in question, President Donald Trump, actually made fun of and mocked Dr. Ford. While dismissing her, he expressed compassion for Judge Kavanaugh and for young men and boys who, he said, find themselves vulnerable to false testimony by devious women exactly like Christine Blasey Ford – and his own accusers.

How male of him! How patriarchal!

Yes, that’s the way of patriarchy pure and simple. In terms of today’s Gospel, the Republicans (along with Democrat Joe Manchin) gave reality to Jesus’ words, “You know that those who are recognized as rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones make their authority over them felt.”

Meanwhile, Dr. Ford’s demeanor and testimony was more in accord with Jesus’ description of justices in his much higher Supreme Court: “But it shall not be so among you,” Jesus said. “Rather, whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you will be the slave of all. For the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

In summary, Jesus’ idea of judicial wisdom reflects “servanthood,” self-sacrifice and putting the needs of others first. It is far more like what we witnessed in Dr. Blasey-Ford’s testimony. It’s the model of female leadership and judicial restraint displayed by women throughout Mark’s Gospel.

There, from outset to conclusion, it is women who are referred to in servant language. In the beginning of Mark (1:31), the first act of Peter’s mother in law upon being cured by Jesus is to serve food to her benefactor and his companions. And at the end (MK 15:41) Mary Magdalene along with another Mary and Salome are identified beneath Jesus’ cross as “those who used to follow him and provide for him when he was in Galilee.”

To repeat, all of that suggests that in today’s reading, Jesus is proposing the notion of “servant leadership” on his Supreme Court — and, it seems, on ours. It suggests that the practical content of that concept is typically embodied not in men, but in women.

It seems then, that in Jesus’ eyes, a woman like Christine Blasey-Ford would have been a far worthier choice for Supreme Court justice than any Brett Kavanaugh.

I for one am going to keep all of this in mind on November 6th.

What We Call “Progress” Might Kill Us All: How to Avoid That Catastrophe (Theodor Adorno’s Essay on Progress)

Progress

Here is the essay I promised to share a few days ago, when I wrote about the class I’m taking at The People’s Forum in NYC. The assignment was to read Theodor Adorno‘s essay “On Progress.” Our teacher, Stanley Aronowitz, assured us that we’d have a difficult time understanding it. He was right. It took me about half and hour to read each page. Not wanting to forget what that taught me, I immediately wrote the following abstract and essay to record my understanding of the piece. This is the sort of essay I liked my students to write about reading assignments I gave them. (The references are to page numbers in Adorno’s Critical Models.) See if my efforts makes sense to you. I’m still not sure about the accuracy of what I’ve written here. So, for what it’s worth . . .

Abstract

This essay describes the complex reasons behind the widespread confusion surrounding the concept of progress. The confusion finds its roots in the Genesis creation myth, in Augustine distinction between the City of God and its earthly counterpart, in the secularization that followed the Augustine’s distinction, and in the inherently unjust principle of exchange centralized in bourgeois capitalism.

These influences gradually emptied “progress” of its transcendent and spiritual community content reducing it to a notion of mere material advance among atomized individuals.

Adorno predicts that in the end, since material progress is inseparably connected to an exploitative capitalist system, those inevitably harmed by the injustices of the system’s exchange principle will rebel in the name of their own shared humanity. Thus, capitalism’s victims turn out to be the engines of spiritual progress understood as specifically human growth in communal consciousness concerning the unity of all creation.
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My Unassigned Essay After Struggling with Adorno’s Reflection “On Progress”

“You can’t stop progress!” That’s been the mantram of conventional wisdom leveled against Luddites, the Amish and back-to-nature hippies as long as I can remember. Actually, the slogan reaches back much further – to at least the 18th century when “enlightened” Europeans routinely published works like Condorcet’s “Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind.” Hot on the heels of the scientific revolution, the idea was that for humans, the sky’s the limit.

The evidence supporting that apparent truism has often seemed irrefutable. Examples like the steam engine, radio, telephone, automobile, television, computers, the iPhone, and GMOs have all been marshaled to demonstrate the irresistible upward trajectory of human civilization.

In the face of such beneficial innovation, surely, no one would argue that we’re not better off, would they?

Actually, yes – among them, the great critical theorist, Theodor Adorno (1903-’69). He, along with other members of the Frankfurt School, have contended that the signs of progress like those just itemized can actually signal its opposite — a decadence that appears irreversible and fatal to us all. The innovations demonstrate a decline based on a truncated understanding of human nature and of progress itself.

In terms updated to fit the post-modern context, signs of decadence and decline include the universal government surveillance made possible by computers and iPhones. Then there are the interminable wars intensified beyond measure by supersonic jets – among the most lethal weapons of mass destruction ever devised. There is the replacement of innumerable seed varieties by corporate-controlled GMOs that arguably aggravate rather than remediate world hunger. Worst of all, there’s the ghastly phenomenon of global warming facilitated by the unrestrained capitalist production – the very engine of post-modernity’s vaunted progress. In fact, climate scientists predict with great certainty that the inseparable tandem of unchecked global warming and technical progress will inevitably spell the end of human life as we know it. In other words, progress is at times its own opposite (Adorno 148).

What then about the notion itself? Why is the concept of progress so ambiguous (141)? How are we to define it? And what is its true nature? Is it, according Condorcet’s understanding, a matter of total human advance (159)? Or is its reality confined to the category of technical innovation?

What about the human spirit within us all and in the collective? Does it progress in any way?
And how do we make sure that progress doesn’t destroy us all?

All of these are the questions addressed Adorno’s essay on pages 143-160 of Critical Models. Its understanding of progress comes down on the side of praxis derived from expanded awareness, rather than of ambiguous technical invention.

To begin with, Adorno argues, the term’s ambiguity derives from a twofold source: (1) a faulty understanding of human nature and (2) the fundamental lie inherent in the capitalist notion of exchange (159). Nonetheless, Adorno maintains that both sources of confusion unwittingly set the stage for a more coherent understanding of progress derived from the very obscurities and errors just mentioned.

Human Nature

Contrary to conventional thought, human nature for Adorno is not a given. Rather, it is an experiment – a work specifically “in-progress” (145). Moreover, the experiment might well fail. That is, the supposedly evolving human race might easily degenerate into barbarism, not to mention total extinction (160). Additionally, the authentic measure of progress cannot be limited a mere listing of human accomplishments in terms of increasingly sophisticated industrial products. The two-edged nature of the fabrications listed above should make that evident. To ignore such reality in favor of unquestionable faith in some guaranteed evolution is to live in a fantasy world.

Nonetheless, the fantastic nature of historically insured progress remains obscure. It is covered over by notions of human nature inherited from the Bible’s Genesis account of creation, from Augustine’s City of God and from a secularity ironically derived from both those sources (146-7).

The biblical mythology of Genesis encouraged belief that the original man and woman were fully human from the outset. The subsequent spiritual challenge could not then involve species development. Instead, the human spiritual task became limited to the individual’s willingness to appropriate a human nature complete from the beginning, even though the task was complicated by the First Parents’ fall from grace. This, in effect, privatized the notion of human progress depriving it of its essential community dimension (144).

Augustine, the most influential theologian of Christianity’s first millennium, unwittingly facilitated such privatization. His distinction between the City of God and the Earthly City split off an area of human endeavor (the earthly city) that could absorb ungodly human activity until the Final Judgment, when creation would ultimately be restored to its original undisturbed state (155). In other words, this side of death, there could be no ontologically shared spiritual progress.

By the 18th century, Augustine’s insight about such an independent sphere had successfully set the stage for an encroaching western secularity that would eventually exclude any consideration of God’s city. This in turn discounted for secularists the entire spiritual realm previously emphasized by the 5th century church doctor. The human spirit’s relationship of dynamic tension with the material world along with its constant attempts to break free from material limitations were all but lost in the process (157). Following the Enlightenment, it thus became virtually impossible to ascribe a transcendent dimension to any notion of progress at all. In this way, the concept was impoverished nearly beyond repair. Its function was reduced to that of describing an inevitable triumph of technical innovation.

Capitalist Exchange

A second key source of ambiguity and confusion about the notion of progress derives from bourgeois capitalism’s foundational principle of exchange of equal commodities (159).

According to this exchange principle, all merchandises are entirely fungible; in every act of commerce, products of equal worth are traded one for the other. Or as George H.W. Bush put it, “Computer chips or potato chips, what’s the difference?” So, while champions of capitalism on the hand promote the system as an engine of progress, their principle of exchange denies the possibility of advance on the other. No wonder confusion reigns.

Adorno clears the confusion by simply denying the principle of exchange. Simply put, it is a lie. He says, “Since time immemorial . . . the societally more powerful contracting party receives more than the other. By means of this injustice something new occurs in the exchange” (159).

Ironically, it is in this implied act of robbery by the powerful from their opposites that Adorno finds the seed of true progress. For him it surpasses mere technical innovation and rescues the concept’s essential transcendence from a one-dimensional secularity that confines progress to the arena of technology. Adorno locates it instead in the realm of conscious praxis accessible primarily to those the world’s powerful expropriate.

Transcendent Progress

That is, for Adorno, oppression (like that embodied in the mendacious bourgeois principle of exchange) is itself the incongruous emancipator of consciousness. For by virtue of the pain inherent in such domination and the want it necessarily inflicts (144, 154), humanity as “sleeping giant” awakes from its immemorial slumber; it escapes the magic thrall of the ideology promoted by religion and capitalist ideology. Gradually become aware of its own inbred nature, the giant suddenly brings to a halt the domination in question. It “storms forth and tramples everything that gets in his way” (150).

In the best-case scenario, the behemoth’s newfound political maturity gives him the final word in its struggle against all oppressive systems. That word’s utterance and the world it creates rationally establish a self-conscious global community governed by “a perfectly just civil constitution” that maximizes personal freedom while insuring similar levels of liberty for all. On Adorno’s view, such balance alone can avert the generalized catastrophe threatening the species (144). It alone deserves the name “progress.”

All of this is in accord with Adorno’s understanding of humanity itself which in its essence is:
• Spiritual, even mystical (155)
• Basically communal (144)
• Free and unsullied by privilege and class domination (152)
• Resistant to both totalitarianism and individualism (146, 151)
• Enlightened in the sense that it lives reconciled with all other human beings as such and with nature itself (148, 152)
• Cognizant and solicitous of future generations (146)
• Prone to transcendence, i.e. “to fly” in the face of “the merely existent” (157)
• Constantly growing in all levels of consciousness (157)

Conclusion

As a theologian reading Adorno directly for the first time, I couldn’t help noticing the . . . well, “theological” nature of his essay on progress. The piece centralizes the concept of redemption (146, 148). It is filled with references to God as Nature with intentions and purposes (144) and as world spirit, divine absolute (149), eternal invariant (150) Being itself (153) and Being as such (156).

But even more specifically, as a liberation theologian, my intellectual antennae were alerted by the absolute coincidence between Adorno’s analysis and that of liberation theologians like Costa Rica’s (and Germany’s) Franz Hinkelammert. Both exhibit the same deep historical consciousness and the need to square their conclusions with western history of ideas.

Both engage in the same critique of Christian tradition that not only refuses to throw out the baby with the bath water, but that demonstrates an appreciation of the tradition’s core insights as well. Both find the systemic root of domination and oppression in the economic system of capitalism.

Finally, both Adorno and theologians of liberation pinpoint humanity’s savior in the poor and oppressed. Both make a “preferential option for the poor.” That is, they recognize the “hermeneutical privilege of the poor” that identifies in humanity’s despised, rejected, humiliated and ignored the point of critique that alone offers hope in this “age of both utopian and absolutely destructive possibilities” (143).

“Sweet Little 78” and Back in Class Again

Aronowitz

As readers of this blog might remember, Peggy and I have just moved to Westport, Connecticut. In an earlier posting, I explained that we’re here largely to be near our four grandchildren. My daughter, Maggie, our son-in-law, Kerry, along with Eva (9 yrs.), Oscar (7), Orlando (5), and Markandeya (3) live at 69 Clinton Avenue. Peggy and I are now located at 33 Clinton. It’s a 10-minute walk between our two houses.

And so far, it’s working out just fine. We’re pretty well moved into our new digs which are quite a bit smaller than what we became used to in Berea, Kentucky. But we’re finding comfort in the down-sizing. After all small is beautiful.

33 Clinton

Along those lines, however, I do find myself missing the small-town atmosphere that we got so comfortable with in Berea. Forty-five years in Kentucky definitely turned me into a country mouse. Here in Westport, a virtual suburb of New York City, things are quite different. The pace if faster; the traffic is heavier; the prices are higher.

But with Westport and that proximity to NYC come a lot of benefits. For instance, our new location has a wonderful Playhouse. Just this weekend, Peggy and I took in “Man of La Mancha” that had been performing there to rave reviews. The reviews were well-deserved. We came away truly inspired.

And then there’s a nine-week course I have enrolled in and am attending each Saturday in the heart of Manhattan. That’s what I want to tell you about here. As Chuck Berry might say, at sweet 78, I’m back in class again.

The course is called “The Frankfurt School and the Paradoxical Idea of Progress: Thinking beyond Critical Theory.” The sessions are taught by Stanley Aronowitz (pictured above), an emeritus professor of sociology, cultural studies, and urban education at the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center. Stanley is a widely-published authority on critical theory. Peggy and I had met him years ago (around 1990) at the Socialist Scholars Conference at CUNY. His work on Paulo Freire and our friendship with Paulo were our connecting points.

My primary purpose in attending Stanley’s class is to deepen my understanding of critical theory, which lies at the basis of my related book The Magic Glasses of Critical Thinking: Seeing Through Alternative Fact and Fake News.

True, my book addresses what is called “critical thinking” here in the United States. But the latter’s exclusive emphasis on logic and detecting fallacies is a far cry from critical theory as understood in the rest of the world. There it is profoundly informed by Marxism and the work of Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Max Horkheimer, Herbert Marcuse, Eric Fromm – all members of the so-called Frankfurt School.

Just as my book does, the Frankfurt School emphasized the structural causes of the way we think: capitalism, its ideology, and the ways thinking is influenced by capitalism’s history, colonial practices, and associated understandings of violence, terrorism and other obfuscations. As I explain in my book, I picked up almost everything I know of that kind of critical thinking from the liberation theologians I’ve studied with in Rome, Brazil, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Mexico, Cuba, Zimbabwe, South Africa, India, and Israel. Liberation theology is deeply influenced by the Frankfurt School.

So, my first purpose in attending was to learn more about critical theory unfiltered through theology. My secondary purpose was to meet other leftists, to find out what they’re up to in the NYC area, and to possibly join them in their efforts at creating a world with room for everyone.

The Aronowitz class meets Saturday afternoons from 12:00-2:00 at The People’s Forum on 320 East 37th Street. Getting there has me taking the 10:08 train from Westport to Grand Central Station. That reaches its destination about 11:30. Then I walk a mile and a quarter down 42nd Street to Broadway, and then to East 37th. On the way, I pass the New York City Library and thousands of very interesting-looking people.

The first meeting drew about 30 people. Though extremely interesting, it frustrated my purpose of getting to know people. Stanley didn’t have us introduce ourselves. So, I came away with only the vaguest notions of who was there. They were of all ages, though slightly tilted towards my own cohort. Mostly men, though about a third were women.

For homework, Stanley assigned a very difficult reading from Adorno’s Critical Models. It was an 18-page essay called “Progress.” It turned out to be one of the most abstract pieces I’ve ever read. I found it kind of exciting though. It made me feel like I was in graduate school again – reading something very serious. However, Aronowitz was right: “You have to read it about three times to get what Adorno’s saying.”

Well, I did that. It took me about half-an-hour to read each page. And later (even though it wasn’t part of the assignment) I wrote a 1000-word essay of response. It’s the kind of essay I always wanted my students at Berea to produce after readings I assigned there.

In any case, Stanley’s second class had about half the number of attendees as the first. Our actual class size is 12 students. (Stanley said the class size-difference is normal.) As it turns out, most of them (largely 50 yrs. and older) are Aronowitz groupies. As far as I can tell, I’m the only one who hasn’t taken a previous class with him. The others are all Marxists more or less (I guess I fall into that category as well) – all very smart and well-read.

So, I’m having fun here in Westport. The three classes I’ve attended so far have been dynamite.

Tomorrow or the next day, I’ll share the essay I mentioned above.

Jesus Was against Machismo Not Divorce

Today’s readings: Gn. 2:18-24; Ps. 128:1-6; Heb. 2:9-11; Mk 10:2-16 http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/100718.cfm

I shared Tammy Wynette’s award-winning song “D-I-V-O-R-C-E” because it captures the pain that more than half of married people go through when they decide to divorce. Tammy’s opening words, “I want to sing you a song that I didn’t write, but I should have,” as well as the way she sings capture the very sad experience that divorce is for couples who all started out so full of love and hope. As all of us know, divorce is often characterized by regret and feelings of failure especially relative to the children involved. The irony is that many divorced people will come to church this morning and find their pain compounded by today’s readings and no doubt by sermons they will hear.

However today’s liturgy of the word is surprising for what it says about Jesus and his teachings about divorce. The readings tell us that Jesus wasn’t really against divorce as we know it. Instead as the embodiment of compassion, he must have been sympathetic to the pain and abuse that often precede divorce. As a champion of women, he must have been especially sensitive to the abandonment of divorced women in his highly patriarchal culture.

What I’m suggesting is that a sensitive reading shows that what Jesus stands against in today’s Gospel is machismo not divorce as such. Relative to failed marriages, he implicitly invites us to follow his compassionate example in putting the welfare of people – in his day women specifically – ahead of abstract principles or laws. Doing so will make us more understanding and supportive of couples who decide to divorce in the best interests of all.

By the way, the gospel reading also tells us something important about scripture scholarship and its contributions towards understanding the kind of person Jesus was and what he taught on this topic.

First of all consider that scholarship and its importance relative to the topic at hand.

To begin with, it would have been very unlikely that Jesus actually said “let no one” or (as our translation went this morning) “let no human being” put asunder what God has joined together. That’s because in Jesus’ Palestine, only men had the right to initiate a divorce. So in prohibiting divorce, Jesus was addressing men.  The “no one” or “no human being” attribution comes from Mark who wanted Jesus’ pronouncement on divorce to address situations outside of Palestine more than 40 years after Jesus’ death. By the time Mark wrote his Gospel, the church had spread outside of Palestine to Rome and the Hellenistic world.  In some of those communities, women could initiate divorce proceedings as well as men.

Similarly, Jesus probably did not say, “and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery.” Such a statement would have been incomprehensible to Jesus’ immediate audience. Once again, in Palestine no woman could divorce her husband. Divorce was strictly a male right. Women could only be divorced; they couldn’t divorce their husbands.

So what did Jesus say? He probably said (as today’s first reading from Genesis puts it) “What God has joined together let no man put asunder. “ His was a statement against the anti-woman, male-centered practice of divorce that characterized the Judaism of his time.

And what was that practice?

In a word, it was highly patriarchal. Until they entered puberty, female children were “owned” by their father. From then on the father’s ownership could be transferred to another male generally chosen by the father as the daughter’s husband. The marriage ceremony made the ownership-transfer legal. After marriage, the husband was bound to support his wife. For her part however the wife’s obedience to her husband became her religious duty.

Meanwhile, even after marriage, the husband could retain as many lovers as he wanted provided he also able to support them. Additionally the husband enjoyed the unilateral right to demand divorce not only for adultery (as some rabbis held), but also according to the majority of rabbinical scholars for reasons that included burning his food, or spending too much time talking with the neighbors. Even after divorce, a man’s former wife needed his permission to remarry. As a result of all this, divorced women were often left totally abandoned. Their only way out was to become once again dependent on another man.

In their book Another God Is Possible, Maria and Ignacio Lopes Vigil put it this way: “Jesus’ saying, ‘What God has joined together, let no man put asunder’ is not the expression of an abstract principle about the indissolubility of marriage. Instead, Jesus’ words were directed against the highly patriarchal marriage practices of his time. ‘Men,’ he said, should not divide what God has joined together. This meant that the family should not be at the mercy of the whimsies of its male head, nor should the woman be left defenseless before her husband’s inflexibility. Jesus cut straight through the tangle of legal interpretations that existed in Israel about divorce, all of which favored the man, and returned to the origins: he reminded his listeners that in the beginning God made man and woman in his own image, equal in dignity, rights, and opportunities. Jesus was not pronouncing against divorce, but against machismo.”

Here it should be noted that Mark’s alteration of Jesus’ words is far less radical than what Jesus said. Mark makes the point of the Master’s utterance divorce rather than machismo. Ironically, in doing so and by treating women the same as men, Mark’s words also offer a scriptural basis for legalists who place the “bond of marriage” ahead of the happiness (and even safety) of those who find themselves in relationships which have become destructive to partners and to children.

Traditionally that emphasis on the inviolability of the marriage bond has represented the position of the Roman Catholic hierarchy. It is very unlikely that the historical Jesus with his extremely liberal attitude towards law and his concern for women would have endorsed it.

Instead however, it never was Jesus position that any law should take precedence over the welfare of people. In fact, his refusal to endorse that precedence – his breaking of religious laws (even the Sabbath law) in favor of human welfare – was the main reason for his excommunication by the religious leaders of his own day. In other words, Jesus was the one who kept God’s law by breaking human law.

So instead of “Anti-Divorce Sunday,” this should be “Anti-Machismo Sunday.” It should remind us all of what a champion women have in Jesus.

Sometimes feminists complain that Christian faith finds its “fullness of revelation” in a man. But as one Latin American feminist theologian put it recently, the point of complaint shouldn’t be that Jesus was a man, but that most of us men are not like Jesus. Today’s Gospel calls us men to take steps towards nullifying that particular objection.

The Real Election Interference Threatening Our Democracy

Voting Machine

Ever since the 2016 election, our non-stop news cycles have focused on Russian meddling in our (supposedly) otherwise well-functioning electoral system.

And just lately, President Trump, who denies that such interference helped get him elected, has warned that the Chinese are also about to intervene – this time, he fears, against the interests of his party.

The President’s double standards aside, all such scapegoating ignores the fact that the real interference threatening our democracy comes from within. In fact, it largely originates with Republicans, whose policies have rendered the system entirely dysfunctional and unreliable.

To begin with, I’m referring to their sponsorship of the Citizens United lawsuit. It opened the door to the corrupting influence of campaign contributions from wealthy donors to Republicans and Democrats alike. I’m also referencing The Supreme Court’s striking down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act. The Court’s (Republican-led) 5-4 decision opened the door for laws intended to disenfranchise Democrat-leaning minorities.

Add to this the practice of gerrymandering that renders GOP congressional seats virtually invulnerable, along with widespread voter suppression that discounts thousands of votes in each state and millions nation-wide in each election cycle, and you get an idea of just how corrupt our system has become.

And I haven’t even mentioned refusal to eliminate the Electoral College that has overridden the popular electoral will in favor of our last two Republican presidents – or the entirely hackable voting machines controlled by GOP-friendly operatives like Diebold Election Systems.

And then there’s the most fundamental voter-suppression measure of all – holding elections on Tuesdays precisely during the hours when working-class voters are on the job or traveling to the workplace.

All of this suggests that we must face up to the facts that:

• G.O.P. operative, Paul Weyrich, meant what he said in 1980 about Republicans not wanting everyone to vote (because if everyone did cast a ballot, a Republican president would never again darken the White House door).
• Computerized voting machines overwhelmingly favor that minority otherwise unelectable party by potentially miscounting and/or flipping millions of votes that end up completely unverifiable.

Addressing the problem will entail:

• Getting private money out of the electoral process in favor of public funding.
• Eliminating the electoral college in favor of direct popular vote.
• Abolishing gerrymandering by making redistricting a bi-partisan process subject to the approval of a reformed Federal Election Commission whose goal would be to maximize voter turn-out as well as to increase voter confidence by a transparent certification process.
• Outlawing completely highly hackable voting machines.
• More specifically, implementing a system of universal, automatic and verifiable voter registration and reverting to employment of hand-counted paper ballots.
• Changing Election Day from Tuesday to Sunday, or even establishing a national voting holiday (e.g. from Saturday to Tuesday), with ballots hand-counted by unimpeachable young people like senior Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts on Wednesday.

Failure to enact such changes, especially following the debacles of the presidential elections of 2000 and 2016 is not the fault of foreign interference in our electoral process. It’s the fault of a fundamentally broken system intended to discourage grassroots participation in favor of a minority party. Fixing it will require great commitment and work by us all.

Despite the obstacles placed in our paths, a first act towards repairing the systemic dysfunctions just described will present itself to us on November 6th.

In other words, that first reparative step is to vote the Republicans out of office replacing them with progressive democrats who refuse to take corporate money.