Author Archives: kaweah

I’ve Been Slimed!

by kaweah

I was ready. I was set. Obama was my man. He’s for pluralistic politics, and so am I. He’s an apostate, and so am I. He’s for change, and so am I.

Now that I’ve finally met the real Barack Obama, I’m thinking I’ll take the other guy; you know, the two-faced war monger down in AARPizona who’s decomposing before our eyes.

Now we see that when Obama finds himself in the lead, he won’t debate. Admittedly, we saw this in the primaries as well. Maybe it’s not so much about being in the lead. Maybe he just doesn’t like to debate.

As if that weren’t enough, we now find that once he finds like he has more money than the other guy he foregos public financing. As if THAT’S not enough, he proceeds, taking a page from Slick Willie’s play book, to redefine private donations to be “public”, suddenly determining that the public financing system is broken!

Forget Slick Willie. Calling Bill “slick” was premature. Obama is so slick he’s slimy.

Listen to what Dan Carlin has to say: The New Old Politics

Further reading:

David S. Broder, Washington Post: Getting to know Obama

David Brooks, New York Times: The Two Obamas (subscription required)

Heraclitus Down Under

by kaweah

Here’s Alan Saunders, host of the Australian program The Philosopher’s Zone, reflecting on the influence of Heraclitus on Australian philosophers John Anderson and John Passmore.

I find that what Passmore talks about most is not so much Anderson as Anderson’s lectures on the Greek philosopher Heraclitus and in fact not so much Anderson’s lectures on Heraclitus as Heraclitus himself. About Anderson, I’m still a bit in the dark, but Passmore has convinced me of why Heraclitus mattered to him and why Heraclitus ought to matter to me.

As presented in ‘Memoirs of a Semi-Detached Australian’, Heraclitus is a philosopher of flux: change, the conflict of contrary things, is the essence of life. We cannot impose order from above; order emerges, in the way that it should emerge in democratic societies, when, as Passmore puts it, ‘contrary interests achieve a degree of balance without losing their distinctiveness.’

“Balance” is an apt enough term, I suppose, but I might have used “harmony.” The key here is that socially and politically, there is no one universal foundational truth. Truth is emergent.

Saunders continues, explaining how Heraclitus saw us as distinct, yet entangled to the point that we compose a kind of social organism that transcends individualistic notions such as active and passive individuals.

But however distinct we may be, we are inevitably entangled in all that lies around us. We can be spectators, says Passmore, but even a spectator can have an effect on the game: the way I look at you may have consequences for you and your behaviour.

Such a social dialectic has been infamously misinterpreted by Marxists to undermine the individual in society. Where they have failed to follow a truly dialectical model is in imposing a universal foundation upon society, and not allowing change to emerge organically, in a free society. The individual must be defended against all powers, whether those powers be kings or mobs, for the collective to thrive.

And what I see when I see you, or what you see when you see me, will be the result of whatever information we have and our earlier histories, all of which makes for a complex tangle of relations, which is why, Passmore remarks, Heraclitus warns us to expect the unexpected. We can never possess certain knowledge or make entirely reliable predictions.

This is a useful philosophy to have. I for one find it entirely congenial, and it tends to encourage a certain pluralism, or at least anti-dogmatism, of outlook…

See Ockham’s Razor, Aug 22, 2004

I agree with Saunders, though I do regret that dialectical thinking has too often been made the servant of dogmatism. Self-professed dialecticians since Hegel have oft as not failed to go the distance with the Heraclitean dialectic, and settled for the comfortable security of foundationalism. By employing dialectical thinking as a philosophical PR representative for universals, they have missed the point at best, and have at worst been guilty of philosophical deceit.

This reminds me of how Heraclitus, having evident respect for the genius of Pythagoras, called him “the prince of impostors.” Pythagoras was a mathematical genius who has had great influence on western thought, science, and Heraclitus as well, but who enslaved his genius to a dogmatic agenda.

“Pythagoras son of Mnesarchus pursued inquiry further than all other men, but choosing only what he liked from these compositions, made a wisdom of his own: much learning, artful knavery.” —Heraclitus

Curt Flood: American Hero

by kaweah

He could have contented himself with stardom, but he had to go out and try to break the last great American monopoly, Major League Baseball.

“I am pleased that God made my skin black — but I wish He had made it thicker.” —Curt Flood

As a kid I was, for some mysterious reason, a fan of the Saint Louis Cardinals. When I gave my heart to Baseball in the mid-1970s, I lived thousands of miles from Saint Louis and the Redbirds were mediocre, but it may be that I absorbed some subconscious reverence for the team from overhearing the San Francisco Giants games and sports talk shows playing on Dad’s radio.

 Baseball's Best Centerfielder

“Baseball’s Best Centerfielder”

I was raised with the certain knowledge that Willie Mays was the greatest baseball player ever, and that the Giants were miserably hopeless. That was just Dad’s way of being a baseball addict. It seems like baseball has always been a bad trip for him, but that rarely stopped him from listening in on a game.

It seemed like he had nothing bad to say about the Cardinals. Maybe that’s why I became a Cards fan rather than a Giants fan. Maybe it was those glowing red and white home uniforms. Names like Stan Musial, Bob Gibson, and Lou Brock shone in the firmament of my childhood; though not quite so brightly as Mays.

Some seem to have believed that Curt Flood was a better defensive centerfielder than Mays. That’s saying a lot.

I don’t remember hearing much if anything about Flood. He was a masterful centerfielder and embattled player activist, who left Major League Baseball long before my dad and little brother converted me. Until recently, I had no idea what he went through. The old stories of American racial hatred never cease to shock me.

By 1957, my second year in the South, I thought I was beyond crying, but one day we were playing a double-header…And…after the end of the first game you take your uniform off and you throw it into a big pile and the clubhouse manager, he comes and he gets your uniform and he drys them and he cleans them and then you play the second game with the same uniform…I, like everybody else, I threw my uniform right into the big pile with everybody else’s and the clubhouse guy came by with one of these long sticks with a nail on it and he very carefully picked my uniform out from the white guys uniforms and my little sweatshirt and my little jock strap and everything. Sent my uniform to the colored cleaners which was probably 20 minutes away and there I sat while all the other guys were on the field. [The crowd has] really been giving me hell all day long, and now I’m sitting there stark naked waiting for my uniform to come back from the cleaners and the other guys were out on the field. So finally they get my uniform back and I walk out on the field . . . boy you’d think that I had just burned the American Flag.

Curt Flood, Ken Burns’ Baseball, Seventh Inning.

Story: Flood Is at Peace With His Lost Career

Daena

by kaweah

Verses celebrating Daena, that celestial maiden of ancient Iran; symbol of faith and conscience. … This is largely plagiarized from the Vendidad (Fargard 19) and Hadhokht Nask, employing some degree of arbitrary license.

♦—♦—♦

At the end of the third night,
when the dawn appears,
it seems to the soul of the faithful one
as though he were delivered
amidst plants and aromas;

it seems as if a wind were blowing from the region of the south,
from the regions of the south, a sweet-scented wind,
more sweet than any other …

And it seems to the soul of the faithful one
as if he were inhaling that wind into his nostrils,
and he thinks: ‘Whence does that wind blow,
that sweet-scented wind … ?’

And it seems to him as though his own Daena
were advancing toward him on that wind,
in the shape of a maiden fair,
bright, white-armed, strong,

tall-formed, high-standing, full-breasted,
beautiful of body, noble, of a glorious seed,
of the size of a maid in her fifteenth year,
as fair as the fairest things in the world.

‘Then comes the beautiful,
shapely, strong and well-formed maid,
with the hounds at her sides,

she who can discern right and wrong,
with great following, happy,
and of high understanding.

And the soul of the faithful one addresses her,
asking: ‘What maid art thou,
who art the fairest maid I have ever seen?’

She answers him: O thou
youth of good thoughts, good words, and good deeds,
of good religion,
I am thine own conscience!

‘Everyone did love thee for that greatness, goodness, fairness, …
strength and freedom from sorrow,
in which thou dost appear to me;

‘And so thou, O youth
of good thoughts, good words, and good deeds,
of good religion!
didst love me for that greatness, goodness, fairness, …
strength, and freedom from sorrow, in which I appear to thee …

‘I was lovely and thou made me still lovelier;
I was fair and thou made me still fairer;
I was desirable and thou made me still more desirable;

‘I was seated at the fore
and thou made me foremost,

‘through this good thought,
through this good word,
through this good deed of thine; …’

© 2008 Dan J. Jensen

Religion and Conscience

by kaweah

Religion is often juxtaposed against conscience. There is a good reason for this: religion is truth that descends upon man, whereas conscience is truth that emerges from within man.

That said, it should not be maintained that moral intuition is intrinsically antagonistic to faith. The Zoroastrian religion uses conscience synonymously with religion—and quite literally: the Avestan word for religion, “Daena” (akin to the Persian-Arabic “Din”), is also the Avestan word for conscience.

“Conscience” has two related meanings. First, it is a moral intuition (literally, a “knowing”). Secondly, it is a sense of shame. In religious circles, the latter usage is often employed, inasmuch as moral intuition is often rejected. Zoroastrianism appears to use the concept in both senses.

In Christianity, there is of course plenty of shame, but though men are seen as flawed, conscience is treated more as a moral intuition than a capacity for shame:

When the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves: Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another … —Epistle of Paul to the Romans

And again:

Love worketh no ill to his neighbor: love therefore is the fulfilment of the law. —Epistle of Paul to the Romans

From such sayings of Paul, “examination of conscience” has become orthodox Catholic practice. It does not presume a state of guilt, but rather presumes a capacity to distinguish right from wrong:

Directly, this examination is concerned only with the will, that is, with the good or bad intention that inspires one’s thoughts, words, and actions. — Catholic Encyclopedia: Examination of Conscience

Again, some other scriptures focus more on incapacity and shame. This appears to be the case with Baha’u’llah, who emphasized the Judeo-Islamic notion of religion as revelation of and adherence to divine law.

Regarding the incapacity of man, Baha’u’llah said:

Man is unable to comprehend that which hath streamed forth from the Pen of Glory and is recorded in His heavenly Books. Men at all times and under all conditions stand in need of one to exhort them, guide them and to instruct and teach them. —Lawh-i-Maqsud

Regarding fear and shame:

The fear of God hath ever been a sure defence and a safe stronghold for all the peoples of the world. It is the chief cause of the protection of mankind, and the supreme instrument for its preservation. Indeed, there existeth in man a faculty which deterreth him from, and guardeth him against, whatever is unworthy and unseemly, and which is known as his sense of shame. This, however, is confined to but a few; all have not possessed and do not possess it. —Words of Paradise

The Glories of God

by kaweah

The Pahlavi term for the Glory of God, “Farrah” (originally the Avestan “Khvarenah”), is sometimes translated in Arabic-Persian as nūr (“light”):

Fundamental to the concept of khvarenah are its connections with light and fire, attested in the root from which it is derived, khvar (“to burn, to glow”), which is probably … connected with the same root as hvar, “sun” (Duchesne-Guillemin, 1963, pp. 19–31). This explains why khvarenah is sometimes translated in Greek as doxa (“glory”) and in Arabic-Persian as nūr (“light”). —Encyclopedia of Religion

Faravahar
The Zoroastrian Faravahar, thought by some to represent the “Glory of God”

Though this concept of divine glory, light, and bounty was dominant in the native religion of Iran, there is little or no indication that the Iranian nobleman and prophet Mirza Husayn ‘Ali Nuri was consciously aware of it when he was given the Arabic title Baha’ (Glory) by his religious leader Sayyid Ali Muhammad Shirazi (the Bab). The nobleman of Nur later extended that title to Baha’u’llah, “Glory of God”.

We might well wonder how such a coincidence occurred, that a man’s title might correspond so well with the name of the home town of his ancestors, but this ought to come as no surprise, for the name of his ancestral home was part of his name from birth. When the Bab heard his name end in Nuri, the name Baha’ must have come naturally to the Prophet of Shiraz.

Shoghi Rabani made much of the correspondence between his great-grandfather’s ancestral home and spiritual title, reporting in his history God Passes By that Bahá’u’lláh, when asked to report his name and origin,

… spoke with majesty and power these words:“My name is Bahá’u’lláh (Light of God), and My country is Núr (Light). Be ye apprized of it.”

Of course Bahá’u’lláh didn’t have any control over the fact that he was born a nobleman from Nur, so the fact that he had such an auspicious ancestry might be seen as divine providence, but it might also be seen as a circumstance that might give a man an elevated sense of personal destiny; that is, it might be seen as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Though I don’t believe anything supernatural was involved in the naming of Bahá’u’lláh, I have not counted out the power of cultural values. In a land with such a history of fire and sun worship, where the “Glory of God” was once one of the central concepts of the dominant religion, is it too much of a stretch to assert that this name Bahá’u’lláh is a subconscious expression of Iranian heritage?

The Trinity of Islam

by kaweah

I was raised a trinitarian of sorts. I was taught that the Prophets of God are like perfect mirrors, where God is like the sun. The sunlight, though not God, was like the spirit of God—what Christians call the Holy Spirit and my Baha’i friends sometimes call the Maid of Heaven. The idea is that if you want to see God, all you have to do is look in the mirror. I mean—you know what I mean—don’t you?

Muhammad and Gabriel

Muhammad and Gabriel

Now that’s behind us; let’s look at Islam. How does it compare?

Islam’s creed gets off to a great start:

I testify that there is no god but God, …

… but then in falls into idolatry mid-sentence:

… and Muhammad is the Messenger of God.

 

If we are somewhat generous, we might recognize unitarianism in the first phrase of the creed; an assertion that no man can claim any partnership with God.

Unfortunately, that lofty ideal is nullified by the second phrase, which essentially causes the creed to state, “There is no god but God, but every word and act of Muhammad is of God.” Just look at how Muslims generally revere Muhammad as the perfect example of man.

There you have it: a divine incarnation; God in the flesh.

It doesn’t do any good to debate whether God really is incarnate. The only thing we need concern ourselves with is, as they say, the taste of the pudding. Is it a divine image, or isn’t it?

Now Muslims may insist that there’s a difference between “what would Jesus do?” and “what would Muhammad do?”, but I think it all comes down to a choice from among idols.

Moving right along, Muslims generally consider the Qur’an, that is, the words spoken by the Angel Gabriel, to be inerrant and uncreated (eternal). That sure sounds a lot like the Holy Spirit to me. What do you think?

So let us review. The following are the fundamental elements of Islam (more fundamental than the pillars themselves):

1) Father = Allah

2) Son = Muhammad

3) Holy Spirit = Gabriel (uncreated, divine words spoken by Holy Angel)

These three things that Muslims revere above all else are ultimately one in spirit; that is to say, they are one in their divine purpose. They are one so far as the believer is concerned. Muhammad may not be God in his essence, but he is divine in appearance; he is a “mirror”, as the Baha’is say. Is this not a trinity?

I have for years regarded my religion of birth, the Baha’i Faith, to be a trinitarian corruption of Islam, but lately I’m beginning to realize that Islam has been trinitarian from its beginning. I have on several occasions accused Baha’is of elevating Muhammad to a divine station that Islam does not claim. I’m beginning to suspect that I was mistaken.

Sorry guys!

Is Ahmadinejad the Bab?

by kaweah
There was once a town in Iraq called Babel. The name means “Gate of God” (Bab-El), and among Jews and Christians elicits all sorts of images of human arrogance and unholy ambition. Men strove to reach up to heaven, perhaps to be as God, and were swiftly scattered in chaos and confusion to the corners of the earth.

The word “Bab” is an old semitic word for “door”, “gate”, or entrance” that is commonly seen in Arabic place names. Twelver Shi’a Islam has used this term to represent the divine messengers who in past times facilitated communications between the Mahdi (the 12th Imam) and the believers.

Amazon: Ahmadinejad

164 years ago, Sayyid ‘Ali-Muhammad Shirazi claimed to be the latest Bab, then claimed to be the Mahdi as well. His embattled crusade eventually evolved into the religion that I was raised in, whose adherents, along with homosexuals, are chief targets of persecution in Modern Iran.

I mention all this because I was reminded of it today by a Terry Gross interview with the author Kasra Naji on the May 13 episode of Fresh Air. I was stunned to hear the guest say:

Ahmadinejad has been on the record, saying to various people that he believes that by the end of his term in office the Mahdi will return, and he has to hand over power to the Mahdi.

This should sound familiar to Baha’is. Naji continues:

And only a few days ago, he said in a speech in northeast Iran that, in his belief, the Mahdi is managing the affairs of the State, and he is only doing the legwork—if you like—that he is representing the Mahdi, the Mahdi is in charge; Mahdi is managing the affairs.

It sounds as though Ahmadinejad may see himself as a kind of “Bab” to the Hidden Imam.

According to Naji, Shi’ites in general do not expect the Mahdi to literally return:

Many people in Iran, many Muslims, many Shi’ites around the world take that as an abstract idea, that justice will prevail in this world; so there’s no literal belief that somebody is going to come tomorrow …

But there are those, such as Ahmadinejad, that take the Mahdi prophecy quite literally. That doesn’t mean that everyone that shares that belief are allies. To the contrary, it puts them in direct opposition if they should happen to disagree on the specific details of the Mahdi prophecy. It seems to follow that those in opposition to the dominant representative of the Mahdi—those Shi’ites who claim to have their own Bab, may be in mortal danger. Hopefully, the Baha’is of Iran will be spared the full wrath of Ahmadinejad’s millenarian zeal. They are already suffering through yet another surge of persecution.

How far will it go? It’s hard to know just how sincere Ahmadinejad is in his fanaticism. Sincerity, in this case, could be a very dangerous thing.

From Annihilation to Immortality

by kaweah

I admit to having been baffled by Nietzsche’s references to the doctrine of “eternal return” in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. What did he mean when he asked how believing in such a doctrine would impact our lives? What difference would it make, I wondered, if I occurred once or a million times? From the perspective of eternity, is an identical repeat any kind of return at all? It seems no different to me than living once in eternity. Continue reading →