Meritocracy, Learning, and Escaping the Empire (Part 1)

A Swedish friend of mine waxes heavy in the realm of patience, reserved humor, and prolonged cultural analysis. A few weeks ago he was explaining to me that he is one of the few people in his home country to achieve a graduate degree in a very specialized field involving psychology, pathology, cultural analysis, and intuitive peaceableness, which goes by the name of conflict resolution. It's hardly a science, if by science, you think of objectivity. When my friend sits in front of two individuals or groups who are disagreeing, each observed action, cultural background, personality trait, family situation, tone of voice, etc, mentally carves out a little nudge or bell-shaped curve of a piece of the puzzle of human understanding that must be set aside and looked at in relation to all of the other pieces. This must be done, that is, before agitated, offended hands mold pieces into poorly shaped travesties, and then try to fit these all together unsuccessfully. Let me tell you, I know a few older women who take great pride in their puzzle-completing abilities, and it would be completely unacceptable for them to go to sleep after such an event as was aforementioned. Who cuts a slab of human story and mystery into pieces that don't fit together, and then complains about results while clutching red, angry fists and a haughty assurance of their own rightness?

On G_d's green earth there is an awful lot to astound and mystify me, but no object of curiosity has struck me so mercilessly recently as that curious ill hidden deep behind those pair of eyes which are justified by their anger, by the merit of the fact that someone owes them something, retaining a supercilious conviction of the reasonableness of the madness of their own angry, mocking, scorn for the inferiority of the other.

Sounds wretched. It takes the human mind less than a second to rally itself and the forces of whatever it is that makes up a pool of anger to claim its own right to acting like a very educated, dignified, correct, version of a three year old who has not yet learned to share. Turning the other cheek seems more than practical when simply looking at statistics, watching the actions of those who are fighting, but most especially when hindsight realizes that such a thing can take over your entire person, and choice, will, well, you have not learned enough to even be able to give them a chance. But to turn the cheek with your thoughts, your heart, it may be easier to admit your own unfaithfulness to your wife, or to drop an atomic bomb.

What is an argument like in a society where your personal identity is based upon the merits of what you accomplish during your lifetime? What is learning like?

Your value is based upon whether you win or lose. And as you grow older, you must supply your own scratch and sniff stars for your more advanced tests, let others wear their own, or demystify the illusion that the stars and the arguments really have anything to do with the value of human beings.

Recent Artist Statement: Los Desplicados de Colombia

I wrote a very surly artist statement for some photos I've shown recently at some places around the Williamsport area. Here it is. I may receive hatemail.

Hugo Chavez on an armed FARC: "The perfect excuse for the Empire to threaten all of us."

On Sunday, June 8, in a television address to his citizens, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez had this to say about the militant FARC revolutionary movement in Colombia:

"I believe that the time has come for the FARC to release all the people it has up in the mountains unconditionally. It would be a great humanitarian gesture. … Guerrilla wars have become history in Latin America. … This far along in Latin America, an armed guerrilla movement is out of step, and that has to be said to the FARC. … The FARC should know this: you have become an excuse, a justification for the Empire to threaten all of us. You are the perfect excuse."

If Chavez is upbraiding the FARC, is there any hope that anyone else can wear the shoes of negotiator? It looks like President Uribe expected that the FARC’s excruciatingly slow, headstrong approach to negotiations would confound even Hugo Chávez, thus strengthening his government’s rigidity when it comes to negotiating, ie: (”If even Hugo Chávez can’t talk to them…”). But this is the first time Chavez has shown any public signs of frustration since he initiated these talks last August. And as a result of gunned down FARC leader Reyes' computer being found by the Colombian military, anyone is suspect of collaboration that has simply tried to communicate with FARC.

And even if it is true that Chavez wrote the FARC a check for a substantial amount of money, does the Uribe administration really understand the consequences of burning the possibility of other negotiations? It seems that a serious fear of socialism has robbed Colombian leaders of the ability to see the serious implications of their decisions: without negotiators, why should FARC release prisoners? Why should they even let them live?

Uribe's response is that the Colombian military will solve this "problem." The Colombian military will solve this problem? This is the type of logic that has created these situations to begin with. The FARC is the largest and oldest leftist revolutionary group in the world. They know how to stick around.

Would-be facilitators are being warded off by Uribe. His administration is clearly convinced that a military victory is at hand. The recent mass extradition of paramilitary leaders to the US sent a message to FARC that they will not be protected, if they desert, by the "Justice and Peace" law. At this point, anyone promoting negotiations, even to free the hostages, is simply in the way. And the hostages, seven civilians, thirty-three military and police, and untold hundreds held for ransom, are as far as ever from freedom.

And what about the three Americans being held by the FARC? It is clear that they feel abandoned by their leaders, and consequently by the American public, as a result of the silence of the Bush administration.

High time for ending negotiations? I think not.

If the blood of the prisoners of FARC is shed, only then will the Uribe administration understand that military might and intimidation multiply violence instead of eliminate it. I hope and pray it doesn't get to that point.

Meeting with Aviva

Tomorrow I become more responsible than ever by driving a rental car to Boston to visit Aviva Chomsky, fellow curmudgeon when it comes to critiquing U.S. involvement in Colombia, and a heroic woman besides. She is helping us quite a bit by being present for supporting us simply in spirit, let alone the other practical knowledge and experience she has garnered through her various trips to Colombia, and consequently making herself available to us to talk about it. I hope she will sell me a copy of the book that she's written recently on Cuban politics, history, and culture: I owe it to my grandfather's father, the Cuban chef, and my grandfather's grandfather, the barber. I also owe it to that old tradition of Spanish Catholics on my Father's side who have tenderly and carefully worked their land in Spain for over a hundred years. Perhaps someday I can thank them personally for it. Since my plans for after high school involved living in a cabin in Pennsylvania with three home-schooled girls instead of working in mi familia's fields in the Toledo area of Spain, I suppose I really need to get there sometime soon and tell them I appreciate what they are doing for the family, the land, and for Spanish tradition.

If you get a chance to look at Aviva's writings, they are well worth the time I think you'll find. Latin and South American immigration is a subject that too few are writing about, and it seems to me that more intellectuals could be cultivating a rich tradition of family-shared farming traditions and agrarian fascination and respect for place and land which are to be found in the study of folks like my ancestors.

Thank you Aviva.

June Mix '08 (Disc Two)

(Image by Justin Kimball)

1. J. Tillman - Steel on Steel
2. Colour Revoult - What Will Come of Us?
3. The Kinks - Strangers
4. The Stills-Young Band - Long May You Run
5. Jets to Brazil - Sea Anemone
6. Laura Gibson - Black is the Color of My True Love's Hair
7. Meg Baird, Helena Espvall, Sharron Kraus - Barbry Ellen
8. A.A. Bondy - Of the Sea
9. Bonnie "Prince" Billy - For Every Field There's a Mole
10. Tyler Ramsey - These Days
11. Billy Bragg - Birds and Ships (W. Guthrie)
12. Sufjan Stevens - The Lord God Bird (from NPR)
13. Phosphorescent - Be Dark Night
14. Gary Higgins - Thicker Than a Smokery
15. The Weakerthans - Bigfoot
16. Sonna - Smile
17. Fleet Foxes - Drops in the River
18. Peter and the Wolf - Where Summer Goes

(Download Here)

June Mix '08 (Disc One)

(Image by David Hilliard)

1. Elyse - House (Featuring Neil Young)
2. Joni Mitchell - Cactus Tree
3. A.A. Bondy - Witness Blues (Daytrotter Session)
4. Pure Horsehair- Mama Did That
5. The Band - Up on Cripple Creek
6. J. Tillman - Trouble's Always Free
7. Bob Dylan - Tomorrow is a Long Time
(Live at the NYC Town Hall - 4.12.63)
8. David Falcone - Lullaby for Lauren
9. Jackson C. Frank - Don't Look Back
10. Bosque Brown - Fine Lines
11. Megafaun - Drains
12. Sibylle Baier - Tonight
13. Peggy Honeywell - Face Reader
14. Syd Matters - Nobody Told Me
15. Blind Willie McTell - I Got to Cross the River of Jordan
16. Ben and Bruno - I'm Awakened
17. Bowerbirds - Human Hands
18. Richard and Linda Thompson - Down Where the Drunkards Roll
19. Hayden - Weight of the World
20. Peter and the Wolf - How I Wish
21. Fleet Foxes - Red Squirrel/Sun Rises

(Download Here)

Handala

A few friends of mine from Eastern University have finished a film they have been busy working on for quite some time now. They have decided to call the film Handala:

"Handala is an Arabic word that roughly translates to bitterness in English. More importantly, Handala is the name of a famous Palestinian cartoon originally created by a Palestinian refugee named Naji al-Ali. Handala has become an important symbol in Palestine--most directly of the Palestinian refugee crisis. Handala has also become an important symbol in the popular Palestinian nonviolent movement."




(See Adam's Blog Yallah Handala for more information on the film)

The story of the Palestinian people is, as far as my imagination and mind can construe, the most devastating example of the failure of states to create or maintain any sort of peace apart from violence and organized execution, since the failure of diplomacy and imagination which culminated in the use of the first atomic bomb. From a theological perspective, The Palestinian crisis is the foremost white elephant in the world's room, so to speak, that cries out against the soteriological nature of the state to produce its own meta-narrative, which in turn, is the basis for state-based violence and institutionalized crimes against humanity. As Cavanaugh writes in Torture and Eucharist, "Much of contemporary Christian thinking on church and state is intent on limiting the power of the state, but in fact adopts Hegel’s soteriology of the state as peacemaker for the conflicts inherent in civil society." As long as the myth of the state as peacemaker exists within the folds of civil society and the Church, peace is intangible.

Being truthful to each other about the state of our world and our communities, accepting with humility, the lack of simple solutions or even the possession of knowledge capable to move in constructive and responsible ways, can begin a process of reversing the inborn arrogance and denial of responsibility assumed by an unconscious adoption of the schizophrenic nature of our state's psychological character: simultaneously believing in freedom and the right of the hegemonic nation-state to direct this freedom, for other nations and peoples, in ways which it sees fit. And as the state continues to believe in its own sovereignty and ability to resolve the complex problems it has created, we must remember that it is not the nations who control and define history.