Some people these days say “Soros” but mean “Rothschild,” the way Dostoyevsky did:
Something that is very small for Rothschild is enormous for me, and as to the gain or profit, it is not only at the roulette table that people keep winning and snatching things away from one another….[1]
They must all work like beasts of burden and amass money like Jewish usurers….[2]
“Then, in fifty or maybe seventy years, the grandson of the first Vater last has a really substantial amount of capital to turn over to his son, who turns it over to his, and so on, for five or six generations, when the descendants may be a Baron Rothschild, or Hoppe and Co…â€[3]
It was some Jew from Frankfurt; he had remained at my elbow all the time, and I believe had occasionally given me some advice on how to play….[4]
Oh, I never had any pity for those fools, never, nor have I now—I say it with pride! Why isn’t he a Rothschild himself? Whose fault is it that he hasn’t got Rothschild’s millions? ….[5]
Wealth yes, but not on the Rothschild scale; an honourable family, but one never distinguished in any way….[6]
Ganya was annoyed with Ptitsyn because his brother-in-law did not set out to become a Rothschild. [7]
But for “Soros” to mean “Rothschild,” is silly, because, Soros is such a peon, in terms of global reach, a word like “Zuckerberg” would be more appropriate. Yet neither Soros nor Zuckerberg have (yet) an empire whose administration is based on nepotism–unlike Baron Rothschild (and unlike Donald Trump).
NOTES
[1] Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. Игрок, Igrok. (The Gambler.) 1867. Translated by Andrew R. MacAndrew. NY: Bantam Classics. 1964. II, p. 29.
[2] Dostoyevsky, Игрок, Igrok. (The Gambler.) IV, p. 43.
[3] Dostoyevsky, Игрок, Igrok. (The Gambler.) IV, p. 44.
[4] Dostoyevsky, Игрок, Igrok. (The Gambler.) XIV, p. 145.
[5] Dostoyevsky, ИдиоÌÑ‚ (The Idiot) 1869. UK: Translated by Alan Myers. Oxford World Classics. 1992. III, v, p. 414.
[6] Dostoyevsky, ИдиоÌÑ‚ (The Idiot) IV, i, p. 487.
[7] Dostoyevsky, ИдиоÌÑ‚ (The Idiot) IV, i, p. 490.
As an average American I was stirred by Molly K. McKew’s January 1 piece in Politico “Putin’s Real Long Gameâ€; as a foreign policy amateur, however, I can but respond by offering half-thoughts accompanied by a scattered set of quotations on things previously read. I urge everyone to please read McKew’s article before browsing anything I have to say about it below.
UPDATE: It looks like Quinta Jurecic at LawFareBlog.com beat me by a month-and-a-week on the whole Bullshit meme. Below I apply it to Russia’s disinformation campaigns, while she applies it the disinformation campaigns of President Trump.
INTRODUCTION
In a bar in Seville in April 2014, shortly after the Orange Revolution, I had a conversation with a Ukrainian who was curious about American perspectives. The point I made was my belief, then, that the majority of Americans generally supported an independent Ukraine and generally opposed Putin’s policies, but that Americans also felt no urgency or passion or enthusiasm over the issue because most Americans feel powerless over any of their government’s actions concerning foreign policy.
I. WHERE I AGREE WITH MCKEW
I agree with McKew’s article that the Russian Federation is (and has been) engaged in a hardcore information war against the United States for quite some time and that Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election is a mere symptom of this much longer campaign. If war exists, then by definition, dialogue between the two sides does not exist,[1] and, as Reuters reported on December 21, “The Kremlin said on Wednesday almost all communications channels between Russia and the United States have been frozen,†although, “the U.S. State Department disputed the statement.†[2] Such an absence of dialogue has been articulated in the East by Tolstoy and in the West by Isaiah Berlin:
It used to be dreadfully difficult to talk when we were left alone. It was the labor of Sisyphus. As soon as we thought of something to say and said it, we had again to be silent, devising something else. There was nothing to talk about. All that could be said about the life that awaited us, our arrangements and plans, had been said, and what was there more? Now if we had been animals we should have known that speech was unnecessary; but here on the contrary it was necessary to speak, and there was nothing to say, because we were not occupied with what finds vent in speech.[3]
Sometimes the rot has gone too deep, and the members of the decadent society collapse into a kind of second barbarism, the ‘barbarism’ not of youth or of ‘the senses’, but of ‘reflection’––a kind of senility and impotence, when each man lives in his own egotistic, anxiety-ridden world, unable to communicate or co-operate with his fellows. This is the situation in which men, although ‘they still physically throng together, like live wild beasts in a deep solitude of spirit and will, scarcely any two of them able to agree, since each follows his own pleasure or caprice’.[4]
As an amateur, I believe an information war such as this calls on Americans to, among other things, rigorously study the dynamics of dialogue as theorized by Martin Buber in the West and Mikhail Bakhtin in the East.
An information war does not imply an absence of violence. Nonetheless, whether or not the current campaign is also a traditional war of blood-and-treasure, particularly with regard to the front of Eastern Europe, I agree with McKew that in this war the principle weapon of the enemy dissolves all distinctions between truth and falsity. As McKew sees it:
What both administrations fail to realize is that the West is already at war, whether it wants to be or not. It may not be a war we recognize, but it is a war. This war seeks, at home and abroad, to erode our values, our democracy, and our institutional strength; to dilute our ability to sort fact from fiction, or moral right from wrong; and to convince us to make decisions against our own best interests.
Yes!––particularly “to dilute our ability to sort fact from fiction,†or as McKew puts it later, “subversion rather than domination…. not about creating an alternative truth, but eroding our basic ability to distinguish truth at allâ€â€“–this is the thesis to Harry Frankfurt’s 1986 essay “On Bullshit.†Frankfurt pointed out that bullshit is a special species of non-truth and that bullshitting is far more dangerous than lying. Why? Because a liar must have some regard for the truth––for that is the thing the liar tries to hide––while the bullshitter has absolutely no regard for the truth. The dangers of non-Russian-made bullshit were witnessed in the U. S. housing market crash of 2008. Why? Because bullshit is an acid that corrodes our social ontology—it eats away at what McKew refers to as our “security architectureâ€â€“–and in this war Russia produces a lot of bullshit.[5]
In particular, Russia seeks to erode any desire we in the West may have to distinguish fact from fiction with regard to the war itself. The Russian psyche, however, is itself well adapted to such conditions, and has been for a long time. Even before phrases like “reflex control†and “multi-vector policy†became standard in the Kremlin, one finds, for example in the play The Trouble with Reason (1823), the character of Chatsky who admits: “The more you think about it, the more you’re overwhelmed.â€[6] Lemontov has a character who confesses:
I lied, but I wanted to infuriate him. Contradiction is, with me, an innate passion; my entire life has been nothing but a chain of sad and frustrating contradictions to heart or reason. The presence of an enthusiast envelops me with midwinter frost, and I think that frequent commerce with an inert phlegmatic individual would have made of me a passionate dreamer. [7]
And as a young Tolstoy observed from fellow soldiers: “When we don’t think we don’t feel. When a man thinks, it is the worse for him.â€[8]
II. WHERE I DISAGREE WITH MCKEW
For McKew:
“…. it haunted me, this idea that modern revolutionaries no longer felt some special affinity with the West. Was it the belief in collective defense that was weakening, or the underlying certitude that Western values would prevail? … It matters deeply that the current generation of global revolutionaries and reformers, like my Ukrainian friend, no longer see themselves as fighting for us or our ideals.â€
While I agree with McKew that Russia seeks to wage war “until we are broken as they perceive themselves to be,†and that “Putin has launched a kind of global imperialist insurgency,†I do not agree that the best way to engage the enemy (besides traditional hard power) is to cheerlead “Western valuesâ€â€“–not when there is scant historical, political, anthropological evidence or indications that Western values are valued by a substantial majority in the East.[9] Yes, much of the current war takes place on Russia’s western frontier—right where East meets West—but more often than not East does not equal West, even in peacetime. The bear knows how the handle the cold in winter:
Civilization has made man, if not always more bloodthirsty, at least more viciously, more horribly bloodthirsty….[10]
The basis of authority is bodily violence…. Government authority, even if it does suppress private violence, always introduces into the life of men fresh forms of violence, which tend to become greater and greater in proportion to the duration and strength of the government…. That has always been necessary, and has become more and more necessary with the increased diffusion of education among the masses, with the improved communication between people of the same and of different nationalities. It has become particularly indispensable now in the face of communism, socialism, anarchism, and the labor movement generally. Governments feel that it is so, and strengthen the force of their disciplined armies.
The fact that in America the abuses of authority exist in spite of the small number of their troops not only fails to disprove this position, but positively confirms it. In America there are fewer soldiers than in other states. That is why there is nowhere else so little oppression of the working classes, and no country where the end of the abuses of government and of government itself seems so near. Of late as the combinations of laborers gain in strength, one hears more and more frequently the cry raised for the increase of the army, though the United States are not threatened with any attack from without. The upper classes know that an army of fifty thousand will soon be insufficient, and no longer relying on Pinkerton’s men, they feel that the security of their position depends on the increased strength of the army….[11]
All men, then, bound together by state organization, through the responsibility of their acts on one another, the peasant soldier on the nobleman or merchant who is his officer, and the officer on the nobleman who has been appointed governor, the governor on the nobleman or son of an official who is minister, the minister on the member of the royal family who occupies the post of Tzar, and the Tzar again on all these officials, noblemen, merchants, and peasants. But that is not all. Besides the fact that men get rid of the sense of responsibility for their actions in this way, they lose their moral sense of responsibility also, by the fact that in forming themselves into a state organization they persuade themselves and each other so continually, and so indefatigably, that they are not all equal, but “as the stars apart,” that they come to believe it genuinely themselves. Thus some are persuaded that they are not simple people like everyone else, but special people who are to be specially honored. It is instilled into another set of men by every possible means that they are inferior to others, and therefore must submit without a murmur to every order given them by their superiors…. [12]
All the revolutions in history are only examples of the more wicked seizing power and oppressing the good. In declaring that if their authority did not exist the more wicked would oppress the good, the ruling authorities only show their disinclination to let other oppressors come to power who would like to snatch it from them.[13]
Yet even if people from the East believed in Western values, that doesn’t mean those values would prosper in the East. As McKew points out, a non-Soviet Russia attempting democracy since 1992 was suddenly interrupted by a coup in 1999. But should we in the West be disheartened that that democracy was overthrown by a quick three-month operation or should we be disinterestedly sober when we realize that Russia had only seven years to practice democratic principles?
After the Cold War, some in the East may have sought “some special affinity†with Western values, particularly, “the belief in collective defense,†but in 2016 most of that sounds like the jive talk of the now dissolved Project for the New American Century. There is no doubt that when we fail to distinguish truth from fiction, we must consider ourselves ignorant. And when we are ignorant we are childlike and must resort to rhetorical tropes to understand the things we are ignorant of. We rely on tropes for understanding our counterparts because dialogue between us has failed.[14] I believe in the traditional ideals (the social ontology) espoused by the United States, but those ideas may not be for everyone, and I believe in the childlike trope of Russia being part of the East and America being part of the West. Hitler harnessed the trope that socialism was the work of Jews and Russians, while today many non-Hitlers spread the trope that democracy––or the English Rule of Law, or transparency that combats corruption (take your pick)––may be the habit of Jews and Americans but is not the preferred practice of many in the East. In The Trouble with Reason Chatsky asks:
Where are the fathers of our fatherland who are
the models you insist we must acknowledge?
Surely not these who by robbery made themselves rich?
Who got around the law through family and acquaintance?[15]
Yes, as McKew points out, Russia has the second most powerful army; but its population (according to some) has also been drastically decreasing. Nonetheless, as Tolstoy once pointed out: “The strength of Russia†remains “simplicity and obstinacy.â€[16] While Syria and Georgia may all be part of the same war, is it really, as McKew sees it, “subversion rather than domination,†or just the old idea that Russia is always looking for a southern port?[17] Either way we in the West, particularly my fellow Americans, need to pay more attention to the situation and thank investigators like Molly K. McKew for reporting from the front lines.
NOTES
[1] This is an old idea in the East as well as the West. See Bhagavad Gita, III, xx; Caesar, Gallic Wars V, xxviii and xxxi.
[3] Tolstoy, Leo. Крейцерова Ñоната. (The Kreutzer Sonata.) 1889. Translated by Louise & Aylmer Maude. § X.
[4] Berlin, Vico and Herder: Two Studies in the History of Ideas. NY: Viking. 1976. p. 63.
[5] John Searle’s propositions for social ontology theory start with the premise that one cannot intend to play a language game with (or against) another if that other refuses (does not intend) to play that game, which is what the bullshitter does:
A way to come to see this point is to ask oneself, what is the difference between regarding an object as an instance of linguistic communication and not so regarding it? One crucial difference is this. When I take a noise or a mark on a piece of paper to be an instance of linguistic communication, as a message, one of the things I must assume is that the noise or mark as a natural phenomenon like the wind in the trees or a stain on the paper, I exclude it from the class of linguistic communication, even though the noise or mark may be indistinguishable from spoken or written words. Furthermore, not only must I assume the noise or mark to have been produced as a result of intentional behavior, but I must also assume that the intentions are of a very special kind peculiar to speech acts…. (Speech Acts: an Essay in the Philosophy of Language. Cambridge UP. 1969. § 1.4, pp. 16–17; see also 42–43)
Meaningful utterances are those where the speaker intentionally imposes conditions of satisfaction on the utterances. But because the utterances themselves are the conditions of satisfaction of the intention to make those utterances, we can say that speaker meaning consists of the intentional imposition of conditions of satisfaction on conditions of satisfaction. This, I argue, is the essence of speaker meaning. The condition of satisfaction of the non-meaningful intentional utterance is simply that an utterance should be produced. But if the utterance is to be meaningful it must itself have further conditions of satisfaction, such as truth conditions or fulfillment conditions. It is the intentional imposition of these further semantic conditions of satisfaction onto the conditions of satisfaction already present in the intentional utterance that constitutes speaker meaning….
We create money, government, private property, and marriage, for example, by representations that have the double direction of fit….They are the glue that holds human society together, because they carry the special type of deontology that makes society possible…. (“Language and social ontology,†Theory and Society. Vol. 37. No. 5. (October 2008.) 443–59 at 447, 451, 452)
We make something the case by representing it as being the case…. Intentionality essentially involves the representation of conditions of satisfaction….†(“Language and social ontology.†445, 452)….
The necessary conditions of a speaker’s performing a fully consummated definite reference in the utterance of an expression are:
There must exist one and only one object to which the speaker’s utterance of the expression applies (a reformulation of the axiom of existence) and
The hearer must be given sufficient means to identify the object from the speaker’s utterance of the expression (a reformulation of the axiom of identification). (Speech Acts § 4.4, p. 82)
[6] Griboyedov, Aleksandr. Гope om yma. (The Trouble with Reason.) 1823. Translated by Frank R. Reeve. IV.
[7] Lermontov, Mikhail. “кнÑжна.†(“Princess Mary.â€) 1840. Translated by Vladimir Nabokov with Dmitri Nabokov.
[8] Tolstoy, Sebastopol. 1855. Translated by Frank D. Millet. § I.
It is an idealization—to put it mildly—to call coerced behavior agreement and a system an institution when the majority of relevant individuals has been removed from the system…. The majority of individuals, those occurring in the other groups, have a different perception. Usually such individuals take the institution for granted, as a part of their natural environment which they cannot influence. They do not perceive themselves as involved in the collective ascription of new statuses and power, not to speak of the “construction†of the institution. At best they can be said to participate in maintaining the institution in the sense of not actively seeking to destruct it. (“Searle on Social Institutions: A Critique.†Dialectics. Vol. 56. No. 3. (2002.) 195–211 at 206, 210)
[10] Dostoevsky, ЗапиÑки из подпольÑ. (Notes from the Underground.) 1864. Translated by Andrew R. MacAndrew. I, vii.
[11] Tolstoy, ЦарÑтво Божие внутри ваÑ, (The Kingdom of God is within You.) 1894. Translated by Constance Garnett. 1894. VII.
[12] Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is within You. XII.
[13] Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God is within You. X.
[14] Berlin, Vico and Herder: Two Studies in the History of Ideas 103–08; Vico, Giambattista. Vico: the First New Science. 1725. Translated by Leon Pompa. Cambridge UK: Cambridge UP. 2002. I, xiii, [¶ 42–43] pp. 33–34; [The Third] New Science: Principles of the New Science Concerning the Common Nature of Nations. Third Edition. Translated by David Marsh. NY: Penguin. 1999. “Idea of the Work†[¶ 4] 3; I, § 2, xxxvii, [¶ 186], p. 89; I, § 2, lxviii, [¶ 206], p. 92; II, § 2, iv, [¶ 408], p. 162.
[17] “The drive of the Russians for a warm-water port, whether under the Tsarists or the Communists, is a fundamental geographic expression of Russian foreign policy.†(Russell H. Fifield and G. Etzel Pearcy. Geopolitics in Principle and Practice. NY: Ginn & Co. 1944. p. 5)
Each of the five sections of Les caves du Vatican (Lafcadio’s Adventures) begins with an epigram. The fifth section, “Lafcadio” begins with an epigram from Conrad’s Lord Jim (1900),[1] written fifteen years prior. Gide writes:
His beaver hat was pulled down over his eyes and kept out the landscape; he was smoking dried juniper, after the Algerian fashion, in a little clay pipe and letting his thoughts wander at their will.[1]
Now compare Lord Jim:
When he moved, a skeleton seemed to sway loose in his clothes; his walk was mere wandering, and he was given to wander thus around the engine-room skylight, smoking, without relish, doctored tobacco in a brass bowl at the end of a cherrywood stem four feet long, with the imbecile gravity of a thinker evolving a system of philosophy from the hazy glimpse of a truth.[3]
On the other hand, Dostoevsky’s character of Makar Devushkin can do anything but think when he puffs his pipe:
Frankly, sweet, I can sit with them, listen to what is said, even smoke a pipe like them, but when they begin to argue about all sorts of lofty maters, I just keep quiet. Yes, dear, I’m sure that both you and I, we’d have to keep quiet most of the time. I turn out to be a real, poor fool, and I am ashamed of myself sitting there all evening, trying to put in a word on those lofty subjects, but never finding that wretched word! And I’m sorry that I’m not up to them, Varinka, that, as the saying goes, “a man can be fully grown and still have no mind of his own.†For what do you think I do with myself in my spare time? Well, I just sleep like a fool. Ah, it’d be better if, instead of wasting my time sleeping, I could do something useful—sit down and write, for instance. It’d be good for me, and perhaps of some use to theirs. Why, my dear, you can’t imagine how much they get for it, God forgive them![4]
So what was Gide getting at? Why did he feel the need to rewrite the passage from Conrad? What was the basis for the Frenchman’s anxiety of influence?
[2] Gide, Les caves du Vatican. (Lafcadio’s Adventures) “V. Lafcadio,†i, 178–79. The quotation runs:
“There is only one remedy! One thing alone can cure us from being ourselves! …†“Yes; strictly speaking, the question is not how to get cured, but how to live.â€
–Ch. XX
[3] Conrad, Joseph. Lord Jim. 1900. Lord Jim: The Authoritative Text. Edited by Thomas C. Moser. NY: Norton. 1968.  III, p. 15–16.
[4] Dostoevsky, Poor Folk. 1846. In Dostoevsky – Three Short Novels. Translated by Andrew R. MacAndrew. Bantam Books, NY. 1966. “June 26,†p. 70.
As Signore Machiavelli puts it, a successful politician requires the optics of religious sincerity. That is, princes, if they are to possess any longevity, must appear to be religious…. [2]
Could this mean that in order for a book to become well-read, nothing is more crucial than for it to appear to be virtuous? Wouldn’t that mean books which appear virtuous must not be (or must not appear to be) self-published? A virtuous book should also at least appear to be written by the person claiming to be the author, no matter who actually wrote it….
Sons and daughters of royalty may wander to and fro about the earth as prodigal progeny, but true regents do not drift. Real rulers hunt for game; for unlike wandering children, regents have definite goals in mind. They pursue a prize. If books can be sought and found by regents, a virtuous regent will find a well-read book. But servants and royal children worm through words and thumb through pages looking for things that interest themselves in the moment, never for things that might gain interest over time….[3]
For every coupling of author and reader, one must look through Lenin’s eyes and Tully’s logic and ask: who benefits from this relationship? Who wields the most power? Deep may call unto deep, but the depths are apparent even on the surface—for the answers abide in the way the questions are constructed….[4]
’Tis neither original nor profound to observe that some of the least helpful books sit on shelves marked “self-help.†But I want to read (or dare I say write?) a book whose virtue is its selfless-helpfulness….
There’s a reason why the Bible calls it the Book of Acts, not the Book of Audiences. A century ago, Americans wanted a deity who acted, not one who simply listened. But today I want a book that acts upon me as a reader. I’m tired of being a reader who acts against authors.[5]
NOTES
[1] Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. Игрок, Igrok. (The Gambler.) 1867. Translated by Andrew R. MacAndrew. NY: Bantam Classics. 1964. VI, p. 59.
[2] Machiavelli, Niccolò. Il Principe. (The Prince.) in Niccolò Machiavelli – The Prince: a New Translation, Backgrounds, Interpretations, Peripherica. Translated by Robert M. Adams. NY: W. W. Norton. 1977:
Nothing is more necessary than to seem to have this [religious] virtue. Men in general judge more by the sense of sight than by the sense of touch, because everyone can see but only a few can test by feeling. Everyone sees what you seem to be, few know what you really are; and those few do not dare take a stand against the general opinion, supported by the majesty of the government. In the actions of all men, and especially of princes who are not subject to a court of appeal, we must always look to the end….. (“Ch. XVIII. The Way Princes Should Keep Their Word,†p. 51)
But when these afterwards began to speak only in accordance with the wishes of the princes, and their falsity was discovered by the people, then men became incredulous, and disposed to disturb all good institutions. It is therefore the duty of princes and heads of republics to uphold the foundations of the religion of their countries, for then it is easy to keep their people religious, and consequently well conducted and united. And therefore everything that tends to favor religion (even though it were believed to be false) should be received and availed of to strengthen it; and this should be done the more, the wiser the rulers are, and the better they understand the natural course of things. Such was, in fact, the practice observed by sagacious men; which has given rise to the belief in the miracles that are celebrated in religions, however false they may be….
With the line—“everything that tends to favor religion (even though it were believed to be false)â€â€”can this apply to all lies, superstitions, propaganda, bullshit? But see also Machiavelli’s maxim on Rome:
Nor can there be a greater proof of its decadence than to witness the fact that the nearer people are to the Church of Rome, which is the head of our religion, the less religious are they…. (Discourses on The First Ten Books of Titus Livius in Niccolò Machiavelli – The Prince: a New Translation, Backgrounds, Interpretations, Peripherica, “Book I – Chapter 12†p. 103)
Compare Poggio:
The worst men in the world live in Rome, and worse than the others are the priests, and the worst of the priests they make cardinals, and the worst of all the cardinals is made Pope. (Braccidini, Poggio. Facetiae [Demenichi] in The Facetiae of Poggio: and other Medieval Story–Tellers. Edited and translated by Edward Storer. London: Dutton. 1928. V, p. 37)
But comport Ben Jonson who says, opposite of Machiavelli, that we tend to trust our ears over our eyes:
We praise the things we hear with much more willingness than those we see, because we envy the present and reverence the past; thinking ourselves instructed by the one, and overlaid by the other. (Timber: or Discoveries(1640))
Now compare Jonson to Oscar Wilde, for whom “The first duty in life is to be as artificial as possible. What the second duty is no one has as yet discovered.†For Wilde, our eyes have priority over our ears, though our ears are quite discriminating:
When people talk to us about others they are usually dull. When they talk to us about themselves they are nearly always interesting, and if one could shut them up, when they become wearisome, as easily as one can shut up a book of which one has grown wearied, they would be perfect absolutely. (“The Critic as Artist†(1891))
A prince will appear religious by not talking about how religious he is; therefore, a well-read book will appear virtuous by not referencing its own virtue.
[3] Job 1:07, 2:02; Proverbs 2:04, 25:02, 25:11; Matthew 7:07, Luke 11:09 and 15:11–32; Pirkei Avot V, xxvii.
[4] Psalms 42:07; “The problem inherent in the surface of things, and only in the surface of things, is the heart of things.†Strauss, Leo. “Introduction.†Thoughts on Machiavelli. 1958. Quoted in Niccolò Machiavelli – The Prince: a New Translation, Backgrounds, Interpretations, Peripherica p. 183.
[5] See James Bissett Pratt who found that Americans weren’t interested in any affirmative knowledge about a deity, but only in what a deity can do:
But one result of the answers as a whole that seems fairly clear is that God’s “attributes†play a comparatively unimportant part in the minds of religious people, and that His relation to individuals is the really important factor in the concept. People are chiefly interested not in what God is, but in what He can do. Two thirds of my respondents describe Him as “Father,†“Friend,†“Companion,†“the ally of my ideals,†or by some equivalent expression; while only 12 thought it worthwhile to mention the fact that He is omnipotent, 9 called Him Creator, 3 mentioned Him as the Trinity, and one as the “Great First Cause.†Doubtless most of my respondents, if asked whether God were all these latter things, would respond Yes; the significant fact is that these attributes play so unimportant a part in their conception of Him that when asked to define that conception these attributes never enter their minds. Professor Leuba seems to be right in the main when he says that God is used rather than understood….
While the concept of God is, however, in one sense decidedly pragmatic, it would be a mistake to suppose that the ends for which the religious consciousness wishes to use God are chiefly ordinary utilitarian ends—such as protector, “meat purveyor,†etc. Unless my respondents are very unusual people, the chief use for which God is desired is distinctly social rather than material. God is valued as an end in Himself rather than as a means to other ends. Most people want God for the same reason for which they want friends, and His relation to them is exactly that of a very dear and very lovable and very sympathizing friend. It is quite naive, no doubt, but perfectly simple. Thus 53 out of 73 of my respondents affirm that God is as real to them as an earthly friend. Doubtless some of the 53 answered as they did in a purely conventional spirit, but that this was not the case with more than a small proportion is shown by the general tone of the answers to the other questions. The God whom most people want and whom many people have is a very real and sympathizing friend. Like other friends he is, to be sure, not only an end in Himself, but a means to other ends; He can help one to many things that one wants. These things, however, are as a rule not material benefits. They are chiefly of three kinds: comfort in trouble, hope for the future, and assistance in striving after righteousness. (The Psychology of Religious Belief. NY: Macmillan. 1908. pp. 263–64)
Compare Pratt’s line––“A very real and sympathizing friendâ€â€”to Walter Jackson Bate on Coleridge for whom the former asks:
What was wrong with occasionally prizing literature when it was simply a “friendâ€â€“–a friend that could comfort while it informed and uplifted? The great English poets could not be viewed (at least not yet) in exactly that way. Only the best were studied—and the best part written by that best. Around them was an inevitable association of demand. In this respect they offered no essential contrast to his other reading—the reading in Greek literature and philosophy, the Neoplatonists, the metaphysical writers generally, the skeptics, the modern writers on science and epistemology. (Coleridge. NY: Macmillan. 1968. pp. 9–10)
That is to say: Coleridge hunted for virtuous books in the same spirit one does when searching across a lifetime for a true friend.
In the Marines, “you’re not allowed to say ‘I’ because you’re taught to mistrust your own individuality….â€[i] But for the rest of us outside the military, does this mean we ought to always rely on the herd, run with the rabble, riot with the mob, keep camouflaged within the crowd?
When I played football, it was more sacrilegious to sit on your ass––or worse, your helmet––than to take a knee. Taking a knee used to be considered basic protocol.
No one ever fought a war just to fly a flag and sing a song.
Think of how many GIs got enemy kill shots in Iraq simply by kneeling?
Rodney King did a lot of kneeling in 1991:
What is this ritual of the national anthem but “nostalgia driven blindness?â€[ii] Nostalgia blinds us from the bad old days, and lets us get away from them by thinking that they were good; but those days were so bad we purposely forgot all about them.
Nostalgia allows citizens go through the motions to keep up appearances:
If the regime were to mold voting booths into the shape of slot machines, might I have more enthusiasm about this election?
The choice matters not; the tuna salad in the fridge will taste the same after Election Day as it did the day before.
But when will Elation Day arrive? Shouldn’t we instead dread that mark on the calends?
I see myself in the voting booth and know that I am not that voter:
“Should I or shouldn’t I? Should I acknowledge him? Admit that it is me? Or should I pretend I’m someone else, someone strikingly resembling me, and look completely indifferent?†Golyadkin asked himself in indescribable anguish. “Yes, that’s it: I’m not me and that’s all there is to it,†he thought, his eyes fixed on Andrei Filipovich as he took off his hat to him….[iv]
NOTES
[i] Vance, J. D. Hillbilly Nation: a Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis. NY: HarperCollins. 2016. p. 163.
[ii] Levin, Yuval. The Fractured Republic: Renewing America’s Social Contract in the Age of Individualism. NY: Basic Books. 2016. p. 103.
[iii] Tolstoy, Leo. A Calendar of Wisdom. Translated by Peter Sekirin. 1997. “September 28,†p. 284. Compare Milton, John. Paradise Lost, VIII, 79–84:
when they come to model Heaven
And calculate the stars, how they will wield
The mighty frame; how build, unbuild, contrive
To save appearances; how gird the sphere
With centric and eccentric scribbled o’er,
Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb
See also Owen Barfield, Saving the Appearances: a Study in Idolatry. Second Edition. Middletown, CN: Wesleyan UP. 1988. pp. 62–64, 123–24.
[iv] Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. The Double. 1846. In Dostoyevsky Notes from the Underground. Translated by Andrew R. MacAndrew. NY: Signet Classics 1961. pp. 151–52.
