Prayer

I recently spoke with someone very close to me concerning the subject of prayer.

I have relatively little traditional background when it comes to this aspect of the religious experience. As an adolescent, I regularly attended Hebrew school and Shabbat services, but because I could only pronounce, rather than actually understand Hebrew, prayer is something I’ve almost never authentically practiced in a formal setting or traditional manner.

Once, when I was six, I prayed really hard for my recently-deceased salamanders to come back to life. They remained limp and were subsequently flushed down the toilet by my mildly sympathetic parents. Since this was before my parents decided that, despite their apathy for organized religion, I should have some exposure to it, I’m still not sure who I was praying to.

The conversation took place over AIM. The basic question concerned how one could reconcile a desire to find refuge in prayer with 1. the reality that most prayers are not answered and 2. the absence of any apparent rhyme or reason as to why God would answer some prayers and not others. Out of respect for my interlocutor’s privacy, only my input is included here.

zNomadSun : prayer doesn’t have to include the assumption that someone or something specific is listening and putting your requests on a to-do list
zNomadSun : prayer is, or at least can be, taking the uncertainty and pure potentiality of the future into one’s hands, and submitting one’s hopes and wishes to the infinite and unpredictable forces that will bring it to pass
zNomadSun : because prayers aren’t answered in the same way as orders at a restaurant
zNomadSun : there isn’t a person at the controls of all activity in the universe intervening here-and-there because certain people figured out a way to ask him to

[she asks, in essence, how i think prayer does work, then]

zNomadSun : it doesn’t work; i think, that’s sort of the point i’m making — submitting a wish to the chaos of the universe isn’t going to change the universe’s mind about how to treat you, precisely because the universe doesn’t have a mind
zNomadSun : but rather, prayer is an admission of finitude and humility in the face of a world that is too complex for us to ever wholly grasp or understand, and a future that is always beyond our power to control
zNomadSun : we articulate our hopes, so that they might leave the pure interiority of our minds and come back to us with the worldly affirmation of the spoken word, and we ask that they will be fulfilled, because we know that they cannot be fulfilled through sheer force of will alone
zNomadSun : something else is required: grace
zNomadSun : every success has been achieved thanks in part to factors beyond the control and awareness of the individual who succeeded, and in recognizing that, we admit that we need the help of a power, or powers greater than ourselves, transcendent to human consciousness and intrinsically mysterious — thus, the heavy burden of pure responsibility is lifted from our shoulders, and we can take some solace in the very limitedness that once seemed to be the primary cause of our suffering
zNomadSun : and because we are human beings, always painting the world in the colors of human spirit, the mysterious unfolding of the present into the future stands in relation to us as a force that holds some share of human sentiments, and in constantly providing us with the material by which we synthesize the past with the ever-collapsing present (i.e. a pure, two-fold stream of fresh time and infinite possibility), it connects us to ourselves as creatures always hoping forward, as ekstases carving on surfboards of pure will inexorably down that inexhaustible temporal stream toward infinite) — and whatever we might find in this force of mysterious unfolding that calls out to us with an undeniable demand for deep, devotional regard as sacred, I see no reason to not also call God.
zNomadSun : or, that’s my perspective, anyway
zNomadSun : your mileage may vary

I haven’t taken the time to go back and analyze the extent to which these thoughts might be half-baked, unclear, or incoherent, but they felt valuable enough coming out to share with you.

Any comments appreciated.

A triumvirate of nerds philosophers dims the post-election afterglow…

Simon Critchley

“Obama’s politics is governed by an anti-political fantasy. It is the call to find common ground, [to] put aside our differences and achieve union. Obama’s politics is governed by a longing for unity, for community, for communion and the common good. The remedy to the widespread disillusion with Bush’s partisan politics is a reaffirmation of the founding act of the United States, the hope of the more perfect union expressed in the opening sentence of the US Constitution. It is a powerful moral strategy whose appeal to the common good attempts to draw a veil over the agonism and power relations constitutive of political life. The great lie of moralism in politics is that it attempts to deny the fact of power by concealing it under an anti-political veneer. At the same time, moralism engages in the most brutal and bruising political activity. But the reality of this activity is always disavowed along with any and all forms of partisanship. Moralistic politics is essentially hypocritical.

Yet, what is most hypocritical, of course, is the talk of change.”

Judith Butler

“…many of us “set aside” our concerns in order to enjoy the extreme un-ambivalence of this moment, risking an uncritical exuberance even when we know better. Obama is, after all, hardly a leftist, regardless of the attributions of “socialism” proffered by his conservative opponents. In what ways will his actions be constrained by party politics, economic interests, and state power; in what ways have they been compromised already? If we seek through this presidency to overcome a sense of dissonance, then we will have jettisoned critical politics in favor of an exuberance whose phantasmatic dimensions will prove consequential. Maybe we cannot avoid this phantasmatic moment, but let us be mindful about how temporary it is. If there are avowed racists who have said, “I know that he is a Muslim and a terrorist, but I will vote for him anyway,” there are surely also people on the left who say, “I know that he has sold out gay rights and Palestine, but he is still our redemption.”"

Slavoj Zizek

“Obama’s victory is not just another shift in the eternal parliamentary struggle for a majority, with all the pragmatic calculations and manipulations that involves. It is a sign of something more…A sign in which the memory of the long past of slavery and the struggle for its abolition reverberates; an event which now demonstrates a change; a hope for future achievements…The paradigmatic cynic tells you confidentially: ‘But don’t you see that it is all really about money/power/sex, that professions of principle or value are just empty phrases which count for nothing?’ What the cynics don’t see is their own naivety, the naivety of their cynical wisdom which ignores the power of illusions.

[But t]he true battle begins now…Nothing was decided with Obama’s victory, but it widens our freedom and thereby the scope of our decisions. No matter what happens, it will remain a sign of hope in our otherwise dark times, a sign that the last word does not belong to realistic cynics, from the left or the right.”

…and just for good measure, two journalists:

Christopher Hitchens

“The recognition of these obvious points should also alert us to a related danger, which is the cousinhood of euphoria and hysteria. Those who think that they have just voted to legalize Utopia (and I hardly exaggerate when I say this; have you been reading the moist and trusting comments of our commentariat?) are preparing for a disillusionment that I very much doubt they will blame on themselves. The national Treasury is an echoing, empty vault; our Russian and Iranian enemies are acting even more wolfishly even as they sense a repudiation of Bush-Cheney; the lines of jobless and evicted are going to lengthen, and I don’t think a diet of hope is going to cover it. Nor even a diet of audacity, though can you picture anything less audacious than the gray, safety-first figures who have so far been chosen by Obama to be on his team?”

and Eduardo Galeano

“Once President, will Obama, who supported the recent gift of $700 billion to the banking industry, continue the usual practice of privatizing profits while socializing losses?

I fear that he will, though I hope that he won’t.

Will Obama sign and abide by the Kyoto agreement, or will he continue to allow the biggest polluter on the planet to pollute with impunity? Will he govern for people, or for automobiles? Will he shift the devastating course of a way of life in which the few steal the destiny of the many?

I fear he won’t, though I hope he will.”

Yes We Can(nabis)!…and other ballot-related matters…

Voters approve marijuana law change
By David Abel, Boston Globe Staff / November 5, 2008

Voters yesterday overwhelmingly approved a ballot initiative to decriminalize possession of small amounts of marijuana, making getting caught with less than an ounce of pot punishable by a civil fine of $100. The change in the law means someone found carrying dozens of joints will no longer be reported to the state’s criminal history board.

With about 90 percent of the state’s precincts reporting last night, voters favored the Question 2 proposition 65 percent to 35 percent…

Source

…also, I guess some guy named Obama won some big political thing…?

Okay, in all seriousness (all the seriousness drunken blogging can muster, anyhow), I’m almost embarrassed by how thrilled I am with Obama’s victory. I teared up at multiple points during his victory speech and celebrated loudly in the streets of Boston. His platform is far from ideal and there is no doubt that he’ll keep us throwing large hunks of carrion into the cage of the beast we call the military-industrial complex. Nonetheless, I am also certain that his victory represents a major shift in the right direction for this country and, by virtue of the massive power it wields, human civilization.

A few thoughts on the speech: I think it was smart of Obama to say “so…just because you elected someone who speaks as well as I do doesn’t mean that we’re no longer strapped to a chair, about to be force-fed a massive financial shitsandwich drizzled with military quagmire dressing.” (Okay, that was a paraphrase). It was disappointing that he didn’t mention the poor. It was somewhat unnerving when he echoed Martin Luther King Jr.’s mountaintop speech (“we as a people will get there.”) The climax was absolutely brilliant.

Left: One-time Obamaniac Sheikh Yassin contemplates joining the Green Party, Right: Obama's Marxist ex-supporters try to drown the sorrows of betrayal

Also, in case none of you noticed, not once in his victory speech did Obama praise Allah or declare the end of history. He didn’t even give a shout-out to Huey Newton! I suppose Obama has four years to make good on his promise of a homosexual dictatorship of the Muslim proletariat, but I, for one, don’t have high hopes *cough*.

As for McCain’s concession speech, there’s an extent to which I’d echo the applause he seems to have gotten across the board. It was a sober and respectful admission of defeat, and his efforts to calm down his angry supporters was commendable. However, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the first big chunk of his speech was, in the nicest language possible, saying “okay black people, you can have this one on affirmative action, I have no problem taking one for the team and losing for the good of improving race relations.” Maybe this is just me being cynical, and yes, I have an a priori dislike (of great intensity!) for the Republican party. I also have a hard time forgetting so quickly the nature of the campaign McCain was running until last night.  But all residual loathing aside, something about this speech left a bad taste in my mouth.

I’ve heard a number of people point out that while Obama’s supporters cheered mildly at the mention of John McCain, McCain’s supporters booed and jeered when he name-dropped our new President-elect. At first I chalked this difference up to the fact that Obama’s crowd was celebrating a historic victory, while McCain’s was writhing in the bitter aftermath of a severe trouncing. However, when the spirit of procrastination led me to revisit the nomination acceptance speeches given at the conventions last August, I noticed the same difference. More evidence that Republicans are, on the whole, an unsavory group of people.

Last comment: aside from California’s heartbreaking approval of a ban on gay marriage, the biggest disappointment of this election was this majorly unwise statement from Ralph Nader:

“To put it very simply, he is our first African-American president…and we wish him well. But his choice, basically, is whether he is going to be Uncle Sam for the people of this country, or Uncle Tom for the giant corporations.”

 Nader’s use of the term “Uncle Tom” is extremely unfortunate for two reasons. The first is that it will be a permanent stain on his reputation; Nader and his supporters have spent eight years in exile from many progressive circles because of what happened in Florida in 2000. Now that progressives think their ideals have found salvation in Obama’s victory, Nader’s joy-killing observations regarding Obama’s centrism and professed support for so much of what the left stands against will easily be dismissed out of hand because, don’t you know?, he’s a racist! (or, at the very least, a bitter, mean-spirited old loser).  This clip was unbelievably painful to watch: 

The second reason is that the basic point he’s making is an important one, and if only phrased differently (and to different people, jesus) it could have helped incite some much needed post-election critical discussion about what Obama has promised, and what we must demand of him once he takes office. 

For those who are interested, you can read Nader’s open letter to Obama on the Nader-Gonzalez website.

Two Quotes on Politics

…there was a conviction—a well-founded one, moreover—of the futility of rationalizations and ratiocinations. In 1982 or 1983, in Foucault’s apartment, we were watching a televised report on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict; at one point one of the combatants (which side he was on is utterly unimportant) was invited to speak. Now this man spoke in terms quite different from the ones ordinarily encountered in political discussions: “I know only one thing,” this partisan said, “I want to win back the lands of my forefathers. This what I have wanted since my teens; I don’t know where this passion comes from, but there it is.” “There we have it at last,” Foucault said to me, “everything has been said, there’s nothing more to say.”

Each valorization of the will to power, or each discursive practice…is a prisoner of itself, and universal history is woven of nothing but such threads…

–Paul Veyne, The Final Foucault and His Ethics

I don’t know that it was always this way, but, for as long as I can remember, just as we move into the final weeks of the Presidential campaign the focus shifts to the undecided voters. “Who are they?” the news anchors ask. “And how might they determine the outcome of this election?”

Then you’ll see this man or woman— someone, I always think, who looks very happy to be on TV. “Well, Charlie,” they say, “I’ve gone back and forth on the issues and whatnot, but I just can’t seem to make up my mind!” Some insist that there’s very little difference between candidate A and candidate B. Others claim that they’re with A on defense and health care but are leaning toward B when it comes to the economy.

I look at these people and can’t quite believe that they exist. Are they professional actors? I wonder. Or are they simply laymen who want a lot of attention?

To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?”

To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.

–David Sedaris, Undecided

…but so much music wounded me [!]

My Saturday Evening Playlist: made with only the finest Aural Ingredients (via Youtube)

First 10

1. The Mahavishnu Orchestra – You Know, You Know (live)
2. Medeski, Martin, & Wood – Nocturne
3. John Zorn’s Masada – Gevurah (live)
4. Buckethead – Padmasana (live)
5. Gordian Knot – Rivers Dancing
6. Claude Debussy – Deux Arabesques No. 1 (Ichiro Nodaira)
7. Olivier Messiaen – Le Merle Noir
8. Shpongle – Connoisseur of Hallucination/…/Falling Awake
9. Toby Driver – 60 Metonymies (live)
10. Maurice Ravel – Kaddish (Daniel Hope)

….

National Funk Day

It occurs to me that there are only four US holidays in honor of a single individual: President’s Day (which is George Washington’s birthday), Columbus Day, Martin Luther King Day and Christmas. Not that I’m one to complain about a day off, but doesn’t Columbus Day sit uneasily with the other three?

Follow-up question: if you could pick someone to honor with a holiday instead of Columbus, who would it be? My vote: Bootsy Collins. Think about it.

Post-midterm Linkshare

Patrick Cockburn on the Surge

Once again, Chomsky advises swing state residents to vote Democratic.

The Washington Post says al-Qaeda has endorsed John McCain.

Zizek has been doing public debates as part of his book tour for Violence. Here is video of his discussion with Steven Lukes, and here you can listen to the audio of his meeting with Bernard-Henri Levy (this is the better of the two).

A convenient youtube playlist of Derrida interviews.

I’m not not licking millipedes: tripping lemurs. Think this clip is real, or just a clever youtube overdub?

Question for the religious, non-religious defenders of religious belief, and people who just really dislike Richard Dawkins…

If you knew an intelligent, open-minded young admirer of the New Atheism heroes (Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris…), and could only give them one book to help them develop a more sophisticated appreciation of religion/God/etc., what would you choose?

I should probably point out that this isn’t for me — I’m not religious and I find the arguments advanced by Dawkins, et al. glib and generally uninteresting.

Related question: if you’re a defender of the atheist position, but dislike the recent bevy of bestsellers on the subject, what book do you wish people were reading instead of, say, The God Delusion?

Friday Night Freewrite

Fixed Cycle

“There’s good self-consciousness, and then there’s toxic, paralyzing, raped-by-psychic-Bedouins self-consciousness.”
–David Foster Wallace

He can only see the pattern. First a piece of the off-white expanse, and then the black zig-zags snaking upward, and at last a sliver of his face in the faded gold foil that descends in a straight-edged column over every fourth line. The wallpaper is old, peeling and viscerally tacky, like those scattered extant roller discos, or David Lee Roth. He turns his head slightly, catching himself in the gaze of his left eye in that foil, and pupil-to-pupil a feedback loop of reflexivity builds behind his brow an infinitely dense black ball of gravity, a deep, draining helplessness.

8:30am, fifth snooze, pinned to the sheets by dread, sleepless from a growing adrenaline feed, an anxious stomach. He knows it’s too late to show up on time, knew as he watched the 10-minute intervals on the alarm clock greet his tired eyes in fluid succession when the last moment for a right-habit day would sneak by. Suddenly, the invisible electric shocks traverse him head-to-toe at infinite speed, and he leaps out of bed, frantically collecting a watch, cleanest shirt, khaki pants, cell phone, wallet…

Dried dots of toothpaste spittle form a lopsided heart constellation around his eye-in-the-foil, and as he traces his gaze around the invisible lines of its implied contours, he notices hot wetness glide down the sides of both nostrils, the left side wetness staggered slightly behind the right, both meeting beneath his septum and draining into four days of lip stubble, now a nascent (tear-drenched) mustache.

She left, without any final notice, no goodbye. As the hand cream applied moments prior clouded the saline in her cupped hand, and she cursed quietly, fumbling for her glasses, she saw the indentation in the repulsive 70’s wallpaper where his knuckles cracked skin, and she paused a moment to swallow the pity swelling in her throat, before flicking the milky contact lens into the sink, tiptoeing to the side door, and scuttling to the blue Honda humming expectantly outside.

The real reason why Powell supports Obama…

I spent my morning commute listening to the hosts of the local hard rock station’s morning show blather on about how Colin Powell is only supporting Obama because they’re both black. This argument is unbelievably naive. Powell is obviously supporting Obama because they’re both communist muslims.