John Dewey on the Threat that Totalitarianism Poses to Democracy

"The serious threat to our democracy is not the existence of foreign totalitarian states. It is the existence within our own personal attitudes and within our own institutions of conditions which have given a victory to external authority, discipline, uniformity and dependence upon The Leader in foreign countries. The battlefield is also accordingly here - within ourselves and our institutions."

Erich Fromm citing John Dewey in Escape from Freedom (Avon, 1965), pp. 19-20.

Societal Disintegration and the Rationality of Narratives

Earlier this year, in a sermon about postmodernity, I preached about Foucault's inversion of Sir Francis Bacon's "Knowledge is Power." For Foucault, power is knowledge. But what does this mean? It means that the social disintegration we see around us, particularly in the increasing bifurcation of our political worldviews, can be explained by Foucault. "Post-truth" politics seems to be the phrase of 2016, but Foucault predicted this and even suggested that it undergirded our systems of rationality nearly four decades ago. The increasing separation of our worldviews (Republican and Democratic) is a reflection of the structures of power, and their constituent methodologies, that create and sustain the narratives and news-cycles that we consume. Without a common enemy, like the Soviet Union, our competitive worlds have turned on each other, rather than unifying behind a singular methodology - like the kinds of journalism we saw under the Cold War.

Academics and Ministry

One of the pastors who had the largest impact on my own development just started a sabbatical in the American Southwest to write poetry. It's one of his great talents. Sometimes it even makes its way into his sermons. I've always been inspired by spiritual mentors who try to live holistic journeys, full of a rich mixture of curiosity and empathy. For me the academic side of ministry isn't a retreat into obscurity, but an engagement with all of life's riches. If we're called t...o walk alongside and hold people as they face their own joys and trials, shouldn't we strive to understand them as much as possible? God sees the depths of our joys, our discoveries, and our pains. Christ lived them. Part of our task as Christians is to strive to be like Christ to those around us, even in the depths by which he drew near to people. That's my thought, perhaps dream, for this evening.

Marcuse on Nonalienated Labor

"The real danger for the established system is not the abolition of labor but the possibility of nonalienated labor as the basis of the reproduction of society."

Herbert Marcuse, "Aggressiveness in Advanced Industrial Society" in Negations: Essays in Critical Theory (Boston: Beacon Press, 1967).

Benjamin on Marx's Project

"When Marx undertook his critique of the capitalist mode of production this mode was in its infancy. He went back to basic conditions underlying capitalistic production and through his presentation showed what could be expected of capitalism in the future. The result was that one could expect it not only to exploit the proletariat with increasing intensity but ultimately to create conditions which would make it possible to abolish capitalism itself."

Walter Benjamin, Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arendt (New York: Shocken Books, 2007), p. 211.

Hobbes on Freedom

"A Free-Man, is he, that in those things, which by his strength and wit he is able to do, is not hindered to doe what he has a will to do."

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 146.

Jürgen Habermas on Communication

"Liberation from hunger and misery does not necessarily converge with liberation from servitude and degradation; there is no automatic developmental relation between labour and interaction."

Jürgen Habermas, Theory and Practice (Beacon Press, 1973), p. 169.

Erich Fromm on Marx's Fetishised Labour

Spinoza, Hegel, and Goethe all held that, "man is alive only inasmuch as he is productive, inasmuch as he grasps the world outside of himself in the act of expressing his own specific human powers, and of grasping the world with these powers. Inasmuch as man is not productive, inasmuch as he is receptive and passive, he is nothing, he is dead. In this productive process, man realises his own essence, he returns to his own essence, which in theological language is nothing other than his return to God."

Erich Fromm, Marx's Concept of Man: Including 'Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (Bloomsbury, 2013), p. 26.

Horkheimer on Utopia and Schopenhauer's Wheel of Ixion

"The ensnarement of humanity in eternal nature and an unswerving struggle against temporal injustice are already central in his thinking. As essential as he finds it that the 'unjust distribution of goods' be abolished, he nevertheless wonders if the fulfillment of the boldest utopias would not leave the 'great' torment untouched, 'because the core of his life is... torment and dying."

Alfred Schmidt, 'Max Horkheimer's Intellectual Physiognomy', in On Max Horkheimer: New Perspectives, ed. Seyla Benhabib, Wolfgang Bonns and John McCole (Boston: MIT Press, 1995), p. 26.

Horkeimer's Spring

"I feel sorry for you, you now know the truth... Nut it is not enough to take off the rose-tinted glasses and then to stand there confused and helpless. You have to use your eyes and learn to walk in the colder world. Intoxicate yourselves and praise every minute that you spend without being conscious, for consciousness is terrible; only Gods can possess it clear and undistorted and still smile."

Max Horkheimer's vagrant speaking to the young couple in  Spring as cited in: John Abrometit, Max Horkheimer and the Foundations of the Frankfurt School (Cambridge University press, 2011), pp. 31-32.

Marcuse on Liberation

"All liberation depends on the consciousness of servitude, and the emergence of this consciousness is always hampered by the predominance of needs and satisfactions which, to a great extent, have become the individual's own."

Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1991), p. 7.

Thinking about Peace in Times of War, Injustice, and Dehumanization.

December 4th, 2016

Isaiah 10:1-11

Ah, you who make iniquitous decrees,
    who write oppressive statutes,
² to turn aside the needy from justice
    and to rob the poor of my people of their right,
that widows may be your spoil,
    and that you may make the orphans your prey!
³ What will you do on the day of punishment,
    in the calamity that will come from far away?
To whom will you flee for help,
    and where will you leave your wealth,
⁴ so as not to crouch among the prisoners
    or fall among the slain?
For all this his anger has not turned away;
    his hand is stretched out still.

⁵ Ah, Assyria, the rod of my anger—
    the club in their hands is my fury!
⁶ Against a godless nation I send him,
    and against the people of my wrath I command him,
to take spoil and seize plunder,
    and to tread them down like the mire of the streets.
⁷ But this is not what he intends,
    nor does he have this in mind;
but it is in his heart to destroy,
    and to cut off nations not a few.
⁸ For he says:
“Are not my commanders all kings?
⁹ Is not Calno like Carchemish?
    Is not Hamath like Arpad?
    Is not Samaria like Damascus?
¹⁰ As my hand has reached to the kingdoms of the idols
    whose images were greater than those of Jerusalem and Samaria

shall I not do to Jerusalem and her idols
    what I have done to Samaria and her images?”

Sermon:

          In 1954, amidst the fear and terror of the Cold War, a German-Jewish exile named Herbert Marcuse wrote that, "The defeat of Fascism and National Socialism has not arrested the trend towards totalitarianism. Freedom is on the retreat - in the realm of thought as well as in that of society."[1] It’s a statement that refers to the many faces that dehumanization and horror can take on. At that time the world was facing the possibility of nuclear annihilation, a possibility and terror that we are perhaps too eager to forget about these days. Ten years after writing those words, Marcuse went on to express his fears about how interrelated productivity and destruction are. The more we produce and consume, the more waste we generate. Rather than encouraging schools to embrace curriculums that focused on individuals we had begun to move towards a system where our hopes, thoughts, and fears became attached to institutions like governments, mass media, and corporate interests. The outbreak of the New Left and the student protests of the 1960’s were largely a product of a search for individuality – of young people crying out for a place for subjectivity – the ever-pressing question of “who am I?” and “what does it mean to live an authentic life?”. And in the midst of this also stood the same dark specter that we see in our world today – “misery in the face of unprecedented wealth.”[2]

     Much has changed, yet little has too. It’s a paradox of our contemporary life. Each of you can recount the thousands of ways your lives have changed over the years. Yet, if you think about some of the fundamental things, a lot has changed very little. The world still faces the abyss of nuclear annihilation, war, famine, and the existential angst of realizing that “our lofty ideals about the rights of the individual under democracy have in fact yielded a society in which ‘choice’ – at least for a certain demographic – is the difference between two forms of scented body wash.”[3] To put it another way, we’ve come to a place in the history of civilization where ‘uniqueness’ and ‘individuality’ have been commodified. So much so, in fact, that varying degrees of uniqueness are a privilege that come with geography, education, parentage, and exposure. As the sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu argued, we don’t choose our tastes so much as the micro-specifics of our class determine them.

     All of this can be encompassed under the realization that some things haven’t changed for the better 1964. Some things certainly have, but many of the problems that we faced back then still exist now. In some respects, they even exist in more extreme forms. In the 1960’s young adults rose up in an attempted revolt against many of the societal ills they saw around them. Other did not, but many did. Today, millennials have a derogatory label that they sometimes throw at people. If a girl wears a particular kind of outfit, behaves a particular way, and gets a pumpkin spice latte from Starbucks every morning she might be labeled “basic.” It’s a label that implies that she is boring and not creative enough to be interesting. Now, I think that’s interesting not only because it’s an incredibly dehumanizing thing to say about another person, but because it also flips the behavior of the beatniks and hippies right on its head. Rather than rejecting consumerism, wastefulness, or other extremes, today’s hipsters judge people on the basis of the ‘authenticity’ or ‘uniqueness’ of their purchases and hobbies. Classism and stigmas have not disappeared, they have only taken on new – ever more consumeristic – forms. Our society still faces the threats that Marcuse listed; they’ve only changed clothing.

     Most of us probably assume that the book of Isaiah is paired with Advent and Christmas because he provides us with a lot of the foreshadowing, prophecies, and imagery we use for the Baby Jesus. I think that’s true. Yet, I also can’t help but notice the irony in pairing this particular prophet with a season that has become all that it has become for us as 21^st century Americans. Let’s list out all of issues that the lectionary provides for us as we reflect on the theme of peace. Isaiah lists:

• Evil and unjust laws and political actions.
• Indifference and a turning away from the needs of the poor.
• Robbing the poor of what is justly theirs. In the context of ancient Israel, that would have included the right to basic things like food as well as fair treatment before the law.
• Isaiah, speaking for God, condemns those who prey on widows and orphans – the weakest in society. God is in the business of getting mad when people take advantage of those who are most vulnerable.

Isaiah even goes so far as to goad those who have committed these crimes. He insinuates that their money and privilege will not protect them from the wrath that God will unleash upon them. The wonderful thing about the prophets is that they show how thoroughly enraged God can get with those who commit crimes against other humans. He is, after all, a God of justice. So, when we get to the second-half of today’s lectionary text for the season of Advent – the season where we celebrate the coming of God – we hear about God using another nation (Assyria) as his hand of wrath, even though they too are evil. God does not like it when any nation or people, regardless of size, behaves evilly. However, there’s a lot of evidence to suggest that he regards the bad behavior of his own people as an even worse offense.

     So why all of this on this Sunday? Why did the people who composed the lectionary choose this passage of scripture to talk about peace? I’ll be honest, I don’t know if this particular passage dates back to medieval use. However, I can say that I think that this passage can help us reflect on the message of peace in a way that is critically important. Peace is not just about the absence of violence. Peace is something that flows out of justice and righteousness. There can be no peace when the poor and vulnerable are being exploited. A person or society that commits injustices can not only not have peace with God, but cannot realistically claim to have peace in any real material sense either. I believe that there is good reason to believe that the Bible tells us economic violence and exploitation undermines peace in a material and ontological sense as well. If one segment of society is stealing from, or exploiting, another part of society the people who are responsible for that not only have to face the fact that they’ve violated God’s laws, but they also have to face the fact that they’ve undermined the trust and peace that helps the different components of a society work together cooperatively – the peace between peoples who may share a common language, culture, religion, or geography.

     Today we’re celebrating the coming of the true Prince of Peace and that’s a powerful thing. It’s a title we probably think about less than we should. When we invoke it, we might glance at it and just assume that it means that one day there won’t be any more warfare. I think we miss something very fundamental to a biblical conception of peace when we do that. Sometimes it’s helpful to really sit with a biblical idea like peace and look at the contexts in which it is used.

     Even if we think about the usage of the term “holiness” what are we really referring to? Many of us probably have a number of extrapolations as to what it means, but in the Biblical context it’s really just a referral to God’s removal from the taint of everything we’ve just been talking about. Holiness, when it is applied to God, is a recognition of his transcendence; and in that respect, it is related to the concept of righteousness and majesty. God is absolute and complete, totally self-sufficient and non-contingent. As a consequence, God is not affected by things like insufficiency. God is, in our faith, good and pure; and consequently righteous – incapable of doing evil. We are obviously very capable of doing evil. Holiness is really an issue of that distinction between us, beings capable of atrocious things, and God who is not.

     Peace is a similar thing. God is peace in the fact that there is harmony within the trinity; one substance expressed in three persons who are not in conflict. We are not blessed to have the luxury of having a substance that we all share. However, we do have a common humanity, so peace for us is inextricably bound to righteousness. Our task is to be at peace God and one another. We cannot have one without the other. Its our acts of right and wrong that have an effects upon the peace we see in the world. Acts of physical, emotional, or economic violence remove us from the kind of peace that God calls us to – that Jesus embodies. Words that we may express that dehumanize other people also destabilize the peace that God calls us to. In a sense, we fall short of peace whenever we fail to be just. That’s why we read Isaiah this morning. The coming of God is about the coming of peace.

     Today, we’re celebrating a different kind of future. We’re celebrating the opportunity to live into a different future – a future where each and every one of us strives to imitate Christ and make the world a more peaceful place. Jesus doesn’t just redeem us and offer us forgiveness. He demonstrates what a more perfect humanity can look like. Following Jesus is about following that example. May we strive to make the world a better place, to live lives of love, and to act justly. If we can do that, we can make the world a more peaceful place.

---

[1] Herbert Marcuse, "Epilogue," Reason and Revolution, 2nd ed. (New York: Humanities Press, 1954), pp. 433ff.

[2] Herbert Marcuse, "Introduction to the First Edition," One-Dimensional Man (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1991), p. xlv.

[3] Anne Helen Petersen, “What We’re Really Afraid of When We Call Someone ‘Basic’: Breaking Down Why We’re Actually Dismissive of All Things Pumpkin Spice” (Buzzfeed, October 20^th 2014): https://www.buzzfeed.com/annehelenpetersen/basic-class-anxiety?utm_term=.mp4rN9jnP#.mmWVaYEZL

Marcuse on the Need for Change

"... the need for qualitative change is as pressing as ever before. Needed by whom? The answer continues to be the same: by the society as a whole, for every one of its members. The union of growing productivity and growing destruction; the brinkmanship of annihilation; the surrender of thought, hope, and fear to the decisions of the powers that be; the preservation of misery in the face of unprecedented wealth constitute the most impartial indictment - even if they are the raison d'être of this society but only its by-product: its sweeping rationality, which propels efficiency and growth, is itself irrational."

Herbert Marcuse, "Introduction to the First Edition," One-Dimensional Man (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1991), p. xlv.

Marcuse on Totalitarianism

"The defeat of Fascism and National Socialism has not arrested the trend towards totalitarianism. Freedom is on the retreat - in the realm of thought as well as in that of society."

Herbert Marcuse, "Epilogue," Reason and Revolution, 2nd ed. (New York: Humanities Press, 1954), pp. 433ff.

Benjamin on Capitalism

"Capitalism, was a natural phenomenon with which a new dream-filled sleep came over Europe, and, through it, a reactivation of mythic forces."

Walter Benjamin, The Arcades Project (Belknap, 2002), p. 391.