I've definitely found keeping The AX relevant in the Age of Trump harder than normal. It's always been a challenge for me to stay on top the news, and write on events in real time, which is part of what a blog is all about. If journalism is literature in a hurry, than blogs are journalism on methedrine. At their best they walk in the footsteps of gonzos like Hunter Thompson, or better "New Journalist" like Tom Wolfe, who put themselves in the middle of the story. Thompson was more imaginative, blurring the line between fact and fiction, while Wolfe stuck to what he saw, but with a decidedly subjective glance. Things are moving so fast right now that it's hard to process events quickly, then write about them before they disappear from our collective consciousness.
I could site my work load, but then I see Msgr. Charles Pope, a pastor of a busy parish in D.C., with all sorts of other important positions inside his archdiocese and his prolific output. Don Bosco used to stay up nights writing drafts of the Salesian Constitutions, text books of all sorts and articles for the Salesian Bulletin. Then he would still go all day running the Oratory. I may have a loaded plate similar to Msgr. Pope's, but I am not nearly a occupied as Don Bosco, so find a way I must.
I can hope for increased output, but relevancy will never be my thing. It just takes me too long to think things through, and I lack the gift of brevity. But I'm introducing a new feature called "Staying Irrelevant." About once or twice a month I'll write on several current topics briefly, whether they happen to be in the latest news cycle or not, as well as set up longer posts that are in process.
One Last Thing About Harvey Weinstein and the Latest Hollywood Sex Scandals
David Cole over at Taki's Mag wrote a piece a couple of weeks ago basically saying that there are too many self proclaimed experts who've never stepped foot in a movie studio who are talking all sorts of trash about the Weinstein scandal and the proverbial casting couch who have no idea what they're talking about. He doesn't deny Weinstein's actions, but contends that he represents the crudest of Hollywood's crude fringe. Most actors get their roles through a professional process involving casting directors and assistant directors, with not sexual quid pro quo's involved. When it's employed, the real casting couch, Cole continues, is a much more subtle affair allowing for both informed consent and plausible deniability on behalf of the respective parties. The Weinstein's of the industry are a sad, repulsive aberration from the norm.
The post made me stop short, because I qualify as one of those would be movie industry experts Cole calls out. True, the closest I've ever come to a Hollywood sound stage is when I was a member of the studio audience for a taping of Jeopardy twenty-five years ago. But I've been haunting movie theaters and multiplexes since 1974, and have observed a lot just by watching, as Yogi would have said. And what I've noticed is that filmmakers like to preach, quite a lot. And as a priest, I know when I'm being preached to. They also take a great deal of pride in it. You could make a killing betting on the Oscar winners each year based on the social causes the nominated films are championing or marginalized minorities the actors are playing. You don't even have to see the movies in question, reading a synopsis will do. I'm not saying the winners are unworthy (I subscribe to the Katherine Hepburn principle that all Oscar winners are deserving, just not necessarily for the part or movie they won for), but I have the creeping feeling that political correctness trumps art, or even commerce, in the minds of the Academy voters.
What the Weinstein, and now Kevin Spacey scandals have exposed is that show business is exactly that, a business run by human beings who can get just as drunk on power and greed as are members of any other large corporation. There are sincere filmmakers who want to use art to make a difference, but mostly its about profits and image, with a smattering moral posing thrown in to fain social credibility.
Rumors, long circulating just under the radar, of the abuse of minors are also surfacing. There was a story last week about a possible bombshell exploding over at Nickelodeon, which has yet to ignite. Jim McDermott over at America Magazine offers some sensible advise to the folks in Tinsel Town based on the Church's experiences with the child sex abuse scandal. I'm not sure they're going to take it, though. The Church has a built in moral center that she can recalibrate to when her institutional members go off the right path. What is the film industry's moral true north, especially when so many of its products promote the idea of moral relativism? Also, there was a free and independent press to follow the story up. There are now 6 major conglomerates that control 90% of media outlets in the country. The same corporations that make the movies also run several major newspapers and control network news departments. You might believe that his may not be such a big deal when the target of an investigation is an oil company, the government or the Church. But when it comes to the mass media policing it's own, how does that work? Personally, I'm surprised this much has gotten out at all (I have my own, inexpert opinions on this, that I'll keep to myself). How deep will the reporting be allowed to go if things prove to be really ugly, and big profits are at risk? And did I mention there are journalists getting caught up in the scandals too?
No, I'm not an expert. But I have two eyeballs, two ears and a brain, and I know when I'm being preached to by a flagrant hypocrite, and I hope the film industry is humble enough now to stop.
Wicca a Go-Go
I've stockpiled some articles on the latest trend among millennials: the abandonment of traditional religion in favor paganism and the occult. I'm still sifting through them, and plan a longer post, but just a few thoughts for now.
With the rise of the New Atheists after 9/11 the thinking was that young people in the West were abandoning Christianity because they could see now that religion breeds fanaticism and violence. Along with the terrorist attacks perpetrated by Islamic extremists, we had the priest child sex abuse scandals that erupted at the beginning of 2002, further eroding confidence in traditional religious institutions, the Catholic Church in particular. The alternative to religion being offered was atheism rooted in scientific rationalism. Once and for all the medieval superstitions of the past were going to be put to rest since the "God delusion" had been exposed by savage Muslim terrorists and lecherous priests.
While these evangelists of nihilism use philosophical and scientific arguments, in reality they rely on the sins of religious people to make their case. As horrible as a religious person using their faith to justify mass murder or a clergyman abusing children are, they do not prove one way or the other the existence of God. It's just simply a non sequitur. It can be emotionally stirring, and people do lose their faith as a result of scandals, but the connection is logically vacant.
What might seem logical is the assertion that a rejection of God equals a rejection the spiritual. The New Atheists like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins aren't proposing a "spiritual but not religious" option, though Harris believes in using meditative techniques, which makes some of his fellow travelers uneasy. They don't believe in a spiritual realm at all. Reality is simply what can be observed and measured. But this won't do for many people, because even though they may not trust religious institutions, there is something innate in all of us that seeks the transcendent, and this is where the new fascination with the occult comes in.
Occult practices are perfect for today, because they combine two innate desires that we all have - one is our desire for the transcendent, the other is our desire to control. Belief in Jesus means surrender, and in the relinquishing of our will we become truly free and united with God. But this goes against our desire to control outcomes. This is where the occult comes in. The witch or the shaman is trying to manipulate spiritual forces to achieve a desired end. God asks us to be patient and possibly endure trials on the road to salvation. We are probably not going to get what we want when we pray, but are asked to trust that God knows better than we do about what we really need. The occult offers us spells, potions and incantations that will get us what we want when we want it. In the occult we can get everything we want - to touch the transcendent and satisfy our will, and don't have to worship God. I am now my own god who controls the very spiritual realms. Of course, this is a dead end. Those who try to manipulate "spirits" find our that they are the ones who wind up manipulated, but more on that later.
This move to the occult is perfect for today because it fits our post modern sensibilities, which far from embracing science and reason, is a trip down the rabbit hole of self centered subjectivity and the will to power.
Postmodernist Blues
I have a big blind spot in my philosophical education. Dr. George Pepper, one of my philosophy professors at Iona College, may he rest in peace, had a penchant for switching course topics on a whim. For instance, once I'd signed up for medical ethics - a requirement, and when I showed up he decided that he didn't want to teach that. So we spent the next 15 weeks on political philosophy instead. This was ok as far as I was concerned, I shared Dr. Pepper's interest in the topic. The only problem is that my transcript reflects the course I never took, which caused some confusion when I was trying to get into Seton Hall. I don't remember the particulars, but I had to convince some registrar that I couldn't go on to a second level medical ethics class since I never took the first one. The other quick switch was when we got to contemporary philosophy. This time he didn't want to be bored teaching a survey course, so we did a semester of Hegel. "Hegel is all you really need," he told us, "Everybody since, from Marx to Nietzsche, are simply answering him." As true as this may be, I still feel like there is a big drop off in my comfort level when dealing with latter day thinkers like Nietzsche, or the French existentialist of the 20th century, let alone the fathers of postmodernism like Michel Foucault or Jacques Derrida.
To fill this gap I'm reading Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault (Expanded Edition) by Stephen R.C. Hicks. I'm early on, but Hicks sets things up in a rather concise way. He reviews Medieval and Enlightenment philosophies, presenting them as a progression from a faith, mysticism based philosophy to the supremacy of reason that led the way for the scientific revolution and modern conceptions of political and economic liberty.
Postmodernism discards both, but most troubling for Hicks is the rejection of the Enlightenment. Rather than pure reason being the guiding principle, postmodernists take the old Marxist analysis, but in place class conflict, people are divided by race, gender and sexual orientation into oppressed and oppressors: dominant groups against the subjugated. Rather than people possessing individual rights, they have rights insofar as they are a member of an oppressed or marginalized group. Logic and reason are rejected as tools used by the oppressors to keep the oppressed in their place. Contradictory opinions can be kept with no problem, even if they are contradicted by the physical reality, because what matters is the protection of oppressed groups and, ironically, the radical right of the individual to define "reality" as they see fit without reference to any exterior, empirical supporting evidence.
My only critique of Hicks is that he clearly doesn't understand Medieval thought. He makes the classic mistake of missing the Medieval synthesis of faith and reason. He blames Immanuel Kant for separating faith and reason so that he could preserve both, but most especially his faith. This rending actually happened back during the Reformation, when Luther rejected philosophical thought as having any place in religious discussions. Kant, over two hundred years later, was trying to show that you could have both, but just in separate compartments. The Catholic world view is that there is no conflict between faith and reason. If revelation and science seem to contradict, then we have either done the science wrong, or else we've interpreted revelation the wrong way.
Otherwise, the book has been pretty eye opening so far, and I'm looking forward to finishing it. The only way to understand political correctness and what is controversially called Cultural Marxism is to understand postmodernism.
I owe many debts of gratitude to Dr. Pepper. He was patient with a block head like me during an independent study on Thomas Aquinas that he didn't have to do. I also really don't mind the switcheroo on the medical ethics class (I dig politics much more). But I do wish he had stuck with he contemporary philosophy survey. It might have saved me from having to read this book now.
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