Archive for March 19th, 2007
Commentaries
I was sitting in a bar in Moscow with a Syrian who was explaining the differences between Sunnis and Shiites. In the midst of his discussion, he mentioned the different Holy Texts, and then explained that each of them also have tens of millions of commentaries on them that are also part of each major segment of the Faith.
I laughed, and it embarrassed me and infuriated him. I did manage to explain why I laughed, but it wasn’t easy. It was a BAD mistake.
I certainly was not laughing at him or his faith. But telling ME a religion has commentaries hit me sideways. It is like someone saying, “I can’t find my shows. That is, I cannot find my LEFT shoe and my RIGHT shoe.” If someone said that to you, and you had just been drinking, you would naturally take it as a joke.
A big-time defense lawyer was addressing law students and a student asked him if what he had been talking abut represented justice. The reply was, “Don’t be CHILDISH. Law has nothing to do with JUSTICE.”
If you quote the Commandment, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” and point out that not only does it state flatly that ARE other gods, but that you can worship them, you will be considered childish. That is what JHWH SAID, but if you are learned in the commentaries, you should realize that that is not what he MEANT.
In order to transform an institution into a form of Wordism, commentaries are indispensable. Commentaries use the old “We COVERED that” argument. So conservatives no longer use the “old argument” that “If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns.”
Actually it is absolutely true. I have had a LOT of contact with felons on several continents. I have not met one single criminal in the most fanatically gun-controlled environment on earth who had the slightest problem getting hold of a gun. You do not keep weapons from people whose whole busy is to do illegal things by making guns illegal. This is a matter of logic, but it is also a matter of PRACTICE.
So how do liberals keep all respectable conservatives from using the statement, “If guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns?”
Very simply: They call it “the OLD argument that ‘If guns are outlawed, outlaws will have guns.'” This means it is a childish argument, something that has already been covered.”
Yes, it is childish. “Suffer the little children to come unto me, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.” This does not sound like the words of someone who thinks all salvation lies within the pages of Scripture known only to the priesthood.
But that is a childish way of looking at it.
So when that Syrian told me about all those commentaries, and how so many of them are regarded as overriding something that the Koran got wrong, I would be willing to bet that Mohammed himself would not be let into either a Shiite or a Sunni mosque, any more than Christ would be welcome in any church today.
Theologians often say that it is amazing how much alike the Great Religions are. It certainly doesn’t amaze ME. As institutions get older, they follow institutional imperatives. All institutions have to survive in the same environment. This is a common phenomenon in biology called “parallel evolution.” The marsupial saber-toothed cat looked amazingly like the saber toothed tiger, but the saber toothed tiger is far more kind to a field mouse than to that marsupial look-alike.
In the end, if you don’t listen to me, your institution will look like every other institution. No matter how different Jesus and Buddha and Mohammed were, the institutions built on their names will eventually be run by commentary.
But I shouldn’t have laughed.
Kicking the Tires
Posted by Bob in Coaching Session on 03/19/2007
What I want to do here is teach you a way of thinking.
Please note: Not THE way of thinking, A way of thinking.
The real question is not whether I am right or wrong, but whether you can USE my way of thinking. I have very often fund that someone can be wrong in the examples they give, but there is an insight in them that I can use in some other context.
For example, my insight about how Jews talk about how persecuted they are, yet they were the only group Christians allowed to stay ALIVE and practice their own non-Christian religion comes straight out of Karl Marx’s A World Without Jews. If you look closely, you may note that I do not totally agree with EVERYTHING Poppa Marx says, but this was a dilly.
I want your corrections. As I have said, I NEED your corrections. But I don’t want you to get LOST in them. One of the most satisfying comment I got today was from Shari, because it was so short and to the point:
NOT SPAM
NOT SPAM
I suppose that Northern Europeans who first accepted Christianity did so because it fit the beliefs they already had, but then came the hook.
Comment by shari
This was satisfying to ME because she summarized MY point. She didn’t MISS it.
Shari can USE that logic in every part of life. Like everything else I say, it is something you know already, but the difference between seeing it 90% of the time and seeing it 100% of the time is the basis of almost all of our social ills. In every part of life, we have to be as careful in looking at WHY a person says something as we are when we look at what a used car salesman tells us.
Yes it is a Honda. Yes it is a 1999 model. Yes, it looks nice. So will you buy it?
He’s is very respectful. He is opposed to robbing people. So will you buy it?
This person genuinely believes he is preaching Love, Brotherhood and Peace. His Book says so. Will you buy it?
Look under the hood first.
CORRECTION: Have SOMEONE look under the hood first. I don’t know about you, but when it comes to anything built after 1970, I could stare under the hood till my eyes crossed and kick the tires until they folded under the car and I still wouldn’t know anymore than I did when I started.
But you do NOT ask the mechanic you have look at the car what car YOU should have. You might end up in a 240-horsepower pickup with giant tires.
When it comes to personal motivations and institutional diseases like Wordism, I am the guy to look under the hood for you. I am not telling you to buy what I buy. But I am very useful in telling you what to look for.
The best mechanic on earth can still tell you to buy a car you’ll regret buying. But the last thing you want is someone who will absolutely swear to you that he will find you the PERFECT car.
Would you buy it?
Wordism is the DISEASE of Institutions
Posted by Bob in Coaching Session, Comment Responses on 03/19/2007
I am not opposed to art. I am not opposed to music. I am not opposed to words. I am not opposed to institutions.
But if you decide that all races are equal because you like African art, I am opposed to that. If you decide your daughter should marry a black because some blacks are good singers, I am opposed to that.
None of this is hard to understand. But when I say that institutions are bad when they are substituted for racial loyalty, I am opposed to it, people get very confused. One commenter said that “e the People of the United States “ordained and established a constitution,” so I should not object to institutions.
What I LIKE about this statement is that it is blog statement, no frills, no fancy stuff, no attempt to cite endless histories to make it look like the writer is thinking Deep Thoughts. It is right or it is wrong.
And that precious word:
Period.
This is a PLAIN statement of a confusion that a lot of people have about Wordism. Just because you have an institution does not mean you have Wordism. Wordism is the fatal disease that every institution gets, and will get until we are fully aware that it IS a disease and what its symptoms are.
I am not opposed to art. I am not opposed to music. I am opposed to words. I am not opposed to institutions. But in the case of the Preamble to the United States Constitution I am reaffirming that the PURPOSE of the institution: to provide the blessings of liberty for OURSELVES and OUR descendants. I certainly do not object to an institution that does THAT.
But what is the Constitution today? The Constitution is the document used by judges when they OVERRIDE the peoples’ interests. When it was decided by California voters that they did not want to provide welfare for people who were NOT “We the people of the United States” the Supreme Court overruled them in the name of the Constitution.
Due to Wordism, the Constitution is doing exactly what it was set up toe avoid doing. Courts have picked out the words they want and made our Constitution into an institution which is an enemy of we the people and our posterity. This happens to all institutions eventually.
Whales gather barnacles. That does not make me anti-whale. People get diseases. That does not make me anti-people. Institutions get Wordism. That does not make me anti-institution.
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