My friend Ruth commented on the Gaza Nativity post.
It caused me to think more about it, and I recalled Yeat's The Second Coming:
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert.
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
It's like watching a disaster movie - the world's longest disaster movie - unfold before our eyes, and you know what's going to happen, but the people on the screen cannot see what's coming until too late.
The falcon is the ways of war and violence, so well taught and studied in the 20th century; in this, the 21st century, the falcon cannot hear the falconer, and thus cannot obey: war and violence are on their own.
This is the basis for the common myth of the revolt of the machines, the basis for the Terminator films and many others: something man made which escapes his grasp, and he just does not know how to call it back.
War has now escaped out control.
We are always on the verge of putting more troops in, or pulling more troops out. Our days and nights are filled with wars and rumours of wars. In Israel, Martin Buber's Ich und Du ( I and Thou), has a grisly look of confrontation.The center of our morality cannot hold us in our appointed courses anymore, and things fall apart.
This indeed is Schumpeter's "creative destruction", the lapse into chaos pregnant with a second coming. Now I understand: the hour of the rough beast has come; having waited 20 centuries, this unkempt watcher is ready to pounce.
I believe that all religions descended from Abraham are on the anvil of history. The time of Faith is now.
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4 comments:
I'm sorry, I know we differ on this (or maybe not), but I fear the Abrahamic religions created this beast.
No. I agree they created it, and now they have had 60+ years to rectify it, but have failed.
If there is nothing left in a religion except words of belief, but actions of violence, fear, and hatred, the religion is already dead.
I am really struck by your observation that the falcon does not hear the falconer and war is now out of control. There is such weariness in inertia and helplessness, no?
Yes. Terrifying.
Hey - off topic - I was talking to a guy about a film "Mongol" which came out a few years ago. It was about Geghis Khan.
What's interesting is that it was financed by a large group of interests, many of which were descended from the nomads of Central Asia: the government of Kazakhstan, Uighur businesses, and Turkey!!
I forget where the homeland of the Ottoman Turks was, but I was glad to see this, even though I had not heard about it before.
If you recall, there were riots in China in Xinjiang, the Uighur province, back in the summer.
I was interested in this going back 4 years when the BBC had an article on the fact that some of the Muslim women in Xinjiang were Imams, because there were obstacles set up by the Chinese, or the men had to leave the area for various reasons.
If you don't know how incredible this is, mention it to a Muslim man and hear what he has to say. Many of them go ballistic.
Anyway, I guess we should polish up our Turkish and keep an eye on Central Asia.
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