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Monthly Archives

May 2008

Everyday SymbolismMysteriesThe Zeitgeist

The Mystery of the Square Dinner Plates

by Dr. Mark Dillof May 21, 2008October 12, 2018
written by Dr. Mark Dillof
The Mystery of the Square Dinner Plates
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Albert Camus once wrote that “Great ideas come into the world as quietly as doves.” This is also true on a personal level. For example, something apparently minor, like a change in a person’s hairstyle, a sudden loss of desire for a certain favorite food or an interest in a new food, a slight change in clothing preferences, and the disappearance of certain medical conditions, can signal a major change is a person’s way of seeing the world and way of living.

The same small type of changes can signal social and political changes of great magnitude, a major shift in the zeitgeist. An example, that comes to mind, happened to me last week. I went to lunch with a couple of friends of mine. We choose a trendy restaurant, near Syracuse New York, owned by a gregarious woman, a lesbian, who is fairly active in radical left-wing causes. I’ve eaten at this restaurant many times and am friendly with the owner. Since I disagree with her politics, I try to avoid the topic. In any case, she is usually a cheerful person, but the last few times that I stopped in, she seemed depressed.

We each ordered a lunch special. Now here is the curious thing. The three of us were served on square plates. I asked the waitress, “What’s the story with the plates?” She stated that they had just started serving customers with them that week. Was there something more going on behind this seemingly trivial change from round to square plates?

The meaning of “square” has gone through a number of transformations over the years. The word had a positive sense for most of the Twentieth Century. A square is equal on all sides. The sense of proportion suggested balance and uprightness, as well as the traditional values of honesty, fairness, and integrity. More generally, it suggested morality itself. That is why President Theodore Roosevelt used the famous political slogan “the Square Deal.” Also apropos, to my restaurant experience, is the notion of eating a “square meal,” a meal that is nutritious by virtue of being balanced, in terms of the various food groups.

In the late 1950, with the advent of the beatniks, followed in the 1960s, with the hippies, all that changed. A person who was square was considered un-hip to the real status of moral values. Moral values were no longer considered to be objective and true, but merely subjective and culturally relative. Out went the search for the right life, the true way of living, and in came the notion of “lifestyle,” encapsulated by the song “I Did It My Way.” The philosophical correlate of this is postmodernism, with its lack of belief in absolute truth.

Has there, perhaps, been a reaction to postmodernism? Could the advent of square plates suggest a return — or at least a longing to return — to an earlier relation to values, to being square and all that it implies in the positive sense of the word? Some of the various retrochic movements have been indicative of a longing to return to an earlier time, “steampunk” being the latest such trend. One can never go home again. Once the absoluteness of values has been questioned, it cannot be undone, but it may be possible to go beyond cultural relativity and postmodernism. What lies beyond is the mystical, an awakening from the whole dream known as the human condition. Awakening, on an individual level is immensely difficult. What hope, then, can there be for awakening on a cultural level?

Perhaps, the melancholy of the restaurant owner represents the melancholy of yet another lost generation. Perhaps the baby boomers — who jettisoned traditional values, and murdered the Father archetype, in their Oedipal way — have finally grown tired of their empty hipness. They need to go forward, but do not know the way. Some years back, Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead, sang a song called “Ripple,” with its earnest lyrics: “If I knew the way, I would take you there.” Apparently, my generation still doesn’t know the way. Instead of going where they need to go, what has emerged is a nostalgia to return home again, as embodied by the square plates. It is not an altogether bad thing, these square plates, (recently a square watermelon was created. See the above photo) for there is much to be said for traditional values. It is certainly a lot better than the present anomie, produced by no values at all.

That solves the mystery of the square plates, but it still leaves a greater mystery unanswered: how to leave our present cultural malaise and move forward into a new level of being, into the mystical.

May 21, 2008October 12, 2018 4 comments
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MysteriesPolitics

Radical Islam’s Theological Achilles’ Heel

by Dr. Mark Dillof May 13, 2008October 12, 2018
written by Dr. Mark Dillof
Radical Islam’s Theological Achilles’ Heel
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Here is an example of a political mystery in broad daylight: our chances of winning the propaganda wars against radical Islam and the military wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan, might significantly improve, if we could attack Radical Islam’s theological Achilles’ Heel. Can you guess what that Achilles’ heel is? Read further to find out…

Amidst the turbulence and travail of a military campaign, it is easy to lose sight of the battle of ideas. America has largely neglected the ideological war, but America’s enemies have been relentless in their propaganda campaign. Keeping pace with technology, they seek recruits through Jihadist websites. Some scholars have traced the beginning of this ideological conflict, between political Islam and the West, to the 1950s, particularly to Sayyid Qutb. He was a prolific author of books about the virtues of Islam and the deficiencies of the Western way of life, condemning everything from capitalism to the relations between the sexes in American society. Qutb became the ideologist for a fanatical group called “the Egyptian Brotherhood,” which morphed into Al Qaeda. Osama bin Laden has been profoundly influenced by Qutb. Ideas can have dangerous consequences, especially when young people — who are searching for meaning and fulfillment — are not offered attractive alternatives.

We, in the West, have done an inadequate job championing our values, virtues, ideals, and way of life. Some critics have argued that notions like democracy, free enterprise, and the rule of law lack the utopian-inspired excitement of Jihadism, or holy war. The same had often been said, in the last century, about our values failing to inspire, when contrasted with the revolutionary and millennial rhetoric of Communism. I shall argue, though, that the essential problem lies neither with our values, nor with the fact that we sometimes fail to live up to them. The essential problem, in this war of ideas, is that we lack an adequate understanding of our values.

Why is this lack of understanding a problem? If we do not understand our highest ideals, we cannot believe in our way of life. Then, we lack faith in ourselves. And if we cannot believe in ourselves, we shall lack the fortitude to endure the protracted social, political, and military battles that must be fought for the survival of our culture and civilization. Nor will we possess the enthusiasm and the self-confidence that wins hearts and minds, and inspires people of other lands to emulate our way of life. As our confidence ebbs, the despairing specter of Neville Chamberlainism appears. Then, we are doomed to defeat. That is why understanding our higher ideals is vital to our survival. It has rightly been said that powerful nations are often most defeated from within. They lose sight of who they are and cease to believe in themselves.

I’ll confine my discussion here to the value of freedom, or liberty. What is true of Islamic fundamentalists is true of totalitarians of all stripes: they abhor liberty, on the grounds that when people are free, they are free to act immorally. They see the overt sexuality expressed in American films, the greed of capitalism, and the moral flabbiness of secularism in general, as indicative of the immorality and decadence of the West. Similarly, Qutb saw the West as soulless in its materialism.

What, arguments, then, do we bring to bear, in our defense? We rightly accuse our ideological critics of exaggeration. After all, the worst excesses of Hollywood is not representative of the rest of our nation. We also argue for all the many amazing cultural and scientific advancements that emerge from a free society. But, if we are to win this ideological war, we must, to a large extent, defeat the enemies of freedom on their own terms. We must, therefore, get to the very heart of the ideological and theological issue. I.E., since our enemies argue morality, we must argue morality.

Here, then, is the essential point: a constrained morality is not a true morality. If I refrain from stealing because I fear getting my hands chopped off, and if I do not commit adultery because I fear getting stoned to death, then I am not truly moral. Similarly, if I keep my faith because I know that infidels are hung, then mine is not a sincere faith. Outwardly, it may seem that I am moral and righteous, but the outward is no more than a sham. According to St. Augustine, God made us free, knowing full well that if we are free, we could sin. Even were we to eventually see the light, it might take years of sinning before realizing the errors of our ways. That is the consequence of being free. As St. Augustine stated, God made us free because He did not want to be loved by puppets. Only love freely given is true love.

There is absolutely nothing good or noble about a people who obey the rules because they are forced, by fear of a draconian punishments, to do so. (The same argument can be rightfully levied against those Christian denominations, who preach eternal hellfire for those who sin.) Legislating morality, through the threat of violence, fosters fear, subservience, resentment, a search for scapegoats, antisemitism, a sense of being victimized by other groups of people, and a host of other psychological and spiritual maladies. Forced morality does not produce goodness, for goodness is inseparable from freedom. Naturally, there have been good and brave individuals, who have emerged from totalitarian societies, but they have been the exception. Here, then, is the essential point that must be driven home in our war against totalitarianism, in both its theocratic and secular forms: the seeds of true morality flourish in the soil of freedom.

Only by understanding our highest ideals, can a compelling narrative emerge, a cogent explanation and justification of why we are at war in Afghanistan and Iraq. I am not, of course, suggesting that a war of ideas can obviate the need for a decisive military victory. Quite the contrary, victory on the field of battle lends credence to the superiority of one’s ideology. As the military strategist Carl von Clausewitz argued, when the military and the ideological join forces, there is a powerful synergy.

May 13, 2008October 12, 2018 2 comments
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Mark Dillof has been a philosophical counselor for over twenty years. You can learn more about his work, by going to his other website, www.deeperquestions.com.

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