Outis

Last week, I happened to be watching the local news when the Secretary of the State of California, Kevin Shelley, announced the statewide special election to recall Governor Gray Davis.

However, unlike most of my fellow Californians, I happened to be watching this report from Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico, as it aired on a San Diego television station. A few hours later, I walked into one of Tijuana’s many magazine stores to find a fractured, apocalyptic depiction of California on the cover of Newsweek. [note the 1974 original]

From my vantage point, amidst the ruin and simmering potential of Tijuana, the issues at stake in this “special” election were quite clear and obvious. But they are hardly limited to the particular circumstances of California.

Instead, in the absence of any political malfeasance, we are being asked to reflect and vote upon a philosophical matter: whether our future should be determined by a conservative or a progressive ideology.

As this political question involves matters of faith and philosophy, here are my own thoughts on the same.

Article of faith: ahead of us is either a better future or a repeat of the worst elements of the past.

The “past” and “future” of which I speak are the tokens of two ideologies, “conservative” and “progressive,” which, despite being used often in our public debates and propaganda, are seldom defined from outside of a political context.

When I talk about a “better future” or a “worst past,” I do so because I am a believer in both the fundamental proposal of Christianity as well as its implications — and limitations — as articulated by the four hundred year-old social process we call the Enlightenment.

If you’re in a hurry, here’s the punch line: to be a conservative is to break away from the promise of both Christianity and the Enlightenment.

In other words, a Christian and/or a rational approach to politics rejects the notion that the past contains anything but a reminder of human fallibility. Instead, a Christian and/or rational political ideology affirms that the future, forever unknowable and pliant, is the only fitting context for political action and discourse.

Because the label “Christianity” has become all but synonymous with that of a specific sect, namely Evangelical Christianity, I feel I need to clarify that Christianity is no more and no less than a radical theological stance in which the fate of humanity — much more so than its origin — is given meaning by the legacy of a mortal God, a God made of flesh and bone.

Before addressing that particular legacy, I would like to further clarify that this “body of work” is not set in stone. Like any event that is comprehensible to human beings, it is open to interpretation. We humans are, it must be remembered, forever fallible and prone to errors of logic — especially when those errors result in an outcome that suits our needs or accords with our fears and hopes.

Furthermore, is not by accident that the figure recorded into history as “Jesus” spoke largely in parables. Nor are these parables some form of riddle, wherein a formula can be applied and a single, correct answer deduced.

Rather, like the philosophical and ontological claims of many other celebrated prophets, from Mohammed to the Buddha, from the Oracle at Delphi to the holy texts of the Mesoamerican civilizations, the teachings of Jesus are neither simple nor simply binding. The popular dictum that describes a Christian as someone who “takes Jesus into his or her heart” obscures the mystery and intellectual labor of belief with childish sentimentality.

(Would that mental health were a national priority and relationship counseling and mediation an accepted component of our society, what of the “fundamentalist” project then? What of the role of churches and the meaning of the state then?)

Yet, unlike other religious traditions, the “godliness” to which Christians are said to aspire is not entirely immaterial or otherworldly. The figure recorded into history as “Jesus” lived among the poor, the outcast, the downtrodden and the desolate.

To expand upon Collin Raye’s popular country music song of recent years, there can be no “what if” in the phrase “What if Jesus comes back like that / Two months early and hooked on crack.” In essence, a replay of the life of Jesus would more likely set the manger amidst the chaotic poverty of a Third World city like Tijuana — i.e., not a mansion in Texas.

If you are a believer, there is no accident to the poverty and injustice that marked the birth, life and death of Christ. In other words, the meaning of the figure recorded into history as “Jesus” would be radically different had this mortal God been born a rich man. He was not. So it is written.

Because of this portentous circumstance, the legacy of Jesus is one of tremendous social and political significance. While it is possible to cast the claims of Christianity as being separate and apart from this world of hunger, disease, violence and injustice, a similar disappearance act cannot be performed on the works and mortal experiences of the Jesus who “walked on this earth.”

Either you believe that Jesus was born — and born into poverty and near-slavery — or you don’t.

It should come as no surprise, then, that efforts to push back against the political and social agenda of Christianity, an agenda that entails both enfranchisement and the amelioration of poverty and suffering, are often performed by those whose belief system dismisses or downplays this critical aspect of the life of Christ.

For these Christians, the Old Testament God, Yahweh, a God of war and entitlement, supersedes the God of peace and compassion. Not surprisingly, they reconcile the mystery of the Trinity (a three-fold God) by asserting the paternal authority of the Father over the Son, choosing to ignore the implications of that metaphorical family relationship — just as fathers and mothers beget sons and daughters, so, too, do sons and daughters become fathers and mothers.

It should also be observed that a parallel strain in this rejection of the life of Jesus is a fervent obsession with the “return” of an all-powerful God who punishes sinners and rewards the pure. In the second coming, all the mortal suffering and moral complexity of Jesus are fantastically reversed and replaced with limitless power and unequivocal “justice.”

Is it any wonder, then, that such beliefs can accommodate a political agenda that is listless and lazy, fatalistic and concordant with the perspective of those for whom life on earth is easy? For whom is it advantageous to conserve the conditions, social and economic, into which we are born — the rich man or the poor man, the rich man or the poor woman?

Who asks us to look to the past to find a better way of life? The person who has inherited wealth and corresponding political privilege or the person who has inherited abject poverty and powerlessness?

Who is a conservative? The Christian is not.

12:07 pm

postscript
The origins of this entry are two-fold: on the one hand, a simple thought — if the goal of Christianity is to create the City of God on Earth, then, necessarily, a conservative agenda is antithetical to this project; on the other, I recently read an essay by the French psychoanlytic philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis on the role of politics in contemporary society.

While the former thought is more or less compact and easy to debate, the latter’s arguments are far more complicated to suss out. The essay I’d just read, “Psychoanalysis and Politics,” found in this book, paints a rather grim picture of the Christianity that emerged after the life of Jesus — that is, grim because it is defined as “not of this world” and, thus, devoid of any attachment to such mundane matters as hunger, violence and civic society.

For more on the distinction between the life of Jesus and the emergence of Christianity, the philosopher poet Nietzsche has written a powerful essay on the same with the rather unfortunate title of “The Antichrist.” Mind you, this piece has absolutely nothing to do with the figure of popular lore and debatable religious significance of the same name.

That I have to draw such distinctions in 2003 should indicate just how slowly the Enlightenment process advances.

“the particular circumstances of California” [8/13/2003]
For an in-depth analysis of the California recall and how it came to pass, please read the August edition of the California Journal.

what’s in a name? [8/13/2003]
Throughout this journal entry I have used the name “Jesus” rather than Christ. In fact, the expression “from Jesus to Christ” connotes a great deal of both theological and political significance. For more information on this critical distinction, a good starting point is either this academix text and/or this Frontline documentary.

Despite my lack of interest in mathematics, I tend to spend a great deal of time thinking about the economic systems that make possible the world that we inhabit.

Often, I think about how lucky I am to live near the top echelon of the First World and not, say, at the vast bottom of the Third World.

For example, I do not have to forage in garbage for my survival. I do not have to work from sunrise to sunset with a stooped back, picking fruit or produce on sun-scorched fields. Nor do I work in a factory, forever attuned to the rhythm of an ergonomic formula, a marketing plan, a machine.

Because I do not enjoy torturing myself, on average, I don’t like to think about these fates more than once a day.

Instead, I mostly think about the intricate machinery of financial structures and, in particular, how these largely hidden arrangements make some outcomes more likely than others, irrespective of their moral implications.

Despite my fascination with systems, I am neither a Calvinist, a Marxist, nor a rabid “free-marketeer.” I do not believe in an Invisible Hand — be it God, the Massess, the Market — guiding the course of human events.

I very much believe that a single individual, or, a single group, can upset the course laid out by entrenched interests, even those that are far-reaching and centuries’ old. Perhaps, from the same wellspring of faith, I enjoy a strong belief in chance — in coincidence or “la casualidad.”

Somehow, between habits that are nearly impossible to break and the cataclysmic power of a willing body at the right place and time, I am able to continue to live — and believe — in a world that is so often filled with the signs of both coercion and chance.

While such theological concerns, so expressed, may seem esoteric, they are the essence of our most visceral artform: comedy.

Consider the following video from a Japanese variety show.

http://www.devilducky.com/media/7939/ (WMA)

At first, the two men playing “table tennis” appear to be displaying nearly-superhuman athleticism. Soon thereafter, the introduction of a second ball and its gravity defying movement suggests that we are watching a computer-enhanced visual fantasy. It is only then that the punchline is delivered.

Out from the shadows emerge a half-dozen men dressed in black — invisible stagehands who have physically crafted the dazzling illusion of the two god-like athletes and spirited ping pong balls. No computers. No supernatural talent. Just human ingenuity and our desire to believe.

What is, perhaps, most remarkable about this delightful joke is that it continues, for a long time, after the punchline has been delivered. In a sense, the revelation of the human hands behind the scenes quickly sets up a series of further unveilings — not about the making of the opening illusion, but, instead, about our own expectations.

Once we are told that the spectacle unfolding is an illusion, we are free to enjoy it as such — or not, however we like. As with the optical illusions that reveal a second and, at first, “hidden” meaning, this game of ping pong is a game where the winning move is being able to jump back and forth from one impression to another.

Thank God for such games.

This week’s entry is late. It is sure to be short. Hopefully, sweet.

For the last few weeks, my wife and I have been writing and recording a song called “Tijuana, Habana” — or, perhaps, “Tijuana-Habana.”

In this case, as with paychecks, the punctuation matters.

In some ways, our song is a response to Kraftwerk’s classic “Computer World,” with its oblique and yet, somehow, direct references to “Business, numbers, money, people.”

In other ways, it is an affirmation of a feeling — a presentiment, perhaps — that our birthplaces, Habana, Cuba and Tijuana, Mexico are inextricably linked.

Whereas Porfirio Diaz would coin the tragic reproach “poor Mexico, so far from God, so close to the United States,” Cubans dwell on a similarly geographic lament when they say, simply, “90 miles.”

But if there is a meaningful connnection between Tijuana and Habana, the U.S. is not the only link.

Both are spanish-speaking cities and, in a sense, international metropolises — however constrained their borders, both natural (Atlantic Ocean) and political (”Operation Gatekeeper”). Likewise, they are both magnets for high-tech innovation and cultural bricolage, though, once again, these developments are severely circumscribed by governmental and market forces.

At a superficial level, there is a significant difference in their private and public sectors. Habana’s private sector is defined by international investments (hotels and resorts) and a domestic black market. Tijuana’s private sector is largely fueled by multinational corporations (maquiladoras) and a transnational black market (illicit labor and drugs).

The government of Cuba is a dictatorship with lofty goals and an ambiguous track record of popular enfranchisement alongside heinous human rights abuses. The government of Mexico was, until recently, a de facto dictatorship with lofty goals and an ambiguous track record of enfranchisement and heinous human rights abuses.

In Habana, government reprisals, summary executions and nepotism have created an environment of cynical abandon and seething frustration. In Tijuana, corruption and crime — the city’s own police chief was assassinated by drug traffickers in 2000 — have created an environment of cynical abandon and seething frustration.

More nuanced differences emerge when you consider the media landscapes of both cities. Activists in the U.S. and Europe do (and should) chafe at the current trend towards media consolidation, from Rupert Murdoch to Clear Channel. But theirs — and, by extension, Tijuana’s media culture — is a paradise compared to the situation in Habana.

The very possibility of protests against corporate media, the tacit and widely-held belief that heterodoxy is a hallmark of freedom, as well as the indisputable vitality of alternative media (however unpopular, strident and/or boring these may be) are all blessings, not to be taken lightly.

While the extent to which the popular media in Tijuana is actually the “vox populi” is questionable, that city nonetheless basks in some of the cultural “grace” that radiates upon nearby San Diego.

If the quality of entertainment and cultural production in San Diego is poor — which, I believe, it is — that outcome has little to do with the rich resources available to the citizens of that sun-baked metropolis. While the citizen of Tijuana may not always appreciate the content of San Diego’s television and radio offerings, they cannot help but notice the potential of same (to say nothing of its orderly roads and planned communities).

While San Diego television and radio are no longer the only strong signals in Tijuana, as they were for decades prior to the late 1980s, the likelihood that Mexico City will ever share its control over the nation’s media to this border city are slim. It is, most likely, only a matter of time before some — or much — of San Diego’s media resources flow into Tijuana just as consumer goods bought in the U.S. have poured across the Mexican border for decades. Either way, the future is probably bright for that region’s emerging culture.

In Habana, the outlook is markedly cloudier. While tremendous achievements have been made in the literacy and overall educational levels of most Cubans, that same enlightenment has been strictly focused on a single (light) source: the Revolution of 1959 and the government enshrined by this coup.

Cosinder the fact that in Tijuana, personal computers are becoming middle class appliances, as commonplace as microwaves. (So,too, is pirated software and a canny interest in linux.) In Habana, however, it is a crime to own a personal computer that is not registered with — sanctioned by — the government.

Pursuing this line of thought — a task that I cannot do in an exhaustive manner at this time — is, probably, what led me to ask the question wrapped in a declaration: Tijuana-Habana.

That is: what if you could combine both cities, the cultivated “pride” of Habana along with the calculated “humility” of Tijuana, the intellectual capital of both, the sophisticated marketing (propaganda) techniques of the former and the managerial and “interpretive” skills of the latter, and so forth, and so on.

We’ll see what happens — both with our song and with the promise it implies.