Monday, October 21, 2019

Mark 4 21-45


is a candle brought to be put under a bushel, or under a bed?
and not to be set on a candlestick?
for there is nothing hid,
which shall not be manifested;
neither was any thing kept secret,
but that it should come abroad.

if any man have ears to hear, let him hear.

Annoying people love to point out that popular proverbs sometimes contradict each other. It is undoubtedly true that many hands make light work but it is equally true that too many cooks spoil the broth. So the consensus of homely folk wisdom appears to be that you should have lots of helpers for jobs that need lots of helpers and fewer helpers for jobs that need fewer helpers, or, put another way, the right number of people for the job.

Thanks, homely folk wisdom.

But there can be deeper ways in which things can be contradictory but also true. A teacher may very well assert one truth; and then assert an apparently different truth; and hope that his students will tease out a third truth somewhere in the space between them. Casting the I-Ching involves randomly generating two different pieces of advise and trying to understand how the transition from one to the other describes your present situation.

Jesus has just said that he preaches in parables in order to hide and conceal his true meaning. He now says "Do you think anyone would light a candle or a lamp and then cover it up? And do you think anything can really stay a secret forever?" He says it twice. Everything which is hidden (krypton) will be revealed; and every thing  — every event  — which is secret (apokryphon) will come to light.

So we have two different teachings, placed next to each other either by Jesus himself, or by Mark. "The Gospel is a big secret. Shhh...don't tell anyone." "There is no such thing as a secret. Everything eventually gets out into the open."

and he said unto them,

take heed what ye hear:
with what measure ye mete,
it shall be measured to you:
and unto you that hear shall more be given.

A literal translation of this passage would go something like "With whatever measure you measure shall it be measured unto you, and more will be added to you." With what measure / you measure / it will it be measured are three single words in Greek: metro metreite metrethesatai. "Metron" is literally a "measure" — a measuring device — but it could also be taken to mean "standard". It's where we get our word metric from. So: "The same measuring device you use to measure and weigh with will be used to measure and weigh you — and even more so."

The Good News Bible chooses to render this as: “The same rules you use to judge others will be used by God to judge you — but with even greater severity." This is not a translation, but a commentary, and a tendentious one. Metron is a literal or figurative measuring device, so I suppose they went looking for an English word which could be used in both senses. And they came up with the word "rule" which could refer to either a piece of wood with feet and inches marked on it, or the  regulations of a game or an organisation. (The word "rule" in the first sense has been completely superseded by "ruler". School teachers occasionally refer to "meter rules" because "meter rulers" would have been a bit of a mouthful.) But having said "rule" the first time the word comes up, they decide to say "judge" the second and third time. The Bible never uses metron in the sense of "judgement"; it turns in contexts like "go and measure the walls of the city." And prostithémi doesn't mean "treat with greater severity": it simply means add, or increase. You could just as well gloss the passage as "The same standard you use to decide what gifts to give others will be used by God to decide what gifts to give you — but with even greater generosity." Except there is no need to bring God into it. Mark doesn't. It could be a general piece of advice: "If you are mean you will experience meanness — even more so. If you are generous, you will experience generosity — even more so."

People have asked me why I have a bee in my bonnet about the Good News Bible. This is why. 

Jesus has not, up to this point, been talking about rules or gifts or punishments. He has been talking about listening and understanding. So surely the verse is actually saying: "You will understand in proportion to how carefully you listen — even more so, in fact."

for he that hath,
to him shall be given:
and he that hath not,
from him shall be taken
even that which he hath

It is certainly true that poor people tend to get poorer and end up with nothing, while rich people carry on getting richer. But Jesus is presumably not talking about economics. He is still talking about preaching, and understanding, and listening. You have to understand Jesus' sayings before you can understand Jesus' sayings. If you start out understanding, you'll understand more. If you don't understand to start with, you'll get to the end of a parable understanding less than you did before. Grasp a little bit? That's great. We can work with that. Fail to grasp even the simplest parable? Sorry, but there is nothing that can be done for you.

and he said,

so is the kingdom of God,
as if a man should cast seed into the ground;
and should sleep, and rise night and day,
and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how.

for the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself;
first the blade,
then the ear,
after that the full corn in the ear.
but when the fruit is brought forth
immediately he putteth in the sickle,
because the harvest is come.

For a moment, it sounds as if Jesus is going to tell us the secret. This is the kingdom of God... The kingdom of God is like this... But anyone expecting a Big Reveal will be sorely disappointed. 

"This is the kingdom... a man planted some seeds, and they grew into a plants."

This man is an ever bigger idiot than the sower in the first story. He has some valuable seed corn, but he doesn't realize that that is what he has. Maybe he was going to feed it to his chickens. Maybe it's what was left over after the miller made it into flour. For all I know, he has stupidly swapped his cow for a bag of beans. But for whatever reason, he just throws or drops the seed outside his house and forgets all about it. And then a few weeks later corn or sunflowers or a beanstalk pop up outside his front door — to his complete surprise. It seems to him as if the ground outside his house has suddenly come to life all by itself. Not that he's complaining. He picks the flowers or harvests the corn right away.

The first story was an allegory. The sower was Jesus, or perhaps one of Jesus's envoys; the seed was the Word; the Soil were different types of listener. But it is a cardinal mistake to assume that you can take the key to one story and use it to unlock a different story. This second story is not allegorical in the way the first one was. The seed is not the Kingdom of God; the crop is not the Kingdom of God; the man, his house, and the soil are not the Kingdom of God. What is like the Kingdom of God is the whole situation. The Kingdom of God is — will be — a complete surprise. It will just suddenly appear. And it will look as it it had just popped up out of the ground all by itself.


and he said,

whereunto shall we liken the kingdom of God?
or with what comparison shall we compare it?

it is like a grain of mustard seed,
which, when it is sown in the earth,
is less than all the seeds that be in the earth:
but when it is sown,
it groweth up
and becometh greater than all herbs
and shooteth out great branches
so that the fowls of the air may lodge under the shadow of it.

It is a mistake, again, to try to find things in parables which are definitely not there. Jesus says that the Kingdom of God is like mustard seed in one specific respect. We are not entitled to say that the Word of God teaches that the Kingdom is great for flavouring curry or that the Kingdom can be used as an ingredient of massage oil.

Once again, Jesus the carpenter tells his fisherman friends about planting seeds and harvesting crops. Mustard seeds are very small. Not, as certain anti-literalists would want to remind us, the smallest seeds on the planet earth, but very small indeed. And mustard trees are very big shrubs: not necessarily the largest tree in the world; but plenty big enough to provide shade for a passing pigeon. But very probably, we should read the piece as a kind of poetic hyperbole. Imagine if the mighty Canadian Redwood grew out of a tiny powder-like seed. That's what the Kingdom of God is like. A very, very big thing growing up out of a very, very small thing.

and with many such parables spake he the word unto them
as they were able to hear it.
but without a parable spake he not unto them
and when they were alone
he expounded all things to his disciples

Jesus speaks in puzzles. And if we can't see what follows from warnings about men who do not realize that there are seeds growing in their own gardens and huge trees bursting forth from small seeds than we are still outsiders. Without ears; incapable of hearing. 



and the same day
when the even was come,
he saith unto them,
Let us pass over unto the other side.
and when they had sent away the multitude,
they took him even as he was in the ship
and there were also with him other little ships.

I said previously that it was a mistake to treat the second and third chapters of Mark as continuous narrative: they are better thought of as a montage, as a collection of Jesus-stories and Jesus-sayings. But clearly this chapter does have a narrative structure: Jesus goes to beach; teaches his disciples on a boat; sails to the other side of the lake and performs a miracle there. So: is there a thematic or didactic connection between the different sections of the chapter?

Well, of course there is: otherwise I wouldn't have asked the question.

An overwhelmingly huge crowd of people have formed on the West side beach; all wanting miracles and wonders. Jesus gets onto a boat, and teaches his disciples instead. When he has finished teaching, rather than going and ministering to the mob on the beach, he turns the boat around and sails off to a completely different beach, over on the East side. 

and there arose a great storm of wind,
and the waves beat into the ship
so that it was now full.
and he was in the hinder part of the ship,
asleep on a pillow:
and they awake him, and say unto him,
"Master, carest thou not that we perish?
and he arose, and rebuked the wind, and said unto the sea,
"Peace, be still."
and the wind ceased, and there was a great calm.
and he said unto them,
"Why are ye so fearful?
how is it that ye have no faith?"
and they feared exceedingly, and said one to another,
"What manner of man is this,
that even the wind and the sea obey him?"

There is a storm. The disciples are scared. They are fishermen. They know this lake. They know what kind of storm is dangerous and what kind the boat can weather. Jesus isn't worried. He's asleep, at the back of the boat. Maybe he is in a state of spiritual serenity. Or maybe he is a land-carpenter and doesn't realize how much trouble they are in. So the disciples wake him up. And he rebukes the wind. He admonishes it; he talks to it sharply. And to the sea he says something like "Silence! Be muzzled."

Having given the weather a good ticking off, he turns round and chastises his disciples as well. "Why are you fearful? Do you still not have faith?" Don't you trust me yet? You've been my students for a while. Haven't you grasped the basics?

Jesus wants to know why they were afraid of the weather. But his question makes them even more afraid. They "fear with a great fear". But it isn't the sea they are afraid of now: it's Jesus himself.
I think there is a comic note to this scene. The disciples are convinced they are going to drown. A possibly slightly grumpy Jesus gets up from his nap and says "Wind — you are being very, very, naughty! Sea — shut up and put a sock in it right now!" And then, we assume, he goes back downstairs to bed, leaving the dripping wet fishermen in the middle of a dead-calm sea, looking at each other with open mouths.

"Who is this person?"

The Gospel is a secret which not everyone can understand. Jesus teaches in puzzles and cryptograms. The disciples need cheat sheets to solve even the easiest ones. And Jesus's biggest miracle yet raises the biggest question yet. Who is Jesus?

They don't know. They really don't know. 

There is a seed lying in the ground which the daft farmer has forgotten he even planted. The room is pitch dark because someone has put a bucket over the lamp. Someone has a handful of seeds which are so small you can hardly see them. But the tiny seeds are going to turn into massive trees; the daft farmer is going to be surprised, and someone is going to take away the bucket and we'll all be able to see what is going on. 

The big crowd don't know who Jesus is. The disciples don't know who Jesus is. Even Jesus' special twelve don't know who Jesus is.

But we do. We were in on the secret from the first chapter. almost the first verse. We know the mystery of the kingdom. The good soil is us.


Fun Fact:
When someone calls Jesus "Master" they are almost always calling him Didaskolos, teacher—not boss or lord. Until the middle of the 20th century, English school teachers were often referred to as "masters".


I'm Andrew. I write about folk music, God, comic books, Star Wars and Jeremy Corbyn.

Or consider supporting me on Patreon (by pledging $1 for each essay)

Monday, October 14, 2019

Mark 4 1 - 20


and he began again to teach by the sea side
and there was gathered unto him a great multitude
so that he entered into a ship
and sat in the sea
and the whole multitude was by the sea on the land

The last time Jesus went down to the beach, there were so many people that he asked the disciples to get a boat ready. This time, he actually gets into the boat: the crowd must be even larger. Once he's in the boat, he starts to teach. (That word again: teaching as opposed to proclaiming.)

I don't think we are supposed to imagine that he is shouting at a huge crowd from a boat. How on earth would they hear? (I think some irreverent comedians could probably come up with a clever sketch based on just that question.) I have heard this story many times, and I have always assumed that Jesus preached from the boat, to the people on land: that he was using the ship as a floating pulpit. But I now think this is incorrect. I think that what actually happened is that the multitude who converged on the beach mainly wanted to see miracles and ask for healings and Jesus withdrew onto the boat in order to teach his disciples. A few pages ago, Jesus was inside Peter's house, teaching, while a mob were outside, breaking the ceiling down, because they wanted miracles. In this story a boat has taken the place of Peter's house. For all we know it may have been Peter's boat. 

Jesus has not got into the boat to make it easier for the crowd to hear him: he has got into the boat to make jolly sure that they can't.

and he taught them many things by parables,
and said unto them in his doctrine,

hearken;
behold
there went out a sower to sow:
and it came to pass, as he sowed,

some fell by the way side,
and the fowls of the air came 
and devoured it up.

and some fell on stony ground
where it had not much earth;
and immediately it sprang up
because it had no depth of earth:
but when the sun was up, 
it was scorched;
and because it had no root, 
it withered away.

and some fell among thorns,
and the thorns grew up,
and choked it,
and it yielded no fruit.

and other fell on good ground,
and did yield fruit that sprang up
and increased
and brought forth, some thirty
and some sixty
and some an hundred

This is the first time we readers have been allowed to listen in on one of Jesus' seminars, so Mark gives it a big build up. He tells us twice that Jesus is about to start teaching. "He taught them lots of things using parables; this is what he taught them in his teaching." Then he hands the floor over to Jesus. Jesus tells everyone to listen, and then he tells everyone to use their imagination and look. And then the seminar starts.

But it is strange sermon; a meta-sermon: preaching about preaching, teaching about teaching. We may get to the end of the Sermon on the Boat more baffled than when we started. And, alarmingly, this may be the whole point of it.

First comes the story of the sower. Unless you are a Martian, or a Hindu, or Prof Richard Dawkins, you know this story. Well, it is hardly a story: it is little more than an image. A farmer throws seed out at random, without regard for where it goes; so naturally, some of it comes up and some of it doesn't. This is called broadcasting, but you would normally only broadcast seed when you want the crops to come up densely over a whole area — sowing a lawn, say. The Sower is being profligate and wasteful with his seed: that's the point of the story. Jesus was an artisan; his disciples are fishermen: perhaps they take it for granted that all farmers are idiots.

"There's this farmer, right — and imagine this — he just chucks his seed everywhere without paying any attention to where it goes. And, do you know, in a funny way, God is a bit like that silly farmer….."

and he said unto them,
he that hath ears to hear, let him hear

We've all got ears. Very nearly all of us, at any rate. And hearing is very much what ears are best at doing. So one's first reaction to this phrase is "Since we all have ears, this story is meant for everyone." But then we stop and think, and realize that it could mean "If you are capable of hearing this, you should. But not all of you can…." So perhaps this story is only meant for a minority. The minority on the boat, perhaps.

and when he was alone,
they that were about him with the twelve asked of him the parable

So. It's a simple story. A sower plants some seeds. Some of them come up, some of them don't. Maybe because it is so simple, some of Jesus students ask him what it means. His answer pretty much throws the whole of the book of Mark, and everything we think we know about Jesus, into disarray.

Mark seems to refer to two groups: "those who were about him" and "the twelve". Jesus is alone at the center telling the story. Around him are his twelve chosen envoys. Further out is a larger group of students who can still be said to be near to him. And some distance away is a huge undifferentiated beach-bound crowd, who can't hear what is being said.


unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God:
but unto them that are without,
all these things are done in parables:
that seeing they may see,
and not perceive;
and hearing they may hear,
and not understand;
lest at any time they should be converted,
and their sins should be forgiven them.

We are all familiar with the idea of fables. They tend to be vivid concrete examples of self-evident moral precepts; they don't contain any esoteric secrets or mystical revelations. We know that lying is wrong. We know that people doubt the word of habitual liars even when they are telling the truth. The story about the little boy who kept setting off the wolf-alarm when there was no wolf-emergency and as a result got eaten by a wolf doesn't tell us anything that we didn't already know. But it fixes it in our minds; it helps us remember it. I suppose it may scare children by showing that a fairly small offence might have a catastrophic consequence. (And anyway, children like stories in which other people are naughty and cop it.) Platitudes are conveniently expressed in concrete form: it is relatively hard to say "I wonder if it has occurred to you that projects can be overstaffed as well as understaffed". It is easy to say "Well, you know what they say about too many cooks…."

I think that most of us are also familiar with the idea of allegories. They are stories which require some sort of key or explanation. The seem to be about one thing, but they are really about something else. There is a story about a traveler who is captured by a giant in a swamp and imprisoned in a castle, but manages to escape when he finds a key. It is a rousing little story if you like that kind of thing. And I suppose you could read it as a fable: the moral of the story is "Don't give up. However bad things look, there is always a chance they will turn out okay." But it is actually an allegory. In the background, the voice of the author provides a key. The traveler is named Christian, the swamp is named Despond, the giant is called Despair, his castle is called Doubt but the key is called Hope. If you ask me, that is quite a complicated way of telling us that if a Christian has hope he will never despair. (Pilgrim's Progress. Boring book; excellent theme song.)

A parable literally means a juxtapositioning; putting two different things alongside each other, so we can spot the similarities. But according to Mark, Jesus's parables aren't fables, to help us hold onto a truth, or allegories, to make a moral message palatable. According to Mark, Jesus's parables are more like puzzles. Riddles, even. The Kingdom of God is a Mystery.

There were, in the classical world, many "mystery religions" which taught their rituals and doctrines only to initiates. In medieval times, the word "mystery" simply meant "trade secret" or even just "trade". The religious "mystery plays" were plays put on by the different craft guilds, and have nothing to do with mysteries in the religious sense. It isn't exactly clear when "Mystery" took on its present meaning as "puzzle" or in particular "a story about an unsolved crime". The title of the 1794 story which Jane Austen lampoons is The Mysteries of Udolpho. I've always taken that to mean "the puzzles which our intrepid heroine had to solve" but it could still have meant "the experience which was in a funny way like an initiation".

The kingdom of God is a Mystery. There are people on the inside — on the boat? — who know the secret; and people on the outside — on the beach -— who do not. So Jesus preaches in parables to make sure that the people on the beach don't find out the secret.

The "lest" part is particularly troubling. If the people on the shore solve the puzzle, they would turn their lives around and send their sins away. And we wouldn't want that, would we?


and he said unto them,
know ye not this parable?
and how then will ye know all parables?

the sower soweth the word.
and these are they by the way side,
where the word is sown;
but when they have heard,
Satan cometh immediately,
and taketh away the word that was sown in their hearts.

and these are they likewise which are sown on stony ground;
who, when they have heard the word,
immediately receive it with gladness;
and have no root in themselves,
and so endure but for a time:
afterward, when affliction or persecution ariseth for the word's sake, immediately they are offended.

and these are they which are sown among thorns;
such as hear the word,
and the cares of this world,
and the deceitfulness of riches,
and the lusts of other things entering in,
choke the word,
and it becometh unfruitful.

and these are they which are sown on good ground;
such as hear the word,
and receive it,
and bring forth fruit,
some thirtyfold, some sixty, and some an hundred.

If we don't understand this parable, we won't understand any of the other parables either. That could be taken two ways. Is Jesus saying that this is the master parable, and that once you have decoded it you will be able to solve all the others? Or is he merely saying "I am surprised you need my help to solve this: it's actually one of the easier ones."

Jesus is preaching. It's his biggest gig ever: more people than can get onto the beach. But he is withdrawn with a small number of students; more than twelve but less than fifty. And they have questions. Why is it that such a lot of people listen to you, but so few hear you? Is there a problem with the Word? Maybe you need to focus group a New Improved Word? Maybe you could triangulate with the Pharisees and come up with some Word that would have better market penetration?

To which the answer is: "You don't blame the seed because of where it lands. If it lands in bad soil, it doesn't come up. If it lands in good soil, it does."

The key to the allegory isn't that surprising or complicated. Different types of soil equals different types of people. Some people give up following the Word because it gets too hard: when being a follower of Jesus becomes dangerous or unpopular. Some people give up following the Word because it gets too easy: when there is money and fun and lipstick to be had instead. And some people never hear the Word in the first place: one of those Dirty Ghosts can get in between the preacher and the listener.

So: at whom is the story directed? Is Jesus talking to the soil? "Try hard not to be the kind of soil which has weeds growing in it. Try hard not to be the kind of soil which isn't deep enough for wheat to take root? Try hard to be good soil."

Is he talking to the people outside the process? "You may wonder why not all the seeds come up. But don't worry. There is nothing wrong with the seed, although there may be something wrong with the soil."

Or is he talking to other sowers? "Don't worry if not all your seed comes up. That's not your fault. You can't second guess what kind of soil your seed will land in. Carry on sowing."

We can't change what kind of soil we are. The seed is the seed. The message is for the people already with Jesus, on the boat. "Don't worry. You will always be a minority. You are good soil. But the ear-less majority will never hear what I am saying."

It starts to seem terrifyingly possible that Jesus was a Calvinist.

FUN FACT
In Greek an "ear" of corn is a stachui, and the things on the side of your head are ota and what you do with them is akou. There is no world play between "ear" of corn, a human "ear" or the act of "hearing".



I'm Andrew. I write about folk music, God, comic books, Star Wars and Jeremy Corbyn.

Or consider supporting me on Patreon (by pledging $1 for each essay)

Monday, October 07, 2019

Annoying Facebook Science Meme Critique Rant

A friend of mine posted one of those annoying memes which go around facebook under the umbrella title "I fucking love science".

This one went as follows.



Frivolously, I said: "Have you got a week."

"Possibly." said my friend. (These may not have been his precise words.)

So I wrote the following.

DAY ONE

It is always possible to frame Paradise Lost or the Book of Genesis as "that story about the talking snake", in the same way it is always possible to frame Hamlet as "that story about the sad kid" or Parsifal as "that story about the lost cup".

But if you choose to frame them in that way, I will probably think "Oh, these Science Dudes don't get what art and literature are for".

In fact, I will probably think "If Science Dudes look at the Bible and Milton and can't see anything but a talking snake, I definitely don't want to be a Science Dude."

This doesn't make them wrong, necessarily. You can get science and not get literature, in the same way that you can know everything about sport but nothing at all about cookery. But it does make my fur prickle and my hackles rise. It makes me disinclined to pay attention to the rest of their argument.

Which, I strongly suspect, is the object of the exercise. No-one is trying to persuade anyone of anything. They are just saying "Our side -- hooray! -- Your side -- boo!" If I had flaccid hackles and smooth fur they wouldn't be doing their job.

Indeed, there is a kind of a trap here. If an annoying person is standing on a virtual street corner saying "Science rocks! Religion sucks!" it is very tempting to turn around and say "No, on the contrary, science sucks!" Which means the annoying man can say "See, told you so! Religion is anti-science."

I shall attempt to get to the end of this week without at any time saying "Science! Boo!"

I think that it is entirely possible to fucking love science without fucking hating religion.


DAY TWO

Some Christians think that their Bible is the exact word of God. They think that God wrote it, in the same way that the Earl of Oxford wrote Hamlet. Similarly, Muslims believe that their Koran (which has also got a snake story in it, I think) existed in heaven before it was dictated on earth, and would have existed even if God had never created the universe.

If you went up to one of those Christians or Muslims and asked "What would happen if every single copy of the Bible and/or the Koran were destroyed... and everyone on earth for some reason forgot all about them?" they would reply "I suppose God would dictate them all over again when he thought humans were ready for it." Which is a perfectly reasonable answer.

Now, I don't believe that the Bible is a magic book in that sense, and neither do you, and neither does the Archbishop of Canterbury, and neither does the Pope. But some people do. And if you go up to one of those people and say "If we forgot about the Bible, it couldn't possibly be reconstructed" they would simply retort "Oh yes it could." It's the kind of evidence that only works if you have already decided what verdict you are eventually going to come to.

"I can prove that God doesn't exist" says the science dude. "If God existed, he would exist. But he doesn't exist... so it follows that he doesn't exist!".

"I can prove that God exists" says the Christian. "If God didn't exist, he wouldn't exist. But he does exist! So it follows that he exists."

Truly, you have a dizzying intellect.

DAY THREE

I am pretty sure that if human culture was wiped out then the exact combination of words which go to make up Hamlet would never exist again.

This is what makes works of art especially precious. All over the universe there must be aliens who know about evolution by natural selection and Pythagoras's theorem; but none of them know about the death of Ophelia or why Hamlet thought he was a rogue and peasant slave. Gravity is just sitting around waiting to be discovered: only one being in the entire universe could have written "oh that this too, too solid flesh would melt..."

Next time someone asks you what's so special about humans, that's the answer.

If you don't like Hamlet then substitute Les Miserables or Lord of the Rings or Here Comes Noddy! or any book you do like.

But if we entirely wiped out human culture humans would carry on making babies. And I think -- I am not quite sure but I think -- that as long as we go on making babies, we will still have the idea of "fathers" and "sons". And if we've got the idea of "fathers" and "sons" then wouldn't we also have the idea that one of the worst things that could happen to a young man is for his father to be murdered? And that one of the worst possible crimes is for a man to kill his own brother?

And I think that if we entirely wiped out human culture, human beings would soon spot the fact that everyone dies in the end, and some of them would start wondering "where do people go when they die?" And once they've asked that question, the idea of ghosts would occur to some of them.

So sooner or later it would occur to someone to tell the story of a young man who gets a message from his murdered father's ghost...

Maybe this is all a bit Neil Gaiman. But I think that there is a very good chance that if we rebooted human culture, humans would sooner or later come up with a story that was very much like Hamlet.

Sherlock Holmes and Spider-Man I wouldn't hold out as much hope for....

DAY FOUR

Jung and his disciple Joseph Campbell thought that human brains are wired to tell particular kinds of stories. The story of Luke Skywalker is a bit like the story of Gilgamesh because the journey of those two particular heroes are a bit like everyone's journey through life. Deceitful snakes and wise old men and tricksters pop up in stories all over the world because they represent things which are in every human being's mind.

Archetypes, if you insist.

If they are right, then the Very Big Stories are the ones which humans are most likely to start telling even if culture has been rebooted. So if it is possible that Future Humans would have a story which is a lot like Hamlet, then it is very likely indeed that they would have a story which is a lot like Paradise Lost.

I don't know if this is true. I recanted my faith in Hero With a Thousand Faces a long time ago. A lot depends on what we mean by "culture" and exactly how the reboot scenario works. If snakes have gone extinct then no-one would think to tell a story about the snake in the garden of Eden -- or even about Kaa or Sir Hiss. And maybe, once we have wiped out a million years of human culture and started all over again, the new lot of humans wouldn't understand the idea that, say, kids are innocent and old men are wise, in which case the Journey of the Hero wouldn't have anything to be about.

Maybe the new lot of humans wouldn't even understand that there are things called rules with consequences if you break them or think that it would be odd for two adults to be naked all the time.

But if the New Humans thought so differently, I am not sure I would call them "human". And if they were that different from us, why assume they would come up with that very specific way of investigating the universe called "science"?

DAY FIVE

Either

1:  God exists, or
2:  God does not exist.

But these are not the only options. (That would be too simple.)

1.1 God exists, and wise and clever humans can work this out for themselves.
1.2 God exists, but humans wouldn't know that he existed unless he told them so himself.

2.1.1 God does not exist, but some wise and clever humans honestly believe that he does.
2.1.2 God does not exist, but some wise and clever humans made up the idea of God because they honestly thought that believing in God would make humans nicer.
2.1.3 God does not exist but some ignorant and stupid humans think that he does because they don't know any better.

2.2 God does not exist, but some wicked humans invented the idea of God for some nefarious reason -- to fool other people into giving them money, or to make everyone respect the king or to give them a pretext for wearing nice red uniforms.

3: God does not exist, and the the fact that some people think he does is a complete historical fluke -- if history had gone differently, the Fish Slapping Society might have taken the place of the Church of England and Henry VIII might have quarreled with Rome over the precise interpretation of the rules of Tiddlywinks.

But in each case, if human beings came up with the idea of God once, they would probably come up with the idea again. If God exists, then some of the New Humans will figure it out eventually. If the existence of God isn't the sort of thing that can be figured out, God will do his "Hey guys, look at me!" routine with the burning bush all over again.

If God does not exist, but was a more or less honest mistake by some more or less well meaning Humans, then it is quite likely that after the Reboot, some more or less well meaning New Human will make the same kinds of mistakes all over again. The New Humans will live in the same universe that the Old Humans did. They will ask the same kinds of question about it. And they will very probably come up with the same sorts of answers. "I reckon that someone must be in overall charge; I reckon he must be good but quite cross with us when we are bad; I reckon he wants us to acknowledge him in some way..."

But supposing the idea of God was a deliberate con-trick? In that case I think that the same sort of Naughty Priests who came up with the idea in the first place will come up with the same kinds of fibs after the Great Cultural Reboot.

I agree that if the idea of God coming into being was an arbitrary and meaningless fluke then the same arbitrary and meaningless fluke is unlikely to happen twice.

So. Destroy all the holy books and wipe everyone's memories. I think that in a few thousand years, human beings will again be building temples, saying prayers, sacrificing goats and trying hard not to covet their neighbor's Oxen. I think they will get to this point a long time before they have worked out the Three Laws of Motion from first principles.

I cannot guarantee that anyone would re-invent the lyrics of Kum-By-Ya.

DAY 6

The Snake Story had probably been around for a long time before it got incorporated into the collection of stories we call Genesis. And the book of Genesis had been around for a very long time before Christians worked out what they thought the story meant.

Christians think the snake story is a partial description of how human beings relate to God. In particular they think it is the answer to one very Big Question.

"If God is nice, why is the world horrid?"

"Because humans keep on breaking God's rules. Let me tell you a story..."

Obviously, the Christian New Testament understands the story in a very particular way. Paul says "in Adam, everyone has sinned", which is probably not what the Genesis-writer had in mind when he wrote the story down. Later Christians have understood Paul in different ways. St Augustine probably didn't understand the story of Adam and Eve in quite the same way that Billy Graham does. I doubt if I could state the difference between, say, Hooker's doctrine and Thomas Aquinas', in any form which would hold water for five minutes. But the basic idea -- "things used to be okay between man and God; then man broke God's rules and they are not okay; someday God is going to do something and they will be okay again" -- is one which millions of people have found makes sense for them.

They might be wrong, but it can't just be written off as "a silly story about a talking snake."

So.

If all the stories in the world were suddenly forgotten, I think it is probable that in a thousand years time, humans would again be telling stories very like Hamlet, Gawain and the Green Knight, Superman, Cinderella, and Adam and Eve, because I think they are the kinds of stories which human beings tell, because I think that part of what makes us human is telling those stories.

If all the stories in the world were suddenly forgotten, I think that it is probable that humans a thousand years later would have come up with the idea that the universe is run by some sort of God, because that's the kind of creatures humans are and that's the kind of universe we live in.

If all the stories in the world were suddenly forgotten, I think that it is probable that some of the humans who believe in God would have come up with the idea of the Fall of Man. Things used to be okay between man and God, and things will be okay again in the future, but right now we are in God's bad-books and everything seems horrible.

I think it is less likely, but not impossible, that the New Humans who have the idea of the Fall of Man will tell a story quite a lot like the story of Adam and Eve. Humans keep on putting the same kinds of things in stories and the images in the story -- fruit, gardens, walls, snakes, nakedness and clothing, knowledge and ignorance -- are pretty fundamental. But I am not sure about that. Maybe it would be a different story and maybe they wouldn't put it in the shape of a story at all.

The trouble with the original meme is that it really says "If the story of the snake is just a silly story with no deeper meaning and significance; and if stories in general are just silly arbitrary things which people make up to pass the time and if the idea of God is just an arbitrary superstition which someone made up then if you wiped all the stories out then nothing at all similar would ever exist again."

And I don't think you can take any of that for granted.

DAY SEVEN

I am off to have a rest.





I'm Andrew. I write about folk music, God, comic books, Star Wars and Jeremy Corbyn.

Or consider supporting me on Patreon (by pledging $1 for each essay)



Wednesday, October 02, 2019

A Black Day

Trying to work out how old I must have been at the time.

Primary school age. Before Star Wars but after Spider-Man.

Let us say that it was All Saints Day and that the Sunday School put on a pageant in which each child represented a real-life Saint.

Actually it was more elaborate than that. A full-length play in which both adults and children took part. Possibly it involved a man, possibly played by my Boys' Brigade captain, being questioned by Saint Peter at the Pearly Gates. Saint Peter had a big red book like Eamonn Andrews. I suppose he was played by the Minister. But it certainly involved children from the Sunday School proceeding around the church in the personas of various saints.

Someone recited The Son of God Goes Forth To War as we walked in. (*) I didn't know that "matron" just meant "an older woman" and "maid" simply "a younger woman". I took it that "the matron and the maid" meant "the woman in overall charge of a hospital, and also the woman who does the menial cleaning tasks." Childhood is full of those kinds of confusions.

"Which saint was Andrew selected to play?", you are all asking

I dressed up in a white shirt and a grown-up tie; and presumably some kind of jacket; and for reasons I do not quite understand, a false pair of glasses. This was before I had been prescribed glasses of my own. My "saint" was Martin Luther King, who I had never heard of. So naturally, I wore make-up on my face and my hands. Another girl in my class also wore make up. Of the same colour. I have literally no idea who she was pretending to be. Surely not Rosa Parkes? Mary Seacole was not much known-about in those days.

That narrows it down. I know that I did not wear glasses in Miss Beale's class and did wear them in Miss Griffiths's class. So I must have been eight years old, which takes us 1971 or 1972. Had it really only taken three years for M.L.K to become such a safe, uncontroversial figure that he could be represented in a children's Sunday School pageant? In England? A few years later the Minister mentioned in the course of a sermon that men like Martin Luther King and John F. Kennedy, however flawed as human beings, could, in a very real sense, be seen as pictures of Jesus in our own age. I remember my father blustering that if they hadn't had "the extreme good fortune to be assassinated" he would still regard them both as far too "political" to mention from the pulpit.

Fast forward a couple of decades.

It is the middle 1980s. I am at college doing my second degree and playing more Dungeons & Dragons than is good for me. This was the period when I single-handedly and without precedent created the genre of "theater style" live action role-playing games out of my head.

I read it on the internet so it must be true.

A LARP is a game where you dress up in costume and fight monsters with rubber swords. A free-form game is a LARP where you dress up in costume and mostly talk to other people dressed up in costumes. Game guru Paul Mason once said that he couldn't take free form games seriously because they called to mind an image of Andrew Rilstone dressed in a blanket.

One of the freeform LARPs we ran was pirate themed. I think it was set in a dockside tavern. There were people with hooks who said "arr" and other people with hooks who also said "arr" and ladies disguised as cabin boys and kings' custom men disguised as beggars and a treasure map and a black spot and a cannibal witch doctor.

Dressed in leopard skin.

With a plastic bone though his nose.

And black make up.

I believe photographs exist. I would be mortified if anyone saw them.

It is a mistake to say that a racist thing is a thing done by a racist person and that it is therefore impossible for a non-racist person to do a racist thing. This was the circle which the editor of Doctor Who Monthly got into last year when the conversation turned back to Talons of Weng Chiang. Some people thought that the story, which involved a white actor in yellow make up playing a villain who was to all intents and purposes Fu Manchu, was racist. If the story was racist, then Robert Holmes and Phillip Hinchcliff were racists. But the editor had met Bob and Phil and there was no one in the world less racist than they were. Therefore Talons of Weng Chiang cannot possibly have been racist. So it follows that anyone perceiving racism in a story about a Chinese villain who says things like "I understand we all rook arrike?" had been infected with porritical collectness.

I imagine that there were people in my church in 1972 who I would now consider to be racists. There were certainly no black people in the congregation, or indeed the town. We were four years out from "rivers of blood", in a parliamentary constituency which had not returned a Labour MP since 1945. From time to time we had a lady come to talk to us about Home Missions, which meant "children less well off than ourselves" and another to talk to us about Overseas Missions which meant "children in far away lands". There is nothing wrong with sending charity to foreign countries and I doubt if Methodist missionaries at that time were much given to marching into native villages and burning their religious shrines. But there was an undercurrent of grass huts and primitivism about the whole thing. Poor benighted heathens who needed our pennies if they were ever going to learn to read or write.

You can see it in Blue Peter as well: poor strange dark skinned children who won't have anything to eat unless we send them our old teddy bears. Do they know its Christmastime at all? People still told us without irony that we had to eat the burned scrambled egg because they were starving in Africa.

I do not think that there was the slightest racist intention in the first of my two forays into blackface, which is not the same as saying that it wasn't racist. No-one was consciously making fun of black people. Certainly no-one was consciously making fun of Martin Luther King. One little white boy in a collection of twenty little white boys had put black boot polish on his face. Others presumably had swords and dragon-heads and collections of injured animals. Someone's mum had to produce a John Wesley costume.

I would have to place it in exactly the same category as my much-loved and now disintegrating gollywog. The lady who made the toy and put into the sale-of-work was not a racist. My granny, who bought the thing and put it in my Christmas stocking was not a racist. My parents, who let me play with it, were not racists. I was certainly not a racist toddler. And yet there it was: my favourite toy, a Jim Crow caricature of a black man.

We couldn't see the wood for the trees. Which is to say we couldn't see the racism because of all the racism. Lenny Henry was a regular guest star on the Black and White Minstrels. Jim Davidson told Chalkie White jokes in front of the Queen. Robertson's Jam had a gollywog on the label. (He finally retired as recently as 2002.) "Maybe you could think of a contemporary Christian hero which didn't involve blacking up a nine-year-old?" was not a question which had occurred to anyone.

Once someone asked the question, everyone knew the right answer. Nearly everyone. The world split neatly into the majority who said "Dear God in heaven what were we thinking of?" and those who said "We didn't mean anything by it then we don't mean anything by it now so we are going to damn well buy MORE gollywogs to stick it to the liberals."

The live action role playing incident is completely inexcusable, although I hope everyone see the difference between "inexcusable" and "unforgivable". I can hardly believe it happened. The most I can say in my defense is that everyone did stupid things while they were students. A friend of mine immersed himself in a bath of green poster paint in order to play the role of a goblin, and found the next morning that the stuff was almost impossible to remove. Another friend found that he was the only boy who had signed on to a course about feminist literature. He attended the final seminar of term in full drag. And I am told that some of the more sporty students, who were not on speaking terms with us D&D nerds, would occasionally take the bet to run out of the changing room showers and do a lap of the sports center with nothing on.

We didn't think we were doing something awful. I don't think we even thought that we were doing something a little bit naughty, like the streakers and the drag. It was just the kind of thing that people did. RPGs deal in broad, over the top caricatures. There had to be pirates who said "Ahh, bejabbers, me hearties, belay and belike" and admirals who said "I say, blast the bally blighters, what?" and Frenchmen who said "Sacre bleu, oh la-la." So naturally there had to be witch doctor who said "Dis um some powerful magic man."

There are lots of things in my life which I am acutely embarrassed about. Embarrassing memories creep up on me in the street for no reason and make me literally cry out, or bite my own fingers to distract myself. They are nearly all examples of social gaffs and being a show-off. There was one Boys Brigade camp when a different boy was invited to lead prayers each night. This generally ran to "Thank you God for a lovely day, and thank you for the ladies who cooked the sausage stew." When it was my turn I took it upon myself to explain to the assembled multitudes, including the vicar, what I understood by the doctrine of the Trinity. I would like to say that I am acutely embarrassed about having blacked-up for a role-playing game; that I come out in a cold-sweat whenever I think about it. But I don't. I ought to, but I don't. In fact, the only feeling I have about that long-ago evening is a vague sense of pride because I improvised a passably decent one-liner on the spur of the moment.

Cannibal Witch Doctor: To work magic, put powder in mouth, go to bad man, and spit in face.
Governor's Beautiful Daughter: In his face, or in my own face?
Cannibal Witch Doctor: You know how spit in own face, you got more powerful magic than me!

I am offering this up as a piece of data. I ought to be embarrassed, but as a matter of fact, I am not.

In 1972, I didn't know any better. In 1985, I damn well should have done. But apparently I didn't. Neither did anyone else. Not the person who scripted the game (one of the most right-on guys I've ever met). Not the other players, at least one of whom I believe to have been a left-wing student union rep. Not the astonishingly humourless joke-shop man who sold me the plastic bone. ("I can also do you a bone through the neck, if you'd like one.")

"Would you have done it if there had been any black people in your RPG group?"

Of course not. But there weren't. Which is probably the point.

"What would you say if someone asked you do it now?"

I would say dear god have you entirely taken leave of your senses fucking hell of course not. And if Present Day me could walk in on Past Me, preferably before he put the damn make up on, I would say for goodness sake Rilstone what the hell are you thinking of?

I don't know if bad words or bad costumes or bad make up or bad jokes are less bad in some context than others. I don't know if "Yes, I did say the n-word, but I was rehearsing a play" is ever an excuse, or a partial excuse, or a mitigating factor. I am disinclined to believe that some words and concepts exist as free-floating signifiers, obscene or racist regardless of where you say them and who you say them to. Mrs Mary Whitehouse believed that merely pronouncing the f-word caused concrete social harm. Anne Widdicombe MEP claimed to be physically unable to watch even one minute of In The Thick of It, even after she had agreed to appear on a talk show in which people try out things they don't think they will like. I think they would both have struggled to see any difference between the rugby club prank and a pervert displaying himself to young children in the park.

Jonathan Miller thinks that theater is a special space where anything goes. Could I argue that a live-action role-playing game is a highly stylized piece of improvised theater, so what is permissable for the RSC to do at Stratford is acceptable for the SF&F Soc to do in meeting room L049? Is the stage so sacred so that words and actions which would be unacceptable anywhere else become magically sanctified? I suppose the arch represents an invisible barrier: you aren't in the same room as a naked dude or being sworn at by someone, you are looking at them or listening to them through a mirror or across a wall. I wouldn't take my clothes off on stage for any money. And some sort of subversive racism for a high artistic purpose is a lot different from me playing a stereotype in what was basically a pantomime.

I suppose that they still do Aladdin as panto, and I suppose that it is still set in China and I can't believe they cast exclusively Asian actors. Dear dear Sir Ian once played Widow Twanky, but he conceptualized her as an English lady who had once married a Chinese sailor. Has the D'Oyley Cart quietly dropped the Mikado from its repertoire?

The past is a foreign country. I was an asshole when I was in my twenties and when I am in my eighties I will think that I was an asshole when I was in my fifties. You shouldn't judge someone on the basis of one stupid thing they did a long time ago. I am not a racist: I once did a racist thing. I once did a racist thing: therefore I am a racist. If your society permits gollywogs and minstrel shows and Jim Davidson and what-not then even people who are not racists feel some how permitted to put bones through their noses. People who are racists feel permitted to do very much worse. White people can't see racism when it is literally painted on their faces. "Check your privilege" is not just a cliche. There is stuff which you and me and everyone else are doing now which twenty years down the time line is going to make everyone say "What the hell were we thinking?" So think about what you are doing before you do it. I never wanted to be president of Canada in the first place.


(*)A noble army, men and boys
The matron and the maid
Around the Saviour's throne rejoice
In robes of light arrayed
They climbed the steep ascent of heaven
Through peril, toil and pain
O God to use may grace be given
To follow in their train.







I'm Andrew. I write about folk music, God, comic books, Star Wars and Jeremy Corbyn.

Or consider supporting me on Patreon (by pledging $1 for each essay)




Friday, September 27, 2019

You have to remember that the alt-right truly and sincerely hate us.

They think that the only thing which "liberals" have in common is that they we lie about everything, all the time.

They sincerely believe that those of us who went to state schools are sub-human zombies.

They honestly believe that there is secret organization (the Cultural Marxists, the Political Correctness Brigade, the S.J.W) working towards the downfall of civilization, and they honestly believe that this organisation controls schools and media and universities and have invented lies about climate change and vaccination and media studies and evolution and the world being round.

The Daily Mail literally ran a headline: "How the BBC fell victim to a plot to destroy civilization as we know it."

For these people "goodness" and "decency" are not real.

The worst thing they can call someone is "do-gooder" and "goody-goody".

Anyone who wants to make the world nicer is "virtue signalling" or "politically correct", that is to say, insincere.

Instead of goodness, they have a vestigial belief in "purity" which some of them associate with the Christian church. But their purity rules, like their schools, only exist to separate the world into "us" and "them", people who know the rules and people who do not. The rules of sex and the rules of grammar are about equally important. Dudes can't marry dudes or wear frocks. Children have to use the subjunctive and fronted adverbials. Everyone has to salute the flag or sing the national anthem in exactly the right way. If those rules were ever broken -- if we let gay people get married and started ending sentences with "by", "with", or "from" -- it would mean the end of civilization. They literally say this.

These people are not shocked when Johnson speaks ill of Jo Cox. In their mind Jo Cox was an SJW and a traitor and a virtue signaler and a snowflake and a liar and a LIBERAL. They are not horrified when politicians seem to incite violence against remainer MPs, because in their minds remainers are consciously working against the common good; pretending to support the common market, insincere, traitors, virtue signalers, snowflakes -- LIBERALS.

The majority of the Conservative Party are not part of this alt-right apocalypse cult, but the architects of Brexit and the press barons clearly are -- or at any rate, they are prepared to dance to their tune.

Witness the odious Quentin Letts in today's Times sneering about all the "halos" on display in the Commons. The voices raised against Johnson were not merely mistaken: they were insincere; because liberals always lie about everything; because goodness does not exist.

Witness the odious  Farage's positioning of himself along side alt-right poster boy Donald Trump.

The alt-right fooled America, and game-played the constitution, and inserted their guy into the White House.

I do not think that it is a foregone conclusion that, if there is ever another election, the British would do the same thing. I don't think that the majority of Brits are socialists or liberals or Liberals, and I don't think that we are any wiser or cleverer than Americans, on the whole. But I think that we have been brought up to believe in Fair Play and Sportsmanship and to dislike Bullies and and be skeptical of Con-Men and to think that Lord Snooty and Bertie Wooster need to fall on their arses, spelt with an R, from time to time.

Also queuing and tea.

But there is no point in appealing to the decency of the alt-right. There ain't no such animal.





I'm Andrew. I write about folk music, God, comic books, Star Wars and Jeremy Corbyn.

Or consider supporting me on Patreon (by pledging $1 for each essay)