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[ by Charles Cameron — on the half-hidden motivation that gives glee to an act of outright butchery ]
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My source:

There’s a lot that is, as the title suggests, gruesome here, both in the telling, and in the deeds and conversations that are told.

One comment stood out for me, however, as a student of religions, and one whose studies indicate that religious drivers are to be taken more seriously in wars and other forms of violence than our cynical, skeptical, secular world is prone to believe. Here it is:

At the end of the conversation, Mutreb asks whether the “animal to be sacrificed” has arrived. At 1:14 p.m., an unidentified member of the hit squad says “[he] is here.”

I don’t want to be needlessly literalistic about the point I’m making, because I don’t mean it to be taken literally, and couldn’t quite explain how to take it — except seriously. But here it is:

human > animal > sacrifice — this is a very potent & archetypal set of transforms

Seeing humans — Jews, for instance — as animals make it much easier to kill them en masse — as in the Shoah, for example. That part of the psychology of Khashoggi‘s killers is easily understood in the wake of the Nazi atrocities, the Khmer killings, the Rwandan massacre — and genocides in general.

What is perhapos harder for us to come to grips with is the power of the third element — sacrifice.

Sacrifice — the word means making sacred — invokes what Paul Tillich calls ultimate concern, which corresponds to the notion of existential threat with an added dimension..

It gives participants the sense they are not only facing a life and death situation, but one involving the better angels vs the deepest depths of despair.

People who are moved at this level tend to move decisively on those impulses.

That’s — more or less — what I meant to suggest.

[ by Charles Cameron — until we understand suffering as devotion, where are we? ]
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The running of the bulls in Pamplona, Spain, celebrates the martyrdom of San Fermin:

Ernest Hemingway on the San Fermin fiesta:

The fiesta was really started. It kept up day and night for seven days. The dancing kept up, the drinking kept up, the noise went on. The things that happened could only have happened during a fiesta. Everything became quite unreal finally and it seemed as though nothing could have any consequences. It seemed out of place to think of consequences during the fiesta. All during the fiesta you had the feeling even when it was quiet, that you had to shout any remark to make it heard. It was the same feeling about any action. It was a fiesta and it went on for seven days.

[ .. ]

The fiesta and its requisite state of constant drunkenness is a time of “unreal” events and chaos—a time in which our characters let go of any sober sense of right and wrong they might still possess.

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India: Watch men get TRAMPLED by herd of cows for Diwali:

Dozens of men in the central Indian village of Ujjain Taluk allowed themselves to be trampled by stampeding cows Friday as part of Govardhan Puja, the fourth day of Diwali.

Locals pray for their wishes to be granted by ‘Lord of Animals’ Lord Pashupatinath and in return perform the cow-trampling ritual as a mark of gratitude.

Despite the ritual having being performed for hundreds of years, allegedly not one man has been seriously injured as of yet.

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in the running of the bulls, the idea is to avoid being gored: in the running of the cows, the idea is to be trampled.

Religion.

[ by Charles Cameron — anointing Brazilian strong-man Bolsonaro, and hymn singing in Hong Kong ]
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Religious behavior in general fascinates me — but when it affects politics, people often don’t realize what powerful motivation it can provide.

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Religion can be coercive, as in the anointing of Bolsonaro [at approx 3.50]–

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Remember the laying on of hands over Donald Trump? The overarching authority of religion has Trump bow his head, but sets Bolsonaro on his knees! —

— and religion can be liberating —

— That’s a crowd of protesters in Hong Kong singing “Sing Hallelujah to the Lord”.

Remarkable.

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From Reuters in June:

‘Sing Hallelujah to the Lord’ an unlikely anthem of Hong Kong protests

For the past week, the hymn has been heard almost non-stop at the main protest site, in front of the city’s Legislative Council, and at marches and even at tense stand-offs with the police.

It started with a group of Christian students who sang several religious songs at the main protest site, with “Sing Hallelujah to the Lord” catching on among the crowd, even though only about 10 percent of Hong Kong people are Christian.

“This was the one people picked up, as it is easy for people to follow, with a simple message and easy melody,” said Edwin Chow, 19, acting president of the Hong Kong Federation of Catholic Students

The hymn is simple, optimistic yet adds a touch of solemnity and calm to the proceedings, and also affords some legal protection to the protesters —

The students sang the songs in the hope of providing a cover of legitimacy for the protest. Religious gatherings can be held without a permit in the financial hub.

“As religious assemblies were exempt, it could protect the protesters. It also shows that it is a peaceful protest,” Chow said.

The hymn was composed in 1974 by Linda Stassen-Benjamin in the United States for Easter. Its five words are repeated over four stanzas in a minor key, which gives it an air of meditative solemnity.

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Between the anointing of a dictator and the hymn singing of a crowd of protesters demanding democratic freedoms from the Chinese state, we have quite an instructive confluence of ways in which religion can enter the public square.

No doubt there are others. In Nepal, there’s the tantric cultus of the goddess Kubjikaa. What’s religion up to in your neck of the woods?

[ by Charles Cameron — it’s like a waterfall ]
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It’s like a waterfall: you stumble on an idea that comes from the mouth of Doug Coe, describing the principle behind the influence of The Family, of which he was the long-time leader —

— and it turns out the same principle is referenced in an article on surveillance in Defense One —

— only to re-emerge in Dr Mark SG Dyczkowski‘s work on the tradition, philosophy and practice of the goddess Kubjikaa.

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There’s clearly a principle at work here that could find application in many fields, contexts, silos — and the concatenation of such instances is itself a demonstration of the value of silo-breaking thinking.

FWIW, I wouldn’t have so much as heard of the Goddess Kubjikaa were it not for my half-century friendship with Mark Dyczkowski, to whom I owe so much, and into the waters of whose scholarship so deep I have dipped no more than a toe.

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[ by Charles Cameron — I spend a fair amount of time showing the ways in which religious extremism across many religions results in violence — it’s my pleasure here to show how simple religious devotion can have a positive impact ]
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This is a very simple example of one positive aspect of religions, plural:

Stevenson epoxied the Buddha to a rock on the corner to ward off potential vandals. “I would have stuck Christ up there if he would have kept the mattresses off,” he says. “I don’t care who’s doing it."https://t.co/kUPR5ODUI7

— hipbonegamer (@hipbonegamer) August 19, 2019

In Mexico, California and the Southwest the Virgin of Guadalupe is strategically positioned for preventing garbage dumping and graffiti. pic.twitter.com/P2Iu2fzehP

— Dr. Death & Divinity (@AndrewChesnut1) August 19, 2019

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BTW, anyone who wonders whether Twitter can be worthwhile might take a look at this exchange between scholars of religion, as an example of the simple notion that two minds are better than one.

In this case, I’m grateful both to Judy Silber, who posted How a Buddhist shrine transformed a neighborhood in Oakland, and to Andrew Chesnut, aka Dr. Death & Divinity, for his quick and profound reponse to my original tweet.