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[ by Charles Cameron — early seeds of MLK’s social orientation in a paper he wrote on eschatology ]
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As on many other days, I was thinking about eschatology yesterday. Also yesterday, I was thinking a bit about Martin Luther King. So it occurred to me to see what I could find out about King’s eschatology. It’s not something I’ve really looked into before, I don’t have access to the intriguing-looking dissertation whose cover is illustrated above — and what I was able to discover via the web somewhat surprised me…

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The main documentary evidence available to me was King’s own very early essay, The Christian Pertinence of Eschatological Hope. In this essay, King makes it clear that he does not question the modern scientific worldview with respect to scientific fact, and thus finds that Christian beliefs from two millennia ago must be reinterpreted in light of recent discoveries and understandings. Specifically, this leads him to reconsider eschatology:

Among the beliefs which many modern Christians find difficult to accept are those dealing with eschatological hopes, particularly the second coming of Christ, the day of judgment, and the resurrection of the body.

He regrets that the clash between scientific and scriptural narratives regarding (eg) heaven and hell has had the effect of distancing many of his contemporaries from religion:

In an attempt to solve this difficult problem many modern Christians have jettisoned these beliefs altogether, failing to see that there is a profundity of spiritual meaning in these beliefs which goes beyond the shackles of literalism.

and formulates his view of scriptural inspiration which could accommodate both scientific and scriptural modes of knowledge:

Inspiration did not magically remove the limitations of the writers. It heightened their power, but did not remove their distortions. Therefore it is our job as Christians to seek the spiritual pertinence of these beliefs, which taken literally are quite absurd.

This is not exactly a novel position, but King expresses it pretty forcefully, dealing in turn with the four great doctrines of the end times — in each case viewing the present moment as our aperture on eternity, and eventually doing so in a way which confers immediacy on the need for social justice.

He does this under four heads:

1. The Second Coming of Christ

It is obvious that most twentieth century Christians must frankly and flatly reject any view of a physical return of Christ. To hold such a view would mean denying a Copernican universe, for there can be no physical return unless there is a physical place from which to return.

At this point, he quotes George Hedley, The Symbol of the Faith:

The second coming of the Christ is not an event in space-time, but an experience which transcends all physical categories. It belongs not to the sky, but to the human heart; not to the future, but to whatever present we are willing to assign to it.

King continues, here making our choices at each moment the criteria for Christ’s presence in our lives:

Actually we are celebrating the Second Advent every time we open our hearts to Jesus, every time we turn our backs to the low road and accept the high road, every time we say no to self that we may say yes to Jesus Christ, every time a man or women turns from ugliness to beauty and is able to forgive even their enemies. Jesus stands at the door of our hearts if we are willing to admit him. He is far away if with ugliness and evil we crowd him out. The final doctrine of the second coming is that whenever we turn our lives to the highest and best there for us is the Christ. This is what the early Christians were trying to say.

2. The Day of Judgment

If our choices at each moment determine whether we “admit” Christ to our hearts or “crowd him out”, King suggests, it follows that each moment is “the judgment”.

When we set aside the spectacular paraphernalia of the judgment scene and the literal throne we come to the real meaning of the doctrine. The highest court of justice is in the heart of man after the light of Christ has illumined his motive and all his inner life. … In this sense Christ has already come to judge the world. Already and here he is judging every one of us. This is the ultimate meaning of the Christian doctrine. Dare we judge ourselves by the Christ?

3. Immortality

King’s view on immortality here is quite surprising: he argues that “God is a conserver of values” — that’s an idea I’d like to investigate — and then makes what is essentially an apophatic case for our inability to envision what immortal life entails:

For us immortality will mean a spiritual existence. All of the details of what this existence will be like are somewhat beyond our intelligence. But with faith in God we may rest assure that death will not be a period that will end this great sentence of life, but it will be a comma punctuating it to more loftier significance.

Compare, for example, St Cyril of Jerusalem: “For we explain not what God is but candidly confess that we have not exact knowledge concerning Him. For in what concerns God to confess our ignorance is the best knowledge”

4. The Kingdom of God

If the meaning of “spiritual existence” beyond death is ineffable and necessarily unclear to us, King can turn at last to locate “the Kingdom” in the here and now, perceived in terms of social imperative:

The eschatological thinking of the Christian religion is not without its social emphasis. Throughout nineteen hundred years Christian thinking has centered on the kingdom of God. Some have seen this kingdom in political terms in which there would be established a theocratic kingdom on earth which would triumph over all rival and satanically inspired regimes. Others have seen the kingdom of God coming to realization by means of the increasing influence of the church ultimately destined to dominate the world. Others have seen it as the day when Jesus shall return on the clouds bringing about a cataclysmic end of history and establishing God’s eternal purpose. … Whether it come soon or late, by sudden crisis of through slow development, the kingdom of God will be a society in which all men and women will be controlled by the eternal love of God. When we see social relationships controlled everywhere by the principles which Jesus illustrated in his life–trust, love, mercy, and altruism–then we shall know that the kingdom of God is here. To say what this society will be like in exact detail is quite hard for us to picture, for it runs so counter to the practices of our present social life. But we can rest assure that it will be a society governed by the law of love.

And there we have the kernel of the quest for social justice, in the name of Christ and of the God who is love, that was to be King’s mission in life.

As Robert James “Be” Scofield put it in a recent article in Tikkun:

The purpose of the church for King is not to create dogma, theology, or creeds but rather “to produce living witnesses and testimonies to the power of God in human experience,” and to commit to action.

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I’d love to know more about how King’s eschatology matured and developed across the years, and would appreciate any pointers others may have — particularly and personally because my own mentor, Father Trevor Huddleston [link goes to video], was similarly faced with the issue of a Christian response to racism [link to key quote in a previous ZP post] during his time in S. Africa.

It is to be regretted that Scott Savaiano‘s interesting-looking dissertation, King among the Eschatologists: The political eschatologies of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi, security state violence and the Civil Rights movement — cover illustrated at the top of this post — should be priced clear out of the reach of interested students of civil rights, non-violence and matters of security and the state.

Not to mention students of eschatology : )

Discussion has been emerging in the foreign policy blogosphere of   late  regarding sovereignty and the other day, Afghanistan scholar Antonio Giustozzi opined on coercion, a necessary tool of a state seeking to wield a monopoly of force.

Theory is good and the discussion is an important one with implications for US foreign policy, but it helps when debate is informed by empirical examples from practitioners.  Quesopaper, a blog by  someone out in the field  in Afghanistan has been dormant for a while, but sprang alive again with a timely post:

Rule of Law, The Afghan Springer Show 

….Rule of Law is one of the key aspects to “fixing” Afghanistan. When the Taliban dominated the country, they controlled the “courts.” As Taliban influence waned, the US and partner nations have sought to create a more traditional court system. I can’t speak intelligently on why “WE” decided to create a more western form of law in Afghanistan, but I can say, it’s not the correct approach.

I work in a remote district. It’s over an hour to the main provincial (think state) government center. The difference between the two places is about as extreme as possible. The villages, even the district center (think country govt) lack ANY essential services. There are no plumbing systems, no electricity, no garbage service…nothing. Yet, the people here survive; and dare I say? Thrive.

Like most farming folks, the people here like to be left alone. The people appreciate the Govt–Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan aka “GIRoA”–but they only want so much help. Rule of Law doesn’t fit into their needs.

So, how do rural locals settle disputes?

I just recently worked with a local governor as he negotiated the resolution of a 25 year dispute. Dispute doesn’t really describe what happened…feud is more appropriate. Each side had multiple murders, one family had 1300 fig trees destroyed. Decades of money in dispute. The feud was complicated enough that the Taliban failed to resolve the issue in nearly seven years of negotiations. Negotiations require buy-in from many parties…I could go on about this, but I doubt I can make it any clearer…

Land disputes are among the thorniest local civil society issues in Afghanistan, and one where the generally corrupt and inept Karzai regime draws a particularly poor comparison with the Taliban insurgency’s ability to provide “rough justice” where the richer, more influential party to the dispute does not automatically win through bribery. Land claims are blood issues in peasant-agrarian societies in general and all the worse in honor cultures that tolerate vendettas – that the brutal Taliban could not force a settlement in this case, or did not dare to try – speaks volumes.

….Finally, our district (county govt) governor is called upon to start the process of reconciliation. This BTW is MAJOR progress for the legitimacy of GIRoA. It means the people trust this man to handle this dispute. It might become national news (for Afghanistan) though you will never hear this story on any US network or .com site (except quesopaper.com). After weeks of massaging each side, pulling out their story, commitments (commitment to settle is vital in these things) and “evidence.”

An aside about evidence…in a society that is mostly verbal and illiterate, nearly anything written can become something that it is not…WTF are you talking about Pietro? What I mean is, give someone who can’t read a document. That paper is written in a foreign language, with foreign letters. Tell him its a deed to a piece of land…wait 35 years. Now, tell that man’s grandson that the land he’s been farming for 10 years; that his family has worked for generations, isn’t actually his.

Now he has nothing; he can’t provide for his family. Tell him, his paper is a receipt for a Persian rug, not a deed…explain that he owes the real land owner for the use of that property and revenues generated. Let me know how that goes…if you smell cordite it probably didn’t go to well.

For very poor people who live at the margins of subsistence, the stakes could not be higher, which can make rolling the dice on private violence attractive (this is also why land reform programs are only a short term stopgap in economic development and reform. Agrarian population almost always exceeds arable land and as the plots get smaller, they are less productive).  Dying on your feet with a weapon in hand looks a lot more honorable to a hard-pressed farmer than watching your children waste away from starvation as the other villagers gossip about your plight.

A state with legitimate authority can preempt or suppress such private violence, but is also expected to solve the problem.

….Back to our story…The governor calls in Sharia/Islamic law experts and elders from both tribes and other community elders. Mix that group into a bunch of small rooms and start shifting groups from room to room…hours of discussions (which looks like arguing to me). Don’t forget, this thing hasn’t been settled before, it’s serious business, and here serious business is settled with an AK. At anytime the whole ordeal can melt into violence.

Success is fleeting. I have a gun, no fooling…I’m armed….

Go to quesopaper to find out what happened next.

Part of the problem is, as quesopaper indicates, our Western framework. We began experimenting with rule of law to settle property claims and commons rights starting, oh, in 14th century England with land enclosures and we did not really finish for good until after Reconstruction in the very late 19th century. That’s 500 years for the “Rule of Law” as we understand it to become the standard for 100 % of the population, 100% of the time.

And along the way, there was blood. Rivers of it. From the Highlands of Scotland, to the piney woods upcountry of Appalachia to the Black Hills and the great Western Range Wars. The gavel of the judge had to be preceded by the soldier’s rifle, the settler’s six shooter, the rebel’s musket and knives used in the dead of night.

Are Afghans in far rural villages closer to a Manhattan attorney or an English tenant whose access to the pasture has been closed off by his noble lord against all custom and ancient right? What quesopaer is seeing is “state building” from scratch, from the bottom up. Slow, painful, difficult to be certain, but more likely to be durable than imported abstractions imposed from the top down.

We are leaving Afghanistan, it is clear. Any state that we leave behind that can resist the Taliban must be able to stand behind and enforce a rule of law as Afghans understand and accept it.

[ by Charles Cameron — Burma, Tibet, impermanence ]
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Sources:

Hozan Alan Senauke, Burma’s Opening Door, Shambhala Sun, Jan 16, 2012
Robert Saiget, China’s Tibetan Buddhists ‘in vicious cycle’, AFP, January 16, 2012

China cracks down, Myanmar lightens up… the Buddhists call it all “impermanence”.

[ by Charles Cameron — 2012, apocalyptic, AntiSec, impact of decent graphic design ]
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The artwork above is taken from an AntiSec / Anonymous proclamation. It’s the A in “AntiSec”, and I think it’s quite striking, has a bit of a Cirque du Soleil effect, or Kokopelli maybe. As regular readers know, I’m a sucker for decent graphics no matter where they came from, so this particular logo (I’ve only shown you the first letter, the whole thing is huge) caught my eye, and was enough to set me scanning the rest of the 421-page document.

The document itself was provided to me and many others a little over a week ago by way of a link in an email purporting to come from george.friedman@stratfor.com – i.e. George Friedman, the founder of STRATFOR, the “global intelligence company”. The email was headed “Rate Stratfor’s Incident Response” and told its readers (presumably people whose email addresses had been found in a Stratfor address book, which was downloaded in the “intrusion” in question):

We would like to hear from our loyal client base as to our handling of the recent intrusion by those deranged, sexually deviant criminal hacker terrorist masterminds.

The rhetoric here is interesting – “loyal client base” is phrasing I could easily imagine a bureaucrat using in a public document, while “deranged, sexually deviant criminal hacker terrorist masterminds” is way more fun but just a tad less, how shall I put it, official-sounding.

And with a come-on like that, I could hardly resist digging a little deeper…

So I clicked on through, and found myself looking at the long, long piece which opens with the striking graphic above. Okay, there was a lot of code, and I don’t read that — but the graphic at the head of the whole thing was neat, and in among the extended passages of code I found various paragraphs of English prose with enough lulz to keep me skipping and skimming, and…

Lo, I am rewarded. Because…

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There’s a reference to 2012, and indeed specifically to 21 December 2012. I love those – they’re apocalyptic!

Apocalyptic movements are a major interest of mine, not least because they provide the many varieties of human with an immensely rich playground for our hopes and fears — our sense of an unjust and imperfect world in which we live and the utopia it might and by rights “should” be – that bridges mundane reality with heightened imagination. And they’re found, as Richard Landes shows in his masterful recent book, Heaven on Earth: the Varieties of the Millennial Experience, scattered across the centuries and continents.

21 December 2012, as you may have heard, is when the Mayan calendar allegedly runs out — or rolls over, and a “new age” begins. And the 2012 Mayan Calendar prediction has spawned a popular apocalyptic movement with enough leeway in it to attract survivalists, sorcerers’ apprentices, and those who are deeply skeptical about organized religion alike…

Just my kind of thing, eh?

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This Mayan calendar / 2012 business looks to be a “bigger” apocalyptic event than last year’s two Harold Camping predictions combined, even though those spawned $100 million in billboard and other advertising worldwide, and had an impact as far afield as the Hmong montagnards of Vietnam, some 7,000 of whom are said to have gathered on a mountain to await the Rapture, and some of whom may have been “massacred” by security forces – the official response to these accusations apparently being that a group of secessionists were arrested.

Camping’s predictions were made in the face of a widespread (and Biblical) understanding that “of that day and hour knoweth no man” (Matthew 24.36) and agreement that “date-setting” of the Camping kind is therefore, in strictly theological terms, indefensible – not to mention that failed predictions of this sort tend to bring disrepute on religious narratives in general.

The Mayan Calendar “prediction” for 2012, on the other hand, appeals to a wide range of people who might identify as “spiritual, not religious” – there’s no scripture they’d all agree on available to disconfirm it in advance in the way that Matt. 24.36 disconfirms predictions like those of Rev. Camping – and it can be “read” as a date certain for the end of the world, of history, of “the world as we know it” — or simply as a convenient peg for a “turning point” not unlike the Harmonic Convergence which preceded it, the tipping point after which humanity comes to its senses, finally recognizes the futility of war, the need for global justice and ecological renewal, and all good things…

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So it is interesting that certain persons Anonymous have picked that wave to ride… and are aiming to add a touch of their own mayhem – their word, not mine – into the mix.

They announce this upcoming “Project Mayhem” — in the particular AntiSec / Anonymous zine we’re discussing — by way of publishing an excerpt from an unclassified (but “For Official Use Only”) Homeland Security document, claiming with some mix of irony and joy:

THEY R HIP 2 OUR MASTER PLAN…

Here are two of the relevant paragraphs:

• (U) “Project Mayhem,” (PM) was announced by Anonymous in August 2011, and according to their public website projectmayhem2012[dot]org, is set to culminate on 21 December 2012. The PM website ahs several links to YT videos, which appear to have been randomly selected and have no direct tie to PM or past / current / future Anonymous malicious activity. Furthermore, there is no dialogue or hints as to specific tactics, techniques and procedures (TTP) that Anonymous plans on employing on or prior to 21 December 2012. There are also several seemingly related internet wiki-style portals and web forums, operating under the PM name, devoted to random malicious acts – some involving physical disruption and some involving targeting information systems – but no direct discussion of attack scenarios.

[ … ]

DHS/NCCIC’S PM ASSESSMENT: While Anonymous’ PM will not likely be as spectacular as the activities it was named after in the movie Fight Club, little is known about their plans for this event. We anticipate several more YT videos and public statements via Twitter leading up to the culmination date of 21 December 2012. Based on previous incidents involvin Anonymous, we can expect DDOS, web defacement, SQL injection, and potentially in-person protests targeting worldwide government institutions and private corporations. Though the characters in the movie Fight Club who carried out their version of PM utilized deadly force and terrorist tactics, Anonymous is not likely to use violent force in their operations.

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When Y2K rolled along, there was concern that what seemed on its surface to be a technical problem (a glitch in the ways in which un-remediated computers handled dates) might also prove an opportunistic moment for people with millenarian beliefs to take disruptive action.

So the conjunction of millennialism and disruption is not a new one.

In the event Ahmed Ressam, acting on behalf of Al-Qaida, tried to take advantage of the rollover between the second and third millennia to detonate a sizeable explosive at LAX on December 31st 1999 – a time when many other problems might be expected to be tying the hands of the authorities — and would likely have managed it had he not been intercepted and his bomb-making materials confiscated at the Canadian-US border on December 14th of that year.

This time around, it’s the ancient Mayans who have (allegedly) been doing the date-setting, and this time it’s techno-savvy black-hat hackers who may take symbiotic advantage of the predictions to make their own brand of mayhem…

6.

Okay, as usual, the religious rhetoric angle is what intrigues me, so here’s some of their prose text.

In an act of loving egalitarian criminality, we used company credit cards to make donations to dozens of charities and revolutionary organizations, including the Bradley Manning Support Organization, the EFF, the ACLU, CARE, American Red Cross, Amnesty International, Greenpeace, some commies, some prisoners, various occupations, and many more unnamed homies. It took weeks of hard work, but it paid off: to the tune of over $500,000 dollars liberated in total.

That’s pure Robin Hood, isn’t it? Take from the rich and give to the poor? With some political analysis thrown in, and a touch of overturning the money-tables?

Note that phrase, “loving egalitarian criminality”!

I’m reminded of the Situationist Raoul Vaneigem‘s book, The Movement of the Free Spirit, of Robert Lerner‘s Heresy of the Free Spirit, and Norman Cohn‘s great The Pursuit of the Millennium which first introduced me to that most interesting of medieval heresies — and the antinomianism that runs like a thread through so many apocalyptic movements and moments.

Fascinating stuff, medieval heresy…

7.

I’m guessing from the way the writers of the email from pseudo-Friedman described themselves that they enjoy the rhetoric that is deployed against them – as I said above, they seem to feature a heady mix of irony and joy, and clearly took some pleasure in being called “PUNKS and CANNIBALS!!!” by one of their detractors. Which brings me to their motto:

WE ARE ANONYMOUS. WE DO NOT FORGIVE. WE DO NOT FORGET. WE ARE LEGION. EXPECT US!

I’m betting whoever came up with that phrasing was aware that in the New Testament (Luke 8.30), Jesus asked a man possessed by demons what his name was…

And he said, “Legion,” because many demons had entered him.

So that word “legion” is an interesting a little trip-wire that would pass unnoticed by most people, but would be liable to excite the wrath of those who see the world we live in through the lens of scripture — another hint of the significance of apocalyptic rhetoric in times of social discord…

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I started with a stunning graphic, I’ve been on about apocalyptic rhetoric all along, and I’ll end with two more apocalyptic graphics -– there are so many to choose from! — these ones come from a video on an extensive Christian site that’s set up to debunk 2012 theories in favor of the personal form of “end of the world” situation — cancer, heart attack, you know the story.

All of which might happen in 2012 – but then again, maybe not.

So there we go… whoosh!!

[ by Charles Cameron — Mexico, Zetas, Argentina, art ]
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Back in May of last year, I posted one of my DoubleQuotes comparing one of the Inspire crews’ fantasies — the “ultimate mowing machine” — with the Zeta cartel’s actual “Monster 2010”.

Since then, I’ve developed a variant on the DoubleQuotes format I call Specs, which allows me to juxtapose larger images than before, so here’s a sort of follow-up to that earlier post on “Trucking: AQAP and the Zetas”.

This time, both images come from below the (US) border in the Americas. The top one is the same image of the Zeta-mobile I used last time, while the one below it shows a “bookmobile” which goes by the name of The Weapon of Mass Instruction [link goes to the New Yorker], and which is the work of the Argentinean artist Raul Lemesoff [link goes to YouTube].

Guns or butter — which can also be known henceforth as bullets or books, perhaps?