tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2601639312234106733.post5793239982990945783..comments2023-11-10T22:27:47.359-05:00Comments on Eye on a Crazy Planet: A discussion about genocide at the Munk CentreRichard Khttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10239826441964023625noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2601639312234106733.post-79411910808869408882014-11-03T17:21:06.021-05:002014-11-03T17:21:06.021-05:00Very good article.......
JoeFrmEdmVery good article.......<br />JoeFrmEdmAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2601639312234106733.post-14042819981129068092014-11-03T14:53:04.675-05:002014-11-03T14:53:04.675-05:00Juxtaposing Ghomeshi and genocide?!
I guess the...Juxtaposing Ghomeshi and genocide?! <br /><br />I guess the point you are making, and it is one we too easily forget, is that no matter what the evil, it is impossible to do it without thinking you are doing good (and likely by extension being good, to some degree - e.g. the chivalrous Nazi). A Satanist, for example, thinks Satan is good, the enemy of a false or corrupt "creation" that is not the real creation still waiting to be rediscovered via the Satanic rite. A genocide may be a project in national sanitation, or a full blown Gnostic religion. I kill xyz because he is a force of corruption, or because my supposedly "evil" desires are actually good because the truth of the world is that it is all about the will to power and those who try to deny this with goody two shoes talk are just dishonest "priests" or elders out for their own power. <br /><br />All this, and at the same time, I can be a hospitable and gracious host of a sacred feast.<br /><br />So, even when I hate myself, and maybe even kill myself, I do it in deference to the good I have supposedly failed. The anthropological truth is that human consciousness cannot but be focussed on the sacred in some shape or form, so that our resentful violence becomes justified in terms of rebellion against those who are alienating us from the "real" sacred. We are creatures of a scene that always has a sacred centre - desiring periphery structure (the lesson is that language/religion/esthetics must have first come into being on a memorable, recreatable, public scene). <br /><br />So, one moment one is a charming host, when one is normatively signing off on the sacred centre of attention (as we share signs of its goodness on the periphery of desire), while in a next moment one is full of resentment that the signing didn't quite work in winning one some desired transcendence, didn't work because of some corrupting or alienating forces. <br /><br />I know where my teachers are coming from, and this kind of universal anthropological thinking is a product of the Jewish discovery of monotheism where our God is everyone's God and there is no non-idolatrous way to call his name and request special favours (no murder can be justified), but only divine rewards or punishments depending on one's actions in revealing the oneness of God and our unique relationship to it. Those who want to wipe out the Jews want, ultimately, to wipe out the legacy of this or some such understanding of God and replace it with some "truer" idea of creation. <br /><br />And this makes antisemitism unlike other forms of racism, and the Shoah unlike, to some degree, other genocides. And it is the resentment of the uniqueness of the Holocaust, or of the fact that today's victimary culture is rooted in the paradigm of the Nazi-Jew (wherein all the "colonized" peoples want to be recognized as the victims of unquestionably evil Nazi-like White professionals in total killing control of modern technology) that makes most discussions of genocide limp. How to address the problem of Jewish historical centrality without turning it into a scandal? ...the kind of scandal that percolates and leads us, Jews and Gentiles, into all kinds of resentful thoughts.<br /><br />Sorry for the long comment, but I guess I am trying to redeem myself for just being quite rude to an angry Croatian soldier-killer at another site.truepeershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16401984575637492845noreply@blogger.com