The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected
-- Swedish Proverb
Beware of a man with one book
--English saying
Society or culture or whatever you might want to call it,
has created us all solely and wholly
for the purpose of maintaining its continuity and status quo
--Krishnamurti
In my last post, Mnemonics For Antiquity: Part Two, we ended with Kings 1 which introduced the concept of taxes. Since we now are involved with kings and divine right, taxes work like this: you work on the land I own growing and harvesting food for me, and a little for yourself, of course, and after surplus has been sold, you pay me some money for your efforts. Serfdom. And then came sharecroppers and then came you. We have continued with the concepts of cycles and examined canons, which we now can see clearly, are also mechanisms which enforce duplications of work which support systems that benefit a select few.
The philosopher, Luis Althusser, wrote a rather mind numbing essay titled, Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. If one can slog through it, a brilliant analysis, he lays out bare all the mechanisms needed to keep things going as they are and how we become trapped in systems. I've included the Wikipedia link to its summary so that you can get the gist.
The worker is the key component to the mechanism and the system working. We begin with man who needs food and shelter. We build upon this by now having many men needing food and shelter. A mechanism is put in place that declares work is a good thing and for your work I will give you a wage. The wage becomes a system. Houses need to be built for shelter, houses that don't fall down, so an educational and training system is put in place. If you fail to cooperate with the mechanism in place, then a police force is put in place as a mechanism for control. To keep the worker on this treadmill and firmly believing that what he is doing is right, taking him somewhere, and instilling an allegiance to his nation the mechanism always have carrots in place. A high school diploma but if you want more, a masters, if you want even more a doctorate. Religion is a mechanism which keeps the worker on the treadmill if he is susceptible to fear or is wondering at all why he is here in the first place. The religion promises you one big vacation after all your hard work or simply makes you scared to disobey. You are a sports fan and have an allegiance to a specific team. Sports become the mechanism that teaches nationalism and at its highest form it solidifies your feelings of an us against them ideology.
So how does this mechanism become duplicated over and over again? You teach it to your children. You take them to a religious institution just like you were taken. You received a high school diploma but you want your children to be doctors. You take your son to a football game so he can share in on the fun. You have internalized the mechanism and I am no longer needed to threaten you in to submission. Of course I am paraphrasing and have whittled Althusser's essay down to a few sentences but hopefully the gist is grasped.
In this essay, Part Three, I will continue to examine the Old Testament with an eye on mechanisms. In Part One and Two we have already seen the mechanisms laid down for punishment for disobedience, taxes, more laws placed upon laws, the census: collections of data about private citizens, a judicial system, capitals of cities being formed where governments sit, and finally the rightful notion of segregation. We have also seen a switch in leadership. We have gone from one person being able to handle the handful to kings, an entity removed from the masses yet in solid control over the masses.
KINGS 2
In Kings l we saw a split of nations one going north, the other south. In Kings 2 the terminology for these two sections is no longer a tribe, or an Israelite but is now referred to as 'kingdoms'. The split came about because the two groups did not see eye to eye and felt that they could not live in the same place. Are these the first republicans and democrats? Both of these kingdoms, none really faring better than the other, are under the same King, but it is the Northern kingdom that is conquered and sent in to oblivion leaving the Southern kingdom to be threatened by so get with the program or suffer the same fate. From the outside this simply seems a tussle for more power. All over Europe are castles still standing and ones left in ruins. Someone won and another one bit the dust.
CHRONICLES l
I find this chapter very interesting. We have a current saying, attributed to George Orwell, he wrote, 'History is written by the winners'. Chronicles shows us how one day a genealogy was placed down to record the lineage of importance. I say importance because when we look at the historically powerful people and institutions today we can trace their lineage because they documented it. The longer the documentation of lineage, the more importance we place upon that family or institution. And the lineage where no traces of insanity, illegitimate births, or anyone stepping out of line in the recent past is a lineage that, no questions asked, is deemed authoritative, somehow due respect, and internalized as better than you somehow. It is a mechanism that implies I am someone and you are not. Look at the lineage of Thomas Jefferson and the uproar over the descendants of Sally Hemming sharing Jefferson's DNA yet, his legitimate (acknowledged births), descendants can't bare the thought that her descendants have the right to be buried alongside him as well. The discovery of their relationship in the 20th century should be exciting but certain lineages demand erasure of reality so that what is presented hold up a notion of superiority. Look at the scandal Ben Affleck caused to Henri Louis Gates' reputation, when he learned that a recent ancestor had been an American slave owner. He asked Gates to omit this fact and it was done. He did not want it known that his lineage had anything he felt would make him look bad. Look at the descendants of the Mayflower. They came over as a bunch of scurvy riddled paranoid fanatical pilgrims, and now run around imagining themselves the creators of America. Daughters of the Revolution is another pile of worms. Make no mistake: the longer the documented lineage, the longer the edited bullshit. Then think about who can not document their lineage beyond a grandfather or great grandfather, and then ask yourself why?
CHRONICLES 2
In this genealogy what gets placed down for the record is the lineage of hereditary rulers of a nation. Why is the Old Testament now interested in the lineages of kings and dynasties? Why is the word 'lord' now more often used in this sacred text to refer to kings and not God? Why do we interchange 'lord' and 'god' when we refer to kings and God? Are kings stand-ins? Or are we confused? Or has a machinery been put in place that equates the rich and powerful as actually having the same power over people as God once was imagined to have have? We also learn in this chapter that building things bigger, better and grander is a huge pastime during these years. God is only a footnote here with lame threats placed here and there as a dim reminder of something…
EZRA
Ezra introduces us to the concept of miscegenation. He's in an uproar that intermarriages between people of different religions should stop immediately. He is preoccupied with thoughts about the end of his culture as he knows it. He wants his children to speak his language, follow his religion, and be like him. And he wants that for you and yours too. And of course there are those ready to jump on his bandwagon because he's perceived as a learned man. This mechanism is still in effect today. If you want to be a good Jewish person you can only marry another Jewish person. A Muslim man can marry anyone he wants but a Muslim woman can only marry a Muslim man. A Christian a Christian. This is a system, a canon and a cycle. In time this mechanism will be taken even further to include races and many laws will be written to enforce the mechanism. As a footnote, Ezra is a lawyer and teaches the law to others. So already an educational mechanism is in place. Ezra reinforces God's commandments but he now refers to them as laws.
NEHEMIAH
You have to love this chapter. This chapter is a brilliant example of how a mechanism is suggested, bought into, adhered to, and then internalized. It is also a great look of the canon of property and ownership. Our budding village of Jerusalem is under attacks by enemies, (enemies are simply people we imagine different from ourselves somehow). Nehemiah comes up with the brilliant idea of how to get a wall built around Jerusalem and sells it to people who were busy sleeping. He tells them: Each household is only responsible for building a portion of the wall that spans the width of their property! He likely adds things like: protect your home, protect your family from the enemy or all your hard labour will be lost! In 52 that wall is built! and in the process it instills pride of ownership, pride of nation, and the right to defend ones property. Brilliant! No one goes backwards in canons until the cycle is complete. This mechanism as we know has been built upon to now include more laws, guns, the right to kill trespassers as well as property and tax laws.
ESTHER
Suddenly, somewhere between Chronicles and Esther the Testament becomes preoccupied with the preservation of Jewish concerns regarding language, lineage, etc., and it places it in the hands of a woman. A man may not always know who his children are but a woman always will. Hence the rational behind who can marry whom when pertaining to marriage and offspring. If the mother is Jewish then the child is Jewish. A Muslim woman can only marry a Muslim man so that the lineage of religion remains intact. Women raise children, not men. And Esther, through any means necessary, is willing to defend and insure that her tribe, her people, are guaranteed an existence through time. I write any means necessary because beautiful Esther is also a manipulative wench who causes people to be hanged if they don't support her views.
JOB
Job has some sort of ailment which all of his friends have never seen before. His wife is disgusted enough that she leaves and he has lost all his money. His friends gather round (with friends like these, who needs enemies), to tell him he is ill because he's a sinner and must have brought it upon himself. Before his wife leaves she says: You should go kill yourself. This a powerful story that is timeless. It is applicable to so many aspects of diseases never seen before and how people react to their emergence. It is a wonderful allegory. Diseases not understood, in their infancy, always follow the script of Job. Not solely is it the story of the afflicted but too it is the story of what the non inflicted do when faced with unknown, and uncontrollable disease. Job is the story of we humans at our most frail and vulnerable. It illustrates tenderly the inner dialogue the inflicted have with themselves and with God asking always: why me? And those with terminal illnesses always have a stage in their disease where they backtrack and try and figure out what they have done to have brought this upon themselves. And always there are those that stand around the inflicted and declare they know the answers. You ate too much processed food, you're homosexual, you're a mean bastard, you're a heathen, if I were you I would kill myself. When the terminally ill recover and are turned from death temporarily, there are profound lessons that remain. When the body fails us this is when we usually stop and do inventory on our souls. And if we are lucky to recover we live lives different from the old life. or if death is inevitable, we make peace with our inventory and go content. Rich or poor, none of this matters when faced with imminent death.
PSALMS
Every culture and nation attempts to preserve its art and music. When war is raged art is often ransacked soon after. When you destroy a cultures art, you destroy the history of that culture. Hitler did it, the Russians did it and they are doing it as I write, in the Middle East. The World Trade Centers while not art per se, was a symbol of American culture. And the message was clear when those towers came down: No more American involvement in other peoples affairs. You have enough money already. Stop being greedy.
So Psalms is the softer side of us; the poetic and musical side. The best that was to offer at the time. As well it declares that our war raging, plague ridden, enemy hating, wall building, God fearing selves led lives with some fun thrown in in-between.
PROVERBS
LOL, ROTFL, :). These are modern day proverbs of a sort. Proverbs are shortened, cliched abbreviated blurbs about things we are already familiar with. So instead of a long winded sermon from God admonishing us with threats, violence and punishments, we say to our kids doing naughty: Stop or God will get you, God is watching you. This chapter paves the way for people no longer trusting their own instincts and instead relying on proverbs and cliches which by their own existence removes historical meaning. In the Testament people have already begun saying things, repeating things, that have some measure of meaning but are devoid of historical context.
In our own lives, my life, I repeat phrases that sometimes I have too look up because someone younger than me doesn't have a clue what I've just said and I even have forgotten what the original context meant.
In the next part of this analysis we will begin with Ecclesiastes continuing as we have with an exploration of the mechanisms put in place that have led us to today.
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