Ben Tripp has written a delightfully vituperative piece addressing his fellow Americans on the Bush victory in Counterpunch. I was enjoying the incandescent wit and anger when it struck me that, even though it's addressed to Bush supporters, the piece wouldn't be read by most of them beyond the first few words. So its REAL audience is people like me who would agree with it.
And that's true of pretty much ALL the stuff that appears on the internet. There is hardly ever a meeting ground in cyberspace (the only exception I know of is Open Democracy) where people from two opposite ends of the spectrum of political opinion meet. This is less so of TV, but there the debates are either biased against one side, or rendered meaningless because in the short span of time available, each side seems interested not in a debate, but in restating their main points. Or both sides share the same assumptions to such an extent that it's a "debate" only between two positions of a narrowly defined spectrum of opinion.
However much I enjoyed reading the Tripp piece, I have to say that the Tripps of the world have no chance unless they start talking to the people he castigates as "poltroons" and succeeds in changing their mindset. Otherwise, he is just mirroring their blindness.
And here is another one in the NYT by Garry Wills, ruing the death of Enlightenment values, and pleading for a rededication to them.
Speaking here as an agnostic, adhering to no religion, but endowed (I think) with what William James called a religous "germ", unless those who espouse Enlightenment values get over their disdain of religion, or of the religious impulse in the vast majority of the world's population, including, especially, the poor, the secular will always be at war with the religious, and the Karl Roves and the Osama bin Ladens of the world (VERY secular people!) will continue to hijack religious sensibilities - one of the most powerful motivations for people everywhere - for their own nefarious purposes.
Every religion has within it the potential to act as a force for the good, and in very worldly ways - healing the sick, feeding the hungry, alleviating human suffering, "building Jerusalem" (to use the Christian tradition), or Ramrajya (to use the Hindu one), which roughly translates as the Kingdom of God . With the notable exception of Quakers and liberation theologians (and perhaps a few others I am missing - confining myself to the Christian tradition), and Swami Agnivesh from the Hindu, why have the vast majority of secular-minded people allowed themselves to forget this? We constantly hear of the religious right - why is there no religious left? Why do secular people insist on comparing religion at its worst with the best of secular enlightenment, as if the comparison could not be reversed? What have secular enlightenment ideals done for the poor, dispossessed and suffering? Why not look at Auschwitz, Hiroshima, the two world wars and the secular horrors such as communism and its counterpart, US-style "free-markets-and-democracy" forced on countries all over the world to fight the communist menace?
Those of us who regard ourselves as secular need to find common ground with religious people (i.e., the majority) for our common worldly ends - living in peace and creating a fairer world, and not leave it to the Karl Roves and other secular maniacs to appropriate religious ideals. The real battle is not between the secular and the religious camps, but between the dual strands of good and evil within each.
Comments