Bulletin
N° 617
Subject: ON THE MEDIEVAL JUDEO-CHRISTIAN-MUSLIM
TRADITION, THE VORTEXES OF FANATICISM & THE SUBTERRANIAN NOTION OF
‘DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM’.
24 June 2014
Grenoble, France
Dear Colleagues and Friends of
CEIMSA,
As we continue to excavate the
culture of the late Middle Ages, to uncover the origins of some of our problems
today, in the post-liberal world of crisis capitalism and the permanent warfare
economy, we discovered the works of the famous English historian George
Macaulay Trevelyan, who wrote at a time when the complexity of social context
was still taken seriously.
In this era, the Elizabethan English
were in love with life, not some theoretic shadow of life, wrote Trevelyan in
his influential book, English Social History (1942).
Urban culture, like rural culture, in the time of Shakespeare was characterized
by dancing, singing, poetry and music. Everyone was expected to participate.
Such festive atmospheres were revived as the revolutionary hallmark of the
1960s: “Revolution for the fun of it!” Such was the liberal expectation in a
society, it was thought, that had abolished scarcity.
This cosmopolitan atmosphere was
found in every major western city, including Paris in the 1970s: “the Golden
Age,” when the comrades from every corner of the earth suddenly dropped
their ‘veil’, opened their eyes and found themselves perceiving the sentient
reality around them with an awakened interest.
Servile fascist thugs are hired
today by slightly more refined administrators to manage failing institutions by
intimidating and twisting the arms of employees until they cry ‘uncle’, or in
some other way convince their ‘superiors’ that they will submit to the rules
and meaningless objectives which the institution has espoused and which demands
the allegiance of everyone, at any price. But these agents of violence from
above are unable to change the past by coercion; though they can, and do, mess
with our collective memories. The social responsibility of historians --as
opposed to professional lackeys-- is to remain honest and to speak frankly
about what is important to the community, instead of running scared in a
mindless state of panic. (The banal opportunists, in pursuit of their careers,
must now perform in the open where they will no doubt reap the recognition that
they deserve.)
To better understand, today, the
compromised condition of our lives, we turn once again to the medieval insights
of the Islamic scholar Ibn Khaldhûn:
If dumb animals were asked and could
speak, we would find that they would ignore the whole of intelligibilia.
It would simply not exist for them. (p.350)
…as to the relationship of humanity to animality,
it is clear that the former is included under the latter and comes into being
when it comes into being. … the relationship [is] that
of genus to species in every existing thing. … or …
that of the universal to the particular, according to the theory of ideas.
(p.364)
[The] oneness is actually similar to what philosophers say about colors,
namely, that their existence is predicated upon light. When there is no light,
no colors whatever exist. Thus … all existing sensibilia
are predicated upon the existence of some (faculty of) sensual perception and,
in fact, that all existing intelligibilia and
objects of imagination are predicated upon intellectual perception. Thus, every
particular in existence is predicated upon the human (faculty) that perceived
it. If we assumed that no human being with perception exists, there would be no
particularization in existence. Existence would be simple and one. (p.364)
Khaldûn speaks of the social need for tolerance and respect for the
experience of others, whose encounters may be different from our own, but whose
perceptions are no less valid.
Thus ,
heat and cold, solidarity and softness, and, indeed, earth, water, fire,
heaven, and the stars, exist only because the senses perceiving them exist,
because particularization that does not exist in existence is made possible for
the person who perceives. It exists only in perception. If there were no
perceptions to create distinctions, there would be no particularization, but
just one single perception, namely, the ‘I’ and nothing else. They consider
this comparable to the condition of a sleeper. When he sleeps and has no
external sense perception, he loses in that condition all (perception of) sensibilia, with the exception of the things that
the imagination particularizes for him. They continued by saying that a person
who is awake likewise experiences particularized perceptions only through the
type of human perception (that exists) in him. If he had not that
something in him that perceived, there would be no particularization. (pp.
364-365)
No man
would deny to himself the existence of certain knowledge. In addition,
competent recent Sufis say that during the removal of the veil, the Sufi novice
often has a feeling of the oneness of existence. Sufis call that the station of
‘combination’. But then, he progresses to distinguishing between existent
things. That is considered by the Sufis the station of ‘differentiation’. That
is the station of the competent Gnostic. The Sufis believe that the novice
cannot avoid the ravine of ‘combination’, and this ravine causes difficulties
for him because there is danger that he might be arrested at it and his
enterprise thus come to naught.(p.365)
No
language can express the things that Sufis want to say in this connection,
because languages have been invented only for the expression of commonly
accepted concepts, most of which apply to the sensibilia.(p.366)
They also thought that human
perception could not comprise all the existentia
. . . . Therefore, they did not speak about any of their supernatural
perceptions. In fact, they forbade the discussion of those things and prevented
their companions, for whom the veil (of sense perception) was removed, from
discussion the matter or from giving it the slightest consideration. They
continued following their models and leading exemplary lives as they had done
in the world of sensual perception before the removal of the veil, and they
commanded their companions to do the same.(p.367)
In his study of English social history, G. M. Trevelyan describes the society in
Tudor England (1485 – 1603), following the reign of “Bloody Mary” (1553-58), as
a nation exhibiting a totally different mentality than what existed before or
after. The emphasis after the mid-sixteenth century was on proactive freedoms
and there was little opportunity for reactive Ressentiment.(*)
The study of history and literature
of Elizabethan England gives an impression of a greater harmony and a freer
intercourse of classes than in earlier or in later times. It is not a period of
peasants’ revolts, of leveling doctrines, of anti-Jacobin fears, or of
exclusiveness and snobbery in the upper classes such as Jane Austen depicts in
a later age. Class divisions in Shakespeare’s day were taken as a matter of
course, without jealousy in those below, or itching anxiety on the part of the ‘upper and
middling classes’ to teach ‘the grand law of subordination’ to the ‘inferior
orders,’ which is so painfully evident in the Eighteenth and early Nineteenth
Centuries . . . .
Class divisions, recognized without fuss on either side, were not rigid
and were not even strictly hereditary. Individuals and families moved out of
one class into another by acquisition or loss of property, or by simple change
of occupation. There is no such impassable barrier as used to divide the lord
of the manor from his peasantry in mediaeval England, or such as continued till
1789 to mark off the French noblesse as an hereditary
cast separate from everyone else. In Tudor England such rigid lines were
rendered impossible by the number and variety of men in intermediate classes
and occupations, who were closely connected, in the business and amusement of
daily life, with those above and those below them in social status. English
society was based not on equality but on freedom –freedom of opportunity and
freedom of personal intercourse. Such was the England known and approved by
Shakespeare: men and women of every class and occupation were equally
interesting to him, but he defended ‘degree’ as the necessary basis of human
welfare.(pp.163-164)
It was a period of great optimism,
wrote Trevelyan, and consequently a period of religious and political
tolerance.
There were among Shakespeare’s
contemporaries many violent Puritans and Romanists and many narrow Anglicans,
but there was also something more characteristically Elizabethan, an attitude
to religion that is not primarily Catholic or Protestant, Puritan or Anglican,
but evades dogma and lives broadly in the spirit. It is common to Shakespeare
and to the Queen herself. (p.174)
Two generations later the mentality
in England had changed dramatically; Trevelyan points out that following the
triumph of the Parliamentary armies, came the Puritan Revolution and the ‘rule
of the saints’,
with their canting piety used as a
shibboleth to obtain the favour of the dominant
party; their interference with the lives of ordinary people; their closing of
the theatres and suppressing of customary sports. . . .
The Cromwellian revolution was not social and
economic in its causes and motives; it was the result of political and
religious thought and aspir4ation among men who had no desire to recast society
or redistribute wealth. No doubt the choice of sides that men made in politics
and religion was to some extent and in some cases determined by predispositions
due to social and economic circumstance; but of this men
were only half conscious. There were more lords and gentlemen on the side of
the King, more yeomen and townsfolk on the side of Parliament. Above all,
London was on the side of Parliament. Yet every class in town and country was
itself divided. . . .
The stage of economic and social development which had been reached in
the England if 1640 was not the cause, but it was a necessary condition, of the
political and religious movements that burst forth into sudden blaze. . . .
Indeed, the Puritan Revolution was itself, in its basic impulse, a
‘Pilgrim’s Progress.’ ‘I dreamed [wrote Bunyan,] and behold I saw a Man clothed
with rags, standing in a certain place, with his face from his own house, a
Book in his hand, and a great burden upon his back. I looked, and saw him open
the book and read therein; and as he read, he wept, he wept and trembled; and
not being able longer to contain, he broke out with a lamentable cry, saying:
‘What shall I do?’
That man, multiplied, congregated, regimented, was a force of tremendous
potency, to make and to destroy. It was the force by which Oliver Croimwell and George Fox and John Wesley wrought their
wonders, being men of a like experience themselves.
But it would be a mistake to suppose that this earnestness of personal
and family religion was confined to the Puritans and the Roundheads. The
Memoirs of the Verney family and many other records
of the time show us Cavalier households as religious as the Puritan, though not
so wearisomely obtrusive with scripture phrases for every common act of
life. . . .
But there are other things in Pilgrim’s Progress besides the most
perfect representation of evangelical religion. The way of the Pilgrims, and of
the reader withal, is cheered by the songs, the rural scenery, the tender and
humorous human dialogues. . . . It is still in great measure the England of
Shakespeare, though it is the scene of a soul’s conflict that afflicted the
contemporaries of Shakespeare less often than those of Bunyan. But the human
background had little changed. . . .
In those days men were much left alone with nature, with themselves,
with God. As Blake has said,
Great
things are done when men and mountains meet.
These
are not done by jostling in the street. (pp.234-237)
Nevertheless, all was not Sturm und Drang.
Even in these days of fanaticism, popular traditions were kept by ordinary
people.
The Civil Wars of Charles and Cromwell were not, like the Wars of the
Roses, a struggle for power between two groups of aristocratic families,
watched with disgusted indifference by the majority of the population,
particularly by the townsfolk. In 1642 town and country alike rushed to arms.
Yet it was not a war of town against country, though to some extent it became a
struggle for London and its appendages against the rural North and West. Least
of all was it a war between rich and poor. It was a war of ideas in Church and
State.
Men chose their sides largely from disinterested motives and under no
compulsion. They made their choice on account of their own religious and
political opinions, and most of them were in such an economic and social
position as to be able to exercise that choice with freedom. . . . But in 1642
many yeomen drew sword against the neighboring squires.(pp.241-242)
[But . . .] fortunately most of the common people who kept the sheep in
Shakespeare’s countryside, or wandered by Izaak
Walton’s streams, fishing-rod in hand, were untroubled by Bunyan’s and
Cromwell’s visions of heaven and hell; but, saint and sinner, happy fisherman
and self-torturing fanatic, all were subject to the wholesome influences of
that time and landscape. As to the songs of common people, they are well
described in a dialogue by Izaak Walton.
[When the milk maiden finished
singing the duet requested by the merchant traveler, she said:] ‘Trust me,
master, it is a choice song, sweetly sung by honest Maudlin. I now see it was
not without cause that our good Queen Elizabeth did so often wish herself a
milkmaid all the month of May.’
Such were the simple country-folk
under the Puritan Commonwealth, most of them little disturbed by its
interfering rigours and stern aspirations. (pp.238-239)
______________________________________________________________
(*)For more on ‘slave morality’, see Friedrich Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals (1887) [Translated,
also, in 2006 by Cambridge University Press, at http://www.inp.uw.edu.pl/mdsie/Political_Thought/GeneologyofMorals.pdf.]
The 8 items below offer
CEIMSA readers the opportunity to reassess the intellectual traditions which we
have more or less inherited: the knowledge, the concepts, the ideas, categories
and notions; and, above all, the perceptions
to which we are exposed and which in turn color our souls and determine our
behavior, from day to day (including our capacity for ordinary conversation,
without the practice of mental jujitsu against
some arbitrary adversary) . . . .
Item A., from Nordic News
Network, is an article by Al
Burke on the second anniversary of Julian Assange’s
captivity in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.
Item B., from History Today, is an essay on the meaning of “social
history”.
Item
C.,
from National
Security Archives, is are report on the
Obama Administration release of declassified documents on Diplomacy between the
US and Brazil, relating to Brazil's military dictatorship, which held power
from 1964 - 1985.
Item D., from Financial Times of London, is a video presentation of
the contemporary art market, featuring Folk Art over Fine Art, the values and
intelligibility of which have become increasingly inaccessible to the general
public.
Item E., from Consortium News, is an article by Ray McGovern on the abstract game of murder in the name of military science.
Item F., from Truth Dig, is an article by Chris Hedges on our victims in Iraq who have come back to haunt us.
Item
G.,
from Information Clearing House, is an interview with the
Commander of ISIS: “Where Will ISIS Go Next?”
Item
H., from Historians Against
War, is a report by Carolyn Eisenberg on the US Congress’
passing of the Large Pentagon Budget, “Under Iraq Shadow”.
And finally, we invite CEIMSA
readers to take a look at the decidedly ahistorical
1999 science fiction Blockbuster film, for a look one scenario of the future of
modern alienation :
The Matrix
http://megashare.info/watch-the-matrix--online-TVRBeA
[The French Marxist sociologist,
Henri Lefebvre, author of Everyday Life in the Modern World (1984)described the role of Sci Fi writers in the modern world as essentially the same as the traditional
role performed by Prophets (and false prophets) in ancient societies.]
Synopsis of “The
Matrix”:
During the year 1999,
a man named Thomas Anderson (also known as Neo), lives an ordinary life.
A software techie by
day and a computer hacker by night, he sits alone at home by his monitor,
waiting
for a sign, a signal - from what or whom he doesn’t know - until one night,
a
mysterious woman named Trinity seeks him out and introduces him to that
faceless character he has been waiting for: Morpheus. A messiah of sorts,
Morpheus presents Neo with the truth about his world by shedding light on the
dark secrets that have troubled him for so long.
Sincerely,
Francis Feeley
Professor of American Studies
University of Grenoble-3
Director of Research
University of Paris-Nanterre
Center for the Advanced Study of
American Institutions and Social Movements
The University of California-San
Diego
http://dimension.ucsd.edu/CEIMSA-IN-EXILE/
_______________
A.
From Nordic
News Network :
Dates: 19 June
2014
Subject
: Assange Still Under Siege in London.
Today marks the second anniversary of Julian Assange’s
forced confinement in the London embassy of Ecuador, which has granted him
asylum for an indefinite period. Under heavy pressure from the United States,
but claiming to be motivated by its legal obligations to Sweden, the U.K.
government has refused to grant safe passage of Assange
from the embassy to the country of Ecuador.
Assange: Still Under Siege
in London
There
is strong reason to believe that Sweden has also been acting on behalf of the
United States in this matter, and would subsequently extradite Assange to the United States where he is threatened with
severe punishment for committing acts of journalism. That belief appears to
have been confirmed by the behaviour of Swedish
officials during the past year.…
Article in PDF format (ca. 450
KB):
http://www.nnn.se/nordic/assange/siege.pdf
Note: It is anticipated that the 7th installment of
"Miscellaneous Information" on the Assange
case will be available on the website no later than 21 June 2014.
Link: http://www.nnn.se/nordic/assange/resources.htm
______________
Al Burke
E-mail: editor@nnn.se
Internet: http://www.nnn.se
Tel. +46/(0)8 - 731 9200
Zetterbergsvägen 10
S-18143 Lidingö
Sweden
WARNING! E-mail to and
from Sweden, or via servers in Sweden, is monitored and stored by the
National Defence Radio Establishment.
Varning! E-post
till och från Sverige, eller som passerar servrar
i Sverige, avlyssnas och lagras
av Försvarets Radioanstalt, FRA.
_______________
B.
From History
Today :
Dates: 19 June
2014
Subject
:
What is Social History?
http://www.historytoday.com/raphael-samuel/what-social-history
_______________
C.
From National Archives :
Dates: 20 June
2014
Subject
: Declassified Diplomacy with Brazil: National Security
Archive Hails Obama Administration.
http://nsarchive.wordpress.com/
Declassified Diplomacy with Brazil:
National Security Archive Hails Obama Administration
Decision to Assist Brazilian Truth Commission
Washington,
D.C., June 20, 2014 -- The Obama administration advanced the principle of
international openness, accountability and support for human rights this week
when Vice President Joe Biden transferred to Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff a set of newly
declassified U.S. government documents relating to Brazil's military
dictatorship, which held power from 1964 - 1985.
Visiting
Brazil for the World Cup soccer competition, Biden announced that the
Administration would conduct a further review and release of still secret U.S.
records to help to the Brazilian Truth Commission; the commission is
investigating human rights abuses under military rule and due to issue its
final report at the end of 2014. The documentation, Biden stated, would be
"of particular interest" to President Rousseff
who was a political prisoner and torture victim herself during the military
regime. (Diario do Podar,
June 17, 2014) "I hope that in
taking steps to come to grips with our past we can find a way to focus on the
immense promise of the future," Reuters quoted Biden as saying. (Reuters,
June 17, 2014)
Biden's
announcement comes as the U.S. and Brazil are attempting to mend fences in the
aftermath of revelations that the National Security Agency had tapped President
Rousseff's cell phone and spied on other Brazilian
government agencies.
Peter
Kornbluh, who directs the Archive's Brazil project,
commended the Obama administration for the document donation, and hailed the
Vice President's "virtuous use of declassified diplomacy." According to
Kornbluh, "Biden's diplomatic gesture will not
only assist the Truth Commission in shedding light on the dark past of Brazil's
military era, but also create a foundation for a better and more transparent
future in U.S.-Brazilian relations."
The
United States covertly supported the military coup that deposed President Joao Goulart on April 1, 1964, and maintained close ties to
Brazil's military rulers during the dictatorship. American diplomats, intelligence operatives
and military personnel reported routinely, and in detail, about regime policies
-- and abuses. The Archive has obtained
the release of portions of this critically important historical record through
the Freedom of Information Act, and has posted a number of files relating to
the U.S. role in the 1964 coup that brought the dictatorship to power.
Since
the inauguration of the Brazilian Truth Commission in May 2012, the Archive's
Brazil project has been pressing the Obama Administration to conduct a special
declassification to assist the Commission's investigation. With the
encouragement of the National Security Archive and others, in recent years U.S.
presidents have shared similar records with other governments seeking to
recapture their troubled pasts, including in Chile, Guatemala and Ecuador.
Rousseff's government has
been an active proponent of freedom of information. Brazil served as co-chair of the Obama-led
Open Government Partnership. In 2012,
the country implemented a new information access law, taking a further step out
of the persistent shadow of two decades of military rule.
_______________
D.
From Financial
Times :
Dates: 22 June
2014
Subject
:
Folk Art and Fine Art, and decline in the market of abstractions over sentient
realities.
Folk art and fine
art
http://video.ft.com/3629952482001/Folk-art-and-fine-art/life-and-arts
_______________
E.
From : Consortium News :
Dates: 23 June
2014
Subject:
Killing people as if they were abstractions.
When I saw the Washington Post’s
banner headline, “U.S. sees risk in Iraq airstrikes,” I thought, “doesn’t
that say it all.”
Iraqis Are Not ‘Abstractions’
http://consortiumnews.com/2014/06/21/iraqis-are-not-abstractions/
by Ray McGovern
_______________
F.
From : Truth Dig :
Dates: 23 June
2014
Subject
The
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, reflect back to us the ghoulish face of
American empire. They are the specters of the hundreds of thousands of people
we murdered in our deluded quest to remake the Middle East.
ISIS: The Ghoulish Face of Empire
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_ghoulish_face_of_empire_20140623
by Chris Hedges
_______________
G.
From : Information Clearing
House :
Dates: 23 June
2014
Subject
:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/
ISIS commander says, ‘USA decision
to hit us will have a positive outcome and will show a US/Al-Maliki alliance against the Sunni”.
Where Will ISIS
Go Next?
Interview With ISIS Commander
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article38905.htm
by Moon Of
Alabama
_______________
H.
From Historians
Against the War :
Dates: 23 June
2014
Subject
: [haw-info] Under Iraq Shadow-House Passes Large Pentagon
Budget.
http://www.historiansagainstwar.org/
With the Obama Administration debating the extent of US military
intervention in Iraq, Congressional voices are especially important.
Under the shadow of Iraq, the House of Representatives voted on
the 2015 Defense Appropriations bill last week. The bill totaled $571 billion,
including $79.4 billion for Overseas Contingency Operations. The exact purpose
of $ 79.4 billion is left ambiguous-- but these funds could readily be used to
extend US military operations in Afghanistan beyond December 2014, or to fund
new operations in Iraq.
We are including Roll-Calls on key amendments and the final bill.
It would be helpful to consider what role historians can play as this
legislation goes to the Senate. This is an important
opportunity for letters to the editor, op.ed. pieces, calls to Congressional offices and other
initiatives. Hanging in the balance is the military re-involvement of the United
States in Iraq, as well longstanding issues of war and peace.
Carolyn Rusti Eisenberg and Margaret
Power for the HAW-SC
----
Last week the House of Representatives voted on a series
of amendments to the HR 4870 Defense Appropriation bill. Among the key amendments were those introduced by
Barbara Lee--to prevent US military intervention in Iraq and to bring to an end
to all combat operations in Afghanistan. All were defeated by varying margins.
(Use links below to see the Roll-Calls)
*** Even though these particular amendments were defeated, It is very significant and distressing that by a margin of
342-73 the House passed a $571 billion Defense Appropriations bill. This is not
just the House Republicans. A significant majority of Democrats supported it as well--far
more than were willing to support the Pentagon budget last year.
For Roll-call on the bill as a whole
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2014/roll338.xml
For votes on Representative Lee's amendments on Iraq and
Afghanistan, use links below.
Rejected 165-250 Lee (D-CA)
amendment to prohibit the use of funds to be used for the purposes of
conducting combat operations in Iraq.
Rejected 182-231
Lee (D-CA) amendment to prohibit use of funds to be obligated or
expended pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002.
Rejected 157-260
Lee (D-CA) amendment to prohibit use of funds to be obligated or
expended pursuant to the Authorization for Use of Military of Force after
December 31, 2014.
Rejected 153-260 Lee (D-CA),
to prohibit use of funds for the purpose of conducting combat operations in Afghanistanafter December 31, 2014.