Pesach, Freedom, Easter, Dostoevsky: from Neo-Neocon

My favorite host on the blogosphere is Neo-neocon. Various reasons. But in the month and a half I have been posting in this medium, 99% of my posts have gone there. So I will start posting them here, until I decide to post something really original.


Thanks for another rich post.

I am not a practicing religious person but I have had a lot of exposure to Christian and Jewish rituals and have affection for them. Even so I think the historical bases for both is probably more mythical than anything else. (ducks)

The notion of freedom is by necessity rather vague and thus hard to nail down, or view outside of some context.

In the case of Pesach, what is being celebrated is the deliverance of the Jewish people from bondage by the Almighty, thus is it above a celebration of that supreme being, and the special bond the Jewish people have with him by being loyal to their covenant. Yes, it is about freedom in a certain sense, but, of course it is not about freedom in the libertarian sense.

If Passover emphasizes the unity of the Jewish people by their promise to the Almighty, Easter emphasizes the unity of the believers with the risen Christ.

So the one holiday collapses time, and the other, space, for the faithful.

We in the West for a century or more have become accustomed to what might be called pluralistic ideologies, I mean, the notion that a plurality of intepretations of the world, a plurality of codes of conduct, and a plurality of individual life choices can co-exist without rancor. As a result we tend to look down our noses at societies that are "closed" (in Popper's sense), perhaps forgetting that most societies for most of human history have been run by unitary ideologies that do not tolerate dissent: and, BTW, that includes much of Jewish and Christian history, as well.

Anyway, the problem with our Muslim friends is that they are at that moment now. They have long lived under the single ideology of Allah, and now that it being threatened by their exposure to the West. So the are retreating into a kind of reactionary ideology, where fear and force are in play. And, yes, Nazism and Communism were very similar to these. And they are very different from us and therefore very scary in that way. I have that fear, and I also fear that we might become more like them, because of the challenge and threat they represent to us.

However, it's important to recognize that they are dealing from a position of weakness, despite their bluster and their (possible) WMD's, and their evident brutality (Moussaioui). They are attempting to impose an ideological straight jacket that will not hold. Unfortunately, the future of the Muslim world is going to be somewhat like the history of Europe from the French Revolution through the fall of Communism, not very pleasant, and possibly very dangerous, but, what we can do is try to manage it. We will not be able to control it.

Dostoevsky was a revolutionary in his youth: a believer that organized religion (read: organized unitary ideologies) were all mere engines of social control preventing sacred individuals from fulfilling their destiny. But when he got older he returned to faith, and thus he represents more Alyosha than Ivan by the time he wrote Karamazov.

The story really isn't that ambiguous because everyone who doesn't share a faith regards it as a phony edifice of control. Thus, everyone is Ivan. On the other hand, everyone also recognizes, when we listen to our better nature, that we need some kind of structure of values, including ethical values or spiritual values, in order to survive, and in order to love each other.

The key element is how one views the Deity: IOW, is there a overarching purpose to our lives, and, if there is, how should that guide us? Or is life just something into which we have been radically thrown, and if we live just for our own fulfillment, how long before the material comforts become dust and ashes?

I am rather sure that FD would have considered Ivan's position as one that ultimately led to solipsistic despair, and even the embrace of a newfangled unitary ideology like "totalitarianism." He would have said, instead, that the notion of finding purpose, and meaning, to life, as well as immortality, through active love, was the solution, and, mythic or no, that is what Jesus Christ is supposed to represent.

As a conservative, I am much more responsive to the old ideologies of the past, including, but not limited to Christianity and Judaism, which recognize that perfection is not possible, that human beings are weak and base, that life is, on an individual basis, a single breath in endless time, and that ego is the most pernicious of concepts.

For this reason, while I am not a believer, I think the old beliefs are a better guide to meaning than the newfangled Enlightenment ones. Freedom in that sense means, first, knowing that freedom is not about being enslaved by your ego desires, but by knowing your duty, based on what you are and your abilities, before the Most High. This is a spiritual insight, found in all the great religions and even in some great poetry.

Happy Holidays to you too.