The Problem in the System

Some online interactions that I've had recently got me thinking about how the idea of a system can become problematic in certain ways.  

As Walter Ong has explained, the term system is a visual metaphor, with roots in astronomy, as in the solar system.

The image above is a diagram of the Copernican, heliocentric system, rendered by none other than Galileo Galilei. And the term system comes into popular use in the era of Copernicus and Galileo, that is, in the era of typography. As McLuhan has noted, the Gutenberg galaxy (by which he meant the typographic media environment and the print culture it gave rise to) heightened the importance of the visual sense, stressing its use in isolation from the other senses, an unnatural mode of perception, but one essential to the habit of reading.   

What is also unnatural is the way that the visual sense is used by literates, focusing on a fixed point of view at a fairly close distance. That's how we read, but most other uses of vision require us to use our eyes quite differently, whether we're scanning our environment for threats and opportunities, or attending to another person's facial expressions, gestures, and stance in interaction. Reading amounts to training our eyes to see in ways that run counter to our natural instincts and inclinations, and this in turn results in some rewiring of the brain's neural pathways.

As a consequence, print culture has been characterized by visualism, as the cultural trend is referred to, and this is quite different from the use of images and imagistic language in oral and preliterate cultures, and in cultures where literacy is limited.  It is also quite different from our own contemporary image culture, which is associated with audiovisual media.

Visualism is very much connected to the rise of modern science, which is based on the empirical method, which is to say that it is based on observation. In particular, it's based on the idea that we can be observers standing apart and outside of what we observe, as outsiders looking on, spectators, peeping toms, voyeurs, etc. In other words, visualism brings with it objectivism, the idea of objectivity, that you can observe phenomena in a detached, uninvolved manner, that the phenomena are unaffected by the act of observation, and that it is possible to separate ourselves from our subjectivity. 

To be objective is to treat the objects of our observation as objects, to engage in objectification. McLuhan notes that this has its roots in the ancient world, and from it comes the idea of nature as something separate and apart from human beings. In objectifying nature, we think of it as something that can be opposed, contained, controlled, defeated, possessed, and manipulated. Camille Paglia in Sexual Personae makes the great point that this a delusion, but a delusion that has resulted in most of the great works and progress that have been accomplished in science, technology, and art.

Literacy is also associated with linearity, and this goes back to the first writing system, cuneiform, developed by the Sumerians in Mesopotamia circa 3500BCE, as Denise Schmandt-Besserat has shown. Linear thinking is very much apparent in Aristotle's logic, which takes us step by step through a thinking process, and also evolved as a method for organizing the process of categorizing information (e.g., if an item is a member of a category, and that category is a member of a larger category, then that item is also a member of that larger category). And as Eric Havelock, along with Ong and McLuhan have shown, literacy leads to the use of more high-level abstractions, whereas the oral mindset favor more concrete verbal formulations. Again, logic and abstract thinking take us farther away from reality, but are also associated with progress in science and technology.

So, returning to the idea of system, it is very much a part of this historical development, and there is no question that visual charts, graphs, tables, and diagrams are enormously useful. So what's the problem with system then?

For Ong, it's a symptom of a larger shift that was centered in many ways in Ramism, an approach to education and knowledge introduced by Peter Ramus (1515-1572), made possible by the printing revolution, and indeed reflecting the biases of the typographic medium. Ramus shifted the emphasis in education away from dialogue, debate and disputation, the understanding that scholarship and knowledge is based on an ongoing conversation.

Instead, what Ramus emphasized is that knowledge can be understood as a set of facts, organized logically and presented in visual form, as an outline or diagram or the like, and Ramist education was based on conveying knowledge in this manner.  

This may be a more efficient way to summarize, organize, and present knowledge, but the human element is abstracted out of it, and with its removal we also lose any sense of human subjectivity. Rather than primary sources read against one another, we get a textbook. Rather than learning about the method of knowledge acquisition, and especially its character as an ongoing, never ending activity, we are given the impression of a field or discipline as established, set, fixed, closed, and complete. A system.

Indeed, part of the problem is the idea of a system as having boundaries, as in the mathematical notion of a set.  Even if you take into account that sets can overlap, and/or be nested within one another, we still lose the idea of open-ended discourse, as opposed to a limited set of facts that can be listed, presented for visual display, complete and bounded.

The cell membrane is another basis for comparison with the idea of system. And while membranes are by their very nature permeable, they still must maintain a strict boundary between what is in the system and what is outside of the system, that is, what is the system's environment. This is an important idea, and I want to be clear that the idea itself is not the problem, but rather its overemphasis.

And then there is the well known diagram of the particles that make up an atom, which has for long been presented in a manner quite similar to that of the solar system. But of course we know that this is not at all an accurate representation for whatever is going on down at that level. Indeed, subatomic physics in certain respects defies visual representation.

Now, admittedly, I've been using examples related to the solar system, of systems with clear boundaries, and I should acknowledge that there are other kinds of systems. For example, the nervous system:

 

 And the subway system:

But while there is no membrane, per se, we still are presented with a sense of closure, the system as complete and contained within the diagram. And of course this also applies to the Ramist diagram shown above, which amounts to a kind of outline turned over on its side.

But there is more to the idea of system than just visualism. System also is associated with systematizing, that is, an attempt to reduce activity down to an established set of steps or procedures. We can recognize in this sense of system a scientific orientation and the full application of operationalism, that is, operational definitions, so again it is quite useful.  But operationalism also gives rise to a mechanical and technical orientation, what Lewis Mumford considers machine ideology, and Jacques Ellul terms la technique. Again, there is the removal of the human element, as occurs when a handicraft is mechanized, and for this reason the emphasis on mechanization and technologization has been criticized by scholars such as McLuhan, Mumford,  Ellul, and Neil Postman.

 The assembly line, as depicted above, is a linear approach to systematization taken to an extreme.  And while the electric circuit counters the linearity of mechanization, the technological bias towards systematization is still present:

And of course, it is readily apparent in computer programming (Ramist diagrams are considered to be an ancestor of the computer program and flowchart):

 And here's one more example, just for good measure (and humor):

So, system reflects a technological mentality, reducing human activity to a standardized program, especially one that can be made into a visual model or chart. Again, we return to the principle of containment and control that is also associated with visualism. 

Now, the online interactions I mentioned at the beginning of this post had to do with general semantics, which Alfred Korzybski referred to as a non-Aristotelian system.  And he did not use the term system casually, he was very much interested in systematizing his insights into human thought and behavior, and developing general semantics as a "teachable system," to invoke a phrase he used in a letter he wrote to Robert Maynard Hutchins.  And by this he meant a simple, easy to learn, set of steps, specifically geared for common folk, as opposed to something that only academics and intellectuals could understand. His goal to improve the common person's ability to think clearly and evaluate reality was commendable, and general semantics itself represents an important contribution to human understanding.  

But the irony is that he failed to realize that the idea of a non-Aristotelian system is oxymoronic, in that the idea of a system in general, in being visual and logical, is itself an Aristotelian formation. Korzybski didn't realize that he was using an Aristotelian method to present a non-Aristotelian approach. Consider, for example, Korzybski's primary model, the structural differential:

The broken parabola at the top is meant to represent the fact that we can only experience part of reality. The parabola is broken to convey the sense of incompleteness of knowledge and experience, and yet the fact remains that the shape is complete, albeit irregular, rather than being infinite. The model itself represents human experience in a systematized fashion, a process of abstracting from direct perception to symbolic representation, from naming to labeling, from less to more general categories, etc. But human experience does not work along clearly delineated, orderly steps. Like reality itself, human experience is unbounded.

I want to make it clear that I am not trying to dismiss the value of general semantics or the importance of Korzybski. But we also have to understand that he was a product of his times, his major work on general semantics, Science and Sanity, was published in 1933, and he was also biased due to his training as engineer and the kind of faith in science that was common in the early 20th century, but since has been adjusted significantly. Korzybski very much privileged the visual sense, arguing that images are closer to the direct experience of reality than words, again reflecting how his thinking was colored by his background in science and engineering. Even his famous saying, the map is not the territory, reflects a visual bias.

So, Korzybski tried to create a containable method to represent an uncontainable reality, and this amounted to a contradiction and flaw in general semantics as a discipline and movement. He formulated general semantics as a response to the new way of understanding the universe introduced by Einstein's revolution in physics. But as McLuhan has discussed, this scientific revolution, paralleled by the revolution in art known as modernism, are related to the advent of electric technology and communications beginning in the 19th century, which results in a transition away from the typographic media environment, print culture, and visualism. Korzybski was marching into the future facing backwards, or looking through the rearview mirror as McLuhan liked to put it. But that should come as no surprise, as this is what we all do. Had he lived a little later, I believe he would have come to understand the limits of visualism, and the need to move beyond it.

General semantics was in part the basis for systems theory, or what Bertalanffy called general system theory, following Korzybski's example, and there the idea of system takes an interesting turn. The systems view is decidedly nonlinear, a sensibility that Korzybski's general semantics pioneered. And in its holistic approach, systems theory runs counter to the analytic mode that alphabetic literacy also is associated with, and Korzybski criticized as elementalism. The systems view therefore does not favor a step by step, systematic and systematizing approach to processes.  So it is, in may respects, a further evolution in the kind of thinking that general semantics emphasizes. But systems thinking does retain a visual element:

 

This very simple diagram brings us back to the idea of boundaries and membranes. And, to reiterate this important point, while there are very important insights gained from thinking in terms of boundaries, there can be problems as well in over-emphasizing the idea of boundaries and closure, even when closure is understood to be permeable, functioning as a filter. This is a problem in systems thinking that I've encountered, for example, in the work of Niklas Luhmann, work that I otherwise have great respect for.

Consider as an alternative to system the idea of network, especially in its decentralized form: 

Although still visual, we no longer have clear boundaries, especially when you consider that the outer nodes are connected to other nodes outside of the diagram. And as we start to get into more full scale representations of social networks, it is not just the outer connections that take us away from the idea of clear boundaries, but also the density of inner connectivity, which goes beyond our ability to fully grasp and contain:

 

 
 And network is of course what the internet, the network of networks, is all about:

   

The above image represents the entirety of internet interactivity, circa 2006. Rather than the simplicity of the solar system, we get something approaching the complexity of the universe itself.

I'm not saying the idea of network is the final answer to life, the universe, and everything, just that it provides a necessary corrective to the idea of system. We make connections upon connections upon connections, the complexity increases exponentially, and at some point it results in an effort to simplify and systematize, an effort that is in some ways necessary, but also potentially dangerous if taken too far, clung to too rigidly, or otherwise reified.  But that is an essential tension in thinking and scholarship, and the accumulation of knowledge and the growth in understanding.


The idea of network, while de-emphasizing the sense of boundaries and completeness, still does not free us from the visual, or even a sense of the fixed. Alternatives to system can be helpful here, in giving us other connotations such as interaction, and especially relationship. A relational view is very much at the heart of the systems approach of Gregory Bateson and Paul Watzlawick, Korzybski emphasized relation, and for Einstein of course the concept of relativity was key. Ong described his approach as relational as well. Relational tends to be associated with a dyadic, dialectic approach, not that it has to be, but another term, one that conveys a greater sense of complexity, would be ecology.  This brings us to the ecological view that is synonymous with systems thinking, as  Fritjof Capra, and also Luhmann have indicated.

And that brings us to media ecology, a phrase and field formally introduced by Postman. Is media ecology free from the problem of being presented as a system? No it isn't. Christine Nystrom tried to systematize the field in her doctoral dissertation over forty years ago, and I myself have been working on various ways to summarize it, at least to provide an introduction to the field. McLuhan's laws of media are presented as a system that is whole and complete (as in, there are no other laws, the tetrad is a perfect set of ratios).  In fact, the laws of media constitute basic principles about how a system functions when a change is introduced, but that's besides the point, which is that the tetrad constitutes, or at least is taken to be a system.

By taken to be, I mean that it is used as a system by others. This happens even to Ong, despite his own strong criticism of visualism and system.  Orality and Literacy is his most popular work, and one of the main attractions is that it summarizes this area of study, presenting it in a relatively systematic form. The best known part of the book, the third chapter on orality and oral cultures, is not exactly Aristotelian in its logical organization. But Ong's list of some psychodynamics of orality (and I put the extra emphasis there to highlight the fact that he describes it in this highly qualified, incomplete manner) has been used by others in a systematic fashion. By this, I mean used as a kind of checklist, by which some modern form of secondary orality like rap music or online messaging can be analyzed based on the characteristics of primary orality listed by Ong, following his list step by step by step. I am certain Ong never intended for this to happen, but it happens nevertheless.

And let me be repeat that I too have worked on and continue to work on some forms of systemizing, although in my book Echoes and Reflections I try to present media ecology as a network of relations among different scholars, rather than a system with boundaries. But as I continue on with my work on media ecology as a field, I realize that I have to be very cognizant of the problem of the system, of presenting the field as a system (or worse, an ism), and of presenting it in such a way as it can be used as one by others. The problem may be unavoidable, but may be mitigated by being aware of that potential.

I find it useful to recall that Ong and McLuhan emphasized and favored an acoustic orientation that was distinct from visualism. An acoustic orientation tends to be open-ended and dialogue-oriented, and while sight tends to emphasize spatial dimensions, sound is a sense that is intimately associated with time. The acoustic orientation also places us firmly within the world, in a subjective position where the world is all around us, surrounding us, all sound being surround sound. We can never stand apart from nature in this way, and although the danger is in seeing yourself as the center of the universe, the benefit is that this is very much an ecological orientation, a view that favors living in harmony with the world, rather than being in conflict with nature as an other.

For McLuhan, an acoustic orientation is our natural mode of human existence, while visualism is a historical and cultural aberration that coincides with the rise and fall of the west. And in the new electronic era, we return to the auditory world of the tribe and village. But it is not a return back to a previous mode, but rather a turning of the wheel moving forward, as Ong indicates through his phrase secondary orality, which he explains is quite distinct from the primary orality that preceded literacy. Our electronically mediated acoustic orientation is something new and unprecedented, and as it is the result of working our way through and past our prior visualism, it retains some elements of it. 

And that is the best way to proceed, to incorporate the best features of different media environments, in search of a sustainable balance. In that pursuit, an ecological understanding, and an open, relational, dialogic approach, combining system, network, and an acoustic element such as resonance (a term favored by McLuhan's associate, Tony Schwartz), is what we need.

Human Sacrifice and the False Idol of Firearms

In his 1992 book Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, Neil Postman wrote that

the uncontrolled growth of technology destroys the vital sources of our humanity. It creates a culture without a moral foundation. It undermines certain mental processes and social relations that make life worth living. (p. xii)

Postman introduced the term technopoly to refer to a culture in which the growth of technology is unchecked and unrestrained, and comes to dominate all aspects of society.  As he explains

Technopoly is a state of culture. It is also a state of mind. It consists in the deification of technology, which means that the culture seeks its authorization in technology, finds its satisfactions in technology, and takes its orders from technology. (p. 71)

Writing over two decades ago, Postman suggests that the United States is the only technopoly in the world, although others are aspiring to that state. Whether we are still alone in our culture's total surrender to the technological imperative is an open question, but even if we are not, we are certainly unique in being the first, and furthest along.

But I want to modify Postman's argument slightly, to say that technology is not so much a deity as it is a religion. And as a religion, it is not a form of monotheism, but rather presents us with a pantheon of gods of the machine, some of which are openly worshiped with great enthusiasm, others not so much. For example, the automobile is one of our most cherished deities, a god to whom we give enormous love and devotion, for whom we build numerous altars  and indeed alter the entire landscape, and to whom we sacrifice an enormous amount of our resources, and beyond that,
some 30,000 lives every year.  In contrast, the locomotive is a god that once enjoyed great respect and admiration in this land, but whose worship has been in sharp decline for many decades now.

A similar example is the technology of the printing press, which is enshrined in the first amendment to our constitution, and still enjoys great prestige, but in regard to  its places of worship, attendance and affiliation has been in a downward spiral (much as it has been for traditional churches and synagogues), displaced by younger gods who prefer the title media rather than press, most notably television, computers, the internet, and the pocket gods we call cell phones.

And getting to the main point now, the second amendment, in language so convoluted that it requires almost as much exegesis as biblical passages written in ancient Hebrew, seemingly deifies another technology, arms, which is interpreted as firearms, the gun as god. How else can we explain the inexplicable response on the part of the National Rifle Association to the tragic shooting of 20 children and 6 teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, by which I mean the absolute refusal to consider that guns may have had anything to do with the event, and the absolute refusal to consider that any measure of limits, even the most modest, on gun ownership might be called for?

How else to explain the fact that, in the wake of the tragedy, gun worshipers rushed out to buy even more guns, especially of the sort used in the Newtown shooting? Is this not the power of belief, of faith, of worship?

Let me be plain about this. Guns do not represent freedom. As technologies specifically designed to cause injury and harm, to maim and to kill, they are a threat to freedom. Guns do not represent safety or security. There are alternatives to firearms that can fulfill that function. What do guns mean, what do they symbolize? Freud would point to their phallic quality, a point that no doubt would be open to ridicule by many, and that I'm not putting forth seriously here, although let's not forget that almost all gun violence is caused by men. But many critics of Freud have argued that what he interpreted as sexual is really about power. And while I am not in the habit of drawing on the French cultural critic Michel Foucault, in this instance I think his emphasis on power relations as something that permeates culture, beyond the power of the state, is relevant. Knowledge is power, yes, but in practical terms it's know-how that is power, in other words it's not just science, but applied science, technology.  Technology is about power, the power to get things done by the most efficient means available, and guns provide the power to cause damage and death more efficiently than any other method available to the average citizen.

The meaning of the gun is power. The worship of guns is the worship of power, the belief that this divine power will be bestowed upon the worshiper. The concept of deities is of beings that are supernatural, above nature, and therefore of much greater power than human beings. In monotheism, God is often referred to as the Almighty, which is to say all-powerful. Technology, being a form of polytheism, the gun is not almighty, but it is worshiped for the less than absolute power that it grants. Traditionally, the power of divine entities would be invoked through rituals, through sacrifice, through prayer, and the worshiper could never be certain of whether the deity would respond in any way. But our technological gods do respond, immediately and effectively, in granting us the power we seek.

As a religion, technology delivers. But only in regard to the utilitarian, the pragmatic. When it comes to traditional religions, and I would venture to add religions that are genuine religions, there are many other things individuals pray for aside from power: guidance, wisdom, compassion, forgiveness, peace. We pray for the souls of the dead, we pray for the healing of the wounded, we pray that survivors may be comforted in their grief and mourning, we pray for the strength to carry on through adversity. Individuals may pray for the ability to do God's will, or may meditate as a way of listening for God's voice, or simply to open themselves to the sacred dimension of the world, and seek communion with the divine.  Perhaps most importantly, traditional religions include prayers for mercy, expressions of respect, awe and even fear  of divine judgment, an understanding that there are requirements for right conduct, moral behavior, as a precondition for divine providence, and against the possibility of divine punishment.  Technology makes no such requirements of us. Holding aside the validity of religious beliefs, it is clear that traditional religion plays an important role in providing a foundation for ethical behavior, and from a sociological perspective fulfills a positive function. Technological religion, on the other hand, does not, and that is the key idea to keep in mind.

Turning back now to gun worship, I'd like to introduce the comments of Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie, former president of the Union for Reform Judaism, taken from a Huffington Post essay dated December 18, and entitled Gun Worship Is Blasphemy. Rabbi Yoffie begins by framing the issue of gun control within a religious context:

Above all, let us remember this: Sensible gun-control is a religious issue.

The indiscriminate distribution of guns is an offense against God and humanity.

Controlling guns is not only a political matter; it is a solemn religious obligation. Our gun-flooded society has turned weapons into idols, and the worship of idols must be recognized for what it is: blasphemy. And the only appropriate religious response to blasphemy is sustained moral outrage and focused moral action.

There is not a single word in the sacred Scriptures of the Christian, Jewish or Islamic traditions that either opposes commonsensical gun control or supports the idea of some God-given right to automatic weapons that fire 100 shots in a single minute.

Yes, our constitution gives us certain guarantees when it comes to gun ownership. But there is nothing in the constitution that says we are entitled to own weapons with a magazine of more than eight to 10 bullets. There is nothing that obligates us to go along with what the NRA has long advocated: the right of almost any terrorist suspect, deranged person, wife-beater and crook to buy almost any weapon at almost any time, no questions asked.

At this point, I want to repeat the point I made in my previous post, On Guns and More, that the second amendment is not scripture, that the Bill of Rights is not the Ten Commandments, that the constitution can be amended and that includes the amendments themselves, and that amendments can be repealed, and it's time to start talking about repealing the second amendment. But let me return to Rabbi Yoffie, and his plea for a response from the faith community:

When these terrible tragedies occur, our nation looks to its religious leaders and its places of worship to provide comfort to the victims and solace to a stricken nation. And it is important that we should do so; we have the capacity to mobilize communities of the faithful, to provide love and caring to those in distress, and to hold our fellow Americans together when anguish and fear are driving us apart.

But at this moment, more is needed of the religious community. As men and women of God, we need to take the moral offensive and demand that something be done.

My plea to every pastor, priest, rabbi and imam in America: This is not the time for the usual platitudes. And yes, we need programs for troubled teens and fewer bloodthirsty movies and hideous video games. But we also need to take on the gun nuts, a single-issue minority too often motivated by intolerance and filled with hate.

When it comes to guns, Americans have learned to be cynical. They have learned that no matter how great the outrage, the entrenched gun interests are always triumphant. But as religious leaders, we know what this leads to. We know that when good people back down again and again; when the gun worshipers are rewarded with ever-more radical pro-gun legislation; when the corpses of the dead, lying bloody before us, are ignored; and when the zealotry and folly of the pro-gun lobby are not confronted by the forces of sanity, the result is fatalism and despair, undermining faith in government and faith in God.

To echo the words of the great sage Hillel, if not now, when?  The problem, though, is politics:

I understand that gun control is not a simple matter; that compromise will be necessary; and that honest, well-intentioned people will differ on exactly what measures are required. But we must make a start. Surely this is the moment to create a coalition of sensible citizens, willing to come forward and say no to the deadly toll that guns are taking on the lives of our children. Surely this is the time to reach out to politicians, of all persuasions and all parties, and ask them to put the welfare of our children and the safety of our citizens ahead of petty, partisan concerns. And surely religious leaders and institutions -- obligated to do justly, love mercy and walk humbly with their God -- should lead the way.

If this massacre of innocents in Newtown will not rouse the nation's conscience, then nothing will. Therefore, this is the moment to mobilize the idealism, energy and anger of the American people.

And a word to President Obama: Nothing will happen without the national leadership that only you can provide. You have been a voice for hope and change, but if truth be told, in this area you have been mostly silent. I believe -- although I can't be sure -- that Americans are ready for a leader with the sense and the guts to tackle the abuses of our gun culture. We need to hear from you a voice of moral clarity and a practical plan that you will be prepared to fight for. Your tears about the murdered children were genuine, but they were not enough. No excuses and no dawdling. If Americans are to stop the slaughter and find their higher selves, religious leaders have a critical role to play -- but they can only do so much. The President of the United States must lead the way.

The trouble with compromise is that it only works when there are two sides willing to compromise. But how do you ask gun-worshipers to compromise on the worship of their god? I realize that Rabbi Yoffie is trying to be reasonable, indeed that approaching problems rationally is part of the Enlightenment orientation that gave birth to the Reform Judaism movement that he once led. And he is absolutely right in calling out President Obama on his abject failure to address this issue in any substantive way. We'll see what the Biden Commission that Obama appointed to come up with proposals to deal with this issue comes up with. But how do we compromise on matters of health and safety? What's the compromise on drinking and driving? What's the compromise on seat belts and airbags in cars? What's the compromise on second hand smoke? What's the compromise on radioactive fallout and toxic waste?

Let me turn now to an essay published in the New York Review of Books on December 15th, written by Gary Wills, a leading Roman Catholic intellectual.  The essay is entitled, simply, Our Moloch, and I thank Rabbi Barry L. Schwartz of Congregation Adas Emuno for bringing it to my attention.  The title is in reference to one of the false gods who are the subject of idol worship in the Hebrew Bible, the most often cited passage being in Leviticus 18:21 which reads, "And thou shalt not let any of thy seed pass through the fire to Moloch." In this instance, seed refers to offspring, and the prohibition against the sacrifice of children, which is the main lesson of the story of the binding of Isaac (as I discussed in my previous post, Appearances), is reinforced just a little further on in Leviticus in 20:1-5, which reads

1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,
2 Again, thou shalt say to the children of Israel, Whosoever he be of the children of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn in Israel, that giveth any of his seed unto Moloch; he shall surely be put to death: the people of the land shall stone him with stones.
3 And I will set my face against that man, and will cut him off from among his people; because he hath given of his seed unto Moloch, to defile my sanctuary, and to profane my holy name.
4 And if the people of the land do any ways hide their eyes from the man, when he giveth of his seed unto Moloch, and kill him not;
5 then I will set my face against that man, and against his family, and will cut him off, and all that go a whoring after him, to commit whoredom with Moloch, from among their people.

Harsh stuff, indeed, but a strong polemic against a practice that was considered acceptable, desirable, and demanded by the gods in the ancient middle east (as it has been in other cultures in other parts of the world). The powerful prohibition against human sacrifice appears elsewhere in the Hebrew bible, in Deuteronomy, Jeremiah, and Second Chronicles.  And, after all, are we not to this day filled with disgust at the thought of such practices, and of sacrificing children in general? With this context in mind, let's turn to what Gary Wills has to say:

Few crimes are more harshly forbidden in the Old Testament than sacrifice to the god Moloch (for which see Leviticus 18.21, 20.1-5). The sacrifice referred to was of living children consumed in the fires of offering to Moloch. Ever since then, worship of Moloch has been the sign of a deeply degraded culture. Ancient Romans justified the destruction of Carthage by noting that children were sacrificed to Moloch there. Milton represented Moloch as the first pagan god who joined Satan’s war on humankind:

First Moloch, horrid king, besmear’d with blood
Of human sacrifice, and parents’ tears,
Though for the noise of Drums and Timbrels loud
Their children’s cries unheard, that pass’d through fire
To his grim idol. (Paradise Lost 1.392-96)

Read again those lines, with recent images seared into our brains—“besmeared with blood” and “parents’ tears.” They give the real meaning of what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School Friday morning. That horror cannot be blamed just on one unhinged person. It was the sacrifice we as a culture made, and continually make, to our demonic god. We guarantee that crazed man after crazed man will have a flood of killing power readily supplied him. We have to make that offering, out of devotion to our Moloch, our god. The gun is our Moloch. We sacrifice children to him daily—sometimes, as at Sandy Hook, by directly throwing them into the fire-hose of bullets from our protected private killing machines, sometimes by blighting our children’s lives by the death of a parent, a schoolmate, a teacher, a protector. Sometimes this is done by mass killings (eight this year), sometimes by private offerings to the god (thousands this year).

The analogy is entirely apt, in my opinion. Of all the false gods that we worship within our technological religion, none are more vile, more horrific, more evil than this one. Some have made reference to the existence of evil in respect to the act of mass murder that occurred, and to the shooter as a person, and in some instances this has been used as a tactic to deflect attention away from the role that firearms have played in this and so many other needless, senseless deaths. What Wills makes clear in this essay is that gun-worship itself is sinful, is evil.

Wills continues by arguing that the gun is more than a technology, but in a way that is consistent with Postman's view that our technologies have become deified:

The gun is not a mere tool, a bit of technology, a political issue, a point of debate. It is an object of reverence. Devotion to it precludes interruption with the sacrifices it entails. Like most gods, it does what it will, and cannot be questioned. Its acolytes think it is capable only of good things. It guarantees life and safety and freedom. It even guarantees law. Law grows from it. Then how can law question it?

Its power to do good is matched by its incapacity to do anything wrong. It cannot kill. Thwarting the god is what kills. If it seems to kill, that is only because the god’s bottomless appetite for death has not been adequately fed. The answer to problems caused by guns is more guns, millions of guns, guns everywhere, carried openly, carried secretly, in bars, in churches, in offices, in government buildings. Only the lack of guns can be a curse, not their beneficent omnipresence.

Adoration of Moloch permeates the country, imposing a hushed silence as he works his will. One cannot question his rites, even as the blood is gushing through the idol’s teeth. The White House spokesman invokes the silence of traditional in religious ceremony. “It is not the time” to question Moloch. No time is right for showing disrespect for Moloch.

At this point, I want to note that Wills is not the first to find a false god in a machine, or to call that god Moloch. One of the most dramatic scenes in the 1927 German silent film Metropolis, directed by Fritz Lang, depicts industrial machinery as a Moloch idol devouring workers. The film portrays a future society where there are two classes, the capitalists who live above the city in privileged luxury, and the oppressed workers who live below.  Freder, the son of the city's master ventures below to see how the other half lives, and upon viewing the workers reduced to automatons servicing the industrial engines, he has a vision of the machinery as Moloch. I'm going to include a clip here, and if you're not familiar with silent film, you might find this stylized depiction a bit hard to relate to, but try to understand the powerful statement being made here about human beings placed in servitude to technology:





This Moloch is consuming adult workers rather than children, but the reality at that time is that children were victimized by the industrial revolution, and women as well as men. It was exactly this Moloch that Karl Marx inveighed against in The Communist Manifesto, with the clear understanding that the inhuman working conditions of the industrial factory and the exploitation of impoverished men, women, and children was intolerable, and it would only be a matter of time before the workers rose up in rebellion against the ones oppressing them. But you did not have to be a leftist, radical, or anarchist to see that, as the fascist movement of the early 20th century also was fueled by the alienation of the working classes.  In fact, the screenplay for Metropolis was written by Lang's wife at the time, Thea Von Harbou, who was a Nazi sympathizer. Lang himself was on the liberal side of the political spectrum, and half-Jewish, although his mother  converted to Catholicism when Lang was a child. 

The point is that if there is a religious belief that Americans have clung to along with the belief in technology, and that goes hand-in-hand in many ways with the belief in technology, it's the belief in free enterprise. And that faith in free enterprise suggested that any kind of legislation or reforms regarding how businesses conduct themselves would be unwarranted. And yet, we did pass child labor laws, and all manner of regulations regarding safety in the workplace. Of course, it took organized effort on the part of working people, especially through the labor union movement, for this to come about. It was important, it was necessary, and if not for this process, there might well have been some kind of massive revolution here. In Metropolis, a negotiated solution is reached at the end, the kind that Rabbi Yoffie would recognize as reasonable, but even there it's only after a violent upheaval, and only to avert any further violence and disruption.

So this is a bit of a digression, but one that brings me to the point that the comparison that Wills makes between guns and Moloch not only makes sense, but has good precedent. And the fact that we were able to overcome the Moloch of the industrial machine through organized effort, political action, and legislation, with the support of religious organizations, shows that it is also possible to overcome the Moloch of firearms. And it begins with identifying the god as a false idol, which Wills proceeds to do in his essay:

The fact that the gun is a reverenced god can be seen in its manifold and apparently resistless powers. How do we worship it? Let us count the ways:

1. It has the power to destroy the reasoning process. It forbids making logical connections. We are required to deny that there is any connection between the fact that we have the greatest number of guns in private hands and the greatest number of deaths from them. Denial on this scale always comes from or is protected by religious fundamentalism. Thus do we deny global warming, or evolution, or biblical errancy. Reason is helpless before such abject faith.

2. It has the power to turn all our politicians as a class into invertebrate and mute attendants at the shrine. None dare suggest that Moloch can in any way be reined in without being denounced by the pope of this religion, National Rifle Association CEO Wayne LaPierre, as trying to destroy Moloch, to take away all guns. They whimper and say they never entertained such heresy. Many flourish their guns while campaigning, or boast that they have themselves hunted “varmints.” Better that the children die or their lives be blasted than that a politician should risk an election against the dread sentence of NRA excommunication.

3. It has the power to distort our constitutional thinking. It says that the right to “bear arms,” a military term, gives anyone, anywhere in our country, the power to mow down civilians with military weapons. Even the Supreme Court has been cowed, reversing its own long history of recognizing that the Second Amendment applied to militias. Now the court feels bound to guarantee that any every madman can indulge his “religion” of slaughter. Moloch brooks no dissent, even from the highest court in the land.

Though LaPierre is the pope of this religion, its most successful Peter the Hermit, preaching the crusade for Moloch, was Charlton Heston, a symbol of the Americanism of loving guns. I have often thought that we should raise a statue of Heston at each of the many sites of multiple murders around our land. We would soon have armies of statues, whole droves of Heston acolytes standing sentry at the shrines of Moloch dotting the landscape. Molochism is the one religion that can never be separated from the state. The state itself bows down to Moloch, and protects the sacrifices made to him. So let us celebrate the falling bodies and rising statues as a demonstration of our fealty, our bondage, to the great god Gun.

What a marvelous suggestion, the intent being of course to shame our political leadership into acknowledging the truth of the situation, and taking action. To understand what we are up against, let's listen to the words of Moloch's prophet:



The false conflation of national defense, a function now served by our professional military and police forces, and the private ownership of firearms by gun-worshipers is unworthy of the actor who once portrayed Moses, the Lawgiver. Professionals will generally tell you that they do not want all of these weapons in the hands of private individuals, but that's besides the ponit. For a better understanding of Charlton Heston, let's turn to the following except from Michael Moore's film, Bowling for Columbine:



While I don't completely agree with Moore, who insists on linking American gun-worship to our foreign policy and numerous military interventions in the world, and doesn't distinguish between Canadian ownership of hunting rifles and shotguns, and American worship of handguns and assault weapons, but his interview with Heston is revealing in the simple truth that there is no rational argument to be made for our policies towards firearms. When there is no argument, no rationale, it all comes down to blind faith, to religious belief, to unquestioning worship. And of what? Of the technological religion, of the gun as as American god, of the false idol of firearms who demand of us human sacrifices, the sacrifice of children. 

How much more can we bear?

Jazzing It Up in Leonia

So, in my role as president of Congregation Adas Emuno, a Reform synagogue in Bergen County, New Jersey, I've had some quotes included in articles appearing in the local Leonia Life community newspaper put out by the North Jersey Media Group, as noted in my previous posts, Congregation and Community and Reconnected. Okay, so here we go again.

The latest article was published on December 21st, entitled Adas Emuno Jazzes Up the Holiday Season in Leonia., and it begins with the following:

Eugene Marlow's Heritage Ensemble came to Congregation Adas Emuno to bring a lively, multi-cultural mix of music to Leonia on Dec. 1.

Before going any further, I should mention that I was the one who organized the concert, the second time we've had them play at Adas Emuno.  And I should also mention that Gene Marlow, aside from being a jazz composer and performer, is also a professor of communication at Baruch College in New York City, and a graduate of the good old media ecology program back in the halcyon days of Neil Postman and Christine Nystrom.  You can read all about Gene and his band on EugeneMarlow.com website, and I give the Heritage Ensemble my highest recommendation, I might add, they are just amazing!  So anyway, let's return to the article, and this is where I come in:

"They preformed for about an hour and the repertoire comes from taking Hebraic melodies and turning them into jazz compositions," said Lance Strate, President of the Congregation. "It's a kind of multi-cultural approach where there is a Latin rhythm section and sometimes we get Latin beats, Afro-Cuban beats and sometimes we get a Mediterranean touch to it."

Guests, including both members of the congregation and visitors, were entertained by a variety of songs.

"It's actually a wonderful mix and collaboration because the leader of the band, Eugene Marlow, comes from a Jewish background but the drummers are native New Yorkers of Puerto Rican descent," said Lance Strate. "The saxophone player is Lebanese and the bass player is German."

Oh, and by the way, the article also features a photo credited to Christopher Trento, with the following caption: "Michael Hashim, Frank Wagner, guest vocalist Shira Lissek and Matthew Gonzalez of Eugene Marlow's Heritage Ensemble perform a variety of Hebraic melodies at Congregation Adas Emuno on Dec. 1."

And the article concludes with some more quotations:

The concert began after a brief Havdallah service. The band was also joined by a singer who joined the instrumental musicians by adding her voice to a few of the songs.

"Four of the pieces that they did they did, they were joined by Shira Lisseck who is a cantorial soloist. She has preformed with symphony orchestras and has an absolutely gorgeous voice," said Strate.

At the conclusion of the concert, guests attended the congregation's Social Hall where there were light refreshments being served.

"We're hoping to make it a tradition but this is only the second time that they preformed for us but we are planning on having them back again next year," said Strate.

The congregation also recently celebrated the daily lighting of the Menorah for Hanukkah.

And that does it for the article. You might be thinking that they overdid it with the quotations, and as much as it's gratifying to see my name in print, I'd have to agree. But there is an explanation, and it also relates to the fact that all it says under the byline of this article is "CORRESPONDENT" (a curious designation indeed!). The author of the article didn't make it to the event, so the piece is based almost entirely on an interview with me on the phone.  

Frankly, it would have been better for all involved if I had just written it for them, it would have been a much better article that way, but I guess that would cross some journalistic line of some sort, or maybe it would just mean that they'd have to pay me. 

And maybe it's only fitting, as jazz represents a form that retrieves some aspects of oral traditional music, fusing remnants of primary orality with the new sensibility formed out of the secondary orality of electronic media, creating a kind of hybrid energy that the Heritage Ensemble so wonderfully embodies. So the article in its own way is a kind of analogue of jazz, you might say. Or maybe not...