Toward Attention

The Tower and the Wastes, Prelude 1: Air-Dropping Machine-Supplies into a Foreign Land, Sending Bombs Into the Belly of Leviathan

For the popular American consciousness, democracy is fundamentally thought of as one more technology, one more technocratic way of assuring something called "freedom," which is popularly understood as the absence of obstacles to consumption.

Do not be fooled: it fits right in with the older Ancient Near Eastern models of the Chaoskampf, the war or struggle against Chaos.

Do not be fooled: here any country (let's say any given one in Africa or the Middle East) that is not a consumeristic totalitarianism is seen as a backwards one, fueled by ethnic/tribal solidarities or religion or represive ideologies. It is seen as Chaos, to be made Cosmos by technology, or technocracy (power, governance or rule by method or technique). "One person, one vote." Democracy is one more machine to export, the mother of them all and their right use.

Real fundamental alleigances and commitments (in terms of God, country, tribe) must not be pre-given, for this restricts the licentiousness of the Appetite, and of the gods in their towers. These gods wish to pen this Appetite in where it is manageable, and where they will have sole ownership and feeding rights to this pet that has birthed them.

Roman Catholic Pope on Contraception

This doesn't seem to me to be anything other than a slightly more nuanced version of normal RC moral teachings, but apparently it's baffled lots of people: many seem to be reading it differently than I am. The Good is not mutable, but there are greater and lesser goods; greater and lesser evils, also. Has the Vatican ever said that condom use voids whatever good might be present in every sexual situation? One doesn't have to endorse condoms to say what the pope said -- one can, in face, still deplore them as inhospitable to life and as sin, and say that. No?

The Holy and Wise Moses

"If we are on the watch to see our own faults, we shall not see those of our neighbour. It is folly for a man who has a dead person in his house to leave him there and go to weep over his neighbour's dead. To die to one's neighbour is this: To bear your own faults and not to pay attention to anyone else wondering whether they are good or bad. Do no harm to anyone, do not think anything bad in your heart towards anyone, do not scorn the man who does evil, do not put confidence in him who does wrong to his neighbour, do not rejoice with him who injures his neighbour."

St. Moses the Ethiopian.

Atheist Rocker Turned Priest-Monk

Here there is an interesting story from the MYSTAGOGY website.

Africa, Condoms and the Bishop of Rome

I've had an interest in Africa, and particularly Uganda, since making the acquaintance of one John Burnett. I've noted any media reference to Africa since then with particular interest, and have tried to keep abreast of the various interests that move (or fail to move) things in various places there. It doesn't hurt my interest that my father and his wife are members of a non-profit group that regularly raises awareness and money for a small country in the south of Africa.

I read here (hat tip to David Bennett, again) that a French doctor recently commented on Pope Benedict's statement that condom distribution would not help the AIDS crisis in Africa, and that this was simply realistic. I thought it was interesting, as the doctor seems not to be anti-condom, but pro, making his comments all that more interesting and credible.