The Audio Stylings of Chris Levens
"I'm a Gangster"

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The Good Old Days

Ever hear people talk about the moral decay in our modern society?
Ever hear people talk about the way the Church has lost its way?

Pictures like this remind me that the Good Old Days wern't all that good.


 8:16 PM   •  2 satisfied customers!!  

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Christians & Blackwater

Ya'll know about Blackwater, right? They are one of the many Mercenary groups Neo-Cons employ as they try to privatize the military.

I was watching this video, don't ask me why, about this automatic shotgun Blackwater developed.



I don't know about you, but people who are in love with the military and guns freak me out a bit. Anyway, as I was watching this I was struck once again with the weird romance between Conservative Christianity and Warfare.

The Blackwater company has ties to Conservative Christian groups. Its founder, Eric Prince, was an intern for G.H.W. Bush, but didn't like him because he was too liberal. Prince's father co-founded the Family Research Council with James Dobson. Eric is a big doner to the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, Calvin College, and Christian Freedom International.

The association of E. Prince with the Conservative Christian cause leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Prince seems to be a modern Christian warlord. The development and legitimization of private military groups with advanced weaponry and permission to act outside of any law (if you follow the scandals about Blackwater, you know what I'm talking about) is terrifying. Private military contractors are stateless armies -- isn't that what makes terrorists bad? -- that can kill with alarming efficiency, and they do it while making a profit. And a portion of that profit, praise the Lord, funds conservative Christian causes.

Is it just me, or is there something very twisted about all this? Who are these people that love Jesus and love shooting guns at people? They remind me of a friend of mine, a Baptist, very conservative both theologically and politically, who wanted to join the army after 9/11 so that, as he said, "I can spread the word before I spread some lead." He was talking about going to Iraq where they need both the Gospel and more bullets flying around.

You shall know them by their fruits -- a condemnation of mainstream conservative Christianity? Not sure how to answer that, but Jesus's words haunt me every time I smell this crap.
 11:10 AM   •  3 satisfied customers!!  

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On Being Popular

You've heard me talk about Edward Said before. You've heard me talk about Antonio Gramsci before. But I don't think you've heard me talk about Raymond Williams before. I've been reading a litte more Williams lately and I thought it was about time I gave him props.

"On Being Popular, huh?" -- just give me a second, I'll get there.

Those three guys, (Said, Gramsci and Williams) have probably had the largest influence upon my theoretical opinions as of late. What I like about these guys is they are able to steer clear of the deterministic forms of dialectical materialism, yet they perform vigorous and exciting materialist readings of cultural products.

"deterministic dialectical materialism?" -- yeah, I know, what's with the jargon. I'd both to clarify, but that would distract me from touching on the popular stuff, so forgive the theoretical shorthand.

And so, one thing that I dig about Williams is his perspective toward people. The progressive solutions he offers are always grounded in mass solidarity. Williams, as well as Said and Gramsci (in their own way), emphasizes the need for people to recognize their common interests. To achieve this, counter hegemonical art must be popular art -- it must somehow enable alienated individuals (individuals who have been taught by the market to think and act as an individualist) to see what they already share -- to see those things they share that have somehow been hiding from them.

One thing I like about this is its view of art: it is populist, not elitist; art is not refined, not understood only by the trained, but art is common, and offers something for everyone; counter hegemonical art is oppositional to systems of domination and cherishes the inseparability of goodness and beauty.

Now, don't confuse what I'm saying with something Said, Gramsci or Williams say in their books. If you think I'm misreading them, that's fine -- maybe I am. But what their writings do to me is increase my appreciation for pop-art's counter hegemonical function -- that good art does not create loners, rebels, anti-socials, individualists, but good art is popular, increasing connections of co-operation between people everywhere.
 11:41 PM   •  7 satisfied customers!!  

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Hoods

I'd like to offer a little interpretation about the use of hoods on terrorist suspects, but first, a little context is needed.

Back in 1963, the CIA produced an interrogation manual called KUBARK. This manual, which is pretty diabolic, suggests that cutting off as much sensory stimulation as possible is one way to break a detainee. To quote one section, "The chief effect of arrest and detention, and particularly of solitary confinement, is to deprive the subject of many or most of the sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and tactile sensations to which he has grown accustomed."

This explains why terrorist suspects are hooded, bound and imprisoned, like in this picture from GitMo.



According to the manual, severe psychological damage is created by sensory deprivation. It states, "The symptoms most commonly produced by isolation are superstition, intense love of any other living thing, perceiving inanimate objects as alive, hallucinations, and delusions."

Besides sensory deprivation and psychological damage to suspects, there is another benefit hoods provide for the interrogation process: they enable the interrogator to treat the detainee like an animal. Hoods hide an important part of the humanity of the detainee. Without seeing the suspects face, an interrogator can behave like a barbarian or a Nazi without the pangs of conscience that a human face might elicit. A hooded terrorist suspect makes it easier to molest and brutalize them.



In the power structure of world domination, it is essential that atrocities committed are done so at a distance. At the top are those who give the command, who never see children's' heads split open. Below the commanders are those who execute the command -- for these, they are more likely to see old ladies with full body burns. Such visions of the fruit of one's labor are likely to make an individual question the morality of their actions. To prevent this, it is important to erect blinders to their own brutality. One way of doing this is by placing them in airplanes high above a town -- all they see are blips on screens -- they press buttons -- bombs drop but they don't see the inhabited apartment complex they hit. Remote controlled fighters are the next step. Hoods also fit into this process -- they are a barrier between the human interrogator and their faceless, sub-human detainee. In order to maintain a fighting force of Stormtroopers, the powers that be must make sure those who do the brutalizing don't question the morality of what they are doing.
 9:54 AM   •   like your cut?  

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Providential Reading

Sometimes, I encounter, in one day, two things that might be called companion experiences. They might be called that, but I would never use such a lame designation.

On Thursday, I read this article in the LA Times about a San Diego evangelical minister who is trying to rally 1,000 California pastors to influence their congregations to pass a state constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage.

Then, as I was finishing up the Adorno book I mentioned last post, I came across an interesting companion to the LA Times article: "Christianity, idealism, and materialism, which in themselves contain truth, are therefore also responsible for the barbaric acts perpetuated in their name. As representatives of power -- even if of power for good -- they themselves became historical forces which could be organized, and as such played a bloody role in the true history of the human race: that of the instruments of organization."

Christianity has been and is being used as an instrument of organization, and it bears the responsibility for the acts committed in its name.
 12:53 AM   •  1 satisfied customer!  

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Frankfurters

To balance out the Right-Wing Wacko stuff I've been reading, I picked up (again) Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment. Horkheimer and Adorno were part of the Frankfurt school of thought, which was an influential mid-century Western Marxists group.

I'll spare you the details about the book -- except for a few interesting observations. They were writing during the Second World War, and much of their book examines the causal link between Enlightenment rationality, Free-Market capitalism and the rise of Fascism. While talking about the Nazis, they make interesting points about the nature of Fascism that really hit home 60 odd years later. Here are a couple quotes that seem a little too similar to contemporary Right-Wing ideology:

"Hitler demands justification for mass murder in the name of the legal principle of sovereign national rights, which tolerates any act of violence in another country."
Sound like the way we justify our aggressive military actions?

"Fascism replaced involved legal procedures by an accelerated form of judgement and retribution."
Sound like the way we treat suspected terrorists?

"Everyone is either a friend or an enemy: there are no half measures."
Sound like Bush's Messianic declaration, "You are either with us or against us?"

"The mechanism which the totalitarian order uses is as old as civilization. The blind murderer has always seen his victim as a persecutor against whom he must defend himself, and the strongest and wealthiest individuals have always felt their weakest neighbors to be an intolerable threat before they fell upon to destroy them."
Again, sounds like the way we justify mass murder -- we call it "defence" similar to the way the Nazis called their aggression "defence."

"The established group always adopts a paranoiac attitude to others. The great empires and even organized humanity as such are not more advanced than headhunters in this respect."
Illegal immigrants? Homos? Arabs? New Agers? Terrorists?

"They must be exterminated to secure happiness for the world."
And of course, we are waging a world wide war on terror to exterminate the "dangerous people" to make the world a safe place for happiness to dwell.

If you made it through all the quotes, let me know what you think. Did the Frankfurters recognize something in 1940s Fascism that is still alive today in Right-Wing ideology?
 9:06 AM   •  3 satisfied customers!!  

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Mind Over Matter

Let's talk about how thoughts can construct reality.

Before I begin, just forget about any sort of Idealism. That stuff will just muddle the waters and make you think I'm saying something I'm not.

I will use two examples to explain how thoughts can construct reality, and then I will follow them up with a little generalization.

Example #1: Micro: Let's say you are sitting in a mall eating a big cinnamon pretzel. You notice a teenager girl look in your direction and then laugh with her friend. They may have not even noticed you, but for some reason you assume they are laughing about you. It makes you a bit self-conscious, a bit worried that something is wrong with the way you look. Is there cinnamon powder all over your face? It makes you agitated. You jump up to look for a reflective surface to see if there is anything wrong with the way you look. Staring at yourself in a window, you can't see anything, so you spin around and look at the people walking by to see if they are looking at you weird. The more you spin and peer at the passers-by, the more you realize that they are looking at you weird. Does everyone think you look weird? You start searching each face that comes by. The more you look, the more attention you draw from everyone around. Next thing you know, the mall security is escorting you out of the mall and searching you for drugs.

Just for the record, this is not autobiography. Instead, it is an example of how the thought that everyone is looking at you weird can actually create the reality that everyone is looking at you weird. It is almost like a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Example #2: Macro: The Classical tradition believes that only war can bring peace. Here are some quotes: Aristotle, "We make war so that we may live in peace;" Publilius Syrus, "The cruelty of war makes for peace;" "We should provide in peace what we need in war;" "He is best secure from dangers who is on his guard even when he seems safe;" Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus, "Let him who desires peace prepare for war;" Athenogoras of Syracuse, "If a man does not strike first, he will be the first struck;" Tacitus, "A bad peace is even worse than war;" "Arms keep peace" - Latin proverb.

OK, so there is a little synopsis of the Classical tradition on the relation of peace and war. Now, if a group of people were to believe this tradition, then their beliefs would construct reality in such a way that the real world reflects these beliefs. If two countries believe that they must strike first or they will be struck; if they believe that in order to have peace they need to destroy their enemies, and that no peace is possible without war, then in their world these things will be true. These countries or cultures will constantly prepare for war, and will distrust any peace that is not the result of conquest. The result will be that no peace will be maintained among those countries. Their beliefs about war and peace will construct the world around them like a self-fulfilling prophesy.

In summery, I'd just like to make sure no one misunderstands me. I'm not saying that all reality is Idea. Nor am I saying that we can shape events just by thinking about events. What I am saying is that thoughts can sometimes construct the world around us. "Sometimes" is the key word. If I think you don't like me, I'm going to act toward you in such a way that you probably won't like me -- self-fulfilling prophsy again. But it could also happen that you do something that shows me you do like me, and then my thougths about you will change, and so will my actions. If as a culture we believe we must shed blood to achieve peace, then peace for us will never be possible without war. Our belief about war and peace will actually make it impossible for peace to be achieved without war.
 3:44 PM   •  9 satisfied customers!!