"In 1927, the Jamaican-born Black Nationalist Marcus Garvey had prophesied, “Look to Africa, for there a black king shall be crowned.” Three years later, on November 2nd 1930, Ras Tafari Makonnen took on the title Haile Selassie, “Implement of the Trinity,” in a lavish coronation ceremony designed to convince the world of Ethiopia’s civility, high style, and large portions. As the New York Times headline ran, “5,000 Cattle Slaughtered for Feast of 25,000 on Raw Meat and Wine—Americans at Ceremony.” Not just Americans—the BBC, National Geographic, and radio and film crews from across the globe had converged on Addis Ababa. During the gilded pageant, Tafari Makonnen became not only His Imperial Majesty but also Elect of God and head of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, an unspoken declaration of his inviolability, the divine right of kings.
A few years later, Haile Selassie had been recognized as “the Messiah returned to earth” by Leonard Percival Howell and other apostles who founded a religion in Jamaica literally in his name. Garvey was declared His John the Baptist. In 1966, when Haile Selassie made his first state visit to the island, an estimated 100,000 Rastafarians awaited him at Palisadoes Airport in a cloud of sanctified smoke. His landing would ever after be known as Grounation Day, the second holiest day after the Coronation.
For his part, Haile Selassie rejected his deification. He claimed to be greatly distressed at being worshipped as Jah, and sent a missionary to Kingston in 1970 to establish the Ethiopian Church in Jamaica, confiding to him, “My heart is broken because of the situation of these people. Help them find the True God. Teach them.” And yet one might argue that Haile Selassie’s involuntary deification represents a perfectly appropriate response to the spectacles that he himself created. All the state banquets, motorcades, and photo ops—the pageantry of power celebrating itself—aims to instill reverence for authority and submission among its subjects. As the 3rd century theologian Origen wrote, in his commentary on the Song of Songs, “It should be known that it is impossible for human nature not always to love something.” It should also be known that it is impossible for human nature not to love too much...."
The story gets quite a bit more odd below, where the author recounts the tale of a society of islanders whom worship the United States of America as "The God of Freedom", and another group which apparently worships Britain's Prince Philip.
"...If men never disagreed about the ends of life, if our ancestors had remained undisturbed in the Garden of Eden, the studies to which the Chichele Chair of Social and Political Theory is dedicated could scarcely have been conceived,” Isaiah Berlin told his audience at Oxford when he assumed that position in 1958. Philosophy was at its best when it was being contentious, especially when it was being contentious about the meaning and purpose of our common existence. Too much agreement was an abdication of its ethical responsibility:
Where ends are agreed, the only questions left are those of means, and these are not political, but technical, that is to say, capable of being settled by experts or machines like arguments between engineers or doctors. That is why those who put their faith in some immense, world-transforming phenomenon, like the final triumph of reason or the proletarian revolution, must believe that all political and moral problems can thereby be turned into technological ones. This is the meaning of Saint-Simon’s famous phrase about ‘replacing the government of persons by the administration of things’, and the Marxist prophecies about the withering away of the state and the beginning of the true history of humanity. This outlook is called utopian by those for whom speculation about this condition of perfect social harmony is the play of idle fancy. Nevertheless, a visitor from Mars to any British—or American—university today might perhaps be forgiven if he sustained the impression that its members lived in something very like this innocent and idyllic state, for all the serious attention that is paid to fundamental problems of politics by professional philosophers.
The task of philosophy was not to settle disputes, but to unsettle them, to encourage them, to keep them going. For it was only through disputation that we could resist the rule of experts and machines, the bureaucratic-technocratic society foretold by Saint-Simon and championed by Marx and Engels, a society in which we replace the “government of persons by the administration of things..."
"Irving Fisher ’88, ’91PhD, a dapper, balding figure, with a white van dyke beard and rimless eyeglasses, was one of America’s best-known scholars. The New York Times ran long, flattering profiles about his work, and for years the Wall Street Journal published “Fisher’s Weekly Index,” for tracking market prices. The rich and powerful, including congressmen and presidents, sought his advice.
And with good reason: even today, Fisher is widely regarded as the greatest economist America has produced. He devised many of the basic concepts for analyzing the modern financial system and explained them so clearly that, at his death in 1947, the Harvard economics faculty en masse would sign a letter saying, “No American has contributed more to the advancement of his chosen subject.”
But Fisher was also a leading voice of the eugenics movement, which aimed to improve human populations through carefully controlled breeding. The aim, more precisely, was to build up the white northern European population, and discourage all others. This agenda, as it found its way into state laws, would mean evicting other Americans from their homes, depriving them of the ability to have children, and locking them away in institutions..."
A concise history of the eugenics movement in the Anglo-American world, with particular focus on the United States (naturally). Especially bizarre were the eugenics competitions at state fairs...
"Apple has gone into detail about how it sources energy for its data centers, explaining its plans to reach 100 percent renewable energy for all of its data centers by 2013. The company is adding an additional large solar panel farm in North Carolina, sourcing hydro power for its upcoming center in Oregon, and transitioning its existing data center in California to renewable sources. Apple is planning to power much of its other operations with renewable energy as well...
Apple has already confirmed that a 20MW solar array and a 5MW fuel cell array are being built adjacent to its Maiden, North Carolina data center. The company is also planning an additional 20MW solar array just a few miles away. Each solar panel array is capable of generating 42 million kWh of clean energy annually. The fuel cells, which run on waste methane generated by a nearby landfill, will produce another 40 million kWh..."
After finishing, I wandered eastwards. While passing the buildings and businesses by, I contemplated wandering through there again, later in the summer, to look for apartments. Arriving at the corner of Preston, I turned south, completely upsetting a prior plan to walk through Chinatown. Instead, I wandered through Little Italy, and kept one eye open for those cafés which Eve insisted were there, but eventually arrived at Dow's Lake and found myself no more greatly enlightened than when I'd started. And so, I wandered on aimlessly, enjoying the smell water, the gardens of wilting tulips, and the overhang of willow-trees. I mused on the fact that Hintonberg and Little Italy had more history than any other area of Ottawa in which I'd spent any time. Perhaps I should say they possessed more history, and lived it more. Other areas had history for sale, and placed on display in fine relief for idle gawking, but no one would ever take it home and live with it.
Along the way, I contemplated both the phenomena of guilt, shame, embarrassment, and pollution a bit more, and the differences between Strauss, Voegelin, and Polanyi on the issue of scientism. I've no doubt that Voegelin and Polanyi had a much deeper understanding of scientism than Strauss, who did not perceive that "modern, value-free science" was not simply destructive of the humanities, but entirely destructive of science. Strauss, I think, did not perceive that scientism or "modern science", being ultimately an art of control and manipulation, was not merely a danger to human flourishing when extended to politics. It was wrong simply: that is to say that it is an entirely mistaken (not to say deranged) pseudo-faith or ideology, which can never possibly attain what it strives for. It can, however, do untold damage to scientific culture, human life, and to the political landscape in its doomed flailings for utopia, as have many another ideology in their wakes.
Therefor, we began our orders when next our waitress showed up, J.J. ordered some horrible "smoked" German beer which smelt of ham, with F.S. following suit (I congratulated Josh on ordering what had to be the most anti-Semetic beer on the menu; a German beer made with ham...), A. had some sort of Belgian, 10% abbey-beer which she and F. were familiar with, S. had a coke, G. something in a green can, and I ordered a dry Japanese beer to go along with dinner. For dinner, F&A both had mussels, I ordered the penne with mediterranean sauce. I can't recall what the others ordered, asides from the fact that Gord's had Italian sausage, and that there was a brief allergy scare on S's side of the table, when it looked as if an olive had snuck into her fetuccine.
J. showed up right after we ordered.... and promptly got lost. Though we were seated in the middle isle, right at the door, she turned the wrong corner and disappeared. We kept along for a few minutes, conversing and the like. A. and I talked about their upcoming move to T.O. and her push for a reassignment (and, possible promotion) to a local T.D. branch. We talked about G's successful completion of his MRP, and F's progress on his thesis... and J. didn't reappear. And so, with a bit of a sigh, I went a-hunting for her, 'round the corner, past the bar (didn't set herself up there), down the back, towards the washrooms... and there she was, coming back in from the side terrasse, presumably.
So, guiding her back to our seats, we got on with the occasion, with J. ordering herself a pint of ale, N.M. joining us a short time later, and all of us (particularly J, whom I'll guess hadn't eaten enough) enjoying the free bread in the meantime. The food came while most of the jolly gang were out smoking, with only G, S, and I left at the table. Eventually, I went-out on another fetching expedition.
More talking, more eating. G. and F. got into a lively discussion regarding something or other, to such an extent that G. was following F. out front to join the smokers on their little breaks. A. and I talked a while about anime, S. and I talked about series like The Tudors. N. and S. bonded over the latter's past in theatre, and there were a lot of questions for N. from various quarters on his thesis on Gorgias -- the sophist, not the Platonic dialogue. He'd really been taking the chainsaw to it, it seems, and both he and F. had been undertaking some severe editing upon it (N. had stayed with F&A for a couple of weeks when he first returned to Ottawa, before moving back into his old apartment. He mused that he probably gained a few pounds during his stay, which I wouldn't doubt).
There was a lot of other conversation, of course, which I'll likely have to fill in as I recall it. J. and I spoke a bit, though I can't remember much of what; from across the table, she did query me on her mistaken impression that Professors Poirier and Darby had travelled together in Greece, which I cleared up (never happened). What I do recall is F&A secretly arranging to treat me to an expensive glass of 20-year scotch (very smooth, positively ethereal), and also the surprise and mild chagrin of one piece of chocolate-moose birthday-cake, complete with sparkler, and a rousing, half-drunken chorus of "Happy Birthday". I also recall that J's next round, after J.J. left, was served in enormous glass chalice; we joked that if it came down to a bar-fight at the end of the night, it would come down to her leading the way, clubbing on-comers down with her weighty crystal pint-glass.
At any rate, we ended up leaving at just past midnight. I left our waitress a large tip; she was quite good to us, and was working on her birthday, no less. G&S offered to give me a ride, while F&A offered lifts to J. and J.J, and they all said their goodbyes and congratulations to me, excepting J. 'Can't say for certain what that was about, but I suspect that she was a bit too past her limit, being tired and a bit drunk, to handle anymore personal contact, though it did bother me for a couple of days. On the drive south, G, S, and I talked about Summer plans: they intend to spend a month in Europe, as S. has conferences in Vienna and someplace else, and I mentioned the Stratford Shakespeare Festival.
When G. pulled the car into the access to my townhouse complex on D'Aoust, we said our goodbyes. And, I must admit, walking the few, pine-cannopied metres to my front-door, I briefly had a half-frown on my face, wondering why J. had walked away without a goodbye, and if A. had said anything to her while they were left alone, outside, finishing their cigarettes while we the rest went in for our dinners.
Edit: Ah yes, some bits and pieces came back to me at random, while on the bus, the train, at the office, etcetera.
J. and F, for instance, got into a heated debate over orthopraxy vs. orthodoxy. F. was maintaining, on behalf of Prof. Emberley I believe, that orthopraxy tends to be more stable, and potentially a more robust entry-point to the transcendent. J. maintained differently. Both G. and S. teased me for the fact that I was sitting silently and analyzing the both of their arguments.
There was also some sports conversation, and my joke about the Scots inventing dodgeball (who else would invent a sport, wherein the intent is to hit, repeatedly, your friend in the face with a ball as hard as one possibly can?). J. and G, in particular, were rolling from that one. The overplayed accent might have played a part.
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