Give me a a way to imagine methods of resistance
Expiate- to talk at length
Largess- Generous Giving
2xy-4y=32 x>1 y=_
This is what I do all ____ing day: excercises in memorization and formal operations designed to be utterly divorced from any movement toward God, the Good, or anything other than the self-aggrandizing motives of isolated Americans (or want-to-be Americans). This is studying for the GRE, and its bull shit. No wonder our society is incapable of imagining any actually social project. We cannot get together for anything. We can’t even get together to murder people who aren’t white anymore, Americans have always believed in the death of the Other! What’s happening to us? The current aggressions in Iraq and Afghanistan are designed to be ignored by the average American.
In other words, its better that we don’t believe anything anymore, then we’re contollable. We’ll be too neurotic to give the government any trouble. We’ll be too worried about the market, the terrorist, the Mexican, the GRE! Human life becomes one neurotic episode not unlike the life of someone who is obsessed with masturbation.
In the recent election news there’s been a good deal of talk about the “American Dream.” I don’t know what that dream used to be but it’s plainly nothing but individuals gaining wealth today. This is precisely the end of any social project that can be socially understood as a social project. This notion of the American Dream says, “We as a society, are committed to functioning as individuals in competition with each other over an increasingly limited amount of rescources.” Or, if you like, “We as a society are committed to isolating ourselves such that we are oblivious to our status as a society” and thus hand over social control to people who no longer need to worry about the power of the people, there are no more people, there are just isolated, neurotic persons. Obama is not an exception here. His only concrete notions of a social good relavent to all Americans seems to be the securing of American “vital interests,” which is of course a very slippery slope.
But I gave up on America a while back, it’s time for churches to give their members reasons to live that can be translated into large social projects. We do this to some extent, but it has to get kicked up several notches. As someone in a Seminary, I think those training to go into ministry often understand their vocations as concerned with a larger social good (appropriately understood as an extension of their service to God). Churches must extend this perspective such that the average member (who may be a carpenter, a factory worker, a nurse, etc…) may come to understand their operation within society as movement toward the material realization of an improved society oriented toward God, moving people (and creation, in a different way) toward participation in the life of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. This is the only way toward social resistance against the capitalist global economia.
