Category: poverty

Forced corruption

Remember. The problem is not corruption or greed. The problem is the system. It forces you to be corrupt.

This line is a quote from Slavoj Zizek’s speech at Occupy Wall Street.  I will not try and wade into the larger conversation about this movement (see here for frequent updates).  I want simply to focus on this line.  For me this line is a stumbling block; and I believe stumbling block is precisely the correct term.  I continue to believe in autonomous morality.  I continue to believe that it is possible for each individual to make a morally valid decision in real life circumstances.  I believe this despite the fact that I know it is not true.  And so I come to a stumbling block, an offense.

I sat with this line as I visited a man from my neighbourhood.  Our church is not exactly a hot spot for those seeking material support though we get our share of traffic.  The process is almost always the same.  There is prefacing story which sets the person both in morally acceptable or pitiable conditions.  This often includes acknowledging some religious conviction, some desire to work, and some immediate pressing need.  I will then wait for the second half of the conversation in which the person will move inevitably towards his (almost exclusively a male) best shot at getting something out of the exchange.

And there I sit, Solomon on his throne, judging how best to suggest sawing his child in half to reveal true motivations.  I stand as the face and gate-keeper of what should be the symbol of consuming charity.  Now to be sure charity is not paternalism but why does paternalism exist in the context of giving charitably?  Still one must learn to be responsible, correct?  To the extent that responsiblity lies in the realm of economics I will continue to be corrupt in my engagement with those in need.  To the extent that responsbility is integrated into a relational fabric there may be a chance to level out life experiences.  Current capitalist economics demands a responsibility based on severed points of accountability.  It demands I take care of my house.  And this is where existentialism remains important in conversations about social systems.  One must ultimately be converted into a larger house; a house that still has rooms and boundaries but a house that also has a larger and expanding commons.  The church in North America, by and large, cannot offer a commons to those who seek it.  And until then I may be forced to remain corrupt.

The super and sub human

So if you are interested in pondering the absurd then have a look at what a local 54 year old grandfather just accomplished.  Just a few highlights;

1. Cycled 6,055 km in 13 days, nine hours and change.  This stands as the fastest coast-to-coast cycling across Canada.

2. Breaking this record included an injury part way through (which required a 15 hr break!).

3. His pace demanded cycling a minimum of 20 hours a day.

These facts do not compute in my brain.  Through the medium of long distance cycling Arvid has raised over 1.5 million dollars.  His charity of choice is an organization that works with street kids in Kenya.  So why I am about to transition to some critical comments related to this story?  First a couple of qualifications.  No criticism is intended towards Arvid.  The fact that he found an expression that allows him to generate this type of support for what I will assume is a great cause can only be commended.  I also assume that other perspectives than the following could be taken (such the need of extreme behaviour to draw attention to extreme situations),  I want, however, to take a step back and ask one question and make one observation.

Why can herculean feats raise this type of money?  Is there not something bizzare or even perverse about the need for someone to perform at super-human levels to draw funds for those living in sub-human conditions?  I will go out on an unsubstantiated limb and venture a guess in saying that the vast majority of Arvid’s support comes from the corporate sector in which donors can only ‘win’ from their association with Arvid.  Arvid becomes the super-hero logo on their chest which invigorates the public imagination.  While Arvid remains out of the average person’s reach the corporation gives the public access to this imagination by acquiring their brand while also associating the average person with helping ‘the poor’ (this is the power of the corporation not Arvid) on the other side of the world.  This leads to my observation;

The owners of Palliser Furniture in Winnipeg created some ‘incentive’ for Arvid saying that if he broke the record they would present him with a check for $50,000 at the finish line.  Now I will also venture a guess in saying that Palliser would have donated the money regardless.  However, the scenario again focuses on some implicit value in this herculean accomplishment.  The money is not worth donating directly to street kids in Kenya, that is, bringing the conditions of a group of people’s life up to a minimally acceptable level.  Or to put it another way, the money is not worth donating to someone who simply demonstrates the need and effectiveness of the situation and organization represented.  Instead the money is worth wagering on the possibility of achieving the never before achieved.  When given the choice between bringing others up to a minimum level on the one hand or extending our reach beyond the maximum the choice is clear (though we are supposed to believe that the two work together).

To again be clear.  I have nothing but respect for Arvid’s accomplishments.  To have inspiring figures in various fields and expressions is part of the beauty of human nature.  What I am drawing attention to is the structure around extreme expressions like Arvid’s.  The amount of global economic resources that could be available from the world’s most wealthy is staggering.  And yet it is the folks without such resources that are required to enter the super-human before investors find enough ‘value’ to throw their tax-deductible donations at so they can still receive a return on investment.

The corsair affair and yet another rejection of politics

Volume 13, The Corsair Affair, is a collection of texts (many of which not written by Kierkegaard) that helps readers to understand what came to be known by this volume title.  The Corsair was a satirical journal that took aim at any culturally relevant figure in Denmark.  While the journal was notable and feared for its lampoons Kierkegaard (or Victor Emerita) was first mentioned in praise for work Either/Or.  Kierkegaard (Emerita) responded publicly by asking how he could be so insulted as to be praised in The Corsair.  While there are many layers involved in understanding why this exchange escalated the way it did one aspect was the growing awareness of Kierkegaard as the author of his pseudonymous works.  Once Kierkegaard’s indirect method became engaged directly he was skewered mercilessly for his own personal appearance, affect and mannerisms.  It is said that the phrases ‘Soren’ or ‘Either/Or’ became pejorative terms hurled at him in the streets.  He was also consistently compared to a local known as ‘Crazy Nathanson’.

What interests me is the extent to which this escalation reflects Kierkegaard’s vehement guard against directness.  To what extent was The Corsair taunting him to see if he would show his cards and lose composure.  Kierkegaard it seems never lost his composure though he appears to have been hurt considerably in the process.  I admit that my reading of this volume was a little more superficial as I found the historical understanding more interesting than the texts themselves.  I did however pause over an extended comment by Kierkegaard rejecting any notion that he is interested in changing externals (politics).  It seems as though from the very beginning people were interested in leveraging a political theory out of him.  I thought it worth offering his comments almost in full.

In Ursin’s Arithmetic, which was used in my school days, a reward was offered to anyone who could find a miscalculation in the book.  I also promise a reward to anyone who can point out in these numerous books a single proposal for external change, or the slightest suggestion of such a proposal, or even anything that in the remotest way even for the most nearsighted person at the greatest distance could resemble an intimation of such a proposal or of a belief that the problem is lodged in externalities, that external change is what is needed, that external change is what will help us.

. . .

There is nothing about which I have greater misgivings than about all that even slightly tastes of this disastrous confusion of politics and Christianity, a confusion that can very easily bring about a new kind and mode of Church reformation, a reverse reformation that in the name of reformation puts something new and worse in place of something old and better, although it is still supposed to be an honest-to-goodness reformation, which is then celebrated by illuminating the entire city.

Christianity is inwardness, inward deepening.  If at a given time the forms under which one has to live are not the most perfect, if they can be improved, in God’s name do so.  But essentially Christianity is inwardness.  Just as man`s advantage over animals is to be able to live in any climate, so also Christianity’s perfection, simply because it is inwardness, is to be able to live, according to its vigor, under the most imperfect conditions and forms, if such be the case.  Politics is the external system, this Tantalus-like busyness about external change.

It is apparent from his latest work that Dr R. believes that Christianity and the Church are to be saved by ‘the free institutions.’ If this faith in the saving power of politically achieved free institutions belongs to true Christianity, then I am no Christian, or, even worse, I am a regular child of Satan, because, frankly, I am indeed suspicious of these politically achieved free institutions, especially of their saving, renewing power. . . . [I] have had nothing to do with ‘Church’ and ‘state’ – this is much too immense for me.  Altogether different prophets are needed for this, or, quite simply, this task ought to be entrusted to those who are regularly appointed and trained for such things.  I have not fought for the emancipation of ‘the Church’ an more than I have fought for the emancipation of Greenland commerce, or women, of the Jews, or of anyone else. (53-54)

Kierkegaard continues on in this letter to drive home with all clarity that external institutions and systems cannot essentially hinder or encourage Christian faith.  The question I have with respect to contemporary forms of ‘liberation theology and thought’ is whether this reading and presentation within Kierkegaard’s larger project can truly be said to move towards the liberation of the individual, that is, beyond political/economic (Greenland), gender (women), or religious (Jew) boundaries.

Whether or not Kierkegaard is being completely ironic he concedes space for those who can understand and interpret the larger social systems (different prophets).  I also think it is important that he encourages any who can improve on their surroundings to do so.  I say this is important not because it is a minor concession by Kierkegaard but because it is assumed.  If someone would try to critique him on this level he would likely ask how ignorant that person is in thinking that someone should not improve conditions around them only that something must transcend the quantitative value (and it still is value) that externals can play in life.

The mockery of careful planning

I have always been a little uneasy with Jesus’ parable of ‘planning’ (Luke 14:28-31).  Jesus asks whether the people would not plan ahead of time to make sure they had sufficient materials to complete a tower and sufficient soldiers for victory.  The ‘moral of story’ as I have received it is that of the wise stewardship of resources.  I could not quite put my finger on why this bugged me other than the fact that it seemed to propagate good, bland suburbanites.  I’m not sure why I didn’t see it but the two images obviously have strong connections to the Old Testament in the Tower of Babel and David’s census taking.  Both of these acts reflect careful planning.  They are also both sins.  Who has the materials to finish building a tower? The answer is no one,  because a tower is never finished.  Who has the man-power to win a war? The answer is no one, because a war is never over.

The parable drives this home in a way that should have made it clear.  The parable  is book-ended first by the command that one cannot follow if they do not first hate their family. And at the end of the parable Jesus offers a re-articulation that states that you cannot become a disciple if you do not give up all your possessions (i.e. ending the production of tower-building and war-making).  The internal space of these commands is the mockery of ‘careful planning’.

A Faithful Life?

I notice a tension between a substantive conception or articulation of a faithful life on the one hand and its entirely contextual and unexpressable nature on the other.  The notion of the substantial reality of faith is most often employed as a negative presence.  This is why my life is not faithful.  The most common refrain being that I live in the midst of and am embedded in powers and principalities that benefit the few at the cost of the many.  In Yoderian language I cannot say that I live independently of these powers.  Therefore my life is not faithful. But I can look to the ungraspable notion of grace and hope in apocalyptic action (of which I seek and participate).  So maybe my life is not faithful but God is faithful.  I am internally in contradiction.  I live in tension.  I would argue, though, that this tension is not a creative dialectic but a binding and entangling cord.  It is only a negativity.  Perhaps a negativity that will serve a purpose or has a place but it is a negativity nonetheless.

I think of a family I know.  She works and receives an increasingly rare middle-class salary.  They have bought a modest house in a ‘bad’ but developing neighbourhood.  He suffers from mental illness and requires stability but is still unable to work.  They have a young girl who he cares for.  This is not a dramatic home (well I cannot attest for everything that goes on there) but also not an easy life.  They discuss and strive for faithful choices in daily life.  I would characterize this house as faithful in the sense that Jean Vanier speaks of when he refers to enough stability for healing and growth and enough chaos and uncertainty to keep life open.

My life is not much different.  But I struggle some days even to conceive of their life as faithful never mind my own.  Negativity can always appeal to a lower (or higher) denominator.  This is binding, indebting and imprisoning.  It is not Gospel.  But I don’t know another way forward.  Is this process I am in necessary . . . is it helpful?  What would freedom mean?  Can I enact that freedom (who will rescue me from this body of death . . . )

Am I stuck in morality?  Do I need to move beyond good and evil as they say?  There is not enough nuance in the world to account for its complexity, at least in terms of possibility.  Who then is the righteous fool?  Who is the faithful one?

The Gospel According to Adam Kotsko; And a Kotskotian Conspiracy

I recently checked the price of Adam Kotsko’s recent book The Politics of Redemption and fortunately it came up with “Look Inside” feature.  I came across a content and tone of writing that may not regularly surface over at AUFS (note well that I am saying nothing of how the two forms relate . . . yet).

Christ restores connections that have been cut off, yet he doesn’t repeat the logic of possession by trying to control those he encounters.  He forgives sins, but is remarkably reticent about how the forgiven should behave in the future, reflecting how often “sin” functions as a stigma rather than a good-faith moral assessment.  He is chastised for his self-indulgence, and in his interactions with others, he very often seems to playing with them.  His persuasiveness is therefore based not on rational argument, but first of all on his general way of being in the world – his simply willingness to be with people whom others shun or simply ignore, his evident enjoyment of them.  His way of being does not end just with him, but spreads to others as a kind of “contagious sovereignty,” an empowerment that is predicated on empowering others rather than dominating them.  Several of those he empowers are sent immediately to continue the work among their own people, implying that no implicit instruction is needed.  His actual public teaching fits within this general pattern, mobilizing surprise in order to invite his readers to come to their own conclusions, a technique that is perhaps also motivated by the sheer pleasure that accompanies an unexpected narrative or discursive twist.  Perhaps the clearest indication of Christ’s approach is the feeding of the multitude, where simple generosity and sharing result in a wholly unanticipated abundance.

Pages started breaking up too far apart to continue reading with any coherence after this quote.

Two things struck me.  First this could have been plucked almost directly out of some of Jean Vanier’s works (especially content related to fear that surrounds this quote).  Secondly this quote led me to a conspiracy theory.  The Adam Kotsko of AUFS is a kierkegaardian pseudonym of the same name (to further nuance the matter) introducing an aesthetic form to the clear the way for his later moral and dogmatic expressions.  It all makes sense now!

The Good Neighbourhood

My wife and I recently purchased our first home.  The house is located in a neighbourhood of Winnipeg in which I have spent the vast majority of my adult Manitoba life.  Moving back from Ontario it was like coming back home.  I am referring to the Spence Neighbourhood in the West End of Winnipeg.  I have lived on Spence St, Young St and I now reside on Langside.  What is clear to me is that everyone, everyone from Winnipeg somehow knows this is a ‘bad’ neighbourhood.  This is so implicitly ingrained in my psyche that when I tell people where our house was I began to rationalize or justify or downplay our decision.  The truth is that I am not sure I can think of a more desirable neighbourhood to live in (maybe the Exchange District).  I love it here.  So I have decided to stop making any additional commentary when I tell people where our house is located.

What I have noticed (after the pause in conversation when I tell them) is that people are now filling in the justification for me or making explicit the public perception (One person actually asked, Isn’t that a scary neighbourhood?).  What is going on here?  Are people actually concerned about my safety?  Maybe.  Do people have a clue what this neighbourhood is actually like?  Probably not.  I would like to propose that maybe part of the need to react to my choosing and (of all things) embracing this neighbourhood is that it subtly questions dominant cultural motivations for home owning . . . namely fear.  In as much as people choose homes out of desires and preferences for this-that-and-the-other I found that house hunting played as much on my fears as anything else.  Will this place retain its value?  Is this a safe neighbourhood?  How will our house and neighbourhood reflect how people view us? These can quickly become dominant motivations as cities have driven for decades now away from the depraved city centres to faux Edens with green lawns, no sidewalks and high fences.

I recognize that our house purchase does not give me any moral high-ground in this larger conversation but our decision has exposed something in myself and seemingly in others.  Our decisions are caught up in a larger system in which we are all participants.  We affirm each other in our decision in live in a ‘good’ neighbourhood.  What defines a good neighbourhood?  I would venture the definition of a good neighbourhood as one in which I do not need to think about anything outside my immediate concerns.  A ‘bad’ neighbourhood then in is one in which outside concerns run in conflict to my own pattern of living.  Living in a ‘bad’ neighbourhood then becomes a call in itself to question our existing pattern of living.  It demands that I make explicit and conscious choices about the things that our world and society are being confronted with and how I am responding to them.  A good neighbourhood then is the capitalist dream.  It caters to my choice and provides the goods and services that will maintain my flow of interests and desires without obstruction.  So what is it again that is good about a good neighbourhood?

Peter Blum on Im/possibility and the Church’s Syntactical Relationship with the Poor

The Gift of Difference hit the ground running with Peter C. Blum’s chapter, “Two Cheers for an Ontology of Violence: Reflections on Im/possibility.” The chapter reflects on the strange possibility that Derrida’s ontology of violence and the impossibility of nonviolence may actually offer more resources for peace than Milbank’s ontology of peace which (as almost all contributors to this work identify) actually justifies and ultimately requires violence.  Derrida reduces the impossibility of nonviolence to an assertion that existence in the form of expression will always be an expression of reducing “the Other to the same” (11).  Blum quotes Derrida, “nonviolent language would be a language which would do without the verb to be, that is, with predication.  Predication is the first violence” (12).  Impossibility for Derrida though is not the end but it is where “things get interesting” (15).  Blum raises a case of the Nickle Mines shooting as a case of the madness and impossibility of forgiveness.  Blum is not concerned with whether or not the Amish response escapes violence but the manner in which it forces us to face the impossibility of nonviolence, its madness.

I don’t think I will offer substantive responses to each chapter (though many deserve further reflection).  What this chapter raised was a sort of tangential offshoot in relation to the Kingdom-Church-World Theses over at Halden’s blog.  What I found confusing there was Thesis #11.  The language was muddled especially the church’s syntactical relationship to ‘the poor’.  In this short thesis there are three prepositions used to relate the church to the poor.

Thesis 11: Such kenotic, cruciform solidarity in obedience to the way of the cross leaves no room for the church to be anything other than the “church of the poor.” The church’s kenotic solidarity with the world thus occurs as solidarity with the poor. As Jon Sobrino reminds us, “The mystery of the poor is prior to the ecclesial mission, and that mission is logically prior to an established church” (Sobrino, No Salvation Outside the Poor, 21). Or as Moltmann puts it, “It is not the Church that ‘has’ a mission, but the reverse; Christ’s mission creates itself a Church. The mission should not be understood from the perspective of the Church, but the other way round.”(Moltmann, Church in the Power of the Spirit, 10). With the Catholic bishops at Medellin, the church must reaffirm and exercise the “preferential option for the poor.” This “preferential option” is not simply one of many tasks of the church—it lies at the center and heart of its mission. In fact, it is its mission, because this is Christ’s mission.

To me this clearly indicates the ongoing struggle of the western/affluent church to integrate something it still does not quite understand.  Are we the poor?  Are we with the poor?  Are we for the poor?  Given Blum’s reflection on impossibility I would like to suggest that the church is called to announce and embody the impossibility of wealth.  This was the revelation to the church of Laodicea.  You say, “I am rich.”  But you do not realize that you are poor (Rev 3:17).  There is no such thing as human wealth.  This is our great illusion.  This is found throughout the prophetic tradition of the Old Testament.  The wealth streams to the Temple of God.  It is only there that is has any worth.  We must not be for or with the poor or even attempt to become the poor.  We must rather unveil our poverty in thought, word, deed.  The impossibility of wealth then can be taken up in the gift of God (Come buy food without cost . . . ).  This most certainly does not leave material poverty off the agenda as the unveiling of poverty releases us from the mechanics that the illusion of wealth demand from us.  For me this also helps release the church from a bind that previous theologies tend to place on practice namely what we hope for the poor.  Do we want the poor to be wealthy?  Why would we assume that they would turn out to be anything other than what the wealthy already are?  We must not eradicate poverty as such but eradicate the illusion of wealth that creates security systems that alienate one from another.  It is this alienation more than material poverty itself that must be overcome.  This erases the need to join syntactically with the poor and creates only the conditions for God’s gift.

Alas, many think that the eternal is a construction of the imagination, money the reality – in the understanding of the eternal and of truth it is precisely money which is a construction of the imagination! – Soren Kierkegaard in Works of Love.