From: b645zaw@utarlg.uta.edu (General Boycott)
Subject: -= Non-Institutional Community =- (re: Death of America)
Summary: See Jacques Ellul, Interpretive Essays, Univ Ill Press '81
News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.41    
Keywords: Hope as passion, not concept
Organization: The University of Texas at Arlington
Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1992 03:50:00 GMT

In article <1992Dec12.230628.8635@panix.com>, 
gcf@panix.com (Gordon Fitch) writes...  

>Poetry in opposition can be very effective: 
>"From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs," 
>is one example.

"Effective," interesting choice of wording. Jacques Ellul would assert
this to be the watchword of the totalitarian state, Gordon. Let's see
if I can make this more worth your while. I'll touch on Carse again in
passing...

Jay M. Van Hook
"The Politics of Man, The Politics of God, and The Politics of Freedom."

	Ellul sees modern society as characterized increasingly
	by "technique," which he defines as "the totality of
	methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency
	in every field of human activity." Technique, in this view,
	is not simply technology; it is the mind-set of an age
	wholly preoccupied with means and efficiency. We are
	beyond the point, he thinks, where the end justifies
	the means; in a technical society "the means justifies
	itself." ...
	
	For Ellul, the modern conjunction of technique with the
	state creates the totalitarian society -- totalitarian
	in that it attempts to absorb the citizen's life com-
	pletely.... The technical society he envisages

	   will not be a universal concentration camp, for
	   it will be guilty of no atrocity. It will not
	   seem insane, for everything will be ordered,
	   and the stains of human passion will be lost
	   amid the chromium gleam. We shall have nothing
	   to lose, and nothing to win. Our deepest 
	   instincts and our most secret passions will
	   be analyzed, published, and exploited. We 
	   shall be rewarded with everything our hearts
	   ever desired. And the supreme luxury of the
	   society of technical necessity will be to 
	   grant the bonus of useless revolt and of
	   an acquiescent smile.  [JE: Tech. Society p.247]

The socialist-totalitarian path will assert that when properly ordered
most of society need not work, only perhaps 20 percent. And of course,
the state will co-opt the poietai, just as happened with Hitler; in this
I agree with Carse. Ellul would likely assert that poetry so used is
propaganda, and that... 

	(as per Michael Real in,
	"Mass Communications and Propaganda in Technical Societies:")

	...mass education and the leadership of intellectuals
	do not prevent propaganda but in fact coincide with
	its spread. Americans have been commonly instructed
	since the 1930's that education and intellectual 
	analysis detect propaganda and immunize the citizenry
	against it. Instead, Ellul sees education as a neces-
	sary precondition for propaganda and the intellectual
	as the most propagandized member of society because
	of his access to overwhelming amounts of information,
	his need to have an opinion on every subject, and the
	conviction "of his own superiority." [JE: Propaganda p.111]

But Carse is not so much a proponent of poetry as of play, and
specifically non-competative play. Not unlike Ellul ala "Between
Chaos and Paralysis:"

	When I speak of the individual as a source of hope
	I mean the individual who does not lend himself to 
	society's game, who disputes what we accept as self-
	evident...who questions even the movement of society
	....This radical subjectivity will inform also the
	three human passions which seem to be the essential
	ones -- the passion to create, to love, to play. But
	these mighty drives of the human heart must find a
	particular expression in each person. It is in build-
	ing of a new daily life, in the discovery of things,
	acts, situations utterly different from those that
	society would fasten on us, that this subjectivity
	can express itself... I am convinced that Christians
	are absolutely the only ones who can attempt it --
	but here on the condition that they start from zero.
	
	Kierkegaard, it seems to me, alone can show us how
	to start...If we are to question our society in so
	radical a fashion, we must adopt a point of view
	essentially different from that of society's -- one
	that we cannot arrive at by starting from our human 
	wisdom. 

And thus the stage is set for Christian Anarchy. A non-partisan,
non-denominational, non-institutional community of spirit, where
truly it can be said that GOD alone is sovereign. 

I part with Ellul, and Vernard Eller, on the assertion that such
a community need be Christian only. Looking to Martin Buber it
is apparent that the longing for the spiritual community burns
deeply in the Remnant of Israel. Certainly the same is true in 
Islam. Humankind may not be able to achieve this without GOD's
help, but the common core of our faith tells us that it is HIS
will on which we should rely. For all intents, such a community
would have the political nature of anarchy, precisely because
of it's dedication to the non-institutional. Ellul doesn't go
this far, but remains instructive:

Ellul, _Precense of the Kingdom_ p.138:

	Day after day the wind blows away the pages of
	our calendars, our newspapers, and our political
	regimes, and we glide along the stream of time
	without any spiritual framework, without a memory,
	without a judgment, carried about by "all winds
	of doctrine" on the current of history, which 
	is always slipping into a perpetual past. Now
	we ought to react vigorously against this slackness	
	-- this tendency to drift. If we are to live in 
	this world we need to know it far more profoundly;
	we need to rediscover the meaning of events, and
	the spiritual framework which our contemporaries
	have lost.

Van Hook, Politics of Man, God, and Freedom ...

	Ellul's solution requires groups of "citizens 
	organized independently of the state" and possesing
	a "truly democratic attitude in order to depolitize
	and repolitize." The purpose of these groups is to
	introduce "tensions" into society by declaring their
	independence and demonstrating that there are areas
	of life which can not be absorbed into the state.
	These tensions are not intended to destroy the state;
	they aim instead to create a political life free of
	illusion. He sums up his proposal:

	  .... it is important to above all never to 
	  permit oneself to ask the state to help us.
	  This means that we must try to create posi-
	  tions in which we reject and struggle with 
	  the state, not in order to modify some ele-
	  ment of the regime or force it to make some
	  decision, but, much more fundamentally, to
	  permit the emergence of social, political,
	  intellectual, or artistic bodies, associa-
	  tions, interest groups, or economic or
	  Christian groups totally independent of the
	  state, yet capable of opposing it, able to
	  reject its pressures as well as its controls,
	  and even its gifts. These organizations must
	  be completely independent, not only materi-
	  ally but also intellectually and morally, ie
	  able to deny that the nation is the supreme 
	  value and that the state is the incarnation
	  of the nation.... What is needed is groups
	  capable of extreme diversification of the
	  entire society's fundamental tendencies,
	  capable of escaping our unitary structure
	  and of presenting themselves not as negations
	  of the state -- which would be absurd --
	  but as something else, not under the state's
	  tutelage but equally important, as solid and
	  valuable as the state.

We may contrast the Quakers, and Berlet's Bane, Christian Identity,
on how practically to proceed. As well as home schooling, Gritz,
and such.

A bit deeper a consideration for you Gordon.

-= Will Campbell has it right, "Think Sect." =-
 	
Newsgroups: talk.politics.theory,talk.politics.misc,alt.conspiracy