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I’m sure many of us hear the following voices from time to time:

They say that I should trust my boyfriend and respect his personal space and freedom, but that’s easy for them to say. How would they treat their current partners if they had been cheated on by their former partners, not once, but time and again?

***

They say that I should respect my liberal leftist teacher, but every time I open my mouth to talk about my deepest right-wing traditionalist convictions I am accused of being a narcissistic racist by some of my classmates.

***

They say that we should respect the so-called traditional family, but what about my best friend who is a victim of incest?

***

They say that I should respect my rightist classmate, but they forget that I’ve been called a libtard, moron and nigger constantly by many right-wing people over the past few years.

***

They say that I should respect the so-called beauty of nature and that I shouldn’t kick my dog when he’s behaving badly, but what do they know about the earthquake that destroyed my aunt’s house and the horse that smashed my brother’s face to smithereens?

***

They say that I should respect the immigrants who stay in the adjacent refugee center, but that’s easy for them to say. My daughter who lives in another town is harassed, almost daily, by a foreigner on the way to work.

***

They say that I should respect their culture and that I should be able to speak and write in their language, but they are not even themselves capable of writing in their own language without mistakes. In fact, I am better at writing in their language. Why should I accept the instruction of my professor to read one of the so-called great literary works of their culture while my own culture has some great writers as well?

***

They say that I should respect and cherish the so-called god-given gift of life, but they don’t seem to consider my trauma: the people who are dearest to me lost their lives in a car-crash. Why should I respect and believe in a god who apparently let this happen?

Have you ever experienced, like the voices above, a rejection or betrayal of yourself or the ones you love by your family, your friends, your classmates, your colleagues, your government, your president, strangers, foreigners, people with another worldview, or even the universe itself? If so, you probably also already took out your anxieties and frustrations on others in revenge of that rejection, although they had nothing to do with the trauma you experienced.

Your new boyfriend is not the old one who cheated on you. Your teacher is not the classmate who offended you. Your friend’s foster parent is not the uncle who abused your friend. Your rightist classmate is not the racist who doesn’t respect your color. Your dog is not the horse that smashed your brother’s face. Your refugee neighbor is not the foreigner who harassed your daughter. Your professor is not the double-standard hypocrite who expects things from you he wouldn’t expect from others.

All these people are non-existent enemies. They are blamed for things they are not responsible for. In other words, they are scapegoats who suffer from revenge – which is an imitated evil. The ultimate scapegoat, of course, is the non-existent god people sometimes get angry at. There is no god who controls our fate or who can be manipulated to have control over our fate.

The tragedy is that we might become so obsessed with fighting non-existent enemies that we ultimately create the enemy we actually wanted to destroy in order to save ourselves. Innocent others might get traumatized by our anger, and they might end up getting angry at others as well. Trauma often inflicts trauma. We might even become so obsessed with fighting the non-existent god and his illusory belief systems that we end up being dictated by the illusion ourselves.

The non-existent all-controlling god cannot prevent car-crashes in which we lose our beloved ones, nor can he cause them. He is not real. The love that connects us with those beloved ones, through and beyond pain and suffering, is real though. Eventually according to the Bible it is that love which reveals who God really is.

Ultimately, we want to love others and we want the love of others. When we experience the lack of others we love or the lack of love from others, we are hurt to the bone because our deepest desire is not met. We don’t want the pain and the sadness when people hurt us, or when people we love are taken away from us. We want love, even if it is because of love that we are able to feel hurt and sad in the first place. Love carries us. Even if we try to fight love with hate and indifference love is always first. Love is equally the source of our joy and our sadness, as it is the source of our indignation and attempts at indifference.

Focus on Love

So instead of focusing on a non-existent god and non-existent enemies because of our hurt, our sadness, our fear and our anger, isn’t it better to focus on the reality of the love that is felt through and beyond our pain? Isn’t it better to focus on the love that moves us beyond our fear, envy, possessiveness and revengefulness?

Those who were not able to let love in our lives shouldn’t be persecuted in others (or ourselves!) who have nothing to do with their sin. And those who showed us glimpses of what love is and who passed away or said goodbye shouldn’t be buried under grief when they can be gratefully present in our ability to love, each and every day.

Easily said. Not always easily done.

Love casts out Fear

NEDERLANDSE VERTALING:

BESCHULDIG GEEN ONBESTAANDE GOD, RICHT JE OP DE REALITEIT VAN DE LIEFDE

Ik ben er zeker van dat velen van ons gelijkaardige stemmen als de volgende al aan het woord hebben gehoord:

Ze zeggen dat ik mijn vriend moet vertrouwen en dat ik zijn persoonlijke ruimte en vrijheid moet respecteren, maar zij hebben gemakkelijk praten. Hoe zouden zij hun huidige partners behandelen als ze bedrogen zijn geweest door hun vorige partner, en dat niet één keer, maar telkens opnieuw?

***

Ze zeggen dat ik mijn leraar met zijn linkse opvattingen moet respecteren, maar elke keer als ik mijn mond open om te praten over mijn rechtse, conservatieve overtuigingen word ik racist genoemd door sommige klasgenoten.

***

Ze zeggen dat we respect moeten hebben voor het zogenaamd klassieke gezin, maar ze denken daarbij niet aan mijn vriendin die een slachtoffer is van incest.

***

Ze zeggen dat ik respect moet hebben voor die klasgenote met haar rechtse opvattingen, maar ze vergeten dat ik de voorbije jaren vele keren vuile neger werd genoemd door rechts georiënteerde mensen.

***

Ze zeggen dat ik de zogenaamde schoonheid van de natuur moet respecteren en dat ik mijn hond niet mag schoppen als hij zich misdraagt, maar zeg dat eens aan mijn tante wiens huis door een aardbeving werd vernietigd, en spreek eens met mijn broer wiens gezicht door de trap van een paard aan gruzelementen werd geslagen.

***

Ze zeggen dat ik de immigranten moet respecteren die in het naburige vluchtelingencentrum verblijven terwijl mijn dochter bijna elke dag wordt lastiggevallen door een vreemdeling op de weg naar haar werk.

***

Ze zeggen dat ik hun cultuur moet respecteren en dat ik hun taal moet kunnen spreken en schrijven, maar ze zijn zelf niet in staat om in hun eigen taal zonder fouten te schrijven. Eigenlijk schrijf ik zelfs beter in hun taal dan zijzelf. Waarom zou ik dan de opdracht van mijn professor aanvaarden om een van de zogenaamd grote literaire werken van hun cultuur te lezen, terwijl mijn cultuur ook grote schrijvers heeft voortgebracht?

***

Ze zeggen dat ik het zogenaamd goddelijke geschenk van het leven moet respecteren en koesteren, maar ze schijnen mijn trauma niet te overwegen: de mensen die mij het nauwst aan het hart liggen, lieten het leven in een auto-ongeluk. Waarom zou ik respect hebben voor en geloof hebben in een god die dit blijkbaar liet gebeuren?

Heb je ooit, zoals de zopas gehoorde stemmen, een afwijzing of verraad ervaren van jezelf of van mensen die je bemint door je familie, je vrienden, je klasgenoten, je collega’s, je regering, vreemdelingen, mensen met een andere levensbeschouwing, of zelfs “het universum” zelf? Indien je inderdaad die afwijzing hebt gevoeld, dan heb je waarschijnlijk ook wel al eens je angsten en frustraties afgereageerd op anderen die eigenlijk niets met jouw trauma te maken hebben.

Je nieuwe vriendje is niet je ex-vriendje dat jou bedrogen heeft. Je leraar is niet de klasgenoot die jou beledigde. De pleegouder van je vriendin is niet de oom die haar misbruikte. Je rechtse klasgenote is niet de raciste die geen respect heeft voor je huidskleur. Je hond is niet het paard dat het gezicht van je broer verbrijzelde. De vluchteling uit je buurt is niet de vreemdeling die je dochter lastigvalt. Je professor is niet de hypocriet die met twee maten en twee gewichten weegt; hij is niet iemand die van jou iets anders verwacht dan van anderen.

Al die mensen zijn onbestaande vijanden. Ze worden beschuldigd van zaken waarvoor ze niet verantwoordelijk zijn. Ze zijn, met andere woorden, zondebokken die lijden onder onze onterechte wraakzucht (en door die wraakzucht imiteren we het kwaad dat ons is aangedaan). De ultieme zondebok is natuurlijk de niet-bestaande god op wie mensen soms kwaad worden. Er is geen god die ons lot controleert en die we kunnen manipuleren om controle over ons lot te krijgen.

Het tragische is dat we zo geobsedeerd kunnen geraken door het bevechten van onze niet-bestaande vijanden dat we uiteindelijk toch een vijand creëren. En eigenlijk wilden we die vijand vernietigen om onszelf te redden. Onschuldige anderen kunnen getraumatiseerd geraken door de woede waarmee we ons afreageren, en daardoor kunnen zij dan weer boos worden op anderen. Trauma’s brengen vaak nieuwe trauma’s voort. We kunnen zelfs zo geobsedeerd geraken door het bevechten van een niet-bestaande god en de valse geloofssystemen die met hem gepaard gaan, dat ons eigen leven uiteindelijk gedicteerd wordt door die illusie.

De niet-bestaande alles controlerende god kan geen auto-ongelukken verhinderen waarin we onze geliefden verliezen, en hij kan evenmin die ongelukken veroorzaken. Hij is niet echt. Daarentegen is de liefde die ons met die geliefden verbindt, doorheen en voorbij ons verdriet, wél echt. Het is die liefde die uiteindelijk volgens de Bijbelse geschriften openbaart wie God werkelijk is.

Uiteindelijk beantwoordt de liefde misschien wel aan ons diepste verlangen: we willen anderen beminnen en we willen door anderen bemind worden. Wanneer we mensen moeten missen die we graag zien, of wanneer we een gebrek aan liefde van anderen ervaren, worden we tot in het diepste van onze ziel gekwetst, precies omdat ons diepste verlangen niet wordt vervuld. We willen niet de pijn en het verdriet wanneer mensen ons kwetsen, of wanneer de mensen die we graag zien ons worden ontnomen. We willen liefde, zelfs als het de liefde is die ervoor zorgt dat we überhaupt pijn en verdriet kunnen voelen. De liefde draagt ons. Zelfs als we de liefde bevechten met haat en onverschilligheid is de liefde nog altijd eerst. Liefde is tegelijk de bron van onze vreugde en ons verdriet, alsook van onze verontwaardiging en pogingen tot onverschilligheid.

Dus in plaats van ons te focussen op niet-bestaande vijanden en een niet-bestaande god wegens onze pijn, ons verdriet, onze angsten en onze boosheid, kunnen we ons misschien beter focussen op de werkelijkheid van de liefde die doorheen en voorbij onze pijn voelbaar wordt. Is het niet beter om ons te laten bewegen door die liefde in plaats van door angst, jaloezie, bezitterigheid en wraakzucht?

We moeten onszelf en anderen niet haten omdat sommige mensen niet in staat bleken om ons liefde te geven. En zij die ons wél een glimp lieten opvangen van wat liefde is, maar van wie we afscheid moesten nemen, zouden niet mogen begraven worden onder jammerklachten. Zij kunnen immers aanwezig blijven in ons dankbaar vermogen om lief te hebben, elke dag opnieuw.

Dat is gemakkelijk gezegd, niet altijd gemakkelijk gedaan. Toch is de hoop op een gerespecteerd en respectvol leven een hoop die we blijvend mogen koesteren.

John Steinbeck on Rejection (quote from East of Eden)

 

 

 

 

by on

Who or what is to blame for the massacre at Pulse, a gay night club in Orlando, Florida (June 12, 2016)? Muslims? Religious people in general? Islam? Religion in general? Or just the twisted mindset of a troubled individual?

Omar Mateen, a 29 year old American Muslim of Afghan descent leaves 49 people dead and 53 injured after opening fire at Pulse, the gay night club he allegedly visited himself on a regular basis. He was eventually shot by the police. Being a regular visitor of the club, as well as his use of gay dating sites, suggest Mateen was gay himself. His ex-wife also made the claim that he was gay. So maybe it was ressentiment that drove him (for similar examples, click here)?

Whatever the case, there is no doubt that religion often advocates intolerance and hatred against LGBT people. Religious leaders past and present have discriminated against LGBT people. For instance, two days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Christian evangelicals Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson blamed gays and lesbians, among other people, for the attacks (which they interpreted as “the wrath of God”). Jerry Falwell stated (for more on this, click here):

Muslim Lesbian Gay HappyI really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way – all of them who have tried to secularize America – I point the finger in their face and say “you helped this happen.”

In other words, some religious people hold LGBT people themselves responsible for the oppression and violence they have to endure, allegedly “because they don’t respect God and His laws”. Seen from the perspective of René Girard’s mimetic theory, this is a form of scapegoating: instead of taking responsibility for their own intolerant and sometimes violent attitude, the perpetrators of hate crimes blame the victims and even God for their own terrorist behavior.

The aversion to LGBT people and their sexuality by certain religious people is sometimes mirrored by an aversion to religion by certain “anti-theists”. In the words of Girard, this makes the latter doubles of their theist counterparts. Because religion is seen as one of the main causes of evil, hatred and violence in the world, certain people would rather eradicate religion, blaming religious people for fostering one of the main breeding grounds for evil, and thus start scapegoating themselves. Bill Maher, for example, in the mockumentary Religulous:

LGBT MuslimsThis is why rational people, anti-religionists, must end their timidity and come out of the closet and assert themselves. And those who consider themselves only moderately religious really need to look in the mirror and realize that the solace and comfort that religion brings you actually comes at a terrible price. […] If you belonged to a political party or a social club that was tied to as much bigotry, misogyny, homophobia, violence and sheer ignorance as religion is, you’d resign in protest. To do otherwise is to be an enabler, a Mafia wife, with the true devils of extremism that draw their legitimacy from the billions of their fellow travelers. If the world does come to an end here or wherever, or if it limps into the future, decimated by the effects of a religion-inspired nuclear terrorism, let’s remember what the real problem was: That we learned how to precipitate mass death before we got past the neurological disorder of wishing for it. That’s it. Grow up or die.

Well, seen from Bill Maher’s perspective, you’re in big trouble if you are gay and Muslim. You shouldn’t be surprised that you experience violence because being a Muslim, being religious is, in the words of Bill Maher, being “an enabler of homophobia and violence”. Once again the (potential) victim, in this case the gay Muslim, is held responsible, this time by so-called anti-religionists, for the violence the victim might have to endure.

In short, some people scapegoat people for being gay, others scapegoat people for being religious. Being gay and muslim means running the risk of being twice the scapegoat.

I am Gay and Muslim

From a spiritual perspective we are challenged to criticize ourselves by listening to the Voice of our (potential) Victim, by listening to the voice of the scapegoat, in order to become “the change we want to see”. Maybe “true Islam” is not a religion of bigotry, misogyny, homophobia and violence. Maybe “true Islam” is the religion of a “radical minority” that testifies to the Love of “the Merciful One”.

In the words of a gay Muslim man from the documentary I am Gay and Muslim:

No one has the right to tell me whether I’m a good Muslim or not.





To put things in perspective, an overview of mass shootings in the US of the last decades shows that most of the murderers didn’t need religion to get them to kill people. Some even hated religion. All they needed was easy access to guns and all too human characteristics played out in the wrong circumstances:


July 18, 1984: unemployed security guard James Oliver Huberty kills 21 people at a McDonald’s in San Ysidro, California. He is killed himself by a police sniper.


October 16, 1991: George Jo Hennard crashes his pickup into a Luby’s cafetaria and begins firing, killing 22 people before taking his own life.


April 20, 1999: Columbine High School students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold kill 13 people before taking their own lives.


April 16, 2007: student Seung-hui Cho kills 32 people on Virginia Tech campus and eventually commits suicide.


April 3, 2009: Jiverly Voong kills 13 people when attacking Binghampton immigration center in New York state.


November 5, 2009: Major Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, attacks Fort Hood in Texas and kills 13 people.


July 20, 2012: James Holmes kills 12 people in what became known as the Colorado cinema shooting, during the screening of the new Batman movie.


December 14, 2012: Adam Lanza kills 27 people, including himself, during an attack on Newtown school in Connecticut.


September 16, 2013: Aaron Alexis, a Navy contractor, kills 12 people at Washington Navy Yard.


June 18, 2015: Dylann Roof kills 9 people at Charleston prayer meeting.


December 2, 2015: Syed Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik kill 14 people at a community centre in San Bernardino. They die in police shootout.


June 12, 2016: Omar Mateen kills 49 people and injures another 53 at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.


no to homophobia islamophobia




					


	



		
			


	

		

		

				
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“It’s because of his ADHD. It’s because of her ADD. It’s because of a difficult situation at home. It’s because he is highly intelligent: he is not challenged enough to study more thoroughly. It’s the teachers: they don’t explain things well enough, they’re boring. It’s because of the educators: they take aim at him and don’t give him any chances. It’s because of the break-up with her boyfriend. It’s because she hit puberty and goes through a difficult time. It’s because he is young and wants to experiment: that’s why he is not motivated to do school and that’s why he colors outside the lines sometimes. You have to understand. After all, it’s good that he’s somewhat a ‘rebel’ at school, isn’t it? It shows character and personality…”


culture of victimhood calvinWe’re all victims, right? If not of our hormones, then of a certain affection, or of ‘circumstances’ and other people. Well, first of all, it’s a good thing that people are acknowledged as victims of whatever it is that makes their life difficult or hurtful. If you’re lucky, then mommy and daddy will find their way to the right institutions to help you. If you’re lucky, your parents can pay for psychologists, psychiatrists, tutors, medicines, and leave you in the hands of professional educators (perhaps at a boarding school) or provide you with a secure and satisfying future at the family firm. In short, if you’re lucky you’ll find your way to people who will help you to overcome an all too comfortable self-definition by what haunts or victimizes you.


If you’re not that lucky, you might fall into the hands of people who confirm and magnify your victimhood, allowing you to accuse whatever ‘scapegoat’ (see René Girard) you can find to deny personal freedom and responsibility. And let’s face it: today’s culture often is a victimhood culture, where everybody plays the ‘blame game’ in order to protect a narcissistic self-image. Indeed, a reasoning like the following is quite common: “If I’d work harder, I’d be able to graduate as a doctor – I do possess the intrinsic qualities -, but my ADD and the fact that teachers don’t pay attention to my particular problem, destroy my motivation and cause me to fail.” This kind of narcissism is supported sometimes by parents as well, for they often do not like to acknowledge that, maybe, their kid has other talents.


Calvin and Hobbes


Every teacher or educator knows how difficult it can be to motivate certain students to work for school. Even in the best of circumstances, with every help possible, some students simply justify their negative attitude with every possible excuse. Rather than fully admit that their child acts as a ‘loon’ or a ‘brat’ in some cases, some parents even plead for a very soft treatment of their child’s misbehavior by pointing out that he or she is just ‘being young’ and ‘showing personality’. As if their child really is some kind of rebel hero. That’s why, in some classrooms, the brat can become a model that deserves imitation. Indeed, in some classrooms students feel ashamed, even guilty, of being a hardworking student. They would prefer making a laughing stock out of other hardworking students than admit being hardworking themselves. Self-denial and betraying (the relationship and affiliation with) others: the two sides of the coin that is the love for one’s self-image – a man-made, social ‘idol’, becoming the goal of one’s life.


Add to this cocktail of excuses the conviction that ‘society as a whole’ is ‘against you’, and you get the sort of victimhood mentality in places like Molenbeek, a district of Brussels known as a breeding ground for radical, young Muslims. Would you still study, as an adolescent in today’s distracting society, if you can convince yourself that ‘it doesn’t make any difference’, that you’re discriminated anyway (even if this isn’t true!)?


I often wonder about some of the students I teach: what would happen to those who are allowed to cultivate an attitude of victimhood, or worse, of heroism in not working for school if this was not happening in the best possible circumstances? What if they wouldn’t be ‘corrected’ by psychologists, tutors or educators (paid by the very parents who plead to go easy on their child’s misbehavior)? What if they would end up in unemployment without a graduation certificate, as a young Muslim? I’m sure they would continue the all too human narcissistic inclination to blame ‘others’ for their detrimental situation. And I’m also pretty sure that they could find comfort in the stories and propaganda of ISIS recruiters. After all, this propaganda confirms their idea of being victims, while it also provides them with a counter-culture that makes them heroic martyrs for God. This counter-culture is appealing to non-Muslims as well and attracts converts, as there are many people who no longer feel ‘at ease’ in today’s consumer and performance based society. All in all, considering the circumstances some young people grow up in, it may be a miracle that not more of them become Jihadists. There’s hope.


Young Muslim women stand hand-in-hand in front of the Oslo Synagogue during the "Ring of Peace" vigil, February 21, 2015. The vigil was organized by Muslim youth in solidarity with Norway's Jewish community following anti-Jewish attacks in Denmark and other parts of Europe.


In any case, there is no real difference between one loon and the next. It just so happens that one is characterized as an ‘adventurous youth’, making ‘youthful mistakes’ that are eventually rectified, while the other is perceived as someone who should blame himself for blowing his chances on a good education and social future. Only narcissist hypocrites will maintain that there is a difference between ‘my kid’ and ‘that kid’. The dress may be different (secular or religious), but we’re all human after all, experiencing similar challenges and temptations.


As hinted at earlier, the victimhood mentality often not only affects those young Muslims or ‘converts’ who are unemployed and indeed find it difficult to assert themselves in society, but it can also poison the minds of young Muslims or ‘converts’ with a rather prosperous life. Like the hardworking student who starts feeling ashamed of being a hardworking student in front of a ‘brat mentality’, the prosperous young Muslim might start feeling guilty or responsible for his supposedly discriminated friends or ‘Muslim brothers and sisters’. Sometimes this discrimination will be real, but in other cases it will be imagined.


ISIS propaganda will try to magnify the story of ‘oppressed Muslims’ and ‘the oppression of Islam’ in order to justify further terrorist acts and atrocities. So the worst we can do, here in the West, is to start discriminating Muslims in general and limit their freedom to practice their religion as fellow citizens (bound by the same laws and rights in a democratic nation, based on the separation between “church/religion/culture” and “state”). Discriminating Muslims would only add to the propaganda of ISIS and confirm its story that ‘Muslims are generally oppressed victims’. ISIS has already poisoned enough vulnerable minds with their propaganda. Why should we too believe that they are the only ‘true representatives of Islam’? Moreover, if we would make it difficult for Muslims to practice their religion publicly, and make it even harder for Muslims to enter into a social and political dialogue where Islam can be a point of debate as well as inspiration, violent versions of it will continue to flourish on the internet. You don’t take porn away nor perverted forms of sexuality on the internet if you make sex taboo. Also, you don’t create a breeding ground for rape and perverted forms of sexuality/(religion) when you enjoy and even “promote” healthy forms of cultivated sexuality/(religion). On the contrary.




Of course Islam lends itself to an interpretation that confirms people in their ideas of victimhood and heroism. Of course Islam lends itself to an interpretation that allows people to ‘heroically purify’ the world through mass killings. But it’s only one of the many possible ideologies to justify a contagious narcissism and self-denial on the one hand, and the sacrifice of others on the other. As history shows, people who feel victimized or threatened, or who long for a ‘heroic’ life, will always find a utopian, romantic story to justify their actions, whether that story be a secular political totalitarianism, a religious totalitarianism, or an individual totalitarianism like “I’m the rebel hero who challenges the educational system that oppresses me and my fellow students.”




Islam can equally be a source of true spirituality, i.e. a spirituality that is not ‘easily comforting’ and confirming a story of narcissistic victimhood and heroism, but a spirituality that allows people to look at themselves more honestly and truthfully. Ideologies, like friends, become dangerous and bad when they only confirm your self-image. Good friends are the ones who confront you with your drug addiction if you have one, with your anorexia if you’re developing this eating disorder, or with the cheap excuses you use to protect untruthful ideas about yourself. This might hurt at first, but eventually the truth can set you free. It might free you from all sorts of addictions, whether it be material goods, habits or illusions. And this is the condition to lovingly – which is not the same as ‘gently’ or ‘comfortingly’ – approach others as well.


The Greater Jihad - Do it Right


Instead of feeling ashamed of not participating in a so-called ‘heroic’ struggle against the so-called external ‘enemies of Islam’, the inner spiritual struggle – ‘the greater Jihad’ – allows Muslims to debunk romantic ideas of victimhood and to destroy the man-made idols of ‘violent, heroic martyrdom’. And when there is no such God, no such man-made idol or ideology, left to blame (as a justification), violent suicides and murders can be seen for what they are: as purely human actions for which humans carry responsibility. Only then can there be truly liberating tears of a different kind of shame and remorse: the regret one experiences for having sinned against the Love that connects people to themselves as well as others, contrary to the love for one’s socially constructed self-image which alienates people from themselves and others.


The transformation of the human heart… That would be the true miracle…

					


	



		
			


	

		

		

				
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Possessed by the Demon of Social Shame and Guilt


Bob was called to the principal’s office. Together with other students he took part in a display of troublesome behavior while being presented a movie in the school’s theater. He knew that the principal would punish him severely if the principal would find out that he had damaged some of the seats together with his friends. But Bob was clever in presenting his story. He could convince the principal that he and his classmates suffered from the bad influence of one student in particular: Oedipus. Oedipus, a rich, arrogant and bothersome boy eventually took the biggest chunk of the blame, although he had only yelled a bit together with the others. He certainly hadn’t damaged anything. So in fact he was a scapegoat, as he was wrongfully accused for being the worst perpetrator. But of course Oedipus bore his punishment with pride: he wouldn’t want to be called a detector by his friends. He’d rather be “the hero” who “took it like a man” than be known as a “coward” – that would be too shameful.


Oedipus stabs out his eyesIn short, what happens in this case is that Bob’s protection of his social profile and self-image leads to the scapegoating of Oedipus. And Oedipus, desiring to protect his social prestige as well, is willing to sacrifice himself for the group.


So the supposed “hetero-aggression” of the principal towards Bob leads to Bob’s “auto-aggression”: Bob cannot be honest about himself because he is too afraid of what will happen to him. Furthermore, because he is ashamed in front of his principal, Bob develops a kind of shamelessness towards his friend Oedipus. Backed-up by his friends, Bob is able to harm the reputation of Oedipus even more. Oedipus, in turn, on experiencing this “hetero-aggression” by his friends, is willing to perform a sort of “auto-aggression”. His “self-sacrifice” thus is an imitation of his sacrifice by the group of friends. Oedipus looks at himself through the eyes of the group who betrays him, and instead of standing up for himself he becomes ashamed of himself, eventually betraying himself in favor of a “social idol” that should gain him “respect”.


cool laughing stockThe story continues… Bob and his friends always looked at Oedipus as “the crazy one”, but also “the audacious one” and “the one who was way too cool to study for school”. And Oedipus was more than willing to meet the expectations of his class-mates, acting like the funny guy, doing all sorts of crazy things – in class, on the playground, with his locker, etc. After all, Oedipus truly was “different”, wasn’t he?


Well, that’s what all of them thought until they met Mahatma. Mahatma was an exchange student from India. He came from a poor family, but he studied very hard and had earned a scholarship to come to the States. Mahatma could have easily become the new laughing stock, but he simply was too fascinating, funny and caring to not be taken seriously one way or the other. Everybody ended up listening to what he, who appeared to be indeed very “different” at first glance, had to say.


Mahatma noticed how Bob, Oedipus and their friends all showed the tendency to cultivate the idea that “it is not cool to work hard for school”. Mahatma was quite sure that some of them studied hard, but it was like they were intercepting any possible disappointment and shame about themselves. No one likes to acknowledge that one studied hard when the grades are bad eventually – for it could be interpreted as a lack of intelligence or talent for a particular subject. Moreover, Mahatma noticed, whenever someone did acknowledge that he worked hard he was immediately somewhat excluded as a laughing stock. “Well,” Mahatma said, “I don’t understand why studying hard for school should be anything to be ashamed of. Even if it turns out that you are not performing too well for one particular subject, it still allows you to discover what your true talents are. And if you can be honest about yourself and realize that you are not that different from the hard working ‘nerd’ you’re making fun of, you can be more loving towards others – allowing them to be honest about themselves as well.”


How about that? Mahatma is doing nothing else than imitating the Christ of the Gospels. Jesus of Nazareth, the one who is called the Christ, reminds people of who they really are: not at all that different from the people they look down on. That’s why he says, “let him who is without sin cast the first stone.”


Jesus wants to replace the love for our untruthful self-image and the adherence to our “reputation” with the love for ourselves and others. We can be like the hard working student who feels ashamed of himself, even guilty of studying hard, and indeed develop the tendency to publicly and hypocritically loath or exclude other hard working students. On the other hand, if we no longer feel ashamed of ourselves, we can start feeling ashamed of the hurt we brought to others because we were too preoccupied with our social profile. That is what happens to Peter: after denying Jesus when the latter is imprisoned, Peter eventually feels ashamed because of the hurt he brought to his friend.


To get back to the story of Bob, Oedipus and Mahatma… Mahatma made something similar happen to his new friends from the States. He made Bob and the others see that they were not at all that different from Oedipus, and that they were all “addicted” to the same negative attitude towards “studying hard for school”. It was an attitude which possessed them like a demon. Mahatma was able to make them look at themselves through the eyes of the ones who were always mocked for being “nerds”. Confronted with the “cool nerd” that Mahatma was, those nerds turned out to be not that “uncool”, “boring” or “hypocritical” after all. Besides, from the point of view of the nerds Bob and his friends were the often uncool and boring hypocrites!


Jesus and Demoniac (Peter Howson)All of this dawned on Bob, Oedipus and their friends. Mahatma was THE nerd who enabled them to be honest about themselves. He could have easily condemned them for what they did to other nerds and other excluded people, but instead he forgave them before they even fully realized how they had hurt themselves and others because of their addiction to a “social idol”. What Mahatma did to them was confronting and liberating at the same time. The truth about how they had lived their lives hurt at first, but set them free as well. It made them independent of the shame others would try to transfer on them, and at the same time allowed them to take sides with and love the oppressed and vulnerable.


So Bob, Oedipus and the others became Mahatmas in their own way, imitating the love he gave them, and trying to reconcile people with each other. Their contagious work of creating a realm of forgiveness allowed people to acknowledge what they had done to others. It allowed people to no longer be ashamed of themselves in favor of a “social idol”. On the contrary, it allowed people to be ashamed and remorseful without being crushed under guilt, and to newly love the ones they had hurt. And finally, it allowed people to free themselves from the traumas they had suffered themselves. As more people experienced the forgiving love that enabled them to accept themselves, those people no longer felt the need to defend a certain self-image and became more capable (though not totally) of living lives without excluding or judging others.


Salvation by a Contamination with Divine Grace: 


“Father, Son, Holy Spirit”


We are truly “godlike”


As hinted at earlier, the “Spirit” that “contaminated” the group of Bob and his friends, and that was created by the self-confident “Son” of India Mahatma (who is indeed carried by a “Fatherly” or “Motherly” Love that allows him to love himself in spite of possible social exclusion), was also the Spirit that contaminated the followers of Jesus. It was the “forgiving nerd” Mahatma – a forgiving “other” – that allowed Bob and his friends to “come to themselves” and “change”: acknowledging their “addictions”, they could free themselves and discover their own talents, paradoxically becoming like the “forgiving nerd” themselves in loving and reconciling people.


The New Testament writers believe that what Mahatma did for his new classmates, Jesus did for the whole of humanity. Jesus is the one who calls for the end of the sacrifice of every possible “Oedipus” by running the risk of being sacrificed himself. He is the ultimate “Other”, the “Mahatma par excellence” who, forgiving, enables us to be honest about ourselves. This makes possible the reconciliation and salvation of humanity as a whole, as there would be no need for a final “One Big Human Oedipus” (one big common enemy or sacrificed victim) to accomplish this. Resurrected, The Forgiving Crucified Jesus who does not simply avenge all the other “excluded” or “sacrificed” allows his disciples and all the rest of us to “do justice” to the ones we hurt, and to imitate him by forgiving those who hurt us – creating the possibility that they might do justice to us as well.


the weak can never forgive (Mahatma Gandhi)Jesus kills every “social idol”, meaning that he is guided by a Love which “desires mercy, not sacrifice.” He allows us to see ourselves through the loving eyes of “the One who cannot be reduced to our man-made world.” As Mahatma allows Bob and his friends to look at themselves through the eyes of a “loving nerd” who does not “crush them under guilt” (that would lead to the temptation to brush off the blame on a scapegoat again), Jesus allows us to look at ourselves through the eyes of a “Loving God” who “believes in us.” Like Mahatma allowed Bob and his friends to discover they were somewhat “nerds” themselves, Jesus allows us to discover we are truly “godlike”. The forgiveness of Jesus paradoxically “re-creates” and “changes” us by bringing us to our”selves”.


Of course, in this broken world we never fully realize our self-acceptance and the acceptance of others – the experience of God as Love (i.e. the experience of God at a human level) –, but we can follow the example of Christ the best we can (as far as it is possible for each of us): forgiving each other time and again, “seventy times seven”. For indeed, realistically speaking, none of us is perfect. So contrary to the famous line of one popular movie from 1970 (Love Story), “love means having to say you’re sorry…” It means being forgiven, “as we forgive those who trespass against us…”


The Prodigal Son (Rembrandt c1669)

					


	

					




		
			


	

		

		

				
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[KLIK HIER VOOR NEDERLANDSTALIGE VERSIE]


1.Right and Left united against “evil religion”, the common scapegoat enemy


“The Qur’an is a licence to kill.”


Filip Dewinter KoranThese words come from Filip Dewinter, one of the leading members of far-right political party Vlaams Belang, who spoke during a session of Belgium’s federal parliament (January 22, 2015).


Dewinter sounds a lot like the members of Islamic State (IS) whose conclusion on the issue of beheadings drawn from their reading of the Qur’an goes as follows:


“The Qur’an justifies these killings.”


It seems a bit ironic, but Dewinter and the members of Islamic State actually agree on the so-called “true nature of Islam”. Dewinter literally echoes the words of Hussein bin Mahmoud, a Jihadi cleric, who said (from an article posted August 21, 2014 on the Shumoukh Al-Islam forum):


Islam-Behead-Infidels“Islam is a religion of power, fighting, jihad, beheading and bloodshed.” 


For some it’s a small step to go from this so-called “true, violent nature of Islam” to the so-called “true, violent nature of religion in general”. That’s in fact an even more extreme version of Dewinter’s discourse and, once again ironically, if Dewinter would deliver that statement he would find some allies on the far-left side of the political spectrum (heir to Marx’s idea that “religion is the opium of the people”). As the French would say, eventually “Les extrêmes se touchent”, the extremes meet one another.


In fact, many atheists today believe (hmm, “atheists believe…”), whether from the political “right” or “left”, that “religion must die for mankind to live” (Bill Maher in the mockumentary Religulous). Yet many of them claim to nevertheless have respect for people who believe in God, although some of them make a distinction between “respecting the people” (for instance Muslims) and “disrespecting their belief” (for instance Islam – And then you get things like: “I’m not saying you, as a Muslim, are violent, I’m saying Islam is violent!”). That’s a bit like some Catholics who say that they don’t have any problems with homosexuals, only with homosexuality (“I’m not saying you are perverted, I’m saying your sexuality is!”). For more on this analogy, see below (chapter 4 of this post).


religion is to blameAnyway, as René Girard points out in his mimetic theory, to sacrifice what is considered to bring about violent mayhem – a “scapegoat” – is a mechanism as old as humanity itself. In the words of Karen Armstrong:


As one who speaks on religion, I constantly hear how cruel and aggressive it has been, a view that, eerily, is expressed in the same way almost every time: “Religion has been the cause of all the major wars in history.” I have heard this sentence recited like a mantra by American commentators and psychiatrists, London taxi drivers and Oxford academics. It is an odd remark. Obviously the two world wars were not fought on account of religion . . . Experts in political violence or terrorism insist that people commit atrocities for a complex range of reasons. Yet so indelible is the aggressive image of religious faith in our secular consciousness that we routinely load the violent sins of the 20th century on to the back of “religion” and drive it out into the political wilderness.


2. Mimetic doubling of religious fascism by some (“liberal”) humanists


Our ancestors attributed all sorts of violence to the gods or, more generally speaking, “a sacred realm”. In order to prevent “the wrath of the gods” – experienced in violent rivalry tearing a community apart, but also in the violence of a pandemic or a natural disaster – and receive “peace and order from the gods”, ancient cultures held on to different systems of taboos and rituals. The taboos on violence and the things that were considered to bring about violence could only be transgressed in rituals and sacrificial rituals (which included wars and ceremonial battles). The ritualistic violence of sacrifices, ceremonial battles and wars was considered permissible and necessary violence, sanctioned by the gods, and ultimately aimed at the establishment of a new peace and order. In short, sacrifice – “the good of a stabilized violence” – was considered necessary to expel “the evil of destabilizing violent mayhem”.


Some atheists, dreaming of a “non-religious” world, might pat themselves on the back now and point to the backward nature of the religiously motivated sacrifices by Islamic State:


• Clearly the sacrificial violence of Islamic State (whether suicidal or aimed at others) is primitive and barbaric, rooted in a pre-modern world-view when people could still believe that violence comes from a non-human realm, from a divine or sacred realm.


In short, according to Islamic State, God is violent (although he can grant us peace as well, if we are willing to live according to his rules).


• By using God as a justification for sacrifices the members of Islamic State cowardly try to avoid their own responsibility and accountability for the violent acts they commit. Moreover, the members of Islamic State make themselves dependent on a set of so-called divine rules (sharia), unable to even take responsibility for their own lives as a whole.


In short, the members of Islamic State use God as a scapegoat, blaming God for the violence they commit themselves.


In this regard one would expect that atheists see religion for what it is – at least in this context: religious beliefs and practices are (imaginary) answers to the problem of human violence. Religion is a consequence of the need to deal with our own (tendencies towards) violence. Sure many “islamists” in Europe grew up without religion, or without the religion of their parents (hence the generation gap between some Muslim parents and their radicalized children). The sudden “conversion” of young people in Europe and their violent opinions on Islam can therefore indeed be understood as a consequence of certain frustrations and aggressive tendencies, more than as a cause of those frustrations and aggressive tendencies. The atheist analysis of religiously motivated violence should therefore read as follows:


• In case human beings use violence, this violence comes from a human realm. Violence is not divine or sacred, it is human.


In short, according to atheism, humans are violent (although we can be peaceful as well, of course).


• Atheists claim that God does not exist. A creature that does not exist, cannot be responsible for anything, let alone for the violent acts performed by humans themselves. Humans cannot blame anything other than themselves for violence.


In short, according to atheists, humans carry responsibility for violence.


However, a strange thing occurs in some atheist quarters. The analysis of religiously motivated violence often goes like this:


Gods don't kill people• In case religious people use violence, it is caused by their religion. Since no man is born with a religion, it is clear that the roots of religiously motivated violence lie outside man [as if religion comes from Mars or something, as if religion is alien to (“the true nature of”) man?!]. Of course, it’s true as well that no man is born with any particular language, but the big difference is that we need languages to communicate and work together in order to survive, while we don’t need religion – on the contrary, religion might prevent the survival of the human race! [Note: to determine the value of something by measuring its supposed “usefulness” is not “neutral”, it’s already dependent on a certain outlook on life or world-view].


In short, following this type of reasoning, religion is violent.


• According to some atheists, religion is not a consequence of man’s violent tendencies. On the contrary, religion is one of the main causes of man’s violence. Human violence does not cause religion or the need for religious justifications. It’s the other way around: religion causes human violence.


In short, according to some atheists, religion is to blame for violence.


evil-twinThere is a striking resemblance between the way in which some religious fanatics view the reality of religiously motivated violence and the views of some atheists. In the words of René Girard, some atheists are imitative twins or mimetic doubles to their intolerant religious counterparts.


Both groups believe that the roots of violence lie in a realm which somewhat transcends humans (a supernatural or perverted realm respectively). “God orders violence.” Or, “religion causes violence”.


Both groups also share a common view on how to achieve a peaceful world: humans should live according to their “true” nature.


The members of Islamic State believe that humans who live without belief in God (or, more extreme even, without belief in the “true” God) invoke the “violent wrath of God”. Thus peace is only possible if the “infidels” are willing to sacrifice their pagan or secular opinions and lifestyle, and convert to God. If they are unwilling to sacrifice their sinful way of life, they should be sacrificed in order to prevent more “violent wrath of God”.


Some atheists believe that humans who live with belief in God are sustaining some of the major conditions that invoke violence. In the words of Bill Maher (again from his mockumentary Religulous):


Religion is dangerous… This is why rational people, anti-religionists, must end their timidity and come out of the closet and assert themselves. And those who consider themselves only moderately religious really need to look in the mirror and realize that the solace and comfort that religion brings you actually comes at a terrible price.


sam harris religion is dangerous


Thus peace is only possible if “theists” are willing to sacrifice their barbaric and primitive opinions and lifestyle, and convert to atheism. After all, according to these atheists, no human being is born with a religion, hence the truly “natural” state of man is non-religious. Note: the zealous advocates of an “Enlightened Reason” that is supposedly very different from “all those fear-rooted religions” constantly refer to “the dangers of religion”. Quite ironic. Ah, well…


Sam Harris fear


3. The Fascism of Anti-religious Utopians – Joël De Ceulaer joins Filip Dewinter


The atheist camp might point to a difference that still seems to exist between “theists” and “atheists”. Although some atheists ask theists to consider abandoning their beliefs, they don’t use any violence against people. At best they use “verbal violence” against “weird ideas” or “weird behaviors” – you know, again, this is analogous to some Catholics who tolerate gay people while condemning homosexuality. They don’t sacrifice people, unlike some theists. Some regard this as a confirmation of their claim that it is really religion that drives people to violence. Moreover, most atheists are able to tolerate religious people, even if their religion is the cause of so much violence! Surely, atheism leads to a better, more tolerant world, no?


The so-called “humanist” atheist tolerance towards “theists” often comes across a bit strange. The atheist who stresses that the belief of his fellow man “is not a problem” to him actually implies that “this could be an issue in normal circumstances”. As if it’s not self-evident. As if the atheist is in the superior position from which he grants the theist the right to be who he is or wants to be. What if people who claim tolerance towards gay people would stress that they don’t have any problems with gay people every time they meet someone who is gay? A bit odd…


But, oh, I forgot to mention other signs of tolerance among atheists. Many of them have no problem whatsoever to attend Turkish restaurants run by Muslims. Also, many atheists already paid a visit to a mosque. Of course none of them would consider conversion to Islam a reasonable option, but look, even if they know that they are in the superior, more progressed and enlightened position, they still take the time to get to know a little bit more about a “less advanced” culture.


Joel De Ceulaer Patrick Loobuyck Jan HautekietDespite the seeming tolerance, intolerance towards religious people is never far in some atheist quarters. In the wake of the terrorist attacks on Charlie Hebdo, Belgian journalist Joël De Ceulaer expands the Islamophobia of Filip Dewinter to religiophobia. Unlike Dewinter, who still somewhat tried to make a distinction between the Qur’an and Muslims, De Ceulaer immediately becomes personal. The journalist and his ideological friends want to “get rid of all merchants of religion and other world-views” in Belgian schools and replace their respective curricula by one, supposedly “neutral” curriculum on “world-views, ethics and philosophy” (Dutch: “LEF – Levensbeschouwingen, Ethiek, Filosofie”), taught by “neutral” teachers. It’s still not clear what a “neutral” use of rationality and science to study different world-views actually looks like, but De Ceulaer (interviewed on Belgian television program Reyers Laat, January 19, 2015) is convinced that:


“It is a train that cannot be stopped.”


Wow. A neutral curriculum as an antidote to the violence of religious fanatics. It seems De Ceulaer is one of those utopistic atheists John Gray writes about in an article for The New Statesman (October 1, 2014):


The idea that religion is fading away has been replaced in conventional wisdom by the notion that religion lies behind most of the world’s conflicts. Many among the present crop of atheists hold both ideas at the same time. They will fulminate against religion, declaring that it is responsible for much of the violence of the present time, then a moment later tell you with equally dogmatic fervour that religion is in rapid decline. Of course it’s a mistake to expect logic from rationalists. More than anything else, the evangelical atheism of recent years is a symptom of moral panic. Worldwide secularisation, which was believed to be an integral part of the process of becoming modern, shows no signs of happening. Quite the contrary: in much of the world, religion is in the ascendant. For many people the result is a condition of acute cognitive dissonance.


As I already mentioned, both religious and anti-religious fanatics claim that religiously motivated violence is ultimately rooted in a realm that transcends human nature (a supernatural or alienating/perverted realm respectively). Both camps also claim to have access to “The Truth”. The members of Islamic State claim to possess the source of full knowledge (that is, within the limits of human possibilities) of “what’s true” and “what’s right”, revealed to them in the Qur’an. De Ceulaer and his lobbyists also claim to possess the source of full knowledge (again, within the limits of human possibilities) of “what’s true” and “what’s right”, namely reason and science.


In short, both religious and anti-religious fanatics are convinced that they can occupy a viewpoint which transcends “all particular viewpoints”. Call it Divine, call it Neutral – I call it Totalitarian and Idolatrous, implying the self-divinization of Man and the disappearance of any true belief in a transcendent realm. One can expect OBJECTIVITY from teachers of religion and world-views, NOT NEUTRALITY. Atheist, Buddhist, Christian or Islamic teachers who present Christianity from the viewpoints of, say, Karl Rahner, George Coyne or James Alison (all Catholic theologians) will tell similar things to their students if they’re objective. They will be able to confront those views with the views of fundamentalists like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. With the views of past Catholics like Benedict of Nursia, Francis of Assisi or Ignatius of Loyola. They will be able to point to similarities and differences. They will also create the possibility of a dialogue with the perspectives and cultural background of their students. A so-called “DIVINE” or “NEUTRAL” viewpoint does not call for dialogue. It demands to be accepted without any discussion, and is a form of mind control or brainwashing. 




merchants of religionI’m one of those so-called “merchants” De Ceulaer refers to. What am I selling, according to him? Lies – maybe even deliberately? Violence? When will I be replaced by a colleague who teaches from the “neutral”, state-imposed viewpoint? Clearly, this has to be done – and I will give De Ceulaer one more reason to demonize the “merchants” – because I will never ever claim or agree to speak from a so-called “neutral” perspective. That would be the biggest lie! I’m trying to teach what Christianity is all about from a Catholic perspective (“a”, not “the”). This should enable my students to form their own opinions on Catholicism, but also on other types of Christianity, and other religions and world-views, because I’m able to point to differences and similarities from my particular perspective. Rest assured, it is not my task to try to convert people to Catholicism, it is my task to enable them to form their own opinions on things they very often know nothing about.


While I wait for De Ceulaer’s unstoppable train of “a state-imposed neutral viewpoint” (I thought we were passed the violence – indeed! – of totalitarian atheist regimes in Europe), there’s another train coming as well. De Ceulaer’s words inadvertently made me think of a statement by Islamist preacher Anjem Choudary, who was interviewed by CNN-host Brian Stelter (on the August 31, 2014 edition of the program Reliable Sources):


“I believe that the Sharia is the best way of life. I believe that one day it will come to America and the rest of the world.”


Apparently we are living in “end times”. 


The apocalyptic battle is on. Which train will win?


 freedom of speech megaphone


4. Some more words on the religion/homosexuality analogy


Some atheists say:


“No man is born religiously, religion is a perversion of human nature.”


Note: some argue that the inclination to believe in God can be situated in the brain – since when are brains “unnatural”? Of course, it is not because something is “natural” that it is “good” – maybe pedophilia is also a natural inclination, that doesn’t mean it’s good. It is quite funny, though, how some atheists argue that homosexuality should be allowed because of a “gay gene”, while at the same time they argue that theists should no longer allow their faith because of a “God gene”.


Some religious people (but there are atheists as well who think like this) say:


“No man is born gay, homosexuality is a perversion of human nature.”


Well, of course no one is born with a particular gay partner and a particular way to experience his homosexuality, but the homosexual inclination is there. And no, lovingly or passionately talking about a partner is not synonymous with an attempt to convince other people that they should also start an intense relationship with that partner. They’re still free to choose their own partners, but at least they get a testimony on what it means to be in a relationship with someone.


Are there homosexuals with a distorted, disrespectful sexual life (disrespectful towards other gays)? Sure, like there are heterosexuals with a distorted sexuality; this doesn’t mean that homosexuality as such is a perversion.


Well, of course no one is born with a particular religion and a particular way to experience his sense of awe for what transcends human life (atheists have this spiritual experience as well as theists), but we could argue that a “religious inclination” is there. And no, lovingly or passionately talking about a religion is not synonymous with an attempt to convince other people that they should also start an intense relationship with that religion. They’re still free to choose their own religions, but at least they get a testimony on what it means to be religious.


Most sexual relationships don’t involve rape. The same reasoning goes for religion: most religious beliefs and conducts don’t involve violence. Of course, certain media and polarizing populists often don’t like “the ordinary” – they go for “the sensational”.


Are there religious people with a distorted, disrespectful religious life (disrespectful towards other people)? Sure, like there are atheists with a world-view that encourages disrespectful attitudes towards other people; this doesn’t mean that every religion or world-view is a perversion.


Anyway, some fundamentalist Christians blame homosexuals for some of the main evils in the world (click here for my previous post on this), like some atheists blame religious people (“people with gods kill people”) for some of the main evils in the world. That’s why De Ceulaer says: “Get rid of the merchants of religion in our schools!” As if we’re perverting the youth. This mirrors the reasoning of some religious fundamentalists who ask to “Get rid of the merchants of sexual perversion – homosexuality – in our schools!” As if gays are perverting the youth.




The paradox is that so-called “anti-religionists” create a new religious structure according to a scapegoat mechanism. However, there are enough spiritual minds (whether theist or atheist) who can free us from our scapegoating impulses (whether theist or atheist).


Conclusion:


Every ideological, non-spiritual religion its scapegoat, whether atheist or theist?




					


	



		
			


	

		

		

				
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From time to time I’m confronted with objections to mimetic theory that, looked at more closely, are based on some misconceptions. Here are some clarifications, hopefully. (For more on scientific research concerning imitation, click here: Mimesis and Science).


1. REGARDING MIMETIC DESIRE


Already in 1961, publishing Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque, René Girard made the world familiar with his concept of mimetic desire. Mimetic desire is literally desire based on imitation. Like so many others before and after him, Girard observes that human beings are highly mimetic creatures. Humans imitate each other in all sorts of ways and thereby learn from each other – they learn good as well as bad behavior… To name but one example, people imitate the sounds of their environment and learn to speak, for instance, with a Texan accent. I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing :).


By introducing the concept of mimetic desire, Girard stresses that our desire is structured by imitating others who function as models for our desire. It is important to distinguish this type of desire from our basic biological or physical needs. When you’re walking in the desert alone and your body is yearning for water, your desire for water is, of course, not based on the imitation of someone else’s desire. True, nature has its impact on human life. However, when our basic physical needs are met, our desire goes beyond them. Our basic need for water is transformed in what eventually became a supermarket world that asks us to choose between different types of water, juices and soft drinks. Growing up, we develop a certain taste, transmitted to us by our social and cultural surroundings. We might even develop desires that not only go further than our physical needs, but also against them (anorexia being one example).


coca cola thirst asks nothing moreSo, it’s not just nature that defines human life, nurture has its way too… We all have the biological need for food, but if we were born in another part of the world we would probably have developed different eating habits. It’s as simple as that. We imitate others. We mimetically learn to quench our natural thirst and to satisfy our natural hunger in a certain, culturally dependent way. No one is born with the desire for the newest soft drink produced by The Coca-Cola Company (indeed, Thou Shalt Covet What Thy Neighbor Covets – click to read this article by famous marketeer Martin Lindstrom), as no one is born with the desire to become a police officer. Our identities are not ahistorically determined from birth, they’re co-created with others.


We always write our personal history together with others, and we mutually influence each other. Since we’re social creatures we cannot escape this influence. Relationships precede and shape our (sense of) identity. Even if we go against our tendency to imitate an immediate social environment that seems indifferent towards the victim of some crime or accident (see “Bystander Effect” – click for more), we probably still imitate heroic examples from stories we grew up with (“The Good Samaritan” may be one of them).


Two questions often appear after these considerations, which show just how hard it is to let go of any type of Ego Illusion:


    

  1. We often imitate others to adjust to our social environment. We imitate others because we desire social recognition. So, our desire for social recognition must be more fundamental than our mimetic tendencies, no?
    2. 

  2. If we imitate each other’s desire for something, someone still has to be the first to desire that something. Surely, the latter’s desire cannot be based on imitation, can it?
    3. 



I’ve answered the first question before, but I’ll repeat it here. Of course we often imitate others to ‘fit in’. However, we could not develop a desire to fit in if it weren’t for our mimetic abilities. Our mimetic abilities allow us to put ourselves in each other’s shoes. They allow us to pretend that we are someone else. For instance, a little girl playing with her dolls pretends being a mother by imitating real mothers. Our mimetic abilities allow us, thereby, to imagine – however preliminary – what others are experiencing, expecting and desiring. So our ability to empathize and to adjust to the expectations of others (maybe to gain their recognition) rests on mimetic ability.


The second question seems very logical. Confronted with real life cases, the quest for ‘the first model’ is not that easy to answer though. Even simple situations show it might be the wrong question. Think, for instance, about two babies in a room full of toys. Let’s name the two Bobby and Johnny. Bobby starts playing with a little ball. Note that he didn’t necessarily wake up with the desire to play with a ball. Already in this sense his desire isn’t his own. It is awakened by people who left him the ball to play with. After just ten seconds, Bobby gets tired of the ball. He doesn’t really enjoy playing with it. So he starts playing with some other toy. He has no desire to play with the ball whatsoever. In comes Johnny. He saw Bobby playing with the ball and this raised Johnny’s attention. Now that the ball is left, Johnny takes the opportunity to start playing with it himself. In this situation Johnny is the imitator. However, when Bobby notices Johnny playing with the ball, he immediately leaves the toy that was more fun to him and tries to lay his hands on the ball Johnny is playing with now. In this situation Bobby is the imitator. In short, Johnny’s desire rests on the imitation of Bobby as model for his desire, while Bobby’s desire rests on the imitation of Johnny as model for his desire. It’s no use asking “Who’s first?” Johnny and Bobby mutually reinforce each other’s desire by becoming each other’s model and imitator. Thereby they become each other’s rival. René Girard speaks of the rivalry between mimetic doubles. More generally, we become each other’s rival if we cannot or do not want to share the object of our mimetic desire. Here’s an example – it could have been Bobby and Johnny 🙂 – CLICK TO WATCH:




2. REGARDING RITUAL SACRIFICE


Some consider René Girard’s explanations on the origin and maintenance of human cultures far-fetched. Well, are they?


René Girard considers the very first sacrificial rituals as imitations of a scapegoat mechanism in groups of primitive humans whose internal (mimetic) rivalry threatened to destroy the group itself. Primitive human societies experienced the killing of one member of their group by a significant part of the community as something which restored calm and order. This must have happened so much in primitive human societies that they started making certain associations.


On the one hand primitive societies experience turmoil as long as ‘the common enemy’ is alive, while on the other hand they experience peace after he is beaten to death. Gradually they will associate new situations of disorder with the resurgence of a former victim of group violence. In other words, they experience a person who is not visibly present anymore, but whose presence is ‘felt’ in situations of turmoil. In other words still, one of the former victims of group violence has become a ‘ghost’ or a ‘god’. At the same time, primitive human societies also ‘learn’ that killing someone apparently restores order. So together with the belief in ghosts and gods considered responsible for all kinds of possible violent disasters, the belief originates concerning the effectiveness of sacrifices to restore, renew and/or keep order, life and stability in human society. If primitive societies would have seen that the victims of group violence are no more responsible for violence than other members of the group, they would not have developed these beliefs. Violence became something sacred because the victims of group violence were considered exclusively responsible for the violence they were associated with. Those victims were scapegoats.


ancient human sacrificeGirard argues that all other associations regarding ‘the sacred’ rest on this first association between violence and divinized victims of group violence. Everything that can be associated with violence had the potential to become sacred or divinized as well. Sexuality became sacred. Indeed, sometimes males fight over females. Food became sacred. Indeed, people fight over food sometimes. Territory  became sacred. Indeed, people go to war sometimes because of territory. Nature as a whole became sacred. Indeed, natural disasters are ‘violent’ and provoke violence if they cause lack of food and water… And so the world and the experience of man became sacred.


Religions came and went, but the age-old associations regarding the sacred were transmitted down the generations. The Greeks still had Ares, god of war, as they had their goddess of love, Aphrodite. The Romans copied (indeed, ‘imitated’) the Greeks and spoke of Mars and Venus.


Asked why they perform their rituals and sacrifices and why they respect their taboos, primitive societies always answer: “Because our ancestors did it, and because we have to respect the ghosts and the gods in order to sustain our community…”


Could it really be true that the structure of ancient human sacrifice goes back to a mechanism that can still be observed in our ape cousins? And that this mechanism provides the foundation of the archaic sacred? Is it far-fetched to suspect that the former fact (the structure of ancient human sacrifice, which begins with a fight!) has something to do with the latter fact (the scapegoat mechanism)?


Pavlov DogGirard has argued that the dividing line between human and ape lies in the way mimetic quarrels became a threat to the survival of primitive human communities. Precisely because the mimetic ability of humans grew, their tendency towards near uncontrollable mimetic rivalry increased likewise. Hence it became possible that humans began to make associations that their ape cousins could not make regarding the communal killing of a group member. Compare to Pavlov’s dog: a dog who has only arbitrarily or sporadically heard a signal while getting food will not drool if he hears the signal, while Pavlov’s dog who has systematically heard the signal while getting food will at some point start to drool from the moment he merely hears the signal… Apes won’t associate turmoil with a victim, while primitive humans will start to do exactly that at some point. The consequences can be suspected: primitive humans will start to consciously ritualize the scapegoat mechanism, while apes only experience this mechanism sporadically. Here’s a powerful example of the mechanism, nonetheless, observed in a group of monkeys. We can almost observe how it must have been like that ‘a loathed enemy’ became ‘a revered god’. This also explains why gods have a ‘dual’, ‘ambiguous’ quality.They’re good and bad…


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Shane Koyczan is a spiritual man. A man of poetry and gentle madness. A man of stories, a man of truth. A man of beauty. His poem To This Day would be a great way to end a first part of a journey with mimetic theory in high school, especially regarding what I’ve written so far on the film American Beauty. It could follow these posts:


    

  1. Mimetic Theory in High School (click to read)
    2. 

  2. Types of the Scapegoat Mechanism (click to read)
    3. 

  3. Scapegoating in American Beauty (click to read)
    4. 

  4. Philosophy in American Beauty (click to read)
    5. 

  5. Real Life Cases of Ressentiment (click to read)
    6. 



quote A weed is but an unloved flower Ella Wheeler WilcoxTo This Day and Shane’s TED-talk contain many themes I’ve written about before, for instance in a post entitled Atheism: a lack of unbelief?:


A person’s worth cannot be determined solely by human perception and judgment. Man is not simply the child of a “social other”, i.e. the product of a man-made social environment in which he gains or loses a sense of (self-) worth. He’s also, following the thoughts of people like James Alison and Emmanuel Levinas, a child of “the other Other”, and we should postpone any final judgment on other people and ourselves.


It also reminded me of this famous quote: “Every finite spirit believes either in a God or in an idol” (Max Scheler, 1874-1928). I wrote about this in several posts before, for instance in a post entitled That is (not) the question, about rap star Diam’s conversion to Islam – it talks about how we have the tendency to sacrifice ourselves and others to the demands of a so-called admirable (self-)image that seeks confirmation and recognition:


quote Shane Koyczan Be the weedDiam’s discovered how she tried to live up to the expectations of her fans, and how this enslaved her. She was kneeling to an image of herself as the admirable idol her fans wanted her to be. Kneeling to Allah, on the other hand, apparently meant that Diam’s no longer bowed to the demands of the music and entertainment industry. It was a turning point in her life. It enabled her to free herself, and to criticize the priorities in her life. From now on, she would seek and explore another source of motivations for her life.


Finally, Shane Koyczan’s story is reminiscent of Peter Howson’s story in a post entitled Desert Moments with Peter Howson:


“I used to be very badly bullied at school and when I was a bouncer in a nightclub for quite a few years I changed in a false sense then, and became a bully myself.” In other words: Howson became the imitator of his persecutors… He followed the mimetic principle of vengeance.


CLICK TO WATCH the video To This Day (click here to read the lyrics in pdf):




I’d like to give some quotes from his TED-talk as well, because they illustrate some key insights from René Girard’s mimetic theory and they reminded me of those previous posts:






quote do not be conformed by this world RomansWe were expected to define ourselves at such an early age, and if we didn’t do it, others did it for us. Geek. Fatty. Slut. Fag. And at the same time we were being told what we were, we were being asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I always thought that was an unfair question. It presupposes that we can’t be what we already are.


See, they asked me what I wanted to be, then told me what not to be. And I wasn’t the only one. We were being told that we somehow must become what we are not, sacrificing what we are to inherit the masquerade of what we will be. I was being told to accept the identity that others will give me. 


quote be this guyOne of the first lines of poetry I can remember writing was in response to a world that demanded I hate myself. From age 15 to 18, I hated myself for becoming the thing that I loathed: a bully. When I was 19, I wrote, “I will love myself despite the ease with which I lean toward the opposite.”


CLICK TO WATCH Shane’s TED-talk:



					


	

					




		
			


	

		

		

				
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“As you get older you will learn that loyalty is a virtue too important to be lavished on individual personalities.”


(From That Hideous Strength, by C.S. Lewis).


When I was a child, back in the eighties, my friends and I used to play this hero or superman game. We would identify with some action figure we considered super-dooper and, well, “fight” each other. Or at least we would mimic a fight from an action movie we secretly watched behind our parents back. Most of us were allowed to watch some violence in cartoons, but weren’t allowed to see the real deal – or so we thought… So Rambo and Rocky were out of the question. This prohibition only added to the mystique of these films and ignited our desire to watch them at all costs. It also made the movie characters larger than life, still, if that was even possible.


I remember that we weren’t quite fully aware of the fictitious nature of most heroes. So Sylvester Stallone was different from Rambo and Rocky, as Arnold Schwarzenegger differed from, say, Conan the Barbarian. Mr. T and B.A. Baracus likewise might have had the same look, but were not to be mistaken for each other. Besides, for some strange reason still unknown to us, we could watch the A-Team. Other cardboard characters in our “realm of the gods” were real cartoon (hmm, “real cartoon”) characters like He-Man or G.I. Joe. And Bruce Lee was the ultimate legend, of course.




It was a simpler world then, for me and my friends. There were good guys and bad guys. Heroes and villains. The Cold War hadn’t quite finished, and as children from Europe’s West we would team up with the valiant knights of the USA against the evil empire of the USSR. For instance, together with Rocky we would fight the Russian monstrous man-machine Drago in Rocky IV. Or we would cheer Rambo to outsmart the Soviets with aid of the Taliban in Rambo III (imagine that – how policies change according to newly found “common enemies”!). We had yet to learn that “the Russians love their children too”, although Sting already sang this as far back as 1985.


Growing up, I learned that the battle between good and evil is not really a battle of “us” (the good guys) versus “them” (the bad guys), but should actually be located in the individual.The battle of the handsome He-Man versus the atrocious Skeletor became understandable as a metaphor for an inner struggle in every man’s heart or soul. After all, “we all have our demons to fight”, don’t we? Freudian psycho-analysis would call this battle the source of an ever fragile equilibrium the Ich has to maintain between Es and Über-Ich.




All of a sudden, the world wasn’t that simple anymore. We couldn’t just locate evil outside of ourselves anymore and banish it, like some scapegoat in the desert. Moreover, the heroes we identified with as children turned out to posses some bad character traits as well. It all boils down to your point of view. I once read a testimony from a Jewish woman who survived the Holocaust wherein she states that the most scandalous experience she had back then, was the realization that her tormentor was a human being, just like herself – after seeing him in a gentle mood with his family. Or, to put things slightly different, Superman only appears beneficial among his own kin. From the perspective of his opponents and victims, he is the devil. So to follow some kind of Superman in all circumstances – even if it’s the Superman you imagine yourself to be – is a shady affair. You could become a monster in trying to turn yourself into a hero…




“Yesterday he was a god; today he is a devil; tomorrow he’ll be a man again; that’s all.”


(From The Three Clerks, by Anthony Trollope).


The challenge that arises from this identity crisis is to accept that you yourself and the people you look up to are not the noble heroes you imagined, nor is your opponent or enemy the monster you always thought. Mercy and forgiveness can only come from this kind of acceptance, from the realization that it is okay to be “mere men”. For the longest time humanity has convinced itself that people should strife for perfection no matter what, that people should resemble some godly ideal.


The ancient Greek philosophers basically defended the idea that it’s nature’s law that “man becomes god.” Christianity tells the shocking story that “God becomes man.” Meaning that it’s not even necessary to participate in a battle between “angels and demons” to sustain some sense of identity. Beyond psycho-analytical identity constructions, you are loved just the same. The paradoxical miracle of accepting yourself as “not being a hero”, is that you can truly become a saving grace for others. For it is when we keep on believing the illusion that we can somehow heroically protect ourselves and our own from all harm and that “evil does not happen but far from our quarters”, that we remain blind for the evil that happens on our very doorstep.


When pedophilia scandals came to light in the Catholic Church of Belgium as well, following reports from child abuse by churchmen from around the world and with the infamous case of Bishop Roger Vangheluwe serving as a trigger, one of my colleagues was scandalized because I claimed that we all bear some sort of responsibility in these cases. Let’s face it, when push comes to shove, we often do have the tendency to look the other way and to let others – you know, “professionals” – deal with “sensitive cases”. But even psychiatrists and health care workers, it seems, aren’t to be trusted. The Netherlands were recently shocked by Rieke Samson’s report on child abuse in youth care. And in Belgium there was psychiatrist Walter Vandereycken’s case. He allegedly abused some of his adult female patients.


It’s very easy to express disgust for criminals and wrongdoers, and to feel some relief for “not being part of the corrupt group” that let them have their way. But I think, considering the spread of child abuse cases, that the Gospel is right for revealing the painful truth that we are all, more often than not, like the apostle Peter whose loyalty is refuted by Jesus (Matthew 26:34): “Truly, I tell you, this very night, before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times.” Indeed, when Jesus becomes a victim of the authorities, Peter looks the other way in order to keep himself from getting contaminated with the troubles of his friend.


So it comes as no surprise then that it was easier for the BBC to run a documentary about child abuse in the Catholic Church (The Shame of the Catholic Church), than to give green light for a documentary about the systematic child abuse of one of its celebrity TV-personalities, the late Jimmy Savile. It’s all too human, sadly. But evil is and can be everywhere, also in our own quarters. We might be tempted again to exorcize that evil and restore our sense of identity by “sending a scapegoat into the desert” or by executing large scale witch hunts, but that won’t heal the damage done. It will only increase people’s solicitude to be “on the right side of the line” between good and evil. It will create further mistrust between people and complicate relationships, especially between educators and children. Educators might start to promote a culture of distance between themselves and children, which will again allow malicious minds to gain an aura of inaccessibility and power – and the problem of child abuse might continue by the very measures that tried to avoid it.


As long as we are more preoccupied to safeguard our own “goodness” by blaming each other for all the “badness”, we won’t be able to help any one victim.




To give up on an easy manicheistic duality between good and evil is very difficult. Make no mistake, many of the people who were on Lance Armstrong’s side when he provided the Tour de France with himself as a new legend in cycling publicly loathe him now. He’s gained money for lots of people, and we just love heroic athletes. But ever since he was revealed as a cheat, we’re on the search for new, “real” heroes. And the vicious circle goes on, for no mere man is capable of being that legendary. Maybe he’ll be remembered more positively when he passes away as a tragic old man and long forgotten sports hero. It’s what happened to Michael Jackson and so many other celebrities. Before he died, the general public didn’t care about Jackson’s music anymore, focusing instead on allegations of child abuse and other scandals Jackson was involved in. Dead, he again became the attractive idol he once was. René Girard’s mimetic theory explains parts of our awe for (and idolization of) the dead from deeply embedded and culturally transmitted experiences surrounding victims of mob violence, whose death formerly brought peace and unity to communities.




Mimetic mechanisms time and again trick us into participating in the creation of “heroes” and “monsters” (who are often our former heroes). We constitute the crowd that applauds the emperor’s new clothes, until a child tells us that he really has no clothes. And then Lance walks on, proud as we have taught him to be, and we, doing everything not to lose face, convince ourselves that we somehow knew or didn’t know (depending on our position) of his deception all along…






One can only pray that people like football coach Jerry Sandusky, who abused several boys, are also taken care of by relatives. Else fallen heroes mainly serve as markers to identify and to judge what and who is “good” and what and who is “bad”. To forget that our “heroes” or “zeros” are mostly “mere men”, is to forget our own humanity. It means that we will imitate the crowd that claims to be “righteous”. It means that we will identify with the hero we imagine ourselves to be to destroy “the bad guys” outside ourselves. It means that we will unwittingly become monsters ourselves, equal to the monster we were trying to destroy – its double. Shouldn’t we be preoccupied with Sandusky’s victims instead of Sandusky himself? To listen to the voice of the Victim in our midst, instead of the thousands of godly heroes in our head that put “us” against “them”, well… that’ll be the day…


For insofar as there is jealousy, strife, and factions among you, aren’t you fleshly, and don’t you walk in the ways of men? For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” aren’t you fleshly? […] Therefore let no one boast in men. For all things are yours, whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come. All are yours, and you are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.


(1 Corinthians 3:3-4 & 3:21-23).

					


	



		
			


	

		

		

				
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“It seems profoundly damaging to the dignity of the human being, and for this reason morally illicit, to support a prevention of AIDS that is based on a recourse to means and remedies that violate an authentically human sense of sexuality, and which are a palliative to the deeper suffering which involve the responsibility of individuals and of society.” (John Paul II, November 15, 1989 – addressing the 4th International Conference of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Health Care Workers).


1. WORLD AIDS DAY


The United Nations’ (UN) World AIDS Day is held on December 1 each year to honor the victims of the AIDS pandemic and focus attention on the prevention and treatment of HIV and AIDS related conditions. The Catholic Church is often depicted as an obstacle in the struggle against this terrifying disease. In reality, however, the Church’s assessment of the pandemic makes more sense than we might expect. The Christian season of Advent seems a suitable time to reflect on these issues a little more, especially one week after World Aids Day. Those familiar with mimetic theory will once again notice how the insights of René Girard shine through, and how MT once again proves to be a poignant framework for analysing our ongoing ‘human affairs’.


2. MORE COMPLEX SOCIAL TRUTHS COVERED UP BY MEDIATIZED SCAPEGOAT MECHANISMS


Edward C. Green (senior research scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health) and Michael Cook (editor of BioEdge and MercatorNet) both wrote interesting articles on the massive problem of HIV and AIDS in Africa, questioning the assumption of some media that the Catholic Church and John Paul II in particular are responsible for millions of African AIDS victims. Cook’s article is aptly entitled In search of a scapegoat. He asks whether John Paul II was indeed the greatest mass murderer of the 20th century. To answer this question, he presents some data which ought to make us westerners reflect on the way we usually construct our perception of different African problems.




Recent empirical evidence seems to support the Church’s claim that the problem of AIDS in Africa won’t be solved by a one-sided promotion of condom-use. Edward C. Green’s contribution in the Washington Post (March 29, 2009), Condoms, HIV-AIDS and Africa – The Pope Was Right, points to a very paternalistic, even patronizing tendency in the way we present solutions to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa. We all too often seem to project the social context wherein we make use of condoms, onto radically different African situations. In the words of Green: “The condom has become a symbol of freedom and – along with contraception – female emancipation, so those who question condom orthodoxy are accused of being against these causes.” The reality, of course, is that the use of condoms in Africa – and the Third World in general – is often promoted to protect more or less suppressed young women and sex workers against imprudent and excessive sexual demands. This reality itself often remains ‘untouched’ by the promotion of condom-use. Green again, from the same article: “… liberals and conservatives agree that condoms cannot address challenges that remain critical in Africa such as cross-generational sex, gender inequality and an end to domestic violence, rape and sexual coercion.”


So, instead of becoming a symbol of emancipation and freedom, the condom in the Third World seems well on its way to transform into a fig leaf behind which systems of social inequality are hidden. In some instances, the success of condom-use suggests a relapse in the urgency to fundamentally tackle social issues. The promotion of condom-use to fight the HIV/AIDS epidemic did work in some Asian countries. However, perhaps not surprisingly, this happened in the context of an exploitative sex-industry, which is supported in large by western sex tourists and (therefore?) remains insufficiently criticized. Green, once more: “Let me quickly add that condom promotion has worked in countries such as Thailand and Cambodia, where most HIV is transmitted through commercial sex and where it has been possible to enforce a 100 percent condom use policy in brothels (but not outside of them).”


Should this kind of ‘success’ become the example of how to fight the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa? Apart from revealing some sort of perverse cynicism towards the abilities of developing countries to really take matters into their own hands and change the ways of their ‘corrupted worlds’ (and the West’s share in that corruption), this idea of ‘choosing the lesser evil’ is doomed to fail in African countries, as is shown by recent history. Edward C. Green points out two important reasons for this failure: “One reason is ‘risk compensation.’ That is, when people think they’re made safe by using condoms at least some of the time, they actually engage in riskier sex. Another factor is that people seldom use condoms in steady relationships because doing so would imply a lack of trust. (And if condom use rates go up, it’s possible we are seeing an increase of casual or commercial sex.) However, it’s those ongoing relationships that drive Africa’s worst epidemics. In these, most HIV infections are found in general populations, not in high-risk groups such as sex workers, gay men or persons who inject drugs. And in significant proportions of African populations, people have two or more regular sex partners who overlap in time. In Botswana, which has one of the world’s highest HIV rates, 43 percent of men and 17 percent of women surveyed had two or more regular sex partners in the previous year. These ongoing multiple concurrent sex partnerships resemble a giant, invisible web of relationships through which HIV/AIDS spreads. A study in Malawi showed that even though the average number of sexual partners was only slightly over two, fully two-thirds of this population was interconnected through such networks of overlapping, ongoing relationships.”


To put it more bluntly, in developing countries condoms seem consistently used by professional (often exploited) sex workers, but fail to have any lasting impact on people’s promiscuous behavior outside the context of commercial sex. It is noteworthy that in both instances the use of condoms doesn’t affect the way in which people, especially women, are treated. Michael Cook remains ‘grounded’ as he refers to the seemingly far more fundamental social causes of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa: “The… assumption is that condoms are essential for preventing AIDS in Africa. In the words of researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, ‘The condom is a life-saving device: it is highly effective in preventing HIV transmission if used correctly and consistently, and is the best current method of HIV prevention for those who are sexually active and at risk’. However, notice that this dogma is limited by two significant qualifications: ‘if used correctly and consistently’. How often can we expect this to happen in southern Africa? If the experts haven’t been able to end AIDS in San Francisco and Sydney by promoting condoms, what makes them think that they will succeed in Africa? […] In the chaotic social environment of many African countries, where poverty is endemic, women are regularly abused and polygamy is widespread, men are unlikely to use condoms consistently. As President Museveni of Uganda has observed, ‘In countries like ours, where a mother often has to walk 20 miles to get an aspirin for her sick child or five miles to get any water at all, the question of getting a constant supply of condoms may never be resolved’. A recent study of condom use in the developing world in the journal Studies in Family Planning summed up the situation with these damning words: ‘no clear examples have emerged yet of a country that has turned back a generalised epidemic primarily by means of condom promotion’. This is most clearly seen in southern Africa. High HIV transmission rates have continued despite high rates of condom use. In Botswana, says Professor Norman Hearst, of the University of California at San Francisco, condom sales rose from one million in 1993 to 3 million in 2001 while HIV prevalence amongst urban pregnant women rose from 27 per cent to 45 percent. In Cameroon condom sales rose from 6 million to 15 million while HIV prevalence rose from 3 per cent to 9 per cent.”


3. THE POPE WAS/IS RIGHT?


The Church, and John Paul II in particular, has always – consistently and stubbornly – focused on the social realities behind the problem of HIV/AIDS in Africa. That’s why, besides also sometimes distributing condoms as a ‘last resort’, Catholic field workers keep on engaging in educational programs to empower women and to humanize sexual relationships. Michael Cook: “About 27 per cent of health care for HIV/AIDS victims is provided by Church organisations and Catholic NGOs… They form a vast network of clinics which reach the poorest, most remote and most neglected people in Africa.” More and more, and contrary to popular opinion in the so-called First World, the assumptions and strategies of these Church organizations are – though somewhat stealthily – adopted by experts, especially following some recent studies concerning the effectiveness of condom-use promotion. Edward C. Green: “In 2003, Norman Hearst and Sanny Chen of the University of California conducted a condom effectiveness study for the United Nations’ AIDS program and found no evidence of condoms working as a primary HIV-prevention measure in Africa. UNAIDS quietly disowned the study. (The authors eventually managed to publish their findings in the quarterly Studies in Family Planning.) Since then, major articles in other peer-reviewed journals such as the Lancet, Science and BMJ have confirmed that condoms have not worked as a primary intervention in the population-wide epidemics of Africa. In a 2008 article in Science called ‘Reassessing HIV Prevention’ 10 AIDS experts concluded that ‘consistent condom use has not reached a sufficiently high level, even after many years of widespread and often aggressive promotion, to produce a measurable slowing of new infections in the generalized epidemics of Sub-Saharan Africa.'”


We should carefully pay attention to what’s actually being said here. Condom-use is not condemned, it’s just presented – in accordance to ‘the facts on the ground’ – as not being the real and morally desirable solution to the problem of HIV/AIDS in Africa. At the end of his article, Green once again stresses what experts nowadays perceive as ‘the first priority’ to assess the epidemic – and indeed seems to show that ‘The Pope Was Right’: “Don’t misunderstand me; I am not anti-condom. All people should have full access to condoms, and condoms should always be a backup strategy for those who will not or cannot remain in a mutually faithful relationship. This was a key point in a 2004 ‘consensus statement’ published and endorsed by some 150 global AIDS experts, including representatives of the United Nations, World Health Organization and World Bank. These experts also affirmed that for sexually active adults, the first priority should be to promote mutual fidelity.”


In a 2010 interview with German journalist Peter Seewald, pope Benedict XVI responded to the statement that “It is madness to forbid a high-risk population to use condoms” by the following reflection (which is very much in line with the recent conclusions of experts in the field): “There may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility, on the way toward recovering an awareness that not everything is allowed and that one cannot do whatever one wants. But it is not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection. That can really lie only in a humanization of sexuality. [The Church] of course does not regard [the use of condoms] as a real or moral solution, but, in this or that case, there can be nonetheless, in the intention of reducing the risk of infection, a first step in a movement toward a different way, a more human way, of living sexuality.”


The promotion of relationships based on mutual respect and, if possible, mutual fidelity, indeed has proven to be more effective than a one-sided promotion of condoms without addressing social issues. This is shown by the example of Uganda. Edward C. Green: “So what has worked in Africa? Strategies that break up… multiple and concurrent sexual networks – or, in plain language, faithful mutual monogamy or at least reduction in numbers of partners, especially concurrent ones. ‘Closed’ or faithful polygamy can work as well. In Uganda’s early, largely home-grown AIDS program, which began in 1986, the focus was on ‘Sticking to One Partner’ or ‘Zero Grazing’ (which meant remaining faithful within a polygamous marriage) and ‘Loving Faithfully.’ These simple messages worked. More recently, the two countries with the highest HIV infection rates, Swaziland and Botswana, have both launched campaigns that discourage people from having multiple and concurrent sexual partners.” Michael Cook, on the same example of Uganda, which deserves to be imitated and improved upon: “In fact, the history of AIDS in Uganda supports the Church’s belief that abstinence and fidelity within marriage are actually the best ways to fight AIDS. In 1991, the infection rate in Uganda was 21 per cent. Now, after years of a simple, low-cost program called ABC, it has dropped to about 6 per cent. ABC stands for Abstain, Be faithful, or use Condoms if A and B are not practiced. Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni preaches the ABC of AIDS with the fervour of an evangelist. ‘I am not in favour of condoms in primary and even secondary schools… Let condoms be a last resort,’ he said recently at an international AIDS conference in his capital, Kampala. ‘I have grown-up children and my policy was to frighten them out of undisciplined sex. I started talking to them from the age of 13, telling them to concentrate on their studies, that the time would come for sex’. Ms Toynbee contended in [a] diatribe in the Guardian that ‘abstinence and celibacy are not the human condition’. But Museveni – no innocent about the human condition – thinks that they are. ‘We made it our highest priority to convince our people to return to their traditional values of chastity and faithfulness or, failing that, to use condoms,’ he told American pharmaceutical executives a couple of years ago. ‘The alternative was decimation’.”


4. MASS MEDIA: THE HOWLING CROWD


Considering all these facts, I cannot escape the impression that the outrage of our western mass media over the millions of AIDS victims in Africa, is often but a pretext to scorn the Catholic Church. It has become one more outlet for the hollow and howling crowds of ‘Pharisees’ in the West who vainly try to boast of some moral superiority. In other words, some media exploit the way in which the Church addresses the HIV/AIDS epidemic (especially in Africa) to serve their own ends, adding absolutely nothing to the solution of this scourge (as John Paul II called it). Moreover, these media actually keep on perceiving African people in a patronizing way. Africans are – at least implicitly – said to be incapable of educating themselves and to be highly dependent of our western ways of life as models we present them to live by. In a sense, popular opinion in the West concerning Africa only mimics a spirit of earlier ‘Catholic’ colonialism it desperately seeks to differ itself from.


We often fail to raise the question whether our ways of life are actually worth imitating, and at the same time we exaggerate our (and, for that matter, the pope’s) influence on the minds and the behavior of ‘the African people’. Michael Cook reveals the underlying paternalism, simplistic reasoning and contradictions in the way some of our media abuse the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa to demonize the late John Paul II and the Catholic Church in general: “… there is something absurdly medieval about making the Pope a scapegoat, as if the clouds would break and the sun shine if we thrust enough pins through a JP2 voodoo doll. Pinning the blame for the tragedy of African AIDS on one man is one of those ideas that are, in the words of George Orwell, ‘so stupid that only intellectuals could believe them.’ Two such ideas run through all these criticisms. The first is basically this: African Catholics are so devout that if they have sex outside of marriage, dally with prostitutes or take a third wife, they will piously refrain from using condoms because the Great White Father told them not to. Ms Toynbee [in an already mentioned article in the Guardian] darkly invokes ‘the Vatican’s deeper power… its personal authority over 1.3 billion worshippers, which is strongest over the poorest, most helpless devotees.’ But she can’t have it both ways: these benighted dark-skinned Catholics can’t be both too goody-two-shoes to use condoms and too wicked to resist temptation. Journalist Brendan O’Neill – who describes himself as an ex-Catholic who has jettisoned Catholic teaching on sexual morality – sums up this patronising argument in the on-line journal Spiked: ‘The only reason you could believe the fantastically simplistic idea that Vatican edict = AIDS in Africa is if you consider Africans to be little more than automatons… who do as they are told’. Superimposing maps of prevalence of AIDS on prevalence of Catholicism is enough to sink the link between the Catholic Church and AIDS. In the hospice which is Swaziland nowadays, only about 5 per cent of the population is Catholic. In Botswana, where 37 per cent of the adult population is HIV infected, only 4 per cent of the population is Catholic. In South Africa, 22 per cent of the population is HIV infected, and only 6 per cent is Catholic. But in Uganda, with 43 per cent of the population Catholic, the proportion of HIV infected adults is 4 per cent.”


5. FOR UNTO US A CHILD IS BORN…


We should learn from what happens in Uganda. We should be aware of the precarious and fragile situation countries like these find themselves in. But we should also be aware of the living hope in the hearts of their inhabitants. What message are we directing to the world if we convince ourselves that we ‘should be realistic’, and that the promotion of condom-use is often but the only thing we can do to ‘educate’ the ‘socially deprived’? Are we, once again, promoting our own ‘freedom’ at the cost of impoverished sex workers – victims we can exploit to answer the demands for a despicable kind of ‘tourism’? Who are we to impose our (self-)destructive ways?


What message are we directing to the world if we convince ourselves – looking at the misery of millions around the globe from our cosy and luxurious homes – that ‘there are lots of worse things than never being born’? Are we actually implying that we ‘need’ the suffering of the world to make death a hero?! A world wherein death is welcomed as a ‘hero’ is a morally perverse world. Throughout history human beings have found the strength to transform the struggle for survival into a token of life and dignity, refusing to slavishly undergo the whims of fate. The Hebrew Bible is one of those testimonies of hope against despair, of dignity in the midst of suffering, of life against death, written by a people of ‘losers’ or ‘victims’. Maybe its message will never be fully understood by the so-called influential and powerful – they might abuse it to suppress others even more – , while it is being lived by the so-called fragile and powerless people…




The ‘First World’ is experiencing a deep crisis, hiding its spiritual wasteland behind an unavoidable economic depression of a materialist, empty and self-consuming culture of death. It’s in this world, our world, that the AIDS orphan is born. This child seems to have ‘no home’, but his coming is the real, often uninvited and unaccepted ‘Advent’ and Promise of Life, despite everything. For God’s sake, who could not notice his splendor, glory and might? His birth is a reminder that our world can be healed, as he blesses our sick cynicism before we even realize we threaten to contaminate the physically sick and dying with our messages of desperation. For, unto us a Child is born… and maybe, in order to receive Him properly, we should alter ‘the world we created…’



					


	



		
			


	

		

		

				
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BIG SCANDAL!


My usually sedate hometown was startled last week by the discovery of a ‘celebrity sex tape’: our female mayor allegedly had been secretly videotaped by some Polish tourists during a vacation in Spain four years ago. She was caught having sex with her then boyfriend, in a public area, more specifically on a tower. The passersby filmed from a distance, zooming in on the two lovebirds. Although there is no nudity involved, every adult can suspect the couple is doing something more than merely enjoying the view from a high building. All the ingredients were there for a typical tabloid character assassination.


The tape already circulated on the internet, but only last week some people from our small city stumbled upon it. What was to be expected, happened: immediately our mayor became the laughing stock of specially created Facebook groups, she got a new, not really flattering nickname, and a carnival song was made about the event. Of course some people, including politicians and some media, demanded her resignation. I was (and actually still am) in doubt about the whole situation. I’ve been asking myself whether the reactions towards our mayor are in proportion to her misbehavior. The bottom line is that she could be charged with public indecency. However, this doesn’t happen. I guess Spain has got more important things to spend its tax money on. Hence people somewhat take the law into their own hands. They take matters ‘to the streets’, the virtual ones of the internet, and the real ones of their hometown – whose carnival festivities are UNESCO World Heritage, and are known for their mockery of all kinds of people, especially of local politicians.


As I tried to make clear in a previous post, carnival festivities have all the features of old rituals which are eventually rooted in scapegoat phenomena. I have some reasons to believe that what happens to our mayor is exactly that: a scapegoat phenomenon. People who use their time and energy to publicly make fun of her, blame their own actions entirely on the way their victim, our mayor, behaved. In other words, they make our mayor a scapegoat, unwittingly transforming themselves into persecutors. They say “She had it coming, she asked for it”, while technically, in purely juridical terms, that’s not exactly the case. There is no proof whatsoever that she asked to be videotaped and to be put ‘online’. The passersby are still responsible for their own actions. They were not obliged to film her, as we are not obliged to mock her.


I must admit I find the situation somewhat hilarious myself, but I think we shouldn’t exploit it to the point of ‘public shame’. I can imagine myself, or someone else for that matter, telling some anecdote about an embarrassing moment in my life (at the doctor’s office, anyone?), as I can imagine our mayor joking about something awkward that happened in her life. It all makes a good laugh. But to use the kind of mistake our mayor made to demand someone’s resignation, seems out of proportion to me. Even more so because she is only partly responsible for what happened. She didn’t steal anything, nor committed adultery, nor killed anyone. She was caught in an act many lovers could have been caught in.


There was a time (indeed, “was”) when lovebirds drove to an abandoned public area to make love to each other. It’s one of the more recognizable moments in American Graffiti, a movie by George Lucas. When a couple makes love in a car, near a river, two people pass by, but they leave the couple to itself.


This scene is contrasted by yet another early movie of George Lucas, THX 1138, which seems to be a perfect reflection of our current situation. Like 1984, the famous novel by George Orwell, THX 1138 portrays a future society where people are constantly watched by each other and by cameras. The film shows a totalitarian regime, a world without freedom, where people constantly have to fear their neighbor might give away their ‘mistakes’. In THX 1138, a couple is making love while being watched by a band of ‘Big Brothers’, who eventually convict the couple.


The troubling thing is we don’t need a war to end up in a situation like the one described in George Orwell’s 1984, or portrayed in THX 1138, although the atrocities of war facilitate certain social reflexes. For example, after the second world war people publicly shamed women who were known to have a German, Nazi boyfriend. These women were accused of ‘collaboration’, and since official, legal charges take a lot of time to be followed through, impatient crowds took the matter into their own hands. As said, apparently you don’t need stores of rage and vengefulness, built by a traumatizing war, to seduce people to mock someone. You just need a person who ‘stands out from the crowd’ a bit, a ‘public figure’. A mayor, or some other ‘celebrity’. Kurt Cobain, late front-man of grunge pioneers Nirvana, describes it well when he reflects on how the media constantly try to find sensational stories about him and his lover, Courtney Love: “I think we’re just easy scapegoats… We turn into cartoon characters.” Being an easy scapegoat is one of the burdens of being a celebrity, which allegedly made Kurt Cobain commit suicide at the age of 27. But you don’t have to be a celebrity to be harassed, mocked and bullied. Tyler Clementi, a promising young man, was secretly videotaped by his classmates while having a sexual encounter with another man. The video was posted on the internet, as a ‘joke’. Eventually Tyler jumped to his death from the George Washington Bridge, September 22, 2010. He was only eighteen years old.


There’s no place in this world for over-sensitive people. So it seems. To quote Charlie Chaplin from his magnificent speech in his equally magnificent film The Great Dictator: “Our knowledge has made us cynical. Our cleverness hard and unkind.” Indeed, we seem to use our knowledge to gain power over others and to “turn them into cartoon characters”. Yet I still believe we have a choice, as ‘free’ individuals, not to give in to processes of victimization and of scapegoating. We can give in to the power of a Love that wants to know the person ‘behind the cartoon’, that is concerned with personalities ‘beyond labels’. To ‘murder’ a person is to ‘steal’ his or her ‘nakedness’, his or her soul… We have a choice not to do that…


Alice Nahon, a Flemish poet from Antwerp, puts it this way (free translation):


“Before you go to sleep,


Look into your own heart,


And ask yourself:


Did I hurt someone’s heart


In the time between dawn and dusk?”


 


In Dutch:


‘t Is goed in ‘t eigen hert te kijken


Nog even voor het slapen gaan


Of ik van dageraad tot avond


Geen enkel hert heb zeer gedaan.


I’m a weak person and a coward in many ways, and I need this advice every day. I once met a drunk man on a bus who made racist remarks to a black woman. He asked me to hold his bottle of whiskey for him, while he kept harassing the lady. I remember the rage in his eyes, and the way he asked my approval of his behavior. I was too afraid to stand up against what he was doing. I forced myself to laugh. At the next stop, I got off the bus, 4 miles from home (around 6 kilometers), and continued walking. To this day I feel ashamed and sad about what happened then. From this experience I learned that it is necessary to question the deeper motivations of our actions at any time, in order not to commit evil where we see ‘no harm’, and where we think we are entitled to ‘defend ourselves’ or even ‘assert ourselves’… ‘creatively’. Not all of our actions are as innocent as they might seem. I don’t want to point fingers. I just made the next video compilation to reflect on what we are capable of as human beings – and I need this reflection as much, or even more so, as you do, dear reader.


Please click the following image to watch the video, and feel free to post comments (the quote on ‘common people’ is by alternative rock band Pulp, from their song by the same name)


– CLICK TO WATCH: