Virtuality Reality

So, which is more virtual and which more real -- the online game or the poker game?

Games East and West

Black and white: absolute opposites, in the moral sphere which is the most significant of all, or friendly rivals / collaborators in the swirl of the tai-chih?

Do not let a pastime upset true affection
You can still accord with kind and say "I win."
The contest over, black and white are collected into two boxes
And where is there any trace of loss or gain?

These words of Wang An-Shih, 11th century Chinese statesman, are found on the same page as the description of the ideal go stones above. They remind me of William Blake: Opposition is true friendship.

Icons of Sanctity

Which of these two is the greater saint?

I raise this question in order to probe our easy assumptions about sanctity, religion, and -- yes -- both Mother Teresa and Mahatma Gandhi.

Gandhi, portrayed here in an icon as a Christian saint, was an extremely devout Hindu, a masterful strategist, and by no means the absolute pacifist he is sometimes taken to be. Should he be considered a saintly figure -- or even a Christ-like one? Is sanctity possible extra ecclesia?

And Mother Teresa? She hobnobbed with the Duvaliers in Haiti, even going so far as to declare that they loved their people... Does that make her an aider and abettor of dictators, or one who judges not lest she be judged? In her concern for the souls of the dying she was faithful to Catholic doctrine in a manner which was naturally offensive to many Indians, and to humanistic thinking in general.

Is sanctity itself a prerogative of the Vatican, or an naturally occurring human quality of compassionate commitment?

Respecting the Qu'ran

Abuse of the Qu'ran -- did it take place? Being neither an eyewitness nor privy to closely held secrets, I cannot know the answer.

The strongest argument against the allegations is that made by Col. Blackner in the first of the quotes above, and Juan Cole echoes it, writing:

Of course, one can hardly take the word of jihadis reporting on the United States, which they hate and would be happy to defame.

However, as our second quote shows, the International Committee of the Red Cross says that they received credible reports of Quran desecration and brought the issue to the attention of the Pentagon, and that the reports ceased after the Pentagon issued guidelines against such abuse.

It seems unlikely that al-Qaida would cease defaming the US in a spectacularly successful way just because US authorities published a set of guidelines... In short, I'm inclined to suppose the reports were genuine.

Here we see one of several testimonies to abuse of the kind alleged, this one taken from a human rights report, juxtaposed with a vivid description of a US training in which US personnel were prepared for the conditions they might find if they were taken prisoner and subject to gross humiliation... the possibility being that someone who went through this kind of training might well have "recapitulated" it (mutatis mutandis) while serving at Guantanamo Bay.

Mohammed was a general as well as a prophet, and defensive warfare has an undoubted place in Islamic thought -- but not all religious violence is Islamic by any means, as this example of Buddhist monks rioting in Myanmar shows. Another nudge in the direction of subtlety in considering matters about which we may have a tendency towards reflex responses...

Again, much has been made of the fact that a number of people have died in riots resulting from the allegations, the obvious question being whether any book is sacred enough to warrant the deaths of human beings. Allegations of blasphemy against the Qu'ran are a serious business, as the fatwa against Salman Rushdie should already have told us. These two quotes remind us that blasphemy as a capital offense has its origins in the Judeo-Christian tradition, and that Islam values even a single human life.

Finally, Chaplain Yee's powerpoint slide shows that efforts were made to defuse the potential for exactly the kinds of offensive behavior which were alleged (somewhat ironically, granted the accusations leveled against Yee himself), and the image of the late Pope kissing a Qu'ran illustrates what respect for the Qu'ran looks like in action.

Scriptural Parallels

In these days in which representatives of Judaism and Islam are often in contention with one another, it is refreshing to recall the close parallel between two central utterances of the two traditions: the Shema of Judaism and Shahada of Islam.

The Christian and Islamic traditions, likewise, are as one in their acknowledgment that the time of the "last days" cannot be predicated in advance.

Since we are noting close parallels between the texts of the Abrahamic religions, the clear and deliberate echo of Genesis found at the beginning of John's Gospel should also be mentioned -- for beginnings, as well as centers and endings, have their family resemblances...

The Art of Dance

At least there's a mention of cultural diplomacy in one of these two quotes...

Lights, camera, action

These two quotes could serve as keys to an extraordinary study of lux and lumen, inner and outer light, miracle and mere chance, enlightenment and enlightenment, perception and projection.

Lighting, lightning, illumination, enlightenment, halo...

Meals and Musings

As Edward Rothstein shows in his book, Emblems of Mind, quoted in an earlier DoubleQuotes today, music and mathematics are now widely understood to be "sister disciplines" in much the same way that mathematics and physics, or physics and chemistry are. Cooking suggests a slightly different issue -- it may not be a sister discipline to chemistry, it may just be chemistry pursued in a particularly happy disguise.

Whatever your opinion of disciplinary siblings and their petty rivalries, there are liminal areas between disciplines where remarkable creativity can make itself known, and Cantu's restaurant seems to be exemplary of the trend. I'm fascinated by the insights that arise when human conversations and conflicts are understood in terms of musical counterpoint. It's refreshing to know that Glenn Gould (and Edward Said and Maya Deren among others) thought along similar lines -- on the margins between rhetoric and music.

Where that can lead...

Comparisons, they say, are invidious, and it's not easy to say quite what desecration of a sacred symbol might mean as much to an American as the desecration of the Qu'ran does to an Afghan. Burning the US flag -- which rioting Afghans have done in response to the Guantanamo incident -- may be the closest equivalent, but it's not a capital offense in the US...

Perhaps those who felt that the salt-stain on a Chicago underpass wall was a manifestation of the Virgin Mary felt something similar when the image was defaced by graffiti, or when the Chicago authorities then painted it over. There are intensities of religious devotion, I surmise, which cut deeper than even the most precious of secular symbols.

And the Nazis? Is it invidious to compare the "abhorrent" trashing of a Qu'ran at Gitmo with Nazi trashing of a Torah and burning alive of the unfortunate man who refused to dance on it? One thing can lead to another, and to my mind the juxtaposition of the two incidents gives us an idea of the slippery slope we're on.

Condoleeza Rice:

Disrespect for the Holy Koran is not now, nor has it ever been, nor will it ever be, tolerated by the United States.. We honor the sacred books of all the world's great religions. Disrespect for the Holy Koran is abhorrent to us all...

That's public diplomacy.

Twinnings Twain

Two views of the singular importance of twoness...

Meditations on Strife

It was this pair of quotes, found in the writings of two very fine American authors, which set me on the path to these DoubleQuotes many years ago. I quote them frequently: I don't know anything quite like them.

Michael Jackson

Mahatma Gandhi shows us just how eccentric a truly eccentric person's behavior can be, even in terms of its sexual expression, even in the direction of innocence. And King David provides us with a striking parallel...

Along somewhat similar lines, Charles Williams, friend of Tolkien and CS Lewis and theologian of romantic love, tells us of the agapetae of early Christianity:

Paul's comment from I Corinithians is commonly read today as referring either to arranged marriage or to engaged couples -- the former a strained reading, the latter an unfortunate attempt to impose later cultural assumptions on an ancient text. That there were members of the early church who made experiments in chastity is confirmed by the letter of St Cyprian to Pomponius:

We have read, dearest brother, your letter which you sent by Paconius our brother, asking and desiring us to write again to you, and say what we thought of those virgins who, after having once determined to continue in their condition, and firmly to maintain their continency, have afterwards been found to have remained in the same bed side by side with men; of whom you say that one is a deacon; and yet that the same virgins who have confessed that they have slept with men declare that they are chaste.

Cyprian, Epistle LXI

And so we come to the matter of Michael Jackson, and the common enough assumption, expressed here by a music journalist:

Macaulay Culkin's testimony gives me hope: perhaps, after all, there is still room in the mind of the world for a highly eccentric and religious individual to be in such matters an innocent...

Saucy?

The contrast between these two quotes is quite striking. But what's the underlying opposition here? Between libertinism and puritanism? Between Maryland and New Jersey? Between courts and sex toy shops? Or between how we (in the US) treat those we are liberating and how we treat ourselves?

They say what's sauce for the goose...

Attained perfection

Two remarkable writers, two extraordinary projects, each of which is, what can I say, intellectually asymptotic to infinity...

I pulled these two quotes together because after many years' familiarity with each of them, it suddenly occurred to me while rereading the Borges quote that I recognized an echo of Hesse in the phrase attained ... perfection.

Perfection isn't something easily attained by humans, I think -- but Borges and Hesse may be among the few who manage it...

*

Tom Whitmore points me to a very different parallel with the Borges piece -- this one from Lewis Carroll, another of the brilliant attainers:

"That's another thing we've learned from your Nation," said Mein Herr, "map-making. But we've carried it much further than you. What do you consider the largest map that would be really useful?"

"About six inches to the mile."

"Only six inches!" exclaimed Mein Herr. "We very soon got to six yards to the mile. Then we tried a hundred yards to the mile. And then came the grandest idea of all! We actually made a map of the country, on the scale of a mile to the mile!"

"Have you used it much?" I enquired.

"It has never been spread out, yet," said Mein Herr: "the farmers objected: they said it would cover the whole country, and shut out the sunlight! So we now use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well.

From Carroll's Sylvie and Bruno Concluded, first published in 1893.

More and more curious...

Public Diplomacy

Two from today's news.

Ironic, isn't it, that the Arabic-speaking American private who "knows a great deal about the various cultures of the Middle East" and who is appalled by the behavior of his colleagues, winds up leaving the service as a conscientious objector, while the Pentagon is promulgating a doctrine that recommends language-training and cultural sensitivity?

Exits and Entrances

Two sudden reappearances reported in the last few days, one of them apparently "real" news, the other apparently sheer gossip. Which one receives the greater coverage?