The Human Beast by Tom Wolfe

heh ^ | 5 13 06 | Tom Wolfe

[cornelis]

It doesn't get as fundamental as the language we use to communicate

Au contraire, mon ami. The sonofabitch is calling us homo loquax.

[Revolting cat!]

You're right about Wolfe's point in the article, but if we talk about the "moral tone of the time", which is what I thought we were talking about, the language we use didn't come into the equation. Otherwise, we're into Chomskims and such, and I'm not really qualified to go there. Semiotics, or as my prof, a semiotician himself at the time, called it, 'semi-idiotics'?

"Moral tone of the times" is the difference between our approach to life in America, in all that it suggests, today and those that preceeded us in, say, 1956. Sex relations, race relations, employer - employee relations, everything else.

[SirJohnBarleycorn]

Book One, first verse, of the Book of John in the New Testament says cryptically: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." This has baffled Biblical scholars, but I interpret it as follows: Until there was speech, the human beast could have no religion, and consequently no God. In the beginning was the Word. Speech gave the beast its first ability to ask questions, and undoubtedly one of the first expressed his sudden but insatiable anxiety as to how he got here and what this agonizing struggle called life is all about. To this day, the beast needs, can't live without, some explanation as the basis of whatever status he may think he possesses. For that reason, extraordinary individuals have been able to change history with their words alone, without the assistance of followers, money, or politicians.

Wolfe does not credit him in this particular lecture but the Weber who so influenced young Wolfe was, of course, only building upon the insights offered by Nietzsche. Culture is a construct created by the myth-making "charismatic" individual, a Moses, a Jesus, a Mohammed, or so we were taught by Nietzsche (and to Moses et al we can add "Marx" and "Darwin" and "fill in the blank"). Ordinary people operate within, and seek the status defined by, the cultures created by the exceptional culture-creating people. Now the latest wrinkle is that culture-creation is only made possible by speech, and that the rules of culture creation take us above and beyond the simplistic animalistic natural selection theories offered by the Darwinists -- So what?

The "longing for status" that fascinated Weber and later Wolfe is in essence the same "longing for gods" that Nietsche described. As the Word reveals, man without God is idolatrous, and selfish pride (HipHoppers, Good Ole Boys, Fighter Pilots, Society or any other "status group") is no less a form of idolatry than worshipping a golden calf or a false prophet or History with a capital "H" (Marx). And Wolfe undoubtedly must realize that Epictetus and the Stoics are no exception to the rule (reference is to "A Man in Full").

And what if John really did have a revelation from God? And what if Calvin really did have a correct understanding of that revelation? Where does that leave Nietzsche, Weber and Wolfe?

[DaveTesla]

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

John 1-14.
The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.We
have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only who
came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

John was speaking about Jesus.

Jesus was and is the word.

As for the rest they are just using their "intellectualism"
to prop themselves up as gods and saviors. Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche,Antonio Gramsci, Stalin etc...
Have contributed nothing less than the death of 100's of
millions in the last century.

Romans 1.21
For although they knew God, they neither
glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their
thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were
darkened.
Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools
and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images
made to look like mortal man and birds and
animals and reptiles.
Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of
their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their
bodies with one another.
They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped
the creature rather than the Creator who is forever
praised. Amen. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts.
Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones.
In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another.
Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion.
Furthermore, since they did not think it worthwhile to
retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done.
They have become filled with every kind of wickedness,
evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder,
strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips,slanderers,
God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent
ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; they are
senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Although they
know God's righteous decree that those who do such things
deserve death, they not only continue to do these very
things but also approve of those who practice them.