Esoteric Myth in Tragedy

Essential to tragedy in drama are mythical elements giving the reader or viewer an esoteric reference to the mechanics of a story. This dramatic device is effective, because regardless of the cultural background of the audience, the observer can reference the action of the characters, the plot and dialogue to personal experiences common in themes of religion and/or mythology. Mysteries surrounding human existence are a key to drawing interest from a contemplative mind and have been used to influence social interaction as well as to entertain.

Often, tragedy and other forms of drama use death, marriage, child birth, ghosts, dreams, sorcery and religion because they are common experiences in the mysteries of human life. Birth, sex, and death are things that are universal to every human life - - they are inescapable.

Many elements found in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman show these various themes. It can be compared to other tragedies in literature and theater. There is dispute among critics as to whether this is really tragedy or not.

Death of a Salesman has some political elements to it. Is it Miller’s intention to give a Marxist view of American society - - the "victim" mentality of life not being fair, establishing a political necessity to artificially create social institutions that limit the individual freedom to choose your own destiny? Or was Miller’s intention just the opposite? Is Willy Loman a victim of an unfair world or the result of his own failings? Is Uncle Ben the evil capitalist, a devil, an angel or what Willy always wanted to be but lacked the courage to strive for? Many artists, playwrights and authors use their works to promote their political or religious ideology. Is Miller any different?

It can be shown that most art, music and literature (sacred or secular) have an intent to influence rather than just to entertain. Considering the personal views of the artist and conditions of the period of history they live in are factors in what they produce. Does life imitate art or is art just a reflection of human experience?

The elements of myth are always esoteric. The secular drama is a myth in and of itself, it is fiction. Myth is metaphorical, the use of such fiction is for escape from reality. Fiction conjures up phantasms, ghosts of the mind that are representative of an ideal or distasteful reality the author wants the audience to ponder and possibly come to a desired conclusion about.

Willy Loman’s fantasy world of delusion is the character’s attempt to escape from reality. Willy Loman is a phantasm for the observer as are the other characters in the play.

This idea is supported by Thomas Hobbes’ in Leviathan:

Part IV. Of the Kingdom of Darkness Chap. xlv.

Of Demonology and other Relics of the Religion of the Gentiles.

(14) An image, in the most strict signification of the word, is the resemblance of something visible: in which sense the fantastical forms, apparitions, or seemings of visible bodies to the sight, are only images; such as are the show of a man or other thing in the water, by reflection or refraction; or of the sun or stars by direct vision in the air; which are nothing real in the things seen, nor in the place where they seem to be; nor are their magnitudes and figures the same with that of the object, but changeable, by the variation of the organs of sight, or by glasses; and are present oftentimes in our imagination, and in our dreams, when the object is absent; or changed into other colours, and shapes, as things that depend only upon the fancy. And these are the images which are originally and most properly called ideas and idols, and derived from the language of the Grecians, with whom the word eido signifieth to see. They are also called phantasms, which is in the same language, apparitions. And from these images it is that one of the faculties of man's nature is called the imagination. And from hence it is manifest that there neither is, nor can be, any image made of a thing invisible.

(15) It is also evident that there can be no image of a thing infinite: for all the images and phantasms that are made by the impression of things visible are figured. But figure is quantity every way determined, and therefore there can be no image of God, nor of the soul of man, nor of spirits; but only of bodies visible, that is, bodies that have light in themselves, or are by such enlightened.

(16) And whereas a man can fancy shapes he never saw, making up a figure out of the parts of divers creatures, as the poets make their centaurs, chimeras and other monsters never seen, so can he also give matter to those shapes, and make them in wood, clay or metal. And these are also called images, not for the resemblance of any corporeal thing, but for the resemblance of some phantastical inhabitants of the brain of the maker. But in these idols, as they are originally in the brain, and as they are painted, carved moulded or molten in matter, there is a similitude of one to the other, for which the material body made by art may be said to be the image of the fantastical idol made by nature. (Hobbes, p 444)

In Hobbes’ sense of fiction, myth is always esoteric regardless of aesthetic intent. Arthur Miller’s writing of this play seemed to be very careful in avoiding any overt reference to the esoteric. However, these elements do materialize much the same way as in Othello. In the other tragedies written by Shakespeare, there is witchcraft, sorcery and ghosts. In Othello these are conspicuously absent. The magic is in Iago being an archetype of an esoteric devil or Satan.

Arthur Miller’s writing is not immune from this use of such imagery although he goes to great lengths to deny it in Tragedy and the Common Man:

Now, if it is true that tragedy is the consequence of a man’s total compulsion to evaluate himself justly, his destruction in the attempt posits a wrong or an evil in his environment. And this is precisely the morality of tragedy and its lesson. The discovery of the moral law, which is what the enlightenment of tragedy consists of, is not the discovery of some abstract or metaphysical quantity.

The "morality of tragedy" is a curious term. ‘Morals’ or ‘morality’ are nothing more than a replacement for the ‘avoidance of sin.’ An atheist telling someone they are immoral is no different than a preacher or rabbi telling them they are a sinner. The idea of a "moral law" implies a "metaphysical quantity" in this sense. The denial of a "metaphysical quantity" in the above by Miller is also contradicted by himself later in the same essay:

The Greeks could probe the very heavenly origin of their ways and return to confirm the rightness of laws. And Job could face God in anger, demanding his right, and end in submission. But for a moment everything is in suspension, nothing is accepted, and in this stretching and tearing apart of the cosmos, in the very action of so doing, the character gains "size," the tragic stature which is spuriously attached to the royal or high born in our minds. The commonest of men may take on that stature to the extent of his willingness to throw all he has into the contest, the battle to secure his rightful place in the world.

The mention of the Biblical figure Job and the book of Job is an interesting thing to contemplate in reference to the role of the Enemy (or Satan), the Accuser (or Diabolus), the Destroyer (or Abaddon) in the book of Job.

The philosopher Thomas Hobbes, having been fluent in both Greek and Latin by age 9, supports this and, in part, some of the previous claims I made concerning the conflict of pagan Egyptian cosmogony and the Judaic related to Othello:

Part III. Of a Christian Commonwealth.

Chap. xxxviii. Of Eternal Life, Hell, Salvation, and Redemption.

(12) And first, for the tormentors, we have their nature and properties exactly and properly delivered by the names of the Enemy (or Satan), the Accuser (or Diabolus), the Destroyer (or Abaddon). Which significant names (Satan, Devil, Abaddon) set not forth to us any individual person, as proper names do, but only an office or quality, and are therefore appellatives, which ought not to have been left untranslated (as they are in the Latin and modern Bibles), because thereby they seem to be the proper names of demons, and men are the more easily seduced to believe the doctrine of devils, which at that time was the religion of the Gentiles, and contrary to that of Moses, and of Christ.

(13) And because by the Enemy, the Accuser, and Destroyer, is meant the enemy of them that shall be in the kingdom of God, therefore if the kingdom of God after the resurrection be upon the earth (as in the former Chapter I have shewn by Scripture it seems to be), the Enemy and his kingdom must be on earth also. For so also was it in the time before the Jews had deposed God. For God's kingdom was in Israel, and the nations round about were the kingdoms of the Enemy; and consequently, by Satan is meant any earthly enemy of the Church. (Hobbes p 308)

The fact that Miller is Jewish also refutes his claim: "The discovery of the moral law, which is what the enlightenment of tragedy consists of, is not the discovery of some abstract or metaphysical quantity." Judaism is a metaphysical quantity and does color the philosophical element portrayed by the author. The concept of "morals" are a deliberately deceptive substitute for the "avoidance of sin."

Another criticism of Miller’s expressed view in Tragedy and the Common Man can be found in Tragedy & Philosophy by Walter Kaufmann, formerly a professor of philosophy at Princeton:

Some writers stress that there must be moral conflict;¹ others, the importance of belief that failure is compatible with greatness, that greatness and the universe remain mysterious, and that failure must be final and inevitable.² It would be foolish to deny that some such views have been supported with great eloquence. Indeed, it is almost a commonplace that George Büchner’s Woyzeck and Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman are not tragic because the heroes are "pathetic" or, as is sometimes said, anti-heroes. Nevertheless, our exploration of Greek and Shakespearean tragedy suggests that these very attractive views ought to be given up.

The claim that some suffering is merely pitiful and not truly tragic can be neither proved or disproved. But it can be shown to rest on an assumption that is false. This assumption is that both Greek and Shakespearean tragedy concentrated on the tragic and disdained the merely pathetic, and that the loss of this crucial distinction is a modern phenomenon. In fact, we have found that neither the Greeks or Shakespeare did make this distinction. (Kaufman, p 311-312)

^1. E.g. Sidney Hook in "Pragmatism and the Tragic Sense of Life" (1960), Max Scheler, 1915, and Hegel.

^2. E.g. Walter Kaufmann, above all in The Faith of a Heretic (1961), ch. 11.

Taking into account both Kaufmann and Hobbes’ observations in comparison to Miller’s Tragedy and the Common Man, one can see how pathos is an element in drama centered on an esoterically based ideal. The use of pathos relates to the idea of an eternal principle, a connection to the human condition of mortality and the human obsession with the eternal. Kaufmann’s understanding of this is based on his study of Aristotle and his translation of Nietzche’s works. There is a genealogy of drama which is analogous to Nietzche’s idea of a ‘genealogy of morals.’ With the pagan Greeks, drama and theater are directly related to their gods. The traditions of literature also trace their beginnings from the same. In the book of Job there is a recurring conflict between the pagan and the Judaic. The Adversary of Judaic theology figures most prominently in Job.

Thomas Hobbes’ voluminous Leviathan is an undertaking all in itself. Hobbes takes great pains to examine elements of esoteric belief based upon the Judaic mythos and explores the etymological and semantic implications of the Christian and Judaic Bibles (they are not the same things) and how many of the translations are either inaccurate or deliberately misleading. (Hobbes was an expert in both Latin and Greek and was fluent in them at an early age.) Where Hobbes talks about "phantastical inhabitants of the brain," we can look at pathos in the same way. Similarly, the characters in drama or fiction are phantasms. Pathos is very much along the same lines of the despair Søren Kierkegaard describes all throughout The Sickness Unto Death, and the following excerpt is related to Hobbes’ previously mentioned description of fantasy or ‘image of the fantastical’:

The fantastic is, of course, most closely related to the imagination (Phantasien), but the imagination is related in it’s turn to feeling, understanding, and will, so that a person’s feelings, understanding and will may be fantastic. Fantasy is, in general the medium of infinitization…

The fantastic is generally speaking what carries a person into the infinite in such a way that it only leads him away from himself and thus prevents him from coming back to himself. (Kierkegaard, p 60-61)

Miller attempts to conceal his personal interpretations of the Judaic philosophy behind a curtain of a seemingly secular drama. This was not necessary for the Greeks. They were pagans. With many gods of differing temperaments to choose from, the Greeks had no propagandist need for the underlying or overt esoteric conflicts between the pagan and Judaic to promote a particular outlook. In Tragedy and the Common Man, this is more apparent to the person with an awareness of how propaganda is applied in the arts than it is to the contemporary observer. Armed with certain knowledge, a person learns to see in a different spectrum.

Perhaps this is why Miller was called before the Senate Committee on Un-American Activities. Being a Marxist is not a crime, but it is the enemy of individual freedom^ii. and an esoteric philosophy or religion. A well-placed Marxist will not generally make an open, identifying proclamation, they are of an occult nature.

Whether Miller was a Marxist or not, is a whole different matter. It is the subject of some speculation(s). It would explain some of the terminology, especially his choice of a title for Tragedy and the Common Man. Marxism has it’s own dogma as religions do.

The ‘genealogy of morals’ and the ‘birth of tragedy’ (borrowing from Nietzsche’s titles) is also alluded to by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in A Discourse on the Arts and Sciences:

An ancient tradition passed out of Egypt into Greece, that some god, who was an enemy to the repose of mankind, was the inventor of the sciences.³ What must the Egyptians, among whom the sciences first arose, have thought of them? And they beheld, near at hand, the sources from which they sprang. In fact, whether we turn to the annals of the world, or eke out with philosophical investigations the uncertain chronicles of history, we shall not find for human knowledge an origin answering to the idea we are pleased to entertain of it at present. Astronomy was born of superstition, eloquence of ambition, hatred, falsehood, and flattery; geometry of avarice; physics of an idle curiosity; all, even moral philosophy, of human pride. Thus the arts and sciences owe their birth to our vices; we should be less doubtful of their advantages, if they had sprung from our virtues. (Rousseau, p 15)

^{3 It is easy to seethe allegory in the fable of Prometheus: and it does not appear that the Greeks, who chained him to the Caucasus, had a better opinion of him than the Egyptians had of their god Thetus. The Satyr, says an ancient fable, the first time he saw a fire, was going to kiss and embrace it; but Prometheus cried out to him to forbear, or his beard would rue it. It burns, says he, everything that touches it.}

The philosophies of Rousseau and Hobbes are not generally considered analogous. Rousseau is actually very hostile to Hobbes, calling him ‘pernicious’ in A Discourse on the Arts and Sciences:

…Paganism, though given over to all the extravagances of human reason, has left nothing to compare with the shameful monuments which have been prepared by the art of printing⁴, during the reign of the gospel. The impious writings of Leucippus and Diagoras perished with their authors. The world, in their days, was ignorant of the art of immortalizing the errors and extravagances of the human mind. But thanks to the art of printing and the use we make of it, the pernicious reflections of Hobbes and Spinoza will last forever. Go, famous writings, of which the ignorance and rusticity of our forefathers would have been incapable. Go to our descendants, along with those still more pernicious works which reek of the corrupted manners the present age! Let them together convey to posterity a faithful history of the progress and advantages of our arts and sciences. If they are read, they will not leave a doubt about the question we are now discussing, and unless mankind should then be still more foolish than we, they will lift up their hands to Heaven and exclaim in bitterness of heart: ‘Almighty God! Thou who holdest in Thy hand the minds of men, deliver us from the fatal arts and sciences of our forefathers; give us back the ignorance, innocence, and poverty, which alone can make us happy and are precious in Thy sight.’ (Rousseau, p 26-27)

⁴ If we consider the frightful disorder which printing has already caused in Europe, and judge of the future by the progress of its evils from day to day, it is easy to foresee that sovereigns will hereafter take as much pains to banish this dreadful art from their dominions, as they ever took to encourage it. The Sultan Achmet, yielding to the opportunities of certain pretenders to taste, consented to have a press erected at Constantinople; but it was hardly set to work before they were obliged to destroy it, and throw the plant into a well.

It is related that the Caliph Omar, being asked what should be done with the Library at Alexandria, answered in these words: ‘If the books in the library contain anything contrary to the Alcoran, they are evil and ought to be burnt; if they contain only what the Alcoran teaches, they are superflous.’ This reasoning has been cited by our men of letters as the height of absurdity; but if Gregory the Great had been in place of Omar and the Gospel in the place of the Alcoran, the library would still have been burnt, and it would have been perhaps the finest action of his life.

Hobbes, and later John Locke, are philosophers who established philosophical ideals that are the basis for Modern Western Civilization. Rousseau, it is argued, establishes a philosophical basis for Marxism - - something Miller appears to emulate with Death of a Salesman.

The rhetoric of Marxists in politics often use the idea of a social contract and the term itself to promote the quasi-religious ideals they worship. Marxists, in a sense, worship the ideals of a dead Karl Marx like some Christians worship the image of a dead Jesus. The political Left often holds to the view of Rousseau, cited above. They eschew the advancement of science and of the arts. It is no wonder that in their pursuit to dominate academia, that the decline of education in the West has been a victim of the political Left. ^ii. Is it any wonder that the modern Left opposes U.S. military action in the war against terrorism, hates the Jews and Israel, as well as supports the Palestinians and terrorism? ^iii.

What may clue someone into this theme is an analysis presented by Raymond Williams in Modern Tragedy:

The mainstream tragedy has gone elsewhere: into the self-enclosed guilty and isolated world of the breakdown of liberalism. We shall need to trace this through its complicated particular phases. But, with Ibsen in mind, it is worth looking briefly at the plays of Arthur Miller, who represents, essentially, a late revival of liberal tragedy, on the edge (but only on the edge) of its transformation into socialism. (Williams p 103)

Professor Williams gives some insightful commentary throughout the book in regard to the philosophy and religion of Marxism and how it relates to the mechanics of certain pieces in modern drama.

David Lenson in Achille’s Choice, goes through a tedious analysis of tragedy, references many philosophical works and offers discussion on mythology and ritualized action as it is related to drama. Of particular interest is the qualification of tragedy in regard to Death of a Salesman:

The debate about Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman centered on questions of action and social elevation of the protagonist, but the true shortcoming of the play as a tragedy – although not necessarily as a drama – lay in it’s lack of transpersonal reference. Although we might generalize from Willy Loman to all those who suffer from similar social illusions, there was no emotional necessity to do so arising from the construction of the play itself. The distance between the aspirations of the hero and the domestic alternatives to it was slight. The weakness of individualization did not serve to reinforce emotional generalization, but instead made a compromise which is quite alien to tragedy. It is as if Achilles found a middle-ground. Another way of putting it would be to say that the play lacks extremes of any kind. (Lenson, p 134-135)

A common theme throughout much of the criticisms in drama are based upon ethereal and esoteric ideals, any of which can be easily construed to take on religious connotations, either because of overt reference by the authors to spirituality, or attempts to disassociate their personal bias from any concealed religious/cultural influence.

The stage is not unlike the altar. Drama is most often scripted and performed much the same way as any religious ritual. Although absent from drama are the devices of esoteric rites, many of the same imageries, psychology, and intent of the writers are indeed present. The use of visual images, lighting, characters, music and dialogue all play their parts in creating the myth. After all, esoteric rites are psychodrama.

End Notes

^i. The Sun and Bacchus are Apollo and Dionysus, two gods, or two aspects of religious experience of the ancient Greeks, and their juxtaposition is of some importance - - a statement of belief in the duality of human nature, symbolized by Apollo as the light of reason and Dionysus as the underground power of emotion. (See Sexual Personae by professor Camille Paglia for a detailed and authoritative description.)

^ii. Take for example, the theft of conservative student newspapers at U.C. Berkeley and other universities by Leftist radicals and the overt oppression of dissent in the classroom by ideologue professors of tenure. (Camille Paglia is a known and outspoken critic of this, as are David Horowitz and others.)

^iii. A portion of an instructive personal letter written to me by a friend here at Free Republic:

Their philosophy is Marxism with and via Allah. It is a perversion of both Islam and of Marxism, even though Marxism is itself a perversion of all that is good and right.

If you go to Marxists.org, you can see that if one expands Marxism beyond just the words of Marx, but also to other revolutionaries of the ilk such as Engles and Lenin, that religion was not considered the enemy:

Engles pointed out in his preface to The Civil War in France that "in relation to the state, religion is a purely private affair". Commenting on this, Lenin wrote in 1905: "The state must not concern itself with religion; religious societies must not be bound to the state. Everyone must be free to profess whatever religion he likes, or to profess no religion, i.e., to be an atheist, as every Socialist usually is.

Marx basically wrote hostility towards religion by the state into his theories mostly for practical reasons; the churches generally opposed them and as such were enemies. But if the state is the church, this problem goes away.

Even among the atheistic Marxists, there is recognition that religion is going to be needed to serve an important role in the (inevitable, in their eyes) revolution:

Similarly, among Moslems, the ideas of Marxism have begun to gain an echo, as the oppressed masses of the Middle East, Iran, Indonesia, begin to take action to improve their lives and look for a programme of struggle to overthrow their oppressors.

What is required is the overthrow of capitalism, landlordism and imperialism. Without that, no way forward is possible. The only programme that can ensure the victory of this struggle is that of revolutionary Marxism. A fruitful collaboration between Marxists and Christians (and Moslems, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews and followers of other religions) in the struggle to transform society is absolutely possible and necessary, despite the philosophical differences that separate us.

Both of the above excerpts were from this bit of writing over there... Marxists.org

I encourage you to go and read again (or for the first time) some of the interviews that have been done with Bin Laden. Compare it to the recommended rhetoric for Marxists to use (look around on the Marxists.org webpage- they have articles about it) to help bring about the revolution.

They have taken a medieval religion, mutated it, and grafted it on to Marxism. This is what their philosophy is based on, and they have allies everywhere there are Marxists.

Works Cited

Heilman, Robert B., Magic in the Web: Action and Language in Othello, Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1956.

Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan: with selected variants from the Latin edition of 1668. Ed. Edwin Curley. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994.

Kierkegaard, Søren. The Sickness Unto Death. Trans. Alastair Hannay. New York : Penguin, 1989.

Kaufmann, Walter. Tragedy and Philosophy. New York: Doubleday, 1968.

Lenson, David. Achilles’ Choice, Examples of Modern Tragedy. Princeton and London: Princeton University Press, 1975.

Miller, Aurthur. Tragedy and the Common Man, 1949. A Collection of Plays, Perspectives. n.p., n.d., 1379-1381.

Naville, Edouard, trans. Egyptian Book of the Dead of the XVIII to XX Dynasties, Berlin, 1886.

Paglia, Camille, Sexual Personae: art and decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990. Rpr. First Vintage Books Edition, September 1991, New York.

Rousseau, Jean-Jaques. The Social Contract and Discourses. Trans. G.D.H. Cole, Rev. J.H. Brumfitt and John C. Hall. London: Guernsey Press, 1973.

Velikovsky, Immanuel. Oedipus and Akhnaten; Myth and History. New York: Doubleday, 1960

Williams, Raymond. Modern Tragedy, Essays on the idea of tragedy in life and in the drama, and on modern tragic writing from Ibsen to Tennessee Williams. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1966.

See also:

The Rise Of Tikkun Olam Paganism

Ping...

I always used to think that all religions stemmed from man's search for God. But now I think Islam is NOT a search for God, but rather a religion designed by Satan. Its followers think they are serving God, but they are NOT.

bump

I always used to think that all religions stemmed from man's search for God.

Condider the word religious and the dictionary definitions for it... (i.e., 1. "He did his homework in a religious manner." 2. "She washed and waxed her car religiously." 3. "The Wellstone memorial was a necromantic religious event." Etc.).

I think you can get the picture. There is more than meets the eye in everyday occurance. This is what I am trying to illustrate.

Consider the modern idolatry of television and the analogy to Plato's Cave Allegory...

I'm just starting on this; but I think you'll be interested.

First, I want to say that this is very good work and I don't want you to take my criticisms as anything other than a constructive exhortation to continue the work. I see this essay as a terrific start with a weak segway to an undeveloped conclusion, in part because we can't all read everything much less integrate it all in one piece. I haven't read your essay The Rise Of Tikkun Olam Paganism and there may be more in there that could comprise that bridge.

You build a wonderful foundation connecting Greek and Egyptian paganism to more modern Western ethology. You spend considerable time connecting Miller to that tradition. There may be an interesting synthesis between the ancient Talmudic Judaic bridge between Miller and Marxism and Marxism to the rest of Western druidic paganism.

I have been on a similar, though clearly less extensive inquiry more focused upon primary religious texts. My focus has been upon the Canaanite paganism of Ba'al Peor, its branches through the Knights Templar to freemasonry (druidic paganism) and the various spinoffs that may include Mormonism (I'm reading the Book of Mormon now). Then there's the Canaanite/Babylonian connection to influences uopn both druidism and the Judaid branch found in the Talmud and the Kaballah (have the latter). Then of course there is the Koran and its origins in the tribes of Ishmael and Esau (maybe late next year). My purpose is to understand more about the hidden agenda of each group and how that fits into current events.

Thanks again for a thought evoking read.

I have been on a similar, though clearly less extensive inquiry more focused upon primary religious texts... My purpose is to understand more about the hidden agenda of each group and how that fits into current events.

Don't limit your scope of reading. I stumbled upon the Velikovsky book about Oedipus and Akhnaten by accident (not doing research the way the English professor taught us to, blundering through the book stacks). Keep me informed.

The Rise Of Tikkun Olam Paganism is a Free Republic thread of a story from Israel. It's not mine, but it is applicable to the subject of the conflict...

Here is another interesting story related to the conflict I was referring to:

Egyptian researcher: Jews were not in Egypt during Pharaonic times, The Egyptian State Information Service February 17, 2002

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There may be an interesting synthesis between the ancient Talmudic Judaic bridge between Miller and Marxism and Marxism to the rest of Western druidic paganism.

Interesting angle to consider. I'll look around for material related to it. I may have a couple titles for you to consider, I'll have to look around...

Thanks C_O. Your instincts are right.

Dash is right in his recommendation to you. Velikovsky is a tremdous source for spurring thinking outside the envelope. Additionally, for you in particular, I.V.'s experience is an abject lesson of how the Establishment treats thsoe who truly threaten their sacred cows. So caution is not unwarranted. You may find that many who've made plans based on I.V.'s predictions, even after succeeding, have given him no credit.

ping...

1. Judaism in its entirety is essentially the advocacy and promotion of social justice.

2. Tikkun Olam means pursuit of peace, environmentalism and economic equality.

3. Justice, peace and equality are synonymous with this week's PC liberal-leftist political fads.

Sounds almost like those in the Catholic Church who are involved with Pax Christi and Catholic Charities.

THe title reminded me of a group from an S.M. Stirling story: The People's Santerist Liberation Front. Politics: Voodoo-Marxist, communal ownership of the spirit-world.

PLEASE NOTE: this topic is from December 2002, over three years ago. Thanks. Found it by accident while looking for something entirely else.

Ping!

The Secret to the Suicidal Liberal Mind

Jack Wheeler
Freedom Research Foundation
Monday, Jan. 21, 2002

What do Harvard president Larry Summers, Taliban John Walker, Delta Airlines officials and the editors of the New York Times have in common with Yanomamo tribeswomen in the Amazon jungle?

To answer this question is to understand the root cause of liberal "white guilt." Lakes of ink have been splashed on newspaper, magazine and journal pages ruminating and anguishing over the bottomless guilt that pervades the liberal soul.

Paul Craig Roberts, economist and columnist, writes eloquently about the anti-white racism endemic in American universities that demonizes white males as the font of all evil. Shelby Steele of the Hoover Institute explained in the Wall Street Journal recently how white guilt empowers racist frauds such as Cornel West.

The self-loathing of the white American liberal is as well-established and documented as Einstein's Special Relativity theorems. A typical example is writer Susan Sontag's denouncement of the white race as "the cancer of human history."

A racist hatred of one's own race – auto-racism – has become a defining characteristic of the liberal mind. Yet the source of such suicidal guilt remains a mystery.

Clearly understanding what disables liberals from wanting to defend their culture is today a mortal necessity – an absolute requirement if America is to be preserved and protected from Moslem terrorists and other folk desirous of her demise.

Exploitation and Black Magic

For such understanding, we need to travel to the Amazon. Among the Yanomamo and other tribes deep in the Amazon rain forests still adhering to the ancient hunting-gathering lifestyle practiced by our Paleolithic ancestors, it is an accepted practice that when a woman gives birth, she tearfully proclaims her child to be ugly.

In a loud, mortified lament that the entire tribe can hear, she asks why the gods have cursed her with such a pathetically repulsive infant. She does this in order to ward off the envious black magic of the Evil Eye, the Mal Ojo, that would be directed at her by her fellow tribespeople if they knew how happy she was with her beautiful baby.

Anthropologists observe that for most primitive and traditional cultures, "every individual lives in constant fear of the magical aggression of others ... there is only one explanation for unforeseen events: the envious black magic of another villager."

Reflect for a moment on the extent to which tribespeople in a tribal, "primitive" culture suffuse their lives with superstition, witchcraft, sorcery, voodoo, "black magic," the "evil eye." The world for them is teeming with demons, spirits, ghosts and gods, all of whom are malicious and dangerous -- in a word, envious.

A great many, if not the majority, of tribal or traditional cultures, whether in the Amazon, Africa or the Pacific, have no concept of natural death. Death is always murder.

For the Shuara Jivaro of the eastern Amazon, the first tribe I ever stayed with, there are three ways to die: actual murder (such as a spear through your stomach); demon-murder (accidental death, such as being killed by a falling tree in a storm or by snakebite, which the Jivaros see as perpetrated by a demon); or witchcraft murder (death by illness or unexplained causes, perpetrated by an envious sorcerer).

The Jivaro, just like the Tiv in Nigeria, the Aritama in Colombia, the Dobua in Micronesia, the Navaho in the Southwest U.S. and the tribal mind in general, attribute any illness or misfortune to the envious black magic of a personal enemy.

Envy is the source of tribal and traditional cultures' belief in Black Magic, the fear of the envious Evil Eye. The fundamental reason why certain cultures remain static and never evolve (e.g., present-day villages in Egypt and India that have stayed pretty much the same for millennia) is the overwhelming extent to which the lives of the people within them are dominated by envy and envy avoidance: as anthropologists call it, the envy barrier.

For the Mambwe in Zambia, for example, "successful men are regarded as sinister, supernatural and dangerous." In Mexican villages, "fear of other people's envy determines every detail of life, every proposed action."

Members of a Hispanic "ghetto" in a community in Colorado "equate success with betrayal of the group; whoever works his way up socially and economically is regarded as a 'man who has sold himself to the Anglos,' someone 'who climbs on the backs of his own people.' "

It is an ultimate irony of modern times that left-wing Marxist-type intellectuals consider themselves to be in the progressive vanguard of sophisticated contemporary thought -- when in reality their thinking is nothing but an atavism, a regression to a primitive tribal mentality. What the Left calls "exploitation" is what anthropologists call "black magic."

As sociologist Helmut Schoeck summarizes in his seminal work, "Envy: A Theory of Human Behavior" (and who collected the above anthropologists' observations):

"A self-pitying inclination to contemplate another's superiority or advantages, combined with a vague belief in his being the cause of one's own deprivation, is also to be found among educated members of our modern societies who really ought to know better. The primitive people's belief in black magic differs little from modern ideas. Whereas the socialist believes himself robbed by the employer, just as the politician in a developing country believes himself robbed by the industrial countries, so primitive man believes himself robbed by his neighbor, the latter having succeeded by black magic in spiriting away to his own fields part of the former's harvest."

The primitive atavism of left-wing bromides like "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer" is best illustrated by arguing that one can be healthy only at the expense of others. That in order to be in superior health, bursting with energy and vitality, one has to make someone else sick or in poor health -- just as in order to be rich you have to make others poor.

The healthy are healthy because they unjustly exploited and ripped off the sick, spiriting away the sick's fair share of health with black magic. In fact, the sick are sick because the healthy are healthy. If this is absurd, then claiming the poor are poor because they have been exploited by the rich is equally absurd.

Fear of Being Envied

Pandering to the envious, and intimidating those who are afraid of them, has been the path to power of all modern demagogues, from Lenin and Hitler to Yassir Arafat and Osama bin Laden.

The three great political pathologies of the 20th century are all religions of envy: Nazism, preaching race envy toward "rich, exploitative Jews"; Communism, preaching class envy toward the "rich, exploitative bourgeoisie"; and Moslem terrorism, preaching culture envy toward the "rich, exploitative West."

Envy-mongering has always been and continues to be the underlying strategy of all variants of the political Left, such as the Democratic Party. What a Yanomamo woman calls "black magic" and a Marxist professor at Harvard calls "exploitation," Tom Daschle calls "tax break for the rich."

So here we discover the secret fear at the source of the suicidal liberal mind. It is envy that makes a Nazi, a Communist or a terrorist. It is the fear of being envied that makes a liberal and is the source of "liberal guilt."

This is most easily seen in the children of wealthy parents. Successful businessmen, for example, who have made it on their own normally have a respect for the effort and the economic system that makes success possible.

Their children, who have not had to work for it, are easier targets for guilt-mongering by the envious. So they assume a posture of liberal compassion as an envy-deflection device: "Please don't envy me for my father's money -- look at all the liberal causes and government social programs I advocate!"

Teddy Kennedy is the archetype of this phenomenon.

This is also why Hollywood is so liberal. The vast amounts of money movie stars make is so grossly disproportionate to the effort it took them to make it that they feel it is unearned. So they apologize for it. The liberal's strategy is to apologize for his success in order to appease the envious.

Liberalism is thus not a political ideology or set of beliefs. It is an envy-deflection device, a psychological strategy to avoid being envied.

Then there are those who are terrified of envy even though they have earned success themselves. Many Jews are liberals because such lethal envy has been directed at Jews for so many centuries that it is little wonder they consider avoiding envy to be a necessity of life.

One definitive characteristic of both envy and the fear of it is masochism. Envy is not simply hatred of someone for having something you don't -- it is the willingness to masochistically give up any chance of ever having that something yourself as long as the person you are envious of doesn't get to have it either.

Similarly, the more one fears being envied, the more one is driven to masochistic self-humiliation in attempts at envy appeasement.

The Masochism of Liberals

It is possible to perceive the passions of the Left as frenzies of masochism. What could be more idiotic and masochistic than to oppose missile defense? This opposition cannot be understood unless one dispenses with its rhetoric and rationales and realizes that these folks at their emotional core do not want their country defended.

The lunacy of the "global warming" hoax cannot be comprehended other than that its masochistic advocates do not want their civilization to prosper. The culture-destroying immigration policies that Pat Buchanan warns are causing "The Death of the West" were put in place by those who do not want their culture to survive.

The lethality of liberal envy appeasement is that personally felt guilt is projected onto the various social or tribal collectives to which the liberal belongs and are a part of his self-identity. Self-loathing is transformed into a loathing of one's society or race.

White male liberals become auto-racist and auto-sexist: racist toward their own race, sexist toward their own sex. Dime-store demagogues like eco-fascist environmentalists, feminazis, animal and homosexual rights types, race hustlers like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton all get their strength from the liberals' fear of their Evil Eyes.

As the Amazon tribeswoman who says her baby is ugly, so the white male liberal says his gender, his race, his country, his civilization and even his entire species is ugly.

I began to realize how liberal envy appeasement is the root of the problem when I was speaking at colleges back in the 1980s about anti-Soviet resistance movements in Soviet colonies such as Nicaragua, Angola, Mozambique and Afghanistan.

Students would invariably turn a discussion of Soviet imperialism into an assertion of moral equivalence between the USA and the USSR: "How can you criticize the Soviets when we're just as bad? What about what we did to the Indians?" I would be asked.

"I haven't done anything to the Indians," I replied.

"What have you done to them?"

"But we stole their land!"

"OK -- let's give it back. And let's start with your property. To what tribe do you want your family's home to go? What tribe gets your stereo?"

Once I couldn't stand being heckled by a particularly loud and petulant student leftist any longer. I lost my temper and said to him: "Look, man, if you're into masochism, find some chick with long black hair who's into whips and chains and have her beat the hell out of you. Just don't take it out on your country."

Rejecting Envy

The future of our economy, our culture and our civilization depends on an antidote to the corrosive social poisons of envy and envy appeasement. That antidote was first provided by Aristotle in the 4th century bc. The antidote to envy is emulation. In the "Rhetoric" (ca. 350 bc), Aristotle distinguishes the two:

"Zelos, emulation, is a good thing and characteristic of good people, while phthonos, envy, is bad and characteristic of the bad; for the former, through emulation, are making an effort to attain good things for themselves, while the latter, through envy, try to prevent their neighbors from having them." ("Rhetoric," 2.10.1)

Aristotle invokes the ancient wisdom of his 8th century (bc) predecessor Hesiod:

"There is not one kind of Eris (Strife), but all over the earth there are two. One fosters evil war and battle, being cruel. The other is the elder daughter of dark Night, and she is far kinder to men. She stirs up even the shiftless to toil. For a man grows eager to work when he considers his neighbor, a rich man who hastens to plough and plant and put his house in good order. Thus neighbor vies with neighbor to hurry after wealth. This Strife is wholesome for men." ("Works and Days," 11-24)

Aristotle concludes that:

"Whereas phthonos, envy, is censured because it seeks to harm another, zelos, emulation, is praised because it encourages a person to attain excellence on his own merits." ("Rhetoric," 2.11.1)

Fear of envy is very deep-seated in the human psyche. It can prevent a culture from progressing for thousands of years. Only a youthful culture full of vigor and confidence can shrug it off, enabling that culture to flourish. The road to cultural ruin lies in the fear of envy reasserting itself from the primordial depths.

America once had that youth, vigor and confidence, culminating in history's single greatest achievement, putting a man on the moon.

After the triply debilitating debacles of Vietnam, Watergate and Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan resurrected America's self-confidence, with America's resultant victory in the Cold War.

Yet America lost her way once more, indulging in a cultural debauch epitomized by the Clintons. America's response to the atrocity of Sept. 11 provided overwhelming evidence that her reserves of vitality and self-assurance remain abundant.

Those reserves are nonetheless depleted. America's most elite universities have degenerated into fascist cesspools of envy appeasement. They survive only on the inertia of their prestige. Delta and other airlines compromise passenger security by harassing people at random rather than racially profiling Arab and other Moslem men.

Indeed, the entire phenomenon of political correctness -- perhaps best exemplified by the New York Times editorial page -- is nothing but a massive exercise in envy appeasement.

One of the most positive results of Sept. 11 is that it has made the American people mad enough to reject envy. They now could care less if Moslems or the French or whomever are envious of them. That rejection must now be applied to the envy panderers and envy appeasers within America herself.

Rejecting envy is the key to preventing "The Death of the West," the key for America to continue to prosper. I suggest that this rejection begin with you.

Fear of the Evil Eye is the only thing that gives the Evil Eye any power. Without fear of it, the Evil Eye is impotent. So, the next time Evil Eyes are directed at you and demand you apologize for your existence, you might suggest that they indulge in S&M by themselves and leave you out of it.

Copyright 2002 Dr. Jack Wheeler and the Freedom Research Foundation