Praying for the Soldier & Condemning the Commander

On 25th April every year, Australians take the day off to commemorate ANZAC day, remembering the sacrifice made by those who fell, or are in the process of falling, on the battlefields. The day is normally celebrated by dawn servicesin specially designed memorial sites across the country. In Turkey, a special service is also held in Gallipolli, where Australian and New Zealand troops, under British command, suffered massive losses in a now legendary failed amphibious attack against the Turks in the First World War.

To the Author, the commemoration of ANZAC day is important for two reasons. The first is not controversial, one commemorates this day to remember the sacrifice of soldiers who lost their lives doing what they were ordered to do. The second reason however may prove more contentious. Whilst these must be bracketed from the actions of the soldiers, it is important, in this Author's opinion, to keep in mind also those who sent those soldiers to their deaths, and remember that often, the day for the commemoration for those who lost or are losing their lives are often mobilised for the purposes of the Modern State, rather than for those that reside within them.

According to William Cavanaugh's Theopolitical Imagination, the Modern liberal State, because it is built on atomistic foundations (meaning that it is meant to allow anyone to do whatever they want), the means to maintain social cohesion can only be effective when it is backed by the threat of violence. According to Cavanaugh then, the use of violence in the name of all the atomistic agents that reside within its borders represents the best way to bring them together to form a cohesive whole. Nothing brings individuals together like a common enemy, and nothing gives individuals that originally had nothing to do with each other a common purpose more than engaging in warfare against that common enemy. If the enemy of my enemy is my friend, then fighting that common enemy would make us all friends indeed.

If Cavanaugh is right, then it makes one pause as to the reasons for the resort to war, which becomes more proficient in tearing bodies apart as the centuries roll on. Can one be conclusive that it is solely for the purpose of defending the community, or for the aggrandisement of a political entity that is not necessarily connected in any substantial way to that community? It is important to note that the significance of Gallipolli lies not in the strategic realm, for it was strategically a disaster; rather the significance of the event that the Author keeps hearing lies in the giving birth to Australia as a country. Though it legally took shape in 1901, the Modern State of Australia only saw the light of day in a real way on the battlefield, amidst the bodies of thousands of human souls. Collective identity linked to the Modern State in a sense, necessitates the bloody sacrifice of those that reside within its borders.

It is significant that quasi-religious terms surround the celebration of this day. The memorial sites are often called Shrines of Remembrance, and the trip to Gallipolli is always called a "Pilgrimage" on the news. This is no accident for Cavanaugh, who argues that war is actually a deformed liturgy of the State, a sick parallel to the sacrificial liturgy of the Church.

If this account is correct, then it is important to ask oneself why one keeps "the ANZAC spirit" alive. One should keep it alive through the weeping over the loss of brothers, fathers, sons, and now, daughters, mothers and wives who vowed obedience to their commanders, and paid for it with their blood. That should be kept separate from those whose decisions sent them to their deaths, and for the idol of the State to whom their deaths pay homage. When the banner that says "defending our way of life" flies, one should ask boldly exactly whose life is being defended.

On Tofu...

The Author had to recover from a gruelling weekend of conferences and interviews in Sydney (more on that in future wonderposts). All had quietened down, and time for ones-self was finally found. The Author stumbled around Pitt Street Mall hoping to find some real alternative to the atrocities of the Golden Arches. But given the late hour in the afternoon that the author concluded his work, restaurants one by one were shutting their doors and slamming the padlocks. Before reaching the point of desparation that would leave one flailing his hands around and screaming like a banshee, the Author found a Japanese restaurant, in which the author hoped to find sustanence in some light, authentic Japanese fare. What folly...

The Author's initial craving for sushi soon disappeared at the sight of the horrors being served on the dishes being tooted around on the train-like device that has now become so frightfully commonplace in Japanese restaurants. Not a scrap of raw fish in sight. What the author beheld were jumbles of tentacle-like strips of dried seaweed, fish-sticks and some viscous liquids sitting in bundles of seaweed sheets, making the whole package look like byproducts of a bad experiement in Area 51.

The only remotely edible choice lay in Agedashi Tofu. "Fine...even if the sushi does look like the offspring of the aliens in The Puppet Master, how bad can Agedashi Tofu be?" The Author thought. To be fair, visually the serve of tofu given was quite pleasing. Neatly cut, oblong pieces of tofu could potentially be the stuff of a good tofu dish, as opposed to the traditional method shown in the diagram. And to be fair, the faults of the tofu rest on a minor point technique.

Maybe it was the fatigue from the weekend, maybe it was the Author's low blood-sugar levels initiating a bout of Tourette's that had to be constructively redirected, but the Author felt obliged to whisper loudly the words that could make sense to no one except the truly insane: YOU DON'T USE FIRM TOFU IN AGEDASHI!

A bit of context in order. In most good japanese restaurants, like one in a small arcade in an Asian section of the Queens Street Mall in Brisbane, Agedashi Tofu is a delicate dish that uses the crispness of deep fried tempura batter to hold the shape of a piece of soft silken tofu, sitting in a small pool of broth made from soya sauce, mirin and soup stock, creating a wonderfully light savoury cushion of bliss.

Firm tofu, unlike silken tofu, has much of the water pressed out of it, creating a much stiffer tofu that can in the event of an emergency be used as a posturpedic mattress. A mattress, even one coated in tempura batter, does not a wonderfully light savoury cushion of bliss make. The dish seemed more suited for safety gear for the Grand Prix than for high-brow consumption. And one should never forget the broth, which comprised of a type of vinegar that would strip the tarnish of Tutankamen's silverware.

But ever the good slave to the liturgies of free market economics, the Author finished the dish, wolfed down the broth (and corroded half his oesophagus in the process), paid the bill and walked off feeling cheated by life once again. The burger from Hungry Jack's that the Author consumed at the airport an hour later proved to be the only consolation to this saga.

The Free Ride to Serfdom?

The Author was having a discussion with a couple following the Eucharist about the upcoming French Presidential election. Thanks to the contribution of the female half of the couple, who was French, I got some very important insights into the condition of the French political scene. The French, it would seem, are given so many choices of candidates, each of them either not being known from a bar of soap, or so fake, or so plain offensive (one does not confine the object of this label to the Right Wing of French politics here), that they do not know who to choose.

The subject of the conversation moved onto the state of Western democracies in general. It seemed interesting that, with the exception of a coup or armed revolution, many of the dictatorships that one beheld in the twentieth century first started out as democracies. Moreover, the despots were VOTED into power. Sure, there were machinations on the part of the despot to ensure he or she remains a despot, but that normally came AFTER they were voted into positions of authority. The most graphic display of this took place in Weimar Germany, which after less than twenty years of being the most democratic state in Europe, ended up voting in one of the deadliest regimes known to man.

Is this merely an anomaly? One must remember too, that Russian President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB agent, the man now responsible for crushing all forms of opposition in the country (and annoyances outside the country) with all the means at his disposal (who would have thought gas could be such a powerful weapon - bean eaters take note), was voted in by the Russian public, not once but twice.

And it must be remembered too that not all dictatorships that were established via the ballot box, did not become tyrannical regimes overnight, but rather through a slow process of erosion of the checks and balances in parliamentary governance, normally following some kind of catastrophic scenario (e.g. Economic breakdown in the Weimar Republic, the Chechan Wars in Russia). While these means of defending liberty are being chipped away, assurances are given that they are necessary to protect a way of life. Sound familiar...?

On a theoretical note, it is interesting to note Peter Kreeft's How to Win the Culture War. An interesting section is dedicated to the "Interior/Exterior Police" dichotomy. He notes that in the absence of an Internal police, which comes in some kind of social discipline such as culture or religion (and one does not mean this in a nebulous sense of cultural or religious "feeling"), a liberal society underpinned by a narrative of individualistic atomisation, begins to disintegrate as each individual seeks to enforce his or her entitlements against everyone else. The solution to this disintegration, Kreeft argues, is via an increasing reliance on Exterior Police, which come in the form of actual police, tougher laws, more prisons and executive decisions, to maintain cohesion.

Indeed, increasing the efficacy of the means of maintaining the liberal way of life that allows each individual to do anything that he or she wants, paradoxically DEPENDS on building an apparatus of tyranny. In a way it would not be hypocritical, but actually quite logical for the main entrace of Camp Delta in Guantanamo Bay, a place where people can be legitimately detained without trial for want of proper legal jurisdiction, to bear a plaque, the bottom of which reads "Defending Freedom".

Many people living in Western democracies may think democracy to be the antithesis of totalitarianism. But in reality, the slope of liberty is very slippery indeed...

What is Radical Orthodoxy? Here is the Book...

Can a Catholic reader be a convert to the writings of a Calvinist, and come out of the process more Catholic than ever? The Author's experience suggest that this is no pipe dream...

The Author last night finished reading James K A Smith's wonderful Introduction to Radical Orthodoxy, which is self-explanatory. The term Radical Orthodoxy has been bandied around to describe a lot of things, none of them accurate. Smith's book in an excellent introduction into a burgeoning "school" of theology that is attracting growing interest among discerning Christians from all denominations, including Anglicans (John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock and Graham Ward), Catholics (William Cavanaugh and Australia's own Tracey Rowland), Calvanists (James K. A. Smith) and Evangelicals (D. Stephen Long).

What is interesting for the Author is the impact Radical Orthodoxy potentially has on political analysis. At the heart of RO's claims lies a rejection of Modernity's claims to neutrality, exposing that under what many count as "neutral" and "universal" is an unacknowledged teleological claim. As Alasdair MacIntyre once remarked in Whose Justice, Which Rationality, thinkers in the scientific world, the paragon of post-Enlightenment Modernity, are slowly acknowledging that "scientific" claims are underpinned by some form of assumption that is essentially theological in nature. And this applies not just to science, but other forms of political thought and practice that operate from the claim to see the world "as it really is", ie Liberalism, Marxism, Feminism and the like.

From this identification of the world as theologically charged, it follows then that rather than stop at the argument that something is "just the way it is", one should actually go further and own up to his or her underlying theology. This paves the way to consider Christianity for what it is, a way of seeing the world and give meaning to it. Moreover, it finally gives room for Christianity to boldly and unapolagetically proclaim its kerygma on its own terms, because it is no longer necessary to convince the skeptic that it is objectively true (Let us for now bracket the issue of objectivity for another wonderpost, for it is important to note that the Author is not claiming here that the Gospel is not true).

From there, RO is able to give its own theologically charged ontology of participation in God and in temporality (a line of thought gleaned from a re-reading of thinkers like Plato, Augustine and Aquinas). This starting point, which sits in opposition to many of the political ideologies mentioned by virtue of their being underpinned by an ontology of univocity of being which cuts divinity out of the picture altogether, then has a massive impact in providing the resources necessary for the questioning of the ideas and practices - be they economic, political or social - that pervade our world today, which in turn threaten the existence of everyone, in particular the weak and the disenfranchised. More importantly, it provides the resources for envisaging political alternatives that do not feed back into the orbit of teleologies that many are seeking to cast aside.

More importantly for the Catholic, the value of Smith's introduction into RO is that it makes you realise the inherent social and political impact of a lot of things that Catholics take for granted, things like tradition, liturgy and authority. Rather than come up with some form of half-hearted syncretism which has become so trendy in the post-Vatican II age, this book makes one realise that the way forward for the Christian is to look backward, though not in a way that romanticises the past.

If you want a way to ease yourself into the scarily complex philosophical world of RO - and there is a fair degree of Continental philosophy in it - and if you want a book that gives a sophisticated defence not just of your Catholicism, but of the renewal of the face of the earth that should flow from that, then this book comes highly recommended.

And We're Back...

Dear Faithful Wonderblog Readers,

Apologies for the very long delay in bringing the wonderblog back to life. Life itself, as you all may know, has a very bad habit of throwing curveballs into the family jewels of one's existence, causing an almost sickening crunching sound that forces one to curl up into so tightly formed a foetal position that reaching out into other more meaningful areas of activity stand the same chances of success as an Australian lamb gaining entry into the US market.

But, a crunch and a curl later, the author has slowly crawled his way back on the keyboard and is back on the writing saddle, ready to bore his faithful public with idle chitchat about postmodern faith, the evils of the state, and myriad varieties of pasta receipes.

In fact, let us begin with a reflection about that most myterious pasta, the gnocchi. Who would have thought a combination of flour and potato, with a few carresses of the palms, could produce a pasta so versatile, so filling, and yet...so light? A TV food critic once described the perfect gnocchi as a "fart in the mouth". Must the author really engage one's imagination concerning what this critic did in order to come up with a description such as that?

The Author shall refrain from engaging your imagainations thus. Instead, I shall direct your attention on to a simple fa...that is, gnocchi dish. Stir in the boiled gnocchi with lots of chopped basil leaves (fresh), garlic, some oregano leaves and salt. For the very adventerous, add a teaspoon of wonton soup base. The thought of mixing Oriental ingredients with something so mediterranean would strike someone as culinary blasphamy. But such an indispensible and versatile ingredient is the wonton soup mix, that it adds the perfect flavour boost to any dish. Stir all that in, and it is ready.

And now, full of pasta, let us continue with this rollercoaster ride...