Blog 4: The Antichrist

Source:

Nietzsche, Friedrich. “The Antichrist.” Sources of European History Since 1900. Ed. Marvin Perry, Matthew Berg, and James Krukones. Boston: Wadsworth, 2011. 36-37. Print.

Summary:

Nietzsche begins by defining good, bad and happiness: good is “all that heightens the feeling of power”; bad, “all that proceeds from weakness”; and happiness, “the feeling that power increases”.  He condemns contentment, peace, and virtue, and declares that we should help the weak and ill-constituted to perish.  Then he starts on Christianity, calling it “more harmful than any vice.” He calls the Christian “the domestic animal, the herd animal, the sick animal.” He accuses Christianity of waging war on the higher type of man and against “every feeling of reverence and distance between man and man.”  He insists that the Christian conception of God had “degenerated to the contradiction of life,” calling God “nothingness deified, the will to nothingness sanctified.” Nietzsche laments, “No one any longer possesses today the courage to claim special privileges or the right to rule, the courage to feel a sense of reverence towards himself and towards his equals—the courage for a pathos of distance… Our politics is morbid from this lack of courage!”  He seems to be in favor of “the aristocratic outlook,” which he says has been “undermined most deeply by the lie of equality of souls.”  At the same time, he seems to also be in favor of revolutions, and deplores the “Christian value judgment which translates every revolution into mere blood and crime.”  Christianity, Nietzsche seems to think, is the wrong type of revolution: “Christianity is a revolt of everything that crawls along the ground directed against that which is elevated: the Gospel of the “lowly” makes low.”

My Opinion:

Obviously I don’t agree with what Nietzsche is saying.  But I find this piece fascinating.  Nietzsche clearly was passionate about what he was writing.  He can’t have had very many adherents to his worldview, and his writing is not representative of any great social movement—just an ideological one.  It is interesting to wonder how Nietzsche would have viewed Hitler and the Nazi regime and World War II.  I think he would have praised Hitler as being “good,” according to Nietzsche’s definition that the piece started with.  But how would he have viewed the end of the war?  Why, in his hypothetical opinion, did it end as it did?  Hitler’s personality represented the type of overman that Nietzsche often praised, but he ultimately lost the war, and committed suicide.  Does this mean that Hitler was not as “good” as it seemed at the height of his career?  Were the Allies stronger, and thus better?  Or had Christianity’s “lie of the equality of souls” ultimately undermined something truly great?  I wonder if Nietzsche’s point of view was only valid because it was hypothetical.  Tyrants, Nietzsche’s “more valuable type”, come along, but they also, inevitably, are toppled, and often not by a new stronger man, but by the people at large.  Nietzsche would have them continue forever, or be replaced by someone stronger, but this necessitates them being surrounded by very weak people, who will allow it, which type of person Nietzsche sneered at.  What, then, was his goal? Anarchy?  A system like the earlier Germany with hundreds of independent kingdoms, thus allowing for hundreds of overmen? 

Nietzsche’s treatment of Christianity is, I think, incomplete.  He neglects, for example, how Christianity was (and still is) often used to justify the subjugation, even domination, of others.  Certainly that aspect of Christianity supports what Nietzsche would call “good.”  He also is, I think, too generous in equating Christianity with “the doctrine ‘equal rights for all’”.  This is an ideal that rarely is supported in actuality by the actions of Christians, especially not at the time that Nietzsche was writing, when it was very common for Christians to be extremely racist.  This may sound rather odd coming from someone who is Christian.  I feel that Christianity, in itself, is a very good thing, but that people’s interpretation of Christianity has, at many times in its history, been used to support Nietzsche’s overman just as often as it has embraced the “lowly”.

Blog 3: Against Social Change

Martin Luther’s “Admonition to Peace: A Reply to the Twelve Articles” (April 1525), and Martin Luther’s “Against the Murdering and Robbing Hordes of Peasants” (May 1525), pgs 106-113 and 130-134 of The German Reformation and the Peasant’s War: A Brief History With Documents by Michael G. Baylor

Summary:

In Luther’s earlier “Admonition to Peace,” he wrote to the “princes and lords” and to the peasants separately.  To the princes and lords, he basically condemned them for their injustices toward the peasants, and placed the blame for the rebellion squarely on their shoulders (and off of his own).  He recommended kindness towards the peasants.  The peasants Luther also condemns, criticizing their use of the sword, as well as “trying to give [their] unevangelical and un-Christian enterprise an evangelical appearance” (page 111).  He advised the peasants and lords to “arbitrate and settle this dispute amicably” (page 113). 

On the other hand, in Luther’s “Against the Murdering and Robbing Hordes of Peasants”, he pulled out all the stops.  He condemned the peasants for three main sins, asserting that each alone was worthy of death: breaking their oaths of obedience to their rulers, starting a rebellion, and blaspheming Christ by calling their cause a Christian enterprise.  Luther then proceeded to recommend that the uprising peasants be killed without mercy, saying, “This is the time of the sword, not the day of grace” (page 133), assuring the lords that theirs was the side of heaven!

My Opinion:

In his “Admonition to Peace,” Luther talks about the social injustices of the lords and princes, but his only recommendation for combating them is for the peasants and the lords to discuss it peacefully and come to a mutually beneficial solution. What he does not address is the fact that the nobility would never have considered any kind of solution (or even acknowledged a problem) had not there first been some sort of conflict.  Luther seems to pay lip service to the existence of social problem without being in favor of any kind of social change.  He makes this even more clear in “Against the Murdering and Robbing Hordes of Peasants,” claiming that God is on the side of the status quo, and that justice should be swift and harsh to those who rebel.  From these pieces, I gather that Luther was not the rebel that his opponents labeled him as, or even quite the pioneer I thought he was.  Certainly, Luther’s opinions must be viewed in light of the time in which he was born—well before revolutions like those in England, America and France that so shape our mindset of “inalienable rights” today.  In the minds of Luther and most of his contemporaries, “everybody” did things in the feudal system they were used to—and that must be for a reason.  It must be ordained by God.  At this time, the idea of taking destiny into one’s own hands and trying to change the world would have been considered heretical, even diabolical.  God, and God alone, would ordain and dictate change.  It’s still very hard for me to read what Luther wrote, though.  It was quite bloodthirsty at times.  Don’t get me wrong, Luther’s teachings and writings were very important, and did sow seeds that would prepare Europe for later social movements.  But he certainly was not ahead of his time when it comes to social change.

Blog 2: Message and Medium

“The Catholic Dilemma,” Chapter 3 of Printing, Propaganda, and Martin Luther, by Mark U. Edwards, Jr. pgs 57-82.

Summary:

This chapter talks about the disadvantages faced by Catholic supporters in responding to Luther and his supporters.  Edwards’s main argument is “both the medium and the message favored the Evangelical position” (57). He discusses how vernacular pamphlets can be bought and accessed (either by reading it or having it read to them) by anyone and encouraged lay involvement.  This was an advantage for Luther, but for his opponents “the Catholic pamphlets did what they argued should not be done” (58), i.e. they granted the public access to debates the Catholic church felt should be privately discussed among the clergy.  Additionally, in order to rebut Luther’s arguments, his opponents had to first restate them.  This meant that by publishing rebuttals they were actually helping spread the Reformist message!  Edwards also discusses how Murner, one of Luther’s greatest opponents, confused some of Luther’s arguments as he restated them.  Whether this was done inadvertently or willfully cannot be determined.  Edwards noted, “Catholic publicists could propagate ideas they deplored in the mistaken belief that that which repelled them would repel others” (73-74).  In the last part of the chapter, we learn that it “was not until the second half of the sixteenth century … that the institutional church began an organized effort to counter Evangelical controversial writing” (78).  Edwards gives several reasons for this lag of several decades:

·         The Church “thought mainly in terms of intervention by authorities,” not printing (78).

·         Catholics “were defending … an existing institution, whose faults and flaws were apparent,” while the Evangelicals were only defending ideals.  “It took some time for the Evangelicals to build their own imperfect institutions and thus become vulnerable to the criticism that reality differed significantly from the ideals they espoused” (79).

·         “Normally one does not even argue with outlaws… Further debate only gave apparent legitimacy to the Evangelical claim that there was something to debate” (79).

·         “Dissonance between the medium—hundreds of easily circulated pamphlets—and the message—common people should not discuss matters of faith since the discussions subverted proper authority—may have inhibited the Catholic response” (80).

·         “The Evangelical message was more easily propagated by the press than the Catholic message.  Evangelical emphasis on the word, and especially the word of Scripture, lent itself to written argument.   Catholicism, in contrast, was more ‘visually’ and ‘ritually’ oriented,” relying on the authority of tradition, which the Evangelicals did not accept (81).

My Opinion:

I chose this selection, because it is a point of view that I never considered before.  Particularly the ideas about how the medium can support or detract from the message are fascinating to me.  I’ve been thinking about other messages and how this idea ties in.  One example is today’s political messages.  Media today is fast, and emphasizes style over substance.  This type of medium lends itself really well to the sound bite and negative ads, but would actually detract from any kind of substantive policy descriptions, making them seem weak and less important, when in fact they are what the public actually needs in order to make informed decisions.  I think that this happened with the Catholic response to the Evangelicals—the medium weakened their arguments.  For them, they just had to concede the point a little as they began publishing.  What can we do in the political arena today?  The politicians’ answer has been to turn more and more to negative campaigning, sound bites, and staged photo opportunities.  Yet the more substantial messages need to be heard—we have a very uninformed public.  It seems that the only choice is to choose a different medium.  The problem is that there is not much of a market for a different medium.  In thinking about this example and reading this chapter, I really started to feel for the Catholic Church—their dilemma was much bigger than they probably realized at the time.  I also got a better understanding of why the Reformation really took off as it did, and how the printing press could have made such a big difference even in a mostly oral society.  The existence and availability of printed material, regardless of the words it contained, was a message all on its own—one that supported the cause of the Reformation.

I’d like to discuss another idea in this chapter that conflicts me a little.  This quote is Edwards summarizing Murner’s opinion: “Commoners could not separate the ‘sound and Christian’ from that which was ‘false and mixed with poison [and] also pungent with acidic comments.’  The ‘pious simple Christian’ did not understand how subtly falsehood is mixed with truth and the devilish angel transforms itself into the angel of light” (62).  I am very conflicted by this, because, honestly, I agree with Murner.  People are very gullible, easily distracted by media hype and misled by unfounded rumor and gossip.  Look at things like the “Y2K” crisis. Companies had to spend a lot of money on advertising that their clients were safe from the Y2K bogeyman because the public got so hyped up about a nonexistent problem.  And don’t get me started on all the crazy gossip about various public figures—and we just eat it all up, and aren’t even fazed when half of it turns out to not be true.  We’re still hungry for more.  In matters of religion, a lot of this happens as well.  There are so many completely different messages out there that a lot of people don’t know what to believe, so they often either believe everything or nothing.  On the other hand, I believe we do have a right to know, to think for ourselves, and to make informed decisions.  And I also believe in freedom of the press and am against government censorship.  I think the only way out of what Murner describes is education.  I think a lot of it needs to happen in the home—parents need to teach their children to sift through the mass of information available to us, and to distinguish truth from lies.  Teaching a healthy skepticism to your children probably seems counterintuitive to most parents because, like the Catholic church in Luther’s time, they don’t want “the way things are” and “because I said so” to be up for debate.  But with children being faced with decisions that can affect the rest of their lives at younger and younger ages, we need them to know how to think critically and sift the sound information from the falsehoods.  I don’t know how feasible that is, but it’s all we’ve got.

Blog 1: About Me and Defining Terms

Part I: About Me

My name is Rachel Brown. I am an air force brat, so I'm not really from anywhere other than the United States. I've lived in Utah, New Orleans (that's where I learned to talk, so I used to have a really cute Southern accent, but it's gone now...), Northern California, Maryland, Las Vegas, Central Coast California, Germany, and, last (for now, anyways...), but not least, San Antonio. I am 24 years old (I turn 25 in a few weeks). I am a Statistics major with a second major in Mathematics. I want to go to grad school and study Epidemiology, and work in medical research. I am a very spiritual person, and God, religion, morals, and ethics are really important to me. I am a really empathetic person, so reaching out and doing things for others is really important to me as well. This has led me to serve as a missionary for my church, teach math and ESL, and has fueled my passion to be involved in research that can improve the lives of others. I could not do without God, especially the peace I've found in times of trial. I know that sounds cliché, but it's the most honest answer I can give.

Part II: Defining Terms

My favorite definitions of…

Media: (For the purposes of this class, I am going to interpret this as mass media.) a method of conveyance or expression in order to communicate, intending to reach the mass of the people (combination of several definitions from Merriam-Webster)

Social Changes:   Social process whereby the values, attitudes, or institutions of society, such as education, family, religion, and industry become modified. It includes both the natural process and action programs initiated by members of the community. (Webster’s Online Dictionary)

Propaganda: the spreading of ideas, information, or rumor for the purpose of helping or injuring an institution, a cause, or a person (Merriam-Webster)

History: a branch of knowledge that records and explains past events (Merriam-Webster)

I think that media and propaganda have a great deal of influence on large-scale history, such as the history of an entire country.  On a personal level, personal relationships are the most influential in one’s history, but when you look at a state or country, one can’t have personal relationships with the entire group, so means of communication become vital for group identity and decision-making, which in turn affects actions and events, which become recorded as history.  Also, since records are so vital to history, at times media is history.  Everything about propaganda is important to history, such as the reasons it becomes necessary, the groups executing it, the ideals behind it (and usually the controversy surrounding those ideals), the propaganda itself, its credibility among the target audience, and their reactions to it.  Each of these aspects both reflect the flow of history and direct it.  With propaganda and other forms of media, the cause/effect relationship with history is confused; sometimes changes in history cause changes in media, and sometimes it is the other way around.

Blog 10: Slavery

Autobiography of Omar Ibn Seid, Slave in North Carolina, 1831:

The introduction labels this excerpt as a description of Omar’s “alleged transformation from a Muslim into a Christian,” and indicates that Omar likely “continued his faith in Islam under a superficial Christian guise.”  I didn’t find explicit evidence of this in this excerpt: he certainly said all the “right things.”  However, there were some hints.  First of all, he refers to his captors, their language, and country as “the Christians” as though to separate himself from being one of them.  Also, I mentioned that Omar said all the “right things.”  In a way, they sound memorized, like he is saying something he thinks he is supposed to say.  However, I feel that this is flimsy evidence, and wouldn’t want to judge someone’s religious beliefs thus.  Omar describes his first master very colorfully, as “a small, weak, and wicked man, … a complete infidel, who had no fear of God at all”, who “did [not] read (the gospel) at all nor pray”, and “a man so depraved and who committed so many crimes.”  On the other hand, Omar praises Jim Owen, saying that he is “a good man, who fears God, and loves to do good.”  Omar is grateful to be clothed, fed, and permitted by Owen to read “the gospel of God, our Lord, and Saviour, and King.”  He claims, “I neither go hungry nor naked, and I have no hard work to do.”  I can’t tell how much of this is what Omar feels he is “supposed” to say, and how much of it is how he really feels.

The Insurrection:

Here Garrison reminds “the South that slaves did not need to be urged to rebel by outsiders; rather the abuses suffered on a daily basis were sufficient.”  He does this by listing, rather poetically, all the incentives that the slaves had to rebel:

“The slaves need no incentives at our hands.  They will find them in their stripes—in their emaciated bodies—in their ceaseless toil—in their ignorant minds—in every field, in every valley, on every hill-top and mountain, wherever you and your fathers have fought for liberty—in your speeches, your conversations, your pamphlets, your newspapers—voices in the air, sounds from across the ocean, invitations to resistance above, below, around them!  What more do they need?  Surrounded by such influences, and smarting under their newly made wounds, is it wonderful that they should rise to contend—as other “heroes” have contended—for their lost rights?” (pg. 322-323)

Garrison is very clever (and very controversial) in referring to the slaves as “heroes”.  Then he compares them to Greeks fighting the Turks, Poles fighting the Russians, and “our fathers” fighting the British.  These comparisons are very evocative, and probably outraged many of his readers.

The American Anti-Slavery Society Declares Its Sentiments:

These are the arguments I found most persuasive: 

• “The sin is as great to enslave an American as an African.”  I guess the African slave trade had ended at this point.  This statement is attacking the process of enslaving African Americans simply because of their color, and points out that there is no difference between enslaving someone in Africa and enslaving someone else in America.  I find this persuasive because Garrison is comparing something that is illegal with something currently legal.

• Biblical references, such as Exodus 21:16 (“And he that stealeth a man, and selleth him, or if he be found in his hand, he shall surely be put to death.”)  Most Americans accepted the Bible as the ultimate authority, and it was already being used to support slavery, so to counter with a commandment against slavery is very persuasive.

• His recognition that the states had the right to legislate on slavery, and that the federal government could only regulate interstate trade of slaves—this is a power not enunciated in the Constitution, and therefore given to the States.  If more people had recognized this, there might not have been a Civil War, because states might not have felt the need to secede.

I don’t know how to evaluate the efforts of the AASS, because one of their principle goals was to avoid “the use of all carnal weapons for deliverance from bondage” (war), and that’s exactly what happened.  So, in that light, their efforts might not have been very effective at all.  Surely they did convince some people, so I won’t say they weren’t important.  But I don’t think things turned out the way they wanted.