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THE GODS OF WAR

2009-11-21T22:16:00Z

The Gods of War

Part I
The Roots of War

“…to understand war we have to get at its myths, recognize
that war is a mythical happening, …and that the love of war tells
of a love of the gods, the gods of war;…” 1.
-James Hillman

Blood sacrifice is a concept civilized people pretend to disdain, yet as a nation, as a people, we honor the blood shed by our youth upon the battlefield and elevate their sacrifices with tales of noble struggles and heroic glory in the cause of freedom. And the battlefields themselves are revered as sacred or hallowed ground. Since ancient times in the cradle of Western Civilization, blood sacrifices have been sacerdotal and made at the behest of the gods. The words ‘sacred’ and ‘sacrifice’ are derived from the same root meaning for blood. To make sacred required sacrifice of blood since the ancients believed the divinity of an offering was contained within their blood. The stories of ancient human sacrifices survive not just in myth, art and scripture but also within the genetic memory of our species – the deep collective memory. Blood rituals and sacrifice also survive in cult rituals and secrete societies and even religious traditions such as circumcision. The concept of scapegoat comes from the ancient custom of assigning one’s sins to a goat before the sacrificial act, thus avoiding the wrath of god (or bad karma). The myth of Abraham and Isaac marks a cultural turning point, at least in principle. And although not normally thought of in this manner the Christ/Redeemer mythos is a human sacrifice of the god-man who “sheds his blood for our sins”.
Today, the blood sacrifices of our youth continue on the battlefields and on the streets of our cities for we are a culture that celebrates violence, guns, gangsterism, militarism and the mythic battle between good and evil – choose your side. The question is: Why? What is the root of war?
Before we can arrive at an answer I believe we must first separate the ‘causes’ of war from the ‘roots’ of war; and to further delineate the causes of war from the ‘enablers’ of war. Erich Fromm in his thesis, The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness points out that the causes of all wars can be attributed to the economic interests and ambitions of political, military and industrial leaders. This is nearly self-evident yet we seem perpetually in denial. We can add to this the expansionist goals of empire which we term ‘national interests’. Fromm disputes the fashionable notion of his time that war develops from man’s innate destructiveness, pointing out that the impulses of defensive aggression in the populace must be mobilized through the propaganda machinery which formulates lies of a foreign threat to the nation and its borders. The government and its propaganda apparatus are the ones guilty of what Fromm calls “instrumental aggression” e.g. “the wish to conquer foreign territory”. Fromm further indicates support for Prof. Morris Ginsberg’s statement in a 1934 symposium on the psychology of peace and war that “the riddle of war lies…deep in the unconscious”.2.
This, in fact, is the premise of this essay: That the roots of all war can be found within the deep collective unconscious – the collective psyche – of a people, a nation and ultimately of a civilization itself. And these deep vectors of our collective psyche stem from the matrix of archetypal symbols which in turn become the foundations of all myth. I believe the anti-war movement for far too long has ignored this spiritual aspect of the struggle against war in favor of either Marxian analysis or a purely reactive approach to building a progressive movement for peace and justice.
As for the enabling factors for any war to be prosecuted, Fromm points to emotional motivations on the part of enlistees, including the deeply ingrained respect for and awe of authority and the possibility of adventure in contrast to the boring and monotonous civilian life. To quote Fromm:
“War, to some extent, reverses all values. War encourages deep seated human impulses, such as altruism and solidarity to be expressed – impulses that are stunted by the principles of egotism and competition that peacetime life engenders in modern man. …war is an indirect rebellion against the injustice, inequality and boredom governing social life in peacetime.”3.
He then offers a prescription:
“If civilian life provided the elements of adventurousness, solidarity, equality and idealism that can be found in war, it may be very difficult… to get people to fight a war.”4
I believe the cultural movement of the 1960’s bears out the truth of this speculation. Nothing less is required of us at this moment in time.
Journalist, progressive activist and former war correspondent Chris Hedges explores this theme of war’s seductive quality in a very personal way in his book, War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning:
“The rush of battle is a potent and often lethal addiction, for war is a drug, one I ingested for many years. It is peddled by myth-makers – historians, war correspondents, filmmakers, novelists and the state – all of whom endow it with qualities it often does possess: excitement, exoticism,
power, chances to rise above our small station in life, and a bizarre and fantastic universe that had a grotesque and dark beauty.”5.
And it is the mythic architecture of war that is vital to any military venture. Again from Chris Hedges’ account:
“Wars that lose their mythic stature for the public, such as Korea or Vietnam, are doomed to failure, for war is exposed for what it is, - organized murder.”6.
Enter FOX news channel. It is the military’s reliance upon mythmaking that keeps FOX news channel in business. And we can find the same formula in the Bosnian war according to Hedges:
“It took Milosevic four years of hate propaganda and lies, pumped forth daily over the airways from Belgrade before he could get one Serb to cross the border into Bosnia and begin the murderous rampage that triggered the war.”7.
And myth is always in context and in relationship, for myth is a gateway to a cosmology – man’s place within the universe and our relationship to the realm of the gods. The context is the human condition, the individual’s search for meaning and purpose; and the relationship is to the whole or to one’s conscience or code of ethics. Thus, in war, the context in relationship to god and country always becomes: “God is on our side”. (It should be noted that when speaking of myth I do not mean ‘a fiction’ although Chris Hedges use of the term does straddle dual connotations.)
With an appreciation for the power of myth, let us now look deeper into the roots of war itself. Doing this requires the use of depth-psychology concepts and terms. Archetypes are universal symbols that are found cross-culturally within the collective unconscious or human psyche. Archetypes such as the god-king, the heroic escapade, invincible warrior and the Emperor can and do animate individual drives toward conquest, dominance, imperial power, expansion and destruction. Their power comes from an ability to animate an individual upon the world’s stage. Archetypal forces conjured by symbolism and attached to myths come to order our society and sustain our cultural, political and religious institutions. Myths such as the eternal battle between good and evil, the apocalypse, manifest destiny or the social Darwinist superiority of modern man or of national superiority can and do exert enormous influence upon human events and the search for meaning. Archetypal forces identified with the people, tribe or nation and linked to a patron deity have wielded immense power throughout the ages. Archetypal forces can launch powerful social and political movements with the potency of arcane symbolism at its core – witness Nazi Germany.
Among these archetypal forces, the force of evil is particularly powerful, although in our hyper-rationalist era it is summarily dismissed as non-existent. The force of evil crosses all national boundaries, all cultures and infects all peoples throughout history because war is evil. War in fact is the genesis of all evil. In his 2001 essay, Confronting Evil [ Tikkun Nov/ Dec 2001 ] Andrew Kimbrell defines evil as, “ that dysfunctional human condition which leads us into repeated patterns of wrong-doing….a kind of ultimate illness which fatally erodes our sense of responsibility for, and ultimately connection to, all else.”8. He adds that an evil act is one of alienation from the other. We can extrapolate from this that evil, as a force in human affairs, acts to produce alienation from self, others and the whole fabric of life. And again, I cannot stress this enough: War is evil – in fact the source of most if not all other evils. In order to defeat war we must call it what it is, we must name it Evil.
Andrew Kimbrell goes on in his essay to discuss what he calls “the technification of evil”: ” Modern society has created a technological, institutional plane where ‘The System’ effectuates evil in circumstances where individuals and their emotions or morals play no significant role.”9, This disembodiment and transference of responsibility for evil actions unto our technologies, in effect, allows modern men and women to see themselves as good people just doing their job. Kimbrell describes our society as atomized individuals living in our “techno-bubbles” far removed from the disastrous effects of our techno-wars. From this seat of comfort we can easily be persuaded to project our evil - the evil we deny exists in ourselves – onto the other and to call them enemy. As we have seen, it is an age old formula.

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Part II
The Gods of War

“The Soldier of Christ kills safely, he dies the more safely.
He serves his own interests in dying and Christ’s interests in killing!
Not without cause does he bare the sword.”10.
- Saint Bernard

In this essay my intent is to discuss the human condition frankly. It is not my intent to denounce religion, belief in god or to denigrate any faith. To the contrary, I believe that the struggle for peace and justice is a spiritual struggle first and foremost. This means facing what we are up against squarely and being honest about the psychic territory upon which we are about to tread. Atheism fares no better with respect to the archetypal forces we’re discussing. Nationalists, anarchists, socialists and atheists are as zealous and hypnotized by the spell of their causes as any religious zealot, and as easily made a pawn in war’s evil game
Patron deities, of city-states, ethnic groups or entire empires, are transcendent powers of the cosmos worshiped through ritual and sacrifice throughout the history of humanity. These transcendent powers of the cosmos are in fact the gods of war or the war-gods of most if not all warrior cultures including our own. Chris Hedges matter-of-factly declares war itself to be a god: “But, war is a god, as the ancient Greeks and Romans knew, and its worship demands human sacrifice. We urge young men to war, making the slaughter they are asked to carry out a rite of passage.”11. And the sacrifice, if not of one’s life, becomes one’s humanity as Hedges explains: “War exposes the capacity for evil that lurks not far below the surface in all of us. And this is why, for many, war is so hard to discuss once it is over.”12.
James Hillman, quoted above from his book, A Terrible Love of War, explores our love for war, from our fascination with ‘the beauty of our weapons’ to the erotic and altruistic encounters on and off the battlefield. Hillman challenges us to look squarely at this paradox and points us toward the realm of the gods: “Yet, where else in human experience, except in the throes of ardor – that strange coupling of love and war – do we find ourselves transported to a mythical condition and the gods most real?”13.
In ancient Greece Ares was the god of war identified with the ram. Although the old gods lost favor to the mystery cults, they survived as metaphor to explain the dynamics of human experience. Ares was despised by the others in the Greek pantheon for his brutality and lust for battle. None-the-less, Hades honored Ares for supplying ample amounts of souls to the underworld. But it was Aphrodite, Goddess of Love and Beauty and wife to Hephaestus, crafter of armaments for the gods, who scandalized the Olympians with her brazen love affair with the bloodthirsty god; as are we scandalized by our own love affair with war.
For Hillman it is the mythic nature of war that makes it sublime, a sublimity expressed in lyric verse and memoir; and which comes from the archetypal conjunction of Ares/Mars and Aphrodite who he says brings the “aestheticizing imagination of war” “The world of war’s horror and fear is also a world of desire and attraction. We have come to another place where understanding our subject is again most baffled: war’s beautiful horror, its terrible love and exhilarating fusion called sublime.”14.
Hillman goes further by connecting war and religion, in fact stating that war is a religion and religion is war. ”Ceremonies of military service, the coercion by and obedience to a supreme command, the confrontation with death in battle as a last rite on earth, war’s promise of transcendence and its sacrificial love the test of all human virtues and the presence of all human evils, the slaughter of human blood victims, impersonally, collectively, in the name of a higher cause and blessed by ministers of several faiths – all drive home the conclusion that “War is religion”.15.
. The ancient battlefields were often proving grounds for whose god was superior. Alexander the Great, reportedly, visited the Egyptian dessert temple of Amun-Re – the primordial creator/sun god and god of war – to seek guidance before launching his campaign against Persia and eventually conquering most of the known world. Amun-Re’s symbolic representation was the ram, and Alexander is often depicted wearing rams horns and fleece on his head. Soon afterward young Alexander declared himself a god and after his death was worshiped as such at the site of his remains in Alexandria. Alexander’s Greece was also the center of the cult of Dionysus, the god of ecstasy and madness. His maenads in the throes of ecstatic union with their god would run through the mountain forests and tear animals apart with their bare teeth.
In ancient Canaan, the god Baal was known by the appellation “The Conqueror” while his sister/consort Anath did battle by his side knee deep in blood and severed body parts and wearing a girdle of skulls around her waist. And it was into Canaan that the ancient Hebrews marched carrying their most sacred object, the Arc of the Covenant – a covenant with their patron god Yahweh - into battle. The scriptures are particularly awash in blood and gore from divinely instigated slaughter. For Yahweh was a war god who promised his faithful dominion in the land of Canaan - a promise revived by the Puritan pilgrims who founded New Canaan amidst the slaughter of Indians in the New England colonies. Their descendents are the so called Dominionists who, preaching a fundamentalist dualism of good vs. evil and advocating war against the evil-does, have reached the highest circles of power within the United States government.
Dualism, the belief that the universe is divided into two opposing metaphysical systems – good vs. evil, light vs. darkness, black vs. white – is a powerfully compelling belief system whose origins can be traced to ancient Persia and the prophet Zoroaster. It is a paradox of history that the titanic battle between East and West that has pitted Greco-Roman, European empires against Asiatic-Persian civilizations in the East has often resulted in a marriage or syncretism of art, culture science and religions. So it is with Dualism. The Zoroastrian belief that the god of light, Ahura Mazda was in constant battle for humanity with the forces of darkness led by Ahriman, influenced the theology of the ancient Hebrews, Christians and Islam. The return of the Hebrew priestly caste from exile at the hand of Cyrus the Great was due, in part, to the affinity of their monotheism with the Persian belief. Later the Jewish Diaspora, which stretched throughout the Persian Empire, was impacted by the dualistic system, particularly in the realm of demons and angels. Christians inherited these teachings but the strength of the new religion’s dualism came from a more contemporary source – Mithraism. The Maji who followed the star to Bethlehem represented Persian Mazdaism. By the fourth century C.E., Mithraism, a form of Persian Mazdaism, was the dominant religion in Rome among the nobility, generals and military officers. (Women were excluded) Centered upon the god-man Mithra, son of Ahura Mazda, who was born to slay the sacred bull and to found a patriarchal, militarized mystery cult, Mithraism stressed the dualistic battle of good vs. evil. It was the Emperor Constantine, a follower of Mithra, who declared Catholicism the official state religion. Thus began a process of syncretization of the two faiths where the pagan blood sacrifices were forgone in favor of Christian dogma and the ‘sacrifice’ of the mass. The Christians, however, were forced to settle their long-standing feud over the divinity of Jesus, for if the new religion were to be accepted by the Romans, Jesus had to take the place of Mithra as the dying god-man. So the Council of Nicaea decided against those whose faith held that Jesus was a prophet and great philosopher and these so-called heretics were summarily put to the sword. This Imperial, militarized religion is what Yale Professor of Theology Cornell West calls ‘Constantinian Christianity’ to distinguish is from the Prophetic Tradition in evangelical Christianity which advocates for the poor and speaks truth to power. And it is Constantinian Christianity which has driven imperial armies from Europe to throughout the world.
A similar pattern can be seen in Islam. With its foundation in the Abrahamic monotheism and influences from fundamentalist Jewish, Mandean and Manichean sects, this strict brand of monotheism fueled the conquest of nearly one third of the known world, forming an empire that stretched from the Iberian Peninsula, across northern Africa through the Middle East into Eastern Europe and East to Afghanistan.
In fairness, Judaism took a sharp departure from its warlike roots after the second uprising was brutally crushed. The teachings and traditions developed throughout the Diaspora are in sharp contrast to the fundamentalist exegesis of the Zealots, but their fundamentalism survived among the Mandeans and other sects in southern Iraq that influenced the birth if Shia Islam and are reborn within the evangelical fundamentalist Christian movement nationally.
Indeed, it is at Christianity that Hillman focuses most of his criticism: “The fact is clear: Western wars are backed by the Christian God, and we cannot dodge his draft because we are all Christians, regardless of the faith you profess, the church you attend, or whether you declare yourself utterly atheistic.”16.
So, it behooves us to vigorously protect and defend the establishment clause of the First Amendment, and cleanse the military leadership and chaplaincy of Christian crusaders. And certainly demand legal accountability for the crimes of this premeditated war. Yet, these measures, even if successful, are remedial and superficial in the face of war’s juggernaut and the depth of its roots – which for Hillman and Hedges is a force deep within the human soul that we recognize implicitly. In Hillman’s words: “It is as if a recognition occurs: “so this is it.” This is Hell; the kingdom of death; the ultimate truth below all else.” 17.
The recognition by the peace-maker community that the culture of war and militarism is reliant upon and to a large degree subservient to the gods of war is, I believe an important first step in crafting an effective posture and strategy in addressing that culture and promoting an alternative one. Certainly the masters of war in the United States have known this for some time as they have consistently propped up their bellicosity on the pillars of God and County. Achieving this depth of understanding gives us the proper gravitas for an effectual struggle while at the same time placing us in the correct arena – the arena of moral and spiritual crisis and awakening - for it is a moral and ethical bankruptcy coupled with an institutionalized hypocrisy that is the root of our national malaise and decay.
It is imperative that the peace movement deconstruct the myths of war and neutralize the myth-makers. Fictions such as the imminent threat of an enemy, of the nobility of cause and of our moral superiority or ‘exceptionalism’ need to be debunked. We must also face the shadow of our own love of war and our acquiescence to evil. And we must accept the existence and power of the gods of war.
War is evil. War is hell. War is a god. War is a religion. And the God of the Abrahamic traditions is a war god. Not a very popular position and even a dangerous one, to say the least. Yet it is no deep insight to say we humans have turned Paradise into hell for scores of millions of innocents with the force of our arms and stridency of our madness to conquer and destroy. We have the same power to turn hell into Paradise.
What is called for is an archetypal even mystical solution - the raising of an archetypal power equal to the gods of war, yet more compelling. To do this we must first recognize our own divinity - we are the gods of peace and we are that archetypal force. We become the gods of peace when we act from the highest place within our being – the transcendent self. As a movement, I believe we must engage the spiritual within ourselves, the Earth and the conscious struggle to evolve. We do this when we heed the 2000 message from the Hopi elders that “Everything we do now must be done in a sacred manner.” I believe the peace movement must make ceremony, prayer and chanting central to the activism of this century, as the indigenous peoples throughout South and Central America have done in their struggles against globalization, privatization and cultural dominance. We become the gods of peace when we hold mass gatherings of ten to fifty thousand people chanting and praying for peace to create vectors of peace to neutralize the culture of violence and war. Only when we recognize the spiritual nature of our struggle – a struggle within the depths of our being – can we truly say, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for”

Elliot Tarry

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Footnotes

1. James Hillman, A Terrible Love Of War , The Penguin Press, New York, 2004
2. Glover, E. and Ginsberg, M., 1934, A Symposium on the Psychology , British Journal of Medical Psychology, 14: 274-293
3. Erich Fromm, The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1973, Penguin, 2004, Pg. 214
4. Ibid, Pg. 215
5. Chris Hedges, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, Random House, Pg.3
6. Ibid, Pg.21
7. Ibid, Pg.21
8. Andrew Kimbrell, Confronting Evil, Tikkun, Nov/Dec 2001
9. Ibid
    10. Barbara Ehrenreich, Blood Rites – The Origins and History of the Passions of War, Metropolitan Press, Henry Holt and Co., New York 1997
From Fields, The Code of the Warrior, Pg.147
     11. Hedges, Pg.10
     12. Ibid, Pg.3
     13. Hillman, Pg. 9
     14. Ibid, Pg. 109
     15. Ibid, Pg 178
     16. Ibid, pg. 190
     17. Ibid, Pg.39

Lines in the Sand - A Blueprint for Common Ground

2009-07-02T18:51:00Z

The tragic murder of Dr. George Tiller has once again placed the divisive issue of abortion at the forefront of political debate. What will certainly be investigated as an act of homicide when placed in the context of the hate mongering rhetoric and vitriol of an organized movement, Dr. Tiller’s killing can only be seen as an act of domestic terrorism. Indeed the Department of Homeland Security just one month prior announced the inclusion of “hate groups” on their watch list. This begs the question: How did an armed activist with ties to militant anti-abortion groups and a record of violence get into that church in Kansas City?

President Obama is asking quite a different question. At a time when the extremists on both sides are framing the debate, a new White House Abortion Reduction Task Force is asking them if they can find some agreement. While the focus of the task force is on policies and programs that can help reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies, the gathering of fierce opponents in one room to work together towards a goal is having the effect of humanizing each side toward the other according to a report by The Huffington Post. This is obviously a necessary step toward what, up to now, has been an abstract notion of “common ground”. And as the dialogue progresses one can only hope that, along with proposals for ‘counseling centers’ and contraceptive distribution, we would have the attendees tackle the difficult question of cultural values and media obsession which contribute to the rise in rates of unwed mothers and unwanted pregnancy.

In this regard the role of the media and entertainment industry cannot and should not be avoided. I believe it is time for both sides of the debate to agree that as a society and a culture we have relegated control over our sexual mores and cultural values to ‘The Marketplace’ where profit and greed are prime motivators and exploitation the modus operandi. And we have been ill served. It is clearly time to take back control of our culture and this means control of sex and violence in the television, music and motion picture industries. No, not censorship but yes, control through regulation. It is not censorship to limit the bombardment of dysfunctional images and messages impacting our children and adults for that matter, it is a survival strategy. And, I would argue that what we have now is a defacto censorship of the healthy, functional, relationship-based view of sexuality in favor of sexploitation and dysfunction. Can we find some common ground here?

If the task force, and the nation for that matter, can address the vexing state of our societal mores and explore each side’s deeply held vision of the possible, we just might discover more common ground. This could change the frame of the debate. For instance, both sides would, I believe, attest to the emotional toll abortion takes on the hearts and souls of women. Scars can last decades and require counseling, both secular and spiritual. In the end, we must come to see abortion not as a medical procedure but more of an encounter with the mystery of life/death. Now, we are at the crux of the issue. If the pro-choice advocates stood firmly on their line in the sand at a “woman’s right to choose” but admitted that abortion was, in fact, killing, a dramatic shift would occur in the debate. The spiritual dimension would be broached and in so doing real communication with the pro-life activists could begin. In return, we would expect the anti-abortion side to admit that our wars and militarism are killing innocent women and children each and every day. If we choose to engage the spiritual dimensions of abortion we are inevitably led to the same frame with respect to war. Thus a dialogue is engaged that would not be possible if the abortion debate remained polarized. The results of such a scenario could be far reaching. We could begin the journey of healing America and turn from polarization and fear toward mutual respect and growth or from a dysfunctional body politic to a working democracy. If you think this is a naïve ‘pie in the sky’ notion, one may look no further than the Billions of dollars spent by Rightist groups and media dispensing divisive rhetoric and outright fear and hate-mongering in largely successful efforts to maintain a polarized electorate. The Neo-conservative, rightwing movement knows instinctively that mutual respect for differing opinions and unity over common ground values spells their doom.

And abortion is the mother of all divisive issues. This, I believe, is understood by Melody Barnes and her leadership team at the Abortion Reduction Task Force. Finding common ground here will dramatically shift the political landscape. I believe the initial steps toward real dialogue must come from the pro-choice camp in the manner outlined by Naomi Wolf in her 1995 essay “Our Bodies, Our Lives”. Ms. Wolf wrote that the pro-choice groups should, “…contextualize the fight to defend abortion rights within a moral framework that admits that the death of the fetus is a real death; that there are degrees of culpability, judgment and responsibility in the decision to abort a pregnancy; that the best understanding of feminism involves holding women as well as men to the responsibilities that are inseparable from their rights;..” The Obama administration has created the opportunity to take bold action. The choice is ours.

Charles Darwin 200th Birthday February 12, 2009

2009-02-13T23:47:00Z

Friends, What a coincidence, indeed. Today marks the 200th anniversary birthdates of two of the 19th century's major figure's- Abe Lincoln and Charles Darwin. Over this time span, myth and legend have long since overtaken fact in our national debates concerning these two historical giants. None-the-less, the coincidence of their relevance to our present state of national affairs and cultural dialogue is uncanny. For old Abe's part we have the embodiment of his myth by the 44th President, as well as the shadows of his trials and civil conflicts as a contextual frame for our present struggle forward. And, even as we heap honors upon an American electorate for choosing to "evolve", we are still engaged in a fierce cultural debate over whether or not the Theory of Evolution is correct. Even more perplexing is the task of separating the myths, mis-quotes and misinformation around Darwin's work from the reality to determine what he actually meant. And then there is the question of what we chose to mean by evolution-physical vs. spiritual. I will not attempt to answer this here but will make two offerings that may enhance this debate: a. An article on Darwin's most famous mis-quote and b. A presentation by futurist and evolutionary biologist Dr. Elisabet Sahtouris titled "After Darwin" as an attachment. Enjoy. Elliot

Reinventing Darwin: Quotable things he never said

1 day ago

PARIS (AFP) — Even the guardians of Darwin's flame got it wrong.
Charles Darwin, born 200 years ago Thursday, single-handedly shapeshifted our understanding of the natural world.
But his powerful insights into evolution were written in a wordy, Victorian style and did not always emerge in compact, haiku-like nuggets of wisdom.
"His writings can be quite hard going," notes Darwin scholar and Cambridge professor John van Wyhe. "Often you have to read a whole chapter to know what he is talking about."
Which may be why no single sentence is cited more frequently as a distillation of the great man's ideas than this one: "It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change."
It's etched in marble at the California Academy of Sciences and was cited last week by the Cite de Sciences in Paris.
A close runner up: "In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment."
The British Natural History Museum website singled out that gem for a massive celebratory exhibit.
Together, they appear in countless books and magazines, as well as tens of thousands of websites in dozens of languages.
But both quotations are spurious, according to top Darwin scholars.
"These sentences do not appear anywhere in Darwin's work," says Patrick Tort, a Darwin expert at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris who said he has spent the last decade "combatting the endless distortions of Darwin's ideas."
To make matters worse, neither quote is faithful to his ideas about the role of natural selection in evolution.
"These pithy little sayings try to encapsulate Darwin," Wyhe said by phone, amused and annoyed in equal measure.
"Unfortunately all of them are actually rather wrong."
It is not the species that are most responsive to change that are likely to survive, he explained.
"It is the ones that are lucky, or already have the right features that can be passed on to the next generation."
The Natural History Museum, which holds many of the plant and animal specimens that Darwin collected on the five-year voyage that triggered his insights, could not account for the erroneous citation, prominently highlighted in an online biography.
"Our web team are currently looking into the source of the copy in question and will address any errors of misleading information," Sam Roberts, the museum's media relations manager, said by e-mail.
In the meantime, the quote has been removed, she said. (AFP, which had picked up the quote from the Museum's website, has run a correction)
"Darwin is particularly likely to get these false citations. Everyone has heard of him, but almost no one has read him," said Wyhe.
Wyhe suggested the fake Darwin quotes may be inspired by the marketing and business milieu, which distorted his ideas to make a point.
That seems to be the case for Darwin Airlines, a small regional carrier based in Switzerland.
"We can adapt, we are flexible," said Vincento Cammarato, the company's deputy head of communications, who cites one of the contested quotes in explaining the company's unusual name.
When informed that the motto was wrong, Cammarato did not seem too concerned, pointing out that not many people know the difference.
A bigger problem for the tiny airline, he explained, is that some consumers associate Darwin with extinction.
For Darwin scholars, the great man's entire opus is available online in a searchable format (www.darwin-online.org.uk).

Terrorism and Evil - A Pagan Response

2008-10-14T00:26:00Z

   Terrorism and Evil – A Pagan Response
“Evil is a construct that pagans try to avoid. “
                                                                        Starhawk 1.
Evil. Time has not dampened its potency as a word or deed. The scientific mind, since The Enlightenment has scorned the idea of some absolute Evil Being which acts to enslave human souls. The Age of Reason sought to expel the fears and superstitions which surround all human miseries. What began as a reaction against the intellectually crippling Christian Dogma (and the abject evil of a Church hierarchy), rationalism became the prevailing paradigm of the age up to the present. Evil, however, persists. And the evil of our time was brought home with the attacks on September 11, 2001.
     Events of that day quickly became packaged and sold as the work of evil-doers Even formerly skeptical rationalists were forced to admit at least the human perception of evil exists, and so too, evil itself. Perhaps not as an autonomous being, but that evil as pathology within the human condition and a malignant force in human affairs, certainly seemed evident on 9/11.
     In his 2001 essay, Confronting Evil [ Tikkun Nov/ Dec 2001 ] Andrew Kimbrell defines evil as, “ that dysfunctional human condition which leads us into repeated patterns of wrong-doing….a kind of ultimate illness which fatally erodes our sense of responsibility for, and ultimately connection to, all else.” 2   He adds that an evil act is one of alienation from the other. We can extrapolate from this that evil as a force in human affairs acts to produce alienation from self, others and the whole fabric of life. Kimbrell goes on to delineate two forms of evil – ‘hot’ and ‘cold ’. Hot evil is the form which concerns most moralists – crimes of passion, sex and violence.
      Cold evil, according to Kimbrell, is institutionalized through our technologies and technocracies. “We are witnessing the technification of evil. Modern society has created a technological, institutional plane where ‘The System’ effectuates evil in circumstances where individuals and their emotions or morals play no significant role.” 3 Kimbrell’s observations are part of a long history of commentary on the evils of industrialization stretching back to William Blake. Indeed, Blake even invoked the image of cosmic Evil when he condemned the atomizing effect of 19th century industrialism upon culture, community and the individual. Implicit in this understanding is evil’s collectivity. But when modern pundits speak of evil they are keen to insist that it (like madness) is contained within the individual or group acting as individuals. Cultural or collective sociological evil is resisted as a concept; and of course the idea of cosmic evil as an autonomous entity is rejected out of hand.
     History, myth and depth psychology, however, give us quite a different insight. The brutal decadence of Rome, The Inquisition, the white-supremacist European slave trade, the fire-bombing of Tokyo and Dresden, modern carpet-bombing and terrorism are all examples of collective will in service to evil. This is upper case evil or cosmic Evil, if you will. Put another way – evil has been a dynamic animating force throughout history and throughout time.
       In Jungian psychological terms, both good and evil have their corresponding archetypal symbols within the individual and collective unconscious psyche. Collective archetypal symbols, whether reflected in myth, religion or historical figures, have a timeless character which manifests within the human drama. So from the perspective of depth psychology, the obvious evil of September 11, 2001 is not a singular act of deranged individuals, but rather a manifestation of our collective ‘will to evil’. But, in order to maintain our utterly unsubstantiated self image as a good, God-fearing people, we project our evil onto those who get caught in the act or onto those who serve as scapegoats.
      And again, in Kimbrell’s view, as a society, we have abrogated our collective ‘will-to-evil’ unto our technologies and bureaucratic institutions. ( the technification of evil). This is in spite of and in contradiction to our societal mores, moral codes and (as we have seen in the case of torture) our legal codes. Cold evil is enabled, says Kimbrell, by technological distancing. “Through technological distancing, the victim becomes little more than a computerized abstraction.” 4 And this distancing is endemic to our bureaucracies of corporatism and militarism, while infecting the individual by ensconcing us within what he calls a “techno-cocoon” of comfort and isolation.
                                            ______________________

                                                   Evil and Paganism

      Pagans do not reject the idea of evil. Wiccans and other neo-pagans tend to reject the idea of evil but, contrary to Starhawk’s premise, paganism does not. For example: Animism still exists among indigenous peoples throughout the world, including Japan and China. They are decidedly Pagan and their cosmologies always include evil as a malevolent agent induced through sorcery. The indigenous people of North America know evil well since the Europeans first set foot upon their land, bringing along with them plague, genocide, war, alcohol and a bible. And if we define paganism as polytheism in which the Earth is revered as sacred and divine, then the Hindus are the largest pagan sect. Although hardly dualistic, Hinduism asserts that we are living through an age of “darkness’ called the Kaliyuga (lasting 60,000 years) which is filled with every sort of evil.
       Historically, Western pagan traditions began in the ancient Mediterranean. The sacred marriage of God and Goddess, the birth of a ‘Child of Wonder”, and the idea of righteous livelihood in accordance with divine order were all theological products of ancient Egypt, where the use of spells and amulets to combat evil is well documented. Indeed, in Egyptian mythology and magical practices were cognizant of evil as an ever present force as the pervasive use of amulets would attest. While Hellenizing many forms and practices, Greece and Rome embraced Egyptian religious traditions as well as other Middle and Near Eastern gods and practices like some cosmic melting pot of religious devotion. In general, we can say that in the Greco-Roman world, goodness was associated with devotion to ‘the gods’ and evil with atheism.
     The Eleusinian Mysteries of Greece, while not encumbered by dualism, gave the seeker an experience of life’s continuum beyond death and a vision of the unity of all humanity. At Eleusis, and through other mystery traditions, separateness, alienation and dysfunctional patterns – the stated effects of evil – were conquered. Plutarch, in Anthologies , said of this effect upon the individual ‘mystes’: “Such a person looks over the uninitiated and unpurified crowd of people living here…who hold onto their evil things on account of their fear of death, because they do not believe in the good things that are in the other world”. 5
     The dualism of good versus evil was embraced by Western pagans in the first and second century C.E. in the form of Mithraism, a Persian mystery cult derived from the older Mazdaism. Through the Mysteries of Mithra, Persian Mazdaism introduced Roman paganism to the mythic battle between the forces of Light and Darkness according to historian Franz Cumont. In his seminal work, Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism, Cumont states: “Mazdaism brought long awaited satisfaction to the old-time Roman desire for a practical religion that would subject the individual to a rule of conduct and contribute to the welfare of the state. Mithra infused new vigor into the paganism of the Occident by introducing the imperative ethics of Persia”.6 The Magi, from whose title we derive the word magic, spread Persian dualism throughout the pagan world both B.C.E. and C.E. The Persian solution to the problem of Evil, was to worship it alongside the god of Goodness and Light. The rites performed to the Persian Lord of Evil (Ahriman) were by any standards depraved and insane and survive in western religious tradition as the Black Mass.
     The point here is that the concept of evil, even cosmic Evil, has been imbedded within the collective Pagan psyche for millennia. And once an archetype becomes imbedded within the collective psyche it manifests in a semi-autonomous manner – denial is irrelevant and for the purpose of this discussion, counterproductive. Starhawk’s comment quoted above, says more about the roots of Wicca than it does about Paganism.
     Wicca is a product of a 19th century, British fascination with the occult. While influenced by the Romantic period of Celtic Myth and legends, Wicca is, fundamentally, a child of post-enlightenment rationalism. It is this rationalistic scientism of modern Western civilization which rejects evil – not paganism. That said, there may be a somewhat unconscious motive for Wicca’s state of denial, a motive which points to a complicity that is difficult to face. The mix of occult practices and Celtic Mythology which spawned Wicca in the early 20th century in Great Britain, also fathered Nazism in Hitler’s Germany. While groups in Britain like The New Order of the Golden Dawn were active before the First World War, they had their counterparts on The Continent, Indeed there was even psychic warfare being waged across the English Channel during both World Wars. It is common knowledge that Hitler and his inner circle were obsessed with the occult. What is not so well known is that elite German SS officers were initiated into a mystery cult as Knights of the Holy Grail. Ancient Celtic and Norse Mythology helped form the German zeitgeist of the early 20th century, as part of a back-to-the-land movement called “volkish” thought. Religious historian Robert Ellwood notes,”…in the decades before World War I a form of late romantic nationalism – volkish, Wagnerian, Nietzschean, sometimes anti-Semitic – was shouldering its way in alongside modernity.”7 Added to this mix were the efforts of the neo-pagan German Faith Movement. What began as a healthy response to the evils of industrialism, the neo-pagan movement morphed into an ugly nationalism. This dynamic is true in all human systems. No matter what social movement we cite, in time, we see it’s polar opposite emerge. Until we Pagans accept responsibility for the evils and excesses of Nazi Germany we will never awaken to our highest calling nor the destiny of our time. It behooves all humanity to acknowledge the dark side of our collective psyche and accept responsibility for the great evils of war, brutality and terrorism. Only then can we progress spiritually and materially.
     In his 1975 essay, Evil and World Order, William Irwin Thomson states: “All forms hold energy against the flow of time.”8 Given enough time all forms will dissolve according to the Laws of Thermodynamics. Most often this ultimate transformation occurs in the crucible of opposition. Thomson continues: “…man lives at the interface of opposites: earth and sky, sea and shore, life and death. Yet it is precisely the interface between opposites that is the place of transformation, and the energy from that transformation comes from remaining poised at the perilous edge, a slight movement to either side brings dissolution into uniformity.” 9 This includes good and evil. As a pagan dogma, Starhawk puts it this way: “…dark and light, life and death, creation and destruction exist in balance and to cut off or condemn one aspect opens us to the imbalance that leads to cruelty and horror.”10 Unfortunately, by rejecting evil, Starhawk commits the same sin of omission she condemns. Her fear is that to accept evil means to project it upon ‘the other’. There is, of course, another option - to accept the existence of evil and accept responsibility for it as part of our nature and our mechanized industrial order.
     Rather than rejecting Evil as a concept paganism takes a proactive stance in combating its effects. The creation of sacred space, calling in of ‘The Directions’, honoring and worshiping the Earth and Sun as sacred beings in the creation of ever-widening circles of community is the pagan response to the endemic evil of militarism and the atomizing effects of industrialism. This cannot be stressed enough; it is a core pagan belief, whether we reference animism or the Eleusinian Mysteries, that the Earth and all her beings are sacred. By keeping faith with this Sacred Hoop of Life, Pagans maintain a direct affront to evil. And, I believe, it is only from this pro-active recognition of evil that paganism can effectively address the issue of terrorism.
                                         ___________________________________
                                             A Pagan Response to Terrorism
    The Mysteries and Wisdom of the Goddess (Earth) wedded to the Radiant Intelligence emanating from the Godhead (Sun) forms the core of Pagan mystical and religious belief. With the collective human spirit as their divine child we have an image of a cosmos that is conscious, alive and interconnected with the evolution of human consciousness. This unity principle – the primal urge toward a shared ethos in community in harmony with the Divine – we call Good. Evil is the ever-present force that attempts to rend the communal fabric beyond repair, often with great success. War is the ultimate evil. Terrorism is war’s bastard stepchild. It exists but none of the masters of war will accept responsibility for it. Indeed, after 9/11, the United Nations was asked to define terrorism so it could be effectively battled and it failed miserably since any such definition tread upon too many toes. One man’s terrorist is another’s ‘freedom fighter’.
     Terrorism is the strategy of war which is used against a civilian population to create paralyzing fear, dysfunction and chaos Often it is used to advance the machinations of war and achieve dominance. Terrorism is evil. As Pagans, wisdom teaches us to look past appearances toward fundamental causes. History teaches us that the Western Imperial Powers have employed terrorism as a matter of statecraft for hundreds (if not thousands) of years. Joseph Conrad referred to this poetically as The Heart of Darkness in his novel depicting the genocidal imperial conquest of the Congo by Belgium. And so it is. The phrase acknowledges in a cognitive way the inherent evil of the modern state. Contrary to popular fiction and appearances, it is not the tactic of the powerless, but rather of the very powerful. The cutting off of human heads and affixing them to stakes, scalping, biological attacks and massacre were all tactics used by the European colonial powers in their genocidal wars of domination and by the United States in Vietnam. Shall we not mention the firebombing of entire cities in the Second World War? In Central and South America the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency trained local militias in the use of terrorism. The same was true in Afghanistan against the Soviets. Terrorism is and has been the province of the covert services to empire.
     A pagan response to terrorism is first to condemn it as evil, categorically and to accept responsibility for its continued use. But then, Pagans must look to our own complicity in the cultural and cosmic genesis of terrorism, imperialism and technocracy. In other words we must not feed the gods of war but instead channel the gods of peace, compassion and light – we must be in the world of darkness, but not of it. In addition Pagan celebrations of life must include prayers and rituals that bring Darkness into the Light as a restorative measure to a world that is horribly out of balance. Then we can turn our attention to the ultimate forces at play, educate ourselves and ask probing, knowledgeable questions about terrorism’s ultimate source and determine responsibility for its use. For this to occur, the cloak of “national security” must be removed as a tool for suppressing pertinent facts and intelligence. In no other case is this more prescient than the attacks of September 11, 2001. With an eye toward history and another on the Heart of Darkness we may gain some answers to the disturbing questions that surround the events of that day, answers that hold the potential to transform even the cold technocratic “Heart of Darkness”.

Footnotes:
1. Starhawk, “Pagans Reject the Idea of Evil – A Pagan Response to Terrorism”; Beliefnet, 2005
2. Andrew Kimbrell, Confronting Evil”; Tikkun, Nov./Dec. 2001
3. Ibid

4. Ibid

5. Marvin W. Meyer, The Ancient Mysteries-A Sourcebook; Harper Collins, 1987, Pg 9

6 .Franz Cumont, Oriental Religions in Roman Paganism, Dover, 1956, Pg. 155

7. Robert Ellwood, The Politics of Myth, State University of New York, 1999, Pg 42

8. Thomson, Evil and World Order, Harper Collins , 1976, Pg. 1

9. Ibid, Pg. 4

10. Starhawk, Beliefnet 2005

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2008-10-12T19:23:42Z

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