Sunday, November 7, 2021

While We Wait









- So you're at Jimmy's, the North Campus cafe up at UCLA, and the manager comes over to say to you he's been watching you for a while, letting you get away with a lot, not wearing a mask, but now...
- I told him I don't have to wear a mask while I'm drinking coffee. I hold up my coffee theatrically.
- And he told you the rule was when not actively drinking or eating you have to put back on the mask.
- And I said, what is the time constraint? Replace the mask after one minute, one second? And I am the whole time I'm here know that someone is watching my every movement, counting the seconds before I either have to raise the cup to my lips or replace the mask?
- And the manager said?
- Why can't I just cooperate like everyone else?
- I can't, I won't, I said. In Los Angeles during the past week there have been on the average of 13 deaths a day attributed to the epidemic in a city of 10 million people. That's about one out of a million risk of death. And in response to that risk, starting Monday if you want to enter any restaurant, movie theather, nightclub, gym, you'll have to show proof of vacination - this while vacination efficacy has declined to less that 50 percent - or show a negative test result within three days. At this point a girl-student, between bites of salad, sitting over against the wall, shouts over at me that I'm putting everyone in danger by my selfishness.
- And you said?
- 'You're the one breaking the rules! Anyone exhaling, proving it audibly by producing words, or not actually swallowing has to be masked.' The manager says:
- Those are the rules. Why can't you just obey them?
- Because rules about how many seconds I have between swallows I'm allowed to remain unmasked is just the latest in impositions following upon the closing down of almost all public places; completely unjustified. 
- That's just your opinion.
- Yes, I have an opinion, based on information coming from the government. You don't have an opinion, or even source of information. You simply obey. You, like that little girl student over there, want to force others to obey. How are you both not fascists?
- Are you going to comply with the rules or not?
- Can't you see? I'm packing up to leave.
- I think of fascism as a government's attempt to control our every thought and act. You went a little too far there. The people of the epidemic, let's call them that, don't care to control your thought and act except with regard to their pet ritual, the observance of epidemic related decrees.
- And if there is some kind of logical, causal relation between ritual performance and totalitarianism?
- Is there?
- There are two. When a government understands the technology of ritual,* satisfying the love of power that drives leaders into politics, it progressively takes upon itself more and power to instruct the public in new rituals, to the point that eventually every aspect of life is directed by ritual.
- And we have totalitarianism.
- Yes. You might think that the greater the imposition of new ritual and new control, the people would begin to wake up and complain. But the opposite is true.
- Why?
- Ritual has its beginning in the story of an old god dying and a new god born. The story can be that of any particular god, but ultimately it is the ritual participants putting themselves in the place of particular gods that does the job. But like our politicians understand ritual and are capable of self-consciously managing them, our not too distant ancestors figured out that if they imagined there was only one god, then all of history would be a single ritual. And once this idea has arisen, something very important, something essential happened.
- They invented totalitarianism?
- Not so fast. They invented ethics. Because always in the midst of ritual, every act would have to have its rule; the rules they had would always be insufficient; because they didn't know when the ritual was going to end...
- They couldn't be told what to think.
- Nor what to do, because new situations would keep arising, they couldn't know for sure which rule would apply. Do you give a friend gone crazy back the weapon he loaned you when he was still sane? An entirely new relation to the world had appeared to us human beings out of the former polytheistic ritual. Immersed in the single ritual monotheistic history, we are neither old god nor new; we don't know who we are, what habits, what character to take on.
- We don't know what are our rules.
- Yes. We take on an experimental relation to the world which is unfolding, the end not in sight, the utopia of everyone following the same rules and universal peace reign. But this experimental practice, searching for the best relation of character to the world, in the logic of the situation, is going one time or another to have to meet its challenge.
- Which is?
- People beginning to see the single ritual coming to a close. A time when rule determination, finding out who you are, no longer is important, rebirth is at hand, soon we'll see how the world looks in recovered strength, all peace and love and fairness!
- In short, Christianity arrives with its claim to complete Judaism.
- That's right. And then what happens?
- The Mulim's messiah arrives claiming to be the true and final savior. History isn't open; isn't about to end, it is at its end, all that is to be is already written, there is nothing further to be done but follow the rules and bear witness to a world that's reached its final form. If politicians have woken up to the knowledge of how to use ritual to add to their power, wouldn't the people of monotheism, waking up to the knowlege of what ritual is were able to transform religion to ethics, wouldn't we - for we're talking about our world here - wouldn't we see ahead to the two further stages? And take the suggestion of our imagination?
- Is there anything that makes us? Why should a Jew become a Christian or a Muslim?
- No reason. But ask instead why should not a politician guide a monotheistic people in the direction that gives leaders more control over the led?
- Is that what you think is happening?
- I do.

Further Reading:
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