Those Magnificent Men and Women in their Flying Machines
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2008
The race for the American Presidency reminds me of that contest in England, where people launch home-built flying machines off a pier and splash into the water. You know they’re going down; the only question is, how far they get before doing so.
George Bush’s flying machine has crashed in a mushroom cloud worthy of the Apocalypse; the only question is, how much will go up in flames with him?
He came to office, literally anointed with oil by religious conservatives, standing in that long line of succession we used to call “the divine right of kings.” In the US, of course, we don’t have kings; we just have the federal government, at its head, the successor to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and John F. Kennedy.
The presidency of George Bush constitutes, not a failure of an individual or a party, but of an entire system which has lost its way, has bowed down to idols of power and money, and is sacrificing chunks of its own body in vain hope of supremacy.
Here no Moses stands on holy ground, only a Bush burning in effigy; I confess, those of us who dance around the flames offer unholy fire like Nadab and Abihu.
Buber diagnosed our situation keenly: we are a vast amalgamation of Its-the economy and the state, the It-district of material hoarding and the I-district of emotional emptiness-being manipulated by whirring machinery which we mistake for civilization.
The solution? Harry Potter calls it remorse; the Bible, repentance; Buber, returning.
Feeding husks to the swine, the runaway boy came to himself and decided to go home. While he was still a long way off, the waiting Father saw him, ran and embraced him and welcomed him home. Returning, coming home-nothing less can redeem our culture from its suicidal course; returning, not by “the other guys” who are responsible for the mess in Washington, not by religious extremists who have hijacked our faith, not by liberals and secular humanists who will be left behind, not by everybody else.
But by me.
Just as I am, without one plea,
but that thy blood was shed for me,
oh lamb of God, I come.
“Every great culture that embraces more than one people rests upon an original encounter, an event at the source when a response was made to a You, an essential act of the spirit… But only as long as [man] possesses the essential act in his own life, acting and suffering, only as long as he himself enters into the relation is he free and thus creative.” I and Thou, p. 103.
Buber conceives of culture as arising from moments when one human being stands before the countenance, or when one person relates to the Presence at the heart of Being-another way of referring to an I-You encounter between human and God.
Life is a melancholy alteration between the actuality of the I-You mode of existence and, at best, those moments when life takes a deep breath, the latency of I-It. When actuality fades in a more lasting way, however, a demonic power usurps the place of the hovering Spirit, shoving matter and people about in an It-world without a soul.
Cultures escape from this zombie-like state only when a human being again steps before the countenance. The human stands without possession, without even clothing, like St. Francis in the marketplace of Assisi renouncing his father’s goods, called to build Christ’s church.. The Spirit hovers over the relation, empowering the human to fashion a human cosmos of houses of worship and dwelling places. The culture escapes from its sarcophagus, the person from her chrysalis, and the I-You of Being emerges, wet and trembling in newness of life.
Tags: Buber