Sunday, May 15, 2011

Usama, Stories & Alasdair MacIntyre









So here is Ahmadinezhad peddling his own version of the events leading to the demise of Usama. And a short article dealing with assorted conspiracy theories centering on the execution of Usama by a team of Navy Seals.

I hadn’t been too terribly pleased myself with the way we have been given tidbits of often contradictory accounts of the events surrounding Usama’s final moments. Then my sister sent me the (1st funny) pic which got me thinking along a different line entirely.

This event has had various factions within the American Gov. spending a long time thinking and planning over. So it makes no sense to accuse them of incompetence or lying or spreading disinformation. I mean, where does that get any of us?

After all, high powered folk in the business of “strategic communication” have had a job to perform and let us agree that they do their best under the circumstances. The best and the brightest in action strategically communicating, which is to say, pitching a story.

In today’s serious parlance, a narrative is taking shape and the picture of a vain Usama watching himself on a t.v. is a small part of an ongoing ( terribly expensive) effort. But what could it be?

There is “something” Arendtesque about the above image and some of the other information we have been given so far.

The extended excerpt is from ROBERT FINE’s HANNAH ARENDT: POLITICS AND UNDERSTANDING AFTER THE HOLOCAUST (PDF)

I am inclined to read the following as a part of the emerging narrative:

Karl Jaspers highlighted the risk involved in the use of this term ‘radical evil’ in his correspondence with Arendt after the war. Jaspers argued that it might endow the perpetrators with what he called a ‘streak of satanic greatness’ and mystify them and their deeds in ‘myth and legend’. It was against this danger that Jaspers emphasised the prosaic triviality’ of the perpetrators and coined the phrase ‘the banality of evil’ to bring this to the surface. He argued, for instance, that the great advantage of treating the perpetrators as ‘mere criminals’ was to present them ‘in their total banality’. Arendt immediately expressed her agreement in principle and acknowledged that in her own use of the term she was coming too close to ‘mythologising the horrible’. No longer mindful of its original source she only introduced the term ‘banality of evil’ in her writings at the time of the Eichmann trial, to face up to the fact that the perpetrators were ‘men like ourselves’ who demonstrated what terrible deeds ‘ordinary men’ are capable of. It was a rejoinder to conventional images of the ‘Nazi monster’ that had nothing to do with ‘men like ourselves’ and which painted the world in terms of a dichotomy between our own absolute innocence and the unspeakable Nazi beast. What she took from the Eichmann case was that the perpetrators of the most radical evil could be rather
pedestrian, bourgeois individuals, rooted in an everydayness that made them incapable of critical reflection or serious moral judgement, marked more by ‘thoughtlessness’ and ‘remoteness from reality’ than by any streak of Satanic greatness.... The mark of his character was sheer ‘thoughtlessness’ and it was this which predisposed him to become one of the greatest criminals of the modern age. The lesson Arendt took from Jerusalem was that ‘such remoteness from reality and such thoughtlessness can wreak more havoc than all the evil instincts taken together’, and that we have to come to terms with the fact that the man responsible for the execution of the Holocaust was terrifyingly normal: ‘the deeds were monstrous but the doer … was quite ordinary, commonplace, and neither demonic nor monstrous’.


What of MacIntyre you might ask? Chapter 15 of After Virtue might offer us some clue to the thinking of another faction. But that’s best left for another post.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The gods tempt people for which they are most weak. Artificial Intelligence will create desire in people's minds for the following sins:::
1. Alcohol
2. Drugs
3. Preditory "earning"
4. Homosexuality
5. Gambling
6. Something for nothing/irresponsibility (xtianity)
7. Polygamy/superiority over women/misogyny (Islam)
Much like the other prophets Mohhamed (polygamy/superiority over women/misogyny) and Jesus (forgiveness/savior), the gods use me for temptation as well. In today's modern society they feel people are most weak for popular culture/sensationalism, and the clues date back to WorldWarII and Unit731:TSUSHOGO.
It has been discussed that, similar to the Matrix concept, the gods will offer a REAL "Second Coming of Christ", while the "fake" Second Coming will come at the end and follow New Testiment scripture and their xtian positioning. I may be that real Second Coming.
What I teach is the god's true way. It is what is expected of people, and only those who follow this truth will be eligible to ascend into heaven as children in a future life. They offered this event because the masses have just enough time to work on and fix their relationship with the gods and ascend, to move and grow past Planet Earth, before the obligatory xtian "consolation prize" of "1000 years with Jesus on Earth" begins.

Your job as a future mother is to learn the god's ways and to help your child understand despite the negative reinforcement and conditioning of today's society. Without consciousous parents the child will have no hope, and may even exaserbate their disfavor by becoming corrupted in today's environment.
Your ultimate goal is to fix your relationship wiith the gods and move on. You don't want to be comfortable here, and the changes in Western society in the last 100 years has achieved just that.
1000 years with Jesus is the consolation prize. Don't be deceived into thinking that is the goal.

The Prince of Darkness, battling the gods over the souls of the Damned.
It is the gods who have created this environment and led people into Damnation with temptation. The god's positioning proves they work to prevent people's understanding.
How often is xtian dogma wrong? Expect it is about the Lucifer issue as well.
The fallen god, fighting for justice for the disfavored, banished to Earth as the fallen angel?
I believe much as the Noah's Flood event, the end of the world will be initiated by revelry among the people. It will be positioned to be sanctioned by the gods and led for "1000 years with Jesus on Earth".
In light of modern developments this can entail many pleasures:::Medicine "cures" aging, the "manufacture" of incredible beauty via cloning as sex slaves, free (synthetic) cocaine, etc.
Somewhere during the 1000 years the party will start to "die off", literally. Only those who maintain chaste, pure lifestyles, resisting these temptations, will survive the 1000 years. Condemned to experience another epoch of planet's history for their ignorant pursuit of xtianity, they will be the candidates used to (re)colonize (the next) Planet Earth, condemned to relive the misery experienced by the peasantry during history due to their failure to ascend into heaven before the Apocalypse.
Never forget:::It is not a house of Jesus.
If this concept of Lucifer is true another role of this individual may be to initiate disfavor and temptation among this new poulation, the proverbial "apple" of this Garden of Eden. A crucial figure in the history of any planet, he begins the process of deterioration and decay that leads civilizations to where Planet Earth remains today.
Which one is it? Probably both:::
One transitions into the other, allowing the gods to wash their hands of obligation to their Chosen One.

You are faced with a lifetime to work and prepare for your next chance. Too many will waste this time, getting stoned, "Hiking!", working, etc.