A Literary Reflection

Bastille Day, 1942

What can you tell us about Ferguson?

“Mother died today.”

      With this sentence from a French novel, we may begin our examination of the uneasy relation between Christianity and Islam.

      Our narrator, who knows that he is soon to die, knows also that what is called “Western Civilization” is really all about money. Nevertheless, since Mersault now has a date with the guillotine, money can have no more meaning for him, except as an explanation.

      Everything comes down to the question the priest cannot answer. It is not about the confession which shall convince Jesus that one is of the ruling class, and will therefore get one admitted to Heaven. Salvation comes down to the bare essential: since life has been happy, it also is acceptable to let go of life.

      Curiously, this agnostic salvation of Mersault echoes the emotional state which Kirkegaard finds to be the beginning of religious salvation: “In the infinite resignation there is peace and rest.”¹

      Woven about this assertion of the meaning of salvation in the gnostic sense, we shall see vignettes of men who falsely believe that they are achieving salvation.

The Hidden Gnostic Drama

This return to the Death of The Mother is the final act in the gnostic drama. Merseult has a friend who is a racist but who likes to use dark-skinned women. His dark-skinned “girlfriend” describes him as as a pimp. He has a name², but we shall call him Kelly, because he represents the nature of the demon who has been ruling Earth ever since 4004 B.C. Mother has been around a lot longer; the frescoes in the Palace of Minos show her as she used to be in her younger years. She later will make an appearance as Mersault’s girlfriend Marie, but for the most part has been repla ced by a religion. This religion honors Mother, but there is so little actuality of spirit that Merseult simply gets a headache from standing and walking in the hot sun. He has encountered one of the sacraments of the Church, but the experience has not brought him to salvation.

A Weekend on the Beach

      Mersault has been invited to enjoy a weekend on the beach in the company of Mr. Kelly. He knows that Mr. Kelly is having some trouble from the brother of a girl whom he is corrupting, and whom he has punished so cruelly, the brother feels he has a duty to avenge her³. If Mersault had possessed the dialectical tools to be able to reflect that Mr. Kelly has been a colonialist agent actively involved in destabilizing the local culture he might have lived longer. But like most of the working-class colonialists, he does not have time for reflection.

      For Mersault, kullu shay is his small group of friends, including the notorious ^{(among the Berbers)} Mr. Kelly. Ironically, the same is true for the “Arab,” the Berber whose culture is being invaded. For the most part, they don’t see the larger perspective, but recognize the strangeness of “the other” only as a deviation from the familiar pattern. They therefore become estranged from the true motives for their actions.

      When a soldier kills, it is an act of alienated labor. In the same way, Mersault’s shooting of the “Arab” is almost accidental. Mersault himself blames the sun. The hot sun had given him a headache. Was he suffering from a minor sunstroke, or was this headache, like the headache at his mother’s funeral, the symptom of a gnawing moral discomfort?

Salvation from What?

      Mersault is now in the same position as our veterans. However, since the State must maintain the illusion that there is no war between the settlers and the Berbers, Mersault is arrested. He is condemned to death.²

      This is the outcome of his quest to find worldly salvation through adventure and exploration. He feels, nevertheless, entitled to laugh at the priest who comes to offer him salvation in the next world. After all, was it not the Church which manufactured this culture-war in the first place?

      Perhaps it was the sun. Or perhaps, the Death of Mother had simply induced a historical trauma, transporting Mersault into a wormhole, causing his body to act as though he were a 12^th century Crusader. He is justified, now that he has come to recognize that the litanies of the Church are actually war-chants against the Saracens, in questioning the priest’s brand of salvation. If that is where salvation lies, Mersault is already there.

      Although the action happens in Algeria, the book is published in Paris, which was reeling under enemy occupation in 1942. Given the nature of the times in which this book was published, there must be a hidden message, and perhaps this is it. So long as we are marching to the drumbeats of 7^th century or 11^th century crusaders, white men in black boots shall find themselves accused of “accidental” shootings of “Arabs.”

Since we know that the sun has no malice, perhaps we should begin by examining the historical trauma that goes into replay mode whenever our reason is stunned.

1 ¹ Kirkegaard, Fear and Trembling. ()

2 ² Raymond

3 ³ I am here taking the liberty to present the tale from the Berber’s perspective.

1.
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The Triumph of Baal-Hammon

Aug. 8, 2014

    Something short and blue flashes in the air for just a moment. Something bright and orange flashes from the black hole in the blue muzzle.
    Behind grey clouds, there is a wicked laughter.
    “I’ve got them now!” laughs Baal-Hammon. “They shouldn’t have ignored teenage suicide.”
    The trees have fallen before the deadly blast. A howl goes forth across the land, even as Baal-Hammon is seen riveting brass bands about the stumps on the lands he has claimed, and marking them with a blasphemous ensign.

I Once Wished to Believe

    I once wanted to believe that Renata and I were soulmates. Now it is all we can do to just salvage our friendship.
    It is possible that we have been evil. We believe we have done everything possible to bring each other back to sanity through arguments of reason. But while we were seducing each other, we also were becoming accomplices in a war that was wreaking its carnage all over the earth.
    We who now find ourselves growing older have seen so many hopes ruined. We did not want to become part of this class warfare being waged against the earth’s people. Yet paradoxically, because we had neither the vision nor the strength of superheroes, that is what happened.
    We try to imagine that we would be happier if we could just forget each other. But this is just one more way of avoiding our own awareness of the crime. You say that we should not dwell on it, because we are the victims. But part of that victimization involved circumstances which compelled us to act in complicity with those who were inflicting the violence. It has therefore become our crime also, and we therefore have a right to do what we must to atone.
    This is why we cannot forget each other. When we turn to the Higher Power, and love each other for the sake of God, we see just how Compulsion has forced us to act as agents of the Great Devils who have been making war against God.
    Our problem is that the real Devils are the ones who are doing the accusing. It is, in fact, only as we attenuate this din of accusation, that we begin to see how we have been manipulated by the real architects of the crime.

The Stone that Kept Us in the Dark

    We have been seduced. In the beginning, the language itself had convinced us that we were serving honorably. We are only beginning to realize that philologists shall classify Newspeak as an Indo-European language, and that the same thing has happened before, in the Aryan tongues of the past.
    If we have been tempted by the old familiar Taghoot to persecute each other, we shall recognize that this phenomonon exists within all cultures. Yes, if the man, if the woman that we have loved be evil, then how can anything be any good in this world? But does that old tradition of “honor-killing” do anything to restore anyone’s sense of integrity?
    The stone that held us back from the Garden has just been rolled away. It now becomes obvious just how the Old Serpent deluded us. We were so convinced he would have horns. Instead he came forth as fair-haired Baldur, calling forth the rapture. Even now, when we stand in the courtyard of Belsen it's hard to believe, the real Jesus would have come in on this or that cattle car.

 

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
          – Psalm 22