Death of the Individual?

[don]

“Well ,we’re really all the same, so the choices a person has aren’t that important…”


“What is finished is the idea that this great country is dedicated to the freedom and flourishing of every individual in it. It’s the individual that’s finished. It’s the single, solitary human being that’s finished. It’s every single one of you out there that’s finished. Because this is no longer a nation of independent individuals. It’s a nation of some two hundred odd million transistorized, deodorized, whiter-than-white, steel-belted bodies, totally unnecessary as human beings and as replaceable as piston rods.” Howard Beale, in Paddy Chayefsky’s 1976 film, Network

Here, in the usual prose, is a familiar formulation of the grand psyop: “We can no longer afford the luxury of thinking of ourselves as individuals. The stakes are too high. Finally, we must all come together and realize our presence on this planet is a shared experience. The decimation of our resources, through hatred and divisive behavior, the denial of love and community, the cold greed and excessive profit-making, the whole range of social and political injustices—all this can ultimately be laid at the door of the individual who refuses to join the rest of humanity…”

Is this manifesto valid?

“When hopes and dreams are loose in the streets, it is well for the timid to lock doors, shutter windows and lie low until the wrath has passed. For there is often a monstrous incongruity between the hopes, however noble and tender, and the action which follows them. It is as if ivied maidens and garlanded youths were to herald the four horsemen of the apocalypse…The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race, or his holy cause…Collective unity is not the result of the brotherly love of the faithful for each other. The loyalty of the true believer [who surrenders Self] is to the whole – the church, party, nation – and not to his fellow true believer. True loyalty between individuals is possible only in a loose and relatively free society.” Eric Hoffer, The True Believer, 1951

Where is the cosmic share-and-care we need to spread like butter over the whole universe? I mean, Eric Hoffer was a wonderful writer, and he was a working man, a longshoreman for his whole life, so we should admire him, but today’s prophets are wired directly into the Unity that will save us all automatically—like a toaster popping up with toast every time…right?

Think of some of the messages of recent pathetic presidents. Bush the Elder: “Kinder, gentler.” Clinton: “I feel your pain.” Bush 2: “No child left behind.” Obama: “We’re all in this together.”

Judging by these presidents’ murderous actions, it’s clear they were selling unity and caring and togetherness as cover stories for oppressive business as usual.

The op? Make the individual extinct, present him as a useless and dangerous and outmoded construct. Then, whatever real unity that might exist between individuals will vanish, because the population will take on the shape of a coagulated mass melted down into a cosmic glob of androidal harmony.

Artists have warned about all this. Their so-called supporters say, “Oh yes, he was a wonderful writer. Misunderstood, of course, but brave in the face of utter rejection.” The usual claptrap. Point is, these gushing advocates conveniently and easily forget what the artists actually wrote.

“A bureau operates on opposite principles of inventing needs to justify its existence. Bureaucracy is wrong as a cancer, a turning away from the human evolutionary direction of infinite potentials and differentiation and independent spontaneous action to the complete parasitism of a virus…Bureaus die when the structure of the state collapse. They are as helpless and unfit for independent existence as a displaced tapeworm, or a virus that has killed the host.”

“After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn’t do it. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military.”

“There is simply no room left for ‘freedom from the tyranny of government’ since city dwellers depend on it for food, power, water, transportation, protection, and welfare. Your right to live where you want, with companions of your choosing, under laws to which you agree, died in the eighteenth century with Captain Mission. Only a miracle or a disaster could restore it.”

The author? William S. Burroughs.

Here’s another psyop and cultural theme: the distortion of money and the free market.

The psyop goes this way: The making of $$ is a religious event comparable to the arrival of Jesus or the appearance of the Great Buddha. Isn’t Christmas the season measured by consumer sales?

A life justified is a life of the bottom-line cash register.

It doesn’t matter what a product is. If it sells, it must be good.

It must mean something profound.

“You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multi-variate, multi-national dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and sub-atomic and galactic structure of things today! And you have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and You Will Atone!” Paddy Chayefsky, in his film, Network

Who would want to keep the individual alive, especially the free, independent, and creative individual? We can learn all we need about that by listening to TED lectures.

Here is another quote from an American artist. This one is REALLY not in the politically correct mode.

“Tomorrow you may bring about the destruction of your world. Tomorrow you may sing in Paradise above the smoking ruins of your world-cities. But tonight I would like to think of one man, a lone individual, a man without name or country, a man whom I respect because he has absolutely nothing in common with you-MYSELF. Tonight I shall meditate upon that which I am.” Henry Miller, Black Spring, 1936

And this from the most celebrated American poet of all, Walt Whitman:

“I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself/And what I assume you shall assume/For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you/I loafe and invite my soul/I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass/…Creeds and schools in abeyance…I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked…The smoke of my own breath/Echoes, ripples, buzz’d whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine…The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hill-sides/The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and meeting the sun.”

A celebration of self, and self expanded out into limitless dimensions?

Something must be wrong.

Yes, the individual, the self—these individual artists—far too messy, too uneven, too unpredictable, too complex to fit into a scheme of the future in which we’ll all be subsumed in a cosmic order.

No, the individual, the self, must be shaved and carved so we can all meld together in a simplified enlightenment.
Here, from the universally acclaimed author of Moby Dick, Herman Melville, another quote that sticks out from the great uniform mass of group-think:

“There is the grand truth about Nathaniel Hawthorne. He says NO! in thunder; but the Devil himself cannot make him say yes. For all men who say yes, lie; and all men who say no,-why, they are in the happy condition of judicious, unincumbered travellers in Europe; they cross the frontiers into Eternity with nothing but a carpet-bag, – that is to say, the Ego. Whereas those yes-gentry, they travel with heaps of baggage, and, damn them! they will never get through the Custom House.”

There is no doubt; these Individuals are too thorny, too different—and even different from each other. How can we build a world of unity and unified enlightenment if we let them in the door?


Let’s cause everyone to accept one of two things. We are either “all in this together forever,” or money is the supreme and final god of all time and space. Those are the two choices. They both flatten out the soul and prepare it for the endless gray day.

The Individual must be put into permanent exile. We can’t even say what he is. We can’t define him. We can’t hold him within borders. We can’t know what he’ll do.

Sometimes he’s up, sometimes he’s down, sometimes he’s sideways. Sometimes he embraces the whole cosmos, sometimes he’s alone in a room.

The new world can’t have him. For sake of the coming glory, he has to exit.

The Great Psyop hath spoken.


Jon Rappoport is the author of two collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED and EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at www.nomorefakenews.com

[Forrest]

Re: Death of the Individual?

“Well, we’re really all the same, so the choices a person has aren’t that important…”


“What is finished is the idea that this great country is dedicated to the freedom and flourishing of every individual in it. It’s the individual that’s finished. It’s the single, solitary human being that’s finished. It’s every single one of you out there that’s finished. Because this is no longer a nation of independent individuals. It’s a nation of some two hundred odd million transistorized, deodorized, whiter-than-white, steel-belted bodies, totally unnecessary as human beings and as replaceable as piston rods.” Howard Beale, in Paddy Chayefsky’s 1976 film, Network

Well, sorry, we aren’t the same, and my choices are important to me, and since this is my life, and not another’s, I will continue to be different. This may put me at odds with a lot of other people, and make life less comfortable, but my ‘self’ is not subject to anyone on this planet. True, my body may be shoved around a little if I am not as wise as a serpent, and as meek as a dove, but then, the type of civilization you speak of…the uniformity of being…is simply not within human nature.

As for the nation not being composed of independent individuals, you will note that all the world still has the idea that the US is the best place overall for an individual to create a home in. It’s not the easiest, nor the nicest, least corrupt place in existence, but we do still have an idea of ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” that beckons to the individuals in other nations.

Here, in the usual prose, is a familiar formulation of the grand psyop: “We can no longer afford the luxury of thinking of ourselves as individuals. The stakes are too high. Finally, we must all come together and realize our presence on this planet is a shared experience. The decimation of our resources, through hatred and divisive behavior, the denial of love and community, the cold greed and excessive profit-making, the whole range of social and political injustices—all this can ultimately be laid at the door of the individual who refuses to join the rest of humanity…”

Is this manifesto valid?

“When hopes and dreams are loose in the streets, it is well for the timid to lock doors, shutter windows and lie low until the wrath has passed. For there is often a monstrous incongruity between the hopes, however noble and tender, and the action which follows them. It is as if ivied maidens and garlanded youths were to herald the four horsemen of the apocalypse…The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race, or his holy cause…Collective unity is not the result of the brotherly love of the faithful for each other. The loyalty of the true believer [who surrenders Self] is to the whole – the church, party, nation – and not to his fellow true believer. True loyalty between individuals is possible only in a loose and relatively free society.” Eric Hoffer, The True Believer, 1951

The manifesto is not valid to me, and it’s not valid to a lot of other people. It is possible within a cult to lose one’s view of one’s self as uniquely wonderful; and in tightly controlled societies such as Korea, force can be used to make the people appear to be a true believer, but human nature doesn’t allow for much of it…we are built for survival, not for self sacrifice to a human cause.

We can sacrifice self for small moments of glorious surrender to a spouse or lover, and for life to YHVH, but the individual doesn’t disappear. It may go into hiding within a society to preserve itself, but the individual self is not obliterated, not even in a cult, where the self is finding belonging, purpose and individual fulfillment in being within the cult. With YHVH, no self is obliterated, for even in surrender to El Elyon, for it is a surrender of love, not by force, not for ideals because YHVH refuses every non-unique person.

As for loyalty between individuals…how silly to think that even in a militarized, uniform society that one friend might not choose to die to save the other. The heart is not confined, nor is the mind, or the soul by the machinations of man. The heart mind and soul can be oppressed, but hardly obliterated.

Where is the cosmic share-and-care we need to spread like butter over the whole universe? I mean, Eric Hoffer was a wonderful writer, and he was a working man, a longshoreman for his whole life, so we should admire him, but today’s prophets are wired directly into the Unity that will save us all automatically—like a toaster popping up with toast every time…right?

Think of some of the messages of recent pathetic presidents. Bush the Elder: “Kinder, gentler.” Clinton: “I feel your pain.” Bush 2: “No child left behind.” Obama: “We’re all in this together.”

Judging by these presidents’ murderous actions, it’s clear they were selling unity and caring and togetherness as cover stories for oppressive business as usual.

True…but it is only oppression, not elimination. These presidents, and those they represent, The Powers That Be, are not capable of a Borg-like assimilation. They will try, and push, and confine, and persuade, yet, in the end, the individual spirit does rise up in rebellion against such oppression.

The op? Make the individual extinct, present him as a useless and dangerous and outmoded construct. Then, whatever real unity that might exist between individuals will vanish, because the population will take on the shape of a coagulated mass melted down into a cosmic glob of androidal harmony.

Artists have warned about all this. Their so-called supporters say, “Oh yes, he was a wonderful writer. Misunderstood, of course, but brave in the face of utter rejection.” The usual claptrap. Point is, these gushing advocates conveniently and easily forget what the artists actually wrote.

“A bureau operates on opposite principles of inventing needs to justify its existence. Bureaucracy is wrong as a cancer, a turning away from the human evolutionary direction of infinite potentials and differentiation and independent spontaneous action to the complete parasitism of a virus…Bureaus die when the structure of the state collapse. They are as helpless and unfit for independent existence as a displaced tapeworm, or a virus that has killed the host.”

“After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn’t do it. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military.”

“There is simply no room left for ‘freedom from the tyranny of government’ since city dwellers depend on it for food, power, water, transportation, protection, and welfare. Your right to live where you want, with companions of your choosing, under laws to which you agree, died in the eighteenth century with Captain Mission. Only a miracle or a disaster could restore it.”


The author? William S. Burroughs.

Here’s another psyop and cultural theme: the distortion of money and the free market.

The psyop goes this way: The making of $$ is a religious event comparable to the arrival of Jesus or the appearance of the Great Buddha. Isn’t Christmas the season measured by consumer sales?

A life justified is a life of the bottom-line cash register.

It doesn’t matter what a product is. If it sells, it must be good.

It must mean something profound.


“You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multi-variate, multi-national dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, Reich marks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and sub-atomic and galactic structure of things today! And you have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and You Will Atone!” Paddy Chayefsky, in his film, Network

Who would want to keep the individual alive, especially the free, independent, and creative individual? We can learn all we need about that by listening to TED lectures.

Here is another quote from an American artist. This one is REALLY not in the politically correct mode.


“Tomorrow you may bring about the destruction of your world. Tomorrow you may sing in Paradise above the smoking ruins of your world-cities. But tonight I would like to think of one man, a lone individual, a man without name or country, a man whom I respect because he has absolutely nothing in common with you-MYSELF. Tonight I shall meditate upon that which I am.” Henry Miller, Black Spring, 1936

And this from the most celebrated American poet of all, Walt Whitman:


“I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself/And what I assume you shall assume/For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you/I loafe and invite my soul/I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass/…Creeds and schools in abeyance…I will go to the bank by the wood and become undisguised and naked…The smoke of my own breath/Echoes, ripples, buzz’d whispers, love-root, silk-thread, crotch and vine…The delight alone or in the rush of the streets, or along the fields and hill-sides/The feeling of health, the full-noon trill, the song of me rising from bed and meeting the sun.”


A celebration of self, and self expanded out into limitless dimensions?

Something must be wrong.

Yes, the individual, the self—these individual artists—far too messy, too uneven, too unpredictable, too complex to fit into a scheme of the future in which we’ll all be subsumed in a cosmic order.

No, the individual, the self, must be shaved and carved so we can all meld together in a simplified enlightenment.

Here, from the universally acclaimed author of Moby Dick, Herman Melville, another quote that sticks out from the great uniform mass of group-think:


“There is the grand truth about Nathaniel Hawthorne. He says NO! in thunder; but the Devil himself cannot make him say yes. For all men who say yes, lie; and all men who say no,-why, they are in the happy condition of judicious, unincumbered travellers in Europe; they cross the frontiers into Eternity with nothing but a carpet-bag, – that is to say, the Ego. Whereas those yes-gentry, they travel with heaps of baggage, and, damn them! they will never get through the Custom House.”


There is no doubt; these Individuals are too thorny, too different—and even different from each other. How can we build a world of unity and unified enlightenment if we let them in the door?


Let’s cause everyone to accept one of two things. We are either “all in this together forever,” or money is the supreme and final god of all time and space. Those are the two choices. They both flatten out the soul and prepare it for the endless gray day.

The Individual must be put into permanent exile. We can’t even say what he is. We can’t define him. We can’t hold him within borders. We can’t know what he’ll do.

Sometimes he’s up, sometimes he’s down, sometimes he’s sideways. Sometimes he embraces the whole cosmos, sometimes he’s alone in a room.

The new world can’t have him. For sake of the coming glory, he has to exit.

The Great Psyop hath spoken.


Jon Rappoport is the author of two collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED and EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free emails at www.nomorefakenews.com

It is foolishness to believe that any power on this planet can cause such an exile. Mass agreement for this purpose cannot be achieved. Even when all those that are massacred are gone, the spirit rises up again, in their children.

You need only look at history…men may choose for a time to let others believe they are under the elite’s control. And generations may pass in confinement of a people, but in the end, the individual remains. It is how we were made, and what we are.

We are individuals, acting for self benefit within the confines of society. When the society becomes too confining, we individuals gather together to undo the society we are in, and make another that will fit a bit more comfortably.

There is no coming glory of uniformity…and when Glory does come, with Yah’shua, and a rod of iron, there will be many individuals, living under one enforced law…the love of one neighbor for another in the love of Yah’shua.

[reggie]

Re: Death of the Individual?

From the movie, Visoneers with Zach Galifianakis: “Dreams are dead” (starts at 8min30s in part 8 and continues thru part 9)

Mr. Jeffers is a sickly old man. He requires an oxygen machine to breathe. He doesn’t just want to a world without dreams, but to live without emotion and independent thought. That’s how man can be most productive, he thinks. He speaks as a man committed to a singular cause, to a life’s work. In spite of his condition, he’s quite jovial. In spite of his dedication to totalitarian suppression he comes off evenly, like the grandpa in Jurassic Park. It’s easy to imagine him voting Republican.

When George drew his vision of the future, he scribbled a crude sunset over an ocean. Maybe it’s a sunrise? Regardless, it blew Mr. Jeffers crotchety old mind.

“What were you thinking when you drew this?” he asks.

“Dreams are dead,” George mumbles.

“I like you, TUNT,” Mr. Jeffers says. “I’m going to show you how you can have the peace you want and live in the world we both know is coming.”

“Kill the thing you love.”

It is foolishness to believe that any power on this planet can cause such an exile. Mass agreement for this purpose cannot be achieved. Even when all those that are massacred are gone, the spirit rises up again, in their children.

You need only look at history…men may choose for a time to let others believe they are under the elite’s control. And generations may pass in confinement of a people, but in the end, the individual remains. It is how we were made, and what we are.

We are individuals, acting for self benefit within the confines of society. When the society becomes too confining, we individuals gather together to undo the society we are in, and make another that will fit a bit more comfortably.

There There is no coming glory of uniformity…and when Glory does come, with Yah’shua, and a rod of iron, there will be many individuals, living under one enforced law…the love of one neighbor for another in the love of Yah’shua

The "uniformity is already here. And the "beauty" of it is that it's not even "seen".

[Forrest]

Re: Death of the Individual?

I am not uniform...I do not fit...I am a Stranger in a Strange Land.

I choose to stand apart.

I see what the Adversary is building with willing hands to help him...with you, the children of disobedience.

This world will become all that you wish...for a time. Enjoy it while you may, for it is all that you will have.

In your movie, George dropped the knife he had ready, and did not kill what he loved, but cherished her...he too stood apart, and he was joyous and triumphant in that choice.

You also have choices. Make a better one than you have.

[reggie]

Re: Death of the Individual?

I am not uniform...I do not fit...I am a Stranger in a Strange Land.

I choose to stand apart.

I see what the Adversary is building with willing hands to help him...with you, the children of disobedience.

This world will become all that you wish...for a time. Enjoy it while you may, for it is all that you will have.

In your movie, George dropped the knife he had ready, and did not kill what he loved, but cherished her...he too stood apart, and he was joyous and triumphant in that choice.

You also have choices. Make a better one than you have.

"Choice" can be gamed, as Marx so aptly revealed in his corruption of Hegel's dialectics, as it presumes selection from a predetermined set of options. So, even your frame of setting yourself "apart" does not do so.

This is a highly evolved system of science tested over centuries. One is not going to be able to remove oneself from it with simplistic sloganistic rebuttals.

For those interested, Jacques Ellul created an approach for living in "Man's" World.
http://archive.org/details/ThePresen...omJacquesEllul

Contrary to advocating withdrawal from the world or urging a lifeboat, Ellul challenges us to embrace and preserve the world. God alone will effect our separation in his own time. This resolute engagement requires a dialectical and antagonistic style of life which remain very much in the world even as it rejects worldliness. To be in the world also requires us to understand it in both its material and spiritual aspects, a task Ellul has undertaken in his sociological and theological works and which he challenges us to better. By rejecting the twin perils of spiritualization (which neglect material realities) and capitulation (which simply adopts one of the world's many different options that appears to harmonize with Christianity), the Christian plays a truly creative role and gives meaning and direction to history, which otherwise has no logic or certitude.

And more, from a review of Ellul's book. By the way, you don't have to be religous or Christian to understand and appreciate Ellul's message.

The Presence of the Kingdom: A Review
(This is my review of the book "The Presence of the Kingdom" by Jacques Ellul)
http://lampfortheworld.blogspot.com/...om-review.html


In this book, the author simply explores and answers the question, “How should the Christian live in the modern world?” In this age of technological advancement and mass media, Ellul vigorously pleads for Christians to live out their identity as the salt of the earth and light of world to this decaying and darkened society. Christ calls His followers to function as “visible signs” of the presence and reality of God's kingdom here on earth.

In order to fulfill their mission, Christians ought not to separate themselves from the culture as most pietists do. However, they ought not to be triumphalistic either, engaging themselves deeply into the culture in order to conquer it or “redeem” it. While modern men are fascinated with, even enslaved by, technology and progress, Christians, however, should be preoccupied with God's kingdom and His righteous rule in the world, living as loyal subjects of King Jesus in all areas of life by the power of His Spirit. They should never forget that God has placed them in this fallen world in order to bear witness to Him who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. This seems to be Ellul's main message in this book.

Ellul of course recognizes that the task of witness-bearing is not an easy responsibility. In fact he identifies several obstacles and enemies that every Christian has to contend with in seeking to remain faithful to his calling in the world.

First, the world is not only a place of warfare but also a force that tries to exert pressure upon the Christian so as to conform to its wicked ways. This makes obedience to God's will for him difficult. Ellul quips, “The fact of living in the world, from which we ought not to escape, is a stumbling block for our faith” (p.9). Second, the reality of sin also renders the Christian weak and ineffective in bearing witness for the truth of the gospel of Christ. Third, we may also add to the equation the devil himself, completing the number of the believer's age-old arch enemies, namely, the world, the flesh and the devil. Ellul is aware of these enemies when he writes,

Living in the world we are living in the domain of the Prince of this world, Satan, and all around us we constantly see the action of this prince, and the result of the state of sin in which we are all placed without exception, because in spite of all our efforts and our piety we share in the sin of the world. We are involved in it because in spite of our faith we are and remain sinners; we are also involved in the sin of humanity through the various “orders” of life created by God, so that when a person of my family, or of my nation, commits sin, I am responsible before God for this transgression (p.9).

This leaves us desperate of ourselves. However, this desperation should not make us totally discouraged. We should instead recognize that though “it is impossible for us to make the world less sinful...it is impossible for us to accept it as it is” (p.9). Thus as Christians, we must learn to live in this tension in the world, being fully aware that God calls us and equips us by His Spirit to live as His people, serving as God’s preservatives and light-bearers exactly in this tense situation. Our lifestyle that is consistent to our calling as citizens of God’s kingdom brings genuine transformation that the world needs.

In terms of concretizing this Christian lifestyle, Ellul observes that this is not all about techniques. The techniques which the world propagates will not foster real change in man or the society where he lives in. This is because man has this mistaken idea that with modern technology comes transformation. What modern technology has actually accomplished, according to Ellul, is that it helped shift our focus from end to means. Rather than thinking of what is good and just, and what brings peace and order to society, people start to think about how to make things work and how to do things efficiently. These have become man’s preoccupation.

This shift of mindset somehow affected many Christians. Thus instead of influencing society by being the salt of the earth and light of the world, Christians try to seek influence using social, economic and political means, thinking that these powers would accomplish the Christian task. By doing so, Christians have resorted to the means which natural man uses.

But no matter how hard the natural man tries to transform society and to make it a better place to live using man-made techniques, the result is always further destruction, decay and deformation of the society. The natural man, regardless of his ingenuity in creating technology, whether social, political, or economic, is totally hopeless in his attempt to promote lasting change in the world. The reason of course is that, the modern natural man employs strategies that only address the external issues of life, leaving the internal, most basic issue and need of the individual and society unmet. Thus at the end of the day, technology and mass media further enslave the sinful man rather than liberate him.

However, the power that is at work among believers is able to effect genuine transformation for every man and society that it touches. Only the Holy Spirit quickens dead spirits of men and causes them to do what is right and good, bringing personal and corporate peace, order and freedom. Ellul believes that the Christian faith alone is able to transform society not because of the Christians per se, but because of its revolutionary agent and king, i.e., the Holy Spirit and the Lord Jesus Christ. When the kingdom of God is lived out faithfully by sinful men who are led by the Spirit of God, following their Lord and King, genuine revolution takes place in this fallen world.

Thus Ellul can say, “Whatever work is undertaken by man does not reveal its meaning or its value save in Jesus Christ and through the Holy Spirit” (p.102). He adds, “If Christians have a special mission here [on earth], it is due to the fact that they are witnesses to an event on which all other events are based, an event which took place in history, and an event which sums up and guarantees all other events, personal or historical, and renders history and life irreversibly. This event is the intervention of God in the course of human history, it is Jesus Christ” (p.108).

The book does not really offer concrete easy-steps to readers in terms of prescribing a lifestyle for Christians to follow in order to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world. The author himself admits this when he writes, “My aim was not to give ready-made solutions, but only to open the way for a work of the renewed church” (p.113). He nevertheless gives suggestions as to what Christians should bear in mind as they seek to live the reality of God’s kingdom out in the world as individuals and as body of believers, the church.

One of the things he points out is that we Christians must be aware of our weak or abstract, if not dead, witness-bearing of the power of the gospel of Christ before the watching world. The reason why the world is in such a mess is partly because Christians have forgotten who they are and why they are in the world. Additionally, they have abandoned the powerful means which God has entrusted to them, i.e. the gospel, which is the power of God for the salvation, in all its aspects, of those who believe.

Further, Ellul shows that if Christians are to effect radical change in the world, they have to take their identity and calling seriously, engaging themselves in ordinary human activity, proclaiming the gospel to the world both in meaningful words and kind deeds. In order to actualize this transformation, Ellul points out that Christians themselves must have been, first of all, transformed by the renewing of their mind, which the Holy Spirit alone can do by the Word of God.

I think Ellul’s analysis of the culture is right on target. While he is not against technology per se, he is denouncing the increasingly destructive influence and control of modern technology not only on Western civilization but particularly on the Christian faith. His observation of our failure as Christians to live out our identity and mission in the world is also quite indicting. While he prescribes no easy solutions, his critical thought helps us to think deeply our life and lifestyle before the watching world.

I would not fault Ellul for his lack of suggestions on how to address the Christian dilemma in the world. From my other readings of his life and writings, I came to realize that he tried to live out what he taught and preached. He was actively involved both in the church and the society, serving as a consultant to the Ecumenical World Council of Churches from 1947-53 and was a member of the National Council of the Reformed Church in France. He also haa a long academic career and participated in local civic affair where at one point he served as Deputy Mayor of his hometown in the mid-1940’s. Finally, he was also involved in ministering with many troubled youth and drug addicts.

If there is anything that he accomplished in this book it is the fact that he reminds us that faith and obedience in the living and loving God who called His people out of slavery from sin and worldliness by His Spirit constitute our best weapon to let the kingdom of God in Christ be seen and felt by the world.

[Forrest]

Re: Death of the Individual?

"Choice" can be gamed, as Marx so aptly revealed in his corruption of Hegel's dialectics, as it presumes selection from a predetermined set of options. So, even your frame of setting yourself "apart" does not do so.

The ‘choice’ you speak of can be gamed, because it only a ‘presumes selection from a predetermined set of options’.

I do not accept your set of options, nor anyone else’s set of options.

I have my own option.

This is a highly evolved system of science tested over centuries. One is not going to be able to remove oneself from it with simplistic sloganistic rebuttals.

My choice is not a slogan in a pretty game of philosophesis, nor part of any philosophical debate, logical or not.

I choose to live in a way consistent with Yah’shua ben Notsri haMashiach, however imperfectly.

That is what sets me apart…it is not a petty conceit, nor an argument of any kind, but instead a fundamentally different way of thinking and living, a course of action that I choose to take every day, and one that I will take regardless of the consequences.

In the film above referenced, George salutes a vision of Revolutionary Patriot soldiers in a small boat, then turns his face up to the sun, rejoicing in life, and the choice he has made. He has chosen to not conform to the way of life offered him by Jeffers, just as I choose not to live in the world as defined in the OP.

[reggie]

Re: Death of the Individual?

The ‘choice’ you speak of can be gamed, because it only a ‘presumes selection from a predetermined set of options’.

I do not accept your set of options, nor anyone else’s set of options.

I have my own option.



My choice is not a slogan in a pretty game of philosophesis, nor part of any philosophical debate, logical or not.

I choose to live in a way consistent with Yah’shua ben Notsri haMashiach, however imperfectly.

That is what sets me apart…it is not a petty conceit, nor an argument of any kind, but instead a fundamentally different way of thinking and living, a course of action that I choose to take every day, and one that I will take regardless of the consequences.

In the film above referenced, George salutes a vision of Revolutionary Patriot soldiers in a small boat, then turns his face up to the sun, rejoicing in life, and the choice he has made. He has chosen to not conform to the way of life offered him by Jeffers, just as I choose not to live in the world as defined in the OP.

If you're living your life "consistent with" Yah’shua ben Notsri haMashiach, then aren't you choosing someone "else's set of options" to live by?

[Forrest]

Re: Death of the Individual?

If you're living your life "consistent with" Yah’shua ben Notsri haMashiach, then aren't you choosing someone "else's set of options" to live by?

Blessedly, no. Walking in the footsteps of the Messiah is not about following rules given, or a mandate to follow. The only choice being made, moment by moment, hour by hour, is to focus on submitting to the complete maturity of the self through the power and grace of Yah’shua.


This is a total transformation of the self from being an imperfect me to becoming a perfect me, without fault or blemish, as a purposeful choice that is not part of anyone’s options to choose from. I am not choosing between this option and that. I am not even attempting to be like unto Yah’shua, for that is impossibility. Yah’shua is El Elyon, the Most High God, the Creator, He who was, and is, and will be, and I cannot become even a shadow of Who He is.


It is also not something that I do to myself, except by requesting the changes needed, and then receiving the instruction and changes made. This allows me to become less like the person that I was, and more like the being Yah’shua enables me to be as a free and full gift.


I choose to focus on the beauty, glory and righteousness of His being, handing myself over to Yah’shua to be made somewhat like unto Him, in heart and mind, soul and spirit, until I have reached the full potential of individuality and uniqueness that I was created to be, that I might enjoy life to the full in Yah’shua, even as He enjoys life to the full in me, and all others that choose Him to be first in their lives.

This is an ever becoming of newness, a daily rebirth, from the me that was each morning to the me that is changed, ever so slightly, by the end of each day.

To obtain all of this is not an easy task, for all the options of the world around me reach out for me, to conform me to the ways of the world, to become as others are, within the options that the world wishes for me, that I trouble them not. Consequently, I refuse all options, and turn my face to the Light, even as George in the movie lifted up his face to the sun, glorying in his individuality, and his choice of an option not offered to him, yet taken all the same.