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AR 24:38 - Does America really need a "zen president?"
In this issue:
FEMINISM - a dystopian classic about fundamentalist Christians
HIGHER EDUCATION - "many things most students or faculty never heard of or dare speak in public" (and it's all old school)
MINDFULNESS - using it to "calm the level of division, emotion, and irrationality in American politics?"
Apologia Report 24:38 (1,446)
September 25, 2019
FEMINISM
Current cultural undercurrent: The Testaments, by Margaret Atwood [1] -- red hot at your public library, this sequel to The Handmaid's Tale [2], published in 1985, "has become a universal symbol of women's oppression [and] for many readers illuminates today's politics more than any other work of literature" (The Economist, Sep 14 '19, p78-9).
And more: "The contemporary influence of The Handmaid's Tale is approaching that of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Over 8m copies have been sold in English. In 2017 it was the most-read novel in America, according to Amazon." The novel "imagines that the American government has been overthrown by the Sons of Jacob, a fundamentalist Christian group. They murder the president and members of Congress - 'they blamed it on the Islamic fanatics' - suspend the constitution and declare the Republic of Gilead. In this totalitarian state, men and women have strict roles. ...
"When Ms Atwood was writing that book in 1984, she wanted to imbue it with an uncanny realism.... The religious conservatism that was then sweeping America harked back to the country's Puritan history. ...
"After Donald Trump's election, Ms Atwood came to be seen by some as a soothsayer. The Handmaid's Tale laid out an extreme version of America's pathologies, issuing a warning that what was once shocking could come to seem normal, as outrage devolved into complacency. [Hmm. What does that line bring to mind? - RP]
"The new book leaps ahead of the [related] TV series, which itself extended the drama of The Handmaid's Tale far beyond Ms Atwood's original novel. ...
"The scope of The Testaments ... uncovers Gilead's inner workings: the ideological hypocrisies, the fragile alliances, the institutional rot. ...
"Yet if The Handmaid's Tale was a warning, The Testaments has a more positive message. Both books end by affirming that the regime eventually falls, in epilogues which refer to a historical symposium of Gileadean studies. The Testaments shows that corruption and infighting help to bring about its demise from within."
The Week (Sep 20 '19, p25) calls Atwood's "dystopian classic ... one of the most anticipated sequels of the modern age [in which] the figure of the red-cloaked Handmaid has become a symbol of feminist resistance."
Christianity Today (May 10, 2017) ran a lengthy and thoughtful critique of The Handmaid’s Tale book and television program <www.bit.ly/2kViLJp>, but other substantial evangelical analyses have been few and far between.
POSTSCRIPT Dec 27 '19: "On 5 October 2017, allegations about what Harvey Weinstein had been getting up to in his fourth-floor suite at the Peninsula broke in the New York Times. ... Over the weeks and months that followed, further allegations were levelled against him.... #MeToo actively sought to give a voice to the most marginalised and vulnerable of all.... Already that year, the summons to a great moral awakening, a call for men everywhere to reflect on their sins and repent them, had been much on the air. On 21 January, a million women had marched through Washington DC. The previous day, a new president, Donald J. Trump, had been inaugurated.... Rather than make the marches about Trump, however, the organisers had sought a loftier message: ... 'It's about basic equality for all people.' ...
"Yet Christianity ... appeared to many who marched in 2017 part of the problem. Evangelicals had voted in large numbers for Trump. Roiled by issues that seemed to them not just unbiblical ... they had held their noses and backed a man who ... had unblushingly cast himself as the standard-bearer for Christian values. ... Three months after the Women's March, a television series made gripping drama out of this dread. The Handmaid's Tale was set in a country returned to a particularly nightmarish vision of seventeenth century New England. Adapted from a dystopian novel by the Canadian writer Margaret Atwood, it provided female protestors against Trump with a striking new visual language of protest. White bonnets and red cloaks were the uniform worn by 'handmaids': women whose ability to reproduce had rendered them, in a world crippled by widespread infertility, the objects of legalized rape. Licence for the practice was provided by an episode in the Bible. The parody of evangelicals was as dark as it was savage. The Handmaid's Tale - as all great dystopian fiction tends to be - was less prophecy than satire. The TV series cast Trump's America as a society rent in two: between conservatives and liberals; between reactionaries and progressives; between dark-souled televangelists and noble-hearted foes of patriarchy." -- from Dominion, by Tom Holland (p528, featured in AR 24:36, and 25:30)
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HIGHER EDUCATION
The Poor Old Liberal Arts, by Robert Gannon (Jesuit priest, and President of Fordham University from 1936 to 1949. He received a doctorate in sacred theology at Gregorian University, Rome, and a master's from Cambridge University) [3] -- Ignatius Press says this is a "memoir that covers ... the loss of the liberal arts in our time, and how to regain them. When young Robert Gannon was a college freshman in the early twentieth century, it was unthinkable that there would ever be a time when Greek and Latin would not be an essential part of the college curriculum. But over the next several decades, in a world radically altered by two world wars, he saw the liberal arts retreat before the New Materialism. ... He reflects on the great impact for good that the liberal arts have had in forming generations of students, and why their loss is such a tragedy. His trenchant remarks on the state of modern education in America and its future prospects make The Poor Old Liberal Arts a spirited, enjoyable and insightful work. [This book] 'contains many things most students or faculty never heard of or dare speak in public. The liberal arts are almost nowhere to be found in existing colleges anywhere. ... The pleas for "multicultural" education to replace liberal arts are really a form of relativism, a refusal to take the issue of standards, truth, and human nobility seriously. In the name of "culture", we bypass the one culture that grounded what it is to be human itself, what it is to be open to what is, to the divine.' - Fr. James Schall, S.J., from the Introduction"
Also see Who Killed Homer: The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom, by Victor Davis Hanson <www.bit.ly/2kWgDBe> and John Heath [4]. The publisher explains that this is "for anyone who agrees that knowledge of classics acquaints us with the beauty and perils of our own culture." Several months ago, this book rekindled my love for reading history. - RP, who is currently deep into Persian Fire, by Tom Holland [5] and glad to have discovered his work.
A related phenomenon: "The Rise of the Bible-Teaching, Plato-Loving, Homeschool Elitists" by Louis Markos (cover story, with the title "Could Evangelical Homeschoolers Save Western Pagan Thought?" in Christianity Today, Aug 19 '19) - re: "a growing number of evangelical homeschooling co-ops that want to raise up a generation of Christians who know the Bible…and who are also firmly grounded in the pagan classics of ancient Greece and Rome, as well as the Roman Catholic classics of the Middle Ages." Markos writes: "If the country is preparing to enter a type of second Dark Ages devoid of classical thought, [an] unlikely group of people is arising to preserve the Great Books of the Western intellectual tradition: conservative evangelical Christians." <www.bit.ly/2mvw2ch>
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MINDFULNESS
"Congressman Tim Ryan Wants to Heal America's Trauma with Mindfulness" by Melvin McLeod (Lion's Roar, Aug 28 '19, n.p.) -- a Buddhist publication's interview: "Tim Ryan, Democrat of Ohio, is currently running for president in the Democratic primaries. He is also the leading proponent of mindfulness as public policy. He talked with Lion's Roar editor-in-chief Melvin McLeod about presenting mindfulness to America, trauma in American society, and becoming America's 'zen president.' ...
MM: "When you're speaking to your colleagues or speaking to the public about mindfulness, what specific areas do you point to in which the introduction of mindfulness practice and others such as yoga can be beneficial?
TR: "I think there's three key areas. One is what we're doing with our veterans, making sure that they have access to mindfulness-based stress reduction and other practices and approaches that help them reduce their post-traumatic stress.
"Next, having these practices taught to teachers and implemented in the classroom - having the teacher model that behavior, learn some of these techniques and then begin to share them with the kids in the classroom. My approach to education is: how do we deal with trauma. If we don't start with the trauma, we're not going to get anywhere with the test scores.
"And then the last piece is the healthcare piece. We want to start building out a system where doctors have training in mindfulness-based stress reduction and mindfulness-based relapse prevention for addiction. Where doctors are actually teaching this stuff to their patients before they start writing all kinds of prescriptions. ...
MM: "[Y]ou said, referring to the stress levels, that America needs a 'zen president.' As the editor of a Buddhist magazine, I would have to point out that 'zen' is not a pseudonym for 'relaxed' or 'low-stress.' But, nonetheless, the point was made that that leaders who can calm the level of division, emotion, and irrationality in American politics are badly needed - whether it's Zen or something else.
TR: "Well, no question. And you know, obviously the cultural interpretation is not necessarily the Buddhist definition. It's seen as 'Don't mess up my zen.' It's penetrated the psyche - the zeitgeist of the country - so that a presidential candidate can even say that. I've tried to communicate in that way." <www.bit.ly/2ktvz9H>
For counterpoint ideas, see <www.bit.ly/2kYv2wF>
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SOURCES: Monographs
1 - The Testaments, by Margaret Atwood (Talese, 2019, hardcover, 432 pages) <www.amzn.to/2msEDwf>
2 - The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood (Anchor, 1998 re-issue, paperback, 311 pages) <www.amzn.to/2mtNMEQ>
3 - The Poor Old Liberal Arts, by Robert Gannon (Ignatius, 2018, paperback, 185 pages) <www.amzn.to/2krgsO0>
4 - Who Killed Homer: The Demise of Classical Education and the Recovery of Greek Wisdom, by Victor Davis Hanson and John Heath (Encounter, 2001, paperback, 323 pages) <www.amzn.to/2kMa9oE>
5 - Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West, by Tom Holland (Anchor, 2007, paperback, 464 pages) <www.amzn.to/2kVti7t>
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