“God without man is no more than man without God.” — GWF Hegel

Individuality replaces faith
reason replaces the bible
politics replaces religion and the church
earth replaces heaven
work replaces prayer
poverty replaces hell
man replaces Christ.

…to conquer God,
to make Him a slave,
amounts to abolishing the transcendence
that kept the former master in power
and to preparing,
with the ascendancy of the new tyrants,
the advent of the man-king.

A concept
that cannot be conceived
must, perforce, like error,
be contrived.
But to be accepted
it cannot rely on the persuasion
innate in order and truth,
but must finally be imposed.

The sky is empty,
the earth delivered into the hands
of power without principles.
Those who have chosen to kill
and those who have chosen to enslave
will successively occupy the front of the stage,
in the name of a form of rebellion
which has been diverted
from the path of truth.

What to write this morning.  The country is a hodge-podge patchwork of responses to the coronavirus.  Ambiguity, the absence of clarity is hallmark of the contribution coming from the White House.  Scientists and virologists on the White House Coronavirus Task Force are patronized, their advice is ignored, undermined by lack of direction and by political objectives overriding public safety imperatives. 

There is intent to absorb as many casualties, covid-19 deaths and the long term disabilities from the sickness as the unimpeded run of the virus happens to cause, if that is what it takes to demonstrate the power of the President and his administration to revive the economy.  Is this the first inning of a death-match between the administration in power, and Nature?  It looks as if it is.

The quote from GWF Hegel is a criticism of the traditional basis for political power.  Until the late years of the 20th century past generations of Presidents believed that they were custodians of the welfare of the people.  They believed they were subject to divine direction, and were accountable to a transcendent power.  This traditional sense of things was held by a majority of Americans.

It hardly bears mentioning, this sensibility of a divine canopy transcending society belongs to a bygone age.  We now live by a more severe logic of power, force being the arbitrator, everything in play, nothing being decided until the very end of the game.  Until the end, — anything goes.  Since there is no reference point for virtue, no morality, there are only winners and losers.  (Don’t get caught on the wrong side of that line)

The lines below the quotation from Hegel were written by Albert Camus at the end of WWII.  Camus lived the consequences of such a time, a time when a man is deified, a God-like leader, fixated upon his ability to “make” history, to establish a thousand year Reich.

Our time is really not that different.  We too live under an empty sky.

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Who was Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel?   Hegel (August 27, 1770 – November 14, 1831) was a German philosopher and an important figure of German idealism. Hegel’s principal achievement was his development of a distinctive articulation of idealism, sometimes termed absolute idealism, in which the dualisms of, for instance, mind and nature and subject and object are overcome. His philosophy of spirit conceptually integrates psychology, the state, history, art, religion and philosophy.  Hegel’s State is the final culmination of the embodiment of freedom or right. The State subsumes family and civil society and fulfills them.   — Wikipedia