Plague Journal, Miscellany
Many things on my mind this morning. We viewed the film Harriet last night. It is the story of Harriet Tubman, escaped slave from a Maryland slaveholder, becoming a female “Moses” returning to the area of her former captivity to lead family members and others to freedom. As a former Southerner I was rocked by the film’s portrayal of White’s attitudes toward Blacks. Those attitudes are still expressed depending on where one happens to be in the South.
I am finishing High-Rise by J.G. Ballard, which is a sci-fi tale centered around the tenants of an upscale 40 story building on the outskirts of London. The placement of one’s “condo,” the height of the floor on which one lives, is an indicator of one’s affluence, and social influence. The ‘one-percenters’ have suites on the top floors, with the architect of the building living in the penthouse on the 40th floor. The architect’s name is Royal. The building is self-contained with supermarket, salons, retail mall, fitness clubs — all the tenants require so that no one need leave the building. Of course the professional class, those living in the middle to bottom floors leave each day for work, – the accountants, lawyers, and television “personalities,” etc. The story line involves the disintegration of the social structure within the high-rise building, cocktail parties eventually devolving into marauding attacks on “enemy” floors. It is a tale of technological breakdown and descent into a primal chaos.
Why read such material? J. G. Ballard is a highly regarded writer-story teller. The story strikes me as a microcosm of what appears to be happening on a larger scale in our nation.
Two of the grand kids came over with their parents on Sunday morning, yesterday. We have four grand children. We went fishing in the creek which flows into Almond Marsh behind our property. Some good memories 
were made as bullfrogs were captured from the creek and held for a while. Fish and frogs were all released after a full examination. All creatures appeared uninjured as they energetically swam away in the clear water.
I am revisiting The Anti-Christ written by Friedrich Nietzsche in the latter half of 1888. This was the last year of Nietzsche’s sane life. Upon my first read of The Anti-Christ some years ago I was impressed by his clear expressive language and philosophical exploration of Christian theology. Christianity was Nietzsche’s heritage, raised in a Lutheran household with a father and grandfather who were pastors. Christian faith could not have been more personal for Nietzsche. He became a first rate critic, from the inside out.
I know that you will never read The Anti-Christ as Nietzsche is an acquired taste. But in the off chance that you might, here is a excerpt.
16
A critical examination of the Christian idea of God will necessarily lead to the same conclusion. -A people that still believes in itself will still have its own god. In the figure of this god, a people will worship the conditions that have brought it to the fore, its virtues, – it projects the pleasure it takes in itself, its feeling of power, into a being that it can thank for all of this. Whoever has wealth will want to give; a proud people needs a god to sacrifice to.
On this supposition, religion is a form of gratitude. People are grateful for themselves: and this is why they need a god. – This sort of god has to be able to help and to harm, has to be able to be a friend and foe. – people admire him as good but also as bad.
The anti-natural castration of a god into a god of pure goodness would be undesirable here. Evil gods are just as necessary as the good ones: after all, people do not exactly owe their own existence to tolerance and love of humanity … Why bother with a god who does not know about anger, revenge, envy, scorn, cunning, violence? Who might not even know the exquisite ardeurs of victory and destruction? Nobody would understand a god like this: what would be the point of having him for a god….
Of course: when a people is destroyed, when it feels that its belief in the future, its hope for freedom, is irretrievably fading away, when it becomes conscious of subjugation as its first principle of utility and conscious of the virtues of the subjugated as the condition of its preservation, then its god will necessarily change as well. He will become modest and full of fear, he will cringe in corners and recommend ‘peace of soul’, forbearance, an end to hatred, and ‘love’ of friends and enemies. He will constantly moralize, he will creep into the crevices of every private virtue, he will be a god for one and all, a private and cosmopolitan god ……
