What Great Gravity

It’s finally becoming chilly around here, with the temperature sinking into the single-digits tonight - the true sign of a clean slate for sure. And since it is the first day of 2008, I feel it is only right to continue on with an appreciative nod to 2007. Without beginning with some cheesy metaphor that compares a year of life to a s’more, a worn pair of jeans, or a sycamore tree (I assure you that all three are possible!), I’d like to offer some of the “best’s” of my year 2007.

Best book I read in 2007: Grace (Eventually) by Anne Lamott

Best Liberating Moment of 2007: Resigning (quite ungracefully) from CorporateJesusFiascoOfAnOgranization on May 23^rd, 2007.

Most Unique New Friends of 2007: Nikki and Mark Hitchcock, owners of Advocate Clothing, the “Robin Hood of t-shirt companies”

Best Band Encountered in 2007: The Weepies

Best Movies of 2007: Across the Universe and The Golden Compass

Best Food of 2007: Maizetos chips and hot, hot salsa

Best Building of 2007: Manly Hall

Words cannot tell of the hundreds of encounters within the walls (and exterior hallways). And if it turns out that they can, I will be a best-selling author with two dogs, a cat, and a mammoth fireplace.

Best Professor I Didn’t Have (But Really Did) in 2007: Russell T. McCutcheon, PhD. Author of the award-winning short article “The Best Pet Show: Featuring Tippy the Turtle”

Best Messy Experience of 2007: Mini-Boston

Best Epiphany/Best Starbuck’s “The Way I See It” of 2007:

The best to you in 2008,

j.

“Simon Peter said to them, ‘Make Mary leave us, for females are not worthy of life.’ Jesus said, ‘Look, I shall guide her to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who makes herself male will enter the Kingdom of Heaven.’”

- The Gospel of Thomas 114

And thus introduces the complexity of recognizing the place(s) of women in early Christianity, how they were viewed in such roles, and their fate in the post-apocalyptic view of the [1]church. In his book, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction, Bart Ehrman spends very little space – eleven pages, in fact, with illustrations! – on exposing this complexity which evidently haunted the early church, and no doubt, continues to do to so today. Ehrman, however brief, does touch on several factors attributing to the riddle of understanding the roles of women in the early church, including the status of women in Paul’s churches, Jesus’ recorded associations with women, the inconsistencies in Paul’s writings regarding of women in the church, gender ideology in the ancient world, and women in the aftermath of Paul. He concludes his short chapter by recognizing that “despite the crucial role that women played in the earlier Christian churches…opposition succeeded in pressing Christian women into submission to male authority” (396). Ehrman, here, fails to identify this seemingly prominent problem in the early Church as a problem prevalent today as the modern church grapples with Paul’s words, those of an apocalypticist who foresaw “an end close at hand,” and did not seem altogether interested in social injustices at hand in light of this quick return of Christ, while women still bear the load of such ancient assumptions about their place in their own contemporary church communities.

In the New Testament mentionings of gender roles within the church, none have been more controversial than the contributions of Paul through his letters (both disputed and non-disputed) to the churches. Surely, this is why Ehrman began here with the women mentioned in Paul’s congregations. It is evident, especially in Paul’s letter to the Romans, that Paul prized the congregational colleagueship of women as he makes mention of the deacon Phoebe, Junia the “foremost among the disciples,” and others. Other Pauline letters offer similar ideas of women’s active involvements in the churches, such as 1 Corinthians (1 Cor 11:4-6) and Acts (Acts 16:1-15) (Ehrman, 396). More evidence, outside of Paul’s own writings, exists from Pauline-Gnostic groups who were known to claim female leaders and spokespersons, as well as other non-canonical texts.

Although Paul did not know Jesus personally, Paul believed that the end had already commenced with Jesus’ victory on the cross and that he would soon return again in haste to judge the living and the dead (400). Because of this victory, Paul saw those baptized in Christ as “new creations” (2 Cor 5:16) which implied a new social order as “Many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourself with Christ. There is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Gal 3:27-28). However his theological convictions, Paul did not urge a social revolution. Quite differently, Paul spent volumes of words regarding the necessity of women veiling their heads (1 Cor 11), and how “nature” supposedly taught that men “should have short hair and women long” (Ehrman, 401). Perhaps Paul believed men and women were equal in Christ, however equality was for another time and place in his understanding – quite a complex notion, an inconsistent and ambivalent one at that.

Although it is highly likely, from what we understand from the Gospels, that Jesus often interacted with women and that his apocalyptic message perhaps delivered hope to oppressed women as “many who are first will be last, and the last first” (Matt 19:30), the apostle Paul did not know the man Jesus, and neither did Paul’s converts. Since the first Gospel, Mark, did not appear until somewhere around 75 C.E., and what we know as Paul’s first letter, 1 Thessalonians, was likely written around 49 C.E., only oral traditions of Jesus’ teachings survived until some many years later when they were first penned. Therefore, Paul’s writings attest to being fairly more reliable in the understandings of the roles of women in the early Christian church. However this may be, Ehrman seems to linger on women in Jesus’ ministry as mentioned in the Gospels as he believes it possible that the position of women among Jesus’ followers while he was alive made an impact on the status of women in the Christian church. While this may be so, this impact was evidently not a lasting impression as this brief period of female leadership in the church did not survive long in Paul’s aftermath.

Due to the aforementioned ambivalence in Paul’s teachings on women and their places – in Christ and in the church, separately, the church was left with a debate regarding the equality of men and women. As gender ideology in the ancient world promoted women as a biologically inferior race (as Ehrman puts it, “‘men’ who had been only partially formed in the womb, and thus they were undeveloped or imperfect from birth…thus, by their very nature, women were the weaker sex”), those converted around the time of Paul likely upheld these then-contemporary understandings of gender roles (403).

Likely, it is this influence which also influenced the pen of the author of 1 Timothy, allegedly written by Paul. 1 Timothy urges two of Paul’s colleagues, Timothy and Titus, to tend to the prevalent problems of their churches, specifically the problem of women. Here, the author insists that the pastors were to appoint married, male leaders (1 Tim 3:2-5, 12) who were to keep their households and wives in submission (1 Tim 2:4), silencing those who argued against marriage and urged asceticism (1 Tim 4:3) while also speaking out against audible women in churches (1 Tim 4:7). These women, instead, were to be silent, submissive, sexually active with their husbands, and of course, those who were eager to “enjoy the benefits of salvation were to produce babies” (1 Tim 2:11-13) (Ehrman, 401).

These arguments, in 1 Timothy, regarding gender roles were those shared among the largely patriarchal society of the early Christian church and which dominated the views of women in the church after, and probably far prior to, Paul’s death. As Ehrman briefly concludes,

“No longer could [women] evangelize or teach or exercise authority…[they were to] stay at home and protect their modesty, as was “natural” for them…The Roman ideology of gender relations became Christianized, and the social implications of Paul’s Apocalyptic vision became lost” (406).

While Ehrman’s conclusion explains the fate of women in early Christianity, it can be argued further that this “problem” is no different than any other in that the church, as it evolves even today, continues to disregard seemingly “wrong” or “inappropriate” oppression in favor of allowing letters, of an apocalypticist who wrongly miscalculated the “haste end” to all things oppressive, to continually enforce ancient patriarchal power within its walls. Just as Paul, in his letter to Philemon on behalf of the slave Onesimus, did not urge a social revolution for injustice in the world, perhaps because of his understanding of the quick second coming of Christ, he did not bother to do so for the case of women either. Had he worried over social iniquities of his day, or should the church recognize the miscalculations of an apostle, perhaps the oppression of peoples, whether during the Atlantic Slave Trade, in today’s Christian congregations, or etc., would be less prevalent among the people belonging to the church.

While the Christian Church today is a living organism, and as such, it evolves and adapts to contemporary issues (women have, in fact, made considerable headway towards equality in congregational standings), issues like these are still hinged on the ancient corners of scriptural interpretation. One may ask, “Why not educate the church on the make-up of the Bible, scribal and authorial mistakes, and historical context?” and some churches have responded in the shape of forming small-scale study groups that wrestle with things as such. However, the largely silent response to that question is fundamentally rooted in the authority of the Church. Why would the Church undermine itself when clearly the largely unquestioned canonized scripture, originally gathered for this very favor, delivers power at its doorstep? It won’t. Perhaps it won’t have to, as certain curious Christian (and otherwise) individuals now have access to scholarly education on Biblical literature and other tools to grapple with this age old power play in the light of a new, questioning, Western culture.

Works Cited

Ehrman, Bart D. The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Hebrew-Greek New American Standard Bible. Ed. Spiros Zodhiates. Chattanooga: AMG Publishers, 1990.

Pagels, Elaine. Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas. New York: Random House, 2005.

© 2007 J. Gresham (requests for permissions should be directed to JaciG83@gmail.com)

This paper was originally written as a “final” for REL112 (New Testament) under the direction of Dr. Patrick Green, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama, in the Fall semester of 2007.

In the Anti-Christ, Nietzsche expels his most forceful criticisms of Christianity. This work tackles all things Christian, as is followed from the yes-saying Jewish God, through the Buddha-like “holy anarchist” Jesus, misconstrued by his followers (most importantly the creator of the antithetical God, Paul), and finally embodied in the “meat-eating” priesthood, the very “grandfathers of German philosophy.” Determined to “wield the knife” to drain philosophy of this disastrous “theologian blood,” Nietzsche boldly examines the “madhouse-world of entire millennia,” Christianity.

The flavor of Christianity referenced is that of the “Christ-followers,” the flavor born from the failed yes-saying Jewish-God, who instead of being abandoned was refashioned to serve to weak and downtrodden, the Jews of the Exodus (AC 146). Christianity, however propagated as such, is not a “counter-movement against the Jewish instinct,” instead it is a “logical consequence, one further conclusion of its fear-inspiring logic” (146). This logical consequence first stems from the earliest Yahweh,

an expression of [the Jewish] consciousness of power, of their delight in themselves, their hopes of themselves: in him they anticipated victory and salvation. With him they trusted that nature would provide what the people needed – above all rain. Yaweh is the God of Israel and consequently the God of justice: the logic of every nation that is in power and has a good conscience about it (147).

This God of the Jews, however, did not last in tact with all its Dionysian, life-affirming, yes-saying nature. Though this life-sustaining God “remained the ideal, even after it had been tragically done away with: anarchy from within, the Assyrian from without,” the old God “could no longer do what it formerly could” (148). Instead of leaving the old newly useless Yahweh in the dust, the Jews reinvented their God to compliment their weak state – “no longer at one with Israel, an expression of national self-confidence: now only a God bound by conditions” (148). It is this decision, to retain their formerly great God by altering their conception of him, that marks the dilution and “falsification” of a once empowering religion into a thick, bitter syrup that will develop into the religion of the weak and epileptic – Christianity.

This newly-embraced concept of God at once becomes the greatest ally of the priests, who:

henceforth interpret all good fortune as a reward, all misfortune as punishment for disobedience of God, for ‘sin’: that most mendacious mode of interpretation of a supposed ‘moral world-order’ through which the natural concept ‘cause’ and ‘effect’ is once and for all stood on its head (148).

It is this inversion of ‘cause’ and ‘effect’ which is the inherent falsification that becomes the embodiment of all further implications of Christian morality. Not to be confused with the message of Christ which is largely estranged and misconceived by his followers, this Christian morality is the “truth on its head,” the greatest tool which assists the priesthood to power over the church. This “truth on its head,” the “banishing of all natural causality,” exists now as the antithesis of the previous yes-saying God. He is now a “God who demands – in place of a God who helps, who devises means, who is fundamentally a word for every happy inspiration of courage and self reliance” (148). Morality in the earlier, life-affirming Judaism is “no longer the expression of the conditions under which a nation lives and grows, no longer a nation’s deepest instinct of life, but become abstract, become the antithesis of life – morality as a fundamental degradation of the imagination, as an ‘evil eye’ for all things” (148). In short, this late-Jewish/Christian-flavor morality is “chance robbed of its innocence; misfortune dirtied by the concept ‘sin’; well-being as a danger, as ‘temptation’; physiological indisposition poisoned by the worm of conscience” (148).

The priest, in his drive to power, displaces true reality for what is not there, enforcing weakness, frailty, and hopelessness to his constituents – all with his own power in mind, “a parasitic kind of human being which prospers only at the expense of every healthy form of life” (149). The priest, the parasite, is not blind like his host. He draws in life so that he may rule at otherwise healthy human expense by

[abusing] the name of God: [calling] a state of society in which the priest determines the value of things ‘the kingdom of God’; [calling] the means by which such a state is achieved or perpetuated ‘the will of God’; with cold-blooded cynicism he assesses nations, epochs, individuals according to whether they were conducive to the rule of priests or whether they resisted it (149).

This device of revised morality gives priests the ability to constitute all figures, historical and present, as “godless men” by “[simplifying] the psychology of every great event into the idiotic formula ‘obedience or disobedience to God’” (149). The new supreme law was at once put into affect in order to give the priestly order reign over the nation of Israel, and later over everything affected by Christian morality (everything). This supreme law read “‘God forgives him who repents’ – plain language: who subjects himself to the priest” (150).

From this “falsified soil” (falsification by the rise of the priestly order following the fall of Yahweh, soil as the Jewish faith), arose Christianity - a form of mortal hostility to reality as yet unsurpassed” (151). This Christianity, however, was not instigated by Jesus. Ironically, the crucified Christ stood for all things contrary to the morality propagated by the priestly order. The “bringer of glad tidings,” Jesus existed as the “holy anarchist who roused up the lowly, the outcasts and ‘sinners’, the Chandala within Judaism to oppose the ruling order” (152). The antithesis of the Christian moral code, Jesus’ message was embodied in his title as the “bringer of glad tidings” which were representative of the eternal, true life, claiming this life as “not promise, it is here, it is within you: as life lived in love, in love without deduction or exclusion, without distance” (152). Not exalting himself as others would later regard him to, Jesus proclaimed equality under the label of the “children of God,” claiming “nothing for himself alone – as child of God everyone is equal to everyone else” (152). Clearly unlike his portrayal by his initial followers, and later by Paul, Jesus does not see himself as a hero, as Nietzsche exclaims, “To make a hero of Jesus!” is blasphemy (152). Jesus, in his actions, is not the hero portrayed in the New Testament, rather a man who

died as he lived, as he taught – not to ‘redeem mankind’ but to demonstrate how one ought to live. What he bequeathed to mankind is his practice: his bearing before the judges, before the guards, before the accusers and every kind of calumny and mockery – his bearing on the Cross. He does not resist, he does not defend his rights, he takes no steps to avert the worst that can happen to him – more, he provokes it…And he entreats, he suffers, he loves with those, in those who are doing evil to him (160).

Jesus, Christ, the great demonstrator, “has been preserved to us only in a very distorted form” (154). This “very distorted form” takes shape in the New Testament, flourishing through the Gospels and various other writings, specifically in Paul’s letters. The true intentions of Jesus, however distinctively different than those received by his “followers,” were not understood, and could not have been understood in the context which had been set up for him – later Judaism. This is seen in the first disciples of Jesus who were faced with the responsibility of translating the person of Jesus, “a being immersed entirely in symbols and incomprehensibilities” into their own “coarseness” in order to understand any piece of him they could grasp. Without detecting this “holy anarchist” slipping through their very fingers, these first disciples could only make sense of him by reducing him to familiar Jewish forms: “the prophet, the Messiah, the judge who is to come, the moral preacher, the miracle-worker, John the Baptist – so many opportunities for misunderstanding the type” (155).

He, however, did not only slip through their fingers. These “followers” took up this “messiah” and hailed him as hero, turning the person of Jesus on his head. In keeping with their nihilistic, world-rejecting God that the Jews had fashioned from failure, these disciples disintegrated the message of their teacher, creating a potent poison – a “moralic acid” to deliver to the masses (129). Here lie the foundations of the Christian priests, in essence, “Deus, qualem Paulus creavit, dei negatio” (175).

The priest, the contemporary psychotic magician, takes the masses and shames them, embezzling natural instincts for life while instilling nihilistic virtues, for that:

denier, calumniator and poisoner of life by profession, still counts as a higher kind of human being, there can be no answer to the question: what is truth? One has already stood truth on its head when the conscious advocate of denial and nothingness counts as the representative of ‘truth’ (153).

The church, the people, therefore, squirm about as mere puppets to the greatest schemes of the powerful priests, the representatives of the negation of truth, their God. Preachers of reversed depravity, these priests infuse the nihilistic crave for harm into the church. In reality, a human is depraved “when it loses its instincts, when it chooses, when it prefers what is harmful to it,” however, depravity is introduced to the layman of the church as his or her unnatural, beastly nature – the “instinct for growth, for continuance, for accumulation of forces, for power” (130). This will to power, this “instinct for accumulation of forces” is only found in one group: the priests, as the propagation of nihilistic values “hold sway in the holiest of names.” They, themselves, are not the hosts of such values. Instead, they are the enthroned, powerful rulers who have poisoned their people so that they may rule and the people may suffer for the royal good.

And to this, Nietzsche raises his scalpel to the modern German philosophy, as none have affected philosophy like the theologians. For what the theologian

feels to be true must be false: this provides almost a criterion of truth…the concepts ‘true’ and ‘false’ are necessarily reversed: that which is most harmful to life is here called ‘true’, that which enhances, intensifies, affirms, justifies it and causes it to triumph is called ‘false’ (133).

Precisely these theologians belong to prevalent Protestantism – “the half-sided paralysis of Christianity – and of reason.” Because of the infiltration of this half-sided paralysis into German reason, philosophers must wield their knives in contempt of the poisonous “theologian blood.” With this challenge, “one should not embellish or dress up Christianity” as it has “waged a war to the death against the higher type of man” by excommunicating “all the fundamental instincts for this type…distilling evil,” regarding the strong human, save the priest, as the “type of reprehensibility, as the ‘outcast’” (129). Instead of saving man from his “depravity,” Christianity has rather instilled it in him by “[depraving] the reason even of the intellectually strongest natures…teaching men to feel the supreme values of intellectuality as sinful, as misleading, as temptations.” And thus, the German philosopher is but an offspring to the Protestant pastor – the peccatum originale. “To be physician here, to be inexorable here, to wield the knife here – that pertains to us, that is our kind of philanthropy, with that are we philosophers, we Hyperboreans!” (131).

To Nietzsche, “there has been only one Christian, and he died on the Cross.” Squeezed onward from the consequences of the failed Yes-saying God of the Jews, a bitter taste flowed forth, guising itself under the name of the Christ of the Cross, but only to turn his message onto its head, the creation of the “madhouse world of entire millennia” – Christianity. And through this intoxicating belief system, this “moral-world order,” has plagued all things since, infiltrating its weak-promoting reward system into all things – above all: the latest philosophy of the Germans. Seeing priests as the grandfathers of all German philosophy, Nietzsche illustrates to his followers (all and none) how to “wield the knife” against this greatest of indecencies.

Works Cited

Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ: or How to Philosophize with a Hammer (Penguin Classics). London: Penguin Classics, 1990.

© 2007 J. Gresham (requests for permissions should be directed to JaciG83@gmail.com)

This exegetical paper was originally written as a conclusive paper in REL370 (Nietzsche and Religion) under the direction of Dr. Tim Murphy, Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama, in the Fall semester of 2007.

Among all characters in literature, none have captivated audiences like the villains. A certain intrigue lies within these horrific personas, often defying humane standards of being and calling into question what is behind these grotesque natures. Harold Bloom, acclaimed modern literary critic, in his book The Western Canon, heralds two of the most intriguing characters in all of Western literature: Chaucer’s Pardoner and Shakespeare’s Iago. In his composition, Bloom reminds his reader of Edmund Spenser’s view of Chaucer as the “pure well of English undefiled,” and reaffirms Talbot Donaldson’s approach to Shakespeare as the “swan at the well” who drinks “most deeply of what was unique to Chaucer, a new kind of literary character” (qtd. in Bloom 113). As scholars have continuously revisited these two wickedly ill-famed creations, the Pardoner and Iago, as core sources for what Bloom refers to as “past genius and present aspiration” respectively, it is clearly not without reason (9). Haunting the English literary scene for centuries, these two characters are attributed the genius born unto them by their respective authors. This astonishing brilliance is an archetypal sketch, first given life through Chaucer and revised by his contemporary, Shakespeare, which outlines a nihilistic nature centralized around astounding lack of motivation, composed of insidious domination, the eventual victimization of the motiveless self, and the chilling silence that follows.

Though the case can be made, and has been by many critical literary scholars, for substantial motivation behind the Pardoner’s eloquent destruction of humanity, represented by the “God’s plenty” of Chaucer’s pilgrims making their way to Canterbury, the Pardoner is best exemplified as what the great German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, would call “the uncanniest guest,” what Bloom recognizes as “the representation of European nihilism” (qtd. in Bloom 120). Chaucer’s “most extraordinary invention,” the Pardoner, represents Chaucer’s “greatest fright,” the ultimate paradox of human values (121). This created monster is the antithesis of all he should be as a representative of the church, in a variety of ways.

As illustrated in the Pardoner’s prologue preceding his tale in The Canterbury Tales, a pardoner is a mere layman who has the authority to sell indulgences, or pardons, by which an individual may escape the harsher elements of Purgatory through gaining favor with the saints. This pardoner, however, openly admits to his fellow “pilgrims” that he has made a profession out of his deceptiveness, revealing the most elusive element of his character. Like a ghost, the Pardoner’s exterior is a translucent, pale casing, revealing his hallow cavity of a self to be empty, motiveless:

Myn hondes and my tonge goon so yerne

That it is joye to see my bisinesse.

Of avarice and of swich cursednesse

Is al my preching, for to make hem free

To yeven hir pens, and namely unto me.

For myn entente is nat but for to winne,

And nothing for correccioun of sinne:

I rekke nevere, whan that they ben beried,

Though that hir soules goon a-blakeberied! (Chaucer 110-18).

Here, the Pardoner indicates his “intent is not…to win [wealth]” or to correct the sins his “pardons” are intended to cover, but instead he cares nothing for souls – of his patrons, who may frolic off to pick blackberries for all of his concern, or his own (Chaucer 115-118). This is surely the greatest Chaucerian irony ever intended: to create a devilish monster that appears to be driven for wealth, only to reveal that he is hollow, without meaning or intent, only a driving, unadulterated evil steering a ghastly appearance.

To this Chaucerian irony of the “gentle Pardoner,” claims Bloom, “Honest Iago” is a direct ancestor (Bloom 111). Othello’s central figure, Iago, inherits a similar paradoxical identity. Perhaps it is here, in the search for motive - or lack thereof, where Shakespeare has taken Chaucer’s work and fine-tuned villainous motivation. The Pardoner, in his Prologue, is explicit in explaining that his stated intentions (wealth) are false. Iago, however, dances with motivation, claiming every possible intention, from one to another, revealing to the careful reader that Iago is truly motiveless, groping for the illusion of motive to clothe his ghastly lack. In his notes from a lecture he delivered on Othello, the famous author of the nineteenth century, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, says of Iago’s revealing soliloquy at the end of act two, scene one, “the motive-hunting of a motiveless malignancy – how awful it is!” (qtd. in Shakespeare 231).

Coleridge’s pungent explication is resonated in Maurice Hunt’s article, “Motivating Iago”, as Hunt expounds, “Iago seems to have too many motives for evil and thus, paradoxically, no motives for it at all” (Erickson and Hunt 125). Iago’s motivation for destruction in the second-act soliloquy is sexual envy, “Now I do love her too/ Not out of absolute lust - though peradventure - I stand accountant for as great a sin” (2.1.272-75). This, Hunt points out, bears no resonance with Iago’s stated motive in the play’s beginning, professional envy, as he has been passed for promotion by his general, Othello, and the post of lieutenant has been delivered to Cassio, an officer with no experience:

“I have already chosen my officer.” And what was he?

Forsooth, a great arithmetician,

One Michael Cassio, a Florentine,

A fellow almost damned in a fair wife,

That never set a squadron in the field,

Nor the division of a battle knows (1.1.17-23).

Iago’s motives are endlessly rounding off, one into another, none of which manage to sustain itself throughout the play. Hunt observes four motives which linearly transpire, one after another, through the play: first, his hatred for Cassio as he is passed for promotion (1.1.17-23); second, his disgust for Othello as he suspects him of committing adultery with his wife, Emilia (1.3.386-90); third, a newer hatred for Cassio as he suspects him also of committing adultery with Emilia (2.1.307); and finally, he hates Cassio because, using Iago’s own words, Cassio “hath a daily beauty in his life/That makes me ugly” (5.1.19-20).

While these motives would be readily acknowledged, by readers, as true if they were founded in the play, the text offers no evidence for suspicions of Emilia’s infidelity (Erickson and Hunt 126). This lack of evidence, paired with the abundance of interchanging drives for destruction of the surrounding characters in the play, illustrates Iago’s motives as incompatible and fabricated. Iago can be seen as admitting his explicit motives as fictitious as he admits “I know not if [Emilia’s alleged affair with Othello] be true,/ But I for mere suspicion in that kind/ Will do as if fore surety,” giving himself a motiveless drive to do evil (1.3.370-72). This leaves Iago, like Chaucer’s Pardoner, as a motiveless nihilistic being who brings about the downfall of his respective society, a coreless creature of malevolence.

Though motive lacking, both the Pardoner and Iago manage to dominate his respective jurisdiction – the Pardoner to his spirituality and Iago to his superiors in office. The Pardoner, though a layman who is forbidden to preach, is of the utmost eloquence and intellect, an articulate preacher in the least. After relaying his blasphemous tale of a “vicious trinity” of youths who set out to slay death (Christ’s mission in both the Gospels and in the book of Revelation), the Pardoner further implements his spiritual recklessness in offering an open invitation to his company, the Canterbury pilgrims, to bow before his bundle of papal bulls and receive forgiveness of sins:

Now goode men, God forgeve yow youre trespas,
And ware yow fro the synne of avarice!
Myn hooly pardoun may yow alle warice,
So that ye offre nobles or sterlynges,
Or elles silver broches, spoones, rynges.
Boweth youre heed under this hooly bulle!
Cometh up, ye wyves, offreth of youre wolle!
Youre names I entre heer in my rolle anon;
Into the blisse of hevene shul ye gon (Chaucer 616-24).

In his book Chaucer, Ethics, and Gender, Alcuin Blamires says of the Pardoner’s unnatural spiritual prowess, “Everything about the Pardoner’s performance screams that he is an outright example of atheistic imperviousness to the very beliefs that he manipulates in others, and to the divine jurisdiction he thereby flouts” (205). Blamires, a Professor of English Literature at Goldsmiths University of London, concludes his chapter on moral jurisdiction by reminding his readers that the Pardoner “is as far Chaucer goes in imagining a certain kind of insouciance in abusing jurisdiction in a spirit of total indifference” (206). The Pardoner, who should not be sermonizing as a part of his profession in the first place, is the most dangerous of all of Chaucer’s pilgrims, climbing the rungs of a spiritual ladder which he was not granted, blasphemously dogmatizing downward from the top rung.

Similarly, the motiveless creature of Iago manages to work his way into dominance among those who rank superiorly to him in office. Unlike the Pardoner who, embracing spiritual jurisdiction, submits himself to his pilgrim peers as inherently great, Iago must work his way through his superiors to achieve the dominance which allows him to orchestrate the eventual downfall of his surrounding characters, his victims. Iago, like the Pardoner, is physically inactive. Instead, he devises the demise of his victims through words, using rumor and suggestion to achieve his desired effect: destruction.

One of Iago’s first obstacles in beginning his climb to manipulation is his own subordination to the newly promoted Cassio. Juhani Rudanko, in his work Pragmatic Approaches to Shakespeare, suggests that this manipulation commences in the beginning of Act Two, Scene Three in a simple conversation (37):

Cas. Welcome, Iago, we must to the watch.

Iago. Not this hour, lieutenant, ‘tis not yet ten o’clock:

Our general cast us thus early for the love of his

Desdemona, who let us not therefore blame: he hath not

Yet made wanton the night with her; and she is sport for Jove (Shakespeare 2.3.12-16).

Here, Iago is seen in the beginnings of weaving his intricate web of manipulation. As Cassio’s subordinate in rank, Iago is expected to submit to Cassio’s command. Instead, Iago cleverly dismisses the order without making his impertinence of Cassio’s superiority evident by politely declining “not this hour”, respectfully acknowledging his higher rank “lieutenant”, and then smoothly changing the topic to Desdemona, (12-16). In this suave manner, Iago takes control of his conversations and achieves the desired ability to steer the discourse – his ultimate gift of manipulation, offering to himself complete jurisdiction over his superiors, his victims.

This ability to maneuver words, those of Iago and his partners in discourse, reveals itself to be the driving technique throughout the play. Shakespeare molds Iago’s conversations with his superiors in a way which exposes, to the reader, Iago as a cunningly humble manipulator. This is best seen in Act Three, Scene Three as Iago approaches Othello. Iago has worked his way to and through Cassio and has won him over in manipulation. Now, Iago has made it to his superior who, in this passage, begs Iago’s insight. This one of Iago’s sliest of moves as he now has Othello hanging on his every word; his superior is now eating out of the palm of his hand:

Iago. My noble lord, –

Oth. What dost thou say, Iago?

(…)

Oth. Is he not honest?

Iago. Honest, my lord?

Oth. Honest? Ay, honest.

Iago. My lord, for aught I know.

Oth. What dost thou think?

Iago. Think, my lord? (3.3.93-108).

Clearly, Iago has made his way to domination. Like the Pardoner, he now has a front center seat to watch his handiwork culminate in his brilliantly plotted disaster.

For both of the gifted villains, however, sitting so closely to one’s own masterpiece of annihilation is inclusive of being annihilated oneself. These two characters, as talented in their manipulations as they seem, have become pieces of their own work. For the Pardoner, this means he is victim of his own profession. Chaucer critic, R.A. Shoaf, examines the Pardoner as a peddler of himself who is aware of this act and is utterly regretful that he cannot buy himself back (qtd. in Bloom 121). His routine, although astounding and eloquent, will not suffice to redeem him, and readers suspect that there is much more beyond the voracity and conceit of his preaching. A true nihilist, the Pardoner is only as good as his motiveless self, and as his deed is done, so is he.

Likewise, Iago’s fate is wound up in his existence as a manipulator. William Hazlit once wrote of Iago, “He is quite or nearly as indifferent to his own fate as to that of others; he runs all risks for a trifling and doubtful advantage; and is himself the dupe and victim of his ruling passion” (qtd. in Bloom 123). As his victims are eventually sprawled about him, body’s empty of air and only present of death, Iago loses his existence, for the reader knows nothing of him other than his motiveless scheming.

This loss of existence, the victimization of the motiveless self, is best observed in the silence which both villains choose at the very moment his surrounding audience identifies his true character, the culmination of the nihilistic makeup which Chaucer and Shakespeare weave into being. This great silence comes to the Pardoner as his extended invitation to the Host is foully refuted. As the Pardoner offers the Host, whom he sees as the most sinful, the first chance, of all the pilgrims, to kiss his “relics,” the Host becomes furiously nauseated. He threatens to cut off the Pardoner’s lacking gentiles and shrine them in a hog’s dung, “Lat kutte hem of, I wol thee helpe hem carie, / They shul be shryned in an hogges toord” (492-493). At this threat, though his eloquence has abounded until this point, the Pardoner is silent, “This Pardoner answerde nat a word; / So wrooth he was, no word ne wolde he seye” (494-495). The Pardoner is finished.

Correspondingly, Iago, too, embraces silence as his answer in the interrogation of his character. After Othello has slain his innocent wife, under the convincing manipulation of Iago, and before he commits suicide in bleak guilt, Othello asks, “Why he hath thus ensnared [his] soul and body?” (5.2.299). In reply, Iago, as Hitler similarly silenced himself once found in his ruins of the Holocaust, answers, “Demand me nothing. What you know, you know. / From this time forth I never will speak word” (5.3.300-01). Shakespeare, having taken note of Chaucer’s chilling silencing of the Pardoner, has Iago even admit to his chosen silence. What is haunting most about Hitler’s quick suicide is that he is not there to answer for his actions, to explain and reveal the intentions behind his abhorrently cruel deeds. Similarly, Iago evaporates from the scene, revealing the culmination of a nihilistic, motiveless self – nothingness.

Villains have captivated their audiences for centuries. Although often not the recipients of heroic praise, these evil-doers mesmerize readers like no protagonist can, by hypnotizing with a horrific spell. Two of the founding villainous characters in early English literature can be found in Chaucer’s “The Canterbury Tales” and in Shakespeare’s Othello. Chaucer’s first nihilist, the Pardoner, is fashioned with illuminating eloquence and subtle captivating charm, perhaps only surpassed in Shakespeare’s modeling of Iago, a “direct ancestor” of the Pardoner’s. The two wicked creations, referred to as “past genius and present aspiration,” have haunted the English literary scene for centuries, and not without good reason. The Pardoner and Iago are the phenomenal representations of the greatest work of Chaucer and Shakespeare, respectively. This work is an unparalleled, sharply composed archetypal sketch, outlining a nihilist nature centralized around a hollow lack of motivation, composed of sinister domination, the eventual victimization of the motiveless self, and the chilling silence that follows.

Works Cited

Blamires, Alcuin. Chaucer, Ethics, and Gender. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Bloom, Harold. The Western Canon. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1994.

Chaucer, Geoffrey. “The Canterbury Tales”. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Ed. Stephen Greenblatt and M.H. Abrams. 8th ed. Vol. A. New York: Norton & Company, 2006. 6 vols. 219-315.

Erickson, Peter, and Maurice Hunt. Approaches to Teaching Shakespeare’s Othello. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 2005.

Rudanko, Juhani. Pragmatic Approaches to Shakespeare. Lanham: University Press of America, 1993.

Shakespeare, William. Othello. Ed. Edward Pechter. New York: Norton & Company, 2004.

© 2007 J. Gresham (requests for permissions should be directed to JaciG83@gmail.com)

This paper was originally written as a conclusive paper in English 215 (Honors English Literature) under the direction of Scott McWaters, instructor at the University of Alabama in the Fall semester of 2007.

In his writings, Nietzsche expands significantly on the works of humans to create a world of metaphors in which they reside. Ignorant of their creating of this world, humans, though driven with the want and capacity for “insatiable greed, murder, on the indifference that stems from ignorance,” desire to live socially “in the herd,” and thus need a “peaceful agreement” (TL, 246). This agreement is truth. Not only forgetting their part as the creators of this metaphor world, in which words are the vehicles for conveying truth, humans also forget that they also are the creations of matter that lies outside of themselves in “the world, ancestors, chance, and society” (BGE, 28). Because of this “disease of the will,” the inability to recognize the causes of their surrounding conditions as themselves and manage them accordingly, humans find themselves facing fears and suffering which manifest themselves as the “need for faith, a support, backbone, something to fall back on” (GS, 289). Thus, humans are living in a world which they have created, though ignorant of their creating, and become entangled in an endeavor for truth, perpetuated by a “disease of the will,” projecting their needs for a commander and fashioning these needs into a god, creating religion. These projected gods are illustrated as taking varying forms, such as “god, prince, class, physician, father confessor, dogma, or party conscience,” which all serve the same overarching function of religion – to deliver the commands that the weak simply cannot deliver themselves, while still managing to appear as separate and distinct entities from their feeble creators (289). Few are without this “disease of the will,” lacking the desire for only fitting and life-sustaining truths, and they are named as free spirits par excellence, the counterpart of the overabundant “weak-willed” who, spiritless as they are, fashion and mold their gods to command them, unable to comprehend their own greatness (290).

Nietzsche’s evolution from the metaphor, to the endeavor for truth, to the epitome of this search for truth being religion, stretches out from the very stem of the beginnings of humanity, where knowledge was fashioned from the minds of those “clever animals.” Because the universe exists, and within its existence “clever animals” – the humans – who will one day “[have] to die,” invented knowledge, how “shadowy and fleeting, how purposeless and arbitrary the human intellect appears within nature.” The human is ignorant of this “purposelessness” and what is missed by this ignorance becomes arrogance “associated with knowledge and sensation” which “lays a blinding fog over man’s eyes and senses and deceives him about the value of existence by instilling in him a most flattering estimation of this faculty of knowledge” (TL, 246). The human does not notice this arrogance and is instead ignorant of his ignorance for “what does man really know about himself! If only he could ever see himself perfectly, as if displayed in an illuminated showcase!” It is surprising, however, that man would ever care for truth in his primitive nature “based on a lack of mercy, insatiable greed, murder, on the indifference that stems from ignorance, as it were clinging to a tiger’s back in dreams (…) Given this state of affairs, where in the world does the desire for truth originate?” Truth’s origination lies in the human’s use of intellect as dissimulation to gain an element of mastery over his opponent (247).

But at the same time, because man, out of necessity and boredom, wants to live socially in the herd, he needs a peace agreement, and he tries to eliminate at least the crudest forms of the war against all. But this peaceful agreement apparently leads to the first step toward man’s acquisition of his mysterious desire for truth. For what ‘truth’ will be from now on is fixed; a uniformly valid and binding terminology for things is invented and the legislation of the language also enacts the first laws of truth. (247)

The human’s desire for truth, however, is not without its selectivity as “he longs for the pleasant, life-preserving consequences of truth; he is indifferent to pure, inconsequential knowledge; toward truths which are perhaps even damaging and destructive, he is hostile” (248). Clearly, the human only desires the truth which functions to hold him, and his society, together.

These truths, boiled down, are embodied and conveyed through the human’s invention of “the legislation of language”. The chosen vehicles for truth are words. Words, Nietzsche illustrates, are but “arbitrary transferences” which are only illusions for life-preserving methods to support the idea of truth as the human race understands (or wants) it (248). Truth, in turn, is “a sum of human relations which were poetically and rhetorically heightened, transferred, and adorned, and after long use seem solid, canonical, and binding to a nation.” To solidify his explication of truth, he illustrates an allusion to coinage, “Truths are illusions about which it has been forgotten that they are illusions, worn-out metaphors without sensory impact, coins which have lost their image and now can be used only as metal, and no longer as coins” (250).

In summary, the primitive, murderous man desires truth as a peace agreement between himself and other humans in order to maintain society. These truths represent “uniformly valid and binding terminology for things”, and the human, just as it forgets itself in the invention of knowledge, forgets itself once again in its creation of truths and only recognizes them as hard and rigid images in a “belief that this sun, this window, this table is a truth-in-itself” (252). Humans, in turn, are likened to a spider spinning its web, “[producing] perceptions within [themselves] and out of [themselves] with the same necessity” (253).

These words, these metaphors, are similar to humans themselves. Unlike the sounds and images which, combined, are words, humans have the ability to reflect on the causes and effects of their very beings. In essence, words are not merely sounds and images which, without any cause, signify. They are not born out of vacuums. Similarly, although humans may appear to be the “thing in itself,” they are not. Instead, they are made from exterior matter (i.e. culture) and are ignorant of it. It is out of this context that two categories of humans are exemplified. The first consisting of those who claim the “freedom of the will,” the second as the “weak-willed.” The former attitude is that of the “half educated” or the “vain races” who “maintain the desire to bear the entire and ultimate responsibility for one’s actions oneself, and to absolve God, the world, ancestors, chance, and society” and who claim to have pulled themselves “up into existence by the hair, out of the swamps of nothingness” (BGE, 28). The others, however, “do not wish to be answerable for anything, and owing to an inward self-concept, seek to lay the blame for themselves somewhere else” (29). And thus, from the latter’s, the weak-willed’s, fatalism, “the religion of human suffering” is posed, “that is its ‘good taste’” (30).

It is here, in this passage, that the connection is made between the metaphor world (truth), which humans have created themselves, and religion. Being ignorant of their own hands in the creation of the world in which they live, “weak-willed” humans have fashioned their gods by projecting the command, which they lack, onto them. Therefore, the degree of weakness, or “disease of the will”, is measured in “how much one needs a faith in order to flourish” (GS, 287). Humans have created a metaphor world and are living within it, their own creation. However, because of a “disease of the will,” an inability to live in this world and “take leave of all faith and every wish for certainty,” man cannot live alone in this world he has created and instead fashions a religion by projecting his fears and potential suffering into a god (290). This god is the effect of the one who lacks the will and ability to command, hence, “the less one knows how to command, the more urgently one covets someone who commands – who commands severely” (289).

This commander, who will, for the weak who do not know how to command themselves, deliver the “thou shalt’s”, appears in a variety of figures, including a “god, prince, class, physician, father confessor, dogma, or party conscience” (GS, 289). These religious figures function, as a whole, to deliver the same message – “thou shalt.”

The very origins Buddhism and Christianity, “the two world religions”, owe themselves to the “weak-willed.” Both religions are explained as teaching fanaticism, “the only ‘strength of the will’ that even the weak and insecure can be brought to attain.” Through this fanaticism, humans become hypnotized in their senses and intellect “for the benefit of an excessive nourishment of a single point of view,” and this hypnosis the human is under the possession of, is labeled as his faith which is embodied in the “fundamental conviction that he must be commanded” (becoming a believer) (GS, 289).

The idea of the projection of command extends further in the illustration of the human’s (here, the Christian’s) identification of the origin of his most powerful emotions. Followers of Christianity, “the most naïve and backward species of man today” are deeply divergent from those “among intelligent, strong, and vigorous races” (WP, 85). Christians are compared to the sickest, the epileptic, of the educated in the “psychological logic” of religion:

When a man is suddenly and overwhelmingly suffused with the feeling of power – and this is what happens with all great affects – it raises in him a doubt about his own person: he does not dare to think himself the cause of this astonishing feeling – and so he posits a stronger person, a divinity, to account for it (…) Among the sick the feeling of health is sufficient to inspire belief in God, in the nearness of God. (86)

In digest, the human-created metaphor world, out of need for a “peace agreement” in society, births the beginnings of “truth” – “a uniformly valid and binding terminology.” It is these selective “truths,” those which are life-preserving, that men desire. Because these humans are sick, and “diseased of the will” – that is lacking of the ability to command and dictate life – they project their fears onto a god, fashioning what is called religion. Thus, humans, when overpowered by emotion, do not think of themselves as causes of these emotions, but instead project this “feeling of power” onto their divinity as liable for the cause (86).

Conversely, the intuitive man, the “weak-willed” is not alone in the classification of the human race. It is conceivable that a “free spirit,” unfulfilled by his weakness and “practiced in maintaining himself on insubstantial ropes,” could take “leave of all faith and every wish for certainty” (GS 290). The intuitive man’s counterpart, the man of reason, exists, but does so in a more subtle manner. Unlike the intuitive man who suffers more violently and often because “he does not know how to learn from experience and he falls again and again into the same pit into which he fell before,” the man of reason, facing an impending storm, “wraps himself in his overcoat and walks away under the rain with slow strides”. This man is identified, starkly contrasted from the petty and overpopulating “weak-willed,” as the free spirit par excellence (TL, 256-257).

In many of his works, Nietzsche vividly and exponentially details the evolution from the beginnings of human knowledge, through truth conveyed by metaphors, to religion and its cause. The evolution, complex though it is, is illustrated as a linear pattern, one origin giving birth to the next, and circular in the pattern of ignorance of the human, who never ceases as a cause while never yielding to forget himself as source. Humans, as spiders who spin their webs, weave a world of metaphors and forget themselves as the creators of these webs (TL, 253). Instead, humans, the “weak-willed” employ these metaphors in the projection of their fears and suffering into religion, fashioning a god out of the darkest fears of mankind, and utilize this fatalism as a backbone, numb of understanding their own cause and effect system they have fashioned from their weakness (GS, 289). Although the “weak-willed” and their creations abound, leaving traces and sustenance in the origins and continuations of Christianity and other religions, they are not without their successors (WP, 85). These stoic successors, unlike their counterparts – the “weak-willed” who do not wish to recognize their part as creators in their own world, turning their cheeks to bliss of ignorance, manage to identify themselves as masters of their universe (TL, 256), choosing amor fati (GS, 223), “walk[ing] away in the rain with slow strides (TL, 257), and “dancing even near abysses” (GS, 289).

Works Cited

Nietzsche, Friedrich, and Judith Norman. Nietzsche: Beyond Good and Evil: Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy). New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs. New York: Vintage, 1974.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. “On Truth and Lying in an Extra-Moral Sense.”

Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ: or How to Philosophize with a Hammer (Penguin Classics). London: Penguin Classics, 1990.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Will to Power. New York: Vintage, 1968.

© 2007 J. Gresham (requests for permissions should be directed to JaciG83@gmail.com)

This exegetical paper was originally written as a mid-term paper in REL370 (Nietzsche and Religion) under the direction of Dr. Tim Murphy, Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama, in the Fall semester of 2007.

Dangling, dripping, dazzling
In brightened beams, a spotlight
Through bashful, blushing blossoms
Hangs fruit –
Candied apple of knowledge
A pom picked for release
Of a brief naivety
For the purple pulp
Will soon ooze
Trickling from its bursting red flesh
Concealing far more
Than a wealth of popping, bright kernels

Drooping, drowning, dousing
In brownish hues of fog
Through wilting, withering remains
Lies fruit –
Cursed iniquity of growth
A pom pierced with two tastes
Of a lengthy want for wisdom
For men will forever
Invent you, pealing back pages
Of narrations gone black
Concealing far more
Than felt board fruit trickery

Dear, we are slowly etching into history
Idle, unused fate
In the dust and grounds of indecision
And of weighted answers
That have not carried us to the brink
Of some bold decision
A fateful leap
Or a passionate kiss
Should we, dare we
Kick up this earthy, burdened powder
Shine some light into its flourishing cascade
And watch, with clasped hands and widened eyes,
What it is to pursue in the face of rust, wear, and ruins
To challenge doom - to urge destiny - to love?

 

When a country dedicates itself to a specific cause, it is partially that country’s leader’s responsibility to see that its promises are fulfilled. However, when governments fail and prefer to lose themselves in the undertow of obsessive national security and a fixation on monetary gain, responsibilities fall into the hands of its people to push toward success. It is this concept that is continuously being proved by the civilians residing in the world’s most developed nations as they take the goal of dispersing basic human rights to the peoples of desperate third world countries. As demonstrated by the myriad of methods compiled by worldwide civilian support for the Millennium Development Goals, it is both just and possible for citizens to offer strengthened support for human rights, even if the support defies the government’s willingness to cooperate.

In the year 2000, leaders representing every country gathered to respond to the desperate cry of third world countries (Walker and Taylor 12). Their cries comprised of poverty, starvation, disease, infant mortality, pitiable education, and increasingly destructive environments (The Millennium Goals Report 2005 4-5). Determined to effectively respond to distressed countries, these leaders took an initiative to react with a vision consisting of eight objectives known as the Millennium Development Goals, which are seeking to provide “countries around the world a framework for development and time-bound targets by which progress can be measured” (The Millennium Development Goals Report 2006 3).

Although substantial progress has been made towards reaching the goals, which are set to be met in the year 2015, a few major political setbacks have proved to threaten the success of the goals altogether. An editorial found in the New York Times illustrates that as it was promised in 2000, developed countries such as Great Britain, France, and the United states are to be working toward contributing .7 percent of their national budgets for developmental aid for the third world countries targeted in the Millennium Development Goals. Sadly, America lags far behind its developed leaders, who have already obtained more than half their goals, at a meager .18 percent after five years into its promise. This, inevitably, shines a light into the comparison between the five hundred billion spent this year on United States national security and the scanty sixteen billion set aside for the development goals (“Thousands” 1).

However bleak the monstrous comparison between security and mere hope for the underprivileged within the United States checkbook, the nation’s disappointing shortcomings don’t quite come close to matching the vile undertakings of the United Nation’s report of the Millennium Development Goals. A British editorial published in London’s Nature magazine describes what the United Nations refers to as “quantitative indicators”, the means by which goal progress is measured, as a “pseudoscientific veneer”. The editorial claims that the yearly United Nation’s report on Millennium Goals comprise of “slick graphics, seemingly noting with precise scientific precision progress towards the goals” (“Millennium Development Holes” 1). The editorial then continues on, asserting that the reports disguise the quality of the insufficient data, and further, the United Nations is merging varying types of data, contributing even more complication to making analysis of the data.

As the goals are ultimately fickle political promises (“Millennium Development Holes” 1), much is left unsaid as to whom to hold responsible should the goals fail to be met. After years of hearing of terrifying statistics of topics such as those suffering in extreme poverty in Asia and infant mortality in shanty African villages, the United Nations was pressed to respond with a response of economic support and hope for progress. The 2001 G8 summit, an annual meeting of the Great Eight leaders representing the 8 most industrious and developed countries-the United Kingdom, France, Russia, Germany, Japan, Italy, Canada, and the United states (G8 Presidency)-birthed the promise of halving world poverty by 2015, in cooperation and assistance to the Millennium Development Goals. Many economists and political theorists believe that book bound proposals are the effective answers to reviving political advancement of the goals[1], but because some of these Great 8 countries are already failing in their promise only one-third into their timed target, a flourish of astounding civilian efforts to hold these countries to deliver has emerged (Those with Power). In order to address their governments, citizens are compiling their creativity and giftedness while raising their voices, creating a beautiful, bold web of strength and compassion that is proving to resonate in the ears of their leaders.

Although there are eight separate goals listed in the Millennium Project, each of them covers an array of issues in and of themselves, and so there are just as many organizations and bands of individuals dedicated, in their own way, to the advancing the specifics of these human rights causes. Some larger, more prominent organizations serve to promote specific goals such as eradicating hunger, ending poverty, fighting AIDS and other life-threatening diseases in third-world countries while many individuals involve themselves, all across the globe, in putting their own creative efforts toward influencing others to help hold governments to their promises of hope.

Although based in the United Kingdom, MAKE POVERTY HISTORY, a campaign launched in January 2005, succeeded in influencing the hearts and voices of over thirty-one million people in one year (Looking Back on 2005 2). Explained in the campaign’s manifesto, MAKE POVERTY HISTORY describes itself as “a unique UK alliance of charities, trade unions, campaigning groups, faith communities, and celebrities who are mobilizing around key opportunities in 2005 to drive forward the struggle against poverty and injustice” (Manifesto 10). The campaign supported an array of efforts expressed in the Millennium Development goals and aimed at asserting its efforts especially in the direction of Tony Blair, the United Kingdom’s prime minister, in order to push him for pressing harder on his own promises. The campaign also promoted a package deal of debt, aid, and trade – and quite successfully as when Blair hosted the G8 Summit in 2005, he and his administration utilized their position in pushing the agenda onto the table of which the eight leaders of the most developed countries sat (Looking Back on 2005 3). Furthering their impact, the MAKE POVERY HISTORY campaign also sponsored the widely-acclaimed Live8, a series of concerts that took place worldwide in ten different countries on July 2, 2005. An estimated three million people from around the globe watched the Live8, either in person or via satellite. Inspired viewers weren’t asked to contribute money, but rather their names to be compiled and sent along to G8 leaders as a representation of individuals who stood behind the decision to keep promises regarding the Millennium Development Goals (Live8). The American sister to MAKE POVERTY HISTORY, the ONE campaign, was also shortly thereafter born, continuing the push as already demonstrated in the effects that resounded in the 2005 G8 Summit (“FAQ’s”).

ONE, in turn, partnered with a blooming movement named RED, an American campaign aimed at selling products, red-colored products in particular, to profit the advancement of AIDS in the Global Fund in order to make it possible to achieve the Millennium Development Goals revolving around disease (“ONE Blog”). On RED’s website, statistics of consumer involvement are astounding as RED purchases managed to generate $25 million for the Global Fund in 2006 alone (RED).

While some of the campaigns supporting the mobilization of the Millennium Project are more appealing to the older crowds, mature adults are not the only representatives of supporters. In fact, some organizations are now appealing to high school students and young adults with a greater response than some receive from grown-ups. HungryKids.org is an organization aimed at young adults and dedicated to the promotion of hunger awareness (“Ending World Hunger”). The organization describes itself as an “unusual grassroots organization” on account that the support is entirely run by student volunteers while members plug in via the Internet from across the globe (“Ending World Hunger”). According to HungryKids, sixteen thousand children die everyday from hunger-related effects, and the organization sets out to put an end to just that (HungryKids).

The organization states that it spreads the message by utilizing networking sites like Facebook. It also appeals through more creative appeals, like requesting the rapper, Lenny P., to write a song to raise awareness. He obliged (“Ending World Hunger”). HungryKids was founded in November 2006, picking up pace with other Millennium Project campaigns where some, like MAKE POVERTY HISTORY, served mainly the 2005 G8 Summit. The organization then partnered with the UN World Food Programme in January 2007, making efforts to engage further influence in the Millennium Project (“Ending World Hunger”). When questioned on why HungryKids targets young adults, Brad Hines, founder of HungryKids, replies that “Young adults are a lot more concerned with global issues than people suspect” (“Ending World Hunger”). HungryKids is supported by a generation that has adopted these global issues as their own, and having instilled the value for human worth at such a young age, it is possible to capture a glimpse of the magnitude of change that may be brought about by future generations with hearts as big as their own.

As many earth-shattering Millennium Project supporting organizations that exist around the globe, there are certainly as many hearts beating with support in their own creative ways. One can be found residing in a flat somewhere in London. Ingrid van Vliet, a charming student of screen writing, has raised her voice in a most innovative approach (“TGIC – About”). Inspired by the film The Girl in the Café, van Vliet decided to send her copy of the DVD on a worldwide tour (“TGIC – on Tour”). The film is a delightful British dramatic romantic comedy that also serves a higher purpose – ending poverty. MAKE POVERTY HISTORY partnered with BBC and HBO to create the film, which in its synopsis describes itself as a “call to arms that shamelessly sets out to entertain, inform and challenge audiences to act” (HBO Films). Visitors to van Vliet’s website, TheGirlInTheCafe.com, can send her an email to be placed on a list to view the film as it travels across the globe, into the homes of many whose hearts, no doubt, will be touched by such an empowering story. Visitors to her website can also view the ever-growing list of people around the world that have viewed the film, and whom it is scheduled to visit next (“TGIC – on Tour”). Van Vliet says of her project “I just want to promote an in my opinion important and also fantastic film, and also support and promote the makepovertyhistory.org campaign” (“TGIC – on Tour”). There is no doubt that Van Vliet’s project is touching the hearts and empowering many to take an action to end poverty – an admirable goal.

Although the Millennium Project has endured its share of difficulties and pitiable government shortcomings, its success lies in the evidence in the hearts around the globe that are taking their own stands. Whether by signing a campaign list, buying RED merchandise, joining social network groups, or making an international project out of touring a certainly informative and touching DVD, individuals across the globe are doing their part to make poverty history. As world renowned anthropologist Margaret Mead once said, “Never doubt that a small group of committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has” (qtd. in “Women’s History”).

Works Cited

G8 Presidency. “Members of the G8.” G8 Gleneagles 2005. 2006. 22 Apr. 2007 <http://www.g8.gov.uk/servlet/Front?pagename=OpenMarket/Xcelerate/ShowPage&c=Page&cid=1078995912414>.

HBO Films. The Girl in the Café – Synopsis. 2007. 22 Apr. 2007 <http://www.hbo.com/films/girlinthecafe/synopsis/index.htm>.

HungryKids. “Ending World Hunger.” HungryKids.org. Apr. 2007. 22 Apr. 2007 <http://www.hungrykids.org/release02.html>.

HungryKids. HungryKids.org. Apr. 2007. 22 Apr. 2007 < http://hungrykids.org/>

Lewis, Jone. “Women’s History.” About.com. 2007. 25 Apr. 2007 <http://womenshistory.about.com/cs/quotes/a/qu_margaretmead.htm>.

Live 8. Live 8 – The Story So Far. 2007. 22 Apr. 2007 <http://www.live8live.com/whathappened/#>.

Make Poverty History. Looking Back on 2005. 2007. 22 Apr. 2007 <http://www.makepovertyhistory.org/media/releases.shtml>.

Make Poverty History. Manifesto. 2007. 22 Apr. 2007 <http://www.makepovertyhistory.org/docs/manifesto_hi.pdf>.

Make Poverty History. Those with Power. 2007. 22 Apr. 2007 <http://www.makepovertyhistory.org/whatwewant/index.shtml>.

“Millennium Development Holes.” Nature 21 Mar. 2007. 22 Apr. 2007 <http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v446/n7134/full/446347a.html>.

ONE. “FAQ’s.” The ONE Campaign. 2007. 22 Apr. 2007 <http://www.one.org/faq/>.

ONE. “ONE Blog.” The ONE Campaign. 2007. 22 Apr. 2007 <http://action.one.org/blog/comments.jsp?blog_entry_KEY=195&t=&gclid=CIz0utGX34sCFRssVAodggGUlw>.

RED. “FAQ.” Join RED. 2007. 22 Apr. 2007 < http://www.joinred.com/faq.asp>.

“Thousands Died in Africa Yesterday.” New York Times 27 Feb. 2005. 22 Apr. 2007 <http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F40C1EF93F590C748EDDAB0894DD404482>.

United Nations. The Millennium Development Goals Report 2005. New York: United Nations, 2005.

United Nations. The Millennium Development Goals Report 2006. New York: United Nations, 2006.

Van Vliet, Ingrid. “About.” The Girl in the Café. 2007. 25 Apr. 2007 <http://www.thegirlinthecafe.com/about>.

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Walker, Janice R., and Todd Taylor, eds. Globalization and Health. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

While searching for a clip of a scene from Love Actually, I stumbled upon thegirlinthecafe.com - a weblog streaming from the UK by the hands of an endearing woman named Ingrid. After reading a few of her entries, and also of the namesake of her website – The Girl in the Café movie, I was undeniably intrigued. Impassioned by the film, Ingrid, realizing that many had yet to hear of it, decided to make a project of sending her The Girl in the Café DVD on tour. I signed up to receive the DVD in October of last year, and finally last week it arrived in my post office box. I never, even after reading countless reviews of it, imagined the film would impact me as it has, and it is with great pleasure that I will package The Girl into an envelope tomorrow morning and send her on her way to the next privileged person. (If you’re interested in joining in on the tour, see here)

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I believe that one of the most human emotions is the sense of loneliness, of being so aware of your isolated state that even the air in the room seems vacant. This is precisely the room that Lawrence, played by Bill Nighy, finds himself in the beginning of the film. Emptiness is found echoing in the sounds of brushing his teeth, in his quiet morning breakfast, and in the water ricocheting around his feet on the pavement amidst a sea of umbrellas in Britain.

“I actually dreamt about you a few nights ago.”

“God, how embarrassing. What was I doing?”

“You were sitting in a café drinking tea.”

“Right. Not fighting a dragon or something glamorous.”

“Sorry.”

Nighy plays the roll of a civil servant in service to the British delegation at the 2005 G8 Summit who seemingly keeps himself wrapped up in his work. In the weeks leading up to the Summit, Lawrence finds himself in a quaint café sitting opposite a beautiful young woman, Gina. Through a round of stifled conversation and awkward first glances, he finds her company assuring and pleasant, and nearly halfway out the door manages to ask her to meet him for lunch a few weeks later. Through a series of lunch and dinner dates, Lawrence finds himself at ease in Gina’s company, even spilling his grandfather’s name in the first few minutes of their second meeting. Obviously tongue-tied at moments – and uniquely British humored the next, the couple find themselves comfortable and honest in each other’s company.

Lawrence and Gina’s story evolves as the G8 Summit approaches. After pacing the floor and a few rounds of making tea, Lawrence gets up the nerve to ask Gina to accompany him to the conference in Iceland. Their first night at the conference, Lawrence details the Millennium Goals set forth in 2000 for Gina, mentioning that every three seconds, a child – who shouldn’t die – does. As the Summit continues, Gina reveals herself to be outspoken on behalf of the “basic human rights” set forth by the goals, and even as she risks Lawrence’s career, she endeavors to challenge the political leaders to uphold their promises to end poverty – spinning into the story an empowering twist in history - and in Lawrence.

The Girl in the Café partnered with the Make Poverty History campaign to make a global impact on the reception and awareness of the dire need for assistance regarding extreme debt, aid, and fair trade in poverty-stricken areas around the world – namely Africa. Obviously, it is making its impact. Although, for me, the impact didn’t stop there – as I’m sure it doesn’t for many who view the film.

“Don’t think because I’m not saying much

that I wouldn’t like to say a lot.”

Most anyone who has ever found themselves in “something quite close to love” can resonate in the moments where hands nearly touch, yet with such electricity, you’d believe fireworks were about to erupt out of fingertips. Those endearing moments when silence fits perfectly where words need not be, and how soft the sleeping silhouette of someone you love appears against the darkened backdrop of night. It’s the merest of affections that can serve as a catalyst for the greatest of things. The film presents a holistic view of love – or something quite close – what can enable us and entrust us with the confidence we need to pursue the things in life that are right and just – whatever the stakes.

“Love can’t change what’s wrong in the world.

But it’s a start.”

j.

As the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama is dedicated to teaching Comparitive Religion, the scientific study of religion, my in-class learning is void of all things “theological”.  Since my department is purely involved in the science of religion*, I often contemplate and toy with the ideas of the convergeance of science with Christian theology. Of course, this would mean a scientific study into areas of theology regarding measurable variables, which are few (you can’t very well measure faith, can you?). Faith revolves around belief in the unseen, in the mysteries.

But what if I told you that, around five years ago, a scientific experiment was held on the effectiveness of prayer? Would you be interested?

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SELDOM DOES SOCIAL RESEARCH MAKE headlines, but this research did.

The researchers, headed by the chairman of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Columbia University, were so astounded by their findings that at first they didn’t know what to do with them. They didn’t even want to report the results, for fear that their scientific colleagues would laugh at or ridicule them.

Their research is so scientifically solid, however, and the results so unambiguous that they decided that the only thing they could do was to publish their findings.

What so astounded them?

The setting was a fertility program at Cha General Hospital in Seoul, South Korea. Being treated were women who wanted to have children but who were having difficulty getting pregnant. One of the physicians suggested that prayer might make a difference in whether or not the women became pregnant. The medical researchers knew that prayer could not possibly make a difference. But, after all, what could they lose by trying?

To find out, the researchers set up a research design that would meet the rigorous standards of science. Background information was gathered on the next 219 patients. A statistician in Korea who did not know the purpose of the research sent background data on the women and their photographs to another statistician in the United States. Twenty patients were lost to the sample due to fragmentary e-mail transmission. This second statistician, who also did not know the purpose of the study, matched the remaining 199 women by age, reason for infertility, and length of infertility. The women were then randomly assigned by a computer to either the experimental group (those who would be prayed for) or the control group (those who would not receive prayer). The U.S. statistician sent photographs of the women who were to be prayed for to members of Christian denominations in the United States, Canada, and Australia. (The statistician sent them just the photographs, not the data.) One group prayed for the women, a second group prayed that the prayers of the first group would be effective, and a third group prayed for the first two groups.

Those who were praying lived continents away from the women who were being prayed for. They prayed for three weeks.

This was a double-blind experimental design. The women did not know they were being prayed for. (They still don’t.) This eliminated the placebo effect—the possibility that suggestion or hope or some other emotion might be at work. Even the medical staff that was treating the women did not know about the experiment. This eliminated the possibility that the staff might somehow treat some women differently. All women received identical medical treatment, IVT-ET (in vitro fertilization-embryo transfer). Finally, the researchers do not work for a religious organization, nor was the study funded by one. This eliminated another possible source of bias.

The results? The women who were prayed for were twice as likely to get pregnant.

More on this study can be found in The Journal of Reproductive Medicine.
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Note: This study reflects nothing of the nature of Comparitive Religion, and would not be considered as such. Instead, the article falls in the category of academic research. For more on the scientific study of religion, see here.