Eso’s Chronicles 391
War Against Byzantium
© Eso A.B.
All comments appearing within brackets [ ] are editorial in origin.

Unorthodox Christianity

It is somewhat amazing that most of the writers about Christianity and or Chritendom ever fail to step out of the realm of Christendom itself, but proceed to offer criticism from within the system.

For example, Malcolm Lambert, a reader in Medieval History at University of Bristol, and author of “The Cathars”, an interesting enough book, cannot for a moment assume that the Cathars represent an early form of Christianity, one that precedes Catholicism, but writes about them only from the perspective that they have been proven heretics to Catholicst Christianity.

No doubt, the Cathars were heretics to the Catholics, but only because they were part of a Christianity that preceded Catholicism and its definition of Christianity by perhaps some thousands of years.

This myopic perspective is similar to all the army of critics from the West, who offer criticism of the West by remaining securely bound to the system, which (having begun with the introduction of taxation) proceeds under the assumption that the Industrial Revolution is an everlastingly new system, rather than the apex of an old faux system come to its apex and about to begin its collapse.

Whatever is it that causes us to presume that Christianity derives solely from the life of Jesus? If indeed this were so, then it cannot be a platform for faith any other than a shallow one—no matter how forcefully Catholics (and its inquisitors) tried or still try to ground it in God. Only violent force can accomplish such a marvel, as in fact the Inquisition proved it by repressing and killing all or most of those who opposed this ‘new’ message.

It may be difficult for the theologians interested in theology to accept the notion that ancient people were better theologians than the academics who stuff the halls of today’s universities, because not only did they evolve a theology as such, but put it in practice in the daily life of the communities to which they belonged.

Take for example the native religion of the Latvian people, to who I have ties a few centuries in duration, and whose language I know rather well. What distinguishes the religion of the Latvians is that it is embedded in their language, with one caveat: it is to be found only in their oral language, whereas written language is utterly western in its orientation and devoid of any spirit—poets excepting--other than having become an obvious objectivist clunker.

The word that holds the nature of Latvian spiritual being is what formerly grammarians called the diminutive, but more enlightened folks call the endearing or gentling word. Some would describe the nature of this spirit animist in essence, but surely if such a description were to stick, it is repressive by nature. Because—how can you call John Johnny, and hold the endearment to be a form of animism? Well, yes, sure, Johnny is an endearment (not a diminutive); and an endearment is for the most part a consequence of love and affection. Besides, while an endearment is not a verb, there stands behind it a feeling it activates.

As far as I know, Latvians have no direct ties to ‘tengrism’ (see EC 290) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_uqBpk9cAg , but like tengrism the forbears of these once proud forest people, believed in synchronicity, i.e., that all of nature, here and there, was not arbitrary matter, but was connected with profound ties to the present and its beings.

True, the same cannot be said about Latvians today, because the people have been subject to over a century of pro-western proselytizing, this, curiously enough, even with the help of the Soviet Union, which government kept them subjects for half a century. This Western influence from both East and West is true, because Marx for all his opposition to Capitalism oriented the Communist system from within a Western mindset and mold.

Eso’s Chronicles 215/ 1  

P.S. Reversed (1)
© Eso A.B.

Today’s blog is more or less a copy of a post which I plan to post on a Latvian internet site that uses the English language as its main communications medium.

Thursday (Sept. 19) concludes the 56th day (8th week) that I have been on a liquid and fish soup diet. I propose to carry on with it until the 18th of November, the Latvian Independence day of the 1st Latvian State (1918-1940) and will carry on until at least that date. The purpose of the fast is to bring to attention with emphasis that the 2nd Latvian State (May 4, 1991 until today) is a de facto pseudo State, even though it may exist de jure. The latter illusory State proved its contempt toward the 1st State when it refused to honor the Constitution of the 1st State that would allow  holding a referendum of whether to surrender the sovereign nature of the 1st state to a Brussels dominated ‘federated’ EU.

During the past week, I have spent some time on my “Apple branch sculptures”. The method by which I make these sculptures consists of cleaning the branches of its bark, sanding the rough understructure, sometimes burning it with a torch after the sanding. Then impregnating the wood with a disinfectant, then giving it several coats of linseed oil or self-polishing wax. This brings out the inherent warmth of the wood. An old Latvian folk song of an orphan who is herding cows springs to my mind: “I pressed myself to the apple tree as if it were my mother./ The apple tree sheds white blossoms, I shed bitter tears.”

The end result is a sculpture that consists of any number of branches—which may be up to 2 metres long and may themselves be branching,--which I place together in a structure that looks expressive. Such a sculpture will look different every time the sculpture is moved to a new location. It will be up to the owner to reconstruct it or, if he or she wishes, to hire a designer to do it for him.

My sculpture Project makes me think of the Latvian language, which—as I have stated on previous occasions—was (like the apple tree) mercilessly ‘deconstructed’ with the arrival of the written word. An elemental phenomenon of Latvian language is the ‘endearing word’. This ‘word’ --when the Latvian language was used only as oral communication--became ubiquitous, i.e., every Latvian word, no matter which, could be ‘endeared’. It pulled the word as symbol of a ‘thing’ much closer than the ‘thing’ could do by itself. While attempt to translate this phenomenon into another language projects with a laughable awkwardness, there is felt no such awkwardness in Latvian, but the projection seems as inevitable as it is natural. Thus, ‘a finger’ (pirkstiņš) may translate as a ‘fingerling’, a ‘nose’ (deguntiņš) as ‘nosey’, a ‘road’ (ceļš) as ‘celiņš’ or ‘roadsey’, a ‘war’ (kaŗš) as ‘kariņš’, etc. etc.  This ‘endearment’ also could be extended to verbs, which were added an extra syllable, for example ‘sasiet’ (to bind) would be pronounced ‘sa(sa)siet’. The extra syllable would often be used when two people did something together, for example, ‘sasatiksimies’—let us meet again. In short, if Wittgenstein believed that the limits of language are also the limits of reality (and philosophy), then the Latvian language was much richer when it was in possession of the ‘endearing’ word. Indeed, it stood for the ‘religion’ of Latvians.

The current world order, today better known as the post-modern order, similar to language deconstruction, also deconstructs the wood and many an old apple orchard. When my neighbor, a local farmer, saw my sculptures, he said that he could get for me similar branches (as yet unprocessed)—all I wanted. In other words, the process of ‘deconstructing’ the Latvian rural landscape by the 2nd State still proceeds apace. Elsewhere the world has known this process as ‘alienation’.

Whereas as a young boy I made myself useful as a cowherd and learned to love every one of the 25 cows that were under my supervision when in the field, today one of my neighbors has just finished a barn that will hold 100 cows. In due time the cows will be trained to enter the automatic milking station site by sixes, then proceed through a turnstile flanked by large brushes that look a little like the roto-brushes at a car washing station (the cows are said to ‘love’ this service), then go for a drink of water, and then return to their berths. In other words, ‘endearing’ has been replaced by a ‘no nonsense’ “cow meat and milk” factory, though for all I know, my neighbor will introduce to the factory music by Mozart to increase the level of ‘cow contentment’ so that  they give more milk (and perhaps the flesh be more tender), and some enterprising Latvian psychologist will arrive to give a scientific assessment of the degree of the ‘contentment’ of the cows.

To what end the above—what some may call—‘irrelevant’ digression?

The following link provides a discussion about Witgenstein’s philosophy and his reflections on Language https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgW_PFl-Xs4 It is worth listening to the entire discussion as, in my opinion, it directly reflects on the status of the Latvian language before it was ‘deconstructed’ by the written word, on behalf of which ‘deconstructed’ form the NA (Coalition of Latvian Nationalist Parties) appears to ground one of the reasons for its being. The more significant observations in the link comes following the 18th minute, re, that one the functions of language is not to describe, but to “express our state of mind”. If we apply this observation to the Latvian language and the absenting of the ‘endearing word’ (see also my blog 210 at http://esoschronicles.blogspot.com ) by the written media, we come to the conclusion, that the Latvian State has killed the founders of its language by killing the state of mind that founded the Latvian language.

If this is so, then the acts of the 2nd State of Latvia, a government whose leadership does everything in its power to bring about a demise of Latvia as a sovereign State. is a deliberate extension of a process that unleashed itself with full force with the occupation of Latvia by the Soviet Union in 1940. In a curious coincidence a Latvian deputy at the Parliament of the EU has just asked that as of 2013 all of Latvia’s  preschoolers be prepared in the use of the Latvian language, so that beginning 2015 all 1st graders can be taught in Latvian. To the deputy, the ‘enemy’ is of course the Russian language.

What a laugh! The Latvian language (as well as literature) as envisioned by its originators is not only long dead in the 2nd State of Latvia, but has been dying throughout the preceding 46 years of Soviet occupation. The deputy who is making the proposal from his seat at the EU Parliament is the same deputy who a few years back gave ‘the finger sign’ to the demonstrators who were demonstrating to have the Latvian Parliament dismissed. The incident was photographed (the photograph has been removed from public access). It is a cruel paradox that this anti-reform legislator would now lead an ultra-Latvian party on behalf of the Latvian language.

The only logical solution or revival for Latvian is not an imposition of the language on a population that no longer is familiar with its language in depth (least of all its political leadership), but to consider founding a pseudo-religious organization that would imitate the ultra-orthodox Jews of Israel as described in a recent article by the Washington Post. While the ultra-orthodox Jews of Israel number 800,000 and Latvians in Latvia number about 1,200,000, the additional 400,000 thousand should give these ultra-orthodox Latvians (led by a deputy of the EU Parliament) that much greater momentum toward success. I am not in the least opposed to Latvians taking a religious perspective of themselves and their language. I have illustrated this sympathy by creating at my countryside residence a Temple to Johns, which would gather Latvians around Jahnis, the central figure of the Latvian Johns Festival. Unfortunately, though the Temple exists for years, the Latvian remain disinterested (as a result of being dumbed-down by the Soviet and their government and, yes, by dismissal of Jahnis in hia endeared form: Jahn-ihtis) in the origins of their language and religio==as much as they lack interest in the survival of their State as a sovereign.

[I hope that ‘P.S. Reversed’ will evolve into a new series of blogs about the future of Latvia as a geopolitical entity.]

© Eso Antons Benjamins

NOT-VIOLENT TERROR
49 A Floating Dead Fish (I)
[The photos are of scenes not infrequent along Latvia's roads. Next blog photos of deforestation near Riga.]

It was W.C. Fields, the humorist, who had the line that a dead fish can float down river, but only a live one can swim upstream. The humorist also knew, as the photo at the link shows, that the way to get any government to spit out the ping-pong ball stuck in its mouth is to whack it on the back of the head with a ping-pong paddle. http://tiny.cc/rUb00  In this instance, the ping-pong ball stands for Latvia, which—one hopes—has turned out to be not to be quite as thin-shelled and crushable as the oligarchs first imagined, but a teeth-cracking stone egg instead.

No ‘normal’ Latvian would whack the head of a ‘live and normal’ Latvian government, of course. Nevertheless, given that the current government of Latvia can easily be recognized by the smell of corruption, a ‘normal’ Latvian (whoever he-she may be) may be turning to populism for help. Populism, like ancestor Gods, generally comes with a dozen heads or more. http://tiny.cc/lgocS  The heads are what in the language of political theory is known as ‘equivalences’. Equivalences are interests, who while generally going their own way, come together—align themselves as a single force—when some other group presumes to threaten their interests, maybe even existence.

The question of whether the heads of the Hydra can agree on who is their nemesis and focus their antagonism on the real target, is at this time an unknown. Unfortunately, up to now the government of Latvia has been able to distract the many heads of populism with money, alcohol, and Bear-jawbreaker medals. Come Johns’ Eve, the night of the Summer solstice—the festival that no Latvian named John ever missed even if he were to die soon after getting there from exhaustion—many now celebrate this holy day by consuming enough alcohol they are sure to fall or drive into a ditch.

The sorry state of the government of Latvia notwithstanding, the institution has the power to act as the surrogate for the banking industry and clean the bones of what is left. After the forests turn into logs measured by the cubic meter and are sold when commodity prices are at their lows, nothing but the memory of a people who parted their hair in the middle of their heads will be left of Latvians. http://tiny.cc/PX9Dc

It is unfortunate that such an end awaits a people who once upon a time were present at the founding of a culture that transmitted its values not by sermonizing, but through a ubiquitous genre of words known as the ‘endearing word’ and a unique form of households called ‘saime’. Anthropologists call these proto-Europeans—Indo-Europeans. This is not to say that the Indo-Europeans were a collective of tribes inverted upon themselves. That is what Nazi Germany tried to make of them. Rather, the Europeans had and perhaps still have a unique way of expressing and cultivating their spiritual and moral sensibility. I am of course referring not to European governments, but to the people of Europe, the mothers, relatives, and friends of who never call John John when they can endear him by calling him Johnny. Of course, we know or ought to know that the ‘endearing’ word is censured from all European media, the Latvian government and Riga media being only the latest to rework their country’s language from one with a lyrical tilt from the countryside (wood, farm, village, and small town) into a cobblestone lilac lacking endearing qualities thanks to bureaucratic Riga.

Because the people who were to become known as Latvians grew to maturity in times that were economically stable, they were able to imbed their moral and cultural sensibility in a) its proto-language (some call it Sanscrit, some Balto-Slavic), and b) a now lost social structure, the household known as ‘saime’ in Latvian. The ‘endearing word’ and ‘saime’ (a word that stands for a household and signifies a household’s greater priority over that of a family among arch-Christians) are at the root of Latvian consciousness as surely as they had forebears. However, both the genre of endearing words and the economic self-sufficiency of households are not only no longer in use, but stand in radical opposition to a consumer culture on warfare footing at their mere mention.

The war consumerism wages is against all who stand opposed to blatant promotion of a civilization where some are presumed to have the right be economically ‘more-equal-than-others’. Since the current Latvian government is the very embodiment of this exclusionary philosophy, it is for some time no longer the guarantor of the survival of Latvians as a people in their own right. It has become instead a brutal agent-teacher (yet another!) to better diminish what little is left of the people’s spiritual self-consciousness.

These blogs tend to be a continuum of an idea or thought, which is why—if you are interested in what you have read—you are encouraged to consider reading the previous blog and the blog hereafter.

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