Still Waiting for the Glorious Dawn

This morning, I watched the dawn break over the mountains in the east, and the music of Adolphe Adam’s O Holy Night was running through my mind.

For yonder breaks a new and glorious dawn…

I wish I could rejoice with these words in this Christmas season. (I call it Christmas, because I want to, not because Donald Trump insists that I do. Trump is certainly not the glorious dawn.) But this promise of new hope for humanity has not been fulfilled. To all appearances, there is no God who has done any miracles to make life better for humankind.

Just how hard would it be for God to do a miracle now and then to help those who are trying to make the world better? I mean, it’s not like it would make Him tired. We’re not asking for much. Maybe to just once in a while help some of the millions of people who are suffering? Just a little bit, pretty please?

Oh, the world has improved in many ways since the first Christmas, and even since Adolphe Adam wrote those words. But none of them have been due to miracles. All of them have been the result of concerted efforts by millions of people, against greater odds than a more generous God would have allowed. Here are some examples.

First, slavery has virtually disappeared. I mention this one first because this was one of the major things that was uppermost in Adam’s mind as he wrote. The seldom-sung third verse of O Holy Night says that “the slave is our brother.” By this time, the only major world power that still had slavery was America. In Europe, abolitionism mainly meant the end of American slavery, and American abolitionists went to Europe to gather support for the end of American slavery. But it was not a miracle that brought slavery to an end. It took a war that nearly bled America dry. It took over a century of legislation and court cases to make Black Americans even partway equal to whites. We have only the better angels of our nature, not God, to thank for it. And America is starting to regress back into white supremacy.

Second, the world is much healthier now than in Adam’s time. Public health, sanitation, antibiotics, and vaccination have all occurred in the last century. We have just celebrated the 44^th anniversary of the eradication of smallpox, due directly to vaccination. But these things did not occur because of a miracle. All of these things took the focused efforts of thousands of people, from scientists to nurses. And America is now starting to regress into the good old days of disease. The campaign of Robert Francis Kennedy, Jr., to erode vaccination efforts—and Trump casting aspersions on vaccinations he previously celebrated and took credit for—is only one example, and is an embarrassment in the eyes of the world.

Third (and the list could go on and on), world wars are currently unlikely. The mountains to the east, over which I watched a glorious dawn break, are the Black Forest of Germany, on the other side of the Rhine River from France, where I now live. I am about ten miles away from Germany. In my parents’ generation, Nazi Germany took over most of Europe, at the same time Japan was conquering much of Asia. As I watched the dawn, I realized that there was exactly zero chance that German troops would take over France today. But it was no miracle that brought this about. It cost the lives of millions of soldiers and civilians, and Hitler did not give up until Germany had been destroyed, all around his bunker. War in western Europe is now unthinkable not due to any miracle but because European leaders like Robert Schuman (not the composer) created the European Union. A united Europe was unthinkable until human effort made it happen. But today, pressure for war is building. Putin wants the Ukraine and everything else he can get, and Trump is not seriously opposing him. According to surveys, most Europeans think war with Russia is inevitable and that they cannot count on America to help them.

We certainly cannot look to American Christianity for any help. Most (not all) American Christians worship Donald Trump and his associates. American Christians do not care that these leaders are flagrant sinners, by Christian standards. Trump has five children by three wives; Hegseth has four kids, by three wives; and Musk has fourteen kids, by four women. This is what the world sees when they hear about Christian morality, as shown by American conservatives.

Our Christian leaders are evil. Please, God, couldn’t you help those of us who are trying to create peace and Christian love? Maybe just a little bit? Pretty please?

Music as Propaganda? The russian Example

I recently read the British novel The Noise of Time by Julian Barnes, which is a fictionalized biography of the Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich. I had heard much of this before, but I’ll bet most of you—even you readers of this blog, who are above average on issues of religion and society—have not. Read about Shostakovich and you will be amazed at what he endured as he spent a lifetime writing music, much of it sublime.

The early part of Shostakovich’s career was under the dictatorship of Josef Stalin. His responsibility as a composer was to write not what he thought was good music but what Stalin thought was good music, something that might change from one moment to the next. Composers whom Stalin had previously liked might find themselves blotted out, metaphorically or physically, shortly thereafter. Mediocre composers would literally lecture Shostakovich on the kind of music he should write—at least, until these mediocre composers themselves vanished into the Stalin nightmare.

When I went to a performance of Shostakovich’s fifth symphony—widely considered one of the best works of the twentieth century—the conductor gave a pre-concert lecture. (Karl Haas, the host of NPR’s Adventures in Good Music back in the day, considered the finale of the Fifth Symphony to be the best example of twentieth-century musical inspiration.) The conductor said that Shostakovich kept a suitcase packed at all times, for at least a period of his life, in case one of Stalin’s stooges came for him in the middle of the night. How Shostakovich could write inspired music under such conditions is beyond the capacity for most of us to understand.

So total was the power of Soviet control over people’s minds under Stalin that they were not even allowed to cry. How could comrades who lived in the best society the world had ever seen, under its infallible leader Stalin, ever be unhappy? It would be a crime. Literally. But during the first performance of Shostakovich’s fifth symphony, the third movement was slow and emotional. It included a portion the conductor explained was the bridge of sighs (Rehearsal number 84, if you have a score), which began as an oboe solo. He said that many in the audience began to cry, in perhaps the only place in which they could do so anonymously.

Of course, Stalin did not say that he was the sole arbiter of good music. He claimed that all Russian music should celebrate the spirit of the Russian people—that is, folk music. Music, he said, must be for the people. Composers such as Shostakovich were required to write music that people liked, that is, music that Stalin thought they liked.

As a general principle, I think that, indeed, artists (including writers such as myself, and composers) should produce works that uplift people, even though readers and listeners might have to endure a lot of pain to get to the conclusion. I do not write just whatever comes into my head, and claim freedom of expression. What I write should do something good for YOU, even if you don’t see it at first. That is my fundamental belief.

Soviet composers were supposed to write music that celebrated the Russian spirit. And this is what many of them, their names now mostly forgotten, did. Examples include Reinhold Glière (The Red Poppy, especially the Russian Sailor’s Dance) who, despite his name, was Soviet, and Aram Khatchatourian, composer of the Sabre Dance. Groups such as the Osipov Balalaika Orchestra and the Kalinka children’s dance troupe performed almost nothing else. But it is difficult for me to get upset about this. I absolutely love the performances of both of these groups. How can one not love this children’s dance performance?  Click on it and watch! Here, the children are dutiful little communists, but the result is spellbinding. It is my granddaughter’s favorite performance. I hesitate to write this, because we are now enemies of Russia. Of course, our enemy is Putin, not all Russians; just as in Shostakovich’s time, it was Stalin, not all Russians.

Many published writings of Shostakovich praise the Soviet empire. But the Soviet leaders wrote those things and required Shostakovich to sign them. People even today think that Shostakovich really believed that shit. The few Americans and Europeans who knew that Shostakovich was forced to sign his name to it wished that he would stand up and be a martyr for truth. But it was not just his life that was on the line, but all of his friends and family as well, who would vanish into labor camps and state orphanages. Worse yet were the American liberals who thought Stalin really had created a communist paradise. If you believe this, just consider the million Ukrainians who starved in a politically-determined famine commanded by Stalin, as explained by Roger Conquest in Harvest of Sorrow.

Was it possible that, deep inside the rough exterior of the communist dictators, there was a soft heart? In Barnes’s novel, the answer was no. As granite encloses yet more granite, there is no cave of conscience to be found. Many world leaders, from Stalin to Hitler to Trump, have no core of conscience. The best we can hope for, suggests Barnes, is that the noise of time results in the whisper of history.

I wrote three quatrains as I was finishing Barnes’s novel:

 

Defiant beauty

Even when Soviet boots crushed

His wildflower

Into the spring mud.

 

His message was a beam

Of deadly ultraviolet light

Invisible

To everyone, including himself.

 

He was a sunflower

Turning his wizened head

Toward a sunrise

That was no longer there.

 

Heaven is and has always been an extension of our deepest desires for peace and security. Heaven has never been a place of intense pleasures, sexual or otherwise, but of tranquility, based primarily on biophilia, which is the love of nature, that is, its peaceful aspects.

I thought about this when I remembered a hymn we used to sing in our little fundamentalist church long ago:

 

There’s a city of light where there cometh no night

For the sun never sets in the sky

In the Bible we’re told that the streets are pure gold

And a cool gentle river runs by.

 

Little children will play and our hearts will be gay

As we stroll through that city of gold

No more dying up there, no more sorrows to bear

And nobody will be feeble and old.

 

This is based on symbolism from the end of Revelation, which itself is based on Ezekiel. It was not meant to be taken literally. But being fundamentalists, we had to argue over it. Revelation does not indicate that Heaven has streets, plural, but just one street. I wonder if the streets-faction split away from the street-faction.

This song sounds a lot like the place I live now, a suburb outside of Strasbourg, France. There is very little crime, and my wife and I can walk anywhere without fear. Most people are polite, and the socialist society takes care of all of our needs. A situation such as this has been extremely rare in human history, including French history. The European Union has come closer to being heaven on Earth than any group of humans has ever been; and it won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012. Right near our house, our favorite place to walk is along the Ill River, which is gentle and cool, just as in the song. Its flow is almost constant, varying by about 15 cm between rains and droughts, at least during the two years we have been here. The river we lived near in Tulsa varied from dry sand to flood stage within weeks. Partly the gentle flow of water in the Ill is natural, but is also because there is a canal system that regulates water flow in the rivers Ill, Muhlwasser, and Aar.

 

France is politically more like Heaven than anywhere else I know about. Racial strife occurs, but it is very quiet. France absorbs immigrants but requires them to become French. All of the hijab-wearing and African women around here speak French (not surprising, since they come from former French colonies). A recent advertising campaign showed Muslim and African women, and indicated that people frequently asked them, even politely, Where are you from? The correct answer, said the advertisement, was, I’m from here. As in our idea of Heaven, people from everywhere blend together.

The song makes Heaven sound like such a wonderful place that one can overlook some obvious problems. If little children are playing, does that mean they were children when they died? And will they remain children forever and never grow up? This is a question without a logical answer and lends itself only to humor, such as what Mark Twain used in Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven.

Anyway, I thought I would send you greetings from Heaven.

Elon Musk's Carbon Footprint

 

Or, maybe, butt-print.

Try putting “Elon Musk carbon footprint” into a search engine. You will find plenty. This is, you realize, the world’s richest man, who just managed to talk his company into giving Him a trillion-dollar pay package. This is all money that Tesla is not going to spend on making their products innovative and safe (hint to investors).

You will get an answer right away. According to PC Magazine, “Elon Musk's two private jets alone—not including his emissions from other sources—generate 5,497 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, or an average of 15 tonnes per day. This is equal to 11 average people's emissions in their entire lifetimes.” A tonne is a metric ton, that is, a thousand kilograms. Then you can click on a Guardian article that explains, worldwide, “Twelve billionaires’ climate emissions outpollute 2.1 million homes.” And that article is even out of date; it has gotten worse.

As if you did not already have enough reasons to hate Elon Musk. Imagine him trying to tell a government how to be more efficient.

But we will get nowhere complaining about how the richest people not only waste money while millions of people suffer, or complaining about how the rich do not deserve to be millions of times richer than the average person. Maybe a little, but not a million times. There is a serious point here.

The fault for global warming, caused by carbon emissions, is primarily due to rich nations (like America) and rich people in those rich nations. China emits more carbon than America, but it has over a billion people. The average Chinese person does not emit, directly or indirectly, as much carbon as an average American. I drove a small car when I was living in America, and my “guilt” was much less than an average American, certainly a rich American.

It is clear that one major contributor to global warming is that so many Americans are so rich and wasteful. You knew that. I just want to give you a couple of numbers to consider.

In France, where I now live, the richest ten percent are responsible for 31.2 percent of carbon emissions. But in America, the richest ten percent are responsible for 84.5 percent of carbon emissions. What this means is that rich Americans are really, really rich and wasteful. America needs to become more like France, in which the rich people (at least, the ones who live around Strasbourg) have only moderately showy wealth and are only moderately wasteful.

As long as rich Americans continue to be joyously wasteful, then there will be no solution to the problem of global warming.

American wasteful wealth and inefficiency cannot possibly be in accordance with any serious religious ethics, Christian or otherwise.