I started checking into Czeslaw Milocz and also Franco Venturi who wrote "Roots of Revolution" I'll buy their books at Amazon. Thanks for the great tip.
"I tell you this so in future, you know who you're dealing with, as regards the faith and with the assumption that you might be Catholic, and as consequence might want to know that you're conversing with an apostate and a heretic."
I'm a practicing Roman Catholic, but in the United States as far off track as Catholicism and all the other religions are, at best I hope and live for right now, is "a brotherhood of man sharing all the world as one." Yeah, I guess I'm a dreamer.
I'm wondering why you identify yourself with the word "heretic"? Identities are a curious thing. I had a friend who was in Alcoholics Anonymous. She was a "health nut" and after 7 years of repeating "I'm an alcoholic" she finally went back to drinking. Your not an approval seeker, and by your rhetoric I can tell you follow your heart most of the time. There really aren't that many people graced that way.
I was wondering if you've ever read much about "the Dumb Ox" (St. Thomas Aquinas). I'm a rebel myself and not motivated by servile fear and so I was enlightened by what he said about "filial fear". Confucious also commonly spoke of "filial duty". Just as desire motivates each of us differently, different types of fear affects each of our lives in various ways. Fear is the grandaddy of all motives.
St Thomas Aquinas explains fear in "Summa Theologica". I hope this following page about it isn't too deep because I'm really not into religious dogma, but this has helped me get a little closer to God and it's the best explanation I could find on the subject.
A synopsis of St. Thomas Aquinas' Summa Theologica is "A TOUR OF THE SUMMA"-By Paul J. Glenn. The following is excerpted from page 198 of "A TOUR OF THE SUMMA" (emphasis in bold added):
FEAR
1. Fear is a shrinking back from evil. Hence, we cannot fear God in himself, for God is infinite goodness. But one is said to fear God in the sense of fearing the evil of being separated from God by sin, and in the sense of fearing to incur his punishments for sin.
2. Fear is called servile fear when it is dread of punishment alone. It is called filial or chaste fear when it is primarily the dread of offending God, our loving father. Between these two types of fear is initial fear, which is properly the beginning of filial fear, and differs from it only as imperfect differs from perfect. There is another type of fear called worldly fear which is the dread of losing temporal things to which the heart clings to as the ultimate good.
*3. Worldly fear is always evil, for it discounts God and eternity, and dreads only the loss of creatural goods.
4. Servile fear is not good in point of it's servility, but it is good inasmuch as it recognizes and dreads the evil that attends upon sin. From such a dread a person may readily rise to the higher and noble type of fear, and through this, to charity and repentance.
5. However, servile fear is essentially different from filial fear. Servile fear dreads punishment; filial fear dreads offending God. These two types of fear differ in their specific objects, and therefore differ essentially from each other.
6. Yet servile fear, as we have seen, has a good aspect, and, in this respect it comes from the Holy Ghost; but it it is not the gift of the Holy Ghost that we call fear. Hence, servile fear, in so far as it is good, can remain in the soul which has charity, that is, which is in the state of sanctifying or habitual grace, and therefore in the friendship and love of God.
7. Wisdom is knowledge of God together with the will to serve him and possess him. Now, the beginning of wisdom, is faith, for by faith we know God and are directed to him. But the beginning of wisdom, in the sense of what arouses one and stirs one to be wise, is fear. This beginning of wisdom is both servile fear and filial fear; such fear puts spurs to man, so to speak, and makes him cultivate wisdom. In this sense, "the fear of the lord is the beginning of wisdom" (Psalm 110).
8. Initial fear is, as we have said, the beginning fear. Both servile fear and filial fear may be, in some way, the start of fearing the Lord. Yet initial fear is closer to filial fear than to servile fear; indeed, it is properly speaking, an imperfect form of filial fear.
9. Filial or chaste fear of the Lord is one of the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost. By it we revere God and avoid what separates us from him.
10. Filial fear increases with charity, for the more one loves God, the more one fears to offend him. Servile fear loses its servility as charity increases, and then, as the nonservile dread of deserved punishments, it decreases in the glow of charity. For charity fixes the soul more and more on God, and thus the thought of self, and even of deserved punishment of oneself, becomes less and less. Besides, the greater one's charity is, the more confident is one's soul of escape from punishment. And thus, the only fear in the charity-filled soul is filial fear.
11. Filial fear will exist in a perfected state in heaven. It cannot be the same as it is during earthly life, for in heaven all possibility of losing or offending God will be taken away. Servile fear will not exist at all in heaven.
12. The first beatitude, "Blessed are the poor in spirit," corresponds to the gift of fear. For if a man fears God perfectly, as he may do by the gift, he does not pridefully seek to be rich or honored, but is humble and poor in spirit.
* From number 3. above: Creature (kre/cher), n. 4.a person under the control or influence of another.
I wonder if that influence or control can occur in a "consumer driven", "approval seeking" society? Money was Mother Teresa's greatest fear. She said, "the more you save, the less you share, it's just the logic of love."
Although these various forms of fear didn't have a label until I read St Thomas, I think this is how me, "the rebel", was motivated by fear: My mom and dad had 10 kids. My mother took a lot of time out to share her understanding of life and see that we also internalized what she shared. "You really only know something to the degree you can teach it to others." My father just sort of yelled a lot and made me feel like I was going to hell if I didn't comply. In my situation with my father, it lowered my self concept and didn't put me in much of a resourceful state. Now older and more responsible, although my parents aren't around anymore I still love them both.
When I had hurt my mother's feelings or didn't obey her it was different, it hurt me inside, so "at the cost of all I had, I got understanding", because I wanted to stay friends and keep my relationship happy with my mother. As for my dad, I just blamed him until I learned enough to respect myself and take responsibility by entertaining solutions instead. My dad was servile fear and my mom was filial fear to me. That's my metaphor for how I think servile fear and filial fear in reference to religion, faith, relationship, and obedience to God, often is perceived.
AlbionGirl I also posted the following:
Lenin knew as well as Loyola that it is not blind economic forces or weight of numbers or even access to power that enables men to make history. Only an ideal does that. An ideal by which the wills of the individuals are won. An ideal for which people are convinced it is worth fighting for and sacrificing everything-even life itself.
You replied:
"No question about that whatsoever. I would only add that once the idea gains force it's been fermenting and growing stronger for many, many years, so the depth of it, its roots are really an unknown quantity to those who are called upon to extirpate. If you ever get a chance to read Roots of Revolution, do it. It chronicles the Bolshevik revolution, and everything that led up to it. It's chock-full of information."
Belief systems travel in 3 stages: opinions, beliefs, and convictions (unshakable beliefs).
Another source of learning "how ideas gain force" is in the field of company "branding" and "positioning", believe it or not. Even the word of God has to be sold. "If you want to dine with the classes you have to sell to the masses." This may seem a bit on the worldly side, but I tell you a lot can be discovered in the field of brand marketing about perception and the revolution of truth. Knowledge of branding and positioning also explains why people get entrenched in the depths of unknown roots.
The best books on this subject that I've ever read, that illustrate an incredible explanation on this subject, are written by a guy called Al Ries (ries.com) and his partner Jack Trout. When you read their books you begin to understand that what's important about getting a message across is not so much whether it's true or not, but rather whether the people your conveying the message perceive it as true.
As an example, in one of their books they say that the Coca Cola company did a blind taste test on over 200,000 people before it put the "new coke" out in the marketplace. The people testing the colas were given "the new coke", pepsi, and the "old coke". In the taste test, the new coke came out first, pepsi was second, and the original coke was third. When they actually put the new coke on the market it failed miserably. The perception was, positioned in "the hearts and minds" of the people, that the original coke was better, even though the blind taste test proved otherwise. The results were that Coca Cola had to spend millions of dollars to reintroduce itself as "classic coke".
All the books of Al Ries and Jack Trout are about companies, advertising and brands Etc.. They charge $30,000 a day to brand or rebrand companies. Remember Avis? "We try Harder". Avis says the slogan put them in the #2 position right below Hertz and they hadn't done anything more than they were already doing. Al Ries and Jack Trout who helped originate that slogan showed Avis how to market it.
The clincher about Ries and Trout is that all their books are usually about corporate branding, but they wrote this one book called: "POSITIONING-THE BATTLE FOR YOUR MIND" written way back in 1981 which is a book mostly about companies, but they have this one chapter 22 titled: "Positioning the Catholic Church".
This is from “Chapter 22: Positioning the Catholic Church”
The first page starts out:
This book could have been written about religion just as well as about advertising.
A far fetched idea?
Not really. The essence of any religion is communication. From divinity to clergy to congregation.
The problems arise not with a perfect divinity or an imperfect congregation but with the clergy.
How the clergy applies communication theory to the practice of religion will have a major influence on the way religion affects the congregation.An identity crisis
Some years ago, positioning thinking was applied to the Catholic Church. In other words, communication problems of this enormous institution were treated as if they belonged to a major corporation.
This request did not come from the Pope or a committee of bishops. It came from a group of laity who were deeply concerned about what one renowned theologian dubbed a “certain crisis of identity” that had followed in the wake of the reforms of Vatican II.
A little further in the chapter Ries and Trout write:
"Losing it's Influence:
What was painfully lacking was a clear presentation of what the new church was about.
The faithful quietly asked, 'If you are not the teacher of the law, what are you?'
In the years since Vatican II, there has been no simple answer forthcoming. No attempt to reposition the church in the minds of the laity. Even in the minds of the clergy, for that matter.
And with no answers, confusion walked in and many people walked out.
For the first time, regular Mass attendance dropped below 50 percent of the Catholic population. This amounts to a 20 percent drop, while Protestant attendance has remained remarkably stable.
There are 20 percent fewer priests, nuns, and brothers today than there were 10 years ago. Vocations have dropped by 60 percent.
One final set of statistics is especially significant. The Catholic Church is presently the 'largest community of moral authority in American society' (A title bestowed upon it by the Protestant theologian Peter Berger).
Yet when a group of 24,000 highly influential executives were asked by U.S. News & World Report to rate the influence of major institutions, the Church and other organized religions came in dead last.
The moral authority of the Catholic Church was obviously not being communicated very well."From Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind
By Al Ries and Jack Trout
1st revised ed., 1986, Warner Books, NY pp. 187-192I want to emphasize again that the preceding was all written way back in 1981.
Since people aren't thirsty for the "new word", maybe the Catholic Church needs to put the "classic word" back out in the marketplace. Like I said before,"if you want to dine with the classes, you've got to sell to the masses."
I appreciate your thinking on identities being curious things, and "fear being the grandaddy of all motives", both in substance and style. The reason I identified myself as a heretic to you, is because from a Catholic standpoint, it is the truth, because I do not believe all I need to believe to call myself Catholic, and I think that if someone is Roman Catholic they have the right to know who they are conversing with, insofar as that is concerned.
I also appreciate your devotion to the cause of life. So many of us are NATO, as was the phrase in high school: No Action, Talk Only. And I want to thank you for the work of St. Thomas Aquinas that you posted. I have to say, that I've thought about fear as St. Thomas delinates, for a long time, though without his skilled detailing, and without the classifications of servile and filial.
I read your post to me yesterday morning just before I dashed off to work. It really stuck with me for most of the day. I bus it to work, and it was pouring rain yesterday morning and I was soaked by the time I got to work. But as I was walking across a bridge that spans the Genesee River, and overlooks its acqueducts, the tears started strolling down my face as I remembered your passage concerning your parents, and I was glad for the rain, as I always wear sunglasses and nobody then would be able to tell if the water on my face was rain or tears.
I wish you the peace of the Lord, my friend, today, tomorrow and forever.