J. K. Rowling and the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Here is a fascinating list which compares the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature with who should have won in an alternate universe.

Some I strongly disagree with. For example, I think Sigrid Undset deserved the prize in 1928 and that she is too overlooked. Still some of the other alternatives are proper - in hindsight. (No prizes for Leo Tolstoy, Mark Twain, and Henry James?)

Still others, if not proper for that year are clearly contenders (W. H. Auden, George Orwell).

Some are wacky (1974 - John Lennon, Paul McCartney).

Others are a fun matchup - who won in 1930? F. Scott Fitzgerald or Sinclair Lewis?

My own favorite suggestions: Chesterton, Bob Dylan, Dr. Seuss, Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein, Phillip K. Dick, J.R.R. Tolkein, Arthur Conan Doyle and Raymond Chandler (but no room for Edgar Rice Burroughs).

Read and enjoy.

Rest in Peace.

One of the best cartoonists to come along, Chris Muir, last week ran a notice that work was suspended due to a family emergency. Sadly, if you opened his website today, there was this panel:


Back in 2005, Chris alerted us to his sister Cathy's cancer and asked for assistance with a "Clicks for Cathy" campaign.

I do not know Chris, but having read his cartoon, I can see that he is a man of integrity and honor and was deeply impressed with his love for his sister. He uses his humor to gently poke fun and make a point -- I have a feeling that even if you disagree with Chris, even if you are his target, you will never come away bitter.

I believe that we can see a reflection of a family in the character of one -- therefore, I feel Chris' grief and, at the same time, know that Cathy was a remarkable woman. I have no doubt that this is a special family. Which, of course makes the grief even deeper.

Accordingly, if you hit your knees tonight, please offer up a prayer of thanks for the life of Catherine Forsythe and prayers of comfort and care for the entire family.

Paul Westhead Bowl.

The Warriors of the University of Hawai'i defeated San Jose in OT last night 42-35. Colt Brennan attempted 75 passes, completing 44 for 545 yards. He's out of Heisman competition I fear, because of his 4 interceptions.

Sadly, I don't think the Warriors are going to make the BCS. But I'd love to see them in a bowl against Texas Tech.

The Kingdom. Thumbs up. I'd rate it an A-.

The only problem I had...

SPOILER ALERT

...was the last minute of the movie.

It's not that it tries to be politically correct, it's that this attempt fails.

Miserably.

Okay, I really mean it -- spoiler alert -- I'm going to tell you the end of the movie.

At the end, the four FBI guys are in their cubes and one of the members asks the team leader (Jamie Foxx) what he said (at the beginning of the movie) to get Jennifer Garner to stop crying:

Adam Leavitt: What did you say to Mayes to get her to stop crying?
Ronald Fleury: I said we were going to kill them all.

And then Director Peter Berg does his pious ham-handed cut to Riyadh where a woman asks a child what his grandfather (the movie's Osama bin Laden figure) whispered to him before he died: "He said we would kill them all."

Yeah, it's set up to allow Berg to show his face at the soirées, but the real problem is that the statement is so inconsistent with the Fleury (Jamie Foxx) character it stands out like Jennifer Garner in a town full of burqas. It's a stretch and it doesn't work.


At worst he would've said "We're going to go there and get some justice."

* * *

Also, the character playing Gideon Young, the Attorney General, is set up to be a religious fanatic like Orin Hatch, but he swears in private, well,

...like Orin Hatch.


But Jeremy Piven, the State Department weenie, and Richard Jenkins as the head of the FBI both work well.

* * *

Actually, it's my understanding that the original ending was nixed as too depressing:

The first Saudi on the scene in the movie, Sgt. Haytham (pictured on the left) was beaten by the Saudi National Guard general in charge. In the movie, Al-Ghazi (very well played by Ashraf Barhom), the Saudi policeman comes to the aid of Sgt. Haytham, however, you can see that Sgt. Haytham is troubled after being tortured by his own government for his suspected involvement in the bombing. The nixed ending has Sgt. Haytham saying goodbye to the FBI team at the air base with a hidden bomb strapped to his chest. Chris Cooper (Sykes) wrestles Haytham away from the group, but Haytham detonates it before Sykes can get clear.

Add Ons. In installing a home network, I've had to reconfigure all the different PCs I use which has caused me to figure out what add-ons I like and what I don't.

First, I use the Mozilla Firefox web browser. IE7 isn't bad, I just prefer Firefox and the add-ons for it. Next, I add the Google toolbar and the following buttons: Bible Gateway; Download; Webster's Dictionary (what I would love would be a button for the Catholic encyclopedia).

Then come these add-ons:

• Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer. Using browsers on at least 4 different machines, I can log in and get my bookmarks wherever I am. Plus, when I update one, they are all updated.
• IE Tab ever get those webpages that will only work with IE? Trick 'em. This embeds Internet Explorer in tabs of Mozilla/Firefox.
• TinyUrl Creator - allows you to right click and make a tiny url. Simple.
• Do you want to print a page, but it's got this color intense graphic smack in the middle which is going to gobble up ink? Use Nuke Anything Enhanced to eliminate it.
• Cooliris Previews gives you a preview of a page before you surf to it.
• Finally, PDF Download lets you choose how you want to view a .pdf document you are going to download - in the browser, in Adobe, as HTML, or save as a file.
  

I've heard good things about Greasemonkey, but it's over my head.
There is one I have been avoiding - StumbleUpon - because I love to go on tangents and can really waste time. You have to figure it out yourself, if I've tempted you.

More

I forgot a few more -- I told you I'm getting several machines networked.

• Forecastfox - I forgot about this, because it's just there. It places the Accuweather forcast for your zipcode on the bottom of the browser. If you use Yahoo widgets, you might have something similar on your desktop, but I like this on my browser. It's out of the way, but handy when I need it. Also, I switch the "Alert Slider" to be inactive (except for severe weather) -- if not, it does take up some resources (when the slider pops up) and slows things down. Also, it doesn't have the spyware that other similar widgets and programs (Weatherbug) have.
• Alternatives to IE Tab, mentioned above, include IEView and IE View Lite. I haven't tried either of these.
• DownloadHelper is one I'm still playing with - it lets you download web content like videos and images - and yes, it works with flash video like YouTube. However, this past week, I tried using it to download the Dahlia Lithwick & Jan Crawford Greenburg exchange on bloggingheads.tv and it didn't work.
• Similarly, I'm still trying to decide whether I like Clipmarks or not. It allows you to clip and save portions of webpages. Where it's been nice is I've saved whole articles (although there is a size limit) in a private space, which I don't feel like I can legally post (in their entirety) here. That way, it's archived, accessible and available when the original online article disappears.
• Oh, and what the heck, here is the link for StumbleUpon.

Also, the good thing about being networked is that I should be able to get back to doing some of this blogging stuff on a more regular basis.

Maybe I should've copyrighted the idea?

Or the acronym? From a long post I wrote back on January 11, 2004:

Next was Martyn Minns, rector of Truro Church, speaking on "The Network" Since his talk is on-line, here, [link no longer works] I'd direct you to read it in it's entirety. It is important. My only comment would be on the name: Network of Confessing Dioceses and Parishes. I prefer the Confessing Anglican Network of America ("CANA") -- as in the place where our Lord took stagnant water and turned it into wine.

Divisions

We are all rightly distressed, and ashamed also, at the divisions of Christendom. But those who have always lived within the Christian fold may be too easily dispirited by them. They are bad, but such people do not know what it looks like from without. Seen from there, what is left intact despite all the divisions, still appears (as it truly is) an immensely formidable unity. I know, for I saw it; and well our enemies know it. That unity any of us can find by going out of his own age. It is not enough, but it is more than you had thought till then. Once you are well soaked in it, if you then venture to speak, you will have an amusing experience. You will be thought a Papist when you are actually reproducing Bunyan, a Pantheist when you are quoting Aquinas, and so forth. For you have now got on to the great level viaduct which crosses the ages and which looks so high from the valleys, so low from the mountains, so narrow compared with the swamps, and so broad compared with the sheep-tracks.

- C. S. Lewis
Introduction to De Incarnatione Verbi Dei (On the Incarnation) by St. Athanasius

Sign o' the times

I clipped the following from my local grocery store sales circular:



I wonder whose idea it was to put the Happy Ramadan under the Bud ad? [ed: maybe because it's a light beer, it works during a period of fasting? uhh, No.]

Father Damien. From a thank you note dictated to my wife from daughter Emilie, age 6:

Thank you for letting us watch “Father Damien.” The first time you ever saw the first bit of the movie, they were taking people to this island to see if they were sick and if they were sick they wouldn’t be released, but if they weren’t sick they would be released. So, Father Damien went to this island where there were lots of lepers and some people told him not to touch them, but he did. People asked him to put his hands on their children and pray for them and he did. And there was a wedding in the movie. And the queen came and she asked what the people wanted and they said they needed medicine. Father Damien got so sick and he died. He prayed with them and there were so many lepers he couldn’t even heal them in one whole day–he was there for trillions of days. He also taught them to sing like a choir because they rebuilt this church and this guy climbed up on something to see what was happening in the church (it was a long movie). When he first went in the church, the things where they sat were knocked over and some windows were broken–even stained glass windows!....................

(Background- while we were at my parents last week, we all watched the movie "Molokai: The Story of Father Damien.")

Some Articles. Since I'm not much good at blogging...

Judge Mukasey on Padilla and terrorists in court. (WSJ - Free).

The new Mall towering over Mecca (FT-blog).

Frida Kahlo's last secret. (the Guardian)

Anyone remember Fr. Richard P. McBrien, a theologian at the University of Notre Dame? Prior to Ratzinger's elevation to Pope McBrien argued it would never happen: “He’s too much of a polarizing figure,” McBrien told The Washington Post. “If he were elected, thousands upon thousands of Catholics in Europe and the United States would roll their eyes and retreat to the margins of the church.” And he's right! That is, if the margins of the church means "More money, More pilgrims and lot's more Latin." (Times Online)

Hitch and the ABC (scroll down to June 10) (Vanity Fair)

Finally, Ingmar Bergman could've defeated Death at chess, if only he'd sent Death for a pizza.

Back with Harry. Yes, it has been awhile. I'm back with a post about Harry. Not my own thoughts, but those of Gregg Easterbrook writing at ESPN. [SPOILER ALERT] Hence, I post his note in full (links added):

God and Man at Hogwarts: The postwar United Kingdom has produced three blockbuster young people's fantasy series, the Narnia books by C.S. Lewis, the "Golden Compass" series by Philip Pullman and now the Potter volumes. All feature astonishingly capable English schoolchildren with magic powers. The Narnia books are explicitly Christian; the Golden Compass books are explicitly anti-Christian; what about Potter? Though J.K. Rowling's 4,000 pages concern supernatural forces, the soul and communication with the dead who exist in an afterlife, religious issues are missing from the series. The wizards and witches of the Potter world celebrate Christmas, but otherwise seem to have no religious views and never pause to reflect on where their power comes from or what the spirit world might be. Perhaps Rowling concluded that in the contemporary milieu, it's totally fine to market a children's story containing numerous scenes in which children are tortured or murdered, but mentioning God would be too controversial.

The final book was the first to contain religious references, and they've been missed by commentators. Harry travels to the enchanted village where the good wizards and witches of England live and observes there is a church at the center of the town square -- the evil sorcerers have nothing like this. On his parents' tombstone in the church graveyard, Harry sees the inscription, The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. This is the essence of resurrection theology, and though readers aren't told, is a quotation from Paul's first epistle to the church at Corinth. In the older Bible books, there is no talk of heaven or paradise; even the righteous dead go to a place of oblivion. When Christ declared, "I was dead, and see, I am alive forever and ever," he was announcing the defeat of death and offering a fundamentally new compact between Maker and made. Paul wrote to the church at Corinth, "If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain ... But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead ... The last enemy to be destroyed is death." The declaration comes in the same letter where Paul set down some of the greatest words in all literature: the magnificent passage that begins, at First Corinthians 13, "If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal."

When Harry finds the Dumbledore family grave, he reads this inscription: Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. Though readers aren't told this either, the phrase is a quotation from Jesus. The teaching, at Matthew 6:19, is worth contemplating in its fullness, as it is difficult to imagine 40 words that exceed these in wisdom:

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Regarding the "Golden Compass" volumes, in them God is a central character -- but is actively evil, obsessed with causing people to suffer. The plotline of the books is that Christianity is a complete fraud and the source of all that is wrong with society; the final "Golden Compass" volume concerns a desperate attempt by the heroic children to kill God and obliterate every trace of Christianity from several universes. I found Pullman's arguments against Christianity puerile -- like recent anti-Christian books by Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris, the "Golden Compass" volumes resort to the cheap subterfuge of cataloging everything bad about religion while pretending belief has no positive qualities. Pullman, Dawkins and Harris are anti-faith jihadis: they don't just want to argue against the many faults of Christianity, they want faith forbidden. But however flawed the "Golden Compass" books might be, to advance anti-Christian views is Pullman's prerogative, and his art should be transferred authentically to the screen. Now that the Golden Compass volumes are becoming big-budget flicks, will Hollywood accurately depict their loathing of Christianity or turn the books into a mere adventure story?

Jerry Falwell. They laid the body of Jerry Falwell to rest yesterday. Here's where I give the obligatory "I was never a fan" disclaimer -- and I wasn't. He was a Southern Baptist televangelist and I was raised in the Roman Catholic Church. Nevertheless, I could never understand why he was so frequently labeled a "hater" nor why those who despised him so greatly actually turned into such rabid haters themselves.

He had a son, also named Jerry Falwell, who was in law school during the mid-80s at UVa -- I had friend who had several classes with this young man who was, like me, a left leaning moderate. He told me that it was obscene how much abuse this guy got. Classmates who were also committed leftists were appalled by the treatment of the guy.

"Sins of the father..."

I was in San Francisco last week when the news came out about Rev. Falwell's passing. Again, the abuse was apalling -- a mock gravesite was erected complete with astroturf for dancing on and a sign reading "Rest In Torment."

This is bigotry, pure and simple.

And, yes, people were coming by to dance on the "grave."

It's not just the Fred Phelps gang that does these things. Or the Moral Majority. Or the Islamists.

Sadly enough, it's also the people of San Francisco...

Progression.

1964: Justice Potter Stewart, in his concurring opinion in Jacobellis v. Ohio, 378 U.S. 184 (1964), writes that he knows hard core pornography when he sees it.*

1978: Justice John Paul Stevens, in an appendix to FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, 438 U.S. 726, 751 (1978), sets forth the twelve-minute comedy routine by George Carlin, "the Seven Words You Can't Say on Television."

2007: The Supreme Court attaches a link to a video of a car chase to its opinion in Scott v. Harris at footnote 1. (Video here).

My question: How long before the Court starts posting porn on its website?


------------------
* This is what he actually wrote, in relevant part: "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that." (at 476).

.

Great Series. This past weekend series between the A's and the Yankees was a great series from beginning to end.

Friday night before a rare sell-out crowd, the A's tie up the game 4-4 on Nick Swisher's HR in the 7th. Then ROTY candidate Travis Buck takes a triple from the weak arm of Johnny Damon and score's on Bobby Kielty's grounder. A's 5-4.

Yesterday, the A's jump out to a quick 3-0 lead, before the Yankees tie it up in the 7th and former Athletic Jason Giambi, at that point in the game 0-5, hits a homer to win it in the 13th for the Yanks. Yankees 4-3.

On to today's game -- the A's take an early 2-0 lead off of Andy Pettitte in the first. Yet both Pettitte and the A's Rich Harden pitch well for the rest of the game. Harden pitched into the 7th before leaving with tightness in his pitching shoulder (and after giving up a leadoff double to ARod). Joe Kennedy came in in relief and promptly gave up a single to Giambi and a double to Posada. Then, back-to-back SF's by Robinson Cano and Melky Cabrera put the Yank's up by one. They got another run in the 8th and were ahead going into the bottom of the 9th 4-2. So, naturally, NY brings in Mariano Rivera for the last three -- and get the first two outs easily. Then, Todd Walker singled for Oakland's first hit since the third inning; Jason Kendall then walked, putting runners on first and second. Next up was Marco Scutaro, who was 1-20 at this point in the season. Frankly, I was stunned that manager Bob Geren didn't go to a pinch-hitter. But Scutaro came through, hitting a walk-off homer just inside the left foul poll to take the series for the A's 5-4.

I'm back from Pago Pago -- but today is "tax day" -- so it will be a few more days before I get my notes up about the trip.

Samoa. Greetings from Pago Pago. More later.

One, Two.

One

From the Episcopal News Service
Jefferts Schori's opening remarks follow:

Good morning to all of you. And it is a good morning. As the psalmist says, "this is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it." Let us rejoice and be glad in the good and creative ministry going on in so many parts of this church and around the world. That is indeed an enormous blessing in a broken and hurting world.

I am grateful for this opportunity to speak to and with you, and grateful to Trinity Church for making this format possible. . . .

-Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori

Two

New Year's Address to the Nation
Prague, January 1, 1990

My dear fellow citizens,

For forty years you heard from my predecessors on this day different variations on the same theme: how our country was flourishing, how many million tons of steel we produced, how happy we all were, how we trusted our government, and what bright perspectives were unfolding in front of us.

I assume you did not propose me for this office so that I, too, would lie to you.

Our country is not flourishing. . . .

- Václav Havel

Children of Men is a very well done, well recieved (90% on the tomato-meter) flick, yet . . . yet, it leaves me wanting. Much of it does not make sense -- if a nation isn't growing, it will need immigrants, not want to imprison them -- but then, SciFi dystopian stories frequently don't (see 2010).

Jeffrey Overstreet's review on Christianity Today was also very positive and noted the strongly Christian overtones ("Echoes of the gospel—both subtle and obvious—occur at every turn, reminding us that God gave us hope by providing a vulnerable, miraculous child to a dark, dying, violent world"). Yet, he also points out what's wrong with the movie:

Cuarón's movie draws us into a world that bears a striking resemblance to our own. Where Spielberg would have become preoccupied with imaginative gadgetry, as he did in Minority Report, Cuarón prefers to keep our focus on the story and its relevance. (Cuarón recently told me in an interview, "I wasn't interested in the future. I was interested in right now.")

Victor Morton has this review which point out the problems with the movie. Here's a sample:

There's no doubt that this adaptation of P.D. James' Christian dystopia is thrilling in pieces ... particularly, the single-take escape as the camera goes into, out of, through and around a fleeing car. But by the time we got to the bravura closing scene (already dubbed "Fireman, Save My Child" by some wag), I was in such intellectual rebellion that I had long ago emotionally checked out of the film.

What caused this intellectual rebellion is that Cuaron made the material incoherent by completely secularizing P.D. James's themes and characters, and decoupling them from what concerned her. He soft-pedals her judgment of the contemporary culture of death in order to make a politically-correct presentist smirkfest against Bush, Guantanamo, immigration, fascist jackboots, etcetera, etcetera, et-bloody-cetera. P.D. James as rewritten by LULAC. . . .

(for me the last bit about LULAC is way too far, but I still recommend the review). I confess that I have not read P.D. James, but after having read some of the commentary on the movie, I am looking forward to doing so.

Still, Morton is right -- Cuarón has a lot of talent and he wasted it by making a movie for the Michael Moore crowd, instead of a timeless classic.

I give this movie a C.

[hat tip on the Morton review to the Chatman]

"These Dissidents." At three places in his letter, Peter James Lee refers to the confessing churches as "dissidents:

...we will seek the return of the churches of the Diocese of Virginia that are occupied by dissidents.

* * *

...attorneys for the dissidents...

* * *

...we have moved to accommodate these dissidents at the expense of our faithful people.

I am reminded of Václav Havel's essay, The Power of the Powerless, from which I quote below [recall, this was written about dissidents in the Soviet bloc -- fortunately our situation is not comparable, nevertheless, some of these points are worth considering]:

-------------------begin exceprt--------------------------------

Who are these so-called dissidents?

* * *

III

The manager of a fruit-and-vegetable shop places in his window, among the onions and carrots, the slogan: "Workers of the world, unite!" Why does he do it? What is he trying to communicate to the world? Is he genuinely enthusiastic about the idea of unity among the workers of the world? Is his enthusiasm so great that he feels an irrepressible impulse to acquaint the public with his ideals? Has he really given more than a moment's thought to how such a unification might occur and what it would mean?

I think it can safely be assumed that the overwhelming majority of shopkeepers never think about the slogans they put in their windows, nor do they use them to express their real opinions.

* * *

Let us take note: if the greengrocer had been instructed to display the slogan "I am afraid and therefore unquestioningly obedient;' he would not be nearly as indifferent to its semantics, even though the statement would reflect the truth. The greengrocer would be embarrassed and ashamed to put such an unequivocal statement of his own degradation in the shop window, and quite naturally so, for he is a human being and thus has a sense of his own dignity. To overcome ihis complication, his expression of loyalty must take the form of a sign which, at least on its textual surface, indicates a level of disinterested conviction. It must allow the greengrocer to say, "What's wrong with ihe workers of the world uniting?" Thus the sign helps the greengrocer to conceal from himself the low foundations of his obedience, at the same time concealing the low foundations of power. It hides them behind the facade of something high. And that something is ideology.


* * *

VII

Let us now imagine that one day something in our greengrocer snaps and he stops putting up the slogans merely to ingratiate himself. He stops voting in elections he knows are a farce. He begins to say what he really thinks at political meetings. And he even finds the strength in himself to express solidarity with those whom his conscience commands him to support. In this revolt the greengrocer steps out of living within the lie. He rejects the ritual and breaks the rules of the game. He discovers once more his suppressed identity and dignity. He gives his freedom a concrete significance. His revolt is an attempt to live within the truth.

The bill is not long in coming. He will be relieved of his post as manager of the shop and transferred to the warehouse. His pay will be reduced. His hopes for a holiday in Bulgaria will evaporate. His children's access to higher education will be threatened. His superiors will harass him and his fellow workers will wonder about him. Most of those who apply these sanctions, however, will not do so from any authentic inner conviction but simply under pressure from conditions, the same conditions that once pressured the greengrocer to display the official slogans. They will persecute the greengrocer either because it is expected of them, or to demonstrate their loyalty, or simply as part of the general panorama, to which belongs an awareness that this is how situations of this sort are dealt with, that this, in fact, is how things are always done, particularly if one is not to become suspect oneself. The executors, therefore, behave essentially like everyone else, to a greater or lesser degree: as components of the post-totalitarian system, as agents of its automatism, as petty instruments of the social auto-totality.

Thus the power structure, through the agency of those who carry out the sanctions, those anonymous components of the system, will spew the greengrocer from its mouth. The system, through its alienating presence ín people, will punish him for his rebellion. It must do so because the logic of its automatism and self-defense dictate it. The greengrocer has not committed a simple, individual offense, isolated in its own uniqueness, but something incomparably more serious. By breaking the rules of the game, he has disrupted the game as such. He has exposed it as a mere game. He has shattered the world of appearances, the fundamental pillar of the system. He has upset the power structure by tearing apart what holds it together. He has demonstrated that living a lie is living a lie. He has broken through the exalted facade of the system and exposed the real, base foundations of power. He has said that the emperor is naked. And because the emperor is in fact naked, something extremely dangerous has happened: by his action, the greengrocer has addressed the world. He has enabled everyone to peer behind the curtain. He has shown everyone that it is possible to live within the truth. Living within the lie can constitute the system only if it is universal. The principle must embrace and permeate everything. There are no terms whatsoever on which it can co-exist with living within the truth, and therefore everyone who steps out of line denies it in principle and threatens it in its entirety.

This is understandable: as long as appearance is not confronted with reality, it does not seem to be appearance. As long as living a lie is not confronted with living the truth, the perspective needed to expose its mendacity is lacking. As soon as the alternative appears, however, it threatens the very existence of appearance and living a lie in terms of what they are, both their essence and their all-inclusiveness. And at the same time, it is utterly unimportant how large a space this alternative occupies: its power does not consist in its physical attributes but in the light it casts on those pillars of the system and on its unstable foundations. After all, the greengrocer was a threat to the system not because of any physical or actual power he had, but because his action went beyond itself, because it illuminated its surroundings and, of course, because of the incalculable consequences of that illumination. In the post-totalitarian system, therefore, living within the truth has more than a mere existential dimension (returning humanity to its inherent nature), or a noetic dimension (revealing reality as it is), or a moral dimension (setting an example for others). It also has an unambiguous political dimension. If the main pillar of the system is living a lie, then it is not surprising that the fundamental threat to it is living the truth. This is why it must be suppressed more severely than anything else.

In the post-totalitarian system, truth in the widest sense of the word has a very special import, one unknown in other contexts. In this system, truth plays a far greater (and, above all, a far different) role as a factor of power, or as an outright political force. How does the power of truth operate? How does truth as a factor of power work? How can its power-as power-be realized?

VIII

Individuals can be alienated from themselves only because there is something in them to alienate. The terrain of this violation is their authentic existence. Living the truth is thus woven directly into the texture of living a lie. It is the repressed alternative, the authentic aim to which living a lie is an inauthentic response. Only against this background does living a lie make any sense: it exists because of that background. In its excusatory, chimerical rootedness in the human order, it is a response to nothing other than the human predisposition to truth. Under the orderly surface of the life of lies, therefore, there slumbers the hidden sphere of life in its real aims, of its hidden openness to truth.

The singular, explosive, incalculable political power of living within the truth resides in the fact that living openly within the truth has an ally, invisible to be sure, but omnipresent: this hidden sphere. It is from this sphere that life lived openly in the truth grows; it is to this sphere that it speaks, and in it that it finds understanding. This is where the potential for communication exists. But this place is hidden and therefore, from the perspective of power, very dangerous. The complex ferment that takes place within it goes on in semidarkness, and by the time it finally surfaces into the light of day as an assortment of shocking surprises to the system, it is usually too late to cover them up in the usual fashion. Thus they create a situation in which the regime is confounded, invariably causing panic and driving it to react in inappropriate ways.

* * *

Therefore it seems to me that not even the so-called dissident movements can be properly understood without constantly bearing in mind this special background from which they emerge.

IX

The profound crisis of human identity brought on by living within a lie, a crisis which in turn makes such a life possible, certainly possesses a moral dimension as well; it appears, among other things, as a deep moral crisis in society. A person who has been seduced by the consumer value system, whose identity is dissolved in an amalgam of the accouterments of mass civilization, and who has no roots in the order of being, no sense of responsibility for anything higher than his own personal survival, is a demoralized person. The system depends on this demoralization, deepens it, is in fact a projection of it into society.

Living within the truth, as humanity's revolt against an enforced position, is, on the contrary, an attempt to regain control over one's own sense of responsibility. In other words, it is clearly a moral act, not only because one must pay so dearly for it, but principally because it is not self-serving: the risk may bring rewards in the form of a general amelioration in the situation, or it may not. In this regard, as I stated previously, it is an all-or-nothing gamble, and it is difficult to imagine a reasonable person embarking on such a course merely because he reckons that sacrifice today will bring rewards tomorrow, be it only in the form of general gratitude. (By the way, the representatives of power invariably come to terms with those who live within the truth by persistently ascribing utilitarian motivations to them-a lust for power or fame or wealth-and thus they try, at least, to implicate them in their own world, the world of general demoralization.)

XIII

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Who are these "dissidents"?

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Perhaps it is now appropriate to outline some of the reasons why "dissidents" themselves are not very happy to be referred to in this way. In the first place, the word is problematic from an etymological point of view. A "dissident," we are told in our press, means something like "renegade" or "backslider." But dissidents do not consider themselves renegades for the simple reason that they are not primarily denying or rejecting anything. On the contrary, they have tried to affirm their own human identity, and if they reject anything at all, then it is merely what was false and alienating in their lives, that aspect of living within a lie.

But that is not the most important thing. The term "dissident" frequently implies a special profession, as if, along with the more normal vocations, there were another special onegrumbling about the state of things. In fact, a "dissident" is simply a physicist, a sociologist, a worker, a poet, individuals who are doing what they feel they must and, consequently, who find themselves in open conflict with the regime. This conflict has not come about through any conscious intention on their part, but simply through the inner logic of their thinking, behavior, or work (often confronted with external circumstances more or less beyond their control). They have not, in other words, consciously decided to be professional malcontents, rather as one decides to be a tailor or a blacksmith.

In fact, of course, they do not usually discover they are "dissidents" until long after they have actually become one. "Dissent" springs from motivations far different from the desire for titles or fame. In short, they do not decide to become "dissidents," and even if they were to devote twenty-four hours a day to it, it would still not be a profession, but primarily an existential attitude. Moreover, it is an attitude that is in no way the exclusive property of those who have earned themselves the title of "dissident" just because they happen to fulfill those accidental external conditions already mentioned. There are thousands of nameless people who try to live within the truth and millions who want to but cannot, perhaps only because to do so in the circumstances in which they live, they would need ten times the courage of those who have already taken the first step. If several dozen are randomly chosen from among all these people and put into a special category, this can utterly distort the general picture. It does so in two different ways. Either it suggests that "dissidents" are a group of prominent people, a protected species who are permitted to do things others are not and whom the government may even be cultivating as living proof of its generosity; or it lends support to the illusion that since there is no more than a handful of malcontents to whom not very much is really being done, all the rest are therefore content, for were they not so, they would be "dissidents" too.

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XVII

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All of this, however, is not the main reason why the "dissident" movements support the principle of legality. That reason lies deeper, in the innermost structure of the "dissident" attitude. This attitude is and must be fundamentally hostile toward the notion of violent change-simply because it places its faith in violence. (Generally, the "dissident" attitude can only accept violence as a necessary evil in extreme situations, when direct violence can only be met by violence and where remaining passive would in effect mean supporting violence: let us recall, for example, that the blindness of European pacifism was one of the factors that prepared the ground for.che Second World War.) As I have already mentioned, "dissidents" tend to be skeptical about political thought based on the faith that profound social changes can only be achieved by bringing about (regardless of the method) changes in the system or in the government, and the belief that such changes-because they are considered "fundamental" justify the sacrifice of "less fundamental" things, in other words, human lives. Respect for a theoretical concept here outweighs respect for human life. Yet this is precisely what threatens to enslave humanity all over again.

"Dissident" movements, as I have tried to indicate, share exactly the opposite view. They understand systemic change as something superficial, something secondary, something that in itself can guarantee nothing. Thus an attitude that turns away from abstract political visions of the future toward concrete human beings and ways of defending them effectively in the here and now is quite naturally accompanied by an intensified antipathy to all forms of violence carried out in the name of a better future, and by a profound belief that a future secured by violence might actually be worse than what exists now; in other words, the future would be fatally stigmatized by the very means used to secure it. At the same time, this attitude is not to be mistaken for political conser vatism or political moderation.. The "dissident" movements do not shy away from the idea of violent political overthrow because the idea seems too radical, but on the contrary, because it does not seem radical enough. For them, the problem lies far too deep to be settled through mere systemic changes, either governmental or technological. Some people, faithful to the classical Marxist doctrines of the nineteenth century, understand our system as the hegemony of an exploiting class over an exploited class and, operating from the postulate that exploiters never surrender their power voluntarily, they see the only solution in a revolution to sweep away the exploitersNaturally, they regard such things as the struggle for human rights as something hopelessly legalistic, illusory, opportunistic, and ultimately misleading because it makes the doubtful assumption that you can negotiate in good faith with your exploiters on the basis of a false legality. The problem is that they are unable to find anyone determined enough to carry out this revolution, with the result that they become bitter, skeptical, passive, and ultimately apathetic-in other words, they end up precisely where the system wants them to be. This is one example of how far one can be misled by mechanically applying, in post-totalitarian circumstances, ideological models from another world and another time.

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But an essential part of the "dissident" attitude is that it comes out of the reality of the human here and now. It places more importance on often repeated and consistent concrete action-even though it may be inadequate...

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Is the basic job of the "dissident" movements is to serve truth, that is, to serve the real aims of life, and if that necessarily develops into a defense of individuals and their right to a free and truthful life (that is, a defense of human rights and a struggle to see the laws respected), then another stage of this approach, perhaps the most mature stage so far, is what Václav Benda called the development of "parallel structures."

When those who have decided to live within the truth have been denied any direct influence on the existing social structures, not to mention the opportunity to participate in them, and when these people begin to create what I have called the independent life of society, this independent life begins, of itself, to become structured in a certain way. Sometimes there are only very embryonic indications of this process of structuring; at other times, the structures are already quite well developed. Their genesis and evolution are inseparable from the phenomenon of "dissent," even though they reach far beyond the arbitrarily defined area of activity usually indicated by that term.

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XXII

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We do not know the way out of the marasmus of the world, and it would be an expression of unforgivable pride were we to see the little we do as a fundamental solution, or were we to present ourselves, our community, and our solutions to vital problems as the only thing worth doing.

Even so, I think that given all these preceding thoughts on post-totalitarian conditions, and given the circumstances and the inner constitution of the developing efforts to defend human beings and their identity in such conditions, the questions I have posed are appropriate. If nothing else, they are an invitation to reflect concretely on our own experience and to give some thought to whether certain elements of that experience do not-without our really being aware of it-point somewhere further, beyond their apparent limits, and whether right here, in our everyday lives, certain challenges are not already encoded, quietly waiting for the moment when they will be read and grasped.

For the real question is whether the brighter future is really always so distant. What if, on the contrary, it has been here for a long time already, and only our own blindness and weakness has prevented us from seeing it around us and within us, and kept us from developing it?

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I am further reminded of the passage in Acts 17:6 (in part), in which the disciples were accused of having "turned the world upside down" (KJV).

Dissidents? Yes, dissidents...