David Anthony Oliver Reflections
THIS TIME, OUR TIME
History Does Not Repeat Itself But it Rhymes
The election of Donald Trump, the surging popularity of the MAGA movement in America, and world-wide movement to authoritarian regimes recalls the triumph of fascism in the 1930s in Europe when Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, and other tyrants came to power.
Tyrants from contemporary billionaires such as Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are nonetheless tyrants as they bought and control media platforms as their own mouth pieces, such as X (formerly Twitter) and the Washington Post (formerly a respected newspaper).
I say “recalls” because, “history does not repeat itself, but it rhymes.” Another way to say this is that “the timeline of history is not a closed circle but an open spiral.” The present passes close to and is similar to previous epochs, but it is not identical to any of them.
Today
What are we to make then of our present situation with the world awash in weaponry from drones to nuclear missiles that world leaders tip-toe forward to use. I bring forward a woman— Simone Weil—and her essay, “The Iliad, Poem of Force” published in the dark days of WWII breakout in 1940-1941.
Simone Weil
The Iliad, Poem of Might
[Note: I am using the translation from The Simone Weil Reader: A Legendary Spiritual Odyssey of Our Time. Edited by George A. Panichas. David McKay Co., 1981, in which the French word for “Force” is rendered as “Might”)]
The true hero, the true subject, the center of the Iliad is might. Might employed by man, might that enslaves man, might before which man’s flesh shrinks away. In this work, at all times, the human spirit is shown as modified by its relations with might, as swept away, blinded, by the very might it imagined it could handle, as deformed by the weight of the might it submits to.
For those dreamers who considered that might, thanks to progress, would soon be a thing of the past, the Iliad could appear as an historical document; for others, whose powers of recognition are more acute and who perceive might, today as yesterday, at the very center of human history, the Iliad is the purest and the loveliest of mirrors.
To define might: it is that x that turns anybody who is subjected to it into a thing. Exercised to the limit, it turns man into a thing in the most literal sense: it makes a corpse out of him. Somebody was here, and the next minute there is nobody here at all; this is a spectacle the Iliad never wearies of showing us:
... the horses
Rattled the empty chariots through the files of battle,
Longing for their noble drivers. But they on the ground Lay,
dearer to the vultures than to their wives.
The Temptation of Power and Might and How to Resist it
The seduction of Might—the irresistible draw of power to silence ot crush those who oppose or thwart our will—robs our souls of their most precious gifts, love and justice.
Weil writes,
Only he who has measured the dominion of might, and knows how not to respect it, is capable of love and justice.
Hate and love are primal human capacities. Weil shows their relationship to might. Hate respects and craves might; love disrespects and gives up might.
Resisting Might requires actively cultivating humility when faced with opportunities to wield power. This is a bitter pill to swallow for those of us who believe we have the good of country (let alone, the world) at heart and need the power to bring it forth. We must find some way to work for love and justice without becoming the evil we wish to overcome.
References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simone_Weil
The Simone Weil Reader: A Legendary Spiritual Odyssey of Our Time. Edited by George A. Panichas. David McKay Co., 1981.
Awaiting God: A New Translation of Attente de Dieu and Lettre a un Religieux. Introduction by Sylvie Weil. Translated by Bradley Jersak. Fresh Wind Press, 2012. ISBN 978-1-927512-03-6.
Gravity and Grace. Edited by Gustave Thibon. Translated by Arthur Willis. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997.
Thank you... wise, and helpful.
Johan