Impossibly pure Girolamo Savonarola
Painted by Fra Bartolomeo shortly before his death - at the stake - in 1498
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Savonarola
Wikipedia
Dear John,
Nothing would be more restorative to The Body Politic than widespread realization that democratic process is intrinsically compromised (and intrinsically compromising) and that all of us -- even "The Most Principled" -- are called upon to participate in less-than-perfect trade-offs.
Lacking this humility, The Body Politic will hurtle, ever faster, toward terminal decline.
Again: "The terrible thing about our time is precisely the ease with which theories can be put into practice. The more perfect, the more idealistic the theories, the more dreadful is their realization. We are at last beginning to rediscover what perhaps men knew better in very ancient times, in primitive times before utopias were thought of: that liberty is bound up with imperfection, and that limitations, imperfections, errors are not only unavoidable but also salutary. The best is not the ideal. Where what is theoretically best is imposed on everyone as the norm, then there is no longer any room even to be good. The best, imposed as a norm, becomes evil.” Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/04/merton-best-imposed-as-norm-becomes.html
Life is not about perfection - at least not in the mathematical, geometrical sense that Americans (mistakenly) construe perfection. ("Be ye perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect" would be more accurately translated: "Be ye complete as your heavenly Father is complete.")
Life is muddle. And it is our station in life to muddle through to "something better" even if "better" proves (in the near term) nothing more than forfending decline. (In the long run, I envision ongoing Revelation that will insure the replacement of humankind's "dominance-submission hierarchies" by even-handed enlightenment - social, intellectual and spiritual.)
As Italo-latinate cultures well know, our lives are not about mistaken notions of "mathematical" perfection.
When imperfect people insist on perfection, "the fan" gets hit by an unusually large load.
Read the following cautionary tale of Dominican priest Girolamo Savonarola, who - despite his impeccable personal life - brought disaster to 15th century Firenze.
Just four years after taking office, Savonarola's "righteous" rule of Florence crashed and burned, another "Bonfire of the Vanities" - this time his own. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girolamo_Savonarola
At bottom, Savonarola evoked catastrophe by being "too true to be good." (No typo.)
At bottom, Savonarola evoked catastrophe by being "too true to be good." (No typo.)
You can only bang the bible so long - and so hard - before it becomes a weapon.
Then, as night follows day, bibliolatry lays waste to the First Commandment.
The prissiness, presumption and unfailing self-righteousness of Christian conservatives are at least as dangerous as militant Islamists to whom they bear striking resemblance.
Christian Pharisees might wisely contemplate "The Woe Passages" - http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew%2023:%2013-39&version=NIV
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"The Bible says it. I believe it. That settles it."
Such simple-mindedness reveals self-lobotomization by ice pick jammed in one's eye.
"When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail."
If authoritarian absolutists take power, everyone will soon be pounded by the hammer of Impossible Purity.
Grant us, Lord, the indispensable gift of Felix Culpa. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exsultet
Pax on both houses
Alan
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