Maybe I've finally gone nuts (some of my liberal critics sure think so). Or maybe like Kramer, "I'm so crazy I've gone totally sane." Now I realize there is no human agency (or at least I would like to think so) that is as far over the top as the "Big Brother" described in 1984 but none the less there are elements of the Institutional behavior that is scary.
The obvious comparisons are the totalitarian government, the total loss of individual freedom, the slogans "War is Peace", "Freedom is Slavery", and "Ignorance is Strength" all seem to ring incredibly true at times. One point that struck home is the idea that "Who controls the past, controls the present and who controls the present controls the past" (sorry about the lack of anotation but I am reading in my Amazon Kindle these days and it doesn't use page numbers!). Throughtout the debate is the ongoing power exercised by Louisville to reinterpret history and as they completely rewrite the Book of Order they are rewriting history. Expunging all record of things undesireable while, just like in 1984, doing so without anyone's knowledge or awareness. Major pieces of the constitution of the PCUSA will just go down the "Memory Hole".
But even all of that wasn't what struck me as the most diabolical thing that I could compare to life in the PCUSA it is this rather long qoute that I will type here and let speak for itself:
"The problem was how to keep the wheels of industry turning without increasing the real wealth of the world. Goods must be produced, but they must not be distributed. And in practice the only way of achieving this was by continuous warfare. The Essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. .... It is deliberate policy to keep even the favoured groups somewhere near the brink of hardship, because a general state of scarcity increases the importance of small privileges and thus magnifies the distinction between one group and another."
That passage just made me say hmmm..... War is Peace...? Peace, Unity and Purity Report...
So many of those who seem to be caught in the middle remind me of the horse in another of Orwell's great works "I'll work harder."
5 Lagniappe (comments):
Bill,
You might be interested to know that people who work in cult or new religions ministry, when dealing with extreme sociological cults, sometimes recommend the book Animal Farm to people attempting to disassociate themselves from the controlling group.
Not that I am at all equating the PCUSA to something like Scientology or Jones Town. Its just that sometimes people, thinking they are doing good, overly manipulate people. And it helps to read something that clarifies how that can easily be done.
I think a good example of that happened at our Presbytery meeting this last week. We are, I think, one of the last Presbyteries that are connected to two other presbyteries by a mission group (Sierra Mission). Supposedly the staff is appointed by the presbyteries, but after one of the synod officials had just explained this to us it was then announced that the synod had appointed a temporary Executive Presbyter for us of course from the Redwoods Presbytery. (That was not in the docket at all) When the Evangelicals tried to protest--- well I won’t even say how that was treated. So not only were we manipulated, we were made to look like ungrateful idiots for objecting. That is Animal Farm.
I'm sorry for your situation. I must say, however, Viola - when you confirm at least in part what I say I feel just a little more normal.
War is Peace - taking control of you is helping you...
Some Presbyterians are more equal than others.
I meant to call that Sierra Mission Partnership. And just to clarify I am writing about the Synod not the Presbytery when I am writing about the problem.
You're not normal you fish among alligators! : )
Bill - if you refuse to be Boxer - perhaps you could be Benjamin:
Though, given the treatment you've received from some sectors, you might be running for Snowball:
"Whenever anything went wrong it became usual to attribute it to Snowball. If a window was broken or a drain was blocked up, someone was certain to say that Snowball had come in the night and done it, and when the key of the store-shed was lost, the whole farm was convinced that Snowball had thrown
it down the well. Curiously enough, they went on believing this even after the mislaid key was found under a sack of meal. The cows declared unanimously that Snowball crept into their stalls and milked them in their sleep. The rats, which had been troublesome that winter, were also said to be in league with Snowball."
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