Animal Rights Is The Most Ambitious Movement In History

OpEds—

Roland Windsor Vincent, Armory of the Revolution

The Animal Rights movement is the most ambitious movement in history.

Ambitious because it seeks to change the very character of the human race.
It seeks to end thousands of years of human self-interest, bigotry, cruelty and indifference.
It offers humanity redemption not contemplated by any religion.
It proposes human liberation as well as animal liberation.
It rejects religious myth, intolerance, and superstition.
It provides the human race with a vision of sharing the Earth rather than destroying it and our fellow Earthlings.

And our opposition is most of humanity. The odds against us are long at best

Those who believe animals should have the same rights to life and freedom from explitation as we humans claim for ourselves are a distinct minority.

And we are not growing as fast as the human population is increasing.

Which means we are losing.

Our current efforts are doomed to failure. For every vegan we convert, two or three children are born to carnists.

Clearly, a new paradigm is in order. A radical departure from one-on-one proselytizing is necessary if the Animal Rights movement is to ever succeed. That new paradigm must be coalition building, outreach, and partnerships with allies on the Left. We must amplify our influence, secure political power and build philosophically based alliances.

We begin with single issue campaigns. Narrowly focused tools to reach those with whom we have a modicum of commonality. Single issue campaigns are the building blocks of alliances, coalitions, and majorities.

Unfortunately there are those in the movement who reject single issue campaigns. The anti-speciesists (they call themselves Abolitionists – as if all of us are not) consider single issue campaigns to promote speciesism. They reject campaigns against whaling, sealing, horse slaughter, dog-eating, bullfighting, elephant poaching, etc, as somehow denigrating the plight of cattle, pigs and chickens who die in the slaughter industry.

Incredibly, they also reject any effort to alleviate the suffering of slaughter-bound animals as taking away from efforts to end slaughter. The sheer idiocy of such a position is realized when one understands the enormity of the Animal Holocaust and that it will not end until the financial incentives that drive it are eliminated: Profits. And profits won’t end until the Capitalist system ends, decades or centuries in the future.

Those who call themselves Abolitionists are the biggest impediment we face. They are fighting against what others in the movement are doing. They are likely sincere, but are politically and organizationally unsophisticated. And their philosophical grasp on Animal Rights is tenuous.

While we call ourselves the Animal Rights movement, almost nothing we do addresses Animal Rights. We are all animal welfarists and protectionists, from rescuing dogs to liberating mink, hunt sabateuring to disrupting whaling, protesting, emailing, demonstrating – All is animal welfare.

Animal Rights will only occur when government bans animal exploitation and murder, animal consumption and profits.

And that government will be a Socialist government, built by a coalition of Leftists, including the Animal Rights movement.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Roland Vincent is an animal rights and social justice activist. He studies possible tactics and strategies that could help the animal defense movement.

Violent Protests in Venezuela Fit a Pattern

by Dan Beeton, MRZine

Chavez-Maduro supporter.

Mark Weisbrot has explained, then — as now — the strategy is clear: a sector of the opposition seeks to overturn the results of democratic elections. An important difference this time of course is that Venezuela has its first post-Chávez president, and a key part of the opposition’s strategy overall has been to depict Nicolás Maduro as a pale imitation of his predecessor and a president ill-equipped to deal with the country’s problems (many of which are exaggerated in the Venezuelan private media, which is still largely opposition-owned, as well as the international media).

Venezuela’s protests are really an upper/middle class revolt against what they perceive as “communism”—the fear of losing their privileges and way of life. It’s the old calumny and class hatred inculcated in countless people.

Following Maduro’s electoral victory in April last year (with much of the opposition crying “fraud” despite there being no reasonable doubtsabout the validity of the results), the opposition looked to the December municipal elections as a referendum on Maduro’s government, vowing to defeat governing party PSUV and allied candidates. The outcome, which left the pro-Maduro parties with a 10-point margin of victory, was a stunning defeat for the opposition, and this time they did not even bother claiming the elections were rigged. According to the opposition’s own pre-election analysis, support for Maduro had apparently grown over the months preceding the election. As we have pointed out, this may be due in part to the large reduction in poverty in 2012 and other economic and social gains that preceded the more recent economic problems.

Defeated at the polls, the anti-democratic faction of the opposition prepared for a new attempt at destabilizing the elected government, and promoted relatively small, but often violent student protests in early February. They then called for a massive protest on February 12, Venezuela’s Youth Day in the center of Caracas. The demonstrations have been accompanied by a social media campaign that has spread misinformation in an attempt to depict the Maduro administration as a violent dictatorship instead of a popular elected government. Images of police violence from other countries and past protests — some several years old — have been presented on social media as having occurred in recent days in Venezuela. A YouTube video that has been watched by almost 2 million viewers presents a one-sided portrayal of the situation and falsely states that the Venezuelan government controls all radio and television in the country, among other distortions. Similar disinformation occurred in April 2002 and in other past incidents in Venezuela, most notably when manipulated video footage was used to provide political justification for the coup d’etat.

Anti-government protester. The forces of the empire never lack for clueless idiots. Note that most of these people are lower middle class.

[T]he opposition has a touchy protest history in Venezuela. Early on in former President Hugo Chavez’s administration, the opposition was consistently on the streets calling for an end to his presidency. In 2002, they organized a coup that briefly unseated the president. Though the opposition leadership is not calling for a coup, the reputation the group made for itself barely a decade ago may be haunting it as it vocally pushes back against Maduro’s administration.While some in Washington foreign policy circles may attempt to portray the leaders of this new wave of protests as persecuted pro-democracy heroes, they in fact have histories of supporting anti-democratic and unconstitutional efforts to oust the government. Both Leopoldo López and Maria Corina Machado supported the 2002 coup; in López’s case he participated in it by supervising the arrest of then-Minister of Justice and the Interior Ramón Rodríguez Chacín, when López was mayor of Chacao. Police dragged Rodríguez Chacín out of the building where he had sought refuge into an angry mob, who physically attacked him. Corina Machado notably was present when the coup government of Pedro Carmona was sworn in and signed the infamous “Carmona decree” dissolving the congress, the constitution, and the Supreme Court. The Christian Science Monitor reported yesterday:

Venezuela’s opposition receives funding from U.S. “democracy promotion” groups including the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and core grantees such as the International Republican Institute (IRI) and the National Democratic Institute (NDI). The NED, which the Washington Postnoted was set up to conduct activities “much of” which “[t]he CIA used to fund covertly,” has made a number of grants directed at empowering youth and students in Venezuela in recent years, and USAID has also given money to IRI, NDI, and other groups for Venezuela programs. These organizations have a history of destabilizing elected governments and working to unify and strengthen political opposition to left-wing parties and governments. IRI notably played a key role in destabilizing Haiti ahead of the 2004 coup there and also has engaged in activities aimed at weakening Brazil’s governing Workers’ Party, to name a few. In Venezuela, they funded groups involved in the 2002 coup, and IRI spokespersons infamously praised the coup after it happened.

The Haiti example is instructive. The parallels are numerous: notably, a key part of the strategy was to exaggerate and fabricate killings and other human rights abuses, which were blamed on the elected government (while truly horrific atrocities committed by the armed wing of the opposition were generally ignored). Researchers — including some from the U.N. — have since debunked the most widely-circulated accounts of rights violations, but of course the democratically-elected president (Jean-Bertrand Aristide) had long since been forced from office by then.

The U.S.-funded destabilization of Haiti in the early 2000s also offers lessons as to the endgame of this strategy. As the New York Times reported and as scholars such as Peter Hallward and Jeb Sprague have documented, the IRI counseled its Haitian partners not to accept any compromises from the Aristide government (which made many concessions, including agreeing to a power-sharing arrangement) and to continue to press further.

But the Maduro government is of course in a much stronger position than Haiti’s government ten years ago. A key factor is that while Aristide was relatively isolated politically, Latin American governments, through UNASUR and MERCOSUR, have condemned the violent protests and the opposition’s calls for Maduro to leave office and have expressed support for the Venezuelan government. In this case, when the Obama administration continues to signal that it sides with the violent protests, it is an outlier in the region.

Dan Beeton is International Communications Director for the Center for Economic and Policy Research. Follow Beeton on Twitter@Dan_Beeton. This article was first published in CEPR’s The Americas Blog on 19 February 2014 under a Creative Commons license.

Guerrilla Girls of the FARC-EP: Making War, Peace, and History

By Chris Gilbert and Vilma Kahlo, MRZine

The Washington mafia has always gone after guerrillas with the zeal of a fanatical exterminator. Never mind that the guerrillas represent the interests of the poor.

If regular armies are generally a man’s world, guerrillas and insurgent forces are just the contrary. There women have always had a central role. Think of Agustina of Aragon, Olga Benário, Tania Bunke, Maria Grajales, and Celia Sánchez, or even (stretching a bit) the legendary Amazons. It is not for nothing that Liberté — the allegorical figure depicted by Delacroix in the barricades of the July Revolution — is a woman.

Colombia is no exception to this rule. From even before the independence, women such as the Cacica Gaitana and Policarpa Salavarrieta have had a key role in armed struggle. Today this legacy of women in resistance continues in Colombia’s FARC-EP (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, People’s Army), which is the world’s longest-lasting guerrilla still in operation. This seasoned political and military organization, now engaged in peace dialogs in Havana, has sent a delegation there that is about a third women.

Who are these women? What makes them risk their lives for the ideals of socialism and national liberation in a country that is heavily dominated by the U.S.? What is their role in the current peace process, which aims at a negotiated solution to Colombia’s 50-year-old internal conflict? As a result of our visits to the peace delegation in Havana during the past months, we have come back with interesting answers to these and other questions about women in the Colombian insurgency.

Poverty and Injustice

That Colombia’s society is characterized by extreme inequality (with a Gini index as high as .89 in some areas) is well known. Yet, like poverty worldwide, its burden is born especially by women. A combatant named Marcela González referred to the link between gender, poverty, and oppression: “Women have the worst lot in this conflict. . . Most displaced people are women. Added to this is the sexual violence, family violence, and the fact that most [displaced people] are heads of families and wander with their children around the national territory. It is a human tragedy that women live in Colombia.”

Though women certainly have it worse in Colombia, making up a large part of the nation’s almost five million displaced people, the principal reasons men and women enter the guerrilla are just the same. These are basically poverty, injustice, and the inability to do legal political opposition from the left. “The indigence and poverty,” Marcela continued, “obliges people to look for a way out of that reality.”

The lack of political options is really key in determining how struggle takes shape. The last serious attempt to constitute a legal alternative party was the Unión Patriótica, formed in 1985. It generated widespread enthusiasm. However, agents of the oligarchy massacred the U.P.’s militants to the tune of about 5,000 deaths in less than a decade. The historical lesson, written on the walls with the blood of the political opposition, is that one has to fight for democracy where it doesn’t exist. For now, it is only possible to question Colombia’s oligarchical regime — armed to the teeth by the U.S and its allies — bearing arms oneself.

Once in the guerrilla, men and women take on all the same tasks. “Men and women have the same rights and the same responsibilities,” explained Bibiana Hernández, who has been in the guerrilla some thirty years. “In the same way as we tote wood and other supplies and organize the mass movement, so we also go to combat and face the enemy. We’re in the same conditions as men.” Women also assume roles of direction and leadership in the FARC-EP, and their equality is part of the statutes of the organization.

The women in the current peace delegation come from highly varied backgrounds. Camila Cienfuegos was born in a family from the countryside and saw extreme poverty with her own eyes as a youngster. Laura Villa got a medical degree in Bogotá. She mentions privatizations in education and health services as weighing in her decision to join the FARC’s revolutionary struggle, where she now contributes her medical expertise. Alexandra Nariño, born Tanja Nijmeijer in Holland, found a job teaching English in Colombia in 1998. Then a gradual process of learning about the oppression and political injustice in the country led to her entering the guerrilla.

These women are continuing an old tradition in the FARC. The organization was founded in 1964, when 48 peasant farmers inMarquetalia successfully withstood the attack of more than 10,000 government troops. Among the “Marquetalianos” were two heroic young women: Judith Grisales and Miriam Narváez.

Away from the War

The dozen or so women members of the FARC’s delegation may be survivors of a brutal conflict — one of the dirty not-so-little wars of the U.S. — but their soft-spoken manners and civilian clothes tend to make you forget about war. You can sit down with them at the historic Coppelia for an ice cream or join them in browsing used books in Havana’s innumerablebookstores. Despite their political tasks, there is still time for reading. Diana Grajales, a guerrillera from southwest Colombia, told us that she is immersing herself in the books of Che Guevara.

One of these women’s current projects — in addition to “rearming” with books and participating in the peace conversations with government delegates — is to make contact with women’s organizations. “We are listening to the proposals of Colombian women’s organizations that come to us,” Alexandra explained, adding that the contacts are also with international women’s groups. Comandante Yira Castroobserved that women’s movements are often made invisible, but the peace process has allowed the guerrilleras in the delegation to learn more about other women’s struggles and share experiences with them. They also maintain a Web page and Facebook account.

Despite the unbroken tranquility of Havana, the war comes back in surprising ways when you are in the company of the delegation. Seeing a scar on an exposed arm or noticing the limp of a compañera serves as a reminder of how Colombia’s government has systematically violated human rights during the war. Colombia’s is an unequal, imperial conflict in which — like those in Vietnam or Algeria — no holds are barred to maintain the neocolonial order. Many of these women have survived high-tech bombings that resemble the U.S. and Israel’s “surgical” assassination attempts. Some have lost close friends and family members, killed in cold blood or disappeared into mass graves like the Macarena, the largest mass grave in Latin America, where Colombia’s special forces depositedsome 2,000 corpses. At least one member of the delegation has been a victim of torture and rape by enemy soldiers.

Laura Villa spoke of the harsh realities of war: “A war is a war. This is a war for the liberation of the people, and in it there are deaths and wounded. There are casualties that affect us very deeply.” Among the painfully felt losses is that of Comandante Alfonso Cano, who initiated the current peace process but was murdered by the army two years ago. “The historical record is full of military people who abuse power and are guilty of disappearing people,” said Camila Cienfuegos. “Think of the mothers of Soacha, whose children were presented as false positives [assassinated and then dressed as guerrilla fighters]. That is . . . state terrorism.” Camila speaks from experience about state terror: she has cigarette burns on her hands and arms from being tortured during an interrogation by the Colombian army.

On top of the human rights violations, there is nonstop defamation of the FARC’s women combatants by Colombia’s mass media. They invent stories about guerrilleras that are simply a projection of the society outside — a society that, because it pressures women to enter into all kinds of exploitative relationships in work and private life, sometimes accepts the mistaken and malicious idea that women are forced to enter the FARC. Or again, the commercial media falsely accuses guerrilleras, who enjoy conditions of gender equality in the FARC that are far superior to those in the society outside, of being merely the cooks and sexual partners of the comandantes.

Looking Toward Peace

One reason for this kind of defamation is to try to divide and conquer the FARC-EP, separating women from men. The effort is futile, say the women of the delegation. In fact, it does not deter a growing number of women from making the decision to change the world rather than simply contemplate it — to use Laura Villa’s description of her own motives for entering the guerrilla — nor does it cause the women already in the FARC to alter their basic vision of social problems or abandon a struggle that they understand to be essentially about class and social justice.

This last point is important. The women in the FARC see patriarchal domination as part of class struggle and are unwilling to separate the two, as some feminists have fallen into the error of doing. They fight not just for Colombian women but for Colombia as a whole. By the same token the peace they might make — a peace with social justice, a peace which goes to the roots of the conflict in social inequality — would also be a peace for the whole society.

Still from Rosas y Fusiles

How, then, to understand the importance of women in the struggle of the FARC-EP? Why is it that, as Victoria Sandino says, “a revolution without the participation of women is impossible”? Perhaps the key lies in the old idea that says those groups, the ones that a society’s structure places between a rock and a hard place, are the very ones called upon by history to change the society. This is what is called a historical mission. Nothing could better describe the position of Colombian women, whose situation cannot be improved without fundamental changes in the whole society. For this reason, the most conscious sector of Colombian women has often taken up arms to change their country’s oppressive conditions.

Today that same mission may call for new tactics. With profound changes occurring in many Latin American countries and the resurgence of Colombia’s popular movement, insurgent men and women may find that they can now make peace to achieve the same goals once pursued with war. Whether that is possible or not depends on whether the Colombian state will change its tune and permit a democratic opposition. That is, whether it will be willing to allow the forces of change to become participants in normal, legal political activity. From this humble starting point — a “democratic window” paid for with the lives of many guerrilleras as well as guerrilleros — Colombia’s most committed and selfless political force could begin the process of dismantling the country’s structural injustices and thereby forging a lasting peace.

Chris Gilbert is professor of Political Science at the Universidad Bolivariana de Venezuela. Vilma Kahlo is a documentary filmmaker who is currently working on Rosas y Fusiles, a film about women in the FARC-EP. En Español: www.mujerfariana.co/index.php/nos-gusta/141-las-guerrilleras-de-las-farc-ep-parteras-de-la-historia.

Cuba: 55 Years of Ideas and Truth

An Ongoing Revolution

by W.T. WHITNEY, People’s World & Counterpunch

On January 1, Cubans 2014 marked the 55^th anniversary of their revolution’s victory. Fidel Castro’s words spoken May 1, 2000 cropped up in President Raul Castro’s speech in Santiago de Cuba. Revolution, they said, is “to   believe deeply there’s no force in the world capable of crushing the force of truth and ideas.”

Commentator Ángel Guerra Cabrera recalls one idea: “To understand the conflict between Cuba and the United States it’s necessary to study Latin American history. It shows the superpower has never tolerated our countries developing internal or external politics separate from its dictates.”

Raul Castro articulated another: “[N]ew generations of leaders … never will be able to forget that this is the socialist Revolution of the humble, by the humble, and for the humble. This is the essential premise and effective antidote for not falling for the siren songs of the enemy.”

Political talkers sometimes label ideas as utopian, among them that of ending the anti-Cuban U.S. blockade now. “Cuba [however] is still embracing utopia in year 55 of the triumph of its revolution,” affirms Guerra Cabrera.

U. S. defenders of Cuban independence could do with truth and ideas, or at least new ones. On their watch, “Cuba has suffered under the longest blockade in history.” Objective realities in the two countries may vary enough for Cuba’s U. S. friends to accept what they see as truth as allowing for small gains only, and waiting. By contrast, Cubans seem to take the realities they live with as encouragement for keeping on. Indeed, there are “55 reasons for a new anniversary,” says one observer. They would fit within Fidel Castro’s notion of the “truth.” A  listing follows:

Cuba’s infant mortality rate is at a new low: 4.2 babies died during 2013 out of every 1000 births. Average rates for the region remain at around 30. Maternal mortality has dropped, and life expectancy at 77.9 years matches that of industrialized nations. Physician density in Cuba is one physician for 197 persons, one of the world’s top rates. That doesn’t include 40,000 Cuban physicians serving abroad in 70 countries.

Universal education and health care are intact; 1,993,300 students from preschool through university level will be enrolled in 2014, and eighty million physician consultations are anticipated, plus 22 million visits to dentists and 1.140.000 hospital admissions.

The United Nations Program in Human Development ranked Cuba 59th overall out of 187 countries. UNESCO’s 2011 Education for All Global Monitoring Report had Cuba as 14th in the world. Health care expenses consumed 22 percent of Cuba’s 2013 state budget, education 27 percent. Cuba’s 54 percent current budgetary allowance for social services is among the world’s highest. Only 30 countries share Cuba’s below-five percent unemployment rate.

Cuba maintains its outsized role in international solidarity. Two thousand teachers work abroad. Cuba’s “Yo sí puedo” literacy program has benefited eight million learners in 29 countries. “Operation Miracle” has restored sight for two million people worldwide. By 2011, the Latin American School of Medicine had graduated 9,960 new doctors from 58 countries. Tens of thousands of other medical students and graduate physicians study in Cuba.

Economic readjustment is proceeding. A new Labor Code became law following discussions among almost three million workers.   State businesses, newly autonomous, are on track to increase exports and reduce imports. Mariel is the site of a new “Special Development Zone” directed at promoting foreign investment, exports, jobs, and fostering modern business technologies. New patterns of land use and agricultural marketing prevail.

Some 400,000 Cubans are recently self-employed without loss of social services. Over 250 new cooperatives are functioning. Cuba’s economy maintains a three percent rate of growth. Russia recently agreed to forgive 90 percent of Cuba’s $29 billion debt incurred during the Soviet era. Provision of electricity has improved through the use of new generator facilities.

Cuban diplomats joined the United Nations Council on Human Rights in 2013. Cuba that year served as president pro tem of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States that includes all Western Hemisphere nations save Canada and the United States. During 2013, Cuba hosted peace talks between the Colombian government and the insurgent Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

These facts – these truths – suggest Cuba’s revolution is established and continuing. In Santiago, President Raul Castro once more called for “respectful dialogue” with the United States. “We don’t claim the United States has to change its political and social system, [but] we have to learn mutual respect for our differences, only that. [Otherwise] we are disposed to endure another 55 years in the same situation.”

Cuba’s real experiences and achievements demonstrate that big, utopian ideas can materialize. New realities add substance and serve to motivate. Fidel Castro’s must have presumed listeners on May 1, 2000 were ready “to challenge powerful forces dominating inside and outside boundaries of society and the nation … defend values in which we believe at the price of any sacrifice.”

That kind of commitment exercised within U.S. society could help convert utopian longings into existing facts. One would be the unrealized dream of U.S. acceptance of Cuba as a regular nation. Actually to fight to change existing U. S. realities would move that dream along, and others too.

W. T. Whitney Jr. is a retired pediatrician and political journalist living in Maine.

New Pope, Old Doctrine

Has Pope Francis Hoodwinked the Left?

by GEOFFREY MacDONALD, Counterpunch

After approximately 1600 years of the Catholic Church, the Pope is suddenly a hot topic again. The high priest has infatuated the public and won a lot of praise in the secular media for bringing new popularity to an institution long plagued by scandals and out-of-date dogmas. Evidently, God’s representative on earth still has an important role to play in the enlightened modern world – not so much as a legislator over condoms and abortions, but as a moral authority who issues warnings about the “idolatry of money” and the sins of the capitalist business world. This confuses a few pundits, but not the earthly powers. They know what a good thing it is to have those without power believing in a Lord in Heaven who gives them orders and leadership.

Holy the poor!

What’s up with the new Pope’s emphasis on the poor? In his first encyclical, he says there is too much greed, people are looking for easy gains and selfish. He wants the church to be a tribune of the poor and stresses concern for the marginalized. The message of his papacy is: go to where the suffering is greatest. What the poor need – above anything else – is charity. That is something quite different than finding out the cause of poverty and getting rid of it.

Charity doesn’t get rid of poverty, but keeps it going. It doesn’t eliminate poverty because it doesn’t change the way wealth is distributed, much less put the means of production in the hands of the poor. First, it offers the donor a good feeling about himself in a way that paying taxes doesn’t. Second, it is whimsical and depends on the personal will to be charitable. The poor can’t rely on it the way they can on a state program.

The Pope’s exhortation – “go out and help the poor and suffering” – tosses all different types of suffering together: illness and death are the same as exclusion from wealth. These are all cases of one and the same thing: suffering. Charity for God’s children does not mean those excluded from wealth or the means of production, but something more like a cancer patient on whom the Christian can demonstrate the virtues of love and compassion. It is practiced in abstraction from the causes of poverty. It deals only with the symptoms of suffering, which have one cause: sin. The earth is just a vale of tears; that’s life.

Saying that sinfulness is the reason for poverty is different than saying that the political economic system is hostile to the interests of the poor. Instead, greed or materialism is held responsible. What is wrong with “greed” as an explanation of poverty? Many people who are greedy, but they do not have power over the livelihoods of others. That requires a whole political economic system. If greed is responsible for poverty, then poverty is something that can never be gotten rid of by an economy planned for meeting needs. It’s unalterable.

If the reason for charity is to fight against sin, it’s also hard to practice without an object. Charity needs the poor because that’s the Christian’s passage into heaven. Christians are not for poverty in the sense that they want people to be poor; that’s already taken care of by the capitalist economy and the state. When Christianity says things like the poor shall inherit the earth, it is saying: the poor are holy. They need charity. This is different than saying: poverty has to be eliminated.

When Christianity says the meek shall inherit the earth, that means that God’s people are those who make no demands. One must show humility, not put forward one’s needs. This is how the poor are celebrated by the church: poverty is a sign of weakness. Why else would anyone be poor? A call for class struggle is far from compatible with the Christian virtues.

If the poor need nothing so much as Christian charity, the flip side is that the Pope and the Church need nothing so much as the poor. That’s how to restore the reputation of the church: no more red Prada shoes and lavish ceremonies; bring the church back to the people and restore its credibility. In the competition for souls, the church needs bodies, especially in Latin America where evangelists have made strides. Go to the poor because the vast majority of the world’s population is poor and becoming poorer.

The need for God

When the Pope talks about poverty and wealth, he is not seeking an explanation. He is a man of faith. That means he doesn’t want an explanation. Faith is different than a scientific finding; a faith can’t be refuted. One can only refute a purported logical statement. That’s why atheists always go down a wrong road in trying to refute Christians. But the need for faith and something like a God can be argued with. Where does this need come from? Why do people want a God?

God’s existence is not a proposal, but an expression of faith and the need for God. “You can only understand if you believe,” the Pope says. “He works in mysterious ways.” Christians and all believers want a God because they are driven by the search for meaning. Its their desire for a God to be there. They use the effects of belief for their reason. They tie it to a feeling: “It makes me happy that the world is meaningful.” People who feel a desire to believe in God always give the same reason: peace of mind. It gives them a feeling of meaning as to what life is all about. It makes them feel good that God is there.

Their big question is: why? The nature of the explanation they are liking for is not really what’s going on in the economy or politics, but an explanation of everything. There’s one reason for everything in the natural world, in relations between people – for everything. That’s what gives them “peace of mind.” Not material security, but rather being at peace or coming to terms with the world; not getting rid of suffering, but being at peace with suffering.

Christianity and its successor, Islam, offer icing on the cake: eternal happiness; the attraction that if this world sucks, it can’t be everything. There must be more to it. Believers want happiness in spite of everything. They want to be comfortable with this world.

Why oh why?

Their big question “what’s it all about, God?” is logically nonsensical: one reason for everything explains nothing. All it is is a description of the world with the heading “this comes from God, Allah, nothingness,” etc. It doesn’t explain this or that, but everything. Saying that “everything has a reason” helps a person come to terms with something. It’s not looking for a reason for this or that, but a good reason, i.e. one that allows you to accept something.

The first big mistake, not just of religious people but all kinds of spiritual types, is ultimately the need for faith. “There’s got to be some Higher Being out there.” This is a poetic way of saying that there must be a reason for everything that happens here that ties it all together and gives it meaning. It doesn’t matter what kind of a Being the believer postulates – they have one answer: there’s a reason behind all reasons.

When asking for a meaning of life, believers do not want to hear that the meaning of life is to make capitalists rich, to be a cheap cost factor that works hard and gets paid very little. They are not asking a real question or trying to understand the world, but something else. They have ideas about what they have to do in the morning, go to work, etc. But they are looking for a reason beyond all these reasons. They want to come to terms with everything; to know that everything has a reason, some reason. The meaning they are looking for is meaningless, but gives them a reason to accept everything. That’s a fatal mistake.

Their starting point is that they are dissatisfied. Faith looks for satisfaction, but its not a satisfaction they have control over. Its different from saying: I am dissatisfied and need a revolution to get it so that I can then be the subject of my own life. Instead, it searches for good feelings in not taking control, but in knowing something else is in control. This insures subservience. They don’t say: I am serving some other interest that is keeping me poor and precarious. They say: I am serving God. This satisfaction with not being in control and ok with that insures obedience.

The search for meaning

is not confined to religious people and their disowned fundamentalist cousins, but widespread. They are all joined by the same motivation: I am spiritual; I would like to believe. The Christian answer for what the Hereafter looks like is unsatisfactory for many modern people who come up with different answers as soon as heaven seems unscientific. But even for those who don’t believe in Heaven, there is the need for something like it, so that the need for it can survive while they reject any specific notion as to what it might look like.

The search for meaning is a case where the answers given are not as interesting as the search itself. Some people go from Buddhism to Christianity, back and forth, getting meaning from the search for meaning itself. They are satisfied with authenticity, with being true to their Self: “it’s the journey, not the destination.” But its hard to find satisfaction in a search for satisfaction. It is perpetually dissatisfied, which is why it is constantly spurred onward. As Hegel put it: “Spirit is unrest.”

The search for meaning (in whatever guise) is in knowing that I am not in control, but what is in control is not the powerful who rule over me and make me their pawn, but something that makes me feel like part of something greater: “God loves you so much he made you.” One is not the subject of any old ruler, but something glorious. It confirms one is not in control and that makes one feel at peace. Its gives a good reason for what has to do anyway. It doesn’t free a person from having to work the next day for somebody else’s enrichment, but allows them a feeling of freedom in relation to the real authorities.

And one is equal with the rulers because we are all subordinated to the same God. Ultimately, my boss is not in charge, but God. This is the feeling of peace and freedom. One finds a new perspective on reality. One does not change the world, but interprets it. Its the same reality, but given a new outlook.

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Charity does not criticize the reason some have money and others don’t, but says those with money should help those without it. That’s why it’s wrong-headed to contrast the Pope’s message of concern for the poor with his support for the former junta in Argentina, as if he had two sides. The only rule a pope rails against is one that doesn’t give free reign to the papacy, like the former eastern bloc states or China today.

The Pope’s message to the poor is: precisely because your everyday reality is unsatisfactory and disappointing, you should look for the meaning of life by serving a higher being. Then your poverty is even a good condition for true faith. That’s a blessing for any ruler!

Geoffrey McDonald edits Ruthless Criticism.