Book Review: In the Shadow of the Banyan by Vaddey Ratner

I didn't plan on writing a review of In the Shadow of the Banyan (by Vaddey Ratner). I read it to pass the time, rather than as part of some kind of study or writing program. But now that I've read it, I have some thoughts about it.

The book is a novel, based on the author's actual experiences as a young girl, member of the Cambodian royal family during the time of the Khmer Rouge, an anti-royal, anti-Western Communist revolutionary group that killed millions of Cambodians through purges, overwork, and underfeeding. She journeys from a relatively sheltered situation at the beginning of the book (a child who lives in the imaginal and familiar world of family, stories, Asian Buddhism, Hindu myths), through a series of progressively darker dislocations and losses, until she is struck dumb. She manages to survive (mirroring the author's survival) and make it out of Cambodia with her mother.

I thought of not writing this review, because the thoughts that I had feel like ones that are underdeveloped at this point, or that might not fit what I want to write about in this chapter of the blog, but something insists in me that I do write, and maybe I'm writing notes for later writing that explores the following subjects in more detail.

I identified with three themes that I saw in the book: The imaginal world, the Revolution, and the cross.

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The spiritual/imaginal world was something that the narrator's grandmother, and the narrator, both spent a fair amount of time in, as though when we are new to the world, or not long left in it, we are better able to see things like tevodas (angel-like beings), ghosts, or connect with the story of Indra, with mythical explanations for things. I don't remember there being any moments where the imaginal world appeared in the sensory world (the "real" world), but the grandmother and narrator were able to see it. I think that there is a part of me that lives in that world -- in fact, that's the world of philosophy, though it often presents itself prosaically and mechanistically. And, I sometimes feel (sometimes too much) that I belong there more than I do in the sensory world. I'm not sure I have much of a point to make in bringing this up, but that was my reaction.

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The Revolution spoke to me, because of how much the revolutionaries were into willing and working. The book shows how some of them were heartless, psychopathic, and corrupt, and this makes me think that the revolutionary spirit is dangerous.

I know that some of my past writing (notably How Can We Love?) could, perhaps in its emphasis, if not its text read carefully, be considered a broadly left- (or "revolutionary humanist"-) leaning thing. It has some of the spirit of Revolution, even though it says on the surface of it things that go against Revolution. I think I would say now that the book is flawed, to the extent that it lends itself to a revolutionary humanist reading, because that was not my intention. But it is a somewhat revolutionary thing and that gives me one reason to want to think about the dangers of the revolutionary spirit.

In the Shadow of the Banyan mentions that there was a split within the Khmer Rouge between the Cause and the Party. The Cause was idealistic, but the Party took over. Causes tend to draw on one kind of energy, that of ordinary people, non-psychopathic human desires. But parties can focus on their own well-being, rather than devoting themselves fully to a cause, and outcompete groups still into causes. This is a pessimistic thought, and it's worth noting that there are a lot of places where parties exist but do not wipe out idealism. (Moloch seems like an undefeatable dynamic, but for some reason it doesn't always rule.) There is a tension between Party and Cause tendencies in a society, and it's wise to be concerned about how any cause could turn into a purely partisan thing.

I know that the revolutionary spirit is dangerous, but, as long as the status quo needs to be changed in some way, it is necessary, and perhaps revolutions, or the spirit of revolutions, is needed to maintain the status quo (if you don't fix things, you decay, and some fixing is "microrevolutionary"). A Communist rejoinder to a book speaking of the horrors of the Khmer Rouge might be "fair enough, they were corrupt and captured by psychopathy, and the empowerment of the corruption and psychopathy was enabled by the revolutionary spirit, but you should also do a calculation, alongside that of the death toll from the Khmer Rouge, of the lives lost due to the corruption and psychopathy that prevents capitalist society from doing the most it's really capable of doing to help the poor". (This sounds like something an effective altruist or EA-type person might try to calculate, or already has.) It may turn out to be the case that revolutionary Communism always turns out to be worse for people, but capitalism (or "capitalism+" (plus civil society? the state?)) that isn't doing its best also (less visibly) has blood on its hands.

As is often the case, formulas are dangerous. If you're into Communism or capitalism, you need to be into the good version of that, because the bad version is as bad as the ideology you reject, or perhaps worse.

Should we think in terms of "blood on people's hands"? I think there is an awful truth to it. The moral truth is something that, when comprehended, causes people to do the moral thing. Is it perhaps misleading to talk about "blood on people's hands", is that a deceptive truth? Perhaps for some people, it is deceptive, and for others, it is basically non-misleading. I think that we gaze at the harshest moral truths and then walk away from them to do our relaxed versions of good. (I think that the Drowning Child Illustration is one of the harshest moral truths and generally EAs walk away from it to do their relaxed version of good, as much as that relaxed version of good might burn them out.) If we never gazed, we might never change into the much more mundane, if still countercultural, versions of ourselves that live in the shadow of the gaze.

I try to focus on saying what's true (because I'm a writer, and I feel like that's my "professional" responsibility). I don't think that the Khmer Rouge's worldview is correct, as much as they might be on to something when they see the moral truth of people held down by the ruling classes, or suffering or dying prematurely. For instance, this life is not the limit of our existence, as they thought, and so purity is something that is not desperately urgent. Purity is something that is necessary, and will come in its time -- the sooner the better, but not desperately soon. I think that MSLN / New Wine System-descended thinking is good for addressing both revolutionary humanism and traditional evangelical religion in their crazily desperate (and on their view, completely necessary) sense that they have to do radical good (on a societal and personal level) NOW, that time is running out for people who must get the essential good (a nice life, or conversion to Christianity) in this life, with death coming all-too-soon.

I understand that the Khmer Rouge, as Communists, were atheists. I believe that God exists, and if I'm correct in that belief, then the emphasis on human well-being found in Communism (as well as in other forms of humanism) could easily be misguided if it ignores God, how our relationships to God are the most fundamental field of altruism. Much of what revolutionary (or microrevolutionary) humanists want to achieve is somewhat orthogonal to people's relationships to God and may not be as valuable, necessary, or urgent as it seems. Making things better from an atheistic standpoint could, in some cases, be dangerous or harmful from a theistic standpoint.

I feel a strong momentum in the direction of secular humanist altruism. For instance, it's relatively easy for me to feel a sense of outrage, or something like that, at things like physical poverty. I think I am somewhat wired to responding to the vivid, loud, and obvious, as I suppose most of us are. The habit of wanting to remove suffering or prolong life, in this life, is not the worst habit. But I have to remember that there's more to the truth than this life.

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Finally, I saw the cross in Ratner's/the narrator's experience. Not that she pursued the cross, although her father did in a fairly obvious way, but in that she underwent the cross. There was a moment toward the end where, to me, it seemed like the narrator died inside in a somewhat good way, and thenceforth had nothing to lose, and little (or less) to fear. (See chapter 29, pp. 295 - 296 in first hardcover edition.) That is one dimension of undergoing the cross, that it pushes us to the point that in some sense we are okay with dying or our death (maybe this is something I can validly connect to the moment in the novel). We are made to be willing to die by being forced close to death, and having "died", we are free. Maybe we have some free will in the matter? I'm not sure, but the narrator was given a gift at that moment of "survivable death" (again, if I'm reading this right). I may want to look at In the Shadow of the Banyan when I someday write a proper book on the cross.

Actually Connect in Negative Times

I've heard it said that successful therapy involves the therapist as well as the client being changed. Maybe writing works similarly, so I should be changed by the process of me writing what I write.

One thing that I learned while writing the most recent major post, Establishedness and Loving God, is to remind myself to actually connect with God when I'm in negative situations, since it is easy enough to miss the opportunity.

MSLN Spiritual Warfare

One of the consequences of believing that evil spiritual beings negotiated with God for the world to be evil (as a condition on willing temptation to exist) (which may be the best explanation for why there is so much evil in the world despite God being good, and is the one favored by MSLN) is that we wonder, what exactly did those evil beings negotiate, and to what extent do they interact with our world?

First, I want to say that if any evil beings do interact with our world, the belief that they exist, and the belief that they don't exist, are both things they would use against us. These beings want to drive us crazy, torment us, and deceive us. But that very thought can drive people crazy, torment them, and deceive them. It is good to read about deceptive truths, pathological thoughts and emotions, epiconcepts, seeing Spiritually, and gating off voices in this context. Also, any discussion of evil makes it possible to wonder if people are evil. I think it's possible that there are evil people, but it can be dangerous to identify people as being evil -- don't sell yourself out to that belief. Evil beings get their will done when people believe other people are evil when they are not. Some readers may want to rule out the possibility of there being evil beings because such a belief could be associated with a traditional religious belief in the devil. They may look on such a belief as a fear tactic, used by religious people to control people. If there are evil beings, then the fear tactic furthers the aims of evil beings, as does the avoiding of the fear tactic to the extent that we rule out the possibility of there being evil beings.

If you can, see evil, but don't fear evil. The power of evil can be reduced by seeing it without fear. If evil frightens you, you can rely on God to keep you safe.

The good news, from MSLN's point of view, is that all being follows from God, and God brings about a completely legitimate world in the end. Evil is real and substantial but is parasitic on good. Evil can never win in the end, at least, it can't destroy God and anyone who remains with God. Evil might succeed in pulling people away from God. We are born with God -- something has to overcome that starting point for us to be lost. Though evil is given a certain latitude to affect the world, one shouldn't forget that God also has latitude to affect the world. Generally people are not on the side of the evil beings, although what they are on the side of may turn out to further the purposes of the evil beings. The evil beings are limited and only one side of the war.

To answer the questions from above ("What exactly did evil beings negotiate? How much do they interact with the world?"), the bad news that is most certain, from an MSLN point of view is: There is some evil that can have an overall good effect, all things considered, but it's debatable which evils do, and it's clear enough (to me) that there is such a thing as gratuitous evil. This evil has nothing to do with human conscious choice. Natural disasters, parasites and other disease-causing organisms, the drives toward aggression and hypersexuality (or other very common biological sources of temptation), genetic-based mental illness, and so on clearly qualify for this category. These are things that we would have to pin on God himself, and in a sense, he does bring them into the world, but not by his own will. These were negotiated to be part of the world by the evil beings, as a condition for them working for God by willing our temptation.

Beyond that, MSLN doesn't have a lot of answers. So I will discuss the range of possibilities as I see it. The reader may be able to form an opinion, based on what they see, as to where in the range of possibilities the answer likely lies.

It does seem likely that if I were a group of evil beings able to have a say in how reality was going to turn out, I would include a provision for my kind to be able to do direct work.

This work might be seen in how cultures are guided. For instance, Descartes was inspired by a set of dreams to reform all knowledge according to a rationalist project (ctrl-f "dreams" to find the reference in the preceding link). Where did those dreams come from? What effect did they have? It certainly pushed history forward. While Descartes himself seems to have been a believing Christian, his intellectual project led to a lot of atheism in the years that followed. I can see God and the evil beings both wanting to get something out of rationalism. Rationalism would then be a site for spiritual warfare, a contested ground. But suppose that rationalism favors evil more than good. Then Descartes' dreams may likely have been the product of an evil spirit, offering him a tempting vision, which he trusted.

How many great minds do not work from inspiration, and where does inspiration come from, except from spirits, good, bad, or (more or less) neutral? Certainly I would expect a materialist reader to think that there are things other than "spirits" at play. But from the MSLN point of view, whatever is, follows from somebody's conscious choice. So a flash of inspiration, if it ever doesn't completely seem like you, if it "comes to you", may well have been devised by some other being. Creative or scientific people are conduits or receptacles for spirit voices, in addition to being people who can create or discover in their own right. Spiritual influence can be a good thing -- it may be a way that God influences the culture. But it can also be a bad thing, or, probably more likely, a contested thing.

Evil beings can work through people who are diagnosed with mental illnesses, producing some or all of their hallucinations and moods. Psychiatric medicines would then block the power of evil beings -- the evil beings consenting to this, I suppose, with some consolation that that established way things are done may promote the view that all mental phenomena come from the nonspiritual world.

They can also work through people with personality disorders -- the "algorithms" that drive such people might really just be evil spirits who hijack them. Such hijacked people look like they are evil, but don't intend or even remember or realize what they are doing. They make themselves look like enemies when, sometimes, they are not. Or they only have a mild or moderate enmity, which is amplified by the spirits that use them. Evil beings like getting humans to hate each other. Probably they are involved in what goes on in politics. The great scandals are probably driven in part or in whole by evil beings.

Evil beings, when they work in people's minds, work within the psychological laws which people's thoughts follow and which can be measured in the brain. Within whatever extent people can express free will outside the skein of deterministic events, there can be the free-willed action of evil beings.

Evil beings can possess people, have them in their power for years on end. They don't necessarily use people all the time, nothing that obvious. But their victims' minds are held captive, and their victims suffer attacks, and themselves are the conduits for evil into other people's lives.

Evil beings can work with people symbiotically. People can have evil intentions which are aligned with the evil beings. If you have a sinful heart at what you think is a small scale, evil beings can work with that and amplify your effect in other people. Your sinfulness is a foothold, and evil beings do not want you to repent. They want you either to ignore your sinfulness, to call it something other than sin, or to lose hope that you can really repent. And you may not always favor what the evil beings want. You may go back and forth between having good intentions and bad, and this alternation allows you to do deeper work for the evil beings, higher on the hierarchy of betrayal.

Not only is your sinfulness something that can be something that is aligned with evil beings, but also your enmity with God (if seen as separate from your sinfulness). Both, your enmity with God in intention, and your enmity with God in fact.

While we may be impressed by suffering, insanity, confusion and the hatred we have for each other, the most destructive thing evil beings can do is turn us against God. They can do this directly, by tempting us or turning us way from anti-temptations. Or culturally -- when we are deceived by them, we spread the lie that opposes the belief that God is worthy of our obedience and trust, either by consciously opposing such a belief, or by adopting it but behaving in a way unworthy of that profession of faith. Evil beings try to shut up and discredit people who follow God and who try to proclaim God's glory and the need for God.

How widespread is this evil? Certainly there are obvious cases, but if the goal of the evil beings is partially to deceive, aren't quiet deceptions better than loud ones? So it may be that in subtle ways, we are being lied to, and don't realize it.

Evil beings can work on small scales or in coordinated actions on large scales. Leaders are especially targeted, because of their disproportionate effect on other people. Evil beings prefer to hide, at least in Western cultures.

It could be that all of the evil beings are unified. It is also possible that they have factions or political parties, or even schismatic movements. Evil beings may oppose each other, while still intending to oppose God. I'm not sure we would see evidence of this, but we might.

God can certainly interact with all beings just for being the mind through which all beings experience. But how can the evil beings get around to so many of us? One possibility is that just as human persons are created and brought into the world, so are evil beings. Maybe God creates them, under contract from the evil beings, or maybe they create their own. God is the original person, the original source of all personality, but evil beings may still be able to create on their own, out of the personality that originally came from him.

So there may be enough evil beings for all of us to be affected by their specific work.

Again, these are speculations, which can fit into the non-biblical parts of MSLN, but you can see how much you think your experiences bear them out.

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How could this connect to the Bible? In the Bible, sometimes "the devil" or "Satan" is referred to. The devil seems to be singular, as though there is one demigod that is parasitic on God. But there is also mention of multiple smaller demons. So there are plural evil beings in the Bible, just as in the non-biblical parts of MSLN discussed above.

Book Review: Dark Intimacy by David J. Hassel

The "dark" in the title has to do (as the subtitle says) with the difficulty of prayer experiences.

The book talks about "intimacy", which Hassel gives his own flavor to.

This book seems idiosyncratic, which makes me think it partially comes out of the author's own life. This is interesting in itself.

Here are some notes I took, related to the book:

Intimacy in one area leads to intimacy in another.

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I'm reading Hassel's Dark Intimacy right now. It has a good section on powerlessness. There's also a section on the "prayer of being". On pp. 95 - 96:

Let us glance at these levels of human experience so as to better understand dryness in prayer. There is, first, a superficial level which presents to our awareness pleasures and pains like the constant purr of an air-conditioner, the heavy perfume of lilacs, the irritation of a skin rash or a raspy voice, the comforting warmth of a May sun or an April shower. The first level, then, is a constant stream of sensate impressions, the context of life.

Underneath this is a second layer of deeper experiences, such as the constant ache of neuralgia or the deep pleasure of loving intercourse or the delight of solving a perplexing business problem or the lyric leap of an evening at the symphony or the exuberant planning for the first baby or the panic fear of a flashing knife. This second level is more meaningful and lends greater depth to the first one.

But underlying both of these is a still more profound set of experiences which make up the third level. It is at this level that one experiences the enervating worry at not having a job, the satisfaction of affectionate family living, the sorrow of watching the alcoholic spouse struggle for respectability, the fulfillment of a successfully completed project demanding ten years of one's life, the sense of wortwhileness in the costly sacrifice for the beloved. At this third level the deepest hopes are raised or dashed, the finest joys are brought into full bloom, and the most crushing sorrows test the stamina of a person's very being.

Believe it or not, there is yet a fourth level, which is the dynamic basis of the three upper levels of experience. Although the top three levels are directly knowable to oneself, this fourth level is discovered and known only indirectly, that is, only in contrast with the other three. Thus a woman can be in good health on the first level, can be enjoying a full family life on the second level, can see her role in life as richly meaningful on the third level, and yet be restless and pain-filled on the fourth level. If it were not for this dramatic contrast with the top three levels, she could not possibly come to know the fourth level as part of her experience.

Hassel identifies this fourth level as the inmost being. He notes on p. 101 that Jesus on the cross had joy on the fourth level while feeling complete affliction and desolation on the upper three. (Or maybe he had expectation of joy on the fourth level, that might be more in keeping with the source verse for "joy" on the cross, Hebrews 12:2.)

"Powerlessness" has its own meaning that Hassel gives it. An illustration he gives of it is how John the Baptist was in the desert for years, Mary went through all kinds of particular things after her "let it be so", and Jesus also was at the mercy of his ministry once it began. Something about how we live for years and years in particular parts of life we don't have much if any control over, and there's a prayer for this.

I can't remember if Hassel says this early in the book or if I'm making this up (it took me a while to read, so the beginning of the book is relatively distant to me), but I possess the feeling that his "Prayer-Experiences" could be read as "experiences or places in life which are prayer". There's a quote from the Psalms that I like that says "In return for my love they accuse me, but I am prayer". Well, it says that in the ESV and not in other translations, but I think it's a plausible translation, maybe the best. And what am I if not my life? I think there can be a distinction between me and my life, but at the same time, me living my life is a big part of me, so I am prayer when I live my life of powerlessness. The whole place in life of powerlessness itself is communion with God.

The book had a discussion about bitterness that I also found helpful.

There were other parts I was less interested in, but for what's mentioned in this review, I can recommend this book.