Chris Hedges, a former NYT reporter in his new book “The World As it Is, Dispatches on the Myth of Human Progress,” quotes University of Berkeley professor Sheldon S. Wolin’s book “Democracy Incorporated,” in which he uses the phrase “inverted totalitarianism to describe our system of power. “Inverted totalitarianism, unlike classical totalitarianism does not revolve around a demagogue or charismatic leader. It finds its expression in the anonymity of the corporate state. It purports to cherish democracy patriotism and the Constitution, while cynically manipulating internal levers to subvert and thwart democratic institutions. Citizens do elect political candidates, but those candidates must raise staggering amounts of corporate funds to complete. They are beholden to armies of corporate lobbyists in Washington or state capitals, who write the legislation. Corporate media controls nearly everything we read, watch or hear and impose a bland uniformity of opinion or divert us with trivia and celebrity gossip.
In classical totalitarian regimes, such as Nazi fascism or Soviet communism, economics was subordinate to politics. “Under inverted totalitarianism the reverse is true,” Wolin writes, “Economics dominate politics and with that domination come different forms of ruthlessness.”
What we face now is parallel in a way to what early Unitarians faced in a beginning phase of our faith’s emergence.
At that time, early Unitarians were addressing Calvinism the certainty of the depravity of the human being and the doctrine of election, which held that those God chose would be saved before the dawn of time, and those not so elected were powerless to effect their own salvation.
The Unitarian denomination was born out of a rebellion to this notion and a liberalism emerged out of the Puritan faith.
According to David Robinson’s account in his book, The Unitarians and the Universalists, “Many of the established churches split between the liberals and the orthodox, and a legal ruling over such a split at Dedham, MA in 1820 served to give the Unitarians the buildings and properties. In 1825, the American Unitarian Association (AUA) was formed, essentially as a publishing and educational arm of the Unitarian movement. It had little power except what was given it by its constituency but it did serve to publicize the Unitarian cause and to give the denomination a national identity.
Almost as soon as Unitarians achieved that identity, it produced its own rebellion: Transcendentalism.
This movement was closely associated with Ralph Waldo Emerson and Theodore Parker, who espoused a religion of direct intuition of God, or the “One Mind” of the universe. The movement disposed against ecclesiastical organization and was more reformist in its political outlook, within the limits of its individualism.
And while Parker and Emerson led the Transcendentalist movement, which is in emphasis away from ecclesiastical, meaning the church, organization, it was not favored by the denomination, and both Emerson and Parker were ostracized by the Boston Unitarian clergy. Additionally Parker and Emerson were not identical in their thinking and Parker held that the Transcendentalist movement was rooted in deeply religious ideas and did not believe it should retreat from religion.
He did distance himself from the Bible and preached that the individual experience should center a person’s religious belief.
According to “Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers” by Elbert Hubbard, Parker said, “Goodness, faith, gentleness and love has nothing to do with the miraculous, neither does a faith in the miraculous found to increase harmony of life. A many might be a good neighbor, a model parent and a useful citizen and yet have no particular views concerning the immaculate conception.”
So what is Parker’s legacy today? Let’s listen to this clip from National Public Radio.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129609461
In closing, here is a story that was first told in Music Hall by Theodore Parker on June 19, 1856:
Once in a stagecoach there was a man who carried on his knees a box on which slats were nailed. Now a box like that always incites curiosity. Finally a personage leaned over and said to the man of the mysterious package.
“Stranger, may I be so bold as to ask what you have in that box?”
“A mongoose,” was the polite answer.”
“Oh, I see, but what is a mongoose?”
“A mongoose is a little animal we use for killing snakes.”
“Of course, of course, oh, but, but, where are you going to kill snakes with your mongoose?”
And the man replied, “My brother has the delirium tremens and I have brought this mongoose so he can use it to kill the snakes.”
There was silence then for nearly a mile when the man of the Socratic method had an idea and burst out with, “But Lordy, gracious, you do not need a mongoose to kill the snakes a fellow sees who has delirium tremens for they are only imaginary snakes.”
“I know,” said the owner of the box, tapping his precious package gently. “I know that delirium tremens snakes are only imaginary snakes but this is only an imaginary mongoose.”
And the moral was, according to Theodore Parker, that to appease the wrath of an imaginary God, we must believe in an imaginary formula and thereby we could all be redeemed from the danger of an imaginary hell. Also that an imaginary disease can be cured by an imaginary remedy. And I might add the same when we consider our world of inverted totalitarianism.
