Take any viable plant seed. Take, for instance, a poppy seed: a tiny bit of blackness, smaller than some grains of sand.
Add the proper conditions, generally just some water and ordinary soil. What appears to be a miracle follows. The seed sprouts, and under proper conditions grows into a plant thousands of times its original size. Then it creates beautiful flowers, which in turn each create hundreds of new seeds.
Until the 19th century or so this seed to flower process was a mystery. It was attributed to God (the mental projection on a much smaller Universe, by some humans, of a universal King), or was just a mystery of nature.
The recent accelerated filing of two dead Roman Catholic Church Popes for sainthood, by the current Pope, has re-opened the debate about miracles.
That Church basically admits to having no ability to produce miracles. Its miracles are more mundane than the sprouting of a poppy seed. No living Catholic can show any special power over nature. No Catholic can point at an ordinary grain of sand and make it grow into a poppy plant.
Catholic miracles are miracles of fame. A famous Catholic gets prayed to. If enough sick people pray to these potential saints, someone will get well, probably through the triumph of their innate immune system over some disease. Getting well happens every day, but Roman Catholics want to treat some healings as a miracle caused by their prayers to dead personalities.
Let me be clear: Buddhists are not able to produce genuine miracles. Neither can Islamists. Nor any of the many Hindu sects, nor any of the self-promotion gurus who run about like ants on a hot summer day. Donald Trump does not do miracles, nor do cinema stars, not even Matthew McConaughey.
The closest thing to a miracle the Catholic Church produced in the last century was the Miracle of Fascism. The fascist leaders (Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Francisco Franco, Philippe Petain, Pope Pius XI and Pope Pius XII, and their allies and underlings) collectively almost managed to kill every Jew and Atheist in Europe. Call it the Holocaust Miracle. But they did not do it by waving magic wands, or converting non-Catholics by sprinkling them with holy water. The holy instruments were extermination camps, tanks, warplanes and just following orders.
I do not call myself an atheist, though others may use that label for me. I believe in Natural Liberation. If I say the poppy seed is a miracle, I mean a miracle within nature, not anything outside of nature. And if I say it was a miracle the Roman Catholic, fascist troops were defeated in World War II, I know it was the Red Army, its soldiers and tanks and all the apparatus of war, that defeated the Pope and his minions.
It is not possible to turn sand into a poppy seed, but it can be turned into silicon, which in turn can be used to do tricks with electronics, including calculating accounts and posting puppy videos to social media. Tricks are not miracles, but they have their uses.
Few humans want to be hopeless. Hopes crushed by Reality (governments and bosses of all sorts), many people want to believe in miracles.
Show them a poppy seed. And teach them some history. Adolf Hitler was Roman Catholic. Don't let that be forgotten. Popes are not good people. Popes are bad people. If you want to argue that some are more or less bad than others, that is your business.
Showing posts with label poppies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label poppies. Show all posts
Sunday, May 11, 2014
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
River of Smoke by Anitav Ghosh, book review
title: River of Smoke
author: Amitav Ghosh
publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; New York
year of publication: 2011
reviewed March 14, 2012
hardcover (also available as paperback & e-book)
Complex and beautiful, River of Smoke takes the reader back to a time when the tiny, greedy, uber-violent nation of Britain ruled much of the world and still had difficulty distinguishing between trading and piracy. Building slowly from a side show in Mauritius, its central plot follows the fortunes of an Indian merchant, Bahram, who has decided to risk his family's fortunes on a vast cargo of opium for the Chinese market.
Bahram's story line alone would have sufficed for a major novel, but it is just one of many wisps in the complicated plot. Smoke is worth breathing for its rich vocabulary, a melange of words from an array of linguistic groups. The names of characters reflect this, as do the names of the foods they enjoy. Savoring new words, readers can get an introduction to pidgin, the common language of Asia ports.
For florists, gardeners, and art lovers, too, there is a subplot: the search for a rare Chinese flowering plant rumored to convey longevity. This involves botanical illustrations, gardeners, more than one painter, and some love affairs.
Bahram has done well as an opium trader. He knows that technically he is a smuggler, that taking opium to China is illegal, but in the past the corruption of Canton officials has made the practice easy and yet still highly profitable. Now a new Emperor, for the benefit of his people, is determined to stop the opium trade, which is destroying the culture and economy of China. Bahram's shipment, which was to finally win him great wealth and respect in his home community, is first decimated by a storm in transit. Then it sits in the waters near what will become Hong Kong, unable to be sold.
In the end Bahram prefers the pipe dreams induced by opium to his shattered dreams in life itself.
I wonder how much most Americans know of the aftermath of the events that take place in Smoke. The first of the Opium Wars followed, in which the British attacked China and secured a treaty allowing them to trade freely in Chinese ports, and continue to sell opium is vast quantities. China, the richest nation in the world in 1700, was a hallowed-out shell by the time the British (and Americans, and Dutch, French, Germans, Russians and even Japanese) had worked their "free market" magic. Many American fortunes were made in the opium trade, notably those of the Forbes family and the Delanos (later of Franklin Delano Roosevelt).
In the jungles, the oceans, and in human culture too, new life cannot come into existence until something old dies, making some room, providing fertilizer by its decay. Today the opium (now heroine) trade runs the other way, hallowing out not so much nations as susceptible segments of a global society, supplemented by a vast array of newer drugs, diversions, and human luxuries. The Chinese people are, for now, back on top, hopefully wiser for the experience of having spent over a century down-and-out, trying to work their way back to prosperity and to understand how they could have allowed a small group of English (and Scottish) gangsters to cause so much misery and death.
River of Smoke is a sequel to Sea of Poppies, which is set in India, and which I have not yet read. I did read and review The Calcutta Chromosome. Amitav Ghosh now has 9 published novels.
author: Amitav Ghosh
publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; New York
year of publication: 2011
reviewed March 14, 2012
hardcover (also available as paperback & e-book)
Complex and beautiful, River of Smoke takes the reader back to a time when the tiny, greedy, uber-violent nation of Britain ruled much of the world and still had difficulty distinguishing between trading and piracy. Building slowly from a side show in Mauritius, its central plot follows the fortunes of an Indian merchant, Bahram, who has decided to risk his family's fortunes on a vast cargo of opium for the Chinese market.
Bahram's story line alone would have sufficed for a major novel, but it is just one of many wisps in the complicated plot. Smoke is worth breathing for its rich vocabulary, a melange of words from an array of linguistic groups. The names of characters reflect this, as do the names of the foods they enjoy. Savoring new words, readers can get an introduction to pidgin, the common language of Asia ports.
For florists, gardeners, and art lovers, too, there is a subplot: the search for a rare Chinese flowering plant rumored to convey longevity. This involves botanical illustrations, gardeners, more than one painter, and some love affairs.
Bahram has done well as an opium trader. He knows that technically he is a smuggler, that taking opium to China is illegal, but in the past the corruption of Canton officials has made the practice easy and yet still highly profitable. Now a new Emperor, for the benefit of his people, is determined to stop the opium trade, which is destroying the culture and economy of China. Bahram's shipment, which was to finally win him great wealth and respect in his home community, is first decimated by a storm in transit. Then it sits in the waters near what will become Hong Kong, unable to be sold.
In the end Bahram prefers the pipe dreams induced by opium to his shattered dreams in life itself.
I wonder how much most Americans know of the aftermath of the events that take place in Smoke. The first of the Opium Wars followed, in which the British attacked China and secured a treaty allowing them to trade freely in Chinese ports, and continue to sell opium is vast quantities. China, the richest nation in the world in 1700, was a hallowed-out shell by the time the British (and Americans, and Dutch, French, Germans, Russians and even Japanese) had worked their "free market" magic. Many American fortunes were made in the opium trade, notably those of the Forbes family and the Delanos (later of Franklin Delano Roosevelt).
In the jungles, the oceans, and in human culture too, new life cannot come into existence until something old dies, making some room, providing fertilizer by its decay. Today the opium (now heroine) trade runs the other way, hallowing out not so much nations as susceptible segments of a global society, supplemented by a vast array of newer drugs, diversions, and human luxuries. The Chinese people are, for now, back on top, hopefully wiser for the experience of having spent over a century down-and-out, trying to work their way back to prosperity and to understand how they could have allowed a small group of English (and Scottish) gangsters to cause so much misery and death.
River of Smoke is a sequel to Sea of Poppies, which is set in India, and which I have not yet read. I did read and review The Calcutta Chromosome. Amitav Ghosh now has 9 published novels.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
