{"id":103674,"date":"2017-12-18T12:00:51","date_gmt":"2017-12-18T12:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=103674"},"modified":"2017-12-17T12:57:31","modified_gmt":"2017-12-17T12:57:31","slug":"an-advent-calendar-to-beat-the-devil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/12\/an-advent-calendar-to-beat-the-devil\/","title":{"rendered":"An Advent Calendar to Beat the Devil"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe task of setting free one\u2019s gifts was a recognized labor in the ancient world\u2026.the spirit that brings us our gifts finds its eventual freedom only through our sacrifice, and those who do not reciprocate the gifts of their genius [daemon, personal spirit that comes to us at birth] will leave it in bondage when they die.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

— Lewis Hyde, The Gift<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

16 Dec 2017 – <\/em>In a capitalist culture of commodification, people have been reified and things reanimated.\u00a0 Our national artists \u2013 the advertisers \u2013 have mastered this trick.\u00a0 People become persons through things, or the things images can secure; things possess a life of their own which they can impart to their possessors.\u00a0 Conversely, without such things one becomes a nobody, as the poor know so well.\u00a0 As long as you can convince people that objects and people are of equal value, the rest is easy.\u00a0 You can even declare that you are not an object to be used, even as you have bought into the culture of commodification through images.<\/p>\n

Daniel Boorstin put it this way in his classic study, The Image<\/em>: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in<\/em> America:\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

The deeper problems connected with advertising come less from the unscrupulousness of our \u2018deceivers\u2019 than from our pleasure in being deceived, less from the desire to seduce than from the desire to be seduced.\u00a0 The Graphic revolution has produced new categories of experience.\u00a0 They are no longer simply classifiable by the old common sense tests of true or false.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

At no time is this more evident than in the months leading up to Christmas and the holidays.\u00a0 Gorging frenetically on \u201cgift\u201d buying, giving, and receiving in a futile attempt to appease an unacknowledged and unconscious indebtedness and guilt, people reveal the truth of a rudderless and faithless society lost in the cosmos.\u00a0 The secularization of the economy with the development of modern capitalism underlies our present condition.\u00a0 Norman O. Brown writes,<\/p>\n

The result is an economy driven by a pure sense of guilt, unmitigated by any sense of redemption; as Luther said, the Devil (guilt) is lord of this world\u2026.secular \u2018rationalism\u2019 and liberal Protestantism deny the existence of the Devil (guilt).\u00a0 Their denial makes no difference to the economy, which remains driven by the sense of guilt; or rather, it makes this difference, that the economy is more uncontrollably driven by the sense of guilt because the problem of guilt is repressed by denial into the unconscious.<\/p>\n

That is why so many people will be having a special guest for Christmas.\u00a0 Possessed by their possessions, while disbelieving in Luther\u2019s Satan, the American people are in the process of bringing Satan home for the holidays.\u00a0 Unseen but present, he will have a place of honor at Christmas dinner tables throughout the land.\u00a0 But don\u2019t worry, he has a parsimonious appetite and just nibbles.\u00a0 My sources tell me that he likes turkey and ham, but isn\u2019t too keen on vegetarian fare, and forget vegan.\u00a0 Yet I am told he has a ravenous appetite for presents, so get shopping.\u00a0 I hope my sources are reliable, but I never disclose them.\u00a0 You can always get him an Amazon gift card.<\/p>\n

These thoughts were sparked a few weeks ago when I sent my grandchildren chocolate Advent calendars.\u00a0 They are, so I think, innocent treats for children.\u00a0 A chocolate a day delivered out of little doors can\u2019t hurt, except I suppose Grinch would say, \u201cAre you kidding, think of cavities!\u201d\u00a0 To which I reply, echoing Melville\u2019s Bartleby the Scrivener, \u201cI prefer not to.\u201d<\/p>\n

But I do want to think about the vast cavity in the American soul.\u00a0 I know Santa is cute, and even though he dresses in red like Satan, I loved him when I was a child.\u00a0 He once brought me a mechanical toy soldier made of metal.\u00a0 You wound his key and he marched to war, no questions asked.\u00a0 Rather than march forward, however, he went in circles, which seemed stupid until I got older and realized he was a prophet.\u00a0 Even Santa makes mistakes.<\/p>\n

In those days, and today for my grandchildren, Christmas is also a holy day to celebrate the birth of a political and spiritual radical, a poor boy born in a stable, an anti-war trouble-maker bound to be executed by the state.\u00a0 To contemplate a newborn infant in his mother\u2019s arms \u2013 any infant \u2013 and to let your mind transport him as an adult to the torturer\u2019s prison, beaten and bloody, and taken ignominiously to his public execution as an example to all those who\u2019ve heard his message of peace and voluntary poverty, redeems the day, banishes the devil from the table where he tries to poison the gift of hope and sharing\u00a0\u00a0 the presence of loved ones brings.\u00a0 In the presence of intangible gifts, the gluttonous one flees.\u00a0 The song puts it thus: \u201c\u2018Tis the gift to be simple, \u2018Tis the gift to be free, \u2019Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be.\u201d\u00a0 And when Santa keeps his gift giving for children simple, while excluding adults except for token exchanges, he is a welcome jolly guest at the dinner table, unlike the nasty fellow from below.<\/p>\n

Being a sociologist, I am aware that every day in the United States many people are undergoing exorcisms.\u00a0 Satan seems to be a popular guy who gets around and takes many forms, as these reports suggest.\u00a0 I hear he turns heads, and have read that when some possessed people are exorcised they violently cough up parts of radios, computer chips \u2013 you name it.\u00a0 You can see why electronics are the number one Christmas gift.\u00a0 Our friend from below probably has the latest cell phone and a chip inserted in his heart.\u00a0 I\u2019m not joking.\u00a0 Trust me.<\/p>\n

As a boy I had a dog who was like those possessed ones.\u00a0 He ate and pooped light bulbs, electrical cords, crayons, clothespins, etc.\u00a0 After he bit my little sister on her leg requiring many stitches, my parents banished him to the ASPCA.\u00a0 Maybe they should have called the exorcist.\u00a0 Of course I loved my sister, but as a child I also loved my dog, and his name wasn\u2019t Lucifer, despite carrying light bulbs in his stomach.\u00a0 And in those days I loved Santa too, as only a child can.<\/p>\n

As I await his arrival now that I\u2019m a bit older, I have created my own Advent calendar.\u00a0 Every day from December 1 until December 25 I open a little door and drop in something.\u00a0 This door opens down to hell, where our friend gleefully awaits his dinner invitation.\u00a0 Rather than invite the bastard, I try to dump on him all he induced me to possess so he could possess me.\u00a0 Never having been big into electronic crap, my stuff is low-tech but powerful, and the \u201cstuff\u201d is often not any thing at all, but inclinations, habits, ideas, and illusions that keep me thinking I need more while being less \u2013 William Blake\u2019s chains:<\/p>\n

In every cry of every man,<\/em>
\nIn every infant\u2019s cry of fear,<\/em>
\nIn every voice, in every ban,<\/em>
\nThe mind forg\u2019d manacles I hear.<\/em>
\n<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Starting slowly, on day one I threw down a few dozen very sharp pencils that were cluttering up my desk drawer.\u00a0 If you didn\u2019t know it, the pencil was a revolutionary technology in its time.\u00a0 But I had collected too many, as most of us collect the inessential to falsely secure us against embracing the wisdom of insecurity, and rather than write with them all to kill our downstairs neighbor, I hoped to spear the prick with a few, knowing as I did that the etymology of the word pencil is \u201clittle penis.\u201d<\/p>\n

On day two I picked up the pace and down went the illusion that I should expect my rambles in words to have any effect on people\u2019s thinking.<\/p>\n

Day three: Books I\u2019ll never read again but El Diablo might benefit from, though he\u2019s probably illiterate like so many Americans.<\/p>\n

Day four: The bad habit of making snide comments about ignorant Americans.\u00a0 This was a little selfish since I didn\u2019t want to be not nice or naughty before Santa\u2019s arrival.<\/p>\n

Day five: \u00a0My sudden realization that the previous day\u2019s confession might mean I\u2019ll get coal in my stocking.<\/p>\n

Day six:\u00a0 Clothes I\u2019ll never wear, old foreign coins, extra socks, an eight inch wide tie, a one inch wide tie, all ties, nonsense things, and any thing I could lay my hands on.<\/p>\n

Day Seven:\u00a0 Many habits that have become useless, but which I won\u2019t mention.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure you understand.<\/p>\n

Day eight:\u00a0 The idea that there are any sane American politicians and that they don\u2019t want a nuclear war with Russia.<\/p>\n

And on and on they go down the slide to hell.\u00a0 In this way I am hoping by December 25th<\/sup> to have dispossessed myself of all that has a grip on me, all that clutters up my life and mind.\u00a0 I am hoping to have nothing left to give or take, and that on Christmas the only gifts I might receive are the invisible kind.<\/p>\n

Then I can hold them in the palms of my hands and set them free to fly away.<\/p>\n

Letting go like this, I will contemplate an infant\u2019s birth, how he came with nothing and left with nothing, and because he did not seek the possessions that are the life-blood of a consumer society sick-to-death, he showed us how to beat the devil.<\/p>\n

_____________________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Edward Curtin is a writer whose work has appeared widely and a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a>.\u00a0 He teaches sociology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. <\/em>A former college basketball player, he teaches the sociology of sports, and writes on a wide range of topics.\u00a0 His website is <\/em>http:\/\/edwardcurtin.com\/<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The deeper problems connected with advertising come less from the unscrupulousness of our \u2018deceivers\u2019 than from our pleasure in being deceived, less from the desire to seduce than from the desire to be seduced. The Graphic revolution has produced new categories of experience. They are no longer simply classifiable by the old common sense tests of true or false. At no time is this more evident than in the months leading up to Christmas and the holidays.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":89352,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-103674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103674\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}