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september 8, 2008 (0085US)  

grim politics and poor Giordano Bruno

I drive into a narrow shortcut, a usually dormant alley. I am enjoined to pull over by a police motorcyclist with an elegant garrison cap and glassy black high boots on, his mount (a magnificient thoroughbred BMW) on kickstand close-at-hand. Along the street well-shammied limos are parked and men in black uniform or in undertaker-gray three-piece suits are hanging around.
The motorcyclist leans to me, "Are you a guest, Sir?" There may be some ceremony of inauguration around.
I laugh, "The wind of the Republic or politics never sends me any invitation, but the invitation to pay taxes."
A bald man in plain clothes perfectly brushed and pressed comes near to us, "What did you tell about the Republic or politics?"
Giordano BrunoI smile wide, "The obviousness of the wind is in the swaying of the tree, the choppiness of the sea..." I make a sweeping but by no means irreverent gesture toward the bunch of authorities in the street. "But we have to pay for the wind. That's all I said." He suddenly irritated says, "Get out of the car! Show me your documents!"
I say, "Well, I'm going to my barber's. I may have forgetten to take my papers." I rummage around. "You're lucky! I've got my driving licence." I hold out a transparent card-wallet to him. He says, "Slip the document out of the card-wallet!" I comply. He grabs the age-old red card softened and dog-eared. The old Photomaton picture on the licence and the old bearded gentleman in front of him do not really look like each other. Which makes him wince with disbelief. Handling the document the way a laboratorian handlles a dog dung he tries to decipher my name. "Your name is..?"
I say, "Michel Potay."
This reminds him of something. For seconds he searches his memory. He asks, "Have we already met?"
I say, "I'd rather say yes, but unfortunately I don't think we've ever met."
He resumes deciphering my driving licence, "You've been born in 1929?"
I say, "Correct. Will you have me put on police files, even though I've not been 13 years old for ages (I allude to Edvige, a new French police file system)? Civil Service index cards and  tax forms are just about all the wind shows to me as evidence of its existence."
He says: "To you the Republic is nothing but wind? You should keep quiet, Sir!"
I say: "Is the biting breath of air you are breathing on me now, unawares, what you call Republic or politics..? I can't reply but that it's just a breath of the wind. Giordano Bruno said: 'Let's regard obviousness as the sole judge of the truth, but whenever the obvious is missing, let's keep consciously doubtful!' We are sorry that Giordano Bruno was reduced to ashes, he was an obvious proof of man's sublimity, a proof that the soul can successfully escape the religious and political darkness. But what blew on his stake? Nothing but the wind."
He says, "Who? Jordo...what?"
I say, "Giordano Bruno, 16th century. The security forces in those days, who tormented that good fellow, thought staunchly that tey ensured the people's security, but just as the Heavenly Father doubts, I doubt whether the authorities have secured anything but their own security, ever. Please don't consider my words as scornful!" He is seething. I willing to defuse the situation say, "With whom do I have the honor of talking?"
He looks away, hands me my old faded red card, "You should have a new driving licence made." He claps his hands, "Move along!" says he imbued with supreme condescension like a confessor that absolves a big sinner (with regret).
I pull away peering anxiously in my rear-view mirror at those priests of the prince of political religion, whom The Revelation of Arès does not distinguish from the priests of the prince of religious religion.
Politics and our security? Politics, the cause of the enormous slaughters of World War 1 and World War 2, which adds Iraq, Afghanistan and Georgia to its slaughterhouse list? Politics powerless against the sharp increase in prices and the economic crisis? Politics, which puts citizens on police files, notably in France the citizens "likely to be a breach of the peace" (no one knows what this means exactly) from the age of 13?
Admittedly, men are violent, but only politics could supply their violence with the colossal means of warfare, conquest, massive destruction and repressive measures that we deplore. Admittedly, men are prone to lie, steal and quarrel, but could never give all of those sins committed individually the fantastic dimension that politics alone can give them institutionally.
The Revelation of Arès
 denounces the black king as well as the white king, because they entitle themselves to commit the worst sins, on a charge of which they in other respects convict any individual that sin alike. In addition to its great care in maintaining men in their flaws and weaknesses and so keep them easy to handle—hence its incapacity to make men happy—politics has inherited from religion its way of regarding power as sacred, of incarnating the all mighty, of excommunicating or inquisitioning detractors. The Revelation of Arès says that politics sometimes happens to do good, but that nonpoliticized men could do good likewise and even do much better. We can't help but doubt the validity of politics.
As for the victims of politics and its mother religion, a thousand pages in this blog might not be enough to list them, but why not say a few words about Giordano Bruno, since I mentioned him—by sheer contingency—to the police officier (maybe a superintendent)? Although I do not share all of Bruno's concepts, I totally share his crime, namely looking for the truth and telling it.
Giordano Bruno was a priest and doctor of divinity in 1578 in Napoli. Then he had the courage to think. He came to tell and write that much of what he had been supposed to believe and teach was untrue, was just dogmatism, the antique throne, the old  "sacred" trick, that every earthly power had from time immemorial sat on (Rev of Arès 22/5-6). Did he understand that the real seat of men's happiness had always been something else, love, the free Good? Yes, he did, but he was less gifted for spirituality—his spirituality was heavily influenced by Platonistic "emenatism"—than for logic. So he had a logical intuition of the infinitesimal and the infinite great, both materialized in numberless elements and constituent of all that exists, man included. This led him to understood the infinitude of the universe. Those concepts were conflicting with all that the church used to teach then. Giordano Bruno had to flee from the Catholic Inquisition. In Geneva he thought he could join real free believers, but found himself face to face with the Protestant Inquisition. He then fled to Paris, Toulouse, Londres. He was a teacher in each of those cities, and then he probably homesick returned to Italy, where he died an atrocious death on the Inquisition stake, in Rome, 1600. When, right before the heap of firewood was kindled, a monk raised a cross in front of his face, so that he could kiss it, he looked away in anger, as he had long realized that that cross was nothing but the commander baton of the princes (Rev of Arès 3/6).
Augusto Guzo, who expertly looked over Giordano Bruno's life and work, said, "[People can at great length discuss Giordano Bruno's concepts, but] they can't by no means discuss the strength of the intellectual enthusiasm with which he used to celebrate the infinite variety of universal nature as God's creation."
Ever since Giordano Bruno's stake politics has triumphed over obscurantism, it seems, as it nowadays lets beliefs and thoughts be freely expressed. This is untrue in fact. Obscurantism has only been reframed. Politics still consists in taking power, keeping it, and, so doing, preventing any contradiction expected or unexpected to grow active. In politics the fundamentals have not changed, only experience has. Politics has learnt that it's no use keeping men from thinking for the sake of thinking, because any thought for the sake of thought—usually called intellectual activity—is just a bonfire in the desert. Seen from a distance it is even pretty, so that politics leaves bonfires to multiply in the desert, which makes a spectacle of the effusions of the State's holy generosity. Only, if one of the bonfires crawls out from the desert edge—this rarely happens, but this happens— blown off by the Creator's Breath, and lights, and heats, and generates steam that activates the human engine, obscurantism reemerges immediately. Obscurantism reappears as soon as an "incorrect" throught performs positively or achieves (Rev of Arès 35/6).
In the days of Giordani Bruno obscurantism originated in theology. The questioning of dogmas was considered as working thought and the thinker was branded as criminal and put to death. Which the sheeplike masses considered as quite natural. From those days to now the "sacred" value of theology has changed into the "sacred" value of public opinion, which is operated like an instrument of torture or of execution. There is no longer any need to kill the man. To make the public have doubts about his integrity is enough. Which the masses, made much more sheeplike by means of the media than it used to be in the 16th century, consider as quite natural.
I think that the police, who serve the Republic, are aware of this point. But what can we do, that's the need to make a living. To be a policeman or a baker...I don't think that those men have made a choice. It was painful, at the bend in a small street, to experience the considerable gap between us and those men, our brothers, because the hard way of life that the system has made for us forces them to ignore the obvious. The obvious that Giordano Bruno used to point to. All the more reason to step up our mission, circulate our great expectations better and better.


Copyright2007

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