"Poo-tee-weet? "

Slaughterhouse Five is based on Mr. Vonnegut's experiences as an American POW imprisoned in Dresden when the city, and its population, were destroyed by incendiary bombs during World War II.

Previous to the bombing, Dresden was best known for fine china.  But when the bombs dropped, it  became an altar, and altars are only useful for two purposes.  As places to stand witness.  And as places to give sacrifices.

Dresden served both purposes.  It stood witness to the rage of our self- righteousness.  And it became an altar upon which most of the city's population was murdered as a burnt offering.

Human sacrifice is not unusual for temples. Actually, for most places of worship, even Christian ones, an offering of human pain, even life, seems to be business as usual.

From the dawn of civilization, the business of the temple and the business of rulers has been inextricably intertwined.  Often the relationship has doomed civilizations. The Mayan culture springs to mind, but every civilization seems to have suffered from failed attempts to righteously combine government with religion from Babylon, to Nineveh to the golden age of the Jews. Next, there was feudalism and the doctrine of the Divine Rights of Kings. After the discovery of the Americas, there was John Winthrop's Puritan/Calvanist vision of the Christian society in Massachusetts. In modern times, there was the canonization of Marx Leninism in the Kremlin.  These regimes have all had their moment in the sun, and then they fell into ruin. Looking back on each them, their remains seem like the props of a movie, featuring the character Alan Quartermain, anthropologist, adventurer, precursor of Indiana Jones in the film, the Temple of Doom.  To understand the relationship between government, religion and commerce, we must follow in Quartermain's footsteps.

We enter a deserted temple in the jungle to discover that it is ruled by a monkey king, sitting on heaps of skulls, the remains of sacrificial victims.  We hear the shrill shriek of the monkey king, and look into eyes crazed by rage at our intrusion; we wonder whether the monkey is a usurper of the throne or merely the logical descendent of those who have preceded him.

Then we notice the inscriptions and paintings on the temple walls; there are also clay tablets, inscribed with prayers and accounts of the feats of the kings.  These were a literate people.  As we explore the area surrounding the temple, we find fragments of tablets containing mercantile transactions.  We discover a storage house with  records for wheat and wine. This was a country with a highly developed economy that depended on accurate record keeping.  Its social organization was probably clericalist in nature.

That's not surprising.  Without exception, every developed nation in the last five thousand years has been more or less clericalist.  Clericalism is virtually synonymous with civilization.

Clericalism is the rule of a society by an individual, or group, possessing a well
developed---though not always apparent---set of theological beliefs. They are
the sole judges of what those beliefs should be. The Clericalists rule by those
beliefs even though the doctrines may not be shared by the citizens under
their control. These rulers believe, consciously or unconsciously, that they
have been given a divine dispensation of grace to force those theological
beliefs onto believer and unbeliever alike.

However, historically the real power of the Clericalists has not been their
religious beliefs but rather their control over centralized economies. Their
claim of a divine mandate merely dissuaded potential rivals from
trying to replace them. Hence, the Pharaohs of Egypt were not only rulers and
guardians of the wealth of Egypt, they were Gods as well.

 Later, in Christian countries, this claim of divinity was modified. The kings
 weren't God, but the kings, and Pope, asserted that God, through the Church,
 had given rulers "divine rights".

The latest manifestation of clericalism was Communism, a fact that was noted in Yugoslavia during the reign of Titto by Milovan Djilas, Communist author of, "The New Class." Djilas believed that Leninism had created a new managerial class, the Communist Party. He was right. The Communist leaders were the latest cultural and philosophical heirs to the power of the mercantile aristocracy. These merchant princes, in turn, were begot by the landed aristocracy, who, at least in Great Britain, co-ruled with the Royal Family, who claimed their own Divine Prerogative by detouring around the Pope, running over Sir Thomas More in the process. A little later, John Calvin added theological road improvements to the detour, making it permanent.

By calling attention to this embarrassing genealogy, Djilas proved that being an atheist and Communist were not necessarily impediments to believing in a Divine Dispensation of Grace to leaders, especially if a Communist official was the beneficiary.

In the United States, this belief in a Dispensation of Grace to the powerful, or D.O.G. as I shall call it, is more devious for political and Constitutional reasons. After all, most American politicians and financial leaders aren't crazy enough to publicity admit that they consider themselves to be heirs of the British Monarchy. Instead, they claim a curiously off-handed brand of support for democratic principles which is almost a conjunctive denial. They'll say something like, "Well, of course we're a democratic country, but..." Then, following the conjunctive, they'll insert a whole laundry list of reasons why we shouldn't be democratic.

The Dispensation Of Grace (D.O.G.) is still considered, by these alleged recipients, to be a private mark of God's favor. This notion has manifested itself by the creation of two U.S. political parties, the noblesse oblige party. And the nobles-with-no-oblige party. Publicly opposed to each other, they manage to unite to split up, amongst themselves, whatever oblige gets passed through Congress. That's why we continue to be a society whose members are motivated by the carrot and the stick with most of the carrots going to the people at the top, and most of the sticks being used on the rest of us.

However, the modern small computer has replaced the army of clerks who have always been necessary to maintain a centralized economy. Control of that army of clerks has been indispensable to the retention of power by the Clericalists.

The Age of Clericalism has ended and the new age has begun with fear and despair.  We should feel joy, but we don't. We just have too much of ourselves invested in the old system to gladly accept change. How we face that despair, as individuals, families, and neighborhoods, is entirely up to us.  Will we choose to live in serenity or will we continue to live in fear, anger and mistrust, inventing excuses to care nothing for others? Will most of us eventually adopt a "me and my own" philosophy so restrictive that it often excludes even family members unless they do things, "our way."  Will we continue to work without joy and to accumulate wealth without pleasure, striving with a gambler's addicted frenzy to achieve a material serenity great enough to exorcise the demons of greed and envy that we have invited to inhabit our souls? Demons who have sent us on a terrible doomed pursuit of "happiness and the good life?" When confronted with our consuming self-interest and indifference to others,  will most of us join those who mutter the mantra of the new age, "What's wrong with that?"

What's wrong  is that exaggerated self-interest goes against a solemn truth carried within each one of us.  We can't do it alone.  We need others.  We are not individual predators.  We are tribal predators.  The only tribal predators on the planet.  Individually, we can't protect ourselves.  Physically, we are poorly equipped to evade other predators.  We will be killed and eaten by the tigers and the lions.  But as a member of a tribe, the other predators fear us.  When they attack us, we do more that run away. We attack them and chase them.  And we don't stop.  Day after day, mile after mile, we run them to ground, and we kill them.  We seek out their children.  We kill them too.  We strip the flesh from their bones and eat it.  We drink their blood in cups made from their own skulls.  We seek to trap their spirit of ferocity within us.  Their bones become our ceremonial ornaments.  As a tribe, we become ferocious.  A beast with many heads and many hands.  We dance, make merry, and celebrate the death of the predator who attacked us.  Because, we are, after all, the people, the tribe.  Acting together, we become a magical beast that can chase a prey from behind and then suddenly pop up in front of it.  A beast like a dragon, cunning as a snake.  A demon.  A god.  A beast that hisses at those who dream of conquering it, "The penalty for attacking me is death."   If a human being seeks to attack a member of the tribe, he too faces death.  We will seek out his children.  We will kill them too.  We will strip the flesh from their bones and eat it.  We will drink their blood in cups made from their own skulls.  We will to trap their spirit of cunning within us to help us defeat others like them.  We are invincible.  We are the people, the tribe. We make war.

(To be continued)

Copyright © 1997-2004 David M. Knapp
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