 
                         20061022.00

     The return trip from Konnarock to Belmont was largely
uneventful, if such may ever be said of so long a trip.
There was no rain. As we were driving Interstate 81 through
the Poconos at 65 mph, there appeared suddenly in the middle
of the lane in front of the car the carcass of a deer that
had been hit and had obviously been run over several times
already.  Whether attributable to my slow reaction time or to
the good sense not to risk a serious accident by swerving, my
split second decision: to straddle it. But the car was too
low; there was a fearful thumping as the bones hit the steel
of the underside of the vehicle , but we drove on without
difficulty, the car seemed undamaged, - the deer obviously
far far beyond repair -.I made a mental note that I should
let the mechanic who next changes the oil know what happened,
lest he be shocked when he sees dried blood on the underside
of the chassis.  PP As we drove I listened to three discs of
Bach cantatas on the CD player, recordings on Telefunken by
Nicolaus Harnoncourt, all of which I had previously heard
many times, but not so recently that there were not in the
rehearing, elements of surprise and novelty.  In Cantata No
42, I noted again the musical imagery of the enemies' darting
daggers, but also the translation into music of "Verfolgung"
(persecution) with an inordiately long series of 16th notes,
- as if it were the notes that were fleeing from the
persecutor; and most interesting to me, of which I had not
been previously aware, a symbol of security entailed in an
unending sequence of verse, to wit:


     6. Arie B
     Jesus ist ein Schild der Seinen,
     Wenn sie die Verfolgung tritt.
     Ihnen muss die Sonne scheinen
     Mit der gueldnen Ueberschrift:
     Jesus ist ein Schild der Seinen,
     Wenn sie die Verfolgung trifft.

     6. Aria B
     Jesus is the shield of His own,
     when persecution follows them.
     For them the sun must shine
     with a golden message:
     Jesus is the shield of His own,
     when persecution follows them.

The "golden message" will obviously be repeated ad infinitum
until the music's finale puts an end to it.  Contrapuntally I
had to think over and over again of the "weapons of mass
destructions"  will-o'-the-wisp which the American public has
followed into the Iraq quagmire, and the irony that this
military catastrophe might be the first installment of the
Olympian retribution for the hubris of the Americans'
claiming a monopoly on weapons of mass destruction, and
presuming to exploit this monopoly to dominate the world, a
presumption which seems to me implicit in our government's
construction of missile defense systems, implicit in the
development for first use of "tactical" nuclear weapons, and
most recently in the of the proposed preemption of space for
American military uses. No politician who proposed even
limited American disarmament would have a chance of being
elected.  Ninety percent of the American public supported the
president when his imperialistic adventure seemed successful.
If his policies are rejected today, it is not because they
are deemed inhuman and fundamentally destructive of humanity,
but because they cost too much and don't seem to be working.
To me armament, especially nuclear armament, sounds like the
prelude to self-destruction. In the contemporary political
climate however, it seems plausible that anyone who advocates
disarmament might be identified as an agent of the enemy, and
might be done away with in short order.  However, prophecy is
precarious business, one cannot foresee the military or
political future any more than one can foresee the economic
or the ecological future.  One tries to make provisions for
ones own existence, and it is, I suspect, by virtue of some
social instinct that one feels obligated to try to make
provision for the future of ones society, however thankless a
task that might be.

I also gave some thought to the nature of hypocrisy.  The
definition of hypocrisy as the condition of pretending to
have beliefs, virtues and feelings that one does not truly
possess, immediately raises the question of what it means, or
how one would determine whether a person "truly possesses"
some belief, virtue or feeling. Arguably also, all social
interaction entails wearing and displaying a mask, a screen
which inescapably conceals ones thoughts and feelings.
Therefore the case may be made that _all_ human action is
inherently hypocritical, but that it is only under certain
circumstances that this hypocrisy is recognized as such and
becomes the object of criticism. Indeed, it is possible that
the charge of hypocrisy is itself unavoidably hypocritical,
inasmuch as it implies a degree of candor and the absence of
concealment which is precluded by the nature of the human
situation in which the hypocrite and his critic confront each
other.  All human discourse is unavoidably hypocritical, and
the charge of hypocrisy far from distinguishing the critic
from the hypocrite, serves rather to demonstrates that there
is no difference between them, and thus establishes the
ubiquity and universality of hypocrisy.

                      * * * * *
Copyright 2006, Ernst Jochen Meyer
