He rescued Adam and Eve from obscurity, devised the doctrine of original sin—and the rest is sexual history.
“I came to Carthage,” he writes, “to the center of a skillet where outrageous love affairs hissed all around me.”
.. The feverish promiscuity, if that is what it was, resolved fairly quickly into something quite stable. Within a year or two, Augustine had settled down with a woman with whom he lived and to whom, in his account, he was faithful for the next fourteen years.
.. As a young man who had already fathered a child, he knew that, for the entire human species, reproduction entailed precisely the sexual intercourse that he was bent on renouncing. How could the highest Christian religious vocation reject something so obviously natural?
.. The “Confessions” does not take the story of Augustine’s life further. Instead, it turns to a philosophical meditation on memory and an interpretation of the opening of Genesis
.. Why Genesis? And why, in the years that followed, did his attention come to focus particularly on the story of Adam and Eve?
.. Pagans ridiculed that story as primitive and ethically incoherent. How could a god worthy of respect try to keep humans from the knowledge of good and evil? Jews and Christians of any sophistication preferred not to dwell upon it or distanced themselves by treating it as an allegory.
.. he persuaded himself that it was no mere fable or myth. It was the key to everything.
.. Augustine returned again and again to the same set of questions: Whose body is this, anyway? Where does desire come from? Why am I not in command of my own penis? “Sometimes it refuses to act when the mind wills, while often it acts against its will!”
.. And this ardor, to which Augustine gives the technical name “concupiscence,” was not simply a natural endowment or a divine blessing; it was a touch of evil. What a married man and woman who intend to beget a child do together is not evil, Augustine insisted; it is good. “But the action is not performed without evil.”
.. Augustine’s tortured recognition that involuntary arousal was an inescapable presence—not only in conjugal lovemaking but also in what he calls the “very movements which it causes, to our sorrow, even in sleep, and even in the bodies of chaste men”—shaped his most influential idea, one that transformed the story of Adam and Eve and weighed down the centuries that followed: originale peccatum, original sin.
.. Pelagius and his followers were moral optimists. They believed that human beings were born innocent. Infants do not enter the world with a special endowment of virtue, but neither do they carry the innate stain of vice.
.. we are all descendants of Adam and Eve, and we live in a world rife with the consequences of their primordial act of disobedience. But that act in the distant past does not condemn us inescapably to sinfulness. How could it? What would be the mechanism of infection? Why would a benevolent God permit something so monstrous? We are at liberty to shape our own lives, whether to serve God or to serve Satan.
.. The Pelagians said that Augustine was simply reverting to the old Manichaean belief that the flesh was the creation and the possession of a wicked force.
.. Surely this was a betrayal of Christianity, with its faith in a Messiah who became flesh.
.. Not so, Augustine responded. It is true that God chose to become man, but he did this “of a virgin
.. that which was born from the root of the first man might derive only the origin of race, not also of guilt.”
.. Augustine embarked on a work, “The Literal Meaning of Genesis,”
.. For some fifteen years, he labored on this work
.. The inquieta adulescentia that delighted the adolescent’s father and horrified his mother could now be traced all the way back to the original moment when Adam and Eve felt both lust and shame. They saw for the first time what they had never seen before, and, if the sight aroused them, it also impelled them to reach for the fig leaves to cover as with a veil “that which was put into motion without the will of those who wished it.”
.. But what was the alternative that they—and we—lost forever? How, specifically, were they meant to reproduce, if it was not in the way that all humans have done for as long as anyone can remember? In Paradise, Augustine argued, Adam and Eve would have had sex without involuntary arousal: “They would not have had the activity of turbulent lust in their flesh, however, but only the movement of peaceful will by which we command the other members of the body.” Without feeling any passion—without sensing that strange goad—“the husband would have relaxed on his wife’s bosom in tranquility of mind.”
.. ” Others, as he personally had witnessed, could sweat whenever they chose, and there were even people who could “produce at will such musical sounds from their behind (without any stink) that they seem to be singing from that region.”
.. Adam had fallen, Augustine wrote in “The City of God,” not because the serpent had deceived him. He chose to sin, and, in doing so, he lost Paradise
.. With the help of his sainted mother, he had severed himself from his companion and had tried to flee from ardor, from arousal. He had fashioned himself, to the best of his extraordinary abilities, on the model of the unfallen Adam, a model he had struggled for many years to understand and to explicate. True, he still had those involuntary dreams, those unwelcome stirrings, but what he knew about Adam and Eve in their state of innocence reassured him that someday, with Jesus’ help, he would have total control over his own body. He would be free. ♦
What do slaveholders think?
It is everywhere illegal yet slavery persists in many corners of the global economy. How do its beneficiaries justify it?
The fact that I was most interested in challenging bonded labour – a contemporary form of slavery – didn’t matter... Around half of the world’s slaves are held in debt bondage in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Debt bondage is a very old form of slavery in which radically marginalised members of society, often from India’s ‘untouchable’ caste, must trade all their labour for single small infusions of cash... Lack of other work, lack of credit, and the need to pay for schooling and marriages effectively guarantee that there is no single contractual debt between the landlord and labourer but rather a string of interconnected informal loans... Workers are often promised that their debt will be repaid within a certain period of time, only to be told that they have somehow incurred new debts. Running debts are occasionally sold to other slaveholders, and in this way a worker can change hands several times... Where slavery is verboten, psychological control through deception and fear is the new coin of the realm... it is the caste system – with Brahmin at the head and ‘untouchable’ beneath.. the caste-based worldview frames these exploitative labour relations in familial terms... Aanan, who views himself as the caring parent and his workers as children. ‘To manage a group of labourers is like managing a group of primary-school children... We divide them into small groups because larger numbers of workers tend to form a union.. Aanan says the happiness of his worker is paramount, even though his business model depends on entrapping the vulnerable and working them to the bone.. Rowdy festivals allow workers to blow off steam, effectively directing frustration away from their abusers.. When asked if he needs the workers or the workers need him, Aanan explains that: ‘The worker is my cash machine, my fate.’ In this one statement, he has captured a central contradiction inherent in most human-rights violations worldwide.. It is the emotional pressure that works.’ A key strategy for Aanan is keeping workers indebted while asking for their gratitude and undermining their perception that opportunities exist... In a form of Stockholm syndrome, the oppressed often agree... I have been told by bonded labourers that they genuinely owe a debt – some having worked for years to repay an amount that would have taken 10 days of work at prevailing wages... Bonded labour requires an actual relationship in which the perpetrator is keenly aware of what kind of pressure – threats? violence? promises? – will ensure compliant work, despite abusive conditions and a lack of pay.
.. Contemporary slaveholders, like contemporary slavery, come in many forms. And these men have other terms for their socioeconomic roles and relationships, including ‘employer’, ‘boss’, ‘landlord’, ‘farmer’, ‘contractor’, ‘master’, and ‘landowner’... Do Aanan and Ahmed not see the scene – debt bondage, child labour, trafficking – as blatantly wrong?.. In conversations with rights-violators such as Aanan, I heard the same thing again and again: ‘You’re the first person to ask me about my life... In my talks with powerful-looking but powerless-feeling people, I discovered the power of nostalgia... in rural India, where the caste system is remembered with nostalgia, as it is in Indiana, where an industrial era is remembered wistfully, despite a history of racial exclusion... In times of cultural, political or economic upheaval, rights-violators are often trapped between the awesomely powerful and the completely powerless. What do we know of people who might once have possessed great power, but who are now in decline?.. Each yearned for the old days, when ‘we were like family’, and each member of the community knew his or her place... respect was expected in exchange for care.. Labourers, in this nostalgic reckoning, were hard-working, grateful and honest. They held up their end of the cosmic bargain so central to caste, and benefited in turn... rhetorical threats such as ‘Don’t you know who I am?’ ring hollow when mobile phones deliver news about better jobs in growing cities connected by bigger roads. Traditional authority is a depreciating asset for many slaveholders faced with broader social and economic change. Workers are voting with their feet... ‘The worst part of these interviews was that they were not difficult … I never met the monster I anticipated.’.. Human-rights violators are a far cry from John Rawls’s evil, bad and unjust men. ‘What moves the evil man is the love of injustice,’ Rawls wrote in A Theory of Justice (1971), ‘he delights in the impotence and humiliation of those subject to him and relishes being recognised by them as the wilful author of their degradation.’.. The contemporary traffickers and slaveholders I spoke with are not motivated by a love of injustice. They are instead driven by cultural inertia, a desire for profit or, more frequently, a need for basic sustenance... What came up, time after time, was respect, honour and dignity... real question is how we respond to loss – by lashing out, by learning, by opening up, or by closing down... Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was right when he wrote in the The Gulag Archipelago (1973): ‘If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?’
Behind Russia’s Cyber Strategy
A 2013 article by Russian Gen. Valery Gerasimov emphasized importance of cyberwarfare
.. Russia’s military laid out what is now seen as a blueprint for cyberwarfare with a 2013 article in a professional journal by Gen. Valery Gerasimov, the chief of Russia’s General Staff.Cyberspace, wrote Gen. Gerasimov, “opens wide asymmetrical possibilities for reducing the fighting potential of the enemy.”.. In the 2013 article, Gen. Gerasimov elaborated on the Russian military’s desire to hone its hacking skills as an extension of conventional warfare and political conflict.
.. In Washington’s defense and national security circles, Russia’s use of masked invasions on the ground and difficult-to-attribute attacks in cyberspace have become examples of what is now known as the “Gerasimov doctrine,” in reference to the 2013 article.
.. “He talks about what he calls fighting a war without fighting a war—use of information, social media, disinformation, deception,” Gen. Neller said.
.. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said security services had detected 6,500 attempted cyberattacks on government agencies and state information resources in the past two months.
.. “Ukraine is the perfect sandpit for this as it is complex enough to test it out but it’s not NATO and can’t really fight back,”
.. Russia denied official connection to the well-armed and well-trained military professionals who took over key government installations on the Black Sea peninsula before acknowledging the “little green men” were actually Russian special-operations troops.
The Wrath of Volkswagen’s Drivers
Volkswagen’s stunning admission that it sold diesel-powered cars that intentionally faked emissions testing results has left many of their owners — who thought they were buying fuel-efficient and environmentally friendly vehicles — angry and feeling betrayed.
The deception could prove a major threat to Volkswagen’s reputation in the United States and could break the trust that the German automaker had cultivated with car owners over the years. It could also have lasting consequences for the future of diesel-powered technology championed by Volkswagen, which has been seeking to make a comeback in the United States.