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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?"
 I
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.
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