Culture of Life?

A number of commentators have remarked that Pope John Paul promoted the "culture of life"by which I uncomfortably infer I am therefore part of the culture of death. Support for a womans right to choose an abortion and support for stem cell research seem to place me in the company of Stalin, Hitler and Charles Manson and yet actually you will find me particularly concerned about those dying of starvation, disease, war and other by-products of the vast economic and resource disparaties associated with advanced capitalism. The Pope also had concerns for the poor but during his reign the numbers did not improve, speaking to the power of that position as the modern project marches forward. Were the sympathies directed at Terry Shiavo and zyglots directed towards the oppressed and downtrodden, those with actual consciousness, I might feel that Christs' teachings were having some effect. Sex, of course, seems at the root of this particular pathology, Eve and that apple have condemned us for far to long. The culture of life will have to reconcile itself to the joy of sex but much auto- repression must first ensue.

Joel Kovel states,"in order for the illusion of an organic (classless) society to be sustained..consent is manufactured by getting sub-altern classes to forge their own mental manacles..the sexual sphere supplies the perfect raw material for the project, because it's logic is heteronomous to that imposed by the regime of social production." How conveniant then for the Church, and the Taliban, this society which expresses it's vast accumulation of wealth by commodifying sex," prime conditions for imposing mass auto-repression." Throw some feminism into this potent brew and watch out.

Along those same lines ,anyone but true believers would find the prospect of Armegeddon as somewhat antithetical to "the culture of life". Looking into this "Left Behind" series of books so wildly popular right now you will find an unholy alliance of Christian Zionists, Evangelicals, orthodox Jews and neo-con war mongers. The carnage they so fervently,piously, reverently look forward to makes the blood soaked trenches of WWI look like a pre-school nap time. Replace that Mosque with a new Temple and it's chainsaw massacre times six billion.