Truce in our Time

The Olympic Games, it seems to me, illustrate the difficulties of seeing very large social events with any kind of precision, whether it is from up close or from of 5,521 miles away by television—that being the distance, using great circle navigation, between Detroit and Sochi in Russia. At the same time, what with modern media coverage, one can also get a more or less trustworthy general feeling about these games. In our case we have access, this year, to both U.S. and Canadian coverage, and we made good use of both. Our mutual conclusion this year was that the Sochi winter games came very close realizing the ideals of the Olympics. The games were peaceful; the contentious aspects, so jarring in many past games we’ve actually watched closely, were almost absent this time around.

A feature of the Ancient Olympics was the Olympic Truce. The Modern Olympics feature the same truce, officially put in place by the United Nations in 1993. The Ancient Olympics were, of course, a miniature. The games were international, but the regions interacting were all Greek. The games did not move about in those days. They were all held in the region called Ellis, in Arcadia, the southern portion of Greece, Ellis itself its north-western edge. The games were held at the city of Olympia within that region, hence the name of the games. The truce made sense, given the location of Olympia. Athletes had to travel very long distances to get there. The distance between Olympia and Athens, to take a horizontal route separating two edges of Greece, is 163 miles—hence speaking of the Ancient Olympiad as a miniature of the modern makes sense.  Localizing that distance of 163 miles? Well, the distance from Detroit to Chicago is 282 miles; see also the concluding note.

This comparison—between the little and the Big—struck us yesterday as the closing ceremonies ended. A good thing that we have a global Olympics now. Those interlocking Olympic rings? Brigitte thought they stood for continents; I had no idea, but she went and looked it up; and she had been right all along. Each ring stands for one of five regions of the world. Until 1951, the official handbook identified blue as Europe, yellow as Asia, black as Africa, green as Australia and Oceania, and red as the Americas. But since the originator of this symbol, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, a French educator and co-founder of the Modern Olympics, made no such association (he chose the colors from uniforms of different countries competing in his time, 1912), the IOC removed any linkage of color to actual regions.

The meaning of “truce,” when unwrapped a little, is rather odd. The very possibility speaks to human power to transcend one level of experience and to establish, if only temporarily, another and superior level above it: to rise above violent hostilities to the level of perhaps grim but actual peace. It would at least seem logical to think that once truce has been achieved, just a small additional effort would also yield lasting harmony. If it can hold for three months—which was the duration of the Olympic Truce in ancient times—it could last four, five, six, and more, until we’ve lost all count.

Truce is a good first step. We’ve gotten that far. As far as world peace is concerned, the Bronze still seems out of reach. But who knows what the future will hold.

The root of that word, in English, incidentally, is centered on the proto-Germanic for “faith,” still almost literally present in the current German word Treue. It takes faith on both sides to make a treaty. Treaties now, faith tomorrow. God speed the day.

- - -

On horses, ships, and volors. In ancient Greece the means of transportation were by foot, on horse, or by ship—the really large ones largely rowed. To achieve global utopia, we need volors. That word comes from a pair of novels by Robert Hugh Benson, Lord of the World (1908) and The Dawn of All (1911). The first is a dis-, the other a utopia. First flight took place on earth on December 17, 1903, courtesy of Orville and Wilbur Wright. In Benson’s projections, the art had been perfected to resemble, and in many ways surpass, the age of the jet in which we make our home. As for The Dawn of All, it is a world where truce has turned to peace—through faith.

The map is from Wikipedia (link).

Benson’s Apocalypse

About a month ago we learned, on Siris (link), that Pope Francis had made reference to a science fiction work, Lord of the World, written by Robert Hugh Benson, a British Catholic priest. The book was published in 1907! Well, that was irresistible. We had a copy of it within the week, and since then Brigitte and I read it together in daily segments right after lunch; Brigitte did the reading. We finished yesterday—and indeed, it was a tour de force.

Benson was a quite prolific and popular writer. He wrote science fiction (3 works), historical novels (7), contemporary novels (10), children’s books (3), devotional works (8), apologetics (10), plays (4), and other books (4) including biographies and a book of poems.

Lord of the World is a profoundly philosophical work—its story being the ultimate victory of absolute materialistic secularism the world over. That might suggest slow, weary reading. But the book was intensely suspenseful, quite a thriller, and we had a real job keeping from reading on and on, as rapidly as possible, to discover what happens next—although we already knew the end before we even began.

Benson was born in 1871 and died in October 1914, thus three months after World War I began. He’d lived intensely and had died young of heart failure. His prophetic gift was significant—but muted. He saw the future clearly in its essence, but not its tawdry nature. The future’s technology is smooth, clean, silent, and pleasing to the eye. He projected the triumph of materialism in every category—except the spiritual. The few great outbreaks of disorder that he shows carry powerful premonitions of, say, Nazi mobs. There is no sense of what we see now, the “war of all against all,” disguised as markets, free speech, and competition. The world’s a kind of physical paradise, its air-traffic almost silent, its ground-traffic underground, its surfaces soft and sound-absorbing. The conflict is all in the “sky”—as in Dürer’s image (shown elsewhere here). Nor does he recognize that everything constellates its own resistance—in reality—so that the great tendencies he saw have not yet, and never shall, actually achieve victory. The reason for this, however, is explained in Benson’s brief prefactory paragraph:

I am perfectly aware that this is a terribly sensational book, and open to innumerable criticisms on that account, as well as many others. But I did not know how else to express the principles I desired (and which I passionately believe to be true) except by producing their lines to a sensational point. I have tried, however, not to scream unduly loud, and to retain, so far as possible, reverence and consideration for the opinions of other people. Whether I have succeeded in that attempt is quite another matter.

At the same time, the book has extraordinary insights into spiritual life—at the collective as well as at the individual levels. These passages in no way interfere with, indeed they heighten, the story-telling tension. Surprising subjects are touched upon, like the post-death vision of one of our favorite of four major characters that carry this story, Mabel Brand.

A most unusual book—weirdly modern, weirdly out of this world. The book produced some widespread reactions—because of its gloomy ending. This impelled Benson later in his life to write a kind of utopian work, Dawn of All. Needless to say, Amazon is flying it to us now—not yet on Benson’s famous volors nor yet on Bezos’ future drones—just by plane and UPS truck. We can hardly wait.