Looking at Jesus in Paintings

Looking at Jesus In Paintings

in Newswire

11/13/2013

by Martin Krieger

0 comments

Note from Prof. Krieger: I have been working in City Heights in San Diego, and documenting the churches there. I have a book in progress on “pollution” and one of its foci is images of Christ and how they are always imbued with flesh and reality, and how the transcendent and the mundane are so ineradicably intertwined by picturing and storytelling. The blog post attached is from my work on that book.

In Jesus' lifetime he was not so distinct from other Jews, except perhaps for his charismatic qualities. He was a Jew within a spectrum of Judaism. The Pharisees and the other rabbis had not only to cope with dissident Jews, but also with their Roman environment. Jesus was not their only or even major problem. The separation of the Christians from the Jews, what seems fairly sharp now, was of course not so clear then. While modern Christians might like to believe, as would his early followers, that there were unmistakable signs of who Jesus was, the situation was more fluid. Any clarity we now see, as did Paul, is a retrospective construct.

Even if Jews do not now recognize the markers of transcendence that say Jesus is Christ, modern Christians must surely hold out retrospective hope for Jews contemporary with Jesus. That is, if we cannot agree on who is marked for ultimate election or salvation, we also will not agree on who is surely not so marked. Jesus' followers, Christians, could not have known which of the persecutors—Romans, Pharisees, Sadducees, pagans—would be won over in time, just who would see the light and be convinced by the miraculous evidence. So when Rubens paints The Tribute Money he must portray the rabbis as not only potential persecutors (along with Rome), but as potential converts. This is the least he owes to historical verisimilitude. At that moment one could not be sure who would end up on each side. Yet Rubens knows about Jesus' authenticity in a way no early Christian could have, and he does not resist the temptation to express that knowledge.

How modern Christians are to treat Jews contemporary with Jesus epitomizes a more general problem. Jesus Christ is a figure who is claimed to be transcendent. Transcendence lifts him out of the fleshly world into a spiritual one. Yet we know he is flesh. We must pay allegiance to both the flesh and the spirit, as contemporary scholarship has shown. More generally, we pay allegiance to the actual facts of life and to transcendent idealizations—keeping in mind that the notions of fact and idealization and that something is a fact or an idealization, is a product of the cultural work we do? A portrait of a person is both a canvas covered with a pigmented emulsion and a vital representation of him, and if that person is a Christ it is also a spiritual representation. It is not material or personal or transcendent. It is all three; no one is the truth; they are different and opposed. Explanations, reductive or otherwise, of how they are reconcilable and are not really opposed just displace the tension of marginality onto other aspects of our lives. The tension is an inescapable fact for us.

For self-proclaimed believers, explanation and demystification will fail. They see the spiritual or the living portrait immediately. They are not confused by the material supports. It never occurs to them that they might be in a dream world, or be seeing mostly empty space filled with a few atoms, to use the skeptic's usual examples. Philosophic, scientific, and materialist claims are quite distant from the believers' everyday manifest world.

Transcendent things have a history through which they have acquired our respect. It is a history with at least three strands: a history of how veneration and honor are to be displayed in general; of how a particular person comes to be so honored; and of how a representation of him is taken to be authentic and worthy of devotion. Jesus' body has a history, as an embodiment of divinity, as a relic, as an object, and as his body in life. These histories have depended not only on conventionally documented events, but on artists' renderings of those events which then gives them concreteness. The actual depends on what we take to be transcendent, as much as the transcendent is a historical product of the actual. This is as true for a painting of an historical event as for a portrayed Christ's relationship to the actual Jesus.

Modern Jews know that Jesus was flesh, but Christians know that he was Godly flesh emptied of its divinity, an entirely different species. But when the Christians were not so separate from the Jews, the nature of Jesus' flesh was not so surely settled. The transcendent objects we have now are historical artifacts, separated out from their original social life, and elevated into un-made, revealed things. They are fetishes. As we shall see, voyeurism is an appropriate attitude toward them.

This blog post originally appeared on the website of USC's Center for Religion and  Civic Culture. 11/13/2013.

Writing THE SCHOLAR'S SURVIVAL GUIDE (USC Interview)

                         Ways to Avoid Becoming Academic ‘Roadkill’

By Merrill Balassone, USC News Service
November 19, 2013

Martin Krieger is an intellectual switch-hitter, first earning a doctorate in particle physics before turning his focus to city planning and the environment. Now a professor at the USC Price School of Public Policy, Krieger has spent 15 years documenting everyday Los Angeles, taking tens of thousands of photographs that capture slices of life in the city. With his recent book, The Scholar’s Survival Manual (Indiana University Press, 2013), Krieger looks back on his 45 years in academia and offers advice to students, professors and administrators on how to avoid becoming “academic roadkill.”

Merrill Balassone: What’s your best advice to USC freshmen about starting a successful college career?
Martin Krieger: USC is such a large and diverse place that undergraduates will do well if they have some focused reason for attending: the band, mastering a subject that matters to them, being in Los Angeles or joining the entertainment industry. For many students, success in college may well mean maturity, learning new social and organizational skills, and making connections in the world they wish to join. I am more of a nerd, so to speak, so college success for me was learning to think like a physicist and getting to know the great thinkers and writers in our traditions.

As for new professors, the secret is to take advantage of the privilege of being a professor. Find research and writing you want to do, make teaching something that supports and develops your research, teach undergraduates as well as graduates. If you discover that the life of research and writing is not for you, find another position in another institution where your strengths are just what they want.  

MB: What inspired you to make such a drastic shift from your academic work, from particle physics to urban planning?
MK: I liked physics — still do — and my training and teachers are still my touchstone. My other touchstone was the Great Books that were the foundation for the requirements for my undergraduate education. What I discovered was that I was not comfortable working in large teams, and that I was not so adept working with equipment. So when I received the PhD, I knew that I had to find another role. I met some of the faculty in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of California at Berkeley, they invited me to visit for half a semester, and I ended up staying in the field by the kind graces of my deans. I had some nice ideas, I worked hard to learn another field, and at 29 I had a home-run publication in a major journal. But only when I was about 41 did I get a suitable job (at USC!). 

As for photography, I have always had an interest in it. In about 1998, I was passing by Playa Vista’s site on the 405 freeway, and I got the idea that it would be good to photographically document this major community development. Also, I started photographing various phenomena such as hundreds of storefront churches or all the LA Department of Water and Power electrical stations. I discovered I was a collector. My advantage was that I saw urban processes and history in the world’s phenomena, and so my systematic photo documentation was actually deeply grounded. It was less about art and more about social science. And much to my surprise, I could get grants to do this work. What seems like a drastic shift — in fact several shifts over the years — felt more like following my nose, and again and again capturing survival from the jaws of defeat. My nine books divide into those about planning and design, those about how physicists think and do their work. When I think of decision-making, my model is Augustine’s Confessions.

MB: Why did you decide to write The Scholar’s Survival Manual?
MK: My motives in writing about scholarly life on my blog were twofold: I hated watching people make big yet avoidable mistakes. And what was good enough for me was not good enough for others — I could protect them. Moreover, it was a way of writing it down rather than have it floating around in my head, seething, getting me upset or angry. I was on the University Committee for Appointment, Promotion, and Tenure for a number of years, perhaps half my time at USC. In my role, for six years I read all the dossiers from all fields at all ranks, so I saw a broad range of fields and problems, and along the way I learned lots about other disciplines and professions. Marty Levine was then the vice provost for faculty affairs, and we would discuss my observations. When he looked at my blog, he encouraged me to make it into a book. At first I was reluctant. But Marty was persistent, and then when I took all the postings at that point [700+], and sorted them and discarded repetition, I could see how it might well be a book. Still, lots of editing, advice from the publisher who was interested in the book and further editing was needed to make it into something that worked. I tested it out on some students, and they thought it useful. I should note that over the years, students and junior faculty told me they found my blog postings helpful as well. What I was saying was useful, although nothing I said was new. I found a way of penetrating people’s defenses and encouraging them to act rather than be defensive. It helped that I was willing to make fun of myself. Coming from New York [Brooklyn], it seemed that I was much more direct than most of my colleagues, although I just thought I was saying what was obvious.

MB: If a survivalist relies on a pocketknife and a compass, what is the academic’s most important academic survival tool?
MK: Keep working: research, writing, teaching. For if you don’t do research and writing, if they are not the center of your being, you will be eaten by all sorts of unsavory characters. If you do your research and writing, in part as a defense against chaos, and attend to your family, you are centered and bulletproof, you have a core that will be your North Star.
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A question they asked, but was excised from the published interview because of length considerations:

MB: You describe plagiarism as an academic IED. Why? Has it become a bigger problem in recent years or has technology just made it easier to uncover?

MK: When I discovered that in two classes almost all my students had lots of plagiarism in their papers, I had to address the problem. Most of them did not think they were plagiarizing, and that what they were doing was OK. (A few students told me that those other students should have learned the rules about plagiarism in high school.) When I brought up the issue to the classes and to their advisor, it did not go well. The rules say you have to report it to a suitable judicial office and when I did that, it got even worse. 

I was not trying to penalize the students. Their grades had already gone in before I discovered the plagiarism. I just wanted to make sure they did not continue in that mode. For if they continued to plagiarize unknowingly then their dissertations or theses would become the equivalent of IED's, ready to explode on them if someone just happened to look, especially after they filed and they received the degree.  Digital versions of dissertations and theses are readily available.

To confirm my concern, I checked a sample of doctoral dissertations, in a variety of fields, and the "Similarity Scores" are often about 5%-12%.  The Similarity Score is what the Turnitin program provides after going through the document, indicating where any copying might have taken place. I set the program not to count stuff in quotation marks, or the bibliography, or any phrase that would appear to be copied that is less than ten words long. (You can adjust all these. The program marks all the problematic passages even if they are not counted in the Score.) You have to look at the marked up document to make sure the program is really indicating copying. 

Students want to be aware of such technologies,  much as they are aware of automatic cameras that capture illegal left turns. You never want to say, "I am not a cheater," and then be confronted with a Turnitin-marked-up copy of your paper. 

Politicians are regularly caught copying without acknowledging the source, sometimes in a speech or newspaper column, sometimes in their dissertations. Their salience as public actors, and the presumptions we might have that they are ethically decent, makes these revelations particularly awkward. 

Defense Policy

I am teaching a course in Defense Policy this semester. My background is in domestic issues on the social and financial side. So, encountering this literature is very interesting.

1. Much of the discussion is ideological--whether it be about a justification for a specific service, weapon, policy, etc. Lots of evidence is offered, usually cherry-picked, but almost always the end point is given at the beginning.

2. Uncertainty plays a very large role. At the same time, much can be done to tame uncertainty with better intelligence, systematic analysis (and a sense of where arguments or evidence are most vulnerable), and some of the ideological or strategic or doctrinal ideas from #1. Whether that taming is good or diversionary is the big issue.

3. More than in most other policy areas, the "other" gets a vote. Hence, your enemy may make moves that are not only surprising, but are meant to be surprising, or are meant to be disinformation or distractions. Moreover, your other may be using a very different playbook than you are.

Related to #2 and #3, can you have some sort of option to revise or reverse your commitments, without having to pay too much for this option

4. Almost all talks of crisis or gaps or ... are scare tactics. There really are scary scenarios, or at least ones that require consideration, but usually as in #1 most such scenarios are in fact meant to push you in a direction rather than warn you of a problem.

5. Labor (soldiers!) is now expensive and represents a massive investment in training. Capital (equipment and technology) is less flexible than one would like, unit costs are in general high, yet the US needs a technological edge as much for reassurance as for fighting.

6. Getting the prices right is one problem, the other is getting the quantities right. By the latter I mean the bureaucratic organization, including jointness, unity of command, and internal conflicts that use up resources. Moreover, the combatants in this case are supported by external players (Congress, lobbying by firms and by services) who have a big say. The President may be Commander-in-Chief, but even five-star Eisenhower had to work very hard to have his commands implemented. (We know that in bureaucracies, there are many ways to slow down the effects of the higher ups.)

In general, each of the services has a doctrinal rationale for its primacy and necessity. But what is needed is a sense of the tasks and contingencies, and a doctrine that allows the services to work together to achieve the goals.

7. Fashions and Fears: Will our service or way of warfighting become obsolete. Should we have light footprint, COIN, regular land/air war configurations, what is the role of the Navy?, etc. Much of this is related to #6.

8. In times of budgetary stringency and downsizing (usually after wars), the problem is not the decreased budget. The problem is always the rigidity of your budgetary commitments due to long term plans and sunk assets, external and internal constituencies, and the ability of opponents to construct perhaps-credible accounts of what might happen.

9. Right now DoD produces Veterans, while VA deals with the products. There should be some way of internalizing the costing, to incentivize DoD policy. And VA should not be in the disability and entitlement business. The VA should be in the reinvestment business, transforming some of the population into productive civilians. Probably, there needs to be major research efforts of the next two decades, to do a better job in healing, reinvesting, and transformation. Too many private organization (profit, and even nonprofit) feed at the teats of the VA, often unscrupulously. (For profit higher education, nonprofits that do little except collect contributions,...)

10. You will always have scandalous behavior in such a large system as Defense. But each such scandal may suggest ways of diminishing such, without at the same time making for bureaucratic red tape. Hence, contracting and logistics, sexual harassment and violence, and narcotics, demand responses that actually make things better. Command structures are bound to be altered, for it is their leadership failure that is most troubling.

11. I believe that armed services have benefitted from the last 60+ years of less-discrimination or nondiscrimination, with stronger troops and officers. As more women move up in the services, improvements will become apparent. (As they have become apparent in the Congress.) What will become clear is that many issues and problems that were consequences of selective bias will be attended to.

Veterans Policy and Justification

In reading the literature on Veterans Policy, I am struck by the transcendent tone of obligation and debt in terms of moral or ethical considerations. Hence, there is little to be said about what to do in a time of sequestration (VA wasn't seq'd), rising Veterans needs, and budget stringency (since we don't seem willing to changes taxes).

My guess is that there will be a series of "scandals": veterans and providers scheming and gaming the system, the development of notions of the truly deserving and the not-deserving veteran, and the equivalent of the $600 screwdriver. Moreover, there will be pressure to put all governmental employees and "entitlers" into the ACA framework. Veterans preferences may well survive, but again there may be a division of the good and bad veterans, the truly disabled and the malingerers. I am not saying this is good. I suspect that there is enough stuff in the system to support this sort of "scandal." Everyone is for veterans, I am told. But not if the own non-veteran ox is gored too much.

What is needed now is a justification for the VA and veterans benefits that is not part of the "entitlement culture," as David Petraeus puts it. [Entitlements, and Tax Expenditures, are likely to be places where budgets will be touched, since they are large, are said to be "out of control."] Nowadays, the new term of art is "investment" in our future. Hence the argument should be:

DoD produces veterans. Many are enhanced by their experience, but many are injured, and some are surely mixed. But DoD does not deal with what it produces. The VA and nonprofits (if they are not scams) take this on. Their job is to increase the productivity of Americans who otherwise limited. Not only get people back in the workforce, but also into community life. These are not benefits for veterans, rather they are investments made by VA/nonprofits. For veterans, the goal is to be free of the VA if possible, not to receive benefits. For some veterans, maybe many, this is not possible, but how can they be more on their own with backup as needed. If there is a sense that compensation is needed for DoD induced injury, DoD ought be taking that on.

There is a veterans industry of those who claim to help veterans and their families. That industry may well be doing good, but it probably is more corrupt that is desirable. And the interest is in the bottom line for the firm or nonprofit, rather than the veterans themselves. You surely can do well by doing good, so I am not saying that all is awful.

The idea is to shift Veterans Policy from entitlement to investment, from benefits to proper care and support. Disability is the worst possible framework in which to deal with this, since there is a long tradition of scheming and gaming, and lots of real disabilities to be sure. Actually, probably there should be much more research and development on what works and on innovations. That will be cheap compared to the costs it saves.

Narcos, Legalization, Warming: Policy and Consequences

1. When we talk about narcoterrorism and "Mexico", we ought recall Prohibition: legalize, and the business goes away. The demand is from middle-class Americans: $ and numbers.
2. When we talk about immigration and legalization, keep in mind that widescale deportation or stigma means that there is no one to take care of children, landscape, pick fruit in the fields, etc.
3. When we talk about global warming, it is surely important to know the extent of the effect, and if possible information on whether it is called by societal actions (vs. some natural force). But you also need to then realize that any such physical consequence will surely lead to adaptations, some formal and statutory and by treaty, and many by price and market. If you have to talk about physics and about society.

Stephen Biddle: Military Power; Michael O'Hanlon, The Science of War, and his Sleeping Giants books.

The "modern system" of battle and strategy is meant to prevent offenses from destroying too many of your troops and materiel, to make it difficult for them to advance, to make it hard for them to locate their concealed and covered and dispersed opponents. And if you are an offender, you want to penetrate the defense to cut off the defense's supportive troops and logistical support so starving them in place. And in any case suppress fire, or make it much less effective if there is enough dispersion of defenders or focus of offense.

So roughly argues Stephen  Biddle in Military Power (2004), through case studies, statistical analysis, and gaming simulation. There's lots more, and I won't even try to systematically review its main points. I am not an expert, but when I read Biddle (including his analysis of the 2003 Iraq and of the 2006 Lebanon) he strikes me as concrete and systematic. His main point is that force deployment (the "modern system") matters and close battle happens much more often than most acknowledge nowadays. He is seen as attacking RMA/transformation, but I see him as carefully assessing the arguments.

I also like Michael O'Hanlon's work, The Science of War and his Sleeping Giant books. They are concrete and specific. No speeches, no ideologizing, just this is the what you can do with what people and materiel.

The Blog Will Now ONLY Be About Substantively Interesting Material and "Best Practices"

I realize now that much of my experience at the university, especially in the mid-70s and for the last 25 years has been one of disappointment and frustration. Not always, and perhaps not so often. But often enough. I go to a seminar or a meeting or even a class, and intellectual irritants are everpresent.

I will no longer write about such shenanigans and stupidity and nonsense. Writing about such is hyperventilating, so to speak. I have done my share of such accounting. It's time to stop, a full stop.

Every once in a while there is a seminar that makes me feel proud, a meeting that is useful, a student who really is good, and a class that is terrific. But less often than I would like. Yet, perhaps much more often than I should expect, given the nature of mass higher education and the highly diverse set of missions and goals of students and faculty and the diversions available to them. Still, even then it makes no sense to expect what I expect, since my expectations are intermixed with hopes that are unlikely to be realized.

So from now on, I will write either about substantively interesting material or best-practices and extraordinary performances. No more complaints, no descriptions of academic roadkill, no more accounts of presumptions of authority about topics when in fact ignorance reigns.

I do this for my well-being. I don't ever again want to leave a seminar exercised and frustrated. I will quietly leave, although some of the time I may not have perceived that the speaker really knows what's up. I won't wade through a presentation, where the main point is only revealed at the end or perhaps at the 2/3 point. If I don't know what's up by 15 minutes into a presentation, I will pack up my lunch and go back to my office.

Why I Wrote The Scholar's Survival Manual.

My motives in writing about scholarly life on my blog are twofold: I hate watching people make big yet avoidable mistakes. And what was good enough for me is not good enough for others-- I could protect them. Moreover, it was a way of writing it down rather than have it floating around in my head, seething, getting me upset or angry. 

I was on the University Committee for Appointment, Promotion, and Tenure, for a number of years, perhaps half my time at the university, in a number of periods. In my role, for six years I read all the dossiers from all fields at all ranks, so I saw a broad range of fields and problems, and along the way I learned lots about other disciplines and professions. The Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs and I would discuss my observations. When he looked at my blog, he encouraged me to make it into a book. At first I was reluctant. But he was persistent. And then when I took all the postings at that point (700+), and sorted them and discarded repetition, I could see how it might well be a book. Still, lots of editing, advice from the publisher who was interested in the book, and further editing was needed to make it into something that worked. I tested it out on some students, and they thought it useful. I should note that over the years students and junior faculty from from lots of universities told me they found it helpful, as well. What I was saying was useful, although nothing I said was new. I found a way of penetrating people's defenses and encouraging them to act rather than be defensive. It helped that I was willing to make fun of myself. Coming from New York (Brooklyn), it seemed that I was much more direct than most of my colleagues, although I just thought I was saying what was obvious. 

Seminars and Workshops--When to Stop Attending

I find that after 3/4 hour in almost all presentations, I want to escape. Often much earlier, rarely later. I expect that a presentation should make its main point in the first five minutes, so I am not trying to figure out where it is going, and it should not have gaping holes (namely, deep problems that you are sure must have occurred to the speaker and are not addressed). I work in a policy school, so we might be preached to about a policy's virtue. Just tell me the main ideas, the foundations for your claims. Preaching is for other contexts.

And your opinion, about virtually anything, is less likely to be of interest than your evidence and argument.

In the 1970s Paul Meehl published an essay, Why I Do Not Attend Case Conferences, in his Psychodiagnosis. I could not do better than Meehl.

One other thing. If you (I!) cannot get through most seminars without leaving exercised and irritated, it's time to stop going and maybe go to the movies instead. If you have to go, learn to sleep quietly, without snoring.

Apocalypticism and Armageddon: On reading and listening to climate scientists' ideas about how to respond to what they have ascertained.

1.       I am sorry I had to leave. I could not take it.

2.       The recital of our need to change has been with us for decades. That we might have catastrophic consequences are always adduced. The cause changes.

3.       There is a history of studies of shortages and environmental crises, energy problems etc. There is a problem that we might respond too slowly and be caught in an inescapable spiral. But in general, the economist’s market or social/political processes have been sort-of responsive, and we have muddled along. We surely have made irreversible changes, but some of them are probably good.

4.       Maybe Climate is the real ultimate exception. I’m not arguing against climate science. Richard Muller’s work convinced me. What I am saying is that apocalypticism is rife, and when such prophesy fails we wonder why we wasted resources of money and people. Maybe this is the real apocalypse, the scientists’ Second Coming—but as a Jew I remain skeptical.

5.       What might EPA do on the cheap: Form a committee of historians and economists and sociologists… and ask them for the Climate Related Applicable Social Science (CRASS), in summary. Commission a National Academy of Sciences study. If the CIA can do it, so can EPA. Maybe even have some experts on religion and theology to give you analogies from that world, where what you are asking for are historical and theological analogies.

6.       I’ve written a series of articles on the probability of doom, the nature of responsiveness, and making good semi-apocalyptic arguments. I am sure there is much better work out there. Steal it.

7.       I understand the articles we were given were signs of the climate scientists’ discovery of the limits of their ken. But in a university, we can walk across campus and ask our colleagues. In fact, the Department of Defense uses lots of social science and history, as well as its fabled natural science and engineering, in planning, designing, and training. EPA should be able to do so. I realize Congress places limits, but you certainly could find say $10 million to find out what is known on the other side of the divide, although I expect that $200,000 might be enough.

8.       I am sorry I was so exasperated. I got involved with all this because I was told that the sky was falling, in about 1968 or 69. It is déjà vu all over again. We can do much better and stop talking like preachers and more like real scientists. The literature on arms control evidences that the smart scientists have deep insights. BUT in fact they are not so convincing when thinking through consequences and societal actions. (You do better with economists and strategy people from a business school says Albert Wohlstetter.)

 

By the way, I am not in the employ of the Koch brothers. These observations do not diminish the importantce of climate scientists' findings, or even question them. But they cannot discover the wheel, and expect us to smile approvingly at them.