Exalta Vocem
On the nature and use of prophetic language
What does one say when words have never been cheaper?
It pains me as a writer, as an academic, as a theologian, to say that words are cheap. Words are my life. Words are the chosen medium through which I express my art. I have always loved writing and the written word. I have gone as far as to say that language itself is one of the greatest innovations of humankind, swiftly followed by the written word. Words matter to me a great deal.
And, unfortunately, words are cheap.
It costs me nothing, save for all the education that I have received, to write anything. I blog here on a free platform, and my podcast is hosted on a free platform. For now, my right to speak freely is uninhibited, save for the mysterious black box that is the whim of “the algorithm1.” At the same time, the same is true for everyone else on the planet. Everyone has the same access to social media, forums, blogging, and podcasting as anyone else. The cost for entry has never been more affordable.
As a result, words are so cheap now that we are drowning in an ocean of words.
The internet once promised us unrestricted access to a world of information. It was once a place where you could find all sorts of delightful things. It was once infinitely customizable and eminently free. Of course, it was unreliable—you were just as liable to find a crank, peddling theories about time-cubes as you were to find genuine, verifiable information—but at the very least, the unreliable stuff was generated by human beings who had to manually type all the words themselves. If you found something on the internet, nine times out of ten, it was put there by someone who was just trying to reach out to like-minded people and share information, insights, or community.
The internet, as it exists now, is a shell of its former self. Tech companies have produced an ever-contracting series of “walled gardens,” inspired by their original prophet, the late Steve Jobs. Jobs pioneered much of the ethos of the modern tech world, but it would seem that the once rogue computer salesman who started in a garage has inspired multiple cults of ever-maddening followers. Jobs would go on to inspire people like Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and other tech oligarchs who would prefer to carve up the existing world into their own tech fiefdoms for us serfs to subsist within. And driving it is a desire to flood their world and their parts of it with machine-generated nonsense, slop delivered by a digital djinn grafted onto once-useful services. They want to drown us in nonsense, to drown out the words of genuine human beings. They do not live in worlds defined by truth, and they want the same for everyone under their control. Gone are customizable personal spaces. Gone are hobbyist blogs. Gone are the people who post out of love for their hobbies, their arts, and their community.
They have cheapened words and have made the world worse because of it. So what is the prophet to do when the machine has rendered the word itself difficult to hear, see, and understand?
I have been thinking a great deal about the concept of freedom and how we interact with it. As a US American citizen, it was very much drilled into me at an early age that “we lived in the freest society in the world,” and that our enemies “hated us because of our freedom.” Funny, that. Nobody ever actually explained what freedom truly meant, nor bothered to actually empower us to use our freedom.
Case in point: the pledge of allegiance. Saying the pledge, a thing that was relatively new in our nation’s history, a thing which itself underwent an edition in the 50’s to include a reference to God, was sacrosanct. Since school prayer was not compulsory, the pledge took on the compulsory status of a thing like a prayer, uttered with gravity and solemnity. But, dare one ask why we do such a thing? Well, that was simply Not Done. Not in Texas. Not in this country. Saying the pledge was done to ensure that we appreciate the great things about our country, and to honor the troops who have died to defend it. Funny. Why pledge allegiance to a piece of colored fabric, really? And why offer prayers to a country, a republic, that cannot in turn respond to you? Why show reverence for “liberty and justice for all,” when I did not have the liberty to simply refuse to say this little oath, this pinch of incense to Caesar? Surely, if I live in the land of “liberty and justice for all,” I am free to not stand and say this pledge. I certainly don’t do that now. But that was not the case for most of my life, I am afraid.
Most of my life, I did as I was told. I thought obedience was a much more important value to adhere to than liberty. Freedom was something other people got to have. Freedom was a value to hold in reverence, but not in reality. Part of this is upbringing and family-of-origin related, to be sure; I was a pastor’s kid “living in a fishbowl,” and that brought a lot of pressure to behave obediently. Part of it was also personal anxiety; I was a fat (closeted) queer kid in a heavily conformist society of Gulf Coastal Texas, and did not want to attract any further ostracism from my peers or from adults for being “unpatriotic.” And so, I bit my tongue. I didn’t rock the boat.
But it is a funny thing how taking my religion more seriously caused me also to question preconceptions about “patriotism.” When Jesus commanded us not to undertake any oaths, what is a “pledge of allegiance” if not a kind of oath to an earthly master? Does Jesus not teach us that we cannot serve two masters, that one always supersedes the other? And for that matter, why do we have the American flag in our churches? What purpose does it serve? Jesus was not American. Indeed, he had no country; the kingdom of heaven has no earthly boundaries. If boundaries are fake, and Jesus goes beyond all of them, then why owe fealty to this current region’s governmental authority? If Jesus is the king of kings, what good is a state in the first place?
You see, that is the danger with freedom. If you feel free enough to pull one thread, well, who knows how many other threads might unravel in the process. Because I felt a great reverence for my faith in Christianity, and for Jesus in particular, other things held in similar reverence felt… artificial. Cheap. Unsubstantial, in comparison. And so, I began not to recite the pledge at public functions. I would stand in reverence, sure, but the words did not pass my lips. I was careful, however. The cult of the American Civil Religion is a powerful one, and it can take a devastating toll on those who choose not to bend the knee.
If we have freedom to speak, are also supposed to be free of compelled speech. It is a right so essential that it is the first one enumerated in the Bill of Rights. A person ought to be free to associate freely, to speak their mind freely, and as long as it harms nobody, to hold their own opinion and express it, even when it contradicts the imperial cult.
Why this digression into the pledge of allegiance? Because it goes back to a matter of personal and professional identity. You see, we are in an age when the court prophets have taken over the temple. We are flooded not only with automated nonsense but with actual bullshit from professional bullshitters. The world is replete with bad opinions and false opinions, and it makes it all the more difficult to speak clearly, to perceive clearly, to express things like truth, virtue, and integrity. In a world so polluted by bullshit, it has never been more important to speak prophetically in response.
What started this essay was, as ever, a lectionary reading, Isaiah 58:1-9a, [9b-12]. Reading this passage was a good reminder that there is utility in speaking loudly and clearly on matters of public interest. More precisely, Isaiah calls for the people to shout and announce the sins of the kingdom of Israel, to expose the cruelty and evil that have been inflicted upon the poor and the oppressed. Drag the monsters into the light of day, and force them to lay bare their wickedness for the world to see.
And then, more of the Epstein files were released for public exposure.
I do not frequently dwell upon the vile actions of Epstein and his network of powerful, influential businessmen, politicians, and intellectuals. I often find no use in my personal reflection on it, because I feel like doing so only lets despair, dread, and righteous anger overwhelm me. That is, of course, the intent of the DOJ. They wish to overwhelm the populace with the enormity and the gravity of the truth. There is no effort at carefully providing relevant information to the people, but to drown us in decades of emails, correspondence, and horrifying imagery. It is an ocean of volume, noise, and perhaps the most concentrated matrix of wickedness imaginable. And so, we are compelled by curiosity to open the forbidden chest, and gaze upon the distilled evil of powerful men.
The monsters—most of them, at least—have been dragged out, and it turns out that there is nothing in society they have not spoiled. Business, politics, religion, and academia have all been polluted by this network of demonic2 influence. Indeed, were we to hold every single person implicated by the files, the whole system, worldwide, would most likely collapse.
And yet, is that not what we are called to do?
Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?3
It sounds like, to me, that such a thing is exactly what Isaiah would have in mind. Indeed, that is what God has in mind, as well. Because what part of breaking every yoke is unclear? What part of share your bread, open your house, clothe the naked, and hide not is unclear?
The not-so-secretive part of prophetic speech is that prophetic speech requires action. There are specific and explicit instructions associated with the action of seeking justice, exposing evil, and calling out the abuses of society at every level. It requires a rebalancing of the scales, scales so wildly out of balance that no person in living memory could ever truly say they lived in a time that was ever just, moral, or fair. The crimes of the Epstein network are the crimes of the slaveholder, the money-mover, the capitalist, the emperor, the imperial centurion, and so on. These have been the crimes of America for as long as there has been an America. These are the crimes of history itself: slavery, trafficking, rape, abuse, pedophilia, and cannibalism. These are the very sins that Isaiah prophesies against.
So, as ever, what is there for us to do? The system that was built is unlikely to address the crimes of the people at the helm of our society. Why would they prosecute themselves? Are we simply left to feel helpless?
Never. I refuse to be helpless, and so should you. I have a gift with words, and despite the oceans of bullshit, the walled gardens that incarcerate and divide, I will use what little influence I have to call for justice, to speak against evil, and witness to the truth. I ask you to begin the work of reconciliation first in your own communities, and in your own heart most of all.
Something that has become more and more evident as time passes is that the work of anarchy is concerned with building parallel structures in society. It is to build the new world within the rotted husk of the old. It is to act as if you already live in a state of anarchy, and do the right thing in your community. Get active. Get to know your neighbors. Get connected to your own city council or city management, and become that annoying citizen who questions why the powerful are doing what they are doing. Do it in whatever sphere of influence you can find. If that means you are building it through an established organization or starting a new one, so be it. Imagine what the world can be, and then try to change the one we are in to be more like the one you want.
Try not to be paralyzed by the enormity of the world’s problems. There are armies of lawyers looking to act on the Epstein files; you don’t need to look in those files to find corruption everywhere. Start in your community. Get organized. Work for justice where you can. If you do,
Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt;
you shall raise up the foundations of many generations;you shall be called the repairer of the breach,
the restorer of streets to live in.4
So get loud, and get to work.
That is a thing that troubles me, frankly. We have come to refer to any kind of unknown formula that “decides” which words and which voices get amplified as “the algorithm,” as if it were a mysterious deity or dark daemon. This is a thought for a different blog post, probably, but it does disturb me the extent to which we have personified a math formula.
I do not use the phrase “demonic” lightly. What has been done to people by the powerful is actually diabolical, influenced by the devil. Perhaps that might stray too far from the materialist set, but in the face of such enormous cruelty and depravity, what other word could I use to express the truth?
Isaiah 58:6-7
Isaiah 58:12