** FATHER FRANK’S RANTS Rant Number 744 5 October 17 A SAGE IN LAS VEGAS

CAN ANCIENT WISDOM HELP IN FACING TRAGEDIES LIKE THE LAS VEGAS MASSACRE?
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59 innocent people slain and 500 wounded by the Las Vegas gunman. Atrocious? Yes but…it could have been worse. Infinitely worse. What if the weirdo had detonated a nuclear weapon? Or a bacteriological bomb? Unlikely but not impossible - something ISIS might achieve one day, God forbid. What would the body count be then? And what about the worldwide, sky-high lamentations? Can you figure them?

The stock response of media and political pundits to catastrophic events is predictable and, frankly, tedious. The philosopher Plotinus offers a more original and virile approach. Naturally, his take is for the elites. Not for the masses but for the lofty ones, the thinkers or the sages. The philosopher will pursue wisdom and the moral virtues. He will be sorry for the misfortunes of others and help insofar as he can but remain inwardly somewhat detached. Because evil and suffering pertain to the body, the material and inferior part of himself – not to the eternal, immaterial soul – the true self.

Wot! Unbearably cold and callous? It would be, if exclusively about the miseries of others. But the sage practices what he preaches. If he is wronged, imprisoned, even executed, well, he will be free from the shackles of the physical body, the prison of the soul. Plotinus’ inspiration and model is Socrates. The brave champion of reason who, unjustly condemned to death, did not opt for flight but, as Plato relates in dialogues like Phaedo and Crito, cheerfully drank the hemlock and spent his last hours discoursing serenely about life after death – immortality. Indeed, for Socrates the whole of the philosopher’s life was a training, a preparation for death.

The sage, Plotinus holds, is unworried about his own fate, happiness or misery. Does he fall chronically ill or into extreme poverty? His loved ones, his children perish in car accidents or butchered in senseless horrors like Las Vegas? No matter. Unlike old Job, the sage is unaffected. He does not commiserate. He does not agitate for gun sales to be outlawed.  Instead, he steadily contemplates the truths of the next world, the dazzling light of the One Reality above, which alone can bring supreme contentment and lasting joy.

Belief in an after-life is essential to the sage’s wisdom. The hinge upon everything else turns. That is not exclusive to Western tradition. Having reached the age of 60, the Dalai Lama, the chief authority of Tibetan Buddhism, now 82, declared that he had ‘to prepare himself for death’. (Reincarnation is, I suppose, what he is looking forward to.) Is it because Western man seems to have forgotten about eternity, the live beyond the grave, that human tragedies are so absurdly inflated?

Admittedly, Plotinus’ ethics exhibits a certain superhuman hardness. The sufferings of the wicked do not move him – it serves them right! (Did they sin in a previous life, as Hinduism has it? Anyway, they will suffer far more in the next world.) What about the innocent? What about the holocaust? The Jews should have fought back. Some youths are beaten up by thugs? Well, why didn’t they take care to learn karate and so to defend themselves? Tyrants rule over you? Crooked, corrupt politicians are in charge of your country? You have brought it upon yourself by not rising up. Or by not taking care to throw the scoundrels out. As a later thinker, Count Joseph De Maistre, rightly commented: ‘Every country has the government it deserves.’

Could the sage in extreme cases commit suicide? Socrates had advised against it. Men are like the slaves of the gods and so have no right to self-destruct, any more than human slaves would. That argument seems dated. Stoic philosophers had justified self-killing, provided it was rationally chosen, i.e. not motivated by trivial passions, like being jilted in love. Plotinus had a disciple, a Semite called Porphyry, who got depressed and wanted to top himself. Plotinus sensibly advised him to take a break, so Porphyry went to Sicily – a desirable holiday resort in the ancient world – and lived on. On the whole, Plotinus taught that the battle against the passions should be fought on earth, here and now, and not by unduly anticipating the final release.

Is Plotinus’ tough attitude incompatible with Christianity? Yes, to sentimental versions of it. Like, say, Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov. Ivan K. cannot accept a God who permits children to suffer. Of course, Platonic sharp dualism between soul and body is unacceptable because it conflicts with the Incarnation – God becoming man in Jesus Christ. Still, Jesus warned: ‘Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy soul and body in hell.’ (10:28) The Church thus follows the Lord’s words in teaching that soul is higher than body. As to the resurrection, the risen body will be of an entirely different nature…

In truth, the Christian ideal is properly the self-sacrificing saint – like St Francis, my own patron - not the impassive Greek sage. Yet the two could be reconciled. St Francis and his Franciscans would not stand aloof in Las Vegas but labour among the victims, assist the wounded and the maimed. Yet, they would echo the Lord’s promise in Revelation: ‘…death shall be no more. Neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.’

Revd Frank Julian Gelli

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