banking services chronicle pdf
banking services chronicle pdf published this article One of the most well known figures in the bible is King David. The historicity of the life and reign of David is without question among bible believers and most all others as well. But did you know that David said that God knew him long before his birth or his reign over Israel In fact David said that God knew him while he was still in his mothers womb Psalm 13913. Whew thank God He didnt mistake David for just a fetus. Lets go one step further to make the point. That God knows us from the womb is one thing but here is another. The most precious thing God could ever endow someone with is his own presence. He does not put his Holy Spirit on anything that is not holy. He does not put His Spirit on anything that is not human either. Yet the Bible says that He put his Holy Spirit on John the Baptist while he was still in his mothers womb. Luke 115 God didnt put his Spirit on a fetus it was a human good thing God knew that too bad we dont. Lo children are an heritage of the Lord and the fruit of the womb is a reward. banking services chronicle pdf
banking services chronicle magazine pdf Published this article page no It is the war of the sated against the famished the obese against the emaciated the affluent against the impoverished the democracies against tyranny perhaps Christianity against Islam and definitely the West against the Orient. It is the ultimate metaphor replete with mass destruction collateral damage and the will of the international community. In this euphemistic Bedlam Louis Althusser would have felt at home. With the exception of Nietzsche no other madman has contributed so much to human sanity as has Louis Althusser. He is mentioned twice in the Encyclopaedia Britannica merely as a teacher. Yet for two important decades the 1960s and the 1970s Althusser was at the eye of all the important cultural storms. He fathered quite a few of them. Althusser observed that society consists of practices economic political and ideological. He defines a practice as Any process of transformation of a determinate product affected by a determinate human labour using determinate means of production. The economic practice the historically specific mode of production currently capitalism transforms raw materials to finished products deploying human labour and other means of production in interactive webs. The political practice does the same using social relations as raw materials. Finally ideology is the transformation of the way that a subject relates to his reallife conditions of existence. The very being and reproduction of the social base not merely its expression is dependent upon a social superstructure. The superstructure is relatively autonomous and ideology has a central part in it. Americas social superstructure for instance is highly ideological. The elite regards itself as the global guardian and defender of liberaldemocratic and capitalistic values labeled good against alternative moral and thought systems labeled evil. This selfassigned mission is suffused with belligerent religiosity in confluence with malignant forms of individualism mutated to narcissism and progress turned materialism. Althussers conception of ideology is especially applicable to Americas demonisation of Saddam Hussein admittedly not a tough job and its subsequent attempt to justify violence as the only efficacious form of exorcism. People relate to the conditions of existence through the practice of ideology. It smoothes over contradictions and offers false though seemingly true solutions to real problems. Thus ideology has a realistic attribute and a dimension of representations myths concepts ideas images. There is harsh conflicting reality and the way that we represent it both to ourselves and to others. This applies to both dominant and subordinate groups and classes ideologies do not just convince oppressed groups and classes that all is well more or less with the world they also reassure dominant groups and classes that what others might call exploitation and oppression is in fact something quite different the operations and processes of universal necessity Guide to Modern Literary and Cultural Theorists ed. Stuart Sim PrenticeHall 1995 p. 10 To achieve the above ideology must not be seen to err or worse remain speechless. It therefore confronts and poses to itself only questions it can answer. This way it is confined to a fabulous fantastic contradictionfree domain. It ignores other types of queries altogether. It is a closed solipsistic autistic selfconsistent and intolerant thought system. Hence the United States adamant refusal to countenance any alternative points of view or solutions to the Iraqi crisis. Althusser introduced the concept of The Problematic The objective internal reference ... the system of questions commanding the answers given. The Problematic determines which issues questions and answers are part of the narrative and which are overlooked. It is a structure of theory ideology a framework and the repertoire of discourses which ultimately yield a text or a practice. All the rest is excluded. It is therefore clear that what is omitted is of no less importance than what is included in a text or a practice. What the United States declines or neglects to incorporate in the resolutions of the Security Council in its own statements in the debate with its allies and ultimately in its decisions and actions teaches us about America and its motives its worldview and culturalsocial milieu its past and present its mentality and its practices. We learn from its omissions as much as we do from its commissions. The problematic of a text reveals its historical context moment by incorporating both inclusions and omissions presences and absences the overt and the hidden the carefully included and the deliberately excluded. The problematic of the text generates answers to posed questions and defective answers to excluded ones. Althusser contrasts the manifest text with a latent text which is the result of the lapses distortions silences and absences in the manifest text. The latent text is the diary of the struggle of the unposed question to be posed and answered. Such a deconstructive or symptomatic reading of recent American texts reveals as in a palimpsest layers of 19th centurylike colonialist mercantilist and even imperialist mores and values the white mans burden the mission of civilizing and liberating lesser nation the implicit right to manage the natural resources of other polities and to benefit from them and other eerie echoes of Napoleonic Old Europe. But ideology does not consist merely of texts. It is a lived material practice rituals customs patterns of behavior ways of thinking taking practical form reproduced through the practices and productions of the Ideological State Apparatuses ISAs education organized religion the family organized politics the media the cultural industries... ibid p.12 Althusser said that All ideology has the function which defines it of constructing concrete individuals as subjects. Subjects to what The answer is to the material practices of the ideology such as consumption or warfare. This the creation of subjects is done by acts of hailing or interpellation. These attract attention hailing and force the individuals to generate meaning interpretation and thus make the subjects partake in the practice. The application of this framework is equally revealing when one tackles not only the American administration but also the uniformly patriotic read nationalistic media in the United States. The press uses selfcensored news commentary and outright propaganda to transform individuals to subjects i.e. to supporters of the war. banking services chronicle magazine pdf
