requiescat in pace, romanos

Today, I was reminded once again just how bad I am at keeping in touch with people. I found out that my friend and godfather, Romanos, passed away back in October. October! I'd even been thinking about him recently, thinking about how I hadn't seen much from him on Facebook or his blogs for a long time. So when Barbara mentioned his passing, I was shocked.

I met Romanos back in 2010 at Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church, where he was volunteering during their annual Greek festival. We spent a lot of time talking that day, and we eventually became friends, talking (and sometimes arguing) about religion, philosophy, politics, you name it. He was a unique person to say the least, and I never quite figured him out; but he was genuinely kind and smart and caring. He loved to talk, but he was also a good listener when he needed to be.

What I appreciated the most about him, though, was his approach to spirituality. It was contemplative and loving and it really spoke to me. I really enjoyed our discussions. Because of him, I started to see something good in everyone. Our long talks gave me plenty to think about, and he truly got my spirituality. He gave me a couple of books that really piqued my interest in contemplative Christianity, an interest that eventually led me to spend a week at a nearby Trappist monastery. And from there, I soon discovered the wonderful community at St. Philip Neri.

With his help, I'd found my own spiritual home, a warm, welcoming community with a strong interest in social justice and a contemplative foundation. And when I decided to be formally initiated into the community, I asked Romanos to be my godfather even though he was Orthodox and the community I was joining was Catholic. But labels never really mattered to Romanos, and he followed his heart regardless of what people thought about his religious and political views or the company he kept.

He was my friend even though he disagreed with my politics. He was my friend when I called myself a Buddhist. He was my friend when I called myself a Catholic Buddhist. And he remained my friend when I simply saw myself as a contemplative socialist of various stripes, deeply ecumenical and outspoken on progressive social issues.

We'd often go months without speaking, and during that time, I was going through a lot of changes. New job. New place. New relationship. I guess I was just too wrapped up in my own world to notice the Facebook post his son made about his passing. I regret not being at the funeral to say goodbye, but I'm consoled by the fact that I knew such a strange and wonderful character at all.

Everlasting be your memory, my brother, who are worthy of blessedness and eternal memory.

realizing our species-being

One thing that I completely agree with the Young Marx on is the need for society to move beyond its fetishism of the right to liberty in the form of private property (i.e., the right to enjoy and dispose of property without regard to others, esp. in terms of corporate 'persons') and towards a realization of its species-being.

Unlike those who assume 'human nature' is a fixed, static thing that's naturally greedy, competitive, etc., I take the position that much of what we label human nature is fluid and changeable yet strongly conditioned by the world around us, especially by the economic 'base' of society, i.e., the way society reproduces itself. Hence the forces and social relations that are embodied within any given mode of production help to shape and influence the ideas and interrelationships within that society (which, in a global context, includes those between nation-states as well as between individuals).

In A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, for example, Marx famously writes:

In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite relations, which are independent of their will, namely relations of production appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of production. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.

Within capitalism, what Marx terms the 'coercive laws of competition' force individual capitals to compete with one another and exploit labour as much as they can in the pursuit of profit; and at the same time, these coercive laws of competition force individual workers to compete with fellow workers, locally as well as globally, for jobs that provide the wages they depend on to survive. And this, in turn, influences and reinforces relations (individual, national, etc.) that are built upon or grow out of this socio-economic foundation.

The problem is, civil society is a decidedly communal endeavour. And as Marx saw it, our species-being is an "ensemble of social relations," which are mutable, rather than an "abstraction inherent in each single individual." The logic of capitalism and the social relations arising out of it, however, structure a society in which we create the bare "semblance of a human existence" instead allowing our nature its full expression, leading to everything from alienated labour to the fostering of profitable industries that harm our very existence.

And I think no area demonstrates this more than the environment and the negative impact the contradictions inherent to capitalism have had on it, with its crises, coercive laws of competition, and accumulation for accumulation's sake that compel businesses and individual capitalists to put profits over all other concerns.