United Colleges - Vox Yearbook (Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada)

Page 29 text:

of all that is good and right in the world and so all who threaten our way of life are evil. However, it is the Christian faith which sees most profoundly into the true nature of evil. It is true that Marx saw evil with a clarity that his contemporaries lacked, but even he could not see its true dimensions. He put it outside of men; the Christian says that man himself is corrupted in the very depths of his heart. The Christian faith sees evil as that positive force in man which not only corrupts socio-economic forms but also has shattered the very structure of his own being. This is not just a different emphasis from Marx’s under¬ standing but an entirely different understand¬ ing of the true nature of evil. Evil always has to do with man’s structural relationship with God. Therefore, Christians cannot believe that the ills of the world can be resolved simply by changing the external forms. Man can be only redeemed through the re-establishment of the structural relationship with God. Man cannot re-establish this relationship; it is God alone who can do that. The Christian affirms in faith, that God did in Jesus Christ.. Only as men know the forgiving love of God are they reunited with the true centre of their lives. And only within this structural relationship do men stand in the true community of the Brotherhood of Man. To the living God and to Him only can men give utter obedience. The Artful Hitch-hiker A ONE ACT PLAY by JAMES WILLER CHARACTERS (in order of appearance) Janet Suracci (Daughter of an important railway official) Alsta Fyffe (An up and coming artist) Oscar Gabion (Younger, and the companion- pupil of Alsta) Scene The Trans-Canada Highway somewhere be¬ tween Trail and Nelson. The summer of 1952. A young lady is busy tinkering with a car. She is very well built. Raphael would have de¬ lighted in her as a model. Of course she would have refused him were it possible they could meet; unless he painted her in the turret of a tank, testing an aeroplane, or driving Hyperion’s Chariot in his stead. She possesses the bearing of one who knows what she is doing, and where she is going. In other words she is absolutely deadly—from the point of view of men. At this moment she is in the act of readjusting some device for the control of the speed of the car. Her father installed it, knowing her for an incurable dare-devil. She is rather irritated by the fact that she must secretly engage and dis¬ engage this device a few miles out of town, at the cost of quite a bit of trouble. However, she thinks it is worth while. Two hitch-hikers appear, carrying enormous haver-sacks, with rolled sleeping bags hanging askew. Their heavy burdens look painfully un¬ comfortable to bear, and can be best described as a bloated confusion of underwear, writing paper, bread, books and paints. The interstices are filled with rolled-oats, the accumulation of four months of leaky cartons. In addition, each carries a parcel, and a paper shopping bag. A palette is seen hanging out to dry. They are artists, returning from a summer’s tour of the Rockies. Travelling expenses amount to a dol- lar-fifty for five thousand miles. Oscar the younger, is glowing with pride in this accom¬ plishment, and in a few miserable drawings which supply him with visions of memorable canvases. The elder is nonchalant, by contrast. But then, the younger has not hitch-hiked Page Twenty-seven

Page 28 text:

centre of the world. He desires to be God. Plac¬ ing himself in this position he tries to bend all men to his own will for self-aggrandizement. All men stand in this position, for all men are sinners; men are estranged from one another because each has made himself his own centre. Thus it is evident that evil is not something outside of man’s nature. It is not rooted in any objective historical reality. Rather, it is a posi¬ tive force which permeates the whole of man himself. The corrupted human situation has deeper roots than mere historical and sociologi¬ cal structures. It is rooted in the depths of the human heart. The Marxist understanding of evil is extrinsic to the nature of man. Marx was aware of evil but he saw it as being inherent in the socia- economic structure and not in man himself. Man himself he considered good. Marx thought that man’s actions were always relative to the the socio-economic structure and as a result if this same structure was evil then man’s actions became evil. Marx also saw that the manifes¬ tation of this evil was bourgeois individualism, the estrangement of man from man, every man standing by himself and for himself. Marx be¬ lieved that evil could be eliminated and man’s natural goodness restored by changing the socio¬ economic structure. Through this new socio¬ economic structure a collective is established in which he believed men would be restored to a true relationship with one another. By formulating this theory Marx was speak¬ ing prophetically to his time. In every age man has created complex structures in which he seeks to direct the course of his life and to these forms he has always sought to give an authority of absolute sanction, refusing to admit their fragmentariness. But Marx saw through the pretensions of his age and pointed out the in¬ justice and brutality of bourgeois capitalism. He shattered the bourgeois idea of inevitable progress which assumes a natural equilibrium of economic power. I believe that Marx’s in¬ sights into the evil of the socio-economic struc¬ ture of his time were valid. However, he mis¬ understood the real origin of this evil. Thus the conclusions that he drew were false. They were false because he failed to under¬ stand the source of evil and therefore its true dimensions. Since evil is a positive force which is in the very heart of man it cannot be eradi¬ cated simply by reordering the economic struc¬ ture. Marx saw that man was separated from man but he attributed this separation to the economic order alone. He thus sought to re¬ unite man with man through the external structures of the economic factor, thus creating a collective. But again he did not see deep enough into the meaning of evil. Men are not separated from one another just on an economic plane but in the depths of their being. There¬ fore his collective unites men on a superficial level only and does not heal the real infection which poisons mankind. Man remains a sinner and is thus still separated from his fellows. Yet Marx did not see this in his own system. He, in his piercing insight, revealed the fragmen¬ tariness of bourgeois capitalism and went on to show how all systems were incomplete and contain within themselves the seed of their own destruction. But Marx refused to admit that his system is just as fragmentary. The in¬ adequacies of other cultures do not appear in his. The Marxist has posited his understanding as absolute truth from which he judges all sys¬ tems but will allow for no judgement on his position. Thus Russia finds greatest difficulty in establishing inner moral checks upon its will to power; not because it is communistic or ma¬ terialistic but because it is informed by a single religion and culture which makes self-criticism impossible and self-righteousness inevitable. However, though we may think the evil and the contradictions of the Marxist position are obvious, we of the west participate in those same contradictions. They are more subtle but perhaps for that very reason they are more dangerous. We too externalize our understand¬ ing of evil although in a slightly different way. Instead of seeing evil as inherent in the faulty order of the world, we see it in those nations or systems which threaten our prosperity and security. So, like Marx, we look for a false re¬ demption. If we can only get rid of the Kaiser the New Age will appear. If Hitler can be de¬ feated then surely the New Order will be ushered in. And now, if only Russia can be taken care of the Kingdom will come. And we too absolutize our position by claiming that the great American way of life is the Messianic hope of the world and we support this claim by asserting that all the religious forces of the world stand with us. We are the representatives Page Twenty-six

Page 30 text:

through North Africa, half Europe, painted Venice and given innumerable one-man shows. He is the enthusiastic convert to a more exciting mode of travel, and fashion of painting. JANET: Equality is the musical ripple on the top . . . The murky male collusion’s under¬ neath. If life were not the exciting sea it is, and arms and legs to paddle the body’s boat, I’d curse my father to his very face, though I’d crumple in his mad grizzly grip . . . (Enter Alsta). ALSTA: Having trouble? JANET: Let us not be obvious. ALSTA: Then let’s be frank, her rich re¬ lation. JANET: A rich, what? ALSTA: I’m asking for a lift. That is when we are repaired. JANET: Hitch-hikers (she sounds disgust¬ ed). ALSTA: That calling. JANET: Calling? ALSTA: O yes we’re religiously inspired; that is the primates among us. There are of course the laymen. Penny flips we call them. JANET: And you are dollar flips I suppose? ALSTA: O, no. Much better. We’re dollar- fifty flips. Five thousand miles for a dollar- fifty. JANET: Be off, man! I know your religion. Canons of lampreys, hyperorthodoxy of hyenas, beliefs of bald eagles that prey on burdened ospreys. At least I’m the daughter of the self- sufficient. (The girl slithers under the car with a dex¬ terous wriggle, spanner in hand.) OSCAR: She’s the daughter of a self-made man, note. ALSTA: Our Maker’s abused. Hired by one generation, and fired by the next. And now currently indisposed by a battery of peeping Toms, led by a two hundred inch pussyfoot, nosing nightly among His mattresses of stars. OSCAR: Let us walk. ALSTA: Walk! And flout the first law, sacrosanct. Offend the Prime Cause who effect¬ ed motor cars for us who revel in the miracle we’re heir to. Besides, our calling’s been spat on, and our self respect bellows for reinstate¬ ment. She’ll pay the recompense I’ve settled on. OSCAR: How? ALSTA: By driving us into town. OSCAR: My feet are cold. ALSTA: And by belly’s burning with hot indignant coals. OSCAR: I’ll catch my death of cold, unless— ALSTA: You warm your blue nails in my display of firewords. Remember the tongue— OSCAR: And the thumb are the tools of our profession. I know. ALSTA: Then remember, proselyte. Wrap your argumentum as a wife wraps her Christ¬ mas cake. Tinsel of antitheses, frills of white wit and purple pathos. Yes, and a glass of euphony clouds the insipidity of an ill—mixed proposition. OSCAR: Why whet your tongue on her? She’s the stone you get no blood from. Besides Maillol carved her out of the tenth rib of a fossilized whale. ALSTA: O, we can command waterfalls of wisdom, rainbows of rhetoric, rivers of disserta¬ tion, whose springs rose in the first primeval thought and rillets multilingual. Little we piddle in, but may unlock milleniums of flood to wear away a stone. OSCAR: It should mortally offend the artist in you to use art for persuasion. Suppose you should stumble into the valley of the shadow of the half true, being lost in a maze of words. ALSTA: You’d expurgate me, I suppose. I could call you by a fashionable dirty name. OSCAR: Not that! Why? ALSTA: Because you would blow up parlia¬ ments and pull down pulpits . . . Shall I tell you what everyone else can plainly see; that man is a demi-god? OSCAR: How? ALSTA: Because he makes that which is born, copulates and dies, like him. OSCAR: What is that? ALSTA: Truths. You should know. You’ve spent half your irreplaceable hours squatting among ‘tome-stones’ reading epitaphs. Men re¬ spect the well-wrapped lie. Imagine the tonnage of wholesome stuff dumped into the sea of the world’s forgetfulness, because men abhor an un¬ attractive carton. Why have we incorporated the lemon, the sourest of fruit? OSCAR: Because men love the color yellow, and the shape of a woman’s breasts. ALSTA: My pupil! Oscar! (A glow of pride is perceptible). Page Twenty-eight