Gravity and Grace.

May 18, 2011 at 8:47 P.M. A word was deleted from one sentence since earlier today. I have corrected this inserted "error." Spacing may be altered once again.

May 18, 2011 at 3:24 P.M. The American government's self-delusion and hubris finds yet another expression in recent complaints that more global cybersecurity is needed. As a U.S. dissident who has been tortured and censored, whose writings are suppressed, whose computer has been destroyed by (I believe) government-protected hackers, I find these complaints about the need for cybersecurity hypocritical and absurd. I suspect that many nations in the world agree with me on this issue. Helene Cooper, "U.S. Calls for Global Cybersecurity Strategy," in The New York Times, May 17, 2011, at p. A11. (A "majority" of global Internet security risks are U.S.-based, including many aimed at Chinese targets.)

Despite the destruction of my computer by New Jersey's hackers, I will continue to write. My experiences may illustrate the struggles of powerless dissidents everywhere in the world. These essays are posted from a public computer in New York.

Writers in Cuba or China may be better off in some ways than I am in New York because they face less hypocrisy and will not be ignored by U.S. media when they are plagiarized or tortured. ("What is it like to be plagiarized?" and "What is it like to be tortured?")

There is something indestructible in the human sprit that will not be denied forms of expression or freedom to make use of them. I am still struggling, loving and yearning for you -- and for justice.

Happy birthday, Gemini. Thank you, Pisces.

May 24th will be a difficult and joyful day, for me, because the date marks the anniversary of someone I love -- a person I have not seen for some time. Nothing important to a person -- no meaningful relationship -- can be taken from anyone who internalizes that relationship by making it a part of his or her identity.

The destruction of my computer deprives me of a manuscript in which I hoped to exlore some ideas that, indirectly, have given rise to this state of affairs. The early pages of a novel which is (I am sure) the best thing that I will write have not been affected by this setback. Compared to what is being done to others, my situation is easy: Jane Mayer, "Enemy of the State," in The New Yorker, May 23, 2011, at p. 46. (Thomas Drake is facing disbarment, I believe, and criminal charges for not lying about waste and mismanagement at the NSA.)

Our novel will be finished. I will see it flourish in the world. The novel is for you as I am "for" you.

The experiences of evil and loss fuse and become (for victims of malice) an epiphany, a kind of grace. The wisdom that results from such experiences is available to everyone -- atheists included. None of us will escape all suffering in our lives.

"The meaning of those experiences" -- of evil and goodness --"was as clear as 'the love that irradiates the tenderest smile.' ..."

This lovely sentence was written by Simone Weil who went on to say:

"As a child, for a joke, hides behind an armchair from his mother, God plays at separating himself from God through creation." ("Is it rational to believe in God?")

Think of the myth of the twins separated at birth by Zeus in Plato's Symposium.

"We are all this joke of God's."

Substitute the word "love" for "God." Simone Weil explains the "unity of gravity and grace" in loving which is what she calls "God." ("For Floria Tosca -- With Love and Squalor.")

"He loves not as I love but as an emerald is green. ... I too, if I were in a state of perfection, I would love as an emerald is green. ..."

To love "as an emerald is green" is to come home to the primal unity from which we are derived. Spirit comes to know her- or himself as Spirit. Love yields the "illumination" that makes understanding and acceptance of evil possible. Love allows us to cope. Love permits us to take upon us "the mystery of things." ("Is this atheism's moment?")

"Love is not consolation," Simone Weil concludes, "it is light."

You cannot keep love intact, but unused in your pocket. The adjective "rich" can apply to a man who does not give his money away, but the adjective "loving" cannot apply to a man who has ceased to love.

Love is a kind of capital that only increases with expenditure:

The kind of difference the love of God makes is the kind of difference involved in dying to what Kierkegaard calls the objective world-historical view of things, and attaining what he calls "subjectivity." Christianity is not a religion of consolation. It is a religion, the God of which, Simone Weil tells us, has only one gift to offer -- the gift of grace.

D.Z. Philip, "Subjectivity and Religious Truth in Kierkegaard," in Philosophy Today, No. 2, pp. 110-115.