18. The Sunflower part 3

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Getting to the crux of the problem

This is from p122 of the Schocken Books edition of The Sunflower from 1997, the section by Robert McAfee Brown,

... If God forgives such deeds, does not that likewise strain to the breaking point any contention that the universe of God's creation is a moral universe? A malevolent deity might be placed in charge of such arrangements but surely not a god of mercy and compassion...

p123 1. I do not believe we can supply an answer to the first question [of Elie Wiesel], "Where is God in all this?" -- a question on the lips of character after  character in Wiesel's novels...

What follows is a lot of dancing around the issue but really avoiding the reasonable questions he's raised. This is almost the reverse of a Straw man rhetorical device --  he's raised an argument he can't really touch but pretends he has refuted it with a few brave words.

Either God is an integral part of this story or "God" is not a part of our story at all. If "God" is viewed after the Hindu interpretation as a mix of light and darkness, then there is less of a problem. If "God" is viewed as man's greatest creation, then, again, there is really no problem as He (or They if you choose to separate out the darkness in the form of Satan) must reflect human nature in all its variations.

It seems to me that this is also more of a problem for Christians than Jews as the Old Testament God is really not all that "Moral," in the way we think about it today. The God of Moses had no qualms about genocide. (Though the God sanctioned genocide that followed Moses' death was at least more rational and efficient than that practiced by the Nazis.)

The Dalai Lama has the most sensible attitude to this moral question -- because, I think, he is coming from a very different metaphysical place. As his story of the Tibetan monk makes clear, he is less interested in the actions or guilt of Karl than he is in his own state of mind.

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13. Architecture walk + The Sunflower

Previous - 12. Budd Road

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Photos!

I finally went back and got a couple shots of that multi-building project going up where a bus parking lot once was: 

None of these structures have much appeal on their own but I think they are an improvement over a parking lot. Would also be unfair to judge the complex until the landscaping is finished. The buildings on the far left of the bottom image are common to both photos -- just for reference.

[Note to self: You have to select the image in Google Photo then two finger click it to get the correct image address.]

An assortment of new buildings in the SOMA/Mission Bay area of San Francisco. We start with some indifferent urban infill:

And then move into Mission Bay where they started from scratch and decided that people who choose to spend a premium for building space in San Francisco really want buildings and a new neighborhood that could be anywhere:

Yes, these are goats clearing brush on lots that haven't yet been built on.

The view towards downtown.

Back to the pre-existing street grid as we near Pier 70 (the old shipyard) and Dogpatch:

The building below, and in the center above, at least has some visual interest. Why is it feasible to do small projects of interest as infill but not as part of large scale projects? Why is bigger almost always duller?

They are starting to re-develop the old shipyard. I had hoped they would preserve these old cranes as industrial sculpture (think Gas Works Park on Lake Union in Seattle), but apparently that isn't going to happen.

More infill, the second image below shows a project that incorporates older, masonry buildings (the two structures on the left) along with the new.

The building below with the interesting facade is an older structure converted for use as an event venue.

This sculpture of the SF Bay is in the lobby.

A new take on the traditional SF bay window.

The images below show the interesting podium that supports a very dull residential building that tries everything it can think of to be not quite so dull.

Loved this detail of the electrical hookups.

The north facing wall of the building -- above the podium -- reads as flat and blank even a few blocks away.

My life...

...seems to be getting back to normal. I'm currently reading The Sunflower by Simon Wiesenthal while very slowly re-reading Martha Grimes' Belle Ruin. An odd sort of normal, I'll admit. 

Belle Ruin is dreamy and full of good food and innocent childhood. The Sunflower is the "problem of evil" coupled with an ethical dilemma. 

I've only started the latter today, but I'm plowing through rather quickly. The question presented is, "Can a Jew in the midst of the Holocaust forgive a repentant member of the SS? And if he can, should he?" 

As for the first question, I'm tempted to say that we are all just doing the best we can, so we have to be willing to give others a break. We can't know how we would have behaved in their place so we are really in no position to judge them. 

But the second question is harder. I can say the above in part because I've lived a very easy and fortunate life. In Wiesenthal's place I could only say, "I wish I could forgive you but you're asking the wrong person. I sympathize but I can't be the one to forgive."

I couldn't help noticing that the SS guy in this story had a background similar to Mussolini's -- a socialist father and a religious, Catholic mother. I tend to think that people adopt the prejudices of their families, but here he rejected his family's values and embraced the values of his peers and society, in this instance the Hitler Youth. In some ways this is even more depressing than people raised to be hateful. (We really don't know that much about the values of the parents except that they were not National Socialists. So I may be reading too much into this little biography.)

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