Daily Archives: February 25, 2017

If youve been reading along in this series of posts about the basics of a Jewish theology, thank you. Im thinking there will likely be 3 or so more posts in this series after this one.

Lets turn our attention to Jewish ways of thinking about human nature, morality, and salvation. Again, my thoughts are colored by Reform and Liberal Jewish approaches to these topics, and Im aware of the diversity of opinion within Jewish thought.

Human Nature

The opening chapters of Genesis, and then the remainder of Torah, seems to indicate that to be human is to be a unique, personal expression of the divine/evolutionary impulse in the world. Metaphorically, we speak of our sharing in this impulse as our sharing in the divine image as persons we possess an inherent dignity, an ontological value, and a sense of worth that is grounded in our very being and is not merited or earned.

As persons we are unified, self-aware flesh. Our existence melds material and immaterial realities, and that the exact relationship of the mind-soul to the body is a mystery. As persons, we are inherently social, relational, and capable of love our flourishing is interdependent on others flourishing as well we are only as whole as the least of our brothers and sisters.

Our wholeness is illusive. Instead of affirming our connection to nature and to others, we too often experience fragmentation, alienation, and separation the results of egoism and selfish living treating nature and others as a means to an end and not ends in themselves. We find ourselves living in disequilibrium, harming others, the environment, and ourselves.

Denying our connectedness with nature puts us at risk of peril. If our culture and spirituality is out of balance with nature, everything about our lives is affected; family, workplace, school, and community all eventually become unbalanced because neglect or abuse of nature is essentially neglect and abuse of self.

Denying our connectedness to others also risks peril. Humans are inherently social animals that cannot exist without community; we engender culture with our very being. Interconnected/Interdependent on one another, kindness and social cooperation make sense from a practical, evolutionary point of view we can only truly thrive when others thrive this insight is foundational for an integrated spirituality of wholeness.

The way to healing is through restoring healthy relationships, cultivating awareness of our interconnectedness with the ecosystem and the rest of the human family. Humans are capable of transcending ego and living lives of kenotic love in service and harmony with nature and others. We are fully ourselves when we give ourselves away to things that deserve us and reflect/enhance our inherent dignity.Our survival and thriving depends on such right relationships.

Morality

Jews have crafted their moral views through an ongoing conversation with Torah and experience, reason and tradition much the way some Christian traditions do (in particular, Im thinking of Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and Anglicanism.)

Jews make their moral decisions and form their views in conversation with the past while living in the present. Neither aspect of the conversation trumps the other.

In a general sense, this manner of moral reasoning has been called the Natural Law tradition. Most Jews wouldnt be overly familiar with the term, but in essence, its the manner of their moral reasoning.

Morality is an integral part of our natural identity. Right human behavior is predicated on human flourishing and empathetic reciprocity, conveyed in the core truth of love your neighbor as yourself treating others, as we would like to be treated. It is an ancient, universal ethical imperative known through human reason. Judaism, and all religion, is at its best when it reinforces this truth.

The insights for living a good life arise from a reasoned, teleological reflection on our own nature and our relationships to others. This vision offers a formal framework within which to conduct our moral reasoning. Our motivation for virtue is a matter of our own integrity, following the logic of our very being.

Human moral understanding has evolved throughout our history. Ethical convictions concerning slavery, patriarchy, marriage, warfare, and many other subjects have changed. Certainly, contemporary Jews do not hold the same moral opinions as did our ancient ancestors and thats often a good thing.

To note the evolving nature of human moral understanding is not to assert subjectivism or relativism. Our understanding of moral truth changes, not necessarily the truth itself. Most accept an ethical understanding that slavery was always morally wrong we humans merely came to see that truth over time.

Jewish ethics has always stressed the social dimensions of morality. We are only as well off as the least of our brothers and sisters.The essential human challenge is to affirm our dignity and interconnectedness with others and nature and overcome the isolating, selfish egocentric tendencies. The path of life is this we can tame our ego and find our right place in the world by living lives of kenotic love, caring for each other and the ecosystem and attuning to the cycles, patterns, and rhythms of nature.

Salvation

Tying the above themes together, we come to understand that the central Jewish metaphor for the human challenge is the the Exodus event which is symbolic of each persons liberation from the narrowness of egoism, set free to live a life of goodness in harmony with others in the wilderness.

Salvation is the totality of individual and collective actualization and fulfillment the alignment with Power of Salvation it is an ongoing process of love.

The majority Jewish interpretation of Genesis does not lead to conclusions of original sin. There is no Fall in Jewish theology that must be overcome or reversed. Humans, created in the divine image, are not separated from the divine there is no chasm between God and humankind, no rift, no cosmic debt no eternal gap. (The Genesis accounts are about many things human maturation, moral awareness, even the change from hunter gather social structures to agricultural forms but a divine curse or some form of eternal separation are not Jewish interpretations.) Human nature is certainly imperfect and limited. Sin is a reality. But the capacity for goodness and evil is inherent in human nature.

Much of Torah is about sacrificial love. Kenotic love is vital to our wholeness. When we give ourselves to realities that deserve us we are returned to ourselves healed, whole, and transformed through divine energy reconnected to nature and others. Flowing from the insight of empathetic reciprocity we further grasp other foundational moral imperatives care for the needy and lowly, seeking a just society, welcoming the stranger, and drawing in the unjustly marginalized.

Kenotic love opens us toward wholeness now we need not wait for some sense of cosmic wholeness or salvation that occurs at our death. Love provides meaning to our lives nihilism is simply not a realistic option; to choose such a path is absurd. We cannot live with integrity as a nihilist; for every action we take implies that we find our life imbued with meaning.

Meaning is found on the journey the meaning of life is not some grand mystery revealed on our deathbed with cloudbursts and trumpets its found now in the present moment to live for the past or future is to live in futility. We can only live in the present moment it is all we have the past is gone and the future does not yet exist.

Our journey will seemingly end no one knows what happens when we die. Judaism doesnt engage in much speculation, either. Yet we do know that wisdom lies in embracing the core spiritual truth of our interconnectedness with others and with nature, and therefore our need for kenotic love, and our need to live according to the cycles of nature.

Jewish hope is rooted in this love endures beyond death how we live our lives now matters both in the present moment and in the world to come. Something of us transcends death may that something be a blessing toward a better world.

Read the original here:

Human Nature, Morality, & Salvation Jewish Theology Pt. IV - Patheos (blog)

Out of the shadows Helena Born and Helen Tufts on Squibnocket Beach in Marthas Vineyard, 1896. Photograph: Courtesy of Verso Books

Last year, believe it or not, was the year of Utopia. A perfect society: happy, prosperous, tolerant, peaceful this idyll was widely commemorated, although its location, appropriately, was nowhere (from the Greek ou-topos: U-topia). The occasion was the 500th anniversary of Thomas Mores Utopia, a splendid little book (in Mores words) that, over the centuries, has found echoes in innumerable dreams and schemes, especially on the left.

Socialism has always harboured utopian visionaries, although they have not always been welcome there. From the communities of universal harmony sponsored by Robert Owen, Charles Fourier, Henri de Saint-Simon and their early 19th-century followers (dismissed by Marx and Engels as purely utopian); to the libertarian-communist Edens of William Morris, Edward Carpenter and other fin de sicle New Lifers; to the free-loving, free-living arcadias of 1960s radicals, utopianism has been alternately embraced and repudiated by the left. The scope of socialist aspirations has widened and narrowed with changing times. Today, in a climate of ascendant neoliberalism and far-right populism, the aspirations have dwindled to the point where even the modest social-democratic ambitions of Jeremy Corbyn and his followers are slated as cranky utopian fantasies by their Labour party detractors.

All socialist utopias involve some refashioning of gender relationships. This has been true from the start. Between 1825 and 1845, Britains first socialists the Owenites, after the capitalist-turned-communist Owen produced a root-and-branch critique ofwomens oppression along with strategies to eradicate it, ranging from practical measures such as reform of the marriage laws and the introduction of birth control, to the creation of communities where private property would be abolished, childcare collectivised and nuclear households replaced by cooperative family arrangements. With these changes, the Owenites promised, women, married or single, would become mens social equals; no woman, with or without children, would need aman in order to survive. Or, as one woman told a socialist meeting in 1840: When all should labour for each, and each be expected to labour for the whole, then would woman be placed in a position in which she would not sell her liberties and her finest feelings.

In the 1830s, Owenite feminism travelled from Britain to the US via Owens son Robert Dale Owen, a strong believer in womens reproductive rights, and the celebrity freethinker Frances Wright. A handful of communities were established where marriage was by joint declaration, with no swearing of eternal fidelity or wifely obedience. These communities were short-lived, as were the half-dozen Owenite communities in Britain, and by the late 1840s the movement had died out. But the links between utopianism, socialism and feminism survived to reemerge inthe 1880s, strengthened by the rise of the womens suffrage movement in the intervening decades.

A host of thinkers and organisations appeared in Britain and America dedicated to building a new Jerusalem free from sex slavery. The US east coast was especially rich in visionaries. Most were obscure, with few adherents and few traces left behind them. But in the mid-1970s, Sheila Rowbotham found a little book in the British Library written by one of them, Helena Born, who originally came from Bristol, and edited by an American named Helen Tufts. Later she discovered that Tufts had kept a personal journal. These findings set her on a four-decade search that has resulted in Rebel Crossings, a collective biography of a half-dozen transatlantic radicals ofthe late 19th century.

Rowbotham is a leading feminist historian, and an unapologetic utopian. Rebel Crossings opens on a personal note: I first discovered the little group of rebels in this book when I, myself, was young and convinced the world wasabout to change for the better. Now in her 70s, Rowbotham came of age politically in the salad days of the New Left, when young lefties like her were seeking an alternative to communism under Stalin. She looked for her alternatives in the campaign for nuclear disarmament, in the History Workshop movement and, above all, in womens liberation, which became for her, as for many leftwing women at the time, her political home.

New Left men could be pretty old-school when it came to women. In 1969, Rowbotham published an influential pamphlet attacking the marginalisation of women by the male-dominated revolutionary left and arguing for feminism as a whole people question: Our liberation is inextricably bound up with the revolt of all those who are oppressed [and] their liberation is not realisable fully unless our subordination is ended. The following year she faced down an audience of (mostly male) students who laughed at her call for research into womens history. In the decades since, she has published dozens of books and articles chronicling the histories of women, especially female freethinkers such as those in Rebel Crossings.

I met Rowbotham in those early days in the womens movement. She had just published her first book Women, Resistance and Revolution (1972) which changed my life. I was a PhD student writing a boring dissertation on the USliberal philosopher John Dewey. Iread her chapter on Utopian Proposals, ditched Dewey, and embarked ona study of utopian socialism and feminism in Britain (published as Eve and the New Jerusalem in 1983 and reissued last year).

For Rowbotham, history writing was not an academic exercise but a political act: her declared purpose in writing Women, Resistance and Revolution was to produce a work that would aid the continuing effort to connect feminism to socialist revolution. Today her hopes for a socialist revolution have faded, but the ambition to link the pastand present in radical ways is still present. My aim, she writes in Rebel Crossings, is subversion sustained by humour and enjoyment.

Born and Miriam Daniell were friendsin 1880s Bristol who campaigned for womens suffrage, aided local strikers and played leading roles in the Bristol Socialist Society. Robert Nicol was a Scottish union militant and Miriams lover. In 1890, the three young people migrated to Boston, Massachusetts, where they experimented with a host ofisms, including Marxism, anarchism, transcendentalism and something called ownerism (self-ownership). They read Emerson, Thoreau, Carpenter, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Walt Whitman (a special hero), andwrote for journals with titles suchas Liberty, the New Age and the ComingLight.

Miriam gorgeous, charismatic and the boldest of the trio embraced Russian nihilism and a mystical feminism centring on woman as the universal redeemer. Helena, a more tough-minded individual (fearless and repellent was her self-description), became the directing liberator of the Boston Comradeship of Free Socialists and wrote articles denouncing capitalist alienation and feminine fripperies. Both women were bravely defiant of social convention: Miriam had left behind a husband in Bristol, while Helena became the lover of a married man, an Irish-born anarchist named William Bailie.

Both also died young: Helena in her early 40s, Miriam in her mid-30s, after giving birth to a daughter named Sunrise, a small, helpless bundle of utopia who became the stepdaughter of the socialist novelist Gertrude Dix, who succeeded Miriam as Robert Nicols lover. After Helenas death, William Bailie married Helenas friend Helen Tufts, a Boston-born feminist who in the 1920s was expelled from the Daughters of the American Revolution for exposing a DAR blacklist of social reformers and other anti-patriots. Ifthats patriotism, she bit back, Ill have none of it.

Rebel Crossings vividly evokes thesebusy, entangled lives, with their campaigning and propagandising and romancing, criss-crossed by doctrinal disagreements and ethical dilemmas made more acute by relentless soul-searching and grasping at moral absolutes. All six of Rowbothams protagonists were religious freethinkers, but their radicalism was shot through with the missionary zeal of a spiritual elect. Dear Comrade, Miriam wrote to a friend, let us if we think we see higher heights and purer lights than another not shun that climbing Soul but bend to point the way we take. Pragmatism had little part to play here, including in their free-love commitments, which were passionately ideological. Love waits not upon social or political changes, Helena wrote to William at the height of their romance. It creates them. Love is the great equaliser.

She vividly evokes these busy, entangled lives, with their campaigning and propagandising and romancing

But if love equalised hearts, it left many social inequities intact. Beyond all teaching and preaching is actual living, Tufts reminded her comrades. But actual life often disappointed, as new world modes of relating bumped up against old world habits and attitudes. Jealousy, rivalry, prejudice raised their heads; low bodily needs got in the way of the higher life, especially for the women. A woman who behaved as though her rights were equal to mans would be treated equally, Helen maintained; but daily life with her William was not always an egalitarian dream. Wm hardly ever wipes the dishes, but he says I cant understand where all these dishes come from! she confided to her journal. My dearest would like to forget dishes after he has used them.

Its easy to smile at some of this, and Rowbotham does smile now and then. But she never condescends. These were brave spirits whose courage she admires, and whose struggles to balance altruistic service and egoism, union and personal desire earn her sympathy. And her empathy: she has known such struggles. She has lived them, or rather experiences very like them as have I, and many other women who share our political past.

For any veteran of 1970s socialist feminism, reading Rebel Crossings is likely to be a mixed pleasure, summoning up a radical past that feels sadly distant yet uncomfortably close, as itreawakens memories of our own utopian moment, with its courage and confusions, its open-hearted visions and myopias. Like the books protagonists, we knew what we wanted aworld where all would live freely andunselfishly, with equal status, resources and opportunities and we sought to live our lives in the shape of our ideals, forming anti-patriarchal sexual relationships and communal households intended to prefigure the egalitarian society to come.

We were whole life revolutionaries, and the future belonged to us. But we underestimated the inequalities among us (of class, race, cultural advantage, financial resources) and the obstacles we faced, both internal and external: our conflicting desires (for unity, independence, work, children); our muddles over men; the personal hostilities, disguised as political disagreements, that cut across sisterly solidarities; but above all, the relentless momentum of our times, as the postwar settlement that had kindled our optimistic dreams gave way to tooth-and-claw neoliberalism and the dystopian nightmare we now see before us.

Rebel Crossings is crammed with hopeful visions from the past, but on the present it strikes a melancholy note. Watching globalised capitalism in action appropriating free expression, raiding collective spaces, shredding non-marketable aspirations, social solidarity and fellow feeling Rowbotham is forced to recognise that a good society, along with a new radical and emancipatory social consciousness, will take longer to realise that I imagined. Like many in my generation, I accept this reality rationally, but emotionally find itineffably baffling.

In the wake of 2016, Rowbothams bafflement is widely shared and not just by one-time utopians. And yet last month some five million women took to the streets in 673 marches worldwide. On seven continents we marched, against Trump and all that he represents: demagoguery, xenophobia, misogyny, racism, sexism, homophobia. Our banners echoed the call ofRowbothams long-ago rebels, for a future of liberty, love and solidarity. For most of us, this was thefirst glimmer of light in a dark time. Hardly utopia, but a moment of genuine hope, born not in some nowhere land of political fantasy but here and now, in this very world, which is the world of all of us (Wordsworth) the only placefrom which real hope, and determination, can spring.

Rebel Crossings: New Women, Free Lovers and Radicals in Britain and the United States is published by Verso. To order a copy for 21.25 (RRP 25) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over 10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of 1.99.

Link:

Rebel Crossings by Sheila Rowbotham review feminist utopian dreams - The Guardian

By Malual Jangdit

The theoretical analysis is aimed to explore the multi-dimensional speculative reasons for persistent ethnic conflict, abject poverty and poor development as the outcomes of the weakness of Kiirs administration in the Republic of South Sudan. In essence, the historical and contextual analysis is based on an empirical knowledge rather than a mere assumption to illustrate the weakness of Kiirs administration such as political sleaze and corruption, prejudicial acts of violence and kleptocratic oligarchy. Therefore, the article uses devil theory, political and social and political crises arise from the deliberate actions of misguided leaders rather than as a natural result of conditions as a guiding principle to depict the ramifications of the weakness and wickedness of Kiirs administration. Thus, the theoretical framework is to depart from simplistic explanations of weak structure of Kiirs administration and provide a framework and contextual theory for a more comprehensive approach to nation building, peace and reconciliation, and post-conflict development strategy in ethnically divided societies. Moreover, the devil theory of ethnic violence affects the lives of all the citizens across the nation. As a consequence, the philosophical analysis will explain to what extent should Kiirs administration solve the social and political crises arise from the deliberate actions of weak leadership such as economic deterioration, tribal killings, ethnic division, and lack of constitutional, institutional and political transformation, including the absurd notions of self-indulgence and iniquitous practices as a fundamental approach to improving the weak structure of Kiirs government. Hence, a thematic intention is designed to focus on the consequences of inconsistent and weak structure of the Kiirs administration such as rampant corruption, neo-patrimonial regime and lack of transformational leadership, lack of constitutional reform, lack of ethnic diversity and institutional and political transformation, absurd notions of self-indulgence and iniquitous practices, an embezzlement scandal and disadvantages of incompetence and predominance of militarism as well as kleptocratic oligarchy, a small group of people having control of the country. Since the independence of South Sudan in 2011, the persistent ethnic conflict, and poverty ravaged the country due to the fact that Kiirs administration has failed to curb the corruption and work for peace and reconciliation as well as development as a holistic approach to improving the deplorable situation and reconciling the divided nation. In fact, it is universally true that South Sudan is the failed state, experiencing the extremely economic collapse, and inability to provide public services due to the weak structure of the government and primitive communalism, a greater loyalty to an ethnic group. To provide evidence, the argument is based on the political corruption, an impenetrable and ineffective bureaucracy, judicial ineffectiveness, military interference in politics and cultural situations in which traditional leaders such as Jieng Council of elders wield more power than those who are working in the national government. We know that the country is not governed by the elected members of parliament rather than the tribal self-appointed leaders. For example, Jieng Council of Elders is a largest ethnic bloc working for a common interest of Dinka rather than the national affairs. Not only Jieng Council of Elders, but the Nuer primitive elites are working for the interest of Nuer people rather than the national affairs likewise Equatoria primitive elites are doing a similar thing. However, the article is written to denounce such as Dinkanism, Nuerism and Equatorianism as an effective approach to unifying the divided nation and promote unity and nationalism as well as patriotism, proudly loyalty and devotion to the nation rather than tribal supremacy and discrimination that tore the country apart. Apart from a belief of the superiority of social group that a person belongs to, I continue arguing that the use of powers by government officials for illegitimate private gain is a result of weakness of Kiirs administration as well as a root cause of economic deterioration not limited to currently ethnic killings. For example, the case of 16 people who got involved in an embezzlement scandal by forging the signature of President described the weakness of Kiirs administration. Not only corruption as the main controversial issue, but the targeted killing of people because of their ethnicity or based on the tribal lines is another factor that Kiirs administration has failed to tackle it. In fact, Kiirs administration has failed to curtail an act of atrocious terror such as the human trafficking and ethnic killing of the passengers. We have heard the sad news and seen the ghastly images of the people who got killed on Juba-Nimule or Juba-Yei Roads in which Tiger and Mathiang Ayoor have failed to tackle the terrorists. Thus a kidnapping and targeted killing of the innocent people carried out for political purpose is clearly an act of terrorism. However, Kiirs administration is reluctant to draft the Terror Act and pass it as a legal framework that shall prevent the ethnic killing. Therefore, I argue that South Sudan needs a national army rather than a tribal army such as Mathiang Ayoor, Equatorian Arrow Boys and Nuer White Army in order to curb the social crimes of ethnic killings and wanton culture of cruelty. In this piece of writing, the weakness of Kiirs administration is seen as an obstacle to nation building rather than the nation disintegration and collapse. In order to achieve peace and reconciliation, there must be a change of neopatrimonial regime as well as the political, cultural, and leadership transformation. Such transformations would bring peace and reconciliation rather than a mere assumption of calling for National dialogue without concrete framework and ethical approach. In essence, the civilian abuses, human rights violations and war crimes taking place currently as the outcomes of imperfect Kiirs administration. For us to achieve peace and reconciliation including development, Kiirs administration needs to be destroyed through cold-war rather than the uprising leads by the truculent warlord, Dr. Riek Machar who spares not even the children, and disabled and elderly people. Thus, re-establishing the new administration is the best strategy that shall unite the people of South Sudan and promote ethnic diversity regardless of ethnicity, sex, age and culture. We have seen now where the country is going and to what extent Kiirs administration failed the nation. I think there is no single person who can argue that today South Sudan is not the failed state. I provided significant evidence to prove that South Sudan is the failed state due to the social crises of the ethnic killing and rampant corruption that Kiirs administration failed to tackle them. I have not disclosed the human rights abuses committed by both tribal armies (Mathiang Ayoor and White Army as well as Equatorian Arrow Boys) if needed be I am titled to reveal the act of terror and atrocities I have witnessed. In war-torn states such as Juba, Bor, Malakal and Bentiu, we heard the sad news and saw the bodies of those who were killed during the civil war in 2013-16. In fact, SPLA-IG and SPLA-IO committed the human rights abuses and war crimes against humanity and thus human rights violation and abuses created ethnic division between Dinka and Nuer as well as Dinka and Equatoria. Nonetheless, I suggest that neither SPLM/A-IG nor SPLM/A-IO is not right group to unite divided nation due to the fact both parties breached the public trust. In fact, many people have developed a cynical distrust of politicians and this is why Non-Dinka are against Dinka as well as Dinka against Nuer as well as Equatoria. In order to create ethnic diversity, the ruling party should adopt a peaceful and reconciliatory approach as the means of unifying the divided primitive society. On top of that, I still argue that the policy of giving the position based on the tribal lines is not the best procedure that Kiirs administration should use as a means of political mollification. On the other hand, I suggest that the Transitional Government of National Unity could have not appointed two vice presidents rather than one vice and prime minister. James Wani Igga could have been appointed as the prime minister with the same powers of second vice president and then Taban Deng Gai as the vice president with the same powers he has now. Thus structuring of the Transitional Government of National Unity would be much better than giving two people one position. I dont understand why Kiirs administration prefers to give two people one position. Hence, Kiirs administration needs to be realistic and fair rather than politically idealistic and nave. This idealistic practice provides significant evidence on the weakness of Kiirs administration. Moreover, the theoretical framework illustrates the dishonest exploitation of power for personal gain such as the ghost names in the organised forces. In general, the military and police leaders have ghost names and thus political corruption contributes to the current economic crisis in the country. In addition, the misuses of the public funds contribute to the poor development in the public sectors. For example, there are no good road, education and healthcare despite the humanitarian assistance, development grants and foreign loan that the government is getting from donors such as US-AID, EU, World Bank and IMF. For example, in the USAID press Office, it is reported that, In addition to $1.7 billion in humanitarian funding, the U.S. government also provides community level peace-building programs and long-term development assistance to the people of South Sudan, such as basic education and health services. (USAID Press Office, UNITED STATES ANNOUNCES NEARLY $138 MILLION IN ADDITIONAL HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE FOR SOUTH SUDAN, August 22, 2016). It is clear that the USAID provides assistance, however, the individuals use the assistant grants for their personal gain rather than to prioritize development. In such a situation, I suggest that the victims of corruption and ethnic killings should stand up and denounce the corrupt system for the sake of development, prosperity, liberty and individual welfare. In my analysis, I argue that South Sudan could have been a welfare state if it is not administered by the hedonistic leaders who got involved in self-indulgence as a way of life or have a lack of self-control in pursuing their own pleasure or satisfaction as well as a belief that pleasure or happiness is the most important goal in life rather than nation building, peace and reconciliation. Thus, the philosophical analysis demonstrates the political unrest as the outcomes of the weak leadership. On the other hand, I suggest that the ruling authority should develop a strategic and comprehensive approach to put an end the social crisis and political unrest as an essential method of curbing the ethnic killing, eradicating poverty and promoting peace and development. Thus the political analysis is to depart from simplistic explanation of the weak structure of the Kiirs administration, and rampant corruption and provide a framework and contextual theory for a more comprehensive approach to neo-patrimonial regime and lack of transformational leadership, constitutional reform, and ethnic division to illustrate the social crises arise from deliberate acts of kleptocratic system. The theoretical analysis is designed to demonstrate a system of social hierarchy where patrons use state resources in order to secure the loyalty of clients in the general population. It is an informal patronclient relationship that can reach from very high up in state structures down to individuals in the villages. Thus neo-patrimonialism illustrates the kleptocracy. Therefore, the philosophical analysis reveals kleptocratic oligarchy in which those in power exploit national resources for their personal gains rather than to work for nation building, peace and reconciliation. In fact, the wicked leaders in Kiirs administration use their power to exploit the natural resources to bribe their supporters in order to hold on power. For example, Riek Machar uses the stolen money to pay the White Army to fight for him including many primitive Nuer elites. On the other hand, Mathiang Ayoor stands firmly to die for Kiir Mayardit and this tribal self-defence is a cause of state collapse. However, Riek should avoid mobilizing his kinsmen to topple the government because the government does not belong to a tribe. On top of that, the kleptocratic system involves an embezzlement scandal of the public funds at the expense of the wider population, sometimes without even the pretense of honest services such as the fake contracts e.g. Sorghum Saga. The theoretical and contextual framework is based on the dictatorship, oligarchy, military junta or other form of autocratic and nepotistic government. The corrupt leaders spend the public funds on luxury things, concubines and lavish lifestyle which are not the reasons of making separation in 2011. In essence, thus explanation describes how the corrupt leaders working in Kiirs administration secretly transfer public funds into hidden personal numbered bank accounts in foreign countries to enrich themselves. For example, the case of 75 people who stole 4 billion US dollars and Gadaffi Investment that involved in a case of 8 million US dollars provide significant evidence on corruption, how the government top officials use the public funds to enrich themselves rather than using the money for making good road and infrastructures. I suggest that 4 billion dollars could have constructed many roads across the nation. Therefore, I argue that for the people of South Sudan to achieve development as well as peace and reconciliation, the current ruling party should be dismantled and re-established a new party and a fresh leadership that would provide services to the public. Another point is amnesty. Kiirs administration gave amnesty to renegades such as John Olony and Gabriel Duop Lam etc for the sake of peace and reconciliation rather than taking them to the court for the war crimes and civilian abuses. Thus official pardon motivates many people to rebel against the government. For example, Riek Machar and David Yau Yau are good example of those who shed blood to get the ministerial position and high rank in the military such a political mollification of awarding the criminals with a high position in the government is another weakness and root cause of defection. Absolutely, I argue that if Kiirs administration had indicted Riek Machar for his war crimes he committed against the civilians in Bor in 1991, he did not get another chance for forming another armed struggle that riven the nation. In fact, I argue that South Sudan is the only country in the world where the human rights abusers are given a ministerial position rather than prosecuting them. The rebels should not be appointed in the high positions for killing the civilians rather than indicting them. Therefore, I argue that Kiirs administration should use meritocracy, a social system that gives advantages to people on the basis of their abilities and achievements rather than their crimes committed against the civilians. Therefore, neopatrimonialism shows the lack of constitutional reform, prejudicial acts of violence as well as a breach of civil liberty in the country. On the other hand, I suggest that Kiirs administration shall implement the new polices based on the human rights convention to give an individual freedom and right to live as an essential approach to govern the dilapidated nation. South Sudan is experiencing the economic crisis due to the foreign exploitation and predatory pricing practice as well as the lack of marketing control that led to devaluation. In Juba, the foreign business people take the control of the market by supplying the goods from the neighbouring countries and in return, collect the hard currency (US dollars) and send dollars back to their native countries leaving the country without hard currencies. However, the government is failed to put restriction on remittance as an effective method of controlling devaluation efficiently. Not only price discrimination, but an issuance of a fake contract plays a negative role in progress and development as well as reconstitution of the kleptocratic government. For example in 2012, an Indian Printing Company was given a contract to go and print the constitution, however, the company took the money and hard copies that disappeared like a fleeting shadow. In essence, Kiirs administration did not track the criminals and this is why there is no constitution at the moment. There is no legal system in the country. People committed atrocities and flout the rules, but there is no law to charge and convict them. The thugs kill people as a lack of criminal law and justice, but the authority cannot apprehend the offenders due to the weakness of Kiirs administration. For example, in Rumbek, the young people are committing human rights abuses, but the President did/ does not want to go and address them or set up the panel that will deal with the human rights violations and civilian abuses of killing people on loan. I think you heard the sad news of a man who was going to Wau for holiday when the terrorists hijacked his car and killed his entire family on loan. However, the President did not bother himself to pay a visit to the area where he was killed and addressed the people in that area. What sort of a leader is he? Thus reluctance to focus on the social crisis provides significant evidence that my writing is a powerful argument that revealed the failure of the kleptocratic government. On the other hand, the criminals from Pibor are abducting the young children in Bor, but the President did/does not bother himself to go to Pibor and address those who abduct the kids and kill the parents. Not only the president, but his entire administration (cabinet) is keeping quiet to raise a motion about human trafficking, child abduction and random killing in the parliament and pass the new laws and orders (Child Abduction Act, and Serial Killing Act) rather than embezzling millions of pounds for personal gain. Nonetheless, I suggest that Kiirs administration should develop a holistic approach to improving the imperfect system. For example, the employment is not based on the qualification rather than the family relationship. This nepotism is a setback to peace and reconciliation. Many people who fail to get a job due to the lack of their family members in Kiirs government take arms against the government. In essence, I argue that the weakness of Kiirs administration is a root cause of all the crises in the nation. In consequence, I suggest that neo-patrimonial regime contributes to the institutional tribalism. Notwithstanding, I suggest the practice of giving special treatment to a relative is another issue that leads to the failed state. Not only corrupt system, but the licentious culture of immorality and wickedness plays a negative role in creating an ethnic division. However, this piece of writing aims to denounce the institutional tribalism and neo-patrimonial regime as an essential approach to put an end the tribalism as a peaceful method of creating a just society and unifying community based on the gender quality, individual liberty and justice as well as regardless of ethnic, cultural and political affiliation rather than the society based on the tribal lines, gender inequality, unequal employment opportunity and discrimination. The theoretical analysis is focused on the unfair treatment of one person or group usually because of prejudice about tribe, ethnicity, age and gender as it is a case in the country. The theoretical analysis deplores the lacks of transformational leadership, constitutional reform, and ethnic division. The article highlights a leadership approach that causes change in individuals and social systems. In its ideal form, it creates valuable and positive change in society as an essential approach that Kiirs administration should adopt in order to put an end the social crises of tribalism and nepotism that riven the nation. The empirical analysis reveals favoritism shown by the officials in Kiirs administration to their relatives and friends especially in appointing them to the good positions. Thus nepotism creates ethnic division, civil war as well as ethnic killings in a guise of democratization. In the country, the thugs, militants and the powerful figures in Kiirs government are abusing the civilians due to the lack of constitutional reform. The militants detain many civilians without trial and thus arbitrary arrest and detention explains the prejudicial acts of violence and an obscene misuse of power and thus gives us a good example of weakness of Kiirs administration. Nonetheless, the government should work hard to end the prejudicial act of violence as the underlying principles of improving the weak structure of Kiirs administration as well as harmonic approach to the current national dialogue at stake. Not only neo-patrimonial regime, lack of transformational leadership, constitutional reform, and ethnic division, but the absurd notions of self-indulgence and iniquitous practices, as well as corrupting and methodological schemes of an embezzlement scandal. To provide significant evidence, theoretical analysis will look at the case of embezzlement scandal in the office of the President and to what extent should Kiirs administration tackle the issues of embezzlement scandal. In this case, the ruling authority is not working hard to end the social crisis of scandal. This piece of writing shows the absurd notions of self-indulgence and iniquitous practices such as hedonism, a philosophical doctrine that holds that pleasure is the source of moral values. For example, all the government officials buy the expensive V. cars, and live in the hotels. The government officials spend the millions of Pounds on luxury life, and concubines. However, the theoretical approach deplores such as self-gratification, intemperance, and profligacy. In essence, I argue that Kiirs administration should stop paying for officials accommodation in the hotels, reducing the office and travel allowance, and screening the ghost names in the payroll as an effective approach to reduce the lavishness that costs the government a lot of millions of Pounds. Last but not least, the theoretical analysis is structured to explain the disadvantages of incompetence and predominance of militarism. In South Sudan, a government policy of investing heavily in and strengthening the armed forces describes a ramification of militarism. Therefore, the holistic approach examines the militant attitude of the organised forces such as military and police forces. In fact, Mathiang Ayoor and White Army committed the terrible atrocities against the civilians. Not only Mathiang Ayoor and White Army, but the generals are abusing the civilians, but the government is keeping quiet to condemn the brutal and cruel treatment of the civilians. In essence, I argue that Kiirs administration has failed to manage the country affairs and control the bad behaviour. Therefore, it depends on the people of South Sudan to decide their fate whether to perish at the hands of the invisible devil or stand up against the neo-patrimonial regime. In the country, I argue that the Ministry of Labour should screen all the employees as we know that millions of the workers are not qualified. In the most cases, the government should take the incompetent workers to the training as the best way of improving their work skills. Not only that, but a desire or willingness to use strong, extreme and forceful methods to achieve something and thus political radicals with a militant unwillingness to compromise on an issue is another weakness of Kiirs administration. In the country, the military forces use the over-speeding that resulted to hit-and-run, but the government does not bother to apprehend the criminals who killed the innocent people. The military and police forces on duty stop the civilian cars and ask for a logbook and who fails to show his or her logbook is detained and asked to pay for bribery. Instead of asking for the driver license, they ask for logbook and this wicked approach describes the militant extremism as an outcome of kleptocratic system. Thus, Mathiang Ayoor, Tiger and White Army are committing terrible atrocities and human rights abuses against the civilians, however, Kiirs administration is reluctant to take a major action against the culprits. In Juba, the criminals kill people every day, but the criminals are not apprehended due to the lack of taking the initiative by acting proactively rather than dragging its feet and this lack of disinclination describes the weak structure of Kiirs administration. This week, the United Nations declared the famine in the country as an outcome of civil war, ethnic violence and displacement. In fact, millions of people fled the country during 2013-2016 civil wars in which the government has failed to provide food and humanitarian assistance. Millions of children are malnourished and thousands of displaced people have no food yet the government is spending the money on buying the military weapons rather than providing food to the starved internal displaced persons. I suggest that, instead of spending the money on the military weapons, it would be good to provide food stuff and humanitarian assistance to the displaced persons. In this point, what was a reason for the people of South Sudan to make separation if they knew that they would not be able to govern themselves or reconcile to live in peace and harmony? For us to achieve peace and reconciliation as an effective appraoch to eradicate extreme poverty, we must to depose the leaders of Transitional Government of National Unity including the invisible Devil, Riek Machar Teny, the warlord and warlock who caused the suffering to the people of South Sudan. The people of South Sudan are suffering because of KiiRieks greediness and fiendish desire to hold on power. In fact, the famine could have not hit the country if it was not the wickedness of KiiRieks selfish desire for leadership. KiiRieks power struggle caused an unendurable and unbearable suffering due to their self-esteems and egoism. On the other hand, Kiirs administration needs to write a new constitution and put the term limit as an essential way of ending the power struggle as well as a guiding principle to govern the nation peacefully rather than sticking to the neopatrimonial regime that leads to the ethnic violence. Riek Machar on the other hand, needs to disavow uprising as a means of ending the ethnic violence between Dinka and Nuer. The ideas expressed are based on the eye-witness account rather than a hypothetic theory that damages the reputation of Kiirs administration or denies the achievements of Kiirs administration.

Reference:

Author: Malual Jangdit Political Analyst and Writer Canterbury, Christchurch New Zealand malualg@yahoo.com

Read more:

The Weakness and wickedness of Kiir's Administration: South Sudan in political and ethnic crisis - Borglobe