Bruins must set path, not just rely on faith
By Daily Bruin Staff
Sept. 21, 2002 9:00 p.m.
There are two types of people in this world: those who believe
that life is merely a chain of random events and thus live in fear,
and those who believe that a higher force controls everything.
It has been one year since Sept. 11, and many of us are no doubt
asking ourselves, what was the meaning behind these events? Was it
a sign of something divine? What does it mean for us here at UCLA?
Such are the type of questions surrounding M. Night
Shyamalan’s film “Signs,” which tells the story
of a rural family who wake up one morning to find a crop circle in
the middle of their farm.
We are left to wonder: What does it all mean? Though the
trailers give you the impression that the film revolves around
extraterrestrials and the cause of these crop circles, they merely
are backdrops to exploring the major premise that I stated at the
beginning of this column.
Because, as the film reveals, “Signs” is not about
aliens but about faith. Mel Gibson plays Graham Hess, a former
minister who lost his faith after the death of his wife. Gibson
eventually comes to the conclusion that a series of unrelated
events are not mere coincidences, but part of a larger scheme.
Acting on this belief allows him to save his family from attacking
aliens and he once again dawns the name Father.
The problem with this pristine picture is it promotes the idea
that simply having faith will save us all from society’s
ills. In other words, if you believe that everything will turn out
OK, things will turn out OK. As John Powers states in his L.A.
Weekly review (Aug. 9-15), “Signs” “instructs us
to put our faith in faith itself, as if the crucial thing
wasn’t what we choose to put our faith in.” In the end,
“Signs” ends up becoming a reflection of the times and
attitudes we find ourselves in today.
Sept. 11 gave birth once again to Samuel Huntington’s
“clash of civilizations” theory, which argues
today’s conflicts will center not around ideology,
nationality, politics or economics, but culture, i.e. the modern
West versus the backward East. Such a theory portrays the West as
the good guy who carries the “right” values. Take for
instance Jane Eisner who, in the Oct. 14 issue of the Philadelphia
Inquirer, proclaims the true religion is the “American
national religion,” which is “our nonsectarian belief
in the freedom of the individual to think, speak and act in his or
her own best interests.”
Though she may mean to say that America is great because it
commits to no specific religion, what she ends up doing is
promoting a belief that is so vague it is devoid of content,
leaving out any commitment to action. To paraphrase author Stanley
Fish in Harper’s Magazine (July), “by denying
“˜the ultimate claims of religion’ “¦ we preserve
this vague, nonbonding, light-as-air spirituality, the chief
characteristic of which is that it claims ““ and believes
““ nothing.”
It is in such a religion devoid of substance, but full of faith,
that simplistic reductions of people as either “good”
or “evil” takes place. While the New York Times brought
us closer to the victims of Sept. 11 by providing us with their
obituaries, where were the obituaries of the innocent civilians who
died as a result of U.S. bombings in Afghanistan who, unlike our
own Cold War hawks who put the Taliban in power, bore no
responsibility for any of this?
At the recent Sept. 11 vigil at UCLA a fireman stated, “We
get our strength from diversity and our power in unity.” But
what exactly do we stand for? War? Peace? Do we even stand
together?
The vigil failed to address these questions and like
“Signs,” it failed to commit itself to anything
particular. Instead, we saw singer- songwriter Dee O’Malley
talk about how faith will make things turn out for the better.
While this vague notion of faith makes us feel good about
ourselves, it merely reinforces the Westwood bubble that shields us
from the world’s problems.
As students at a top public university, it is our job to follow
our faith through with actions, to validate our patriotism by
asking critical questions and forcing our politicians and peers to
fight for the ideals this nation was founded on, and unfortunately,
has never quite achieved. It is the undertaking and understanding
of these actions that should provide the backbone of our college
experience. So rather than waiting for the signs to show us the
path, we must strive to create our own, one that may cast light on
these dark times.
