Metapsychosis

Journal of Consciousness, Literature, and Art

On Wanting to Believe (Seduction)

By

By  | 
Feature Image: new_1lluminati, religion is a region with a li(e) in it [via Flickr, CC BY 2.0]
Print

Our human desires and emotions are oftentimes the “hooks” that memes use to attach to us. Once a meme has colonized us, it can profoundly guide our actions in the world. Therefore, we need to develop discernment to parse the beneficial memes from the malicious ones. Although “toxic mimic” memes might offer fleeting, short-lived “fixes,” a more viable and enduring satisfaction is available in choosing to turn toward life-affirming patterns.

∞

As we’ve discussed over the last several pieces, people are universally compelled by the hope of happiness—but their strategies for meeting this need may vary in efficacy (something we will expand on in this piece). Trance states, which emerge at the intersection of meme and life power, can feed the seeming size and salience of memes and can cause us to act on behalf of memes even in automatic, unconscious ways.

Memetic Epidemic: The Viral Relationship Of Memes To Humans

Let’s talk about how memes infiltrate the human organism. Memes colonize human mind-bodies to effect their own survival and replication in ways that parallel the behavior of biological viruses. Throughout this text, the similarities between the functioning of memes and of viruses are alluded to in epidemiological terms: infection, immunity, etc.

For one thing, simply being exposed to information is oftentimes sufficient to persuade us. Due to human cognitive biases, we are especially vulnerable to believe memes that affirm what we are already “know.” Memes need humans to be receptive to them in order to thrive. When I am exposed to a meme, it has a greater or lesser chance of being incorporated by my cognitive framework depending on all the other memes I’ve already derived or incorporated through the process of living my life—and how much loyalty I feel to those memes.

Memes are created and evolve in accord with humans’ developmental needs, which can involve any level on humans’ hierarchy of needs. Memes are transmitted, replicated, and are born and die off in accord with their host human populations. Humans are the hosts—memes “ride” the substrate of our consciousnesses for their existences.

The viral operation of memes and their propensity to colonize minds is not an intrinsically bad thing. Humans need memes or else we couldn’t survive. It would be reasonable to view memes as having the agency to infiltrate and colonize human minds—such that the mind is less an agent and more a passive respondent to the activities of memes in its environment. In this framing, memes dominate humanity, and we are mere receptacles or pawns in their own war for survival.

But memes are not naturally parasitic—in a balanced picture, they are symbiotic. Our reliance on memes parallels their reliance on us for their existence. The problem is humans’ weak mental condition combined with the relentless, infectious conduct of certain maladapted memes.

Our Propensity For Addiction

Humans’ receptivity to memes is connected to our unmet needs. When we meet a meme that seems to satisfy a yearning within us, we are more inclined to adopt it. On an emotional level, we all long to feel affirmed by members of our social context. Many of our cognitive biases, interestingly, tend to be related to our need for stability and social affirmation in the world. Further, when our natural human desires or anxieties are provoked (which memes do really well), we may become emotionally hooked to certain narratives.

This is the reality of our common human condition, howsoever regrettable. Such limitations of perception are a lamentable flaw at the foundation of human evolution. But there are ways in which people today are in an especially weakened state, making us dangerously prone to infection by malicious memes.

What makes certain falsehoods so compelling? To what extent does our inborn desire to believe self-affirming stories impair our ability to assess fact from fiction? Consider how our mental and physical situation has been shaped by capitalist forces over generations. Although many of us have the full spectrum of our material needs met by this system, we are continuously emotionally unfulfilled. This is actually an acknowledged side effect of immersive advertising: making us feel like we will never be enough, just in who and what we are.

Without the feedback loop of real-world consequences (which Americans’ material comforts and social isolation tend to insulate us from), there is little ascertainable difference in direct experience, for many Americans, to believing in and following lies as compared to truth. We’ve broken our direct feedback loops with the ecosystems and communities that keep us accountable. Weak and isolated, desperate for any emotional fix for our deep malaise, we are vulnerable to becoming victimized by our own mental shortcomings. As entitled consumerists, we will get our emotional fixes—even if from unsavory sources who are motivated to keep us addicted.

Jef Safi, co~lapsus 1/4 . . (ın YSE#27)

Jef Safi, co~lapsus 1/4 . . (ın YSE#27) [via Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0]

Becoming Addicted To Unhealthy Memes

People are highly susceptible to manipulation; our minds have not kept evolutionary pace with the far-ranging powers and technologies of modern society, upon which most modern humans are utterly materially dependent. This combination of the population’s profound dependence on centralized systems and the technological capacity for controlling the society’s mental condition and behavioral habits is precisely why Orwell’s points in his bombshell book, 1984, were so devastating, so grave. What is especially dangerous about our appetite for social stories to provide us with emotional gratification is that we are prone to accept toxic mimic myths that seem to temporarily meet our needs, even if, in the long run, they leave us hung out to dry.

Gregory Mantsios in “Media Magic: Making Class Invisible” explains that since the 1960s, corporate news outlets have been increasingly inclined to deliver news within framings designed to protect the wealthiest classes by encouraging both fear and aversion of poor people, and a sense of middle-class identifications in its viewers. This trend is a result of the influence of advertisers and corporations on networks. Now, there is a class of Americans who have bought corporate outlets’ deceptions and biased framings for such a long time as to vehemently defend them as real. This, conflated with not having any time to go deep on an issue (a result of increasing economic and cultural pressures in a constantly-connected world), plus the insanely rapid proliferation of (false and true) information, creates a desperate situation.

People’s “appetite” for narratives that affirm what they already believe creates a market for fake and biased news. It seems twisted that people’s fear of complexity—which would lead them to distrust and dismiss a career politician like Hillary Clinton, or the word of 98% of climate scientists, etc.—is the same faith they invest in the complexly-false (entangled), lying justifications of fake news sites. That is to say: they want news, they want somebody to explain things to them with the confidence of an authority…they just seek convenient news—news that reinforces their beliefs, news that nourishes their appetite for emotional gratification.

No dyed-in-the-wool capitalist can stay away from an unserved market for long. As in drug addiction, there is always the pusher, who profits by selling the quick fixes and by hooking his clients on the drug. The market created by people’s cravings for media narratives that serve to reduce their cognitive dissonance, combined with the permanent desire of the powerful class to disseminate social narratives that are favorable to them maintaining their power, has fed the growth of corporate control over news media and of “consumer news,” in which news consumption is centered on the audience’s salient identities and not on the integrity or authenticity of the information presented. Today, dangerously, news consumption has become much like any other consumer product by which we craft our preferred realities to reflect our personalities (rather than honing our personalities on the sharp edge of events occurring in reality).

Social media platforms and other corporate interests literally feed off of our attention, and there is no sign that the profiteers will stop supplying whatever “fixes” the market craves. Capitalism, being so driven by its internal logic to exploit market demand to utter exhaustion, creates social precedent for profound destruction. The sorry situation is that the rule of the day is to extract and make off with whatever you can get from one another—ours is increasingly an “anti-social society,” in the words of Rajani Kanth. And our population is thus materially, psychically, socially, and systematically laid to waste: depleted, exhausted, dumped full of empty fast cheap distractions and emotionally-piquing call-and-responses, while our spirits, identities, emotions, and minds are fragmented into a flinching, throbbing pulp.

This results in a degenerative culture, where humans cannot exercise any manner of meaningful influence on the memes, and instead the dominant memes seem to easily control our movements, as though we were puppets. This is not unlike the working of some viruses, like rabies, which hotwire the organism and force it to perform bizarre activities that do not support its own survival—but do support the spreading of the virus to other hosts.

Until Trump’s election occurred, I genuinely did not believe that Americans could be so stupid. I mean, Trump’s personality, with over 70 years of supporting evidence, is unambiguously one of a greedy, anti-social, megalomaniac con artist. His propagandist, domineering media tactics and cutthroat cunning was openly targeted at manipulating working class white voters. “Don’t most people know how not to be conned?” I thought. Trump was so clearly not a leader, but the toxic mimic of a leader: a bully.

What I discovered is that some people will accept a costly, even devastating, illusion over a challenging truth. While I would find such a bargain absurd (to me, the truth is always worth it, any day any way), to some, it may have seemed like the only viable option. Their desires to be “saved” by an archetype of the diseased-and-decaying American Dream (Daddy Boss Supreme Grand Commander Trump of the Kingdom of Capitalistania: a Dreamland of Perpetual Conquest) is stronger than their willingness to take a long, painful look at how their emotions and psyches have been relentlessly manipulated by corporate-political interests for generations. As I will expand on in the subsequent piece, some Americans would rather double-down on their nostalgic, comforting illusions than divest and take a different path—even under extreme duress. (If memes are alive, akin to viruses, perhaps this would explain their host-people’s behaviors in this circumstance: putting up a fight-to-the-death for survival, going “all in” with nothing to lose.)

Humphrey King, Media-Freedom

Humphrey King, Media-Freedom [via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0]

Denial In Addiction Vs. Truth In Reconciliation

Denial, or abnegation, has been observed and analyzed since Freud as an “immature” psychological defense mechanism (immature “because it conflicts with the ability to learn from and cope with reality”). Anyone who has experienced the behavior of an addict in denial knows that it frequently involves one flimsy excuse and meager apology, after another flimsy excuse, after another, all piled on top of one another until you are obviously looking at a bullshit mountain. Yet the addict clings to the mountain desperately, apparently insensate to the stink and unwilling to see or take responsibility for the pattern underlying their continuous problems.

This is just like us with our white supremacy problem and its results; or failure to take responsibility for intensifying climate change; or the continued theft, rape and destruction by which the rich have accumulated political and economic power. Delusionally, we keep trying to justify that which is obviously unfounded, because we are, evidently, so fragile in our sense of self that we would rather believe that we are right than change. If there is indeed “two routes” to persuasion, we need to develop the ability to take the central route, and not the peripheral route, urgently, and as often as possible.

At the outset of these essays, I talk about the essential importance of being willing to change your mind (and indeed, being mindful of the changefulness and conditionality of one’s mindset) as key to self-realization. To align with a genuine eternal force like change, one would need to “make friends” with the change native to every moment’s manifestations, and begin examining what indications there are when something wants to change. At a collective level, if we could harness the eternally renewable power generated by change itself, we could possibly arrange ourselves into more diversifying, yet harmonizing forms.

Denial might protect you temporarily, but it can portend a horrible slide into a lack of complexity (i.e., the dissolution of connections and systems with nothing to replace them). Remember that life is negentropic—it tends to align energy into higher orders. A loss of complexity represents the opposite, or entropy; it indicates organizational decline. This can be witnessed occurring in societies, in ecosystems, in bodies; it is commonly referred to as dying.

If Toxic Memes Could Kill Us

Death is sometimes the price paid for the attachment and commitment we feel to our addictions. But as any recovering addict can tell you, there is always another choice: the choice to turn towards life, to turn towards a higher purpose. If you are harboring a toxic mimic meme, its presence might be indicated by how much effort you have to pour into negating alternative evidence and building complex justifications for your endemic belief system. Ask yourself: Is defending your memes causing you to feel depleted and sick? Or does engaging with your memes revitalize and awaken you?

To illustrate how a culture or society could manifestly decline into a reduced state of complexity: it’s a very undiscerning, “low resolution” (i.e., lack of integrity and detail) steamroller of an act for President Trump to just ban any person from a handful of majority-Muslim countries from entering the United States. It’s very blatant and unsophisticated for Trump to brand all news that reports honestly on his unpopular behavior as “fake news.” Trump would like to label any news that criticizes him “fake news,” but really, it may not be the slant but the openness he despises—he detests that the American people can discuss his actions openly and find them wanting. Aggressive acts intended to “oust” conflicting narratives effectively represent attempts to shut down complexity—to eliminate nuance, to silence differences, to exact total control over a singular, favorable narrative. Perhaps Trump’s supporters crave their cognitive dissonance to be reduced—but to attempt the relief of tension through policies which actually limit the freedoms and suppress the movements and speech of other physical human beings is a dangerous social slide toward fascism and autocracy.

The lower and lower-resolution you get, there will come a point when genocide becomes acceptable. Genocide is only possible when people’s personal, cultural, and intellectual qualities are entirely eliminated from one’s viewpoint, when people’s bodies are perceived only as shallowly as their skin color or creed in determining whether they live or die. It takes a degenerative social situation to discard entirely the nuances that make people human: their life stories, their cultural capital, their ethnic and genetic roots, their inner capacities (talents, skills, knowledge, etc.), their social bonds, their struggles, their human potentials. When you kill someone, you simply cannot ever know whether that person’s mind contained some untold brilliant technology with which they could have rebuilt the world, if presented the opportunity. When being embodied as “white” or as “brown” or simply as “belonging to a particular group” is grounds for extermination, then the aim of integrating the best of what humankind could bring forth is lost.

Genocide benefits nothing, and those who hallucinate that maybe it sometimes does, hallucinate that they will assuredly emerge victorious. The only need genocide might be said to accomplish is reducing environmental demands and population strain—an implicit, if unconscious, fixation behind supremacists’ anxieties. However, the lower resolution such purges go, the more lasting and damaging the legacy.

It may seem strange that I use genocide to illustrate an extreme “low resolution” outcome of a society. However, humankind is manifestly facing annihilation at the hands of toxic mimic memes. The dominant memes seduce us with images of prosperity but deliver us irreversible destruction of our natural capital and planetary wellbeing. If we continue pouring energy into these currently dominant memes, we will run ourselves into the ground, killing us and the memes. However, we can recover the power to mitigate our broad receptivity to memes and to select which memes we cultivate; if humans could actuate the rapid spread of life-affirming memes, we might end up in a future that both we AND memes can survive.

Christopher Dombres, The Next War [via Flickr, public domain]

The Unknown Beyond One’s Habitual Patterns

They say the definition of crazy is doing the same thing and expecting different results. Why do we not have the society or the democracy we’d like to believe we do? What persists as the barriers to a fair and just society, even after many generations of struggle? What if the problem is not this one particular president or another, but the institutionalized political game, as a whole? To the extent that it limits and does not serve us, and other structures would better serve life-affirming purposes, should we not find ways to intervene?

Let us take the risk of imagining for a moment that our consistent economic and social disenfranchisement is not accidental. That it is in the government’s self-interest to ensure our continued reliance on its structures, no matter how excessively bureaucratic. That it is in the capitalholder elite’s interest to ensure our continued reliance on its systems, furthermore. Different tools, different ways of enforcing their order (police use-and-threat of force, bank debt, wage suppression, tax cuts to the rich, etc.), but the effect is to keep us meek, starved, obedient… and, worst of all, too stupid and wrongly informed to assess, analyze and overcome our situations. Some of us—typically those better off by this social order than others—tend to keep making excuses for it. But the same symptoms persist, with devastating effect. Can we continue to excuse it away? Or might we say the persistence of these problems are direct outcomes of the system’s design? Even if you don’t want to entertain this hypothesis, dear reader-scientist, ask yourself: do you think that it is plausible? Do you think it is worthy of being investigated?

Can the privileged admit their addiction to these systems, and repent? Like an alcoholic’s elaborate legacy of lies and excuses finally crumbling down atop him, do we dare imagine that the system, by design, must result in these outcomes? We spend so much energy explaining and forgiving the outcomes. After 40 years, 240 years…10,000 years of some of the same old shit…Occam’s Razor would suggest that the consistency of these outcomes betray actual power dynamics. I’m not claiming that there is a conscious conspiracy behind this pattern—that is to say, some gang of evildoers murmuring sinister plots behind closed doors—because that would be psychologically cheap (adaptive bias) and is a less likely cause than the organic effects of emergence and lock-in. What I am suggesting is nevertheless a conspiracy—a conspiring of those who lucked into power to retain and enhance their power, which means from a basic, factual standpoint, disempowering everyone else.

There’s no boogeyman going to jump out and attack you—or a government agent—just for thinking these thoughts. This is not 1984—yet. We’re sold a narrative that says we need to fear and abhor any alternative thinking—that to critique capitalism is equivalent to deviant anarchism or godforsaken communism. That’s because if we allowed for the proliferation of direct dialogue and discursive thinking among individual members of a community, we might have years ago realized that our economy and our state could function at a much higher level of integrity—and could work better for us.

Turning Towards Life: Recovery And Integration

To empathize with this common human condition is the first step on a pathway to developing human resilience to conquest by toxic memes. Again, people aren’t the problem—few of us are trying to make the world a worse place. We must compassionately accept and work with our limitations—such as our cognitive biases. We should approach this by borrowing from addiction recovery processes and programs.

First, let us empathize with the core cause of our vulnerability to seduction by malicious memes. There are various cognitive biases that come into play here. In many ways, our yearning to affirm what we already think we know about the world tends to override our search for truth. We may even feel personally affronted when our earlier-held notions about something are proven wrong. This is a natural aspect of the human condition, and it makes sense: complex truths can cost considerable cognitive effort to accept.

Given memes’ efficient ability to infect humans, we must be diligent in developing our memetic immune system defenses to ensure that only healthy, life-supporting memes are the ones that ultimately take root. This involves developing a more participatory role in consciously curating the memes we harbor: fertilizing and cultivating the desired patterns, and uprooting the unfit weeds. If humans were to strengthen their mental conditioning and mindfully participate in the shaping of memes (like memes shape us), we could build towards a more beautiful world by giving and spreading only the memes best adapted to our goals. A little participatory evolution, then. In this way, we can entrain memes to serve our human purposes like one trains a climbing vine in a garden. Instead of passively allowing the proliferation of the memetic equivalent of nuclear weapons, couldn’t we harness our innate love for life into enthusiastically proliferating memes that enhance the conditions for life on Earth?

Although we viscerally grapple with social pressures to “not deviate” from the established norms, it is manifestly appropriate to deviate from a burning building. In recovery from addiction, a commonly-cited turning point in a person’s trajectory is “hitting rock bottom.” There’s a point when an individual becomes desperate enough for a change—almost any change would have to be better than this. Thus let us imagine that what is beyond our current realm—what is more creative, more life-affirming—might be worth taking a risk on. It takes a leap of faith to mount the path to recovery, but it can pay off in rewards much more enduring than the path of addiction. That means there is hope for transmuting natural human yearnings into feedback loops that are much healthier.

To the extent humans are giving into their addictions and not practicing restraint and discernment, memes seem to be riding roughshod over us. How could we develop immunity or resistance to toxic memes? If malicious memes are actively seeking ways to invade our heads, how can we “inoculate” ourselves against infection by false views?

Resilient people are comfortable entertaining ideas that differ from their existing frameworks. They mindfully look for ways to meld new information with old. It is challenging to tolerate different perspectives on reality while maintaining awareness of them all as partially “true” at once, but admittedly our minds thrive on solving complex challenges. There is an enduring, deeply satisfying reward when one dives into and honors the difficulty, the complexity.

Resilience means being courageous enough to apply one’s mind, developing the sensitivity to process direct knowledge of what is real, and the discernment to perceive and negotiate the distorting effects of certain memes. Such people have the increasingly-rare capacity to see through veils of bullshit. This is a powerful skill in navigating a so-called “post-truth” world. So: move towards that wholesome discomfort, a discomfort which promises to give way to blissful new levels of realization.

Humphrey King, New City

Humphrey King, New City [via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0]

I seek truth: I want full signal and minimal distortion in all of my encounters in life. But, as a side effect of these patterns we are talking about, in American culture and society, I am instead constantly being bombarded with what somebody else thinks they want me to see. Consciously, or unconsciously, this unfortunate habit persists in all types of relationships—even the relationship to oneself. These little layered lies, the “who-I-want-you-to-think-I-am” ruse (Ram Dass called it “the mind net”) is what makes our interactions so fraught—especially in the context of a competitive social order like capitalism (in which anti-social memes thrive.)

I want to suggest that you look and think of the social order—and especially the mainstream media—from the perspective of: whose interests are being served by the way this is presented? Who could stand to benefit from me believing that (fill-in-the-blank) is true? Who could stand to benefit from the agenda presented by this media? Behind any great addiction, you will find a profiteer.

Deliberately develop discernment, whereby you practice identifying who has your genuine best interests at heart, and who doesn’t. Journalists and others who are genuinely concerned with keeping the public informed about the truth present a more reliable source (insofar as motives align with actions), whereas fake news rabblerousers are transparently looking to make a quick profit off of you (as an unsavvy consumer) and/or disrupt the social order for their broader greed-mongering ends. Especially in regard to climate science: generally, those who present exhaustively-examined facts are likely concerned with your best interests—why else would they have invested all that arduous, critical work? Whereas those who attempt to mislead you by appealing to cheap psychological reactions—aren’t. In fact, they might be attempting to subjugate you. (On a personal relational level: those who are willing to receive critique and question their own perspectives are trustworthy; those who voraciously assert the inviolable authenticity of their truth, alone—are not. This, interestingly, aligns with principles of productive dialogue.)

By contrast to the profoundly destructive outcomes plausible on a planetary scale (if our toxic oppressive memes remain in charge), a more “high resolution” (or synthesizing/negentropic) approach would involve individuals harvesting the splendid bright consciousnesses of the world’s diverse beings, and then holding those multiplicitous truths intact while tolerating the lively tensions generated. A high resolution approach enables complex decisions to be made that reinforce quality for all. If we were to stay with the complexity, and look for overarching patterns… we might find challenging, but ultimately more blissful and satisfying answers.

Recovery constitutes a new direction for life. It requires embracing the healing, or life-affirming, principle in everything one does. This is the harder path, but it is the path that leads toward survival and achievement. To develop social-scale immunity to virulent memes, we need to invest in providing high-quality/diversely-sourced education and skill-building practices to our populace. We need to build a culture of mutual support that encourages the best from one another. Before participatory construction of a new building (or society), there must be a participatory designing through dialogue. We need people who are trained and equipped to engage with our difficulties. We need to develop discernment about the memetic company we keep, we need to strengthen our impulse controls, and we need to immerse in wholesome forms of health and wellness if we seek a more resilient people and society.

Thomas Hawk, #carpeaux #legionofhonor #sf #sanfrancisco #art #sculpture [via Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0]

Ask yourself: what is it, after all, that I really know? How do I know I know something? How do I know whether something is really true… or just convenient to me to believe?

Are you participating—like, really thickly even—in some narratives that seek to exploit you for your social, intellectual or material capital? Could you experiment mentally or actually with alternatives or opposites to what you believe—and just observing what happens? What do you discover in that process?

In your own life journey, you have probably undergone some “philosophical molting,” whereby you discarded earlier belief systems for better-suited ones. What do you recall about that process of letting go of one belief system, for another? What did you take away from that “molting” experience?

What are some ways you could improve health and wellness in your life, so as to be less prone to seduction by toxic options? Relationally, socially, mentally, spiritually, biologically (nutrition, sleep, exercise, etc.)— consider each dimension, for better health means becoming more whole, and a sound, complete organism is optimally resilient.

You Have the Power I Give You, Like a Talisman in my Ritual

By

By  | 
Feature Image: new 1lluminati, akashic record (crop) [via Flickr, CC BY 2.0]
Print

The power Trump commands is given by us—our attention, our deference, our minds, hearts, lives. In little ways, we can retake control of how and to what purposes we deploy our minds and spirits.

∞

What am I doing when I am reciting an aspiration that Trump know happiness and its roots? I am alternatively conditioning my mind: reminding (re-mind-ing) myself that Trump is a human being, and the root of the destruction and chaos he is causing lies in his humanity. Trump’s personality traits of ambition, narcissism and insularity—which are wreaking such havoc at the institutional and political scale—these are all direct outcomes of Trump’s particular psychological and social conditioning, grounded in historical, tangible events.

Although the situation is urgent and dangerous, it’s also sad. Compassion is not an inappropriate response, but rather is always an appropriate response to situations of struggle. What are we struggling against, after all, if not other people who would rather keep us deprived and subservient—and how sad is that? What are we struggling for, if not people’s liberties; what are we struggling against, if not people’s ambitions to control and exploit others? In all of human history, why have we not met our aspirations yet? If we did, could we be at peace with one another?

To say Trump deserves to experience peace, love and joy does not contradict the need to resist, prevent and subdue him from causing any more harm. (In fact, I’m arguing that Trump accessing an experience of genuine self-arising satisfaction would be an antidote to his hungry-ghost will to power.) After all—where do Trump’s maladjusted qualities derive from? They derive from him being materially spoiled—catered to, in spite of his poor personal, emotional, psychological and intellectual development—because of his capitalist holdings and the accorded privileges thereof. Trump has learned a life wherein he’s the center of the narrative—everything and everyone seems to hinge upon his fleeting desires. While such a life might seem fortunate to the untrained eye, it also requires that Trump remain insulated from any substantial depths of relationship. Shallow relationships based on mutual exploitation (and not common feeling or understanding) would be “the norm.” Which means: Trump has mentally entrained to, and now physically embodies, the sick and offensive qualities of the mode of capitalism which he’s been immersed in his entire life. A life made of exploiting others does not, cannot, a healthy and fulfilled human make.

Trump’s personality and his reaction to circumstances are conditioned, as are each of ours. Thus his shortcomings are not the outcome of any “evil” inherent in him. (Whether the pattern/system of capitalism, which has shaped Trump’s subjective reality, is inherently evil… that deserves its own discussion.) As comforting as it may be to demonize Trump, that pose only keeps us locked into fruitless and cyclic opposition, into the false duality of “good against bad.” Hence my assertion that Trump needs healing (to effectuate “right” conduct) more than he needs penalizing correction. (And it is not just for Trump, but for all, that I bear this view.)

Bret Polok, "Everybody wants to rule the world.

Bret Polok, “Everybody wants to rule the world.” [via Flickr, CC BY-ND 2.0]

Given Trump’s weakness in key developmental areas of being human, let us now investigate: where does Trump’s power derive from?

Firstly, let’s discuss where his popularity comes from (which is part of the power behind the career arc of any politician). His popularity derives from a complex of factors: foremost, that he names obvious, vague demons which people yearn to righteously go after—angry-mob-with-pitchforks style. That is to say: Trump’s rhetoric plays on our baser instincts. Self-righteous violence generates compensatory feelings of pride when faced with terrified insecurity (it’s the bully’s way). This is currently manifesting outwardly in acts of racist violence, giving fresh “life” to below-the-surface attitudes that have continuously saturated the people and policies of the United States from its beginning (which I unpack in depth in a subsequent essay, Mythmaking) . Examples include the recent slayings of two anti-racists who defended Muslim women on a train, February’s hate crime murders in Kansas, St. Louis Jewish cemetery defacement, the mass and deadly assault on anti-white-supremacy protestors in Charlottesville, VA… I wish this list would not go on, but without intervention, it assuredly will.

Secondly, Trump gives equally-sweeping, feel-good promises of reform that will be utterly impossible to implement in the complex, burgeoning reality. However, in saying the appealing thing that “sells tickets” (er, votes?), Trump appears to annihilate the real complexity merely via bullying dominance of the narrative. Trump succeeds because most people would love a reduction in the complexity of our problems. Those who believe that shoving problems aside or silencing them solves problems are egregiously mistaken, however.

Further, Trump represents a brand of gross, pathetic incompetence iconic of total despair and civilizational decline. Those who feel that despair, unconsciously or consciously, may derive perverse delight in Trump’s hilariously terrible character, thus coordinating to elect him to the presidency ironically, like a mass act of trickster energy. All of these elements take hold upon the cultural and social patterns in the United States, which include: extravagant material comfort and sense of entitlement, oppressive economic disparities, and belief in individualism / social isolation.

When a civilization is in decline, when its mythos has begun to slide into meaninglessness, it is only too appropriate that the paragon representative of our hallowed (hollowed?) nation is simply what we find most extremely offensive and entertaining. That’s what makes Trump’s rhetoric popular with certain white Americans—he strikes the nerves of their presumably-“lost” ambitions and thus galvanizes them to turn their backs on facing and embracing complexity in favor of worshipping a false-idol image of their conventional supremacy, reinforced (if reprehensible).

Christopher Dombres, "I do not know what I want, but I know I don't have it."

Christopher Dombres, “I do not know what I want, but I know I don’t have it.” Je ne sais pas ce que je veux, mais je sais que je ne l’ai pas . Illustration from 2003. [public domain]

In Escape from Freedom, Erich Fromm explains how a society can weary of democracy when the population feels a general lack of clear purpose or identity, leading to a tendency to lurch quickly into fascism’s arms in an attempt to reduce their social dismay, because fascism lends the security of clear social (if hierarchical and oppressive) roles. Trump offers a shallow yet captivating image of success, embodying a white-supremacist, capitalist American heritage. As ugly as this symbol is, its power to reaffirm Americans’ sense of identity—to extend the life of key American supremacist myths—is undeniable. Therefore, instead of enduring the continued growing pains of developing a more participatory and equitable society, Trump in his grandiosity and grandiloquence poses an easy, if unpalatable, “out” to those still clinging to a dream of universal white cultural and economic dominance.

Those repressed anxieties, when offered an outlet, become channeled into a talisman of collective power—in this case, the talisman of Donald Trump’s mythos. Our media environments season us into trance-like states: hypnotized by the narrative, seized by emotionally provocative messages, our attention is funneled like a pump, sucking energy into the objects of the desired myth. (The hypnosis-like state explains why Donald Trump’s supporters, as a whole, tend to be voracious in their denial of real information and facts, so mesmerized are they by their idol’s glorified image.)

So, perhaps it is clear Trump has absorbed cultural and mythic power in the eyes of a subset of Americans. But how is it that he came to power over the fate of the whole United States?

The answer lies in the very same attention-channeling, hypnotic process, only with different objects. This time, it’s our continued vestment of power in our national political institutions. Our obedience to political conventions has enabled a dangerously ignorant and unethical man to assume power—see Obama’s emphasis on “peaceful transfer of power” and the electors’ installment of Trump, despite all manner of red flags going up.

The problem is we revere institutions more than we attend sensitively to the situation. As institutions, we tend to lean on their proud appearance (“the U.S. is the greatest democracy on Earth!”) more than we thoughtfully attend to structural integrity and appropriateness of the forms. In reality, the U.S. is a sorry excuse for a so-called democracy—its people have barely made any substantive modifications to what is now a 240-year-old (and clunkily outdated) governance model. Bureaucratic complexity has layered up to obscuring and insane heights; meanwhile, gradual, insidious capitalist-corporate appropriations of the people’s political power have eaten away the core, resulting in the structures being on the brink of crumbling. However, we’ve been hypnotized by the rhythms of society into a lulled trance—go to school, to go work, watch the news, pay taxes, vote. When in a fearful, regressed state of mind, we tend to cling to familiar and comforting rituals and rhythms, and think that their very act is proof that all is well.

Our own institutions, corrupted, will be our very undoing—if we continue to hold to them out of blind “tradition” or “faith.” We don’t want to be naughty and “break the rules” of this convoluted game, even if it would in fact save our necks in this dire, unprecedented moment.

So it would seem we are entangled in a complex house of mirrors built of people’s ignorant projections that is so brimming with disastrous and fragile elements, there’s scarce hope of not getting crushed in its inevitable collapse, right?

Well… there is another way to view this situation. In the dark night of the soul glimmers a glimpse of the darkness’ opposite.

If we allow that everything that has been discussed (Trump’s nature, the nature of his popularity and influence, and the nature of his current forms of power) can be traced to conditioning—psychological, historical, narrative and material… that would make it all: empty. As in, there is nothing causing any of this to be strictly the case. All manifestation in this moment is merely the result of processes, an outcome of a system of interconnected conditions and choices. However: the present moment’s configuration, which includes Trump as president of the United States, represents diminishing value to the vast majority of us.

As a cultural icon via reality television…as a ghoulish caricature symbolizing capitalist grandeur…as the president of the United States, even, Trump has the power we give him, much like a totem or a talisman, which we imbue with meaning for particular purposes. We imbue this individual with apparent power beyond what the singular human can, in fact, possess. A major cause of this is our desire to believe convenient illusions—something I unpack further in Wanting to Believe. Our fears, our ambitions, and our longings get channelled into the one individual—leading us to believe that he is much bigger, more impressive, and scarier than one pathetic man.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. (Screenshot: The Wizard of Oz/ MGM Grand)

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. (Screenshot: The Wizard of Oz/ MGM Grand)

The myth obscures the man. Just as in the Wizard of Oz, before the curtain is pulled back.

Acknowledging that Trump represents a manifestation and a channeling of millions of people’s dark psychic energies, I will be happily joining in the trend of the mass rituals to ask all beings (manifest and unmanifest, human, animal, spirit and otherwise) to bind Trump and his cronies so that they may cease to cause harm to so many.

You may not believe in magic, but how else do you explain these real circumstances we find ourselves, apart from the attentional direction and hypnotic manipulation inherent to a magician’s work? How do you explain: the outrageous frenzy that Trump has whipped his supporters into through aggressive, blame-game distortions that blitz Americans into bewilderment; the invisibility of corporate consolidation of political power, domestically and globally; the unspeakability of capitalism’s devastating environmental, social and psychological consequences; the ways long-held cultural myths (of multiculturalism, democracy, and freedom) are dissipating right before our eyes? What do you call our mass vulnerability to hypnosis by various means—whether occurring in religious, consumerist, political, or other contexts?

Trance is real and it is a feature of human consciousness—call it what you prefer, understand it however you like, but don’t ignore it. The ways in which our emotional, psychic, and intellectual capacities respond and attempt to cope with stress are potent-to-the-point-of-perceptible, yet also emerge in mysterious and unpredictable manners—quite beyond the scope of the rational mind to grasp. And while you may try to dismiss what you haven’t yet grasped (or what you moralistically refuse to acknowledge), that real element you brush aside will still be there—and will reemerge in ever more daunting forms.

The disruptions that Trump continues to cause have emotional consequences on a massive scale, affecting millions of people—whose resulting released energy can be harnessed for good or ill (and indeed, to pretend this isn’t happening makes one subject, and not agent, of it).

Therefore, if you’d like to tap into and wield the wide-ranging energies of millions of people (and, too, animals and plants and spirits and lands and ancestors) who do, indeed and resoundingly, want Trump stopped…why not join in the ritual? What harm could come of it? Any bending of one’s mind toward harm-reducing patterns (including through prayer or ritual) that can subsequently reshape one’s perceptions and sense-making of so-called “consensus reality” is valuable. If seeking to retrain the mind for resilience and adaptability amidst chaos, it is helpful to remember that you retain control over what you put your mind to.

Vinoth Chandar, Kali the Goddess - Navarathri Golu Dolls [via Flickr, CC BY 2.0]

Vinoth Chandar, Kali the Goddess – Navarathri Golu Dolls [via Flickr, CC BY 2.0]

When the apparent reality becomes untenable, unworkable, like an abysmal nightmare…what better time to experiment with alternative ways of relating to what is happening—i.e., “lucid waking-dream” yourself some alternatives.

What is your experience of being entranced? Observe how you feel while watching news stories, watching a film, or browsing Facebook. What do you notice?

Is there any edge of awareness that allows for the breaking, or redirection, of the trance state?

If the trance state indicates that you are seeing only what the presenter, or magician, wants you to see, then—how could you take a mental step back and take a fresh look at the elements in the situation?

What are some things you want to believe about Trump? What are some things you want to believe about the United States of America?

What might be some reasonably true alternatives to your assumptions? If you’re not sure, ask people who don’t agree with your viewpoint!

Do you notice a sense of entrancement to your own set of assumptions and biases in terms of your daily conduct? How could you challenge your automatically arising, unthinking reactions to various stimuli, such as people, messages, images, etc.?

Trance states can make us vulnerable to receiving and absorbing messages and symbolic narratives deep within our psyches. Trance can be used maliciously, but also beneficially. How might you employ trance to adjust your internalized beliefs or assumptions in positive ways?

Transmuting the Trumpocalypse

By

By
Metapsychosis
 | 
Feature Image:
Print

This conversation series is concerned with how the monstrous, epic drama of our present-day reality is animated by subtle winds of power. We will explore creative strategies and discuss critical issues relating to developing our embodied consciousness as individuals/collectives—while cultivating more effectual ways to wield our often invisible yet immanent power.

Prologue: Can’t retreat no more forever

By

By  | 
Feature Image: new 1lluminati, alternatives: choose or pray [via Flickr, CC BY 2.0]
Print

To continue a policy of escape, retreat and regression is mutually assured destruction. We need to face, and learn from, our difficulties.

∞

Transmuting the Trumpocalypse emerges in the world as more than just a multi-part publication, but as a collaborative inquiry and conversation about how human life forms, independently and mutually, can more effectively access, channel, and apply their powers for beneficial results. In a mutual dialogue, it is helpful to define one’s assumptions and definitions at the outset so a common understanding becomes possible. Before proceeding, I would like to share my definitions and my thinking about power, about the so-called “Trumpocalypse,” and about our prospects for a genuine transmutation of today’s perilous prevailing forces into more conducive, life-affirming configurations.

Creative Strategies for Change defines power as “the access to internal and external resources, decision-makers, and institutions in order to meet individual and collective needs.” A root idea of power in this definition is “access to resources.” I envision power in a slightly different way: the ability to coordinate and move energy. Energy encompasses both manifest forms (aka “resources”) and unmanifest or potential energy (such as thoughts concerning an action you want to take in the future). Coordinating suggests channeling and concentrating energies into a more highly organized capacity to act on, or move through, the world.

In the following set of essays I deal with principally two types of power: life power and meme power—and a kind of third character: the strange realm of emergent effects where the two intersect.

Life coordinates energy into biological constructs (meaning, organisms) that seek their survival and reproduction. Unlike most everything else in existence, life has an agenda: it seeks its own perpetuation. This necessitates that the organism have some bodily movement or sufficient genetic drift (like pollen riding a breeze or a bumblebee). Genetic furtherance can even be seen occurring across time, over generations of selective evolutionary forces, whereby the organism takes an appropriate shape to fit a niche in the environment.

This implies that there is responsive action or agency as a built-in quality of living things. A being may be animate to lesser or greater degree, but even if seemingly unconscious or unmoving, a living organism is acting on the world. In fact, this is one of life’s defining features: life is negentropic (meaning, it captures energy and creates forms of higher orders out of chaos). One could describe a life form’s innate power as its animate aspect, or: its activities of consciousness. Even if a species’ collective “intelligence” primarily takes the shape of genetic evolution over multiple generations, the agenda to survive and reproduce persists, giving life movement, and thus, the power to act on its environment.

Memes are packets of information. As such, they find a biological analogue in DNA, viruses or genes, which function like the “code” informing the biological construction of bodies. Memes interact with human consciousness through various media, such as story, speech, writing, song, and video. This is why the notion of ideas as living (or appearing-to-live) entities was dubbed “memes” by Richard Dawkins. Memes—in the form of concepts, ideas, symbols or myths—can become absorbed by a biological mind-body and then obtain the power to coordinate energy: typically, memes coordinate the actions of humans and/or give shape to the technologies that humans develop. Social organization of any kind is entirely dependent on the process of establishing and “calcifying” certain memes, in fact.

Danil Kazakov, Spiral

Danil Kazakov, Spiral [via Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0]

So what do these abstract terms have to do with our damning, pressing sociopolitical situation? To “transmute the Trumpocalypse,” we must ascertain the real possibilities of bringing our collective intelligence to bear in a more meaningful and coordinated a way than we’ve so far been able to. Many see Trump’s election as representative of a social regression, heralding a descent into international disarray and the rise of military rule and fascism. How could the people of a planetary interdependent society develop resilience, so history’s lessons need not repeat in vicious loops, with ever more costly consequences? With our depleted resources and compromised environment, we cannot afford to regress, and must make humane sense of our situation in order to innovate solutions. This will require some mental effort and spiritual legwork to develop ourselves. Accelerating the process of human collective evolution—our minds and our memes—by applying our intelligence, by acting from what we’ve learned so far, we can develop new structures (inner and outer) adapted to our current and impending survival pressures.

Though the title of this series might appear flippant, I’d define a “Trumpocalypse” as “a disaster of far-reaching harmful consequences, predicated on the slimmest of egocentric pretenses and the grossest distortions of inappropriate access to power.” In short, it is allowing a dangerously imbalanced situation to deteriorate into a highly undesirable outcome. As we have seen on a daily basis since the dawn of his term, President Trump is a volatile cocktail—a fragile ego plus an uninformed and isolated mind, combined with access to tremendous, even existentially threatening, powers.

Could we access, harness and wield our collective powers in alternate ways that transform these seeds of Trumpocalypse? Every day we feel “on the brink” of an irreversible Trumpocalypse coming to pass. Every day Trump as president is doing damage, or intending to do damage, to people or environments falling outside of his millionaire peer group—which is nearly everyone and everywhere. Together, the people, on the whole, are surely more intelligent and more “leaderful” than rule by President Trump.

We got to “President Trump” through the sophisticated manipulation of “egoically bruised” Americans (white, male, evangelical, and lower and middle class Americans) through propaganda, lies, fearmongering, bullying, and the precipitous “echo chamber” effect of social media spaces. Humans are notoriously dependent on memes—and vulnerable to being colonized by emotionally-gratifying memes. From early childhood, Americans are groomed to absorb a constant, aggressive stream of advertising messages that are not in our best interests. Consumerist culture, corporate-political consolidation, and our increasingly “anti-social society” (in the words of Rajani Kanth) all depend on our susceptibility to control by memes. Therefore, the stories that we subscribe to seem designed to control our behaviors, and we are simply the puppets. It might appear, horribly, that there is no way to stop people from developing more and more powerful memetic weapons—and that humans will forever serve as the shattered battleground.

But memes need us, as we need memes. Consider that a human mind can develop techniques and skills to dismiss and mute ideas, to distill some parts and discard other parts of an idea, to choose the channels by which it engages with memes, to be a soil for only ideas of integrity to take root. Mentally, emotionally and socially depleted people are especially susceptible to exploitation by malicious memes. By contrast, people with mental development, training, and resources, who know the workings of memes and can navigate them skillfully, become far more resilient to malicious memes and mindfully attuned to harbor beneficial, appropriate memes.

AK Rockefeller, Look for… [via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0]

Perhaps our last line of defense against a Trumpocalypse is the distributed, autonomous seizing and wielding of our life power—that is, the power to direct our attention. These essays provide avenues and techniques for reclaiming such power, from individual up to collective levels. We will explore ways that human individuals and communities can themselves have agency and move amidst the marketplace of memes—strolling the aisles, curating what they select, recombine, and cultivate of the available ideas. Our intelligence is more powerful than our reactive conditioning; we are more powerful than we realize. Understanding and working with our inborn, participatory powers of intelligence will increase our resilience to being colonized by ideas with deleterious intentions or results.

Trump’s power is illusory—it is predicated on the compliance of millions of other people. If Trump was facing down millions of people 1) who saw him as their equal, 2) who do not accept his claims to authority over them, 3) who mindfully respond in a mode of dialogue, and 4) who want to help him heal, then probably none of his destructive deviant aspirations could ever come to pass: neutralized, instead, on the precipice between thoughtform and consensual action.

If people committed to developing their power to see through to the roots of how meme and life power plays out in their lives, and to consciously practice their power to say “yes” or “no” to participating in or perpetuating certain patterns, we’d develop the capacity to enact much more elegant and consensual social structures. Dream with me, if you will, of a re-orchestration of all power latent or active in this present moment, whereby memes and people lived symbiotically, cooperatively, in mutual respect and consent, toward the purpose of fulfilling one another’s most life-affirming potentials.

How likely or attainable this future is, doesn’t really matter. If we want to see it come to pass, there’s only one thing to do: give it our attention.

Will you join me on a journey to see where this vision might lead?

We need to penetrate and peel back the lies, distortions and omissions aimed at assuaging our anxieties through a narrative of our inadequacy and our need to submit to a superior power. Continuing a tack of retreat and regression, embodied by Donald Trump’s toddler-like self-absorption and denial of/exacerbation of difficulties, is a dead end.

Artist Unknown

Our only hope for navigating out of this conundrum is by turning directly to face ourselves and our difficulties—like a grownup would demonstrate the courage to turn back into a burning building, because an infant remained, helpless, within. To face the situation, with “radical acceptance and dialectical thinking,” as therapist Robin Chancer writes, is needed. It’ll be potentially the most painful thing we go through besides dying. We might be scarred for what we’ve borne witness to, but we will persist, because we will have chosen to embrace the depths of what life offers. If we view our lives as a sacred source of energy, insight, wisdom and problem-solving capability, from which we could glean everything we need to develop the best ways to be together, then we will have the power to transform the world with our consensual, respectful engagement.

To begin our journey with integrity, we should prepare the soil of the mind. Let us pause and set aside for a moment the convoluted echo chamber of distorted sound-bites-and-notification-blips-turned-harassing-noise, and sit in the shock of silence. Don’t follow any thoughts that arise. When they arise, let them go by gently re-attaching your attention to the present moment. Seep your attention into the body and the breath.

How long can you last in the quiet space of assessing the actual, present reality? Can you bear to look at it? You might be tempted to retreat. But there is nowhere to go when the whole world has been polluted, used up, paved over, fenced off, chained up and beaten into paralysis. As hard and as painful as it is, the worst thing you can do right now is run into the arms of false saviors and illegitimate authorities. The best thing you can do is hold onto your seat and throw open the shades of your cloistered heart to embrace the hardships and the hope, together.

Transmuting the Trumpocalypse: Introduction

By

By  | 
Feature Image: AK Rockefeller, Red Flag [via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0]
Print

I’d like to provide some context for the subsequent essay series. As a relatively unknown author on the brink of publishing a real pile of material (see the Overview page for this 7-part series), I feel I should at least tell about myself and my method upfront.

The essays in this series are concerned with how the monstrous, epic drama of our present-day reality is animated by subtle winds of power—namely life power (innate) and meme power (dependent on life power).

Mr. Trump, as a wealthy real estate mogul, known for his ostentatious tastes and relentlessly self-absorbed persona, embodies power as conventionally defined through the lens of American capitalism. He is now in one of the most powerful roles on the planet, too, as president of the United States. However, Trump is devoid of almost all of the characteristics of good leaders, as defined, enduringly, for thousands of years in cultures around the globe. He is sadly bereft of many developmental aspects of mature humans. I would argue that his intense hunger for external approval is a byproduct of his lack of personal power in capacities such as peacefulness, understanding, empathy and emotional security. Yet, Trump is an extremely sophisticated showman—and by provoking people’s latent fears, he has channeled Americans’ psychic power into extraordinary political power, with the 2016 presidential election representing a major political upset (with or without Russia’s aid). This makes Trump a vibrant jumping-off point for investigating the core nature—as well as the many facets—of power.

Each essay deals with the unfolding, interdependent effects of these powers on a different scale, proceeding from the personal/intimate to the social/institutional. This essay series aims to penetrate to the roots of power and the shaping of material conditions through memes and through minds. I also discuss what is happening to us—“us” being anyone who is impacted by the Trump phenomenon, especially but not exclusively Americans—on individual and collective psychological levels, as we are forced to confront and grapple with certain popular myths about ourselves, our nation, and our global civilization.

I attempt to show that the intrinsic root and source of power is our embodied consciousness—and to describe some effectual ways by which we may wield our often invisible yet immanent power. This power seems invisible in the sense that it is the subtle cause underlying action in reality—the “ghost in the machine,” so to speak. However, it is also invisible due to the ways in which we are taught in the modern, colonized era to not see it, to suppress and fear it, to avoid attempts to understand it, and thus to not channel it freely. The simple, subjective act of knowing the nature of our power—and learning to work with it—undermines the entire set of oppressive structures currently arranged to extract and consolidate as much value as possible from the diverse living strata of the Earth. Our culture is colonized by memes that reinforce patterns of oppression we’ve internalized in our psyches. Still, though the prevailing set of socioeconomic norms seems to absorb us, we possess the power to move within them—more than we may realize.

I want to speak clearly, if sometimes crisply, about the aspects of consciousness that have underpinned Donald Trump’s rise to political power. These pieces use Donald Trump as a point of focus and departure for a deeper analysis. As a media phenomenon and as a person, Trump represents a concentration, an intensification, of dangerous patterns which some of us may have otherwise continued to blithely ignore or dismiss as benign. Thus, Trump’s widespread presence in consciousness at this point is a catalyst for awareness: as our survival instincts bristle and flare, a heightened sensitivity to perception is activated. This blessedly allows the subtle roots animating the gross phenomena to be revealed and traced, when previously, tolerating the threat was an acceptable stance among those of relative privilege.

Amidst the bombast and bluster of a raging demon-god, it’s quite like witnessing a natural breeze rustle the curtain, allowing the true wizard of Oz—a mere insecure man—to be apprehended. And the “wizard” is merely a human magician with a fixation on appearing “big” and controlling others. As a simple person, and not a seething supernatural demigod—he can be worked with. Moreover, insofar as “Donald Trump” is a creation of our media, and our media is a manifestation of our collective consciousness, we can work through “Donald Trump” ourselves.

Artist David Datuna with Make America Stronger Together Installation

David Datuna with Make America Stronger Together Installation [via Wikimedia]

I feel driven to “come out” as a writer at this time, as uncomfortable as this process is for me, because I believe I have some wisdom to share in this situation, based on how I’ve trained my mind to be resilient in the face of toxic cultural patterns. Unfortunately, I observe that a majority of us today (many more than I was willing to admit to myself, until recent confusion-amplifying events in the sociopolitical sphere) do not understand how our minds work, and how the world works, on subtle levels. Being subject to our fluctuating feelings and thoughts—like a cork bobbing on an ocean—without any broader, grounding, explanatory sense of the patterns and laws of reality (often, because we have never fiercely tested our own ossified beliefs), breeds suffering and violence. When the majority of people—or perhaps a simple minority of people who yet wield the majority of social and material capital—would destroy all life, born and unborn, in an unbending enforcement of their projected concepts, something is gravely imbalanced, and those with wisdom must assert themselves, for the sake of restoring basic sanity and systemic integrity.

Appalled and amazed, I witness the profoundly confused and agitated condition of my fellow Americans from the vantage point of a person who has, by contrast, experienced consistently increasing and deep self-actualization and “making sense of the world” since adolescence. Since my youth, I’ve honed a notable personal “powerfulness”—yet it is a vastly different kind of power than the kind President Trump wields. The power I’ve tapped has to do with an ever more skillful harnessing of the inherent life energy that passes through my body—through the application of ethics, wisdom, self-reflection, and dharma practice…whereas Trump, deprived of personal access to such power, obsessively seeks to control more and more external resources and people through an authoritarian, or “power over,” model, to satisfy the profound gap within him. Or, so goes my hypothesis.

Innate Power: Embracing change, embracing difference

Let me tell you about the source of power that I do know—and thus, can speak of, with some authority.

Since my early teen years, I have actively and deliberately developed my embodied consciousness. That means: I have invested considerable energy regularly, if not daily, in experimenting with and studying my evolving sense of what is true and real—making hypotheses about what is “true” and then proceeding to test my assumptions, fearlessly. In my particular journey of personhood, I have cycled through various identities. I’ve gone from a repressed poet to a cynical liberal activist, defining my self-expression only in terms of what I opposed. I’ve identified as a scientific rationalist, a leftist anarchist, an atheist, a radical environmental justice nag, a pragmatist, a constructivist, a cooperatives expert/organizer, a Buddhist, a permaculture and decolonization practitioner… Each of the foregoing identities or frameworks was useful for a time; each allowed me to predict and understand certain things about my reality. And then each fell away, partly or wholly, like a shed skin or autumn leaves, to be used as mulch in a more explanatory, more elegant, more inclusive articulation of the complex of patterns I find myself immersed in.

Thomas Hawk, Or Maybe Just Happy

Thomas Hawk, Or Maybe Just Happy [via Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0]

Throughout this age-old process, I’ve grown to take my own convictions with a grain of salt. I’ve become aware of this pattern of “philosophical molting,” such that no matter how fervently I may believe something is true this instant, I always reserve an ounce of faith that “this, too” will eventually fall away. How/why? By encountering information or having experiences that do not conform to my existing framework. No one belief I have ever held, no matter how convinced I felt about it, could ever contain the full reality. Having a continual awareness that “this, too, isn’t the full picture” is one of the healthiest human qualities to cultivate, in my opinion. Even when experiencing extreme emotions or thoughts, a little part of me tends to remain in touch with impermanence, with witnessing it all as a process my consciousness is undergoing.

I’ve learned that this process of molting ideologies couldn’t be more natural: the arising and the passing away of thought forms. Eventually my body will perish, and then what will become of all those stored and carefully-constructed belief systems but to completely dissipate on the breeze? But then why attach ourselves to ideas at all? If we “can’t take it with us,” what is the proper function of this belief-development process?

To survive, of course! (It’s evolutionary, my dear Watson.) Concepts, handled by the mind, are emergent aspects of ancient natural cognitive processes: the same processes by which bees, crows, dogs—anything reproducing and sentient—can use generalized, encoded responses to stimuli to “make sense” of and intelligently navigate the world encompassing us. When our beliefs cease to serve our life process, it’s time to let them go and cultivate more advantageous ones.

How will we survive today and tomorrow, in a world immeasurably more complex, fraught, overwhelming, frustrating, enormously entangled, and ecologically devastated than anything our ancestors had to grapple with? In these essays, I would like to suggest that we can apply the same ancient built-in mechanisms that helped us persevere though past environmental challenges to “suss out” today’s path to sanity, well-being, and mutual benefit. Mind training systems (such as Buddhism, which is one I can personally vouch for) are a way to condition the patterns of one’s thoughts to better vet and test ideas, relinquish unhelpful ones, and cultivate more life-optimal ones. An actively trained mind responds to reality with greater integrity than an untrained (i.e., passively conditioned) mind.

Remaining aware of my thoughts’ impermanence and conditionality gives me a heightened immunity to “control by memes.” Thus, sometimes, even as dramatic and horribly dark thoughts are stalking my psyche, I am able to break through and even laugh at what I see my mind telling itself—recognizing the conditional nature of it all, and so not feeling obligated to act on my ego’s—temporary—threatening, harrowing machinations. I know now that the overblown doom-and-gloom Wizard of Oz is just a little man trying to look big—the ego within me. And this practice is how I have become internally resilient, able to resist emotionally-agitated thoughtforms and be at ease in the conditional nature of everything. If you were to ask me to kill or die for any one of my current beliefs, I’d look at you with a sustained, curious gaze, and respond, “No, I’d rather not.”

Thierry Ehrmann, Bobby Fischer, painted-portrait

Thierry Ehrmann, Bobby Fischer, painted-portrait [via Flickr, CC BY 2.0]

To train the mind for resilience, it is of the utmost importance that people experience contrasting viewpoints and diverse cultures, and cultivate open, curious minds—willing to pick up, examine and set aside concepts at will (like the tools for survival that they are). What distinguishes me is only that I have made a path, habit, and practice out of repeatedly breaking the bubble of my particular unearned situation and its comforts. I have sought out contrasting experiences. I have thrown myself into situations I didn’t understand. I have chosen to do the opposite of what I believed was the right way to do things on more occasions than I can count. Even when my concepts about things have been obliterated—I’ve remained. And while there is surely pain to this process, I also experience a pervading peace in the space between assumptions, as well as an intrinsic bliss that comes with challenging my brain to embrace the world in its vastness—how it will always ever be beyond my ideas about it. Although unconventional, this path has been a rewarding one that pays regular dividends in insight. There’s one core and immutable premise that underpins this lifestyle: I trust that every experience, no matter how good or bad, teaches about reality—that reality is knowable and workable. To proceed on this deep-diving odyssey with me, I must encourage you to take this approach within yourself.

In the following pieces, I discuss the difference between beneficial, productive, or adaptive memes, and cancerous or otherwise maladapted memes (many of which prevail and are choking the planet of life, currently). However, before we can be confident in our judgments in discerning what differentiates healthful from malicious memes, we must mindfully practice just being with whatever comes up in our minds. Amidst the outrageous difficulties and tensions that this historic moment is surfacing, I invite you to just stay with your breath. Just notice how you feel. (You can’t change the world in an instant, but you can at least witness your breath, right?)

Take it all in. Take in information, take in various points of view, other people’s truths—if a contradiction is found, don’t reject one idea or the other, offhand. Reflect. Breathe. Marinade in the tensions, rather. Tolerate the cognitive-dissonant chords. What someone tells you is true for them, pretend is true for you—just as an experiment. Try their viewpoint on for size. (Ultimately, you needn’t accept their assumptions, but do you understand—can you relate—to why they’d arrive at the conclusions they have?) Set aside mental constraints. Let it be. Soften and relax. You might feel intense impulses or sensations. Watch them, and don’t react. Stay.

This is empathy.

The curious thing about including many points of view as true is that the mind doesn’t necessarily become noisier and more cacophonous (though it may feel that way for a spell). Gradually, an integration process happens—you note where subtle truths have alignment, and you arrange the tones into ever-more blissfully climactic harmonies. That’s the paradox: the more of others’ truths you include, the more spacious you become by being better able to let manifest phenomena just be without throwing up rigid walls of thought-resistance. You are able to joyfully abide more often in a peaceful space of mind—such that, as a yoga teacher once said to me, “when a situation comes up and you do need to use your thoughts, they are that much more skillful and potent.”

We must open to the world, now and every “now” we have the temporary privilege of tasting. The goal is to be able to work with the world as it is: to deny nothing, to weave all the voices of existence into a sense-making harmony. To work with the world as it is, one must learn to work with symphonies of voices—be both a profound appreciator and patron of the world’s “music,” and a skillful orchestral arranger and composer. The ultimate aim is that the world totally fits together with itself, like a symphony at peak performance, which includes you… The ultimate aim is flow, that you resist nothing as “not-you” or not-OK, that you engulf any phenomenon in caring understanding. It is then that we will be free to go beyond the constraints of today, and give life to our deepest dreams.

Jeffrey, Dance of Life [via Flickr, CC BY-ND 2.0]

I feel reactions in line with what you may feel in grappling with the costs and impacts of the condition of Trump’s presidency and the overall state of global economics and political power today—anger, stress, anxiety, worry, disgust, pain. However, on the whole, I also reside in an authentic peace that transcends the current scenario, a peace emerging from the sense that I feel understanding for what is happening and why, and I hold it in compassion. It is this eerie poise that sets me apart in a wide range of scenarios—stressful, extreme, or otherwise. It’s not that I think I have “all things figured out.” It’s that I think I know enough to be able to work with reality, in its varieties, successfully.

If you cannot confidently say about the world and your place in it, “I understand what is happening,” I hope you will continue reading. Sometimes I speak from the perspective of a millennial American Buddhist, sometimes as a long-time student of cooperative organizations and community organizing processes, sometimes with the raw, impassioned voice of a suffering artist. Whether you respond to my anger, to my love, to my hope, or whatever you see in the mirror of me: I hope what I write rings a bell of resonance within you.

Working with What Is

To recap, I am proposing that anything we can claim to have perceived or interpreted must be accepted as only a partial and conditional view on our mysterious, shared situation. There are some things I can claim insight to, and other things I cannot; aspects of power I can claim experience of, and aspects I cannot. No matter how much I “see” Donald Trump as a daily fixture of the news, and no matter how I interpret what I see about Trump’s personality, persona and actions—and no matter how emotively I may adhere to those interpretations—I still must accept that I cannot see Trump in his wholeness. I do not (and would not) claim to have a universal answer to the puzzle of our situation.

Rather, I am putting forth some incisive questions that I think may help “cut through” the miring confusion, and unlock as-yet unrealized potential in our current situation. One of the “angles,” or strategies, in my proffered toolkit is the appropriate application of anger.

Anger is one of the many voices or angles I employ in this series to “get at” what I feel I need to get at. And yet, these essays argue that the only way to liberation is through understanding and embracing our challenges at the human and humanistic levels—through having compassion for our human situation. This attitude may seem to be in tension with the language of enmity I at times employ. I’d like to address that now.

Expressing an urge to actively respond to a perceived threat, anger is an appropriate and important emotion to feel at this time. Without anger, we wouldn’t have the energy nor daring to act with the aim of reducing suffering or benefiting the world. I would never have had the fuel to generate these pieces—these many thousands of words—without anger. Indeed, I have been angry with the exploits and destruction attendant to global neo-capitalism since my early teens. Yet I attempt to direct my anger to the real roots of its cause—not at the particular people who represent and perpetuate it (as the people only change with time and circumstance), but at the cancerous pattern itself, which destroys even the supposedly “privileged” people in its wake. I attempt to use anger as a scythe, to slice away the lies and ruses, to sink the blade’s teeth through the protective meat and hit the bone. Unless we cut and starve off the real roots of our problems, they will only continue to regenerate and evolve—with higher and higher stakes.

Jef Safi, in(ex)gressive (self)trans(in)formation

Jef Safi, in(ex)gressive (self)trans(in)formation [via Flickr, CC NC-ND 2.0]

There are many spiritual traditions in which it is taught that anger only ever obscures the true, divine reality of the moment—that anger is a poison and it blocks authentic relating. In my spiritual tradition, involving a Vajrayana path of Buddhism, nothing—even anger—doesn’t belong in our human experience. Rather, one must learn to skillfully transmute anger as it arises so that it doesn’t result in unconscious, poisonous divisiveness, but instead actuates mirror-like wisdom. Mirror-like wisdom is the straightforward, unflinching showing of the way things are. In looking at the honest, frank reflection, many people may see things they would rather avoid seeing—and may react with fear, blame, rejection, aggression, etc. But if, instead, they use the opportunity of the reflection to further break through the barriers between themselves and the world, a new measure of understanding becomes possible. This is how mirror-like wisdom can spread enlightenment.

Although anger has the power to show us what is real through mirror-like wisdom, it is anything but spiritually “elevated”—anger is earthy. It deals with an urge to address the here and now. I am extremely concerned that we may lose touch with our ground, the real, in favor of the tantalizing distractions offered by fleeting illusions (ideas). There is a great seductive power to believing President Trump will fix everything.

There is seduction, as well, in reverting to militarism, nihilism, or fundamentalism in resistance to Trump. These frameworks are seductive precisely because they indulge and leverage our unconscious emotions in absorbing narratives promising an amazing future bounty… if only we’ll serve their ends now. Like candy dangled over a child’s head, the emotional appeals of these narratives fixate our minds and we follow dutifully like a zombie follows his hunger. They are an appeal to our cravings for an order that is tidier than today’s messy, struggle-filled reality. Is it any wonder escapist media and immersive video games (even, to wit, virtual reality) are exploding right now—just as we need to be paying more attention than ever to our common ecological context? Thus, the seductive narratives and not the much trickier realities dominate our minds and actions. Worse, in consumerist cultures like our own, people have been made especially vulnerable to seductive narratives. (It is worth examining, indeed, who would stand to profit off of your subscription to any of the aforementioned “isms”.) But weak minds will bear distorted fruits. Really: our disordered minds are what is causing a mess of reality, today.

It is THIS I hunger to “go beyond.” These pieces aim to penetrate through various seductions and illusions, and cut to the flesh of the radical alternatives rooted in the real—that raw, earthy, human, funky, NOW. In reality: humans and the planet are stressed beyond imagination. We are inundated with a raging hellstorm of competing ideas, flying about chaotically at an escalating speed and ferocity, terrifying meek mortals. To cut through the deafening noise of that storm, I quietly ask:

What is the nature of ideas?

What is the the nature of human mind-bodies (consciousnesses), on which ideas depend?

Where does power reside—in the ideas, or in the human mind-bodies?

Could we transform the way we relate to our ideas so as to better liberate human potential? That is, could we transform our relationship to ideas such that the fullness of human intelligence is more available to engage enhanced, participatory and harmonic forms of sense-making—and of world-making?

Jeffrey, Shadow Dancer

Jeffrey, Shadow Dancer [via Flickr, CC BY-ND 2.0]

I’ll admit there is one identity that has persisted, like a subtle thread, throughout the evolution of my belief systems. I am an activist still. I strongly desire that my actions in the world cause benefit to other beings. I have been perpetually engaged in an effort to refine the effectiveness of my efforts. I am showing up in this space with the sincere hope that what I present may penetrate to the roots—and no longer merely hack at the symptoms—of our difficulties.

Our difficulties existed before Trump became president, and will exist after he’s gone unless we collectively take right action and seize the day. If you are reading this because you are eager to apply emergent strategies to get at our root problems, and you’re willing to go beyond the standard framings—external and internal—to get the job done, then let us venture forth to those horizons.

∞

The night before his enlightenment, the Buddha destroyed the very last and fiercest of his arising doubts, fears, and temptations by touching the earth and declaring, with a “lion’s roar,” that: as a being of the Earth he had every right to bear witness to ultimate truth and to become enlightened. My own power to speak aloud what I see to be true is so modeled—yet is very difficult for me, as I spent years being socially rewarded for my silence and dutifulness, and almost as many years being ostracized for pursuing a non-conforming direction and for insisting on investigating honestly “what’s real, here.” Pushing back against the tide of this conditioned behavior, I acknowledge that remaining silent supports the conditions for ignorant violence to continue spreading. This I cannot accept—and so I must speak. If there was a defiance in the Buddha’s “lion’s roar,” it was also pure and true. So may the voices I use—including my anger—be.

I have a right to tell you what I see, openly, freely, because I am a living being and my perspective is as valid as any. If you find something of merit in my mirror-like reflection: take it and use it.

And, just as a mirror can reflect light into concentrated beams, may any truth that rides these words annihilate dangerous memes by illuminating them with laser clarity.

May you cultivate a mental soil that bears wholesome fruits.

The Mythopoetic Mind of Plato

By

By  | 
Feature Image: Thomas Cole, The Course of Empire: Destruction [via WikiMedia, Public Domain]
Print

This journey of Plato as artist engenders the gift of mastering mythogenesis that is bound to an animate self. Consciousness appears therein—this sentient will immerses in the thick of sense and meaning to learn how to make a fine distinction between constituent elements and act upon them in accordance with a known image of existence that manifests into a cognitive state. We are always living in a story, always present in a myth. The key is to possess mindfulness towards worldviews and their presence in the awakened self—they are analytical frameworks of the mind that first allow the universe to be experienced in a specific manner and then formulated into pure, specific “understandings” about the nature of that universe.

Read the full series:

The Mythopoetic Mind of Plato: The Kingdom-Sage’s Muthos in Timaeus, The Republic, and The Symposium (Parts I & II)

By  |  Filed Under: Hide from home page, Longform/Essays, Noetics (Mind/Spirit), Philosophy (Eteolegeme), Poetics (Originary Powers)

The entire purpose of this work will not so much argue but re-imagine and challenge Plato, such that it breathes the warmest breath of reconsideration, rereading, and re-admiration into the Platonic dialogues.

Read more

The Mythopoetic Mind of Plato: The Kingdom-Sage’s Muthos in Timaeus, The Republic, and The Symposium (Parts III & IV)

By  |  Filed Under: Hide from home page, Longform/Essays, Noetics (Mind/Spirit), Philosophy (Eteolegeme), Poetics (Originary Powers), Poetry

From [this] indivisible awareness, the mystic sage is fully able to tap into the eternal mind of god, something that would smooth out a translation in terms of human consciousness—and that would give the creative impetus to imagine a text like Timaeus.

Read more

The Mythopoetic Mind of Plato: The Kingdom-Sage’s Muthos in Timaeus, The Republic, and The Symposium (Parts V & VI)

By  |  Filed Under: Hide from home page, Longform/Essays, Noetics (Mind/Spirit), Philosophy (Eteolegeme), Poetics (Originary Powers), Poetry

From the first creation event of Timaeus that heralds a universe (the one and only) into the perceptible in giving a reality, this perfection persists into Plato’s Republic, a world of its own that deals with society and its paradigms in the social creature called humanity and its just longings.

Read more

The Mythopoetic Mind of Plato: The Kingdom-Sage’s Muthos in Timaeus, The Republic, and The Symposium (Parts VII & VIII)

By  |  Filed Under: Hide from home page, Longform/Essays, Noetics (Mind/Spirit), Philosophy (Eteolegeme), Poetics (Originary Powers)

The strength and sincerity at which each of the Greeks in the Symposium pursues his or her own experiences towards a lived philosophy of love is inspirational for a culture of Self, some of the original self-believers.

Read more

The Mythopoetic Mind of Plato: The Kingdom-Sage’s Muthos in Timaeus, The Republic, and The Symposium (Parts IX & X)

By

By  | 
Feature Image: Thomas Cole, The Course of Empire: Desolation [via WikiMedia, Public Domain]
Print

IX

When all is considered, “[t]he truth about stories is that that’s all we are,”1King 2003, 92. and it matters little what mind you engage with for all humanity is narratively driven, and the world that we live in, the world that we tell in is not by mistake mythic, but a definite conglomerate of ideas and consciousness that provides life to that self-indistinguishable “I” that remembers its truest home through acts of myth. The work of Plato holds no glaring exceptions: the myth of Timaeus exists so that humanity might know Justice, that of the Republic to meditate upon it, and that of the Symposium to realize it. And this metanarrative that has been constructed to explore a possible Platonic worldview is enough of the whole to make a holographic, fractal revival of Plato himself inside his mythopoetic mind. The approach used in the intuitive article of creative and critical acts is centered on the concept of extractions. The purpose is to not define myth—or even worldview—per se but provide a meta-tool for the act of natively defining these concepts as they appear in situ, to extract representative samples for practical applications. And over time, these extractions (that are nevertheless cross-sections of myth, the mythogenic patterns, or rather worldviews) might be able to collectively lead to innovations in the mind and cognitive sciences, perhaps find a method of structurally confirming myth as a total phenomenon of consciousness.  For now, the metaphor stands—this experience is akin to being immersed in a play with the original and following acts, given but one superimposed pamphlet in the form of this article and its content with a charge to go back and reread Plato with new eyes, radically.

X. Atonement

Surprise surrendered, in that moment—a bride taking laughter in the pillar of her husband, a Greek wonder as old as those Titan peoples, as all around were in her soft light touched in a weightless renewal. Plucks of instruments proved hypnotic, swallowed the red-sea wines, simply seething psychedelic. And, that man from the old country heard a weary bend in his noble bones, too distant to drink in that good gaiety.

The draught idles of his pain pushed took him away, brushed to a more sombre note of the one endless. The looming, eclipsed leaves were taking in that last bit of heat to cast tender shadows, before that lost Athenian sun was felled to serpentine devourings. Those arches of the Acropolis imprisoning light. Fond flashes of wild memory steeped past all the striking vistas—a kind visage of Socrates, a startling word of Phaedrus, and a brash move by Glaucon—stripping him bare of all his present identity in that flutter, frozen to a marked beat but frantic. These withered hands of white of his were dull to teared eyes old.

A cloth not even Michelangelo could craft swayed to his glint of perception. Then his chin did rise for one he should have bowed to, swearing from early cause to order always to be in her service. Wise age took much from him.

“What breaks you, sweetest Nymph, from the sweeter sounds? Surely, this one man is no interest to a maiden of the festivities.”

“You may not have strength or spirit now to crackle with a thunder divine—but I, yes I, have followed you… once before in disguise, once now in this flesh. I manifest inside humanity to attain its knowledge untasted—no tales recited will ever speak of such acts. I am Pallas Athena, and I have come to comfort…”

“What will become of me?”

“You will be found cold and unlividly dead by the morning, not far from here as you are resting. Athens pauses to mourn your work—without ever knowing you, that deeply.”

“Why not let Hades have his will? What condemns me?”

“Do you have knowledge of self yet unburdened?”

“I would confess, but even age has its embarrassment—I confess not because I am wise or true, but that I know what its value lost means… I foolishly distorted the unities of the soul by a philosophy rationalized, judged and struck people that sought lives I did not understand, to only find evidence of their unfitting demise and detriment by selectively convincing stories of others, never believing in potential. This is my greatest undoing, but I fear most that I have taught this world child, a cruel tool. Where can Justice reside now?”

“That is for the fates to string, but each soul must find it to its own.”

“Catharsis only comes in continuance. I live the eternal death. My body must return to the world as parchment for generations of writers. And since I have procured no ideas of my own, I live the fate of parables in having my soul torn to bits and replace upon the black universe. My friend, remember as I warn all budding philosopher kings, an unlikely man will come prophetic in verse, reviving that Delphic Oracle: ‘This above all—to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.’” And only then and if then, I am freed to skip this redemption immortal, as all must truly listen to that one Justice that resides natively in the soul of philosophers and poets alike.

References Cited (Parts 1-5)

Aerts, Diederik, et al. 2007. “World Views: From Fragmentation to Integration.” CLEA. Accessed 26 October 2016. http://www.vub.ac.be/CLEA/pub/books/ worldviews.pdf.

Annas, Julia. “Plato’s Myths of Judgement.” Phronesis 27, no. 2 (1982): 119-143.

Auerbach, Erich. 1953. Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. Translated by Willard Trask. Princeton: Princeton Press.

Armstrong, Karen. 2010. The Case for God. New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.

Aristotle. 1984. The Rhetoric and the Poetics of Aristotle. Translated by Edward Corbett. Toronto: McGraw-Hill.

Brisson, Luc. 2008. How Philosophers Saved Myths: Allegorical Interpretation and Classical Mythology. Translated by Catherine Tihanyi. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

—. 2000. Plato the Myth Maker. Translated by Gerard Neddaf. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Bruner, Jerome. “The Narrative Construction of Reality.” Critical Inquiry 18 (1991): 1-21.

Buxton, Richard. 2002. From Myth to Reason? Studies in the Development of Greek Thought. Oxford:  Oxford University Press.

Coupe, Laurence. “Myth without Mystery: The Project of Robert Segal.” Religious Studies Review 29, no. 1 (2003): 3-11.

Davis, Wade. 2007. Light at the Edge of the World: A Journey through the Realm of Vanishing Cultures. Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre.

—. “Light at the Edge of the World: Science of the Mind.” TED video, 9:23. 26 October 2016. http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/science-of-the-mind/.

—. “Wade Davis on the Worldwide Web of Belief and Ritual.” TED video, 19:08. 26 October 2016. http://www.ted.com/talks/wade_davis_on_the_worldwide_web_of_belief_and_ritual.html.

—. “Dreams from Endangered Cultures: Subtitles and Transcript.” TED. Last modified 26 October 2016. https://www.ted.com/talks/wade_davis_on_endangered_cultures/ transcript?language=en.

Derrida, Jacques, and Jean-Luc Marion. 1999. “On the Gift: A Discussion between Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Marion, Moderated by Richard Kearney.” In God, the Gift, and Postmodernism, edited by John D. Caputo and Michael J. Scanlon, 54-78. Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP.

DMT—The Spirit Molecule. Directed by Mitch Schultz. 2010. New York: Spectral Alchemy, 2011. DVD.

Falck, Colin. 1994. Myth, Truth and Literature: Towards a True Postmodernism. Cambridge:  Cambridge Press.

History Channel. “Gates of Hell.” Written by Stephen Dost. A&E Networks, 17 August 2010.

Homer. 2004. The Iliad. Translated by Robert Fitzgerald. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.

—. The Odyssey. 1998. Translated by Robert Fitzgerald. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.

Iser, Wolfgang. 2008. “The Reading Process: A Phenomenological Approach.” In Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader, edited by David Lodge and Nigel Wood, 294-310. 3rd ed. New York: Pearson.

James, E. O. “The Nature and Function of Myth.” Folklore 68, no. 4 (1957): 474-482.

Kearney, Michael. “World View Theory and Study.” Annual Review of Anthropology 4 (1975): 247-270.

King, Thomas. 2003. The Truth about Stories. Toronto: Dead Dog Café Productions.

Kintsch, Walter. 1998. Comprehension: A Paradigm for Cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Klein, Julie. 1990. Interdisciplinarity: History, Theory, & Practice. Detroit: Wayne State University Press.

Koltko-Rivera, Mark E. “The Psychology of Worldviews.” Review of General Psychology 8, no. 1 (2004): 3-58.

Lear, Edward. 1994. “Limerick 6.” The Complete Nonsense Book. Containing All the Original Pictures and Verses, Together with New Material. New York: Castle Books.

Lovejoy, Arthur O. 1936. The Great Chain of Being. Harvard: Harvard University Press.

Mauss, Marcel. 2001. The Gift: the Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. Translated by W. D. Halls. London: Routledge.

Meletinsky, Eleazar. 1998. The Poetics of Myth. Translated by Guy Lanoue and Alexander Sadetsky. New York: Routledge.

Milton, John. 1998. “Philosophus ad Regem.” John Milton: The Complete Poems. New York:  Penguin.

The Mindscape of Alan Moore. Directed by Dez Vylenz. 2003. London: Shadowsnake Films, 2008. DVD.

Morgan, Kathryn A. 2000. Myth and Philosophy from the Presocratics to Plato. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Naugel, David. 2002. Worldview: The History of a Concept. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

Orki, Ben. 1997. A Way of Being Free. London: Phoenix House.

Partenie, Catalin. 2009. Plato’s Myths. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Plato. 1997. “Cratylus.” In Plato Complete Works, translated by G.M.A Grube, 101-156. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.

—. 1997. “Phaedo” In Plato Complete Works, translated by G.M.A Grube, 49-100. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.

—. 1997. “Phaedrus.” In Plato Complete Works, translated by Alexander Nehamas and Paul Woodruff, 506-557. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.

—. 1997. “Republic.” In Plato Complete Works, translated by G.M.A Grube, rev. C.D.C Reeve, 971-1223. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.

—. 1997. “Symposium.” In Plato Complete Works, translated by Alexander Nehamas and Paul Woodruff, 457-505. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.

—. 1997. “Timaeus.” In Plato Complete Works, translated by Donald Zeyl, 1224-1291. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company.

Beckett, Samuel. Play. Directed by Anthony Minghella. 2000. Dublin: Blue Angels Films, 2001. DVD.

Ruthven, K. K. 1976. Myth. Cambridge: Cambridge Press.

Saunders, Trevor J. “Penology and Eschatology in Plato’s Timaeus and Laws.” The Classical Quarterly 23, no. 2 (1973): 232-244.

Shakespeare, William. 1963. Hamlet. Toronto: Longmans.

Sperber, Dan. 1988. Rethinking Symbolism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Sophocles. 2004. “Oedipus.” In The Compact Bedford Introduction to Literature: Reading, Thinking, and Writing, translated by Robert Fagles, 1049-1091. Boston: Bedford, 2004.

Uždavinys, Algis. 2004. The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy. Bloomington: World Wisdom.

Wallin, Mark. 2007. “An Eurhythmatic Response to Adaptive Accrual: A Rhetoric of Adaptation.” PhD diss., University of Waterloo.

Watts, Cedric. “Conrad’s Covert Plots and Transtextual Narratives.” Critical Quarterly 24, no. 3 (1982): 53-64.

Zeitler, Michael. “Living Memory: Narrative Accrual and Community in Under the Greenwood Tree.” The Hardy Review 3 (2000): 136-143.

References   [ + ]

1. ↑ King 2003, 92.

The Mythopoetic Mind of Plato: The Kingdom-Sage’s Muthos in Timaeus, The Republic, and The Symposium (Parts VII & VIII)

By

By  | 
Feature Image: Thomas Cole, The Course of Empire: Destruction [via WikiMedia, Public Domain]
Print

VII. Corporal Cherubim

     Pearls of rain
          Caught to polished fire—
A hand blessed to this Eden,
     But wandering in fallings…
          Lying, lain in truths looming.
 
     Skulled in a tambered torment,
          Wingless as dragons
               Spent of soaring tongues:
          A blind Eros births sorrow<
               Dirt-crusted, crestfallen.
 
          Stronger hands yet
               Unchain shades and shadows
                    Split by bare eyes to that tumbling
               Amidst semblances of meadows—
                    Strength smoothing out surfaces,
               Roughed grips to coarsed divinity.<
 
                    All naked as human
                         Cast as an infinite wondering;
     Fevers frolic as these souls steal life—
          A life pained to waking preciousness,
               Not unknowing of Pygmalion’s touch.
 
     Stammered, stood—
          This Eros walked
     Under their wrought unbidden:<
          All pandered beacons protesting Love,
               And with timed hesitation,
                    He would glimpse into universes immaculate!
 
                    Tears of weather,
                         Ethereal scars acidic—
                              Eons of melancholic demise elegant
                    Made such irresistible beauty
      And this Eros called Psyche—
           As he died alas in her love but mortal…

 

VIII

The character of Plato’s Symposium is relived in this brief poetic spell that retells the mode of that one night of drinking at Callias’ house in Athens, where each attendant gives his or her best at speech of praise concerning love (Eros). And the full nature of the subject lends to a more symphonic process, as each utterance is an instrument for an aggregative and innovative wisdom falling on a collective spirit. Hidden in inspiring truth, the phrases ring in the ideal for existence, a pulse upon which each Greek believer is then pragmatically directed to a point of meaning and idealized purpose inside a world-map of humanity. The harmony expressed here on that kindly ideology of love casts all as one in the cohesive: an extra conscious, Phaedrus;1Plato 1997, 463-465, 178b-180c. a growing reciprocity, Pausanias;2Plato 1997, 465-470, 180c-185e. a complete phenomenon, Eryximachus;3Plato 1997, 470-472, 185e-189a a unifying soulmate, Aristophanes;4Plato 1997, 472-477, 189a-194e. a manifest grace, Agathon;5Plato 1997, 477-484, 194e-201c. a needed ascent, Socrates via Diotima of Mantinea;6Plato 1997, 484-497, 201c-215a. and a seductive experience, Alcibiades.7Plato 1997, 497-504, 215a-222c. And, it would certainly seem that the wisest love is not sought in any one of these answers but that of the whole, the whole picture effortlessly fluid to that ultimate truth and drivenness which animates all worlds. To spread such divine wings, invites a psychological renaissance corporeal through a “re-mythologizing of our spiritual landscape[, as this] cultural move […] is philosophically well-founded, because it is mainly poetry […] which can enable us to discover which myths do in fact have a hold on our imagination.”8Falck 1994, 134-135.  Much can be done with a surety, and a life confirmed in that comfort is one that confirms its own grace: there can be seldom a greater surety to a new life steeped in inviting spiritual meanings, or even just its humble attainment. Myth then, in the Symposium or elsewhere, “is not aetiological but fidejussive: its business is not to satisfy curiosity but to confirm the faith.”9James 1957, 477-478. The point being that it functions not so much as to give into speculation but to honour the real pragmatism of how one forges a life, the culture-bearing ethos. And in that world and in that life, a Greek believer needs a direction in uncovering the Agathon.

The strength and sincerity at which each of the Greeks in the Symposium pursues his or her own experiences towards a lived philosophy of love is inspirational for a culture of Self, some of the original self-believers.10Plato 1997, 463-504, 178b-222c. And true, the sheer amount of manifest possibilities demonstrated in the catalogue within the Symposium that may at once become a fully existent physics for these Greeks is dreadfully entangling—even to the  point that awareness collapses in the midst and grasp of this consciousness gradient. The infinite and pre-perceptual material can only be actively translated towards meaning that is recognizable to humanity, via a filter which has often been that of allegory. According to Brisson, “[m]yths are full of surprising things. Thus an interest in myth implies a desire to acquire wisdom,”112008, 29. and all myths are saved via hermeneutics (new allegory) based in philosophy and art to discover the content of mysticism. But not all people are diviners of myth—a fact evident in the discovery of the teleme (“telos” + “episteme”) inside the drama, Oedipus the King.  Teleme brings a myth—and reality as well—to a convergence of truth, but that truth does not have to be consciously recognized for its effects to be prevalent, and this tragic structure gained much artistic power through the technique of denials as seen in the Oedipus-Tiresias dynamic.12Sophocles 2004, 1056-1062. The gift of knowing a teleme at any given point, perhaps as a probability, seems to be the domain and heritage of seers and gods, but it is not entirely outside the hands of humanity, especially with the alternity principle. This deepest practice of muthos enables the bending of consciousness via the idea that the very wiring or reality is actually quite dynamic in the disciplined presence of a master by logos and poesis. What each Greek in the Symposium is lending a purpose to is lining up his or her life and love with a teleme—the most predominant being the two speeches of Socrates and Eryximachus, such that “love [… is] every action in connection.”13Plato 1997, 472, 188c. The embrace of this state inside alternative consciousness sends someone on a path of what may be known as soft-place mysticism, a gateway into an unfamiliar psycho-scape. And these mindscapes have existed cross-culturally like the Xibalba caves (hellmouth) of the Mayans described in Gates of Hell. 142010, 00:19:19. The invasion of such psychological realities gives an opportunity to fashion the otherwise into existence, conforming this presented aesthesis towards an ascent of Love culminating in seeing the absolute via a teleme that enables a Greek believer to be “in touch with the true Beauty.”15Plato 1997, 494, 212a. This knowing is where every purpose originates even if a soul is not always privy to its flow.

The ideal for existence as the inescapable human drive surely and skillfully makes the pursuit of Justice, the Good, and Love both obvious and endearing to adherents, but without it, all becomes an indifferent and cold affair on the constant verge of abandonment. The Symposium makes a reader challenged philosophically and spiritually in truly seeing multiple telemes that each themselves are like keys to holographic realities and fragments, and the possession of one truth does not necessarily exclude the attainment of the other in this unified Greek mindscape because the smallest element of difference possesses all, the universe. The human will to explore and understand the Self gives a wise heart to Justice in its eternal continuance, and a love reckoned to this wisdom is supreme.

References   [ + ]

1. ↑ Plato 1997, 463-465, 178b-180c.
2. ↑ Plato 1997, 465-470, 180c-185e.
3. ↑ Plato 1997, 470-472, 185e-189a
4. ↑ Plato 1997, 472-477, 189a-194e.
5. ↑ Plato 1997, 477-484, 194e-201c.
6. ↑ Plato 1997, 484-497, 201c-215a.
7. ↑ Plato 1997, 497-504, 215a-222c.
8. ↑ Falck 1994, 134-135.
9. ↑ James 1957, 477-478.
10. ↑ Plato 1997, 463-504, 178b-222c.
11. ↑ 2008, 29.
12. ↑ Sophocles 2004, 1056-1062.
13. ↑ Plato 1997, 472, 188c.
14. ↑ 2010, 00:19:19.
15. ↑ Plato 1997, 494, 212a.

The Mythopoetic Mind of Plato: The Kingdom-Sage’s Muthos in Timaeus, The Republic, and The Symposium (Parts V & VI)

By

By  | 
Feature Image: Thomas Cole, The Course of Empire: The Arcadian or Pastoral State [via WikiMedia, Public Domain]
Print

V. Archelaus Kingless

CHARACTERS
Archelaus, general of Pontus
Perseid, brigadier of Archelaus
Soldier of Pontus
Mithridates IV (Mithridates), king of Pontus
Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix (Sulla), consul of Rome
Aristion, tyrant of Athens
A Chorus of Athenian citizens and their Leader

TIME AND SCENE: The port harbour of Piraeus, 88 BC. Civilians of Athens have defected to the Pontic Empire of Mithridates IV, in rebellion against the Roman occupation.

A few days have passed from this inauguration of saviours, and Archelaus has sent Perseid to gather the city’s most prized treasure. He awaits Perseid on the coast, near his naval fleet. A chorus of civilians question the fate of Athens.

Archelaus: I cannot say that this strife is all but selfless,
naked as the day—I have seen men, women
burnt under my sword, the sword of my command:
what say you, soldier, to ease mind harried?

Soldier: If I were ever paid silver coins to consider,
then… then I would perish uncomely
as a philosophic idiot under that heretic blade
of the truly inconsiderate. Unthink it.

The harbour blisters with a beauty taken.

But ho, general! Archelaus of Cappadocia,
I come pressed with pronouncements
on Bendideia, the hunting feast decadent.
And this Roman, an opponent by league,
holds not his tongue peaced:

“I, Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix, protectorate
in power and in empire most mighty
as Rome’s one true consul, am the rightful
master of Athens—fear me wisely!
Your Pontic trespassing is teething with war.
Sons of Greece you may be, that fire
bastard and born of infant ferocity dull.
Rotten and rooted, I will divine the
fate of your master upon white gold gleaned.
Is this justice? What noble falsehoods
do you spring from? Cunning and courage,
smeared thick and pure at the union
of foxes and lions, swearing high fealty to
all those that are gifted by the twins,
Romulus and Remus, regents spirited wild
of my heart grievously offended. Mercy,
I have none. I march to your coming madness;
Chaeronea will see you pinning for Pluto!
if the winter and wolves do not tear, devour.”

Archelaus: Where is your charged officer, Perseid?

Soldier: Near, I see black flag and corpus with his news
and teeming wondrous plunders tasted—
A soldier’s one and only great demise, if refused.

Enter Perseid.

Archelaus: My brother, what foundless treasures?

Perseid: Yes, indeed, the iron hearth of Mithridates IV broken
to a thousand suns would have a hard spells
offering more gilded riches to its fondly mad king.
And that should respite the rule of others,
Supremely forever off of our backs—no, bother?
But, I have a tale for you, strange in nature,
When upon the academy I noticed peril peculiar.
I thought nothing of the place, yet, by Jove,
They thought everything of me, like centurions
guarded before treaty—I slew only natural
and that which provoked, and knew not the intent
of my attacker. I could see only aftermath
cradled in blood before a scant book scattered.
I asked a local Greek to decipher the dialect.
Told me that they were myths, drivel of a traitor
called Plato and his Republic. I did not know
that people would ever die for a myth…

Archelaus: Neither did your sword, but it took fairly—
What value is this, we are not statesmen?

Perseid: None that I know. Moments are what I could not
discard, not after felling men no prouder than
this instrument that I have become, face-stealer.
I took grief in mystery, and I read what cause
had driven me to unkindness upon the civil breast.
Justice not of my own. I heard that every soul
to its city is the proper means to ascend to that
one good, the Agathon. A life of attainment
grants one guardianship, stewards winged over
citizens, but at high costs to cleanse identity
base to wisdom, temperance, and courage serene.
That all men living guided by the rational soul
will like minor gods boldly inspire noble cities afar.
Among them, one takes hold with law and
Philosophy, being their king for sole love of that
wisdom and its unity in soul. It speaks anew,
yes that born redemption by the art of philosophy,
and how its light thirsts for shepherds braver.
Faith reckons all here, and the beliefs and slights
of men in nations crumble this perfection
eternal as the sleep of reason produces monsters,
and all that stays is tapestries of judgement
and the immortal soul broke from chance free, alas.

Archelaus: Most curious. I must inspect this further…

Enter Aristion.

Aristion: Pardons, Archelaus. Gracious for your handiwork,
I could not have conducted such carnage cold;
the Romans will be thanking your cordial invitation.
Your lord, Mithridates, and I have conversed—
We plotted ambitions colourful in our countrymen,
but there is no planning like famine and fear
to wield as weapons stained in stark cannibalism,
coaxing hearts against oppressors bleed real,
and I with Zeus the wolf-god’s potency lord over
this leaderless mob as tyrant extraordinaire!
Merited by Mithridates, the sun king, who swore
it as the seed of his own law aroot in auspice.

Archelaus: Where are your philosophers? Reputations,
I hear that you have one…

Aristion: They are rather dead, or hiding from authority,
and I count myself no longer among them.

Exit Aristion.

Chorus: Hear us with pity forgiving. No mother could
take our hands free, these chains throttle
with dusts foreign, that we are bound loathsome
to this cruelty unknown as Atlas, whored
in pastures that were once graced as home—
We are the proud Greeks, kin to wonders
and the origins of heroic kingdoms renewed,
But as trick, all that is proud becomes slave.
So what befalls our people in just Pontic hands?

Archelaus: This deathtrap will destroy itself, and
I was sent to supervise its whimpering—
but let’s to the matters of conquerors, Perseid.
What orders are we given from homeland?
This news may be our course and will.

Soldier: “I, Mithridates IV as Mithras’ gift incarnate,
who rules in wisdom alone and speaks
the fullest sorcery of my countries tongues
am ungiven to death and its toils lesser.
The awed spirit of my providence wishes that
the world of the Greeks returns home.”

Archelaus: By the gods, I know pure dread thunderous.
War is at our bellies—where lies thought now?
if I ever prayed before, help those wretched souls
that rule not their cities. Ares storms alight.

Exit all.

VI

From the first creation event of Timaeus that heralds a universe (the one and only) into the perceptible in giving a reality, this perfection persists into Plato’s Republic, a world of its own that deals with society and its paradigms in the social creature called humanity and its just longings. And the effort strikes into effect the system of rules, which is the basis and expression for how necessary principles work to govern a network in sustaining an attachment to a world as such—in being both probable and engaging for the explorations of that Greek believer inside that very wellspring of human consciousness. All of this depth operates the boundaries and coding of a worldview in myth, and this one aspect is perhaps most natively familiar to philosophers for its logos-driven characteristics, but a logos freed from bias in embracing integration beyond the merely “rational.” The Republic concerns itself with the rise and fall of an imagined but factual society, and that society cultivates its spiritual qualities with an equally apt mindfulness in attaining and modifying self towards the idea of the good,1The “good” (the Agathon) is the form that generates all and is the ultimate object of knowledge, and self in its presences eternally gains Justice, Usefulness, and Value. “Agathon.”2Plato “Cratylus” 1997, 159, 412c. By the end of Book I of the Republic, the text allows an epistemic invitation towards an allegory. This symbolic layering gives way to a narrative about the soul’s moral development through justice (and ideas of justice leading to consequences as possible paths): a psychic wave where logos is the guide, poesis is the experience, and muthos is the world.3Plato 1997, 997-998, 353e-354a. The strength and height of this society thrives on detachment and taboo, giving into a disciplined life41997, 1014, 375e. that transmutes both the social5Plato 1997, 1035, 398a. and the divine6Plato 1997, 1016, 377e. orders upon this trained ethos to inspire one purpose, the just city. And the Greek worldview that arises as just comes not from any one aspect but that of its unity and pursuit.

The harmony is a very real one that creates justice from a healthy soul. The Platonic model is quite clear on this subject and its hierarchy. The top-heavy, three-part aspect of this soul is first mentioned at the founding of the polis, the city: each part of the soul is said to be an “ally” of the other.7Plato 1997, 1073, 441e. Interestingly, the initial belief that bends more to an egalitarian unity and oneness snaps out of tune upon conflict, charging the rational part to take rule of the others much like a war-time leader.81997, 1188, 580d. And this justification stems from the constructed fact that all other aspects of the soul when uncontrolled lead to illegitimate pleasures.9Plato 1997, 1194, 586e-587a. Yet, this line of reasoning supersedes the sole goal of the Greek act to manifest soul, which in a sense is a mystic unity with the Agathon, forever failing in narrowly treating a non-dualistic reality in terms of a dualistic one. The precedence and motility of this formulation with variance is strong. The evidence is in the correspondences and correlations of the Republic: rational, spirited, appetitive; logos, thymos, pathos; wisdom, courage, temperance; ruler, soldier, producer; and the systems of rules, the ideal for existence, the global picture. The major difference between a mature, actualized soul confirmed in the good and that which is expressed in Plato’s dialogues is the reduction of divisions to completions, which start bravely with the virtues101997, 1060, 428a. and qualities111997, 1110, 486d-e. that act as a scaffold for how to form and keep a government via humanity’s soul aspects. Winning votes go to the party that ends in a consensus-style co-rulership under one being. And with this path to a better government as a herald of pure reconsideration, the harmony is happily re-found in a fresh newness as BOTH reason and poetry preserve virtue, a virtue that pulls the self to the perfection of soul.12Plato 1997, 1161, 549b. Aristotle as well hinted at such mysteries that may lead a Greek believer to transcendence over timeless toil“[f]or the purposes of poetry a convincing impossibility is preferable to an unconvincing possibility,”13Aristotle 1984, 263, 1461b11-12. and “the experience of […that given] impossibility[…,] that its possibility is possible as impossible”14Derrida and Marion 1999, 60. makes universes animate with exceptional and fantastical truths. All of this can be reconfirmed by the two aforementioned forms of Platonic good, which as a practical ideas only reach viability if this Theory of Forms genuinely replaces removedness with ascent as a permanent paradigm shift,15Plato 1997, 1681. to honour all human skills in crafting a multifaceted soul (a World-Soul) that merits substance, resolve, and a final resting place of being.

Kingdom-Sage Rising

Would I have a voice, if you would hear it?
Or would I be the rhythm to your reasons?
Would I have a being, if you did not imagine it?
Or would I be a bastard to your brotherhood?
Some have called this perplexed “I” a soul,
A scorching ethical core—living upon centers.
Again some nothing more than saviour
Come to unnecessitate that troubled being.
But given chance, I would seldom cross
All the struggles and beauties of this world—
But persevere it gracefully to sweet triumph.
Hark, a rebel speaks my own words purely:

“If, O King, you destroy me, a law-abiding man who has done no harm to anybody, know that you may easily destroy a wise head, but later you will see what you have done, and you will lament in vain to your heart that you have destroyed so famous a guardian of the city.”

∞

This departure brings into question only the most enigmatic of the Republic and its formulation of the Philosopher King.16Plato 1997, 1100, 473c. For such an obviously crucial role, this figure is rather unexpressed in contrast to the better known Guardians, especially in terms that its heritage and reputation, always superseding its execution—vast in capturing the undivided imagination of all those poets and philosophers that cross this character slated to rule the Greek Kallipolis, the utopian city-state of the Republic. And maybe this figure is necessarily enigmatic given that the achievement of becoming such a state head puts a soul near the very finalizing stages of realizing uncorrupted justice in the world. The Allegory of the Caves in Book VII is at the crux of understanding the inner dimensions of myth and the essence of the Republic functioning as a symbolic microcosm.17Plato 1997, 1132, 514a Inner states that align to understandings are the common threads to these enclosure-motifs. This diversity makes not only the analysis of Plato’s example insightful but also expresses a larger human potentiality towards regained mindfulness. Each set represents a unique response to what lies within the self and its deepest psychology: absurdism and pessimism in Edward Lear’s “Limerick 6” and Samuel Beckett’s Play; enlightenment and continuance with a Buddhist bhikkhuni and the Kogi Elder Brothers in Wade Davis’ Web of Belief and Science of the Mind; and, finally, illusionism with the Allegory of the Caves in Plato’s Republic. This substance that constitutes a source with no other designation than salvation inside these motifs and Plato himself engrossed in a philosopher-king mythos is the very being that arises on that last occasion where the stormy self is born to warm worlds. And with this hand, the soul may finally reorder itself for its reintegration and healing, christened by the Kingdom-Sage who embraces the fullness of humanity as sparked emanations of the World-Soul.

The pressing—even redemptive—motif of the one true soul is at the textual center of the Republic. This moral imperative comes from the meditative act of pure consciousness that is myth, yet surprisingly not as necessarily so from any of the Greek philosophy which simply justifies the granting of transcendence towards myth. Sound indications of this fact become evident within the constant displacement of Plato’s present reality, the physical world, which seems to sublimely disappear in a block of smoke known as the Republic for both the characters living inside the text and those individual readers now connected to a cognitive aesthetic on opposite bends of the mirror, all submerging to a seamless, self-same realm of ideas and consciousness.18Plato 1997, 972, 327a. This fine art and its grammar within Plato’s Republic is a genuinely timeless attempt to move people’s conscious minds by relocating experiences of reality towards the ultimate realization of that one knowledge of the universal Self in us and through others. The importance of interacting with such a sphere is noted cross-culturally in terms of different states and systems of awareness, but a united goal nonetheless exists in unlocking the fields that might grant Justice or the Good, and as such, wise individuals have historically noted the role of this source—ever since its materials have been crafted into consciousness by the will of countless sentient travellers:

[S]ince we can only ever truly experience our perception of that world [the physical world, in contrast to a purely perceptual one], then it would seem that we more truly inhabit a world purely of consciousness and ideas. It strikes me that the landmasses [the mindscapes inside the human cognitive architecture] that might exist in this mind space would be composed entirely of ideas, of concepts. That instead of continents or islands you might have large belief systems or philosophies. [….] Now when you’re talking about the territory of the mind and perhaps the spirit, the only route maps available are magic systems from antiquity. You’re talking about systems [… which utilize] archetypal images that provide the cartography for a map of the human condition.19Mindscape 2003, 01:04:13-01:10:11.

The raw genius of self in terms of the mythogenic flight to an advanced awareness certainly expresses itself here, and it intuitively and keenly comes from what may be considered more of a cultural (rather than academic or philosophical) resource, albeit a very learned one, but this knowledge, or instead these higher epistemic states, presented by Alan Moore comes from his attachment to the long and collective tradition of wisdom, a tradition that starts with localized shamanism as the earliest experiencers of alternative consciousness. And regardless of the coordinates, the delving into and continuance within these vast idea spaces is what all mature narrative accounts like the Republic do in actively transiting from an arbitrary set of symbols to a conscious experience, a myth. At this point, the reader is able to connect to a much vaster idea space (or mindscape) with the ethnosphere, the cultural counterpart to the biosphere, which is “the sum total of all thoughts and dreams, myths, ideas, inspirations, intuitions brought into being by the human imagination since the dawn of consciousness.”20Davis “Dreams” 2016, par 4 The exercise becomes a facet of Plato’s dialogue, where the layering of both consciousness and dimensions lends visibility to the inter-reality dialogue and the global reality matrix. This in-between awareness gives depth that necessitates human perception towards a singular focusing line (a narrative) that fashions the immensity of worlds and possibilities into a cosmic allegory, which allows a textual sense of layeredness that roughs out maps to new matrixed identities.

References   [ + ]

1. ↑ The “good” (the Agathon) is the form that generates all and is the ultimate object of knowledge, and self in its presences eternally gains Justice, Usefulness, and Value.
2. ↑ Plato “Cratylus” 1997, 159, 412c.
3. ↑ Plato 1997, 997-998, 353e-354a.
4. ↑ 1997, 1014, 375e.
5. ↑ Plato 1997, 1035, 398a.
6. ↑ Plato 1997, 1016, 377e.
7. ↑ Plato 1997, 1073, 441e.
8. ↑ 1997, 1188, 580d.
9. ↑ Plato 1997, 1194, 586e-587a.
10. ↑ 1997, 1060, 428a.
11. ↑ 1997, 1110, 486d-e.
12. ↑ Plato 1997, 1161, 549b.
13. ↑ Aristotle 1984, 263, 1461b11-12.
14. ↑ Derrida and Marion 1999, 60.
15. ↑ Plato 1997, 1681.
16. ↑ Plato 1997, 1100, 473c.
17. ↑ Plato 1997, 1132, 514a
18. ↑ Plato 1997, 972, 327a.
19. ↑ Mindscape 2003, 01:04:13-01:10:11.
20. ↑ Davis “Dreams” 2016, par 4

The Mythopoetic Mind of Plato: The Kingdom-Sage’s Muthos in Timaeus, The Republic, and The Symposium (Parts III & IV)

By Leave a Comment

By  | 
Feature Image: Thomas Cole, The Course of Empire: The Savage State [via WikiMedia, Public Domain]
Print

III: Echo Envoi

Cracks crimp,
     Cold to the cobble—
          Melodies meandering,
And market’s word
     Ceases in obscurity.
          Torrents flow
               Calling the sage
                    To the floor.

          Body still
               Mind wild
          In motions—
     Waking, unwaking;
          Shadow, light—
               Realities in recital.
     “Tear that tongue,
          Pour those ears,
               Skewer those eyes:
 
Walk through this door,
     Perish in perception—
          All begone
     As Nero’s dripping
          Firestorms aplenty. 

     I will hold your shaky spirit
               To speak its piety alight,
          But mind(s) you must cast inside mine:
               Thy freedom is my surrender—
                    I am demiurge.”

Kingdom’s castle
     Could not hold;
          Tremors on linings,
               The terrible life—
                    A murder more prophetic,
               Foretelling…
                    (is, was, and will) 
                         At once— 
               AND the self-same act
                    Supreme history suspends:
               The old-world god
                     Lost in the new,
                          Not knowing
               The tips of self, transcendent…  

     “We of mind eternal
          Sowed seed complete
               Into necessity’s wide void
          So chaos would conform—
               Cruel vessel, remember us:
                    You are free
                         Upon the flood of the firmament.”

     Clarions unclear,
          Cuts of consciousness—
               Stormed, frantic surreal
          As snowed cerebral shrouds.
               Mind alone, mind elohim.

Timber crashed, thunder spat,
     Sheddings immortal in fury fused—
          Disparate dizzied death,
               Resting on the backs of things.

                    That sage sees all,
                         AND tears would fall
                              If eyes were readied—
                    But bellowing arcs
                         Beached new covenants
                              In deserts woven spectral.

               No will unlike,
                    Gave gift
               To dreamings perfect
                         First and prime,
                     The century’s choice:
                         Chiliad’s burning cool.

                     Eternity, an ember in slip,
                               Bloomed new suns,
                         To see what sages saw:
               These schizoid clusters,
                    Ravished to the depths
                         Of symphonies and drowned sprites.

          And this woman, the Wetnurse of Becoming,
               Took the sage’s hand,
                    Palmed with universes,
                         Spent her spirit into its wonder—
               Changing motion to form, form to motion forever.
                         Not finished… waiting…
                              In warm fashionings wet,
                         And another rough hand, the Receiver,
                    Seized the swarms by energy
                         To hush chaos into creation.

               Sonorant rushes of shapes to come,
                    Making kind to kind,
               Quarried with divine geometry quantum.
                    Crackling dawns,
                         Hurried physics
                              Destined as razors
                         In these sage hands that could not
                                   Hold strong this roaming sphere—
                         Explosions most white into galaxies,
                                   Jubilant to
                              Blackest spaces unseen.

               The shaking orb teared
                    In-between these sage fingers
               Calmed by the Receptacle,
                    And it did bite fierce temperatures
                         In its womb of worlds.
                    Flight and will to cosmos
                         Crashed to kindred homes—
                When sages as demiurges
                    Heard the World-Soul at center.
                         And it was beauty,
                So the Name-Giver let breath.

                    Warm breezes chilled
                         The sages senses immaculate—
                Broke to the cobblestone,
                    Speechless as glassed wine
                              Shadowed in grains still,
                    And the sweat of salt seething,
                         An anchor to a fresher existence spined.
                    The sage now but seals continuance,
                                   “Our universe,
                              Indeed the only one of its kind,
                                   Has come to be.”

IV

The preceding poetic myth retells the overarching events of Plato’s Timaeus, from the point that the creation of the universe is potentialized in Platonic thought with a few of its own twists and inventions. And for the majority of this text, it stays rather close to the original. The sincerest understanding of this practice comes from Eleazar Meletinsky and his discussions of remythification, and this poetic consciousness, through the self and its expressions, is always expanding to re-inscribe mythic identity in new minds from poetry to physics and beyond.11998, 340. Myth is not encrusted in any obvious value systems, but decoded and recoded via the subtle-yet-profound interplays between mimetic excesses of meaning and worldviews, in providing self (and society) with a cosmic map of how to live and how to know. That myths “told may always be retold, that a mythology received may also be renewed, that symbolic world-making is never quite complete”—according to Coupe on Meletinsky—speaks to the character of life itself as a constantly fulfilling and ongoing endeavour, never squandered. And this dynamic frustrates and defies any simplistic notion of justification or truth, such that many ancient and modern scholars have had to bracket it off as a curiosity when the common philosophic language collapses under its pertinence and domain.22003, 13. Yet, the bias of valuing one over the other is entirely unfair and unfounded, given that the features of myth and philosophy arise from the same cognitive structure: the mind that works to create meanings in correspondence with its self and surroundings, that is no less active in triumphantly mastering either. Brisson’s translator, Naddaf, even notes where these terms—myth, logic, and art—are fully interchangeable in ancient and modern contexts.3Naddaf, viii. Brisson himself goes even further to express the sort of paradigm shift that was occurring in the Greek mindset, where the juxtaposition of myth and philosophy was allowing each to be tempered by the other in taking on aspects of the other, such that these concepts faded to a new light and synthetic rebirth.42000, 38-39; 87. And not without a certain amount of growing pains, of course.

A steadfast component of Timaeus is the tumult of myth and philosophy, side by side. Plato introduces the method and character of his account, when prefacing halfway through the dialogue, “[w]e must prefer to conduct our inquiry by means of rational argument.”51997, 1254, 50c The purpose is to put myth to the epistemological test to ensure that it arises from validated true belief, the hieros logos (sacred tales).6The cross-checking of myth against philosophy (and vice-versa) is engendered, encouraged to create a sense of mindfulness and (self)reflexivity in his practice of attaining virtue. The wager as I have gleaned is more about the process than the attainment. Plato desires methods to way-find truth vis-à-vis story rather than a forfeiting and a surrender to ‘absolute’ reality—what perhaps could easily deviate and decompensate into an ongoing, unconscious expectation of it; he wants to prove himself, verify virtue through struggle, and have a measure of accountability and knowledge that something has been gained and improved in himself (and ideally others too). When myth is ratified by truth, there is a grander moment of consensus and feasibly an awareness that each person within that privileged cohort is contributing to the same project of reality, a shared community in-sync to the flow(s) of the universe as each conceives, desires it so. Plato yearns for that belonging and commune, one reached through philosophy and shared cultural values. A language of being.

At this point onward, the intensity between narrative and logic heightens such that every section inside the cosmogony is subjected to philosophical proofs to ensure the history and validity of Plato’s vote for this one universe to its ultimate source, the eternal reality of the Good. The fine telescoping of each kernel of this story to saturate it with philosophic features certainly emphasizes the mechanisms at work in making a world.7Plato 1997, 1255-1256, 52e-53b; 1259-1260, 57a-c; 1261, 58d-59c. The power of myth centers in its retellings that do not lose touch with the adherents and admirers, and this in itself is no exception for the distinct materials invested by Plato and others in re-crafting. The high argument of myth comes into being when the global network of mythology8“Mythology” is a regional-to-global network of muthos, that as mythic parts to a larger entity have actively sustained and realigned each other under a collective deep psychology of spirituality and the self that yields a meta-narrative, its effect being to complete the human condition upon this one vision. is evident in its radical flows and responses, and the deep psychology spiritualized into the divine is expressible into a refined language, modified by foreign grammars and the new frontiers of consciousness. A simple example here would be Plato’s use and response to the forms of the divine in Timaeus: the creator god, the world god, the gods, the demiurge(s), the daemons—each of which is re-inscribed by creation as a critical act in paring down decorum to purpose, through the act of perception and a pristine physics. As Lovejoy talks about the “Two-Gods-in-One,” it becomes unmistakably clearer that Plato conceives of all divinity in terms of this dynamic based in a self-sufficing Perfection and a self-transcending Fecundity that merge into the mystery of the universe animate.91936, 50. Managing and capturing (meta)physics and genesis is then undoubtedly mythic, collapsed into a desire of becoming.

Timaeus is indispensable to Plato in that it embodies the global picture that organizes what universe is as far as a continued lived experience of it for the Greek believer. The dialogue is able to connect one’s sympathies to every conscious construction of this origin myth and all the imagination after that follows it in perfect inheritance. And, as a closer reader, anyone therein impressed cannot help but wonder at what point has Plato shaped the modern physicist? Granted, some of the metaphors may be dated, but the perceptual quest and founding principles are sound. Plato, in Timaeus more than elsewhere, has a strong analytical power for parts, wholes, motion, time, qualities, quantities, and other hosts of aspects. The intent allows Plato to have a cosmological and scientific affinity combined with his devotion towards mythic roots. This unique character presents a sensory physics unparalleled, which is an inherent impression in Timaeus and its Platonic mythopoesis10The term “mythopoesis” indicates either completing a single mythogenic act or constructing a myth both creatively and concretely in the manner of remythologizing consciousness. that engenders a bustling universe buzzing with perceptibility. The presence of a living and cognizant universe (the World-Soul) as a god in this dialogue connects humanity with a never-ending, constant, and fluid process of awareness. That eternal flow confirms human existence as meaningful in the sacred, self-same source of first origins: “And, revolving within itself, it [the World-Soul] initiated a divine beginning of unceasing, intelligent life for all time [and all of humanity]”11Plato 1997, 1240, 36e. Yet, the connection that is necessary to pull these sacred meanings down to the physical plane is less than ordinary. There are many candidates that could encourage this psycho-activity in acts of mystical knowing, but the compound dimethyltryptamine (DMT) has a reputation as being one of the fundamental molecules that is universally present in organisms in regulating reality and consciousness, such that it has been coined the spirit molecule. And if what Plato suggests in Timaeus is accessible, then it occurs in conjunction with such matter and the mind itself. The most significant example would be the fractal geometry, that knowing one piece would enable a Platonic mystic to see the entire history of the universe.12Plato 1997, 1256, 53d. Joel Bakst, a Rabbi, takes position on these alternate realities perceived:

I believe all these experiences, in fact, are fractals […]. They are fractured fractions very, very, very minute […]. If we understand the concept of fractal geometry, no matter how small it is, it contains everything that is in the larger picture [universe], and thus that validates profoundly all these various experiences.13DMT—the Spirit Molecule 2010, 00:51:46-00:52:38

From this indivisible awareness, the mystic sage is fully able to tap into the eternal mind of god, something that would smooth out a translation in terms of human consciousness—and that would give the creative impetus to imagine a text like Timaeus. The brilliant use of catalogues at the advent of the first human souls, from sense to object, object to world, work to demonstrate the meaning, immediacy, and pull of existence.14Plato 1997, 1263-1290, 61b-92c. The full artistic effect renders the senses of individuals experiencing this myth—either in a primary or secondary manner—by the aesthesis, the given simulation that orients the self towards and inside an experienced realism that is fully compelled and completed by that conscious self. The goal being that the individual self is totalized and engrossed in the truth that “[t]his world of ours has received and teems with living things, mortal and immortal. A visible living thing containing visible ones, perceptible god, image of the intelligible Living Thing, its grandness, goodness, beauty and perfection are unexcelled.”15Plato 1997, 1291, 92c.

References   [ + ]

1. ↑ 1998, 340.
2. ↑ 2003, 13.
3. ↑ Naddaf, viii.
4. ↑ 2000, 38-39; 87.
5. ↑ 1997, 1254, 50c
6. ↑ The cross-checking of myth against philosophy (and vice-versa) is engendered, encouraged to create a sense of mindfulness and (self)reflexivity in his practice of attaining virtue. The wager as I have gleaned is more about the process than the attainment. Plato desires methods to way-find truth vis-à-vis story rather than a forfeiting and a surrender to ‘absolute’ reality—what perhaps could easily deviate and decompensate into an ongoing, unconscious expectation of it; he wants to prove himself, verify virtue through struggle, and have a measure of accountability and knowledge that something has been gained and improved in himself (and ideally others too). When myth is ratified by truth, there is a grander moment of consensus and feasibly an awareness that each person within that privileged cohort is contributing to the same project of reality, a shared community in-sync to the flow(s) of the universe as each conceives, desires it so. Plato yearns for that belonging and commune, one reached through philosophy and shared cultural values. A language of being.
7. ↑ Plato 1997, 1255-1256, 52e-53b; 1259-1260, 57a-c; 1261, 58d-59c.
8. ↑ “Mythology” is a regional-to-global network of muthos, that as mythic parts to a larger entity have actively sustained and realigned each other under a collective deep psychology of spirituality and the self that yields a meta-narrative, its effect being to complete the human condition upon this one vision.
9. ↑ 1936, 50.
10. ↑ The term “mythopoesis” indicates either completing a single mythogenic act or constructing a myth both creatively and concretely in the manner of remythologizing consciousness.
11. ↑ Plato 1997, 1240, 36e.
12. ↑ Plato 1997, 1256, 53d.
13. ↑ DMT—the Spirit Molecule 2010, 00:51:46-00:52:38
14. ↑ Plato 1997, 1263-1290, 61b-92c.
15. ↑ Plato 1997, 1291, 92c.

The Mythopoetic Mind of Plato: The Kingdom-Sage’s Muthos in Timaeus, The Republic, and The Symposium (Parts I & II)

By Leave a Comment

By  | 
Feature Image: Thomas Cole, The Course of Empire: Consummation [via WikiMedia, Public Domain]
Print

I: Canary-Swelled Empires

The sandy black-harpied soot of Cyprus, a memory embeds itself on new wandering soles unforgiven: impressions of eternity, bending to the moment. An old exile reclaims the estranged embers of a home’s past glow. Canopies relaxed offer him gracious shelter from the cascading transience and cacophony bright; a fall to stars and a brush of blue, sanguine-bearing bushes coldly drunk, give ethereal echoes to bends familiar. Redemption.

A: “Why don’t you rest upon the white rock, Brother? Or am I eyeing Hesperos’ ghost?”

H: “Or is it I, Akakios, that sees a shade alone in this mighty dead land, shipwrecked?”

A: “That distance makes fools of us all is a shame most profane: this tangled web of perceptions, those pure-creatured panderings who mortals entertain in time-deaf dirges.”

The lull of wine passed in hand from one continent to another, ungraciously.

A: “I must ask for a forgiveness, Brother—long overdue in both our minds. The slave-daughter, Akia, was my one true weakness, and my quick passions bed her while I fed her with family secrets, the burial of father’s treasure. Her musk cut deep inside me like the thirsty dust on fallen leaves desiring the sweat of life. I was young and driven then.”

H: “To what end is banishment ever a favour?”

A: “None at all, but it served me well then. I had this slave-daughter slit and quartered to the bowels of Tartarus before she could move tongue to whisper a word. Said she had bravely ended her life in nothing less than played turns of responsible mortification: a just and noble act—none finer—after fearing quite aptly for the dual wrath of both the men that would beat her for the secrets she had learned advantageously and those other masters that would punish her for a faith broken improperly.

A: “And I certainly had to dispose of her body in a timely, proper funeral. But how did she become learned? Well, I say, Brother: you were too much pretending to not have love for Euanthe, and so, I crafted, with honourable tools of persuasion, a sultry tale of where your affections delighted in both the hot and wild touch of her amidst the eyes of Jove.”

H: “I wondered about your trickery, the very kind that turns fathers against sons.”

A: “No sentiments for shock, this you always knew.”

H: “I would have been another man—perhaps dead—if I chose to let your old wound bear in all my actions and angers. When I left, I left that all behind, as Poseidon gave me a new soul in the violent wake of the waters, forever.”

A: “To histories unknown, as here custom dictates, I took Euanthe, a nubile blood bride in your most sadly stead. She was one to make a living impression, but never that far on someone such as I. Listen, O Brother, she smiled, no doubt, whenever I passed her; but who passed her without much the same smile—you might now remember? This grew; I gave commands; then all the lovely smiles stopped. Even that little, unforeseen one in her womb. I sacrificed much, but that painfully happens when you have to hold the birthright…”

H: “Cowardice has constantly been your only motivation, but yet I hear rumours of war, what of that? I would hate to know that all has befallen too late, at your hands.”

A: “After the mysterious illness of our father, I had taste for kingship beyond these seas of ours. So I found strength in trade, feeding the desires of other tyrant kings, while making their morals thin and weaknesses fatted, for the pleasure of my teeth. Without them wise in the full knowing, they let a disease into their inviting homes, a disease loyal to me.

A: “Yet, disease itself is not something that is loyal or ever wanting of a master. There is only so slight of time and quick of room wherein one can work with any cruel instruments before these playthings feel, well, entitled… They mimic the true learnings and strategists of the wolves. And I could not have such insurrection open, which prompted a sharp pitting serene of hardened traitors on the battlefield. I cut my losses in silver coin, but reputations become exceeded by the man, and other nations have furies to follow.”

H: “You are your own undoing; I have no sympathies.”

A: “True, but how have you faired all these years across the seas?”

H: “I wandered in the Greek homelands, forever a stranger but not enough to fail in knowing them. And for years, I was not better or happier than any man when food and life took precedence over long-gone etiquettes of old. But change was a gift… I heard a great man speak in oration, not to me yet for me. I watched this Socrates of Athens, who was flawed like all around him—but confident in the worth of his own morality.

H: “There were others like him that had words, there and elsewhere. And in catching all these voices—I cannot even say that he was the greatest, but a well-placed note within a much greater philosophy. One that longed with fine love to echo into a chalice complete, to make and make a symphony of raptures as one mind working with its all, in all. There was also this scribe, a student, said to be thieving his brilliance by night, a name forgotten: he never had words of his own, and by that, what a disgrace then in a court of philosophy.

H: “The cities were always the most unstable places, filled to the brim with costly food shortages, but no shortage of men with their own profound ideas and rules. So I left for the rural country in search of a new hospitality and provider. And a path broke around a bend, yet I knew not where I was at that moment. I moved in the only direction before me… I came to this stream, but before that stream, there did rest a large rock with a quiet woman lingering in wait and covered in full garment—perhaps an old woman. I asked her if she needed to cross, and she in desperation let me help her because her foot was weary and red from a fall. I grabbed her naïvely. Stirred her across the stream, and took her past the path.

H: “When we got to her village, she unveiled herself, and I cannot describe that deepest love reigning inside me for that moment onwards. No age had ever touched her, no false master had slighted her womanhood. Her name is all that I have left within me. We lived on the homestead for years: I grew the land and her belly with all my happiness. Then one day I had new reason to take to the sword as all but ash was left to reap of wife and child.

H: “I tracked the small garrison of soldiers; they were not hard enough to discover and lay them to the agony of the cross, skinned to the spike. A clean justice repaid for their work that served those most virtuous cities. And not long after, I heard an unkind force was breeding war in these parts—I should have known it was you, somehow. I fought the sickness as best I could with what resources laid before me as weapons, but in the end, it was too plentiful when it grew from the black heart of human cities; yet, it quieted as a sick lion succumbed to a miracle. There was talk of a new war across the seas. It did not take me to long to divine the origin, so I bound myself to ship and the Scylla-road.”

A: “What interesting tales you have for me. I am sure father would have approved if he never found you to be an unlikely traitor. How is your drink, still bitter?”

Hesperos stumbles without taking another draught, dizziness and then a great fall before the dusk twilight. No anger, just subdued to the prick of trust.

A: “Quiet, sweet Brother; it will be over soon. I’ll take us to the womb of our mother, and we will be reborn again. This time, I will be the good one.”

II

The eternal roots of myth have been subject to and reinterpreted into a complicated history—mostly of misunderstanding and frustration. The much naturalized meanings of the term and its associative phenomenon are perhaps the strongest indicators of what myth is, even if the modern current entangles the process beyond formal recognition. The value of such a term supersedes any given language that finds a referent for it, but the earliest uses of such a term in the (written) record comes from the Greeks—muthos, a true story that according to early philosophers, Plato and others, was both a nonfalsifiable and nonargumentative discourse.1Brisson 2000, 137. Yet, the inclusions of myth have become newly problematic in the modern mind, stuck on hyper-rationality and progress: the one-sided antagonism contra irrational muthos and rational logos in Hellenic thought, founded by the modern scholars, is incorrect given that in Plato’s works they constitute the essential part of philosophy.2Uždavinys 2004, 304. The details are in the reading, when the truths of myth are known through a proper cosmological and metaphysical exegesis.3Brisson 2008, 29-40. This layering of meaning and value makes a myth, and this knowing is fully realized with familiarity towards the ideas of Proclus, Sallustius, and Hindu Maya, respectively: myths contain inner meanings and conceal unspoken doctrines, inspired by the gods themselves; as such, the highest level of myth is akin to the transcendent divine reality and the lowest with the deceptive perceptions within the realm of the senses; thus a myth “is tantamount to the manifested cosmos itself, understood as the visible veil of the hidden invisible truth”).4Uždavinys 2004, 305. And the word itself possesses an interesting etymology: “[d]erived from the verb muein (‘to close the eyes or the mouth’), it is related to ‘mystery’ and ‘mysticism’ and has connotations of darkness and silence,” a manner of knowing through unknowing, a mode of transmitting values through art and imaginative narrative.5Armstrong 2010, 374. Myth, in many regards, has been the earliest and only psychology, able to completely describe the “underground” world of the psyche, like no other trusted instrument. Myth then confirms the suspicion that the most effective means of humanity to know itself is through itself, the act of myth as prime mediator.

Myths are total phenomena; they resonate with everything and form the basis of consciousness. The term, total phenomenon, was first introduced by a prominent French social scientist Marcel Mauss in respect to the gift, and the parallels are clear when a critic realizes that as far as myth is concerned everything is complementary and presumes co-operation between agents of awareness: myth is inextricably part of the social and cultural fabric, that its ritualistic act encompasses the totality of human experience by intersecting almost every aspect of human and collective life.62001, 45-9. The idea is quite salient, and new proponents in the cognitive sciences express it accurately. A leading psychologist notes that all narrative communities and cultures display “a ‘local’ capacity for accruing7The term “accrual” refers to a process intrinsic to narratives, wherein they grow and accumulate over time as a result of perception and the ordering element of the human mind via its consciousness. stories [… into a] structure that permits a continuity […]—in short, to construct a history, a tradition, a legal system, instruments assuring historical continuity if not legitimacy.”8Bruner 1991, 20. This mode is made possible through what cognitive science demonstrates in studying culturally resonant narratives prone to grow and accumulate “as a process of perception: human beings literally order experience in terms of narrative—a narrative that grows and changes as elements are added, fundamentally altering the whole as it is written.”9Wallin 2007, 63. The flow of what is written is determined by storytellers and artists, and this performance is the work that [Figure 1] permits and justifies a truth, “[s]ocially elaborated and sanctioned stories are the cognitive structures that hold a culture together.”10Kintsch 1998, 18. The discovery of the narrative basis of reality was confirmed by cognitive science a decade ago: “psychologists became alive to the possibility of narrative as a form not only of representing, but of constituting [a complete] reality.”11Bruner 1991, 5. This complexity moves myth from a simple story to that of worldview and mythogenesis, a sustained pattern of creative and conscious acts that unify necessary relations and re-representations with the world (and the world mediated by word). Many paths open in moments that can weave a myth in the mind.

Figure 1

Worldview is the interface for humanity’s access to higher cognitive functioning that renders vast amounts of data into that one grand phenomenon of experience: these varied units of meaning, both narrative and images, that the active mind will process not simply as just clusters of semantic features but as overarching, salient principles, which positively make meaning, make sense. And no single worldview is like another in that each arises from the experience of an adherent and their own struggle to shape experience. In this manner, “[w]e live by stories. We also live in them. […] If we change the stories that we live by, quite possibly we change our lives.”12Orki 1997, 46. Quite literally, the subtle reordering of narrative sequences creates mimetic gaps in which fresh or alternate worldviews can come into a fully realized descriptive possibility (a becoming), challenging all other pre-existing states. And even if Plato was not aware of the theory and its application,13There is strong textual evidence and support—i.e., 1038-1039, 401b-402b; 1161, 549b-549c; 1214—of Plato’s working knowledge of what Orki argues. Plato particularly has some early insights into how symbolic thought via poetics and narrative intermixes within the rhythms of life and comes to inform rational behaviour, i.e. living myth, from anthropological discourse and theory—see the seminal works of both Leenhardt (1979) and Young (1983) as examples. The narrative framework of these Platonic texts contextualizes this understanding of selves as Plato translates Socrates in delivering a rendition of The Republic. The plurality and positionality comes from the flow, how myth is inter-spliced within a philosophical tract on virtue and the Good. There are ample examples of role-shifting as Plato himself writes Socrates as a philosopher, opts philosophy as the dominant role, and (re)considers the distinct discourse and identity sets—each of which comes with the act of explaining how poetry and his self, an intermeshed personhood, as a poet and myth-maker are important in practicing virtue and resisting the moral turpitude of evil.  Role awareness of the poet-philosopher duality is demonstrated with the logos-hierarchy, the privileged binary, as Plato situates the value of state-sponsored poets and story-tellers who drive morality and an image of virtue. All of which, these creative expressions and outlets, are themselves later perfected by a rational mind and a lifelong practice of philosophy (1035, 397e-398b). But there is also a persistence within Plato to use myth and story as a tool for self-improvement; analysis through allegory of his own deep psychology, biases, and inherited cultural worldview; and even a measure of a self-reflexivity that would itself breed self-actualization if balanced.  the centrality of his self in context with the multiple selves and positionalities of the Platonic figure—the person, the character, the writer, the historian, the philosopher, and even the culture—creates a strong and heightened desire to enigmatically know himself, even if not for finality, but for growth and prosperity in seeing himself as a prism of possibilities trapped in myth. That awareness of his continued sheddings in tellings and retellings, shapings and reshapings centralized for him profound insights into his own deep worldview, allowing him to metamorphose in brilliant ways that other philosophers could not possibly imagine.

This journey of Plato as artist engenders the gift of mastering mythogenesis that is bound to an animate self. Consciousness appears therein—this sentient will immerses in the thick of sense and meaning to learn how to make a fine distinction between constituent elements and act upon them in accordance with a known image of existence that manifests into a cognitive state. We are always living in a story, always present in a myth. The key is to possess mindfulness towards worldviews and their presence in the awakened self—they are analytical frameworks of the mind that first allow the universe to be experienced in a specific manner and then formulated into pure, specific “understandings” about the nature of that universe. Worldviews can be further expressed via a three-part structure: the global picture, a sensory schema constructed from the fundamental conceptions of the lived universe; the system of rules, a set of co-ordinating axioms about how the universe works in a solely operational and causal sense; the ideal for human existence, a pragmatic ideology that aids all individuals in striving towards an idealized purpose for being in the universe. No aspect of worldview is ever its own entity, and it serves a greater aim to imagine it as something of a gestalt, a complex, or a matrix coming to a point of complete unity, yet able to illuminate diversity and function in both itself and relations to the world.

Much literature has surfaced over the years addressing what a worldview is: David Naugle’s Worldview: The History of a Concept, Diederik Aerts, et al’s “World Views: From Integration to Fragmentation,” Mark Koltko-Rivera’s “The Psychology of Worldviews,” and Michael Kearney’s “World View Theory and Study” to name a few. But despite the academic race to coin a predominant and working conceptualization, there seems to be a hardened lack of cross-disciplinary consensus of and camaraderie on the meaning and function of the term, and above that, most of the literature is inaccessible, still in the fuzzy design phases of its history of ideas lifecycle. In this absence, I have formulated what may be the simplest, most effective, and direct version of worldviews (to date as a conceptual model) to succeed in this tradition of myth and consciousness, the isolate principle. And from here, the idea can get as saturated and complex as the context needs, or as dynamic and sharp as realistic communication demands. Genius strikes an idea when collapsible, fractal, and holographic.

Plato’s worldview(s) are the focus of this analysis. There is no question that Plato is a conduit of Greek culture, and beyond that, he is an avid borrow for the traditions of alternate consciousness in the ancient world. The most interesting part is that Plato was never a philosopher (in the strictest sense), but an inspirer and admirer of philosophy—which in an unexpectedly strange way, this sleight made him a philosopher. If he was not, then what is one to make of Plato? He was a historian, a storyteller, and a scribe. Socrates was the philosopher—or all the others who he quoted that were waiting to be Socrates. Lovejoy concurs: “[f]rom this it would follow that Plato himself (in his extant writings) must be regarded chiefly as a historian of other men’s philosophies rather than as a great original philosopher,”141936, 33. This conclusion was drawn independently by  scholars, Lovejoy, and I— and surely others as well—outside the discipline of philosophy. The growth of these narratives and philosophies become a natural element of the glue that holds these communities together, and this accrual signifies “a creative interaction with the past, an adaptation of existing narrative [and philosophic] structures to new situations. One could say that without old stories [and thoughts] there could be no new ones.”15Zeitler 2000, 141. The interest surrounding Plato, if himself neither original nor philosopher, comes from his juxtapositions of the creative and the critical that coalesce into a total picture, composite in blending narrative and thought into a single social dynamic.

The intent of this work is to posit itself as an intuitive essay, which is a thoroughly evocative account of truth and rhetoric wherein both logic and understanding become the domain of the reader in completing the text, finding worth. In that regard, this work is a combination of exploratory, participatory, experiential, and surety practices. The entire purpose of this work will not so much argue but re-imagine and challenge Plato, such that it breathes the warmest breath of reconsideration, rereading, and re-admiration into the Platonic dialogues. And by looking carefully at key works by Plato, the textual relations in critical practice create networks of associations, which “behind the individual works [point to] a meta-narrative [or complete worldview], one large imaginative territory closely related to actuality and from which all individual existent fictions [and philosophies] can be seen as selections.”16Watts 1982, 63. And this end is the purpose of this work, to reconstruct a possible Plato with a likely worldview. Not an easy task given that this expression will only be one permutation among countless others, depending on the models and texts selected. Yet, this work does not concern itself with being definitive, but experience-able and relatable to the point that the reader will not only see a worldview but envision its better. This speaks to how the depth of humanity should be valued. To the reader, I must give this analogy: I am sending you off into the world to discover my work with little more than a compass and a map—you chose the destination amidst these universes and stories!

References   [ + ]

1. ↑ Brisson 2000, 137.
2. ↑ Uždavinys 2004, 304.
3. ↑ Brisson 2008, 29-40.
4. ↑ Uždavinys 2004, 305.
5. ↑ Armstrong 2010, 374.
6. ↑ 2001, 45-9.
7. ↑ The term “accrual” refers to a process intrinsic to narratives, wherein they grow and accumulate over time as a result of perception and the ordering element of the human mind via its consciousness.
8. ↑ Bruner 1991, 20.
9. ↑ Wallin 2007, 63.
10. ↑ Kintsch 1998, 18.
11. ↑ Bruner 1991, 5.
12. ↑ Orki 1997, 46.
13. ↑ There is strong textual evidence and support—i.e., 1038-1039, 401b-402b; 1161, 549b-549c; 1214—of Plato’s working knowledge of what Orki argues. Plato particularly has some early insights into how symbolic thought via poetics and narrative intermixes within the rhythms of life and comes to inform rational behaviour, i.e. living myth, from anthropological discourse and theory—see the seminal works of both Leenhardt (1979) and Young (1983) as examples. The narrative framework of these Platonic texts contextualizes this understanding of selves as Plato translates Socrates in delivering a rendition of The Republic. The plurality and positionality comes from the flow, how myth is inter-spliced within a philosophical tract on virtue and the Good. There are ample examples of role-shifting as Plato himself writes Socrates as a philosopher, opts philosophy as the dominant role, and (re)considers the distinct discourse and identity sets—each of which comes with the act of explaining how poetry and his self, an intermeshed personhood, as a poet and myth-maker are important in practicing virtue and resisting the moral turpitude of evil.  Role awareness of the poet-philosopher duality is demonstrated with the logos-hierarchy, the privileged binary, as Plato situates the value of state-sponsored poets and story-tellers who drive morality and an image of virtue. All of which, these creative expressions and outlets, are themselves later perfected by a rational mind and a lifelong practice of philosophy (1035, 397e-398b). But there is also a persistence within Plato to use myth and story as a tool for self-improvement; analysis through allegory of his own deep psychology, biases, and inherited cultural worldview; and even a measure of a self-reflexivity that would itself breed self-actualization if balanced.
14. ↑ 1936, 33.
15. ↑ Zeitler 2000, 141.
16. ↑ Watts 1982, 63.

Come Out of Babylon: Heavy Metal Music and the Book of Revelation

By

By  | 
Feature Image: José Gómez, 4 Horsemen [http://jgomezart.com]
Print

“A significant part of metal mythology revolves around the more apocalyptic strain of Christianity, especially the Book of Revelation.”

—Deena Weinstein, Heavy Metal: The Music and Its Culture

∞

I’d like to begin with some of the best heavy metal lyrics of all time. They go like this:

The second angel poured his bowl into the sea, and it became like the blood of a corpse, and every living thing in the sea died. The third angel poured his bowl into the rivers and the springs of water, and they became blood. The fourth angel poured his bowl on the sun, and it was allowed to scorch people with fire. And there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, and a violent earthquake, such as had not occurred since people were upon the earth. The great city was split into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell. And every island fled away, and no mountains were to be found; and huge hailstones, each weighing about a hundred pounds, dropped from heaven on people, until they cursed God for the plague of the hail.

Those of course are not heavy metal lyrics, but sections from the Book of Revelation chapter 16. But they sound like metal lyrics. As I was going through seminary and reading more of the Bible in depth, I started to recognize that many images from the Book of Revelation were found in the lyrics of heavy metal music. Songs like ‘The Four Horseman’ by Metallica and ‘Number of the Beast’ by Iron Maiden were obvious ones, but as I researched this link further I discovered that this connection was much more developed than I had imagined. The defining moment came when I discovered a thread on the website Reddit. The original poster of the thread asked if anyone knew of heavy metal songs with themes from the Book of Revelation. By the end there must have been seventy examples given. It blew my mind. What a treasure trove for the researcher this thread was. And as I read the lyrics of the songs posted there, I saw that there was a much deeper connection between the ancient text and this contemporary art form than I had first realized.

Heavy metal has been a much maligned and persecuted music over the past few decades. Many have viewed it as deviant and dangerous. The Christian right in the United States has been a particularly persistent critic and foe. But the more deeply I’ve looked into heavy metal music and its use of imagery from the Book of Revelation, the more I discovered a very remarkable thing—that heavy metal music is doing the Book of Revelation. Heavy metal is not just drawing off of the Book of Revelation because there’s cool imagery that makes for good album covers and t-shirts. Heavy metal music is doing a faithful reenactment of the Book of Revelation. In its style, in its values, in its ethos, heavy metal is doing the Book of Revelation in musical form. That’s what I’ll try and make a brief case for here.

Iron Maiden, The Number of the Beast [album cover]

Iron Maiden, The Number of the Beast [classic album cover, variation]

To get us started, let’s hear what Harry Maier, in his book Apocalypse Recalled, says the Book of Revelation is doing. He writes, “[The author] John challenged the original audience of his Book of Revelation to think critically about their political culture. In particular, he exhorted his audience to look carefully at the economic order of the Roman Empire and the human and ecological misery it unleashed on the world as antithetical to the intentions of God for humankind and creation.”1Harry Maier. Apocalypse Recalled: The Book of Revelation After Christendom. Augsburg Fortress, 2002. p. xi. Heavy metal also challenges its listeners to think critically about the current global world order, with its rampant injustice, inequality, and ecological destruction.

“Allusions to injustice abound in heavy metal music.”2Deena Weinstein. Heavy Metal: The Music and Its Culture. Da Capo Press, 2000. p. 40. We can think of a song like Metallica’s And Justice for All, with it’s lyrics “Nothing can save you / Justice is lost / Justice is raped / Justice is gone.” Heavy metal lyrics “engage socio-political issues like civil repression, economic inequality and exploitation, environmental degradation, euthanasia, execution, nuclear warfare, political corruption, religious corruption, surveillance, uncontrolled technological innovation, and war.”3Peter Buckland. ‘When all is lost: thrash metal, dystopia, ecopedagogy.’ International Journal of Ethics Education. March, 2016. Listen to some of the themes in these band names—Anthrax, Nuclear Assault, Celtic Frost, Sodom, Death Angel, Artillery, Destruction, Megadeth. These names are not celebrating these themes, but are screaming out against a world full of destruction and war. There are many songs about war in heavy metal music, but you would be hard pressed to find one that promotes or glorifies it—most of the songs are about the madness of war, and how average people suffer from its evils.

The author of Revelation uses the literary form of the apocalypse to “drive home the urgency” of his message to his readers that they need to think critically about their political situation.4“I am assuming a broad consensus of academic biblical scholarship that John self-consciously chose the literary medium of an apocalypse to drive home the urgency of his exhortations and admonitions to his listeners.” Harry Maier. Apocalypse Recalled: The Book of Revelation After Christendom. Augsburg Fortress, 2002. p. xii. He often uses “vivid and terrifying symbols” to jolt his readers into waking up to the true reality of their situation. Heavy metal does the same.5“Whoever he was, though, whenever exactly he wrote, and what exactly he meant, John of Patmos thought and wrote in vivid, sometimes terrifying symbols, which is no doubt one of the reasons why visual artists have been so attracted to the work.” Natasha O’ Hear & Anthony O’Hear. Picturing the Apocalypse: The Book of Revelation in the Arts over Two Millennia. Oxford University Press, 2015. p. 3. In fact, the Book of Revelation and heavy metal share many characteristics when it comes to genre and style. Both are ornate and complex. Both are not afraid to use the imagery of death, horror, destruction and violence. Both intentionally invoke extreme experiences in their reader and listener.6“This fascination [of heavy metal] with evoking extreme experiences for the listener has clear similarities with both Revelation itself and with many of the artists who have attempted to evoke this text. Thus it is no surprise that the band Metallica have in their catalogue a song called ‘The Four Horsemen’ (1983) and ‘My Apocalypse’ (2008).” Ibid., p. 239. Both are big, bold, vivid, and designed to shock. Both are powerful, larger than life, and sometimes terrifying. In an article titled ‘Black Sabbath’s Horror Apocalypse,’ Brian Froese writes that, “Black Sabbath was writing music and poetry with the force of apocalyptic literary style.”7Brian Froese. ‘Is It the End, My Friend? Black Sabbath’s Apocalypse of Horror.’ Black Sabbath and Philosophy: Mastering Reality. John Wiley and Sons Inc, 2013. p. 23.

William Blake, The number of the beast is 666

William Blake, The number of the beast is 666

It’s important to remember what these stylistic characteristics were in service of. The Book of Revelation is a literary form of resistance against imperialism, empire, domination, and exploitation.8Greg Carey. ‘The Book of Revelation as Counter-Imperial Script.’ In the Shadow of Empire: Reclaiming the Bible as a History of Faithful Resistance. John Knox Press, 2008. Its core symbols of the Dragon, the Beast from the Sea, the Beast from the Earth, and the Whore of Babylon, are designed to “unveil” and “reveal the true face of empire as monstrous, rapacious, violent and deceitful.” 9Anathea Portier-Young. ‘Jewish Apocalyptic Literature as Resistance Literature.’ The Oxford Handbook of Apocalyptic Literature. Oxford University Press, May 2014. p. 153. Heavy metal music seeks to do the same for our own current world order. Its lyrics and album covers hold up a mirror to the hideous face of a world threatened by nuclear war and climate change, and stricken by greed, inequality, ongoing warfare, and ecological devastation. To portray both the depravity and gravity of this situation, heavy metal frequently uses images of evil from the Book of Revelation. The Beast, Satan, the antichrist and so on, “serve as a shorthand” for the kinds of forces that are currently destroying our world.10Deena Weinstein. Heavy Metal: The Music and Its Culture. Da Capo Press, 2000. p. 41. Heavy metal music and the Book of Revelation both speak in terms of a battle between good and evil when describing the current state of the world.

There’s a deep cry of pain that lives beneath the surface of heavy metal’s sonic power, and heavy metal artists seem to find solace in apocalyptic imagery that tells of the current world order being one day swept away. I offer four examples now of lyrics that explicitly use apocalyptic imagery in this way, although there are many possibilities to choose from. Here’s the band Lamb of God from their song ‘Reclamation’:

Humanity’s a failed experiment
Walking the path to extinction

Only after the last tree’s cut
And the last river poisoned
Only after the last fish is caught
Will you find that money cannot be eaten

As the sky tears open
Fire rains down,
the fourth world comes to an end
Push the button light the match
feel the fault lines detach.

And the band Avatar, with their song ‘Hail the Apocalypse’:

There’s a storm heading our way
All that’s been will be gone
All your cities will sink into the ocean

Hail the apocalypse

The band Manowar, with the song ‘Revelation (Death’s Angel)’:

Above the wreckage of your mortal world I stand
Judgment passed delivered by his hand

What was written foretold in dreams,
In visions apocalypse now seen.
And all self-righteous fools who lived and blasphemed
Drink the wine of his anger
Die with the beast

Earth be cleansed in a blaze
Armageddon, the first trumpet blows.

And lastly, The Black Label Society with the song ‘Doomsday Jesus’:

Horseman roll, tomorrow’s fading fast
Make damn sure nothing’s going to last

Doomsday Jesus
We need you now.

Although many of those lyrics sound dark and dystopic, heavy metal does share a sense of apocalyptic hope with the Book of Revelation. That hope in Revelation comes at the end of the text with its famous vision of a new heaven and a new earth, and a new Jerusalem descending down to earth from heaven (Rev. 21:1-8). There’s little in heavy metal music that displays such an openly utopic sensibility, but most commentators agree that heavy metal’s use of apocalyptic imagery does include apocalyptic hope. Juliet Forshaw writes that, “The depiction of dystopia [in heavy metal] is useful in that it may motivate people to change what they don’t like about the world. Within the overall narrative of nihilism, there are counter-messages of defiance and hope.”11Juliet Forshaw. ‘Metal in Three Modes of Enmity: Political, Musical, Comic.’ Current Musicology. No. 91 (Spring 2011). p. 144. And Laura Wiebe Taylor argues that “Within metal’s images of destruction and despair often lie the seeds of utopian possibility, particularly when such narratives locate the blame for oppressive and apocalyptic outcomes in human society, and leave room for the chance of averting such disaster.”12Laura Wiebe Taylor. ‘Images of Human-Wrought Despair and Destruction: Social Critique in British Apocalyptic and Dystopian Metal.’ Heavy Metal Music in Britain. Farnham, 2013. p. 89–110.

Fabien Claude, Alterpiece IV)

Fabien Claude, Alterpiece (IV) [fabienclaude.com]

Not only does heavy metal share this apocalyptic hope with the Book of Revelation, it shares Revelation’s call to resist and reject the dominant culture and its imperial empire. The Book of Revelation demands that its readers “reassess [their] political and economic allegiances,”13Harry Maier. Apocalypse Recalled: The Book of Revelation After Christendom. Augsburg Fortress, 2002. p. xi. and exhorts them to “Come out” of Babylon (Rev. 18:4),“ Babylon being shorthand for empire. A great deal of Revelation’s script involves avoidance, refusal to participate, refusal to bow down before the Great Beast (Rev. 13:7-10; 14:9-11).”14Greg Carey. ‘The Book of Revelation as Counter-Imperial Script.’ In the Shadow of Empire: Reclaiming the Bible as a History of Faithful Resistance. John Knox Press, 2008. p. 170-171. Greg Carey writes that, “John’s counter-imperial script called Jesus loyalists to an extremely rigorous level of resistance.”15Ibid., p. 172. Heavy metal urges its listeners to do the same. There’s a defiant “you will not defeat us” attitude toward the forces of death in heavy metal music. There’s a sense of determination and an ethos of standing up for who you are and what you believe in. Fans of heavy metal music and its commentators both agree that the musical form is empowering. It’s been described as a “musical will to power,”16‘Let Us Bow Our Heads and Rock—An Examination of the Relationship Between Heavy Metal and Religion.’ http://heavymetalandreligion.weebly.com and the sheer volume and high energy of the music offers inspiration and vitality to those who listen to it.17“Heavy metal’s loudness…is empowering.” Deena Weinstein. Heavy Metal: The Music and Its Culture. Da Capo Press, 2000. p. 41. // “Across these cultural contexts we find disaffected young people who find individual and collective catharsis, identity, and rituals of resistance and empowerment in a musically practiced subculture that emphasizes dystopia.” Peter Buckland. ‘When all is lost: thrash metal, dystopia, ecopedagogy.’ International Journal of Ethics Education. March, 2016. // “Other metal bands have songs with very similar themes, for example Dio’s “Holy Diver” and Iron Maiden’s “The Trooper” call for people fight for what they believe in and oppose the establishment’s unjust rules. These songs and many more empower the youth in a much stronger way than religion. How do they do this? By presenting the messages in high-energy situations and through high-energy music. Christian churches do not do this, so young adults gravitate towards heavy metal because it provides them with an instantaneous feeling of empowerment and a sense of control over their lives.” ‘Let Us Bow Our Heads and Rock: An Examination of the Relationship Between Heavy Metal and Religion.’ http://heavymetalandreligion.weebly.com Many songs talk about the warrior who stands up to the current dystopic order and rejects it. The song ‘Children of the Grave’ by Black Sabbath says:

So you children of the world,
listen to what I say
If you want a better place to live in
spread the words today
Show the world that love is still alive
you must be brave
Or you children of today are
Children of the Grave, Yeah!

Judas Priest’s song ‘Blood Red Skies’ proclaims:

As the end is drawing near
Standing proud, I won’t give in to fear

I will stand, I will fight
You’ll never take me alive
I’ll stand my ground
I won’t go down

You won’t break me
You won’t make me
You won’t take me,
Under blood red skies

And the song ‘Horsemen of the Apocalypse’ by the band Saracen echoes this:

Wake up, our freedom is calling, fight for the right and you might set us free
Wake up, wake up, wake up and a hero you’ll be

Stand up, creatures of mercy, reach for the Bible and march with the Lord
Stand up, stand up, stand up and the saints will applaud

The Book of Revelation also urges its audience to not give in to the ways of the Beast, and to persist even under situations of violence and persecution. It’s the most openly political book of the Bible, and its use of vivid and extreme language attempts to jolt those reading it into choosing their allegiance to the Lamb of God, no matter what obstacles they face. It’s this sense of a warrior ethos, this empowering of people to face empire and resist, that I think makes the Book of Revelation and heavy metal music both important today.

We live in a time of plutocracy and tyranny, where big money has captured the ruling apparatuses of many states. A tiny minority of people continue to accumulate obscene wealth, while the social welfare state is cynically dismantled and millions are left to fend for themselves. This is all against the backdrop of climate change and widespread ecocide. Heavy metal music has been unmasking this reality for more than three decades, and as our modern civilization moves dangerously towards a terminal state, we need to be empowered now more than ever with the type of vigor that heavy metal’s intense sounds and imagery can offer us. And if we’re part of the progressive church, or even if we’re not, the Book of Revelation can inspire us to take up its robust call to persist in the face of tyrannical forces. If we’re to one day make it out of Babylon, we’ll need both heavy metal and the Book of Revelation on our side.

∞

“Come Out of Babylon” – a🤘playlist

References   [ + ]

1, 13. ↑ Harry Maier. Apocalypse Recalled: The Book of Revelation After Christendom. Augsburg Fortress, 2002. p. xi.
2. ↑ Deena Weinstein. Heavy Metal: The Music and Its Culture. Da Capo Press, 2000. p. 40.
3. ↑ Peter Buckland. ‘When all is lost: thrash metal, dystopia, ecopedagogy.’ International Journal of Ethics Education. March, 2016.
4. ↑ “I am assuming a broad consensus of academic biblical scholarship that John self-consciously chose the literary medium of an apocalypse to drive home the urgency of his exhortations and admonitions to his listeners.” Harry Maier. Apocalypse Recalled: The Book of Revelation After Christendom. Augsburg Fortress, 2002. p. xii.
5. ↑ “Whoever he was, though, whenever exactly he wrote, and what exactly he meant, John of Patmos thought and wrote in vivid, sometimes terrifying symbols, which is no doubt one of the reasons why visual artists have been so attracted to the work.” Natasha O’ Hear & Anthony O’Hear. Picturing the Apocalypse: The Book of Revelation in the Arts over Two Millennia. Oxford University Press, 2015. p. 3.
6. ↑ “This fascination [of heavy metal] with evoking extreme experiences for the listener has clear similarities with both Revelation itself and with many of the artists who have attempted to evoke this text. Thus it is no surprise that the band Metallica have in their catalogue a song called ‘The Four Horsemen’ (1983) and ‘My Apocalypse’ (2008).” Ibid., p. 239.
7. ↑ Brian Froese. ‘Is It the End, My Friend? Black Sabbath’s Apocalypse of Horror.’ Black Sabbath and Philosophy: Mastering Reality. John Wiley and Sons Inc, 2013. p. 23.
8. ↑ Greg Carey. ‘The Book of Revelation as Counter-Imperial Script.’ In the Shadow of Empire: Reclaiming the Bible as a History of Faithful Resistance. John Knox Press, 2008.
9. ↑ Anathea Portier-Young. ‘Jewish Apocalyptic Literature as Resistance Literature.’ The Oxford Handbook of Apocalyptic Literature. Oxford University Press, May 2014. p. 153.
10. ↑ Deena Weinstein. Heavy Metal: The Music and Its Culture. Da Capo Press, 2000. p. 41.
11. ↑ Juliet Forshaw. ‘Metal in Three Modes of Enmity: Political, Musical, Comic.’ Current Musicology. No. 91 (Spring 2011). p. 144.
12. ↑ Laura Wiebe Taylor. ‘Images of Human-Wrought Despair and Destruction: Social Critique in British Apocalyptic and Dystopian Metal.’ Heavy Metal Music in Britain. Farnham, 2013. p. 89–110.
14. ↑ Greg Carey. ‘The Book of Revelation as Counter-Imperial Script.’ In the Shadow of Empire: Reclaiming the Bible as a History of Faithful Resistance. John Knox Press, 2008. p. 170-171.
15. ↑ Ibid., p. 172.
16. ↑ ‘Let Us Bow Our Heads and Rock—An Examination of the Relationship Between Heavy Metal and Religion.’ http://heavymetalandreligion.weebly.com
17. ↑ “Heavy metal’s loudness…is empowering.” Deena Weinstein. Heavy Metal: The Music and Its Culture. Da Capo Press, 2000. p. 41. // “Across these cultural contexts we find disaffected young people who find individual and collective catharsis, identity, and rituals of resistance and empowerment in a musically practiced subculture that emphasizes dystopia.” Peter Buckland. ‘When all is lost: thrash metal, dystopia, ecopedagogy.’ International Journal of Ethics Education. March, 2016. // “Other metal bands have songs with very similar themes, for example Dio’s “Holy Diver” and Iron Maiden’s “The Trooper” call for people fight for what they believe in and oppose the establishment’s unjust rules. These songs and many more empower the youth in a much stronger way than religion. How do they do this? By presenting the messages in high-energy situations and through high-energy music. Christian churches do not do this, so young adults gravitate towards heavy metal because it provides them with an instantaneous feeling of empowerment and a sense of control over their lives.” ‘Let Us Bow Our Heads and Rock: An Examination of the Relationship Between Heavy Metal and Religion.’ http://heavymetalandreligion.weebly.com

Streets of Paris

By

By  | 
Feature Image: Frédéric Glorieux, Selfie on emergency shroud — Avatar en suaire de survie [via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0] "Quand des fanatiques m’auront tué, ma tête s’imprimera sur le suaire de survie, pour l’éternité."
Print

Music and Lyrics by Paul Maylone

Download

Lyrics

You will turn me into fire,
You will turn me into war,
I will give my life as openly as so many before.
In my worship of you, paradise is sacrifice;
When entering the gate, both are one and the same.
I will soldier for you now.

They have turned to idolatry,
They have turned as infidels,
Commanded simply in the ways that they are slaves to hell.
In our worship of you, only we the righteous see
And enter through the gate. We are prophecy
And we soldier for you now.

To bring your justice of horrible beauty,
Love in the highest most fundamental.
It’s the greatest thing I’ll ever do when done.

We are in the streets of Paris,
I can feel you in my gun,
Oh the glory of you in the face and fate about to come.
In my worship of you we have seen this day between
The wicked and the faith. Here it comes at last.
I soldier for your will.

I don’t find the architecture
Or the art in foreign stone.
I don’t find the souls surrounding me so no pity is known.
How I’ve worshiped you and longed for you this moment through
The passion of my faith. Here we are at last.
I will hold you now and kill

And bring your justice of horrible beauty,
Love in the highest most fundamental.
It’s the greatest thing I’ll ever do when done.

Sustain/Decay: A Philosophical Investigation of Drone Music and Mysticism (Review)

By

By  | 
Feature Image: Sustain/Decay, Voidfront Press
Print

Edited by Owen Coggins and James Harris. Columbia, SC: Void Front Press, 2017. Pp. 289. $29.99 full color with CD; $10.00 black and white, book only.

Available here: https://voidfrontpress.org/portfolio/sustaindecay/

Drone. Is. Eternal. Primal origins exposed via mass ebbing forward from the past while an ethereal knell drifts incrementally from the future. The center is I. Investigating such phenomena through linear pathways broaches the absurd. Meditations, philosophical rants, poems, short stories, interviews, diagrams, Rorschach-like images, investigations, excoriations, imaginations, excitations all converge on and are underscored by The Drone. Centered on the I, subjectivity is a given, a process that allows both writer and reader to wallow in ideas and revel in questions of sound and meaning indefinitely. Yet neither form a stable enough subject to avoid contamination by others. The I gives way to the many and the many to the sound, The Drone, infinite, endless, in which the body is “vibrated by sound which, listeners repeat, ‘is to be experienced not understood’.” 1Sustain/Decay, p. 19.

This is the central paradox—to discuss sound is to attempt to understand it. To define the experience relying on processes and states of mind is to limit corporeal interaction by invoking words, words, words. These articles swirl and spiral, philosophically investigating the activity of listening, paradoxically, where the act of hearing, of experiencing sound in body, in mind, eludes words and remains just out of reach. If good music writing implies a desire to listen to the works discussed, the writing here transcends this activity in order to raise questions about the very act of listening itself. As Kristine Wolfe points out, “the purpose of this article and the introductory presentation of these techniques is to inspire the reader to go out and explore his or her individual listening practice as it relates to one’s individual experience of sound.”2Ibid., p. 80. Or, as is expressed by the editors, “…this book is a call to approach composition and attentive listening as ritual practice / / to approach drone music as a training ground for the attention, for cognitive endurance, for a weird absorption from which hidden transformations might flower.”3Ibid., p. 7. A tall order, but a worthy goal.

At its core this volume presents a collection of essays geared toward demystifying the mystical, explaining the unexplainable, revealing obscured connections, and uncovering the previously hidden. In many cases what you get are individual authors “freely thinking about the problem myself and offering my own personal results.”4Caron, “On the Transcendental Aesthetics of Time-Stretching,” p. 129. The title captures it all with some pieces leaning toward drone, others mysticism, and still others philosophy. If you like those things in any order or combination then, by all means, pick up this book, which includes some beautiful images and diagrams. (If you can spring for the full-color version with the Kim Cascone curated disc of transcendigital drones you will not be disappointed, if not, the black and white version sans disc is remarkably affordable, the drones can be downloaded here.)

A quick contents scan reveals complex and intertwined titles that address such subjects as: dronoclasm, the relationship between blackletter, mysticism, and drone metal, the meditative qualities of transcendigitalism as a holistic field of relations, resonant VS anechoic chambers, the hieroeidetic field, sounds heard as light, diagrammatic compositional scores, ritual and otherwise altered consciousness connections throughout history, the relation of the Catholic Church to Pantheistic drone, time-stretching, tone exhumation, absentology, the black death, the existential question of immortality, the embodiment of heaviness in a lingering riff, the entirety of the would-be zine Weirdrone Tales (which in many ways is the most direct drone address here since much of it reads like traditional album reviews), and finally an interview with Attila Csihar from Sunn O))). Yea, it’s a lot to take in.

Sustain/Decay: A Philosophical Investigation of Drone Music and Mysticism

Sustain/Decay: A Philosophical Investigation of Drone Music and Mysticism / Abstracts

Clearly an ally in meditation and expanded forms of consciousness, the drone is described as dilating time “for both performer and listener, allowing them to temporarily exist outside of time.”5Cascone, “Transcendigital imagination: developing organs of subtle perception,” p. 34.

This extended temporality includes the body as resonant space in which sound “drowns out or mimics ambient environmental sounds, flattening aural differentiations and rendering the audio field a single contiguous object of thought rather than a collection of objects.”6Harris, “Pleromaticatalyst: Ritual Intoxication Toward the Universal Field,” p. 117. Drone, then, has the potential to induce a trance-like state and alter our experience of both time and space.  In doing so it has the imaginable power to transport the listener “through the ‘threshold between our world’ and the ‘world of the spirit,’”7Norman, “Weirdrone Tales, p. 217. however that “spirit” is defined.

Moving between the academic, the technical, the informational, and the purely experimental, this collection poses a schizophrenic assessment of sound, not in a pejorative way, but rather a state of mind in which consciousness, moving from one perspective to another, is overwhelmed by disparate voices all clamoring to relate some aspect of drone. In toto it reads a bit like a David Mitchell novel, with a shifting focus and perspectives all converging on a singular idea. Some authors take on individual drone works, some the idea of drone as a metaphysical reality, others meditate on death and philosophy and time. This is not music criticism in the traditional sense, nor does it purport to be, but is an exploration of sound and perception that occasionally alludes to bands like Sunn O))), Conan, Coil, artists like Cascone, Eliane Radigue, and Scott Walker, among less well-known but nevertheless engaging artists like Trepaneringsritualen and From The Bogs Of Aughiska.

Many of the voices proceed by metaphor, others by less direct routes. At the center is the reader, the I, sifting through the cacophony in search of meaning, in search of an elusive truth, an epiphany about drone. But, like a Beckett play, the reader must listen for what he or she can hear, as continual nuggets of wisdom arise from the din. This is a more honest and impactful experience than a purely linear or academic one. In this sense it is a book designed for exploration as opposed to a cover-to-cover read. Its intent is inspirational, to shake up perceptions and approaches to sound with links to pursue, footnotes to examine, and listening suggestions galore (did I really wait this long to fully dive into the music of Eliane Radigue?). Balancing the three ideas in the title the stand-outs include: “Unstable metaphors for the inaccessible: mysticism, blackletter, and drone metal,” by Owen Coggins; Kim Cascone’s “Transcendigital imagination: developing organs of subtle perception”; Kristina Wolfe’s “Isoluminance”; Gary J. Shipley’s “Non-terminator: rise of the drone gods”; and James Harris’ “Pleromaticatalyst: ritual intoxication toward the universal field.” Other readers will undoubtedly have other favorites.

Floating from time period to time period amid spiritual and religious observances and contemporary soundscapes the drone remains consistently omnipresent, like the angel of death, hovering just out of reach yet connecting all things living and dead. However, as Shipley articulates, “while drone music may aestheticize a timeless catastrophe of sorts, it only does so on the promise that its timelessness is never made permanent, that its endlessness remain only an appearance.”8Sustain/Decay, p. 199. The drone is, and always will be, in contrast to silence and rhythm, a form of timelessness punctuated by absence and an insistent present, best captured by the specter of deconstruction that hovers over this volume (as do H.P. Lovecraft and Deleuze and Guattari). Sustain and decay are not antithesis, but both sides of the same drone coin. While Joanna Demers is quoted as stating that “it’s exceptionally difficult to write about drone music,” 9Ibid., p. 199. this collection imaginatively addresses this challenge by writing about the experience of drone filtered through the mystical and the philosophical.

References   [ + ]

1. ↑ Sustain/Decay, p. 19.
2. ↑ Ibid., p. 80.
3. ↑ Ibid., p. 7.
4. ↑ Caron, “On the Transcendental Aesthetics of Time-Stretching,” p. 129.
5. ↑ Cascone, “Transcendigital imagination: developing organs of subtle perception,” p. 34.
6. ↑ Harris, “Pleromaticatalyst: Ritual Intoxication Toward the Universal Field,” p. 117.
7. ↑ Norman, “Weirdrone Tales, p. 217.
8. ↑ Sustain/Decay, p. 199.
9. ↑ Ibid., p. 199.

Delusions, by Stanisław Kapuściński: A Review

By

By  | 
Feature Image: Drew Brayshaw, The-God-Delusion crop) [via Flicrk, CC BY-NC 2.0]
Print

Delusions (book cover) – Stanislaw Kapuscinski (aka Stan I.S. Law)

Deciding to review a book is like being a hotel receptionist in Monaco. Your recommendations are expected to be impartial but with the dullness of uniform options you steer your guests towards the hidden restaurant you fortuitously discovered. You hope they will unfold their napkins and enjoy it as much as you did. This book, the chef claims, was inspired by Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion. He may well have observed the famous atheist in the polished steel kitchens of the Royal Society, cooking up traditional fare, steak and kidney pudding, shepherds pie, boiled mutton with gene caper sauce, knowing the palates of his readers will be satisfied with what they had expected, solid and kind to the digestion. Honestly presented certainly, but then the chef has become famous for that, no dressing things up with persuasive parsley. No foreign muck.

In contrast, the author of Delusions, Stanislaw Kapuściński, improvising in a beach shack, has produced a smorgasbord of samples, surrounded by heaps of bright chillies, unusual spotted gourds, sparkling sea salt, freshly slaughtered cows…

His narrative follows the traditional three courses; Man in the Nursery, in High School, in University to tease out the growth and fossilization of Delusions (of both religious and scientific kinds) and also to show the creation of time (past, present and future) cementing and itself created by this division. It is impossible to identify all the flavours that waft from this multidimensional dish, except to urge a reader to order it. It gives a broad education across both centuries and disciplines, and obscure and classical sources. As importantly, it is enormous fun, spiced and aromatic. Unlike his posturing ‘mentor’ the author’s irreverence and wit make his views the more compelling.

Kapuscinski’s intentions are early implied, to match Dawkins bite for bite and (as honestly) to demonstrate the irreconcilable gulf between intellectual reductionism and emotional religious dogmatism, each flailing towards fundamentalism in trying to flatten one another. In that he takes on Dawkins full square and very gently gradually knocks him over. Not by a deft left hook, but by tugging at his shirt. He admires his opponent’s skill and breadth of culture but laments it is not sensitive to the deeper inspiration which might modify his intellectual stridency.

This reader bit into each dish with relish, savouring the fresh flavours of things turned inside out, the familiar used uniquely, the telling argument nailed with just enough illustration, but never too much. (A few infant prodigies to question the central tenets of Darwinian gradual progress or the non-survival of memory) Kapuściński’s erudition is worn as lightly as a tee shirt pulled over well exercised pectorals of Jesuitical education, Gnostic doctrine, Sanskrit sources, mythological and symbolic familiarity of the Bible and Koran which reduces both fossilised religious distortions and scientific certainties (knowing more and more about less and less) over a bright flame, until both cry for mercy. He remains fairly merciless and for that I celebrated.

In the end it is the primacy of mind preceding brain, idea determining creation, and responsibility in the moment of NOW that lies at the foundation of his appeal to ‘pragmatic realism’. The name sounds philosophically chilly, deliberately eschewing inflation, but it belies the passion, and anger, and incipient despair underpinning this very profound work. He gives you himself, grated raw, and dipped into sauces, both sharp and honeyed. The appetite was self-renewing, and consuming pages effortless.

What remains is a deeply humane appeal to reap the best of human inspiration, devoid of dogma, restoring, indeed pleading for, worshipful sanity derived from self-knowledge and true identity. The essence of the individual, one with god, was derived from the only sources that were left standing; the ancient mythical, the repeated mystical and the personal experiential, now indivisible, simultaneously being and becoming in a universe hopefully emptied of delusion (and scientifically proved pretty empty of anything—the two are not unconnected) but waiting for a better use of imagination and light, with little time remaining. For all the chutzpah of this broad-brush annihilation of false stanchions, the ornate pier has collapsed, the crisis he uncovers is urgent. I thought it brilliant.

Editor’s note: You can download the first part of Stanislaw Kapuściński’s Delusions by clicking this link. To purchase a print or ebook copy of the full book, please visit the book’s page on Amazon.

The Name of God

By

By  | 
Feature Image:
Print
Editor’s Note: For readers who would prefer to read this long-form article offline, click here to download as a PDF (27 pages).

He stood upon an old skull, and he crushed it under his dark heel. A snake was inside it, and its blood seeped into the ground.

He stood in the crater where Gods went to die, the valley without light where a bloated Leviathan would rest upon the ground, and spears piercing its belly beneath dark clouds, the sun would turn away in time for it to rot and die. In its carcass, in its open bones a new God would form, a new rotten Beast to occupy the holy Throne.

One man became aware of this cycle, so he travelled to the wasteland to end it. It was a long journey, and he undertook it alone, braving the craggy peaks and the empty riverbeds that led to the lightless hell where religions and nations alike rose and fell like the untamed cycle of death and rebirth he sought to break.

He sought to break it by his own hands, with a will of steel. So he came bearing the Sword, and he came with Knowledge of his opposition. Made of matter, they had no other way than the Sword.

His hair was light and he wore a scarf, rippling with his jacket in the celestial wind. He had a bandage around his left ankle and the tails of his jacket billowed past it, along with the topsoil blown in the infinite wind.

He looked at the archangels before him, and his face was the resentful glare of a child whose ideas had just been shot down by his parents. He could muster no empathy for the archangels, all that took root in his veins was hatred.

Standing tall, he asked them: “So, good old dad’s finally sent his slaves to kill me?”

They stared at him with ruthless eyes.

Michael, the luminous, his decorated sword radiating with heaven’s bliss. It was a thick blade of shining white gold covered in rubies and diamonds, the handsome face of the blond servant eyeing Kasimir with the fury of a dying sun.

And Gabriel, the dark sun, a brilliant blade in each hand. His hair was dark, his breastplate silver and ornate, his wings tucked behind his back.

They were clad in the armor of God, bestowed unto them by the Father himself. Side by side, they stood, monoliths of light and light’s power.

“Metatron awaits you at the gates of Heaven,” said Michael, nothing but intensity in his voice, the atoms quivering in the air and his wingspan luminous enough to blind all the world’s seers. Abraham himself would have dropped the knife and ran. “Even if you slay us here, he will destroy you.”

The ragtag traveler, clothes and scarf billowing all around him, now found it in himself to grin. He was tall and thin, a steady tower, his hand on the sword sheathed at his side. “This world has given me nothing. It has given my generation nothing. You offer us fields of ash and demand we plow? I would rather gut you on the road, and start anew. I would rather Satan himself rise and take control of this Earth, than to pretend for one moment longer that God is good.”

A massive gust of wind blew across the cracked and battered plains, his enemies’ heavenly robes cascading all around them. There was a dark sky, and darkened mountains all around, shaped like tetrahedrons, great monoliths of cultures that once garnered respect.

“Do you even know who I am?” asked the young traveler to the archangels.

“It is of no consequence,” affirmed Michael in the darkness. “No one will know your name.”

The traveler raised his fist, hands trembling, his teeth bared like an animal. This insult, he could not take. And so he spoke:

“No. Everyone will know my name. Mine is the name of all humanity, set against this world and all its suffering.”

Gabriel shook his head. “Enough. Save us your madness.”

The traveler’s grin only grew wider. “You know it, but you refuse to speak it! Your damned pride…” He held his sheathed sword out before him, standing steadfast in the fearsome breeze. “I am the demon to end all demons, the echo of all discontent. And you bastards are nothing but false light serving a false God.”

He narrowed his eyes.

“You serve a Demiurge, the weaver of a world where injustice reigns by the peonage of matter and all the hell it inflicts upon its children. Born of bloody wombs, and to bloody Earth we set our flags. For what? And for whom?”

He grinned, bracing against the wind in the dark valley’s final hour.

“Demiurge.”

Michael raised his sword to the Heavens, the gusts intensifying as he set his will to destruction. There was a heretic before him, a damned little imp with bandages wrapped around his ankles and wind caressing the stubble upon his chin.

“Gabriel,” began Michael. “Stand witness, and tell the creator how I silenced that word upon his lips.”

Cain’s eyes were alight with wonder. He unsheathed his sword slowly, and swept it to his side.

“You think you can silence me? You think you have the right to silence your own children?” A single glint of sunlight escaped from the clouds. “THEN COME AND TRY!”

Michael surged toward him, wings wide, leaving a curtain of light in his wake.

Cain, triumphant, blocked his blade with one hand.

“WHAT’S THE MATTER?” he roared, staring the archangel in his eyes. “I CAN REALLY MATCH YOU?”

He gazed upon nothing but Fear.

“HOW DOES IT FEEL?” demanded Cain, relentless as he pushed against his nemesis’ sword. “HOW DOES IT FEEL TO FINALLY BE OVERPOWERED?”

He kicked Michael in his chest.

“DIE, YOU DEMON WITHOUT A WILL!”

Cain brought his sword down with the wrath of all the souls who were black carbon splattered on the roads of Hiroshima, centuries of malcontents from the human beings cast out of the world without hope of light or grace.

Michael desperately blocked his attacks, grimacing as he was driven backward by a single man.

Gabriel watched in awe, twenty feet back, trying to compose himself.

And then, the blade nicked Michael’s silver armor.

The archangel’s pupils grew huge.

“GABRIEL! HELP ME!”

At this, Cain drew his second sword. One in each hand, black and thin like needles to be driven into the eyes of a God.

“Cowards,” he muttered, crouching then bursting forth as he charged the twin archangels. “COWARDS, BOTH OF YOU!”

The shining paragons of God’s light, feathers and silver and steel, whipped across the windswept valley beneath the unholy sky, clashing blades with the rebel who sought to topple the Heavens.

He parried both of them, his strength more than enough to suffice.

One of Gabriel’s arms flew off at the elbow.

His wings pulsed outward, flying back to escape the battlefield. He held his bleeding stump beneath dark clouds as he watched Michael be overwhelmed.

“URIEL!” screamed Gabriel, staring wide-eyed at his wound, and reinforcements arrived.

The crimson-clad angel broke through the sky with a flaming broadsword, fluttering blonde hair and crystal armor gleaming like the full moon, clashing her fiery rage against one of Cain’s swords.

And there Cain stood, blocking Michael with one hand and Uriel with the other.

She gazed upon him with fury, flames crackling between them.

Cain only laughed. “How many of you will it take? Three? Five? All of Heaven?”

He shoved Michael to the side and slashed furiously at Uriel with both swords, the airborne angel blocking with her stick of flame.

“YOU THINK THAT BLADE GIVES YOU PATHOS?” he bellowed, grazing her arm. “NO! YOU HAVE NO WILL! YOU HAVE NO FREEDOM! SO DIE!”

Michael soared at him from behind. Cain ducked beneath him. He threw one of his swords at Michael’s back, stabbing him beneath the shoulder.

The archangel screamed out in pain. It was clear that he’d never been cut before, and he’d never seen his own blood.

It was this lesson that the angels immediately learned, and they were not ready for it.

Uriel charged Cain from the sky, an eagle from above, locking her fiery sword against his.

“You will not kill us!” she cried, golden hair hanging past her face. “We are the ground beneath your feet! We are the structure of your very mind!”

She flew against him with all of her might, Cain’s heels digging into the dirt as he was pushed back through the dust and the plains.

Uriel screamed: “YOU WILL NEVER TRIUMPH OVER THE FATHER!”

Michael, crazed with anger, shoulder bleeding, began to sprint toward Cain.

Cain, eyes panicked, fell flat on his back. Uriel soared over him.

Michael charged with reckless hatred. Cain raised his sword just in time to stab him through the heart.

Uriel turned, and her jaw fell open.

“You’re the first to die,” said Cain as he reached out, wrapping his hand around Michael’s and easing the blade of Heaven from his hand.

Lifeless eyes gazed back at him.

“NO!” screamed Uriel, who flew at him like a freight train.

Cain rolled out of the way with both swords in hand.

Uriel’s momentum was too much—she crashed into Michael and lodged her flaming sword through his chest.

The brilliant armor of Heaven burned black, gleaming silver breastplate charred, and the corpse of an archangel hit the ground. Red blood pooled all around him, and Gabriel saw.

His eyes widened, his jaws trembled, and he screamed. He screamed the cry of a woman with a stillborn child, or the cry of a father burying his young sons.

Cain rose to his feet as the wind rose to a new high, sweeping his jacket all around his torso and blowing his hair against the billowing black Above.

He had his black sword in his right hand, and the shining blade of Heaven in his left. With them both he was as the conqueror of God, and now the Leviathan’s corpse in the distance became clear. It was a great beast pressed against the mountainside, drawing its final breaths as its lungs collapsed beneath its own weight.

“You’ve already lost,” he announced to the archangels, frozen like traumatized infants. “When power betrays the powerful, they bleed like anyone else.”

He aimed his sword at Uriel, and narrowed his eyes in accusation.

“You’ve always defended the world of power. Now you can witness first hand why it’s rotten, and why the Demiurge must die.”

Uriel was crouched beside Michael’s corpse, tears running down her cheeks. She turned toward Cain, clinging to her flaming sword.

“You’ve done this,” she spat, staring him in the eyes. “Do not blame God, and do not sully His name with that word!”

Cain approached her, unsatisfied. “Bullshit. Look at this world your creator has made! Do you know what rules it? Power! Want proof? Then let me stick it through your skull!”

He brought the blade of Heaven down on her, and she barely blocked it.

Gabriel began screaming again, in utter disbelief that Michael was dead. In utter disbelief that his arm had been severed. In utter disbelief that Uriel, tears in her eyes, was losing to Cain.

He watched as Cain sliced off both her hands, then took her head.

It flew through the air, landing in the dark earth.

Her sword’s flame faded, and her headless body slumped to the ground beside Michael.

Cain grinned as he turned toward Gabriel, madness in his eyes.

“Why?” demanded the last remaining archangel. “Why…why…WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS?”

He walked toward him, sheathing his black sword and holding the blade of Heaven with two hands.

“Why?” begged Gabriel, dripping blood from his arm. “WHY?”

Cain stood before him, and held the sword against his throat.

“That is the question that everyone in the world asks of our creator,” he said, and true flames burned in his eyes. “Every human being who has been thrown away like meat cast to the rocks; every child killed in war, every man starved, every woman raped and every baby stillborn.

“They all ask: ‘Why?’ There is no answer. Only now, that you suffer, do you ask the question. Only now, that you are powerless, do you question power. Well…

“Allow me to show you how much sympathy I have for you, defender of God.”

And then Cain grinned.

“Not God. Demiurge.”

He decapitated Gabriel, and stood upon the ruin of the archangels. Their blood soaked the cracked ground and now lonely streaks of light shone through the turmoil in the sky.

He looked to the distance, to the cruel mountains at the edge of the wasteland, and he knew what awaited him there.

∞

“Stand back,” ordered Raphael, slowly stepping backward.

Cain twirled the blade of Heaven in one hand.

“I mean it!” he shouted, backing up against the opening of a small cave. “You will not harm the Christ!”

“And why do you defend him?” demanded Cain. “So that he will die anyway?”

Raphael scowled. He wore a silver crown, black hair parted past his forehead.

“So that the creator-”

“Can watch another hero writhe in pain? No. I’ve seen enough of his world, and I’ve heard enough apology from the likes of you.”

The two fought against the mountainside, but it was no fight at all. Raphael blocked twice, three times, then his foot was cut and he staggered to his knees.

“Please-”

He was cleaved in two, and his bloodied flesh joined the rest of the archangels in graceless death.

Cain, victorious, stood against the reddening sky. The cosmos was changing. The Leviathan heaved its final breaths.

He turned toward the dark cave, and there he saw it.

It was the progeny of all humankind, the cross silver and great, too massive for any man to bear. Along its edges, gleaming silver. All along its cross a majestic moon, a wish, a dream, the shape of the transcendence, the burden and the way—the object of all prayer and the resurrection of the innocent blood that stained the Earth.

And at its base, the man slumped against it. There were chains all around his torso and his chest, hanging from his outstretched arms and around his neck, tying him to the cross and to his fate.

The Christ kept his burden, staring past Cain and into the bloodstained sky.

“You know why I’ve won, don’t you?” asked Cain as he approached him in the cave. “It is because my time has come. That’s all there is to it. For too long, the old regimes have upheld broken laws as the end-goal of history. Now they see that their reign was only the start…”

The Christ stared straight ahead. “You sound like an archangel.”

“No,” he objected, hurt by the comparison. He approached him and dropped to his knees. For the first time, Cain felt a pouring of warm myrrh in his heart, the desire to be accepted by his hero. “You misunderstand me! I fight for you, my Lord!” He slammed his fist against his own chest. “It is because you suffer that this world must change! It is because a world built on crucifixion of the innocent must be repealed!”

They looked right at each other, a moment that had no parallel.

“What do you mean?” asked the Christ.

“You know it better than anyone,” asserted Cain, staring into his eyes. “The body is a crime. The damnable, obliterable body, crafted by a most insidious weaver to house the highest of highs and fall victim to the lowest of lows. For whom do I fight? The poor, the murdered, the dispossessed masses who have no power in a world where power determines all! Your God, Yaldabaoth, has made it this way.

“He has made it so that even you, light incarnate, are killed by your fellow man! He has made us in his image—the image of power. God, in this world, means nothing but power. I intend to change this. I will crush Yahweh with my own hands, and usurp his throne. I shall rend angelic flesh, and slay the tyrant creator. I have lived my entire life for nothing else. I am Cain, the spirit of rebellion, and by God I will have the Demiurge’s head.”

He rose to his feet, and turned his back on the Christ.

“You bear the cross for him,” he said, then he shook his head. “You die over and over in his world, and nothing ever changes. Your fellow Christians, in all nations, in all eras, would crucify you in a heartbeat. No one wants to hear your message. No one wants to follow the most obvious thing of all: do unto others as you would have done unto you…”

The words spiraled from his soul.

“In a world like this, where light is snuffed out by those who desire power, why should you carry the burden? Why should you continue to suffer for the violent and the ungrateful? No, I say you should be freed!”

He turned to face the massive cross, and he slashed the blade of Heaven through the Christ’s chains, severing him from its weight.

Immediately, it came crashing down onto him, pinning him to the ground beneath its shining form.

“Damn the Demiurge!” shouted Cain, dropping to the ground again. He threw his weight against the cross, trying to shove it off of the Christ, pinned to hard and darkened Earth.

When the cross clanged against rocky ground, he gazed upon a broken man.

“Do as you will,” whispered the Christ. “I am not made for this world, I am not made to fight. The world has rejected me. My own Christians have rejected me. Crucify me, and reveal the name of God. Do whatever it is that you will.

“In this world, love is as good as surrender. So rend angelic flesh, Cain, and exhaust your fire.”

∞

The cross was erected in the center of the wasteland. It was a shining monolith, the only hope in the dark landscape all around. The sky was now pregnant, red and orange, filled with great swaths of black and gray.

The Christ was on his knees before the cross, his chains severed and his heart free. He knew what came next.

Cain stood before him, looking down at the ground.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “It has to be done to open the way to God. If there were any other way, I’d—”

“I am not naïve,” interrupted the Christ. “You’ll do what it takes to achieve your goals. You are not so unique. So make me suffer.”

Cain was silent. There was nothing to say, so he went about his task.

There were three nails.

One, for each hand.

And one to drive through both feet.

“You know,” thought Cain aloud as he stared at the nails in his palm. “If I really am Cain, then that means I only reject power because it doesn’t serve me. That cannot possibly be. I don’t think I’m Cain at all. In fact, I think I am Lucifer.”

He looked up, and gazed at Christ.

“Lucifer and Christ, brothers in arms against the Demiurge. That is the way it should be.”

∞

He wailed in pain.

Crucified, his blood was the blood of all humanity.

He sacrifices everything, for us.

That is love.

The great silver cross was stained with blood.

It stood beneath dark clouds, and the clouds took notice.

As they parted, Lucifer looked up. Stray beams of light fell upon his face, and upon the Christ.

“Is it the moon?” he asked. “Or the sun…?”

And then, the letters came to him.

“Y…”

Lucifer began to smile.

“H…”

The Christ grit his teeth in agony.

“V…”

All creation came to its apex.

“H.”

The shining blue letters of the seal appeared in the clouds above the cross, the seal to the gate of Heaven.

“The Tetragrammaton,” said Lucifer, in awe as it manifested in the world. “The name of God…”

Brilliant light ushered forth from the seal, illuminating the wasteland and bringing hope to the world. Finally, in the crucifixion, man had gained the attention of God. His holy name appeared in the clouds and it was the link between matter and spirit, flesh and soul.

And it came with the fist of judgment.

“This is the voice of Metatron,” came the radiant sound from the seal. “I am the right hand of God.”

Lucifer grit his teeth. Immediately, his soul clamped shut with fury. “YOU’LL DIE LIKE THE REST!”

“No. I will not even fight you. I will send seraphim like waves of the abyss, and they shall smother you like the ant you are. No man can interfere with God’s plan, and this, you shall learn the hard way.”

The light faded from the seal. The dark landscape lost its fleeting brightness.

The Christ closed his eyes, accepting the course of history.

There was silence.

And then, the wave.

Seraphim poured forth from the seal by the thousands, a terrifying mess of light, feathers and eyes. They were not even humanoid—they were akin to demons, monstrous worshippers of God.

They surged toward the earth like spears, each of them a weapon destined for its own death smashed against the shoulders and the skull of the rebel who had come so far.

“HOLY! HOLY! HOLY!”

Their battle chant was louder than the wind, and the gusts arose at Lucifer’s back.

“HOLY! HOLY! HOLY!”

They were a monolith, a pillar of force descending to crush Lucifer and the Christ with him. All of them as one, they were a tidal wave of Heaven’s might. They shook the skies and the Earth below, feet trembling and bandaged ankle seeking to find its grip.

“SILENCE!” bellowed Lucifer, raising the blade of Heaven and his right hand’s sword. “YOU COWARDS KNOW NOTHING OF THE WILL!”

He crouched, baring his teeth, and surged forth into the sky.

He flew at the angels head-on, buffeted by the wind, screaming as he crossed his swords above his head.

“HUMANKIND, GIVE ME STRENGTH!”

The pillar of seraphim collided with him, an impact that echoed throughout the wasteland.

He shredded them with his swords, ascending upward through the mass of angels.

He cut through them all, soaking himself in their blood, battle-weary Lucifer eviscerating the armies of heaven.

With his heart pounding in his chest, he let loose a scream that drove fear even into his own heart.

The pillar of angels had become a funnel of blood, and it began to part against the red and orange sky, recognizing true power when they saw it.

The seraphim, alive and dead, collided into the ground when they reached it, mindlessly crushing themselves all around the forgotten Christ. Like drills, they impaled themselves into the Earth.

Lucifer, drenched in the blood of angels, swords in hand, had reached the blue seal.

He stabbed the blade of Heaven through it.

Immediately, he heard Metatron’s scream.

He reached deeper into seal, grabbing armored arm and feathered wing.

He pulled as hard as he could, ripping the wounded Metatron out of Heaven and into the world.

When he had him in his hands, bleeding, he stabbed him through the spine.

Metatron went limp—and Lucifer threw him down to the earth below.

In the clouds, the wind was at its mightiest.

He looked down at the legions of dead seraphim, and the corpse of Metatron that fell and impaled itself on top of the cross. The beached Leviathan desperately tried to climb over the mountains of the valley below, but its organs bursting within, it fell.

The Christ was still silent. In the face of such power, he could do nothing but bleed.

Lucifer grinned one final time, and reached up through the seal.

He was levitating in the air, and he was drawn through it.

There was only one word for it all:

Victory.

∞

“So this is it,” he muttered in disbelief, suspended in a shimmering sea of blue. “You… are God?”

There was a human embryo floating through the water, in the far distance.

Yes. I am God.

The words invaded his mind, coming from everywhere and nowhere.

“Then this place is your grave,” he growled, moving his arms through the water, swimming toward the embryo.

The water turned gold and purple, a gorgeous sunset reflected on the water’s edge. It turned red, then pink, then it was nothing but white.

It was the number zero, then zero ascended to fifty, fifty to one-hundred, one-hundred to one million, then back to zero. It made perfect sense, and then it didn’t make any sense at all. His feelings changed with the tides.

The colors of the ocean around him continued to change, infinite water in every direction, the colors of the heart imbued by God the creator. Light was the synthesis of all colors, and as the sea turned to overwhelming light, he grit his teeth and found his anger.

“WHY?”

Why what?

“YOU KNOW WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT!” he roared, grasping at the sea in rage, inching ever closer. “WHO ARE YOU, DEMIURGE?”

I am who I am.

“YOUR ANGELS ARE DEAD! YOUR CHRIST IS CRUCIFIED!”

He propelled himself through the sea, surging ahead by will alone.

“YOUR RETRIBUTION HAS COME!”

And who do you think it is that you’re talking to?

He narrowed his eyes. The embryo wasn’t far away now.

“An infantile monster, that’s who.”

Then you know me.

It was hard to see now. The water all around him felt dark and oppressive, even though it was lighter than ever. He reached out toward the outline of God, the embryo floating in the sea of soul.

“I do,” he said, finding himself surprisingly calm. “I do know you.”

So kill me.

His hand brushed against the embryo, sending chills down his spine.

He reached out again, and this time grabbed it by its neck.

“You rigged the game, and left us all to die,” he said. “Now come your sins.”

Only you can destroy me, Cain, or Lucifer, or whoever it is you believe yourself to be. Slay the Demiurge, and make right the world.

He nodded. “I will.”

He crushed the embryo in his hands, seeing the red splatter amidst a sea of light and gold.

The ocean still shimmered.

And then it disappeared, and the new world began to form.

The word of God became incarnate within Cain, and reality ushered forth in His image.

∞

The Christ, crucified, watched the Tetragrammaton flake and break away.

Metatron’s corpse was impaled above him, the blood of God’s right hand dripping onto his forehead.

It ran down the bridge of his nose and fell to the ground. On the cracked earth of the wasteland, the blood of an archangel joined the blood of Christ.

There is no such thing as a sinless being. Incarnate in the flesh, we must all choose to kill or be killed. When there are others who depend on us, pacifism is no longer an option. You see, I did not come to bring peace: I came to bring fire and the Sword.

The truth is that the order of Cain is no different from the order of Abel. Had Cain been chosen by the Demiurge, he never would have rebelled. It would have been Abel, indignant and denied, raising the banner of the oppressed. Cain realized this himself.

And Lucifer, the rebel king…

Christ looked to the Heavens, the dark and parting clouds, and saw His ascension. The God of the new world, with great pale wings and angelic form, rising to outer space to oversee the new creation.

His wings extended into the cosmos, into the stars, His eyes black and round and His flesh a seamless shine without differentiation. He was the ur-soul, the primary being, the second moon and the harbinger of fire.

The fire originated from the cross, from the heart of the messiah, and the wasteland became swept with its grace. The body of the Christ was immolated, the corpse of Metatron reduced to ash. All the rotten Leviathans and all their discarded bones burned and became nothing. The valley was overcome with fire, then the mountains, and the whole world.

The clouds broke, and the oceans emptied themselves. As gravity faded, the materials of creation floated out to the stars.

The great oceans poured into the cosmos, into the dark and the abyss. But the white hand of God stopped them from being lost, and He wove the seas all around Himself.

God, remade in the image of Cain and not Abel, looked over His scarred and beaten Earth.

Without water, it could be seen as it was; a wounded planet, a dark rock, abandoned to its suffering and forsaken by love. It was covered in dents and trenches, great holes inflicted by comets and the stars. It was a punished place, home to punished beings.

But punishment solved nothing, so it had to be remade.

He saw this, and triumphant over the world, He floated in space.

He floated between two massive walls of water, all the oceans of the earth, which he wove into a wheel. A great wheel encircling His star-sized form, His great black eyes wide with hope for the future.

He expanded His luminous wings, radiating nothing but light and light’s power.

He was the archangel to trump all archangels, the completed form of the Ein Sof.

He inherited Earth’s gravity, and all that fell from its surface merged into His wheel of water.

Larger than the moon, the ashes of all life on earth came together around Him. The legacy of life joined the water, which became pregnant with its possibilities.

The water was now shining with light, a great golden wheel rotating around the form of God, ascendant over the Earth and gazing down upon it.

All the Earth was burning, and without gravity, its pieces began to break off and disperse into the stars. The whole planet was breaking apart into three massive chunks, and then the thirds broke apart from within.

God too saved them, melding the form of the Earth into His divine wheel, and empowering light with the reality of matter. Matter is the means through which all light must pass, and God knows this.

Now, the wheel was shining so brightly, and imbued with so much power that no being could control it. The principles of evolution, set forth by the universe itself, would decide the rest.

The oceans, imbued with life, were to become the primordial ooze.

From dust, slime shall crawl.

And from slime, Gods shall evolve.

“Mine is a world of light and will,” He declared, His great black eyes alight with wonder. “The corrupt order of the Demiurge is dead, and now a new God stands triumphant!”

He ushered forth His hand, the will incarnate, and the pieces of Earth left the wheel, reforming where the old Earth had been.

The moon, beginning to become lost, was pulled back by the force of gravity.

It remained unchanged.

The Earth reformed, with great dents made for the oceans to fill.

The golden wheel of primordial ooze still surrounded God, and He returned it to the world.

The oceans flooded back to their place, and from them it was inevitable that life would rise.

“I am God, the universe itself,” He said, with the voice of none and all. “I am who I am, and my law is law. The principles of creation are mine to bend, and they bend to my will.”

The blueprint of creation appeared before Him, a great set of algorithms floating in space, the form of the tree of life and its ten Sephirot.

“This blueprint is vile, but I shall weave it into a new form,” He said. “The principles of evolution, the soul of the world, will be changed, and a new world will rise in its image.

“A world of light and will, of fire and fury. I have slain the Demiurge, and now all creation can proceed anew.”

He expanded His wings, ascendant in the sky alongside the moon.

Tweaking the blueprint before Him, evolution began once more.

Life arose from the seas, and reality began to unfold.

∞

As time went on, the material world revealed itself.

The light of the sun stood beside creation, and as light shined upon the calming waters of the sea, the possibility of sentience arose. The reflection of light on the water’s surface made possible the reflection of thought in the minds of men.

But at Earth’s origin, talk of humans was immature.

The patterns that sculpted humanity were at work from the emergence of the first life forms, and beyond them, from the Big Bang itself.

The universe is no stranger to patterns. When suns die, they become black dwarfs. When stars greater than suns die, they become supernovas. The black hole awaits at the end of the road, and the all-consuming void traps even light. Where does the black hole lead? To another chance.

God, once known as Cain, or Lucifer, or man himself, looked upon his creation with a frown.

He gazed at his hands, unfamiliar.

All time was nothing in the eyes of God, and there were no shortage of moments to realize that something had gone wrong.

The ten Sephirot sat in the palm in his hand, and yet, they meant nothing.

He gazed upon the evolution of the world, when the apex of matter was nothing but a mammal, a rat.

It ate flesh, and its flesh fed others.

God’s eyes were vast and dark, the roundest, blackest eyes that reflected the stars and the Earth itself.

When he saw this rat, which would in millions of years become the progenitor of the entire human race, he knew that he had overlooked something.

I am not all-seeing.

When he realized this, his eyes grew wider than they had ever been.

He gripped his chest, and suppressed his cries.

This cannot be. It is impossible for nothing to have changed. I killed the Demiurge. I slayed his archangels and I ended his world. Where is his legacy? Why does it remain?

The tree of life lay before him, blue script brought forth from subtlety.

And yet it was dirt in the hands of false Gods.

He made a fist, the evolution of life closed to him, and his wings surged outward.

In the blink of an eye, he watched as humanity emerged, and defied his will.

He watched as Abel murdered Cain, and nothing else had changed.

No! No, no, this cannot be…

In denial, God faded from the night sky. Human beings could no longer see him, and they wondered where he had gone.

In truth, he had shriveled.

He lost his divine form, as humanity failed him again and again, and withered into a form that was truly familiar. A sick thing that yearned for a womb that could not exist.

The neoteny of God was the tragedy of humankind, and all the world’s history unfolded with differences that did not permeate the surface.

It was a world where black men had white slaves, and the British crown fell beneath the boots of Indian masters.

The Arab world was the center of commerce, a bastion of corruption, of bankrupt intellectuals defending Islamic bankers and Islamic crimes.

Women stood in skyscrapers, and ordered the ruin of the world.

Black gold flowed through the veins of civilization, and wrought its end.

Natives held their land, and as time went on, they exploited it themselves.

Abel, prosperity incarnate, was spited.

And Cain was more than happy to inherit his will.

The patterns of all creation overwhelmed even God, defying his will the more he attempted to assert it. His creation was beyond him, his work inheriting its own ends and pulling away from him.

As he felt this pull, he withered, and lost his wings.

Great, white angelic wings falling against the darkness and rotting among the stars.

His body became small, his eyes trembling as they watched the world’s end.

He tried to cover them with his hands, but he could not.

He watched as nuclear warheads devastated the planet, and then as a new humanity arose in the wasteland. He watched himself be born, and he watched himself slay the archangels and find the name of God.

He watched as Christ was crucified, for the thousandth time, and war was waged against his domain.

The myths, repeated.

The misery, repeated.

He found himself shriveled to the state of an embryo, and watched as he reached out and crushed his own skull.

The world was remade, again, or not.

It didn’t matter.

Earth could only be remade so many times, before the whole enterprise burned out.

Before the stars incinerated their reserves, and the universe gave way to chaos.

In between explosion and entropy, there was the Word.

And it ate itself.

The God of the new world, whatever Word he held as his name, held all this Knowledge in His mind, and He could not take it.

His body white and His eyes gleaming black, He screamed and begged for the end of everything.

“I HATE THEM! I HATE THESE WORTHLESS HATEFUL HUMANS!”

He dug his fingers into the flesh of his chest, crying, screaming, in absolute despair.

“NO MATTER WHAT I DO, I CAN’T CHANGE ANYTHING! NO MATTER WHO I KILL, NO MATTER WHO DIES, NOTHING IS SAVED!”

God felt the sublime insanity of His own creation, His own existence, and His progeny resting in the skulls of apes. He felt all that He had staked on the world, and all that had let Him down.

He dug His fingers deeper into His flesh, and He drew blood.

Red blood, the same as Gabriel had bled on that fateful day.

“I’VE HAD ENOUGH!”

He reached deeper into His own body, blood staining His pure white hands. He wrapped His fingers around His beating heart, and straining for breath, He tore it free from his chest.

He held it out to the cosmos, in front of the scarred and beaten Earth, as His final work.

“I KILL MYSELF, AND END THE CYCLE! LET ME ROT!”

He crushed His own heart in His hands, and at once, they came.

The four archangels emerged from the far reaches of the universe, demons that shone with the brightest light and yet exuded darkest darkness.

They flew to his body, and landing on it they feasted upon his flesh. They were beings with feathered wings and hard beaks, monsters so foreign to the human being that no eye could bear their witness.

They ate God alive, feasting upon the divine flesh and picking clean His bones.

When they were finished, they pulsed out their wings and soared away from Earth, never to return.

All that was left of Him was a skeleton, fragmented bone drifting through the empty universe. As life destroyed itself for likely the final time, His final legacy was a jawbone attached to a spinal cord, floating in a vacuum.

The sun, finally, bloated and burst. It took the whole world with it, granting the gift of life and also its absolute end.

In this end, the will saw its defeat.

And still, no one understood why.

∞

He stood before the cross in the dark wasteland, the Christ on his knees before him, and he hesitated.

The Christ turned toward him, and smiled. He smiled without condescension, only the understanding of a rebellious child, how downcast and withered was his will, and how deserving of empathy…

“What’s the matter?”

Cain shook his head.

“I just realized,” he began, and he dropped his swords. The blade of Heaven stuck into the dirt. “I’ve done all this before.”

He paced forward about twenty feet, utterly lost.

“Have you exhausted it?” asked the Christ. “Your fire?”

Cain’s eyes widened.

He saw himself, as God, killing himself against the cosmos.

He saw himself as the withered embryo, killed at the hands of those who had been squashed by power.

He looked at his own hands, and he saw that they were his own.

They always were.

He turned toward the Christ, and grit his teeth.

“What is this?” he demanded. “What the hell are you?”

Finally, Christ stood.

Against the dark clouds and the edges of the valley he stood before his shining cross, and there was jubilance in his voice.

“In other worlds, in other dimensions, in time linear and not…you’ve killed me. You’ve killed me as a means to killing the Demiurge, the one who wove this world to worship force above all.”

Cain was looking right at him, and he nodded. “I have the memories to show for it. Now explain.”

“There is nothing to explain—you saw it yourself. You’ve done this before. Now if you think it will work, then do it again.”

He narrowed his eyes. “I can’t. I can’t because it won’t work.”

“And why is that? What’s the one thing here that never changes?”

Cain realized.

“Me. And you.”

“And you always kill me?”

“I do.”

Wind swept across the wasteland for the first time in ages, a cosmic wind that carried with it the hope for a different world.

“Who are you?” demanded Cain.

“Well, who are you?” he asked back. “Your name always changes, and yet your soul stays the same.”

“How—”

“The name of God is yours,” said the Christ, triumphant. “Demiurge, scourge of all humanity.”

The wind blew through his jacket, and his hair.

The corpses of the archangels were strewn throughout the wasteland, the rotten Leviathan on the mountainside, and now he knew who he was.

“WELL WHAT SHOULD I HAVE DONE?” he roared, defiant.

The Christ continued to smile.

“DON’T LOOK SO SMUG, DAMN YOU! IT’S EASY TO DIE UP THERE!” He pointed right at the gleaming white cross. “IT’S EASY TO SURRENDER YOURSELF TO THE WORLD! WHAT SHOULD I HAVE DONE? IN THE WORLD OF THE DEMIURGE, OF THE ARCHANGELS, SHOULD I HAVE JUST LAID DOWN AND DIED?”

He received no answer.

“WELL? SON OF GOD?”

The Christ faded.

The wasteland faded.

He, too, faded.

But he was left with the question:

“What should I have done?”

You should have loved.

The fire originated in the cross, and in the molten core of the messiah’s heart. At the end of the Earth, and at the end of everything, the fire still burned. The fire of resurrection that transcended all force and returned at the end of days.

You were the very God that you hated, and all else was fantasy.

Yours was a sin of blindness.

So easily you pointed at the crimes of others, and so easily you ignored your own.

You crucified me.

Truly, yours was the will of power.

You were the snake swallowing its own tail.

Who were you?

Look around, and then look within.

That’s where you’ll find me.

The molten beauty of the messiah blossomed forth, and it became a new sun. A new light, a new future.

What is love?

Surrendering yourself for the other.

That is all there is to it.

At the dawn of the new world, check your name.

Who are you?

I will tell you who I am:

I am paradox, I am light.
I am the world, and its transcendence.

In the world of power, I abandon power
In the world of fire, I am wood
And in the world of decay, I am resurrection

I am paradox, I am light.
Abandon the way of the Demiurge,
And suffer
Suffer the weight of the cross, and follow me

I am paradox, I am light.
In the apex of all contradiction
Is where you will find me

I am not matter, I am love
I am you, and you are me

Find me

Saturn in Scorpio in the First House

By

By  | 
Feature Image: Elihu Vedder (1836–1923), The Sphinx of the Seashore (1879), oil on canvas, 40.6 x 71.1 cm, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, de Young, San Francisco, CA. The Athenaeum. From Google Images
Print

“Saturn is for dense souls with shallow histories.”

We will build our grave here on earth. Is it grave? Our bodies reduced to the skeleton of gluttony and the like. Or a marker where our former bondage and body lies? This is a result of the flesh we build in action, substance and sustenance.

The villains, if you will, have their will, they were here and are again to learn how best to be a crook. In a staff they lead in droves. It is no herald but they hear, give them their time. We can affirm through their meeting guise, whether we wish to crook the droves or shepherd the course.

If you can’t cry it’s a wasteland

Phantasms on the other side

Face and place lingering vestiges

The waste you can’t home in your bone

Give in to God, give up the devil

God in the rings of Satan for God so loved the world that he gave will toward temptation. Each ring represents temptations, trials and tribulations—defined limitations encased in fossilized amber.

The rings of Saturn are radio waves, concentric waves multiplying,

The interior is karma

The rings of Saturn are sonograph, concentric waves magnifying

Karmic patterns from the center

Spin a sequence on these concentric rings

You will know that you are not as high as the world. You are lowly.

Saturn as Satan does not reveal your worldly ambitions, rather he reveals how they lack ambition, how they are shaped by the constructs of your own skeleton with its pervasive fear and tumult: the devil in us all. And knowing this leads to Saturn’s gift, Saturn on water floats in time and limitation, as every man’s Satan. Saturn is man in time and limitation at an earthly level and the discovery must be God—meaning for his life in such a short period—or he will be absolved to Hell, the suffering which comes with an impermanent fleshly body and its emotional turmoils.

Saturn restricts man but provides a window of opportunity.

You run around in circles but must be still. You seek great achievements but must be still. You want to disappear but can’t. You want out of yourself but are brought further inward. The boundary you seek to destroy is the one that will remove you from your pain and responsibilities.

God called to this soul but it stayed afar. Jupiter mingled in some future verse, its benevolent gaseous swirls squared against Saturn’s pained weariness—Jupiter declaring youth and Saturn declaring that your learning is defeat in every man as old as life and death, a becoming God met in stained glass relief, where ashram and asylum meet, father and son, the hope for all humanity.

The staid soul. There was no destination or creation, though it was created. The universe pulsed in all perimeters, but the soul was apart. There was no light in this soul, just a Nothing without its center.

A voice called out. “Child…” Was this God? and this soul hadn’t asked.

Leave, thought the soul.

“But there are dues.”

Yes, there are many lives wasted. Careless, empty lives in bodily form. Lives when and where death is everyone. Lives when life is everyone dead.  Lives we call life but the life act is always the slaying and never anything more.  Lives stretching in all directions, the arrogant collection for lives, many lives, other than One at eye, but the body as the greatest one, over which God as a whole is dead.

Now the moment arrived. Many lifetimes condensed. This soul in question did not wish for God’s intimacy or any. It wanted only the lingering emptiness. The float. Dissolution and severance. The voice repeated, again.

“There are dues.”

And the message repeated.

In burnt offerings and sin
Offerings thou hast taken
No pleasure.

Then I said, ‘Lo, I have
Come to do thy will, O
God.’

The soul looked out. From the encompassing height and breadth came a rather mystifying resonance. It was a body. It appealed. It was the body of those in the slaying. It was the bodies of all the soul had ever been. They merged at the head of a great entreaty.

“You cannot go back.” The soul entreated upon its Nothingness, the nothingness of these bodies where life never lived.

The Nothing is a void. Pitch, unending. Dictators, murderers and the like live in this first Nothing. They have only met vacancy. Without understanding the genius in two, one cannot create and give. Without undergoing this process such souls become a God unto themselves alone and destroy. If a soul does not actualize the soul—bringing this means into seed where it may grow in the void—making One from many and with a boundary at viewing where their limits may be overabundant—then that soul will remain unenlightened, stagnated.

In the body the ego would have to choose. It could descend into the nothing forever and remain unenlightened or it could work with the nothing. All great creators create from the nothing. It is the place the shaman penetrates before piecing together, it is the place where we discover our problems and make our solutions, the place where we discard and begin again.

This soul wanted the Nothing void—the place where it could dictate its course alone, not necessarily where it could dictate others. Even still, this dictation was a mean loss.  The soul, who was a soul, for it was the sum part in the entirety but could not translate this along its human course, could not refer to the other in any way; therefore its cosmic course remained at a standstill. This soul was infused with the wrath and control of a typical dictator, though it carried its weight in this void as a still frame, separate from We. This soul and those of the same type who lived in the void slaying life, were but dead collapsing pulsations, odd appearances sent to earth to even out a score, without knowing it the even in it all, and with their odd a means to illuminate and offer a difference.

“If you go back you shall not return again,” stated the giant.

“How goes that?”

“If you take on the earthly realm you shall complete what you have avoided.”

“There is the Nothing only…” the soul concluded.

“If there is the Nothing, why do you thus float about?”

The soul pondered the giant’s words. “Floating…you speak these words yet you are one that floats, giant. You float all alone at this great distance, sealed away.”

The giant smiled in his passive, yet sly way. “Here is a place for souls such as yourself. Those that float come onto me.”

Was this soul floating for such a long while? Surely this soul wasn’t floating, always staid and afar.  Far from jubilant Jupiter, far and aloft from anywhere, yet foresight calling with from a distance with companionable change.

“Never has this soul floated anywhere.”

“You’re here. Floating as far as this.”

“No.”

The soul grew terrified. It stayed away, it was never brought into the One. This was Hell. Where it would be brought finally into its mirrored demise at every stage, what it cost and couldn’t contend with, without any choice, now – for the kindness and solidarity, the we and all in the vast equation would not let him stay apart but would force him to stand together.

“This is where you are. Relinquish your soul here. The floating souls that you see are in such a state. They are here from all phases. But they come not knowing God. They have all reached the top and plummeted. They have all misused their lives and the lives of others. This place is not for sightseeing. Not for carousing and conquest. Here you will find only what you have been and what you are. “

Since the time you were born you were alone. This you knew instinctively. Life was before the womb and in that place you determined how it would be. No progress would be made if you followed the same lines of action and conquest. Those lines were worthy but they had served you as far as they could. In those lives you had never known the self in any intimate way. What you had known was identification: with money, other people, and particularly, with the law. The law was the highest truth and you followed it faithfully. This law was your own rigid internal system of right and wrong. Thus, you followed it stubbornly and never wavered. People were treated in the harshest manner with your law-abiding system. You were inflexible and grave in the law being carried out. Only this left no room for negotiation, clarity or camaraderie.

The task in this lifetime is to create a will that doesn’t impose upon others, but includes and validates them. The truth is never a law, but a matter of opinion, as people believe differently. Maintain your truths but remove the law that wishes that other people live and react a certain way.

The insecurity you have always felt is a result of power being misused. You feel powerless in order that you may find strength in your weaknesses, and not weakness in strength. The many obstacles you have faced, as well as the slow growth and isolation, are instruction along the path of wisdom.

If you were going to remove the false self and collapse from your intoxicated height, you would find out what insecurity and thus insight were. Consequently, the surest way to reach that goal was through mistreatment from your family.

You have been bound, stripped, and left parched and bleeding but as the wounds close you are given an epiphany—a hold onto your actions. The scars that are left behind are reminders of the work you have done.

You are directed by your own consciousness and soul identity towards this search, arduous and terrible though it be, so that you may know emotional and physical limitation.  This limitation is felt at a personal level through little self-esteem, many delays and much hardship.  You have had no choice but to feel the crushing weight of time; there could not be a speeding up. You are restricted in time because you altered the physical plane adversely before; meaning, you manipulated time as a curse or dictated the unpleasant removal of someone else’s time (experience).

Conversely, your soul has taken on this weight though you have been the victim many times before and/or because you could not properly attune with a lawful system and manage volatile emotional upsets in other lifetimes, therefore in this you must account for them. With time and growth, you will surely unpeel the layers of victimhood and direct a path of responsible and sensible confidence. If not, you will live in a purgatory of your own crystallized making.

By sitting and not fighting the ponderous time weight that disturbs your hopes and dreams, by studying, working on your projects and calmly and slowly proceeding, you can break your karma or you can earn good karma—you can build a life and not rush into an old one. By understanding that this restriction is an awakening, you can make amends and earn your grace. The one day, miraculously, what you’ve wanted all along will be yours.

“What of God?” this soul asked.

The giant pulsed in its amber weight. “Once you commit your soul here you shall know God in time.”

“So be it,” breathed the soul.

The day was mild and brimming with sunshine. The hour was the afternoon and the day was the longest in the year.

The head breached many places, recalling along its way little happiness through its many earthly incarnations and much strife with no channel then—indeed perhaps the gravest misery of all.

Along the way it gasped for air on its left side. Its ear smothered against a contracted wall. Its tight fist ballooned and let loose among the waste. The hours were the epiphany of the soul’s life. It was the struggle for God in time and the struggle for life in time. The hours raged in this unrelenting cesspool without release. Such dark haunts floated above this birth. Further Nothing fragments…further voids calling, cajoling.

“We are the Nothing,” they repeated in one horrifying voice, a void of life speaking for Life created somewhere with our discovery. Beckoning us, however sinister, to bring the Word of God into the Nothing and out as a collective We.

Now . . Thought the soul. It is given up. The conquest and wandering, of being in charge, nearly, of finding this or that but never within. This soul must reach steadiness.

“Remember, God in time.”

With this struggle the soul knew its disadvantages. There were many. And of these so-called disadvantages, you shall see, the advantages.

The first became a later glance in the mirror.

However much this soul tried as an adult, it could not remove a dark, fleshy mole near the left ear. To do so would cause a bloody avalanche. The mole opened just a bit on the top with prodding, but sank as molasses back into its seat. Sometimes, if picked, pieces would flake off and the mole would turn a pink color. The pink would gradually turn brown again.  The mole had its history. The history declared: Ye shall not tear from life nor obliterate in death.

So it was that the soul was born as a female, rather reluctantly, as only that sex could even the thread. The child thus born knew its life. It knew the outs and ins, the starts and stops; it knew it would be unloved from the first.

When the nurse came before the child with camera, the child looked on with steely, unwavering resolve. The child put up two fists. Tucked in white linen with circus animals surrounding the periphery, she was not defiant or self-defensive. The circus animals on this linen were symbolic of man’s preying nature and, the circus, childhood’s craziness. This child was determined to make amends and find God in time.

Saturn is the solitude of your undoing. This is a gift. I’m writing all the souls of these men. Hoping they find a sole, hoping they find an insert for their feet, a place to walk with crook and shepherd the course.

At Play: A Personal Odyssey in Chess

By

By  | 
Feature Image: Juan Gris; Chessboard, Glass, and Dish [public domain]
Print

“New possibilities appeared, but still no one could say which side had the advantage. Luzhin, preparing an attack for which it was first necessary to explore a maze of variations, where his every step aroused a perilous echo, began a long meditation: he needed, it seemed, to make one last prodigious effort and he would find the secret move leading to victory. Suddenly, something occurred outside his being, a scorching pain—and he let out a loud cry, shaking his hand stung by the flame of a match, which he had lit and forgotten to apply to his cigarette. The pain immediately passed, but in the fiery gap he had seen something unbearably awesome, the full horror of the abysmal depths of chess. He glanced at the chessboard, and his brain wilted from hitherto unprecedented weariness. But the chessmen were pitiless, they held and absorbed him. There was horror in this, but in this also was the sole harmony, for what else exists in the world besides chess? Fog, the unknown, non-being…”

Vladimir Nabakov, The Defense, 1930

Impulse

For a brief span in the 1970s, every American was a chess player. This, it is said, was the impact of one Robert James Fischer becoming the first world champion of the Cold War era who was not from the Soviet Union. But Dad had discovered the game earlier on. He was fond of his set; he had bought it long ago, in the mysterious before-time when he and Mom did not even know each other yet. I was permitted to play with them, but I understood there was something special about the carved pine- and ebony-wood toy soldiers in the box with the sliding top. Their usual field of battle was a solid, smooth plain of alternating squares, also made of wood and also to be handled with great care, as it already had enough small chips and scratches to suit its owner. These were special objects, not to be thrown or lost. For in those days adults played with toy soldiers, too.

Of course, whenever adults were in command there were rules, and many were quite strange. Towers and horses and little men were not allowed to charge boisterously at each other; dramatic arguments over who was the stronger or the rightful owner of a square never arose. No, these were wars of long silences punctuated by the sudden sound of two pieces of wood clicking together or the slide of felt across varnish and a warning not to take one’s hand away “unless you’re sure.” Equally odd was the near certainty of there being more warriors milling about on the sidelines than in the fight as it progressed. I came to have a special affinity with these unfortunate spectators, mute and unable to intervene, waiting and waiting. I knew how they felt, except that bedtime never came for them before the all-important question of who won had been answered.

Such are the shadows then: a lingering scent of gravy, powdered cocoa with delightful huge marshmallows, the tones and rhythms of Miles Davis and a Bird named Parker, the hum and banter of people enjoying company. And Dad was there, resting folded arms on the table and holding his head slightly to the side as he stared into abysmal depths across from whomever dared join him. As much as I loved my relatives, I could only sit and sip and fidget until he nodded, looked up, and smiled. “Gotcha,” he would announce before turning to me with a wink. And for one more day all would be right with the world.

1 b4!? e5
I have the Black pieces. My opponent is the Chess Titans program which came with the accessories package on this laptop along with Minesweeper and Spider Solitaire. I have it set on Level 5 or 6—high enough at the moment for my delusions of grandeur. The “Titan” routinely hands me my butt when I refuse to heed the little voice in my head that sounds like Dad, the one telling me to think and not to merely react. Reacting is all one does when foolishly trying to match the speed of a computer; racing a cheetah makes as much sense.
I cannot assume the Titan is just throwing out novice mistakes. Sure enough, this crazy sequence has a name: the Sokolsky Opening. Yes, I had to look that up.
2 Bb2 f6
I’m not familiar with this opening, so I take the orthodox route of shoring up the defenses in the center. But 2 …Bxb4, 3 Bxe5 Nf6 was also possible, and would have been more suited to my preferred style, which is the security of briefs over the open-ended chaos of boxers. I always feel better after building a proper castle for the king.
3b5b6 4e3Bb7 5d4e4(?)
Likely too early for a counter-attack, but committing to the defense of the e5 square now with 5 …d6 may lead to 6 dxe5, with 6 …fxe5 and an exposed king-side or 6 …dxe5, 7 Qxd8+ Kxd8 and a permanently exposed king. Plus, early queen trades bother me.
6 Qh5+ g6 7 Qh3 d5 8 c4 Ne7 9 cxd5 Bxd5 10 Nc3 Bb7
So much for orthodoxy.

“Chess,” so runs the famous proverb (which has questionable evidence of existence prior to the 20th century), “is like a sea in which a gnat may drink and an elephant may bathe.” It is for this reason the most interesting games will always be between more or less evenly matched opponents. Of course, one seeking to improve his or her play accepts the challenge of tougher resistance, but at the point where one player is so clearly the superior the interaction is more properly called a lesson than a game. As an exercise of skill between equals, chess can be a vital and emotional contest, and one in which the agony of a defeat cannot be cushioned with invective hurled at luck as when cards or dice are involved. One wins because one overcomes the will of the other, and this often requires immersion in total effort, a “point-like unity” of problem and solver.1EPO, p. 48 A scene from the 1993 film, Searching for Bobby Fischer, with Ben Kingsley and Max Pomeranc putting in touching respective performances as teacher Bruce Pandolfini and prodigy Josh Waitzkin, shows the idea with brilliant concision. Bruce bids Josh remember to annihilate distance: “This is you!” he states firmly, emphatically slamming the White king down on the board in front of his student for whom chessmen will soon cease to be “just pieces” and chess “just a game.”

Imagination

I caught on to the strange rules of the adults soon enough. In the last great age, it seems, before the personal computer and cable television there were many games: Monopoly and Scrabble, Stratego and Parcheesi (for us suburban butchers of Hindi), and the entertaining light-and-sound show of Electronic Battleship. But chess ruined me. Nothing grabbed my imagination like doubled lines of tense, battle- hardened figurines eager to radiate energy in straight and diagonal lines—or that weird L jump of the horse which I practiced on the kitchen tiles over and over, trying to cross the room only in steps of ‘two- up, one-over.’ Chess was the great puzzle that, unlike my snap-together cardboard geography lessons or Lego models, never had the same solution twice. Its possibilities and combinations were an endless source of fascination and frustration alike. The fascination came from just how much there was to consider even in supposedly simple positions as I pored over the creations of the masters, pretending to understand half of them. The frustration was because no matter how hard I tried I could not beat my father.

I played too fast; I played too slowly with too much second-guessing; I was hyper-aggressive and careless; I was defensive and over-cautious—nothing worked. First, my ponderous fortresses would crumble, leaving my king prey to all the converging fire of the enemy. Then, I would engineer a breakthrough but, astonished at my own success, stumble over some distraction and see my attack fall apart. Most often, I just did not see it coming. I do not remember—and certainly would have enshrined the time and date on a homemade plaque if otherwise—winning one game with the old man. But my little brother, from time to time, did. It was indeed galling to watch his face light up and his voice assume the mock solemnity of his best Spock impression. (“Wise,” he once announced as he snatched Dad’s queen, “but not wise enough.”) It wasn’t fair. The beauty of Anderssen’s Immortal Game was lost on him. In fact, if he ever learned that the Sicilian Defense had nothing to do with thick-crust pizza, or even knew Capablanca from Mr. Clean I could not tell. Yet here he was, occasionally springing some trap or just finding a way to do what study and dedication obviously could not.

As the years rolled onward, it became increasingly pointless for me to play my brother as I began to see weak spots in every one of his positions or to create them at will and mercilessly exploit them. But he could always say he’d beaten Dad a few times. For a long time, I could not understand how.

11 g4
The voice of my Dad is back. I need to look at chaos as a broadening experience and not just a threatening one.
11 …Bg7 12 f3 exf3 13 Nxf3 Nd7?
But chaos does not mean the absence of careful thought! It was high time to get my king out of the center. Now I lose unless…
14 Be2?
That is called dodging a bullet, plain and simple. The Titan also missed 14 Bc4! which would have allowed White to castle (either side in fact) while keeping me from doing the same. My next moves are quick no-brainers.
14 …O-O 15 O-O Kh8
I can breathe now. My position is suddenly a springboard from which I can try to pounce on the loosely placed opposing pieces.
16 g5 f5 17 Rfd1 Rc8 18 Ne5 Nxe5 19 dxe5 Qe8 20 Qg3 Rd8 21 Bc4 c6
Among other things, a White pawn advance to e6 would be a pain in the neck for me. But 22 bxc6 Qxc6 would be a pain in his. Both of us have to watch those long diagonals.
22 Rab1 Nd5 23 a4 f4
I can use open lines, too! His advanced pawn will be isolated and harder to defend. More importantly, I am beginning to activate my springboard.
24 exf4 Nxf4 25 Rxd8 Qxd8 26 bxc6 Bxc6 27 Nb5 Qd2
Going for broke…

The essence of strategy is the art of achieving a goal in the face of opposition to that achievement. Because of this, strategic situations represent great examples of “self-completing polarity.”2EPO, p. 210 Chess is not possible without a coming together of opposites. Before we get to the legends, the politics, and the quirky personalities of professional play—and there are many—we are confronted with a narrative of interlocking correspondence: light and dark, attack and defense, move and counter. Elemental forces collide but do not disappear in a blinding flash of matter and antimatter, rather they twirl around forever, distinct yet incomplete in themselves. Chess is two wills locked not only in combat but also in cooperation. Players must together create the conditions allowing one to emerge triumphant—or not. Is this not akin to tragedy—to King Lear or Oedipus fulfilling his sad destiny as he seeks to escape it? Yet though the king may fall, he may never be consigned to the fog of non-being outside the margins of the battlefield. This is important as a point of etiquette as well as symbol. Though games have endings, The Game does not.

Calculation

I stand by my heroes, perhaps no more loyally than when they fall. Hero-worship is probably how I got through the initial shock waves of the divorce; only later did the realization come that the truly remarkable thing about my parents was how long they stayed together, not their parting. The strange rules and games of the adults having become mine at last, I found ways to pick up pieces and move on. Analysis creates pieces, smaller doses of reality that, for a little while, can be used to lessen the otherwise overwhelming impact of the whole. Putting the pieces back together is a daunting but intrinsically creative process. One is never able to reconstruct past configurations totally. This, of course, is the essence of what we humans call change.

Eras end. The space is different, the room is smaller, but familiar tones and rhythms flood its air, and the same battered but proud armies face each other again on the same weathered quadrilateral of wood and memories. We chat away like work colleagues now, Dad and I, exchanging our usual sarcasm-laced commentary on politics, the deceptive simplicity of relationships, and what passes for music these days. Played on our level, chess is certainly not about the myriad combinations or sheer history an expert brings to the board but it is still about avoiding that last mistake. At this moment, I am desperately trying to do just that, making each move with the extreme conviction that it will keep me alive for one more. The slow dance continues as Herbie Hancock uses his own white and black to throw melodies into our ears. Then, it happens. My running king reaches a safe square. I exhale slowly. Dad squints, unable to keep the admission of having missed one off his face. Now he has to exchange the last major pieces, and my pawn will reach his back rank two steps before his reaches mine. He nods, looks up, and smiles, playfully flipping me the bird. “You win,” he says. And he winks as he answers my unspoken question, confirming what I had only recently begun to suspect: “Your brother and I always had fun; you and I always played chess.”

That was the passing of the torch. Of course I remember it well and anyone who has ever looked up to another knows of the sweet bitterness lodged in such a moment. Longed for so obsessively, “the” day had finally arrived, and with it a sobering sense of loss far outweighing any thrill of victory.

Sunday, May 11, 1997: Deep Blue plays 19 c4, Kasparov resigns…

Eras end. The great battle between the human brain and artificial intelligence was fought and finally decided, it is said, in favor of the latter. Nature lost, but life continues and I really should get over it; after all, as I write these lines it has been twenty years.

Yet what is the truth behind the fact? Was this really a struggle of “man versus machine” or something obscured, as usual, by the sensationalism of media hyperbole? Deep Blue was built—and later dismantled—by humans, a tribute at least as much to our mental powers as to “its” own. Likewise the grandmasters of our time achieve their status partly through access to sophisticated electronic databases which exponentially extend the reach of their preparations. Kasparov, still my personal pick for all-time chess badass, had faced problem-solving intelligence all his life, including that simulated by powerful computers. Suddenly, the simulation could calculate whole games in microseconds, crunching out ways to sidestep deep traps and to evaluate long-term positions rather than immediate material advantages, potentially on a regular basis. So what? It could still only express that awesome power one move at a time—one legal, readable position per turn.

I remain of the opinion that my hero was not beaten except by the psychological disadvantage of having a psyche. I am not qualified to judge the merits of 37 Be4 in Game Two. I can barely follow the analysis which “proves” that game should have ended with a draw—or others which “prove” Kasparov was indeed right to resign a lost position. The real question remains unanswered—and the world will never know the answer as Kasparov was denied his very human instinct for timely revenge and no one else got the chance. Binary code has enabled our machines to out-calculate us; extending and multiplying our abilities is what we design all our tools to do. But can our machines truly out-play us—or is it necessary for us to help them do so?

28 Bc3 Qc2 29 Ra1 Bd5 30 Bf1
White needs his bishop to keep my knight from the wicked fork check on e2.
30 …Be4?
Dad is speaking again: you are never as vulnerable as when you think you are invincible. There is always a way to drop the ball! Putting the bishop here takes away the only refuge for the queen if trouble comes in the form of 31 Nd4!. I grit my teeth. Chess is about inconveniently turned tables, all right. Yes, says my internal mentor, and also about remaining calm. Now… find the escape: 31 …Nh5, 32 Qe1 (the pawn-doubling queen trade 32 Nxc2 Nxg3, 33 hxg3 Bxc2 is not best for White) Rxf1+, 33 Qxf1 (not 33 Kxf1 Qg2#) Qxc3. Not dead yet. Good boy.
31 Nxa7??
Stronger computer programs—possibly even higher settings of the Titan—will no longer grab material free at first glance only. This pawn-hunt removes the knight from the defense and dramatically reduces my problems.
31 …Bd3 32 Bxd3 Qxc3 33 Rd1 Bxe5
“Remember me?”
34 Qe3?
The final blunder. White breaks one pin to set up one much more devastating. The aria begins.
34 …Bd4!, 35 Kh1 Bxe3, 36 Be4 Qb3, 37 Ra1 Bd4, 38 Rc1 Qe3
Computers do not resign, but it’s over: if 39 Re1, Qxe1#, with 39 …Qxe4# on any other rook move. Saving the bishop does not work either: 39 Bg2, Qxc1+; 40 Bf1 Qxf1#. I win.
This time.

Integration

My elder son thrives in the motion and decision of physical action; he was throwing a football in a spiral of accuracy and grace far surpassing mine in very little time. He is fully capable of processing large amounts of information, but there must be readily discernable purpose to keep his interest. He has little patience for the delicate intricacies of endless ramifications. I say this because the temptation to emotionally favor my complexity-seeking younger son is greater than I am comfortable admitting and obviously to be resisted at all costs. Siblings come from the same place but rarely the same mold; it is important that as I love one because he is me I love the other because he is not. I simply acknowledge without judgment that so far as chess is concerned the younger may be the one to carry forward and shape the emergent family tradition. And, as he too has a mind of his own, that tradition will have to wait for the attractions of Nickelodeon and War Robots to fade a bit.

The seed has been planted, though. My set, purchased in the mysterious time before I met his Mom, is generic hard plastic and not nearly the equal of the work of art which inspired me in former days. Yet it has been out often enough, pored over long enough, and explained with the unconcealed enthusiasm of one who wishes to pass a torch one day. My son cannot yet comprehend the true depth of joy compressed into my grin when he sets his miniature teams to charging boisterously at each other, nor the great waves stirring my soul when he traces lines and counts squares, holding his head slightly to one side as he considers his arrangement. “Now the king is trapped,” he says…

I can well imagine the author of The Ever-Present Origin sauntering over to some battered table outside of some Swiss café on some pleasant late summer day, smiling softly and knowingly as he finds secret moves leading to victory after long meditations. Gebser devotes exactly a fraction of a footnote to the subject of chess in Part One of his magnum opus.3EPO, p. 31 I do not know if he played. He may very well have turned to other pursuits with what leisure he had at his disposal. His name does not appear among the greater and lesser deities of the game, those tournament and match players whose decisions and painful mistakes are emblazoned for all time in the books, but that is no matter. His was another mission, to illuminate the connectedness of spirit, emotion, imagination, and analysis in how we humans operate, and to explain why we should not feel the need to ignore any approach to understanding ourselves and others. Chess is mental activity par excellence but few of its practitioners, from the greatest to profound mediocrities like me, would claim it to be exclusively so. For it is clear that a rich, multifaceted experience lies not far under the surface, reaching across generations and cultures alongside sports, music, and other arts to remind us to be fearless in our creativity, to make connections and to value them, and to always leave ourselves time and space, amidst the troubles of our planet, in which to celebrate our common humanity.

All noted references are from The Ever-Present Origin by Jean Gebser (Ohio University Press edition, translated by Noel Barstad and Algis Mickunas, 1985).

References   [ + ]

1. ↑ EPO, p. 48
2. ↑ EPO, p. 210
3. ↑ EPO, p. 31

The Long Curve of Descent

By

By  | 
Feature Image: Brian George, Archetypal Figure with Bow and Lightning Arrow, 2004 (detail)
Print

Brian George, Hawk Mummy Floating on the Ocean, 1992

One morning, when I was four years old, I was sitting on the third-floor back porch of my family’s three-decker. It was 1958, and Worcester, Massachusetts, was still regarded as the industrial heart of New England. Looking out, I could see smoke puffing from tall smokestacks, a freight-yard and a railroad bridge, hills with houses perched on them that rolled into the distance, and, a few miles off, on one of the highest hills, the gothic architecture of Holy Cross College. How wonderful the day was! I could not have asked for a more perfect moment. My grandmother had given me a large chunk of clay. And then, I was no longer looking out over Worcester; no, I was hovering above the Amazon, making snakes, canoes, and villagers out of the substance in my hands.

As I worked, however, I became frustrated. It occurred to me that I had succumbed to a creative block. I grew angry. I could not believe what I was seeing. My hands were small. My mind just barely worked. My imagination seemed like a blunt instrument. As absurd as it sounds, I remembered what it was like to create real snakes and villagers.

Since that morning, I have explored a variety of methods to get from the place where my feet are planted to the larger space that surrounds me, which is not, of course, mine in any personal sense. The path has been a labyrinthine one. My raids on the inexpressible have imposed many contradictory demands. Scholarship and meditation have opened onto vision, onto a mode of knowledge as intimate as it is vast. An ocean, of a sort, boiled, and I could feel the enormous pressure on my skin. Convulsing on the current, I was thrown here and there. Over time, the heat of vision has given way to a much cooler sense of transparency. But always, there are gaps, which demand that I let go of any sense of certainty, which also ask that the reader play a more active role. When a leap of association has been left hanging in mid-air, the reader should use his or her intuition to complete it, thus creating a connection that could not otherwise have existed.

Without gaps being left, and without the active participation they require of all involved, visionary writing may serve as no more than a travelogue. This approach has led some to accuse me of obscurity. Obscure my work may be, but it is not accidentally so, and I would be happy to be able to move more directly towards my goals.

In a critique of my essay “Memories of Mr. Trippi: The Trauma of an Urban Shaman,” Dave Hanson wrote:

So as you step in and out of the implicate order I can only suggest looking at your intention, honing your control, looking for opportunities to heal others, and seriously questioning everything you experience on the journey. I would like your writing more if it was more simple and direct, but that is me. I don’t know that just because something comes to us from ‘the spirits’ it is any more meaningful than the sound of the toilet flushing. I’m surrounded by people who ‘see things.’ I don’t understand the underlying meanings of most of it, so I plant more vegetables.

My dog died. I miss him. I can feel his body under my hand. My wife is working too hard and worries too much. I have a broken ankle and hate crutches. I can’t do what I love to do and when I’m back on my feet I’ll waste precious time. A Native American spirit showed me a painting I am supposed to do, over twenty years ago, and I haven’t done it…Can your visions help heal another? That’s all there is.1In August of 2009, I posted an essay in Reality Sandwich called “Memories of Mr. Trippi: The Trauma of an Urban Shaman.” “The Long Curve of Descent” grew out of an exchange with writer and shamanic teacher Dave Hanson. I have kept Dave’s comments exactly as they appeared. My response, however, has been expanded and revised a number of times, most recently in April of 2017. It might seem absurd to waste time and energy on something as insubstantial as an online forum. I take dialogue seriously, however. I like to be surprised. What sense does it make to prejudge the source of this surprise? I find that offhand comments—whether from forums or ongoing correspondence—can serve as creative prompts, which nudge me to see things from unexpected angles, to give form to my intuitions, and to say things that I might not otherwise say.

I responded: As regards “healing”: my small role as a healer has to do with the reclamation of collective memory. In my explorations, bits and pieces of lost history become clear, “as if lit for the first time by a brilliant star,” as de Chirico would say. For whatever it is worth, I then attempt to tell others what I see. For me, healing has to do with the discovery of our wholeness, which exists, to some extent, beyond us. This challenge is like the real gesture that we make with our prosthetic hand. There is water in a cup. It waits for centuries for us to drink it. Yet, though broken, we have never ceased to be whole.

Upon birth, having exited from the All beneath the stern gaze of Necessity, we are only allowed to bring a few meaningless details with us. One by one, the pages vanish from the book, as, earlier, our footprints had vanished from the ocean. Only mist marks the biodomes of the cities that we left. A buoy clangs, in the distance, somewhere. We have forgotten more than even the omnipotent are aware of, far more than they know themselves. Trauma locks the doors to the dark theatre of the body. We Are What We Eat: the bread of dreams, the sewage of the dead. The rest is junk DNA—or so our controllers would prefer us to believe. A strange presence guards the other half of each symbol.

I would speak truth to the powers that oppress us, who are not in any way the monsters that we think. As we breathe out, they breathe in, and vice versa. It is our pose of wide-eyed innocence that has tempted them to act badly. Our stealth has been impeccable; it has, perhaps, been TOO impeccable, by a factor of 10,000. We have shown few tells.

“Who are we? Where do we come from? What are we here for? Where are we going?” These are the questions that the writer and the artist have been hoodwinked by society into asking. Such questions are stupid. We should know better. It is possible that they constitute a crime against the Soul. In the stomach of each reader, I would plant and tend the acorn of Omphalos, the one intersection, in order to make the asking of such questions obsolete.

Brian George, Archetypal Figure with Bow and Lightning Arrow, 2004

You correctly place a great emphasis on healing, but please do not underestimate the energies that one can transmit at a distance, or the shock of synchronistic knowledge, whose spark jumps from the writer’s hand. “You have just woven together about ten important things that I was thinking about today,” wrote one reader. “There is a project that I’ve been putting off starting for a year, and now you have pushed me to do it.” One well-placed action can reconstitute the Web. True, cyberspace is not hyperspace, but perhaps it can function as a crude approximation. And it is always possible that the one is—very sneakily—preparing us for the other.

You have asked, “Can your visions heal another?” I tend to view myself more as a catalyst than a healer—a role that has a higher percentage of the energy of the Trickster—but the two roles are related. The term “shaman” is used somewhat ironically in the essay. I would make no claim to be one, any more than I would speak casually about world transformation, as so many do. There are more than enough snake-oil salesmen. Preferring to learn from real snakes, I would reverse engineer the most dangerous of toxins. What the snakes do not know, the birds may be willing to volunteer, so long as one is open to the removal of one’s head. From long before Gobekli Tepe had been built, such birds have been looking for new spheres with which to juggle. They may or may not choose to return some version of the plaything to its owner. Neither snakes nor birds see safety as important. As goes the head, so goes the year from which it comes.

Jasun Horsley once pointed out that whenever I would go to write “2012” it would always come out “2112”—a kind of metaphysical Freudian slip. One antediluvian date is probably just as good as another. Can one individual be healthy if the world died long ago? As I probe my wounds, I am hesitant to give others the peace of mind that I do not allow to myself. Shock at one’s corpse-like decrepitude can be viewed as a big plus. “Vision” and “healing” may not always coincide.

Since the end of the Paleolithic Era, it is possible that we have been riding a long curve of descent, in which all things once transparent have become more and more opaque. We do not remember what our hands are for. Our speech is inert. Our intelligence cannot exit from the top part of the skull, a door whose key has been broken off in its keyhole, an aperture that lacks oil. Once, our story had been written on the leaves of a great tree. The leaves have been torn off. The glyphs on them are illegible, and the tree is now a stump. Preprogrammed from beyond the clockwork of the stars, the decline that we have experienced does not appear as such; no, some trick of perspective causes us to hallucinate an ascent.

Brian George, The Conjuration, 2002

Archetypes break like toys, left over from a childhood that never did exist. We discard them. We ask, “Why is it so difficult for us to see into the cosmos?” We speak loudly. We do not hear the response. The cultures that we dismembered have been sucked into a cloud. Their outcries circle, and then fall like rain. The last civic structures are consumed by a decentralized plutocracy. “Who put you in charge?” we demand. “Do you have any vision at all?” The answers we get do not correspond to the questions that we ask, or rather, they do not correspond to the answers that we want. “May you live in interesting times,” goes the Chinese curse. We do, for better or for worse, live in “interesting times,” in which we must reconfigure all traditionally fixed roles. At the age of 62, I am just beginning to figure out what my public role might be.

A role is a social construct, with a set of rules attached; society can make no rules that the Self is obligated to obey. Why should space concern itself with the shoe size of its mouthpiece? To point people towards what they know but have chosen to forget may be no more than an exercise in futility. Some types of exercise are almost certainly good; others, not so much. Still, I find myself at a perpetual beginning as I test the strength of my lineage, tongue-tied, a bit nervous, as naked as a child who has just stepped from the womb. And here I had pretended to have the answers to each question! “Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself,” as Whitman said.

For such is the prerogative of the preexistent Voice, and of its vehicle: WE.

All periods cohere in the one moment of my Memory. With a shock, one notes that the old becomes new. By the power of my austerities I have vacuumed up all of the water from the ocean. Cities shine there. I am Death—the Shatterer of Worlds. My weapon liberates multitudes.

References   [ + ]

1. ↑ In August of 2009, I posted an essay in Reality Sandwich called “Memories of Mr. Trippi: The Trauma of an Urban Shaman.” “The Long Curve of Descent” grew out of an exchange with writer and shamanic teacher Dave Hanson. I have kept Dave’s comments exactly as they appeared. My response, however, has been expanded and revised a number of times, most recently in April of 2017. It might seem absurd to waste time and energy on something as insubstantial as an online forum. I take dialogue seriously, however. I like to be surprised. What sense does it make to prejudge the source of this surprise? I find that offhand comments—whether from forums or ongoing correspondence—can serve as creative prompts, which nudge me to see things from unexpected angles, to give form to my intuitions, and to say things that I might not otherwise say.

Poems of Degeneration

By

By  | 
Feature Image: Emma Tooth, Breaking Art XIX, 2015
Print
Fans of John David Ebert are likely familiar with his books and YouTube videos—a treasure trove of philosophy and cultural criticism. It’s less well known that he also writes poetry, which is partly why we’re so pleased to debut a sampling from his new book, These Things We No Longer Are. The book’s poetic cycle is divided into two halves, “Poems of Genesis” and “Poems of Degeneration.” We present selections from each in corresponding installments.

Descent of the Angel

Rilke knew it:
Angels are not benign at all
they are huge and monstrous
giants from behind the stars
with bat-wings
and heads shaped like a panther’s

And if you were to be so misfortunate
as to encounter one of them
the radiance alone would sear you blacker
than a Hiroshima shadow
which deed they have never forgiven us

For stealing a power
that was theirs exclusively
and not for the hands of some tiny homunculus
crawling upon a blue and white mote
circling the ruins of an ancient star
and trailing a dead moon behind it.

Peter

At first the teeth went
chipping away one by one;
then muscles, cartilage, nerves
became visible
as the skin wore away
like an anatomic model;
even your cells did not survive
this devastation
burning away in telephase;
yet the body remained.

Only now it was different

somehow;

Transformed:
with elongated arms
and thin spidery legs
and a pink, eyeless face;
you even had a second pair of arms
that grew from your back like strange membranous wings.

At first you did not know what to do
but in time you realized
how to use this new body
for the second arms had claws
and could rend and cut
while the atrophied arms, the ape arms
hung down limp and useless.

And you knew then
that this second body
was not your own
but engineered for chaos
by the Makers
who left you to die
in a heap of debris:
a mountain of yellow bones and scattered
chunks of disused brown and gray organs
along with other biohazards.

Then
then it came to you
the realization
slowly, at first
but then dawning
that it was time
to find your makers

and kill them.

Dead Men

There they lay on the hill in the rain:
round barrow shaped dirt hills full of dead men.
The earth was so soft that when you stepped in it
you thought your foot might sink into one of the skulls
or gently cave in the ribcage of some dead man with all his memories still drifting like a fog through his head.
As the gray rain continued to pour down on the dead men
surrounded by a eld of pine trees
you looked at the sign somebody had painted that said, “Dead Men”
and you wondered who they were and what might have killed them.
And then suddenly the thought came to you, very quickly: you didn’t belong there
these were dead men and they didn’t like to be disturbed
and before one of them could begin to stir and awaken like the dead of the apocalypse
pushing his mound of dirt about as he writhed his way up through it
you decided, very quickly, that it was time to get back in your car and go.

Five Skulls

Five human skulls
Arranged in the red dirt
At the top of a hill
Baking in the sun
Where a man
Wearing a dusty black burnous
Taps on each one of them in turn
With a long wooden stick

After a time he grows weary
And returns to his little house
Made of woven palm fronds
With a floor of crushed seashells
And sits listening to the wind
while drinking a cup of tea

The Angel of Death

Cracked earth; dry and white
Broken like pieces of clay glass
Which no one will ever set foot upon again

The ocean has withered to small shrunken pools
Creeping through valleys
Where the sea bottom is now a sandy desert
Strewn with weeds
And the rusted shells of long deserted ships
Cast aside like so many relics
Which nobody will ever think of again.

The buildings, too, are empty and haunted
With weeds and moss creeping upon their walls
Cracked shells like the ruins of radioactive Pripyat
Where no one will ever set foot again.

It is the angel once more
the angel of death with his huge leathery wings
And his mottled shrunken skin like a mummy’s
And two small caves where eyes should have been
With his long staff ending in a scythe with broken
Chips of missing teeth

Civilization is his hunting ground
And he settles upon the carcass of an abandoned automobile

Sitting upon his haunches
Staff thrown over one shoulder
Waiting.

Reading Albert Murray in the Age of Trump

By

By  | 
Feature Image: Romare Bearden, Jammin' at the Savoy
Print

Editor’s Note: This essay was originally published in The New Republic. It is reprinted here with permission.

In his near-century of life, Murray confronted race by re-constructing American identity as omni-American—that out of many, we are one.

In Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison’s protagonist asks: “Could politics ever be an expression of love?” Our current climate of division, fear, anger, recrimination, and even resignation clearly points to an answer in the negative. However, the writings and ideas of Ellison, and his close friend of fifty years, Albert Murray, should caution citizens of the United States to keep in view how and why we’ve come so far, and to hold on to the vision of possibility within our democratic principles.

As members of the Greatest Generation, Murray and Ellison lived through the Great Depression under Jim Crow, the global threat of fascism during World War II, and the revolutionary 1960s, when Martin Luther King Jr.’s ethic of Christian love and tactic of non-violent resistance moved the nation closer to a democratic ideal. The Civil Rights Movement itself is proof that politics can be an expression of love as well as struggle. Where do we go from here: chaos or community?

The writing of Ellison and Murray both contain the vision and value to not only cope with our current predicament, but to confront the blue devils of chaos and entropy with skill, resistance, and resilience, as witnessed in the Library of America’s Albert Murray: Collected Essays and Memoirs, a definitive collection of Murray’s nonfiction from 1964 to 2004, edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Paul Devlin. Murray transformed what Stanley Crouch aptly called the “decoy of race” into cultural idiom via a three-step process; his blues and jazz paradigm of humanity faced the harsh reality of life heroically, embracing inclusion and celebrating difference, affirming life itself along the way.

ALBERT MURRAY: COLLECTED ESSAYS &amp; MEMOIRS, Edited by Paul Devlin and Henry Louis Gates, Jr.Library of America, 1049 pp, $45

ALBERT MURRAY: COLLECTED ESSAYS & MEMOIRS, Edited by Paul Devlin and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Library of America, 1049 pp, $45

Albert Murray, born in Alabama on May 12, 1916, was a special, even quintessential American writer for the twentieth century: Local and global, black and Western, he was a modernist who respected the myths and rituals of early humans as much as he loved the stream-of-consciousness technique of James Joyce and William Faulkner. Murray didn’t confine himself to ideological boundaries—it’s little use boxing him into liberal or conservative camps, into one academic field or another. As a pragmatic American pluralist of the blues, his vision extended to the implications of quantum physics and Einstein’s four dimensions. Murray, like Ellison, championed the humanities, especially literature and music, over the structural determinist regime of sociology, which he felt stratified people into rigid ethnic and racial categories.

The political and the aesthetic intersect in Murray’s worldview, though he scrupulously avoided partisan political propaganda and the “politics of unexamined slogans.” Murray staunchly supported the Civil Rights Movement as the culmination of a century-long post-emancipation battle for black rights beyond the chains of ethnicity or race. He valued activism and protest as tactical measures, but doubted the long-term political value of what he called “the politics of moral outcry” to induce guilt and fear in whites.

The current backlash against identity politics presents an opportunity for progressives and post-modernists to reboot their strategy and rhetoric. “Producing guilt may or may not be fine,” Murray suggests in the introduction of his first collection of essays, The Omni-Americans (1970), “but stimulating intelligent action is better. And intelligent action always needs to have its way paved by a practical estimate of the situation.”

Murray was also a theorist of “elastic” human individuality: He renounced biological race and the racial worldview and instead emphasized culture as a more viable basis for understanding and interaction. American identity combines roots from Europe, Africa, and, of course, Native Americans, all mixed together with modifications according to region, economics, social power, cultural influence. The last people on earth who should adhere to ideas of biological, ethnic, or racial purity are Americans. (The increasing use of DNA tests—popularized in part by Gates’ PBS series Finding Your Roots and powerful short videos available on YouTube—demonstrates just how mixed, and mixed up, we really are.) “We can no longer afford to traffic in simple-minded and culturally inaccurate terms like ‘black’ and ‘white’ if they are meant to tell us anything more than loose descriptions of skin tone,” wrote Stanley Crouch in 1994 in the closing essay of The All-American Skin Game, or, The Decoy of Race. “We are the results of every human possibility that has touched us, no matter its point of origin.”

Murray’s blues idiom worldview, which he described as a secular form of existential improvisation, is summed up by his phrase “elegant resilience,” a synonym for “swinging” in jazz and “flow” in hip hop. “A definitive characteristic of the descendants of American slaves is an orientation to elegance,” he writes in From the Briarpatch File,

…the disposition (in the face of all of the misery and uncertainty in the universe) to refine all of human action in a direction of dance-beat elegance. I submit that there is nothing that anybody in the world has ever done that is more civilized or sophisticated than to dance elegantly, which is to state with your total physical being an affirmative attitude toward the sheer fact of existence.

Philosophers Kwame Anthony Appiah and Danielle Allen have described a worldview they call “rooted cosmopolitanism,” which I think describes Murray and the blues idiom to a tee. Rooted cosmopolitanism counters the insular nationalism exemplified by the conservative Prime Minister Theresa May, who recently said: “If you believe you’re a citizen of the world, you’re a citizen of nowhere.” Murray, unequivocal about his local Southern roots and nationality as a black American, believed that Americans are heir to the best of culture from all times and places—a global, cosmopolitan conception. Likewise, the blues is a vernacular music rooted in the black South of the United States that’s connected to Western church music harmonically as well as to music globally. The blues idiom is America at her best because it synthesizes “everything in the world as a matter of course, and feed[s] it back to the world at large as a matter of course.”

Albert Murray

“Elegance in style and thought,” a classic photo of Albert Murray

In Murray’s first published work of non-fiction, “‘The Problem’ is Not Just Black and White,” which appeared in Life magazine in 1964, was a swashbuckling dissection of seven books on the Civil Rights Movement. Murray had retired as an Air Force major two years before and he was game to wade in heated waters of public discourse, so his friend Ellison, by this time an icon of American letters, hooked him up for his debut.

Murray came out the gate slicing and dicing white liberals and black radicals alike, as well as giving affirmative nods where they were due. Injustice has many levels and Murray focused on the ideas and images that undergird it: Redneck racists, grounded in regional and racial tribalism, were all-too-obvious for Murray; it was the liberal condescension underpinning an attitude of white superiority that was more stealthy and treacherous.

Nowhere do the smug assumptions which underlie the ideas of white supremacy work more insidiously than among the so-called American liberals, the self-styled “friends of the Negro.” Their methods are rooted in the jargon of social science, their judgments based on tricky statistics, their proposed solutions basically materialistic—and seldom if ever do they stop to consider Negroes as people. Instead, these authors’ good intentions become so enmeshed in misinformation and guesswork that their books wind up preaching the same false generalities as white supremacists. The only difference is that their attitude is condescending rather than malevolent.

In the review, Murray isn’t afraid to name names: jazz critic Nat Hentoff, Charles Silberman, author of 1964’s Crisis in Black and White, and immigration historian Oscar Handlin, among others, get the boot. Murray shakes his head at the Washington bureau chief of JET, Simeon Booker, for his report on the so-called new black militancy: “Booker, like most other reporters, Baldwinizes too much about the Negro’s new liberation from fear of the white man,” he writes. “But he has his facts backward: What the Negro has always been concerned about is the white man’s sometime hysterical fear of him, a fear that expresses itself all too often in terms of lynch mobs, police brutality, racist juries, unconstitutional state laws, and fanatical defiance of federal authority.”

In The Omni-Americans, Murray demonstrated how and why black American culture is central to the American mainstream, despite social, economic, and political obstacles. Twenty four years later, Murray would thrash Andrew Hacker’s thesis in the New York Times bestseller Two Nations: Black and White, Separate, Hostile, Unequal (1992) by listing major U.S. cities with black mayoral leadership, and referencing the multi-million dollar salaries of black athletes accepted by fans of all backgrounds in various sports, as counter-examples. “Two nations? Only two?” Murray asks with incredulity. “What about the Asians, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Cubans, and other not very white U.S. citizens from Latin America and elsewhere? One thing that does not seem to have changed very much during the last twenty five years is the pessimism of white academic experts on black prospects.”

The Library of America volumes also include Murray’s unpublished work, such as his fascinating 1966 essay on Black-Jewish relations titled “U.S. Negroes and U.S. Jews: No Cause for Alarm”—which, as Gates and Devlin explain, was commissioned and then rejected by the New York Times Magazine. The editors instead published James Baldwin’s “Negroes are Anti-Semitic Because They’re Anti-White” a year later, presumably because of Baldwin’s greater fame and visibility, and the likelihood his incendiary title would draw more attention.

The Times editors could condescend to Baldwin’s repetitions of “hatred” throughout his essay to feel sorry for the poor, poor Negroes. Murray, who didn’t tolerate condescension, took a more measured approach than Baldwin, stating without reservation that blacks on the whole are not anti-Semitic, that Jewish philanthropy and support of civil rights for all is greatly appreciated, but that some blacks resent some Jews for certain social and economic atrocities. I suspect that what may have ultimately closed the door to publication was Murray’s audacious, stinging stand regarding particular Jewish intellectuals who were, he claimed, “persisting in misrepresenting and misinterpreting the rituals and motives of U.S. Negro life in terms of clichés and values peculiar to the Jewish tradition, [and] have been propagating and ‘documenting’ a new theory of Negro inferiority.”

By the publication of The Omni-Americans, a collection of pieces he had published in The New Leader and several other periodicals, Murray was primed to influence the national discourse on race, culture, and American identity in the post-Civil Rights era. “After all,” argued Murray in the introduction, “someone must at least begin to try to do justice to what U.S. Negroes like about being black and to what they like about being Americans.”

Henry Louis Gates’s 1996 New Yorker profile, “King of Cats,” recalled Murray in the ‘70s as a “lithe and dapper man with an astonishing gift of verbal fluency, by turns grandiloquent and earthy.” Walker Percy, one of the notables Murray spoke with for his 1971 memoir, South to a Very Old Place, thought The Omni-Americans “well may be the most important book on black-white relations in the United States, indeed on American culture, published in this generation.”

A key Murray insight is that the different perceptions of white and black Americans result not only from the social effect of race, but also from distinctive ethnic and cultural idioms. Nevertheless, he writes in one of the most quoted passages from The Omni-Americans:

American culture, even in its most rigidly segregated precincts, is patently and irrevocably composite. It is, regardless of all the hysterical protestations of those who would have it otherwise, incontestably mulatto. Indeed, for all their traditional antagonisms and obvious differences, the so-called black and so-called white people of the United States resemble nobody else in the world as they resemble each other. [Emphasis in original]

Americans of any stripe share in the promises found in the nation’s founding documents, as well as our motto, E pluribus unum: out of many, one. The promises of our social contract clearly remain unfulfilled, but to Murray they remained ancestral imperatives, lodestars for fugitive slaves fleeing for freedom via the Underground Railroad. His image of E pluribus unum was “that of a mainstream fed by an infinite diversity of tributaries.” The hue of that mainstream is “the color of infinity.”

Murray’s method in The Omni-Americans was akin to a research detective’s, which in The Hero and the Blues he described as: “finding clues bearing on the nature and cause of specific troubles.” His concern was less “political injustice as such” as the “inaccuracies and misconceptions that contribute to and even rationalize injustice.” Positivist social science, which employed the tools of clinical psychology to pathologize the image of black citizens, reinforcing stereotypes and racial bias, was his main culprit. Under the guise of objectivity, he argued, the social sciences abstracted and obscured the lived reality of black folk. The insidious result was the media, policy-makers, and even black spokesmen taking “social science fiction” as real, spreading confusion and harm.

Stanley Elkins’s Sambo model, the Moynihan Report, Kenneth Clark’s renderings of black degradation, and William Styron’s projection of emasculation, sexual repression, and servility onto his fictional portrayal of Nat Turner were each subjected to withering critique in The Omni-Americans—Murray’s most polemical book. He also deemed the protest fiction of James Baldwin and Richard Wright inadequate, not only as representations of the fullness of black American life in Harlem and the South, but because he found their “frames of rejection” too beholden to moral outcry to leave enough space for individual agency and the novelist’s ambivalence about the human condition.

Murray employed “Some Alternatives to the Folklore of White Supremacy” as the sub-title of The Omni-Americans. He considered race a “sterile category,” “hardly useful as an index to human motives as is culture.” Here are Murray’s aforementioned three steps—deconstruction, re-framing, and reconstruction—crucial to liberation from the shackles of racial thinking.

Murray first deconstructed white supremacy by unmasking it as “sociopolitical and psychopolitical folklore.” He did the same for the corollary of white superiority found in discourses of black “cultural deprivation,” “self-hatred,” and so-called “culture of poverty” by coining the phrase “the fakelore of black pathology” as a tactic of homegrown deconstruction. Second, he re-framed race as idiom: A characteristic mode of expression of a people. During Murray’s youth to middle age, “Negro” was the accepted term for native-born U.S. black folk. The “Negro idiom” was a “style and way of life” lived by African-derived Americans. Murray extended the “Negro idiom” from an ethnic domain to an expansive aesthetic with the blues and jazz as primary metaphors.

Third and finally, Murray confronted race by re-constructing American identity as omni-American, a hybrid mixture, a synthesis and composite brought together by the values and principles of the nation’s “sacred” founding documents: the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights. Omni-Americans are the many comprising the oneness of American identity. That oneness is an idea, an ideal, a democratic horizon of aspiration, yes, but without such a vision, the people and the very nation may perish.

To Albert Murray—who experienced the full breadth of the twentieth century, passing away in 2013 at 97—human life was much more than the political survival of the fittest. If, however, there were an existential threat to the Republic and to humanity, as was the case during World War II, Murray’s response would have been to fight those authoritarian dragons of chaos with the best tools at one’s disposal—perhaps even employing an update of what Murray called Reverend Dr. King’s “political jiujitsu,” using the opposition’s own strength against them.

If politics is the art of the possible, then to Murray, art forms such as the blues and jazz, enactments of American civic ideals in sound, are resilient frames of acceptance and pathways of possibility. Murray’s matter of ultimate concern, divined from the thousand or so pages of this Library of America edition, was art and improvisation for life and humanity’s sake. In the midst of the pain, chaos, confusion, hysteria, conflicts and uncertainty of the moment, and apprehension about the future of our nation, the ability to express joy is paramount: to sing, swing, stomp the blues, dance our thoughts, feelings, and actions, and to freestyle on the breaks, dissonance, and asymmetry of our lives for as many measures as we’ve got, because the black and the blues will most certainly be back tomorrow.

Deliver Us From Evil

By

By  | 
Feature Image: Pieter Brueghel the Elder (1526/1530–1569) [CeCILL or CC BY-SA 2.0 fr], via Wikimedia Commons
Print

The global political landscape today reads like something straight out of Revelations. On a daily basis, we read shocking stories of the cruelties imposed by those in power. Education and healthcare are being gutted, families are being broken apart, minorities are being senselessly attacked, discrimination is being legalized, dissent criminalized, and corruption institutionalized. The very fabric of society is becoming undone before our eyes, and tyranny is rearing its ugly head. I’ve previously written about the structural conditions that led to this crisis. However, there is something more at play here that needs to be addressed: evil.

It’s become unfashionable in intellectual circles to speak of evil. One may speak of “good” in a utilitarian sense of achieving optimal outcomes. One may speak of rights or values or duties, and criticize others for failing to respect and uphold these things. One may speak of culpability and responsibility, of motives and intentions, of trauma and personality disorders, of socioeconomic conditions and mass psychology. Yet it is still taboo to suggest that there is a force of darkness at play in the cosmos. Even for those of us who profess to believe in God, we dare not acknowledge the Devil.

Discernment of Spirits

There is good reason for this. Among those who are quick to cry “evil,” there is a strong tendency to ascribe it as a quality that people either have or don’t have. Those who believe as they do and act as they act are good; those who hold different values, who live in different ways, who are somehow alien to them, are evil. It’s all very cut and dry, and makes a convenient binary lens through which to view the world that neatly avoids any need for subtlety or critical thinking.

This kind of black-and-white worldview might be called “cartoonish evil.” Yet it is precisely in cartoons where we often get a subtler representation of good and evil. There is a long-standing trope in cartoons in which a character is seen with two miniature versions of themselves perched atop their shoulders. One is dressed like an angel, complete with wings and a halo. The other is dressed as a demon, with horns and a pitchfork. Each whispers into the character’s ear about what they should do in a given situation. The angel tells them to seek the higher path —one that serves the greater good and shows greater strength of character. The demon tells them to give into their urges, acting impulsively out of lust, greed, wrath, or any of the other seven deadly sins.

This is a closer approximation to how we encounter good and evil in our own lives. We confront them within our own conscience. There is, however, a further level of subtlety that few if any such cartoons delve into. The Devil, according to legend, can appear to us as an angel of light. We can be fooled into believing that we are pursuing noble and respectable ends when in fact we are serving selfish and destructive impulses. Lesser known is the fact that angels can appear to be as frightening demons. Doing the right thing can be terrifying, and our psyches are equipped with an arsenal of self-defense mechanisms to convince ourselves not to do it.

These phenomena were a central concern for St. Ignatius of Loyola, a 16th century Catholic mystic famous for founding the Society of Jesus, more commonly known as the Jesuits. He developed a series of spiritual exercises to help the initiate discover and develop a spiritual gift known as the discernment of spirits. The “spirits” in this case may be thought of as motives. They are drives within us that seek satisfaction. One might imagine that Ignatius, like many ascetics before him, would encourage a militant attitude of self-denial, refraining from “worldly” desires. Yet with his keen psychological insight, he realized that desires are actually very important. So important, in fact, that God speaks to us through our desires. The problem is that we confuse desires with whims or impulses. One may feel very strongly in the moment that one wants to cheat on their spouse, or get drunk for the third night in a row, or have fast food every night of the week. Yet these desires are fleeting. Upon satisfying them, we do not ultimately feel satisfied with ourselves. On the other hand, one may have a desire to improve one’s health, to spend more time with friends and family, to perfect a skill, or to pursue a vocation. These desires may not burn as bright in a moment of passion, but if pursued effectively, they leave us with a more prolonged sense of satisfaction.

Ignatius gives a number of exercises for discerning such spirits. He notes a number of features that characterize higher and lower desires. Any desire that comes with a sense of urgency in making a decision, unless external circumstances demand it, is almost always from the Dark One. The Devil will tempt us to fall away from pursuing the greater desires of our souls, justifying us in our indulgences. His voice will say, “It’s okay to cheat on your wife; you work hard for your family,” or “Go ahead and lash out at this person; they deserve it for getting in your way.” Such self-justifications are familiar enough to us all that I needn’t belabor the point. Yet when we are on the right path and pursuing our greater good, Satan takes a different route. He transforms from the Tempter to the Accuser. It is here that the Evil One appears truly frightening. While we are on the path of sin and ruin, he wants us to think of him as our best friend, feeding us one temptation after another. Yet when we turn from that path, and pursue our highest good, Satan loses his temper. “Who do you think you are?” he will say. “What business is it of yours to help these people?” Several saints recount experiencing physical battles with demons during their fasts, in which the demon would literally knock them across the room. We may not encounter anything quite so severe, but we may be called to suffer in pursuit of the greater good.

Social Evil

Satan may use society itself as a weapon against those who pursue the greater good. We are not merely individually fallen sinners. Society itself is fallen, and is often led by the darker impulses in humanity. Bigotry, greed, exploitation, indifference to the suffering of others —these are all too familiar in our society. Our entire economic system is based on rewarding greed and discouraging altruism. The profit motive, we are told, incentivizes people to act for the greater good. Yet environmental destruction, a failing healthcare system, and widespread inequality expose this for the pack of lies it truly is. Exploitation is so rampant that it’s difficult to imagine a society without it. The clothes on our backs are produced in sweatshops by children working in deplorable conditions, while our food is produced by agribusiness firms that dare to patent life itself. Evil of such magnitude, institutionalized into the very fabric of our society, seems insurmountable. One is tempted to give up any hope of changing it, and simply look after one’s own interests.

Meanwhile, charismatic leaders are able to stir up fear of outsiders to send people into a panic, leading them to commit atrocities. Fear can be an overwhelming emotion, and the Dark One loves to prey upon it. As long as he can keep people afraid of one another, afraid for their own safety and security, for their belongings, they will do whatever it takes to make the object of that fear go away. They will support mass incarceration, torture, and even genocide against those they are taught to fear. Such fear is a powerful drug, and when people feel vulnerable, they will seek out whoever is selling it. The results can be catastrophic.

The Evil One may even appear as God himself. He’s a familiar God to most of us: vengeful, petty, elitist, judgmental. He sharply divides the world between the saved and the damned. He takes great pleasure in the punishment of sinners, while blessing the saved with great material wealth and good fortune, not to help them in serving others, but as a reward for being on the right side of his good graces. He always picks sides in wars, blessing whichever side the worshipper is on. He can quote scripture to justify his followers in whatever hateful or selfish desires they pursue. They can do no wrong, for God is on their side.

The Problem of Evil

Why does evil exist in the first place? Philosophers and theologians have wrestled with this question for centuries, and I certainly don’t expect to answer the question definitively. However, I would like to do what St. Ignatius did, and study the way evil behaves in order to offer insight into its inner workings. I should first note that the reason Satan can appear to us as an angel of light is because that was his original form. Good and Evil are not equal opponents. Evil would not be possible without Good. It is always and everywhere a distortion of the Good. Satan and his army were brought down from heaven through their pride, which can be a virtue if properly tempered, but without discernment can drag down even the most virtuous souls into damnation. In their pride, the fallen angels seek to spread their misery to others by leading them down the road to ruin.

Evil moves quickly. It leads us to seek quick answers, to give in to urges and impulses, to fear the unknown and fortify ourselves against uncertainty. It makes us feel justified in our own actions, yet quick to pass judgement on others. It takes hold of society, building up barriers against one another, exploiting the weak, casting hostility against outsiders and indifference upon those who suffer. Evil creates suffering while also feeding off of it. Those who carry wounds from their own suffering succumb to temptation to inflict that same suffering on others. Trauma begets trauma. Suffering leads to conflict which leads to insecurity and distrust of others. People build up walls to separate themselves from others, and protect what resources they have from outsiders.

What of the Good? How does it move? What is its place in this grand scheme? If Good is metaphysically prior evil, as we are told by the wisdom traditions of both East and West, why do we not see more of it? The Good works slowly, barely noticeable at first. Someone helps another person carry their groceries, or gives up their seat on a bus for another, or gives them some change for a bite to eat when they’re struggling. Such random acts of kindness may seem insignificant in a world so dominated by evil. However, if one not only performs good deeds, but actively cultivates virtue within themselves, they will be a light unto others, and inspire others to act likewise. The light spreads, slowly but surely, and is recognized by the inner light in others.

The path of righteousness does not offer the same short-term payoff as the path of darkness, but those who follow it will discover over time that a sense of inner peace grows within them, even when times are darkest. This is not to say that such people never face anxiety or depression. This sense of peace is a pure aesthetic appreciation of the Good. One finds comfort in doing the right thing, even when it comes at tremendous personal cost. This inner peace has accompanied many saints on their way to martyrdom.

Evil spreads like wildfire, but Good spreads more slowly, like one candle lighting another, slowly reaching critical mass. This may sound bleak, but the angels know a secret: Evil is unstable, and will inevitably turn on itself. Evil divides humanity against one another, and in the end eats its own. So while the demons preach instant gratification, the angels know the virtue of patient persistence. While Evil consumes itself, the Good grows on the blood of its martyrs and in the hearts of the faithful.

Following the higher path means facing this fallen society and preparing to suffer at its hands. Such is the way of the cross. The good news is that moral courage is contagious. Whenever someone shows heroic virtue, they empower the angel on everyone’s shoulder. The demons will work hard to try to sway them away, and they will still win much of the time, but the angel grows stronger from the support of others. Before long, an army of angels is assembled, strengthened by unity of purpose. While demons sow division and hatred, the angels know the virtue of solidarity. The Kingdom of Heaven is spread out among us, but when it is gathered together as one voice, the Devil trembles.

Those who hope for the intervention of an omnipotent deity should take a closer look at how Good and Evil play out within this world. It is a battle that takes place within our own hearts. The raging fire of darkness tempts people with its immense power, but such power is fleeting, and inevitably leads its followers to their own undoing. The steady, shimmering light of the Good, on the other hand, appears weak and fragile, but those who follow it know that it cannot be extinguished by the darkness, and will outlast it in the end. The powerful will be brought down from their thrones, and the meek will inherit the Earth. In our darkest hour, the light shines through.

Reading Group for Shantaram, by Gregory David Roberts

By

By  | 
Feature Image: Shantaram book cover
Print

Starting May 4, 2017…

Metapsychosis: Readers Underground is hosting a group reading of Gregory David Roberts’ acclaimed novel Shantaram.

David Gaian and Marco V Morelli will host a series of 9 live conversations, in addition to online discussions in our forum at InfiniteConversations.com.

Here is David and Marco’s intro to the book and group:

To join, sign up for a Readers Underground subscription, which costs $2/month (or $20 for the year).

Join Us

Note: If you’re a  Cosmos Co-op member, you already have access to this group included with your membership.

Reading Schedule

Start Date: May 4, 2017

Live Conversations

We’ll do a weekly live conversation using the Zoom video conferencing app. The first live event is on May 4th at 6 PM Mountain Time (time-zone conversion).

All live conversations will take place every Thursday at 6 pm MDT, unless otherwise indicated. See the full reading schedule ».

These will be cooperative dialogues. After a brief introduction from David and Marco, we will open up the conversation and invite all to join in.

Online Discussion

There will be a dedicated channel for Shantaram on InfiniteConversations.com.

Each major section will have an open topic created by the moderator and posted each week. Readers are welcome and encouraged to expand the conversation with their own topics and replies.

Join Us

About the Book

“It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured.”

So begins this epic, mesmerizing first novel set in the underworld of contemporary Bombay. Shantaram is narrated by Lin, an escaped convict with a false passport who flees maximum security prison in Australia for the teeming streets of a city where he can disappear.

Accompanied by his guide and faithful friend, Prabaker, the two enter Bombay’s hidden society of beggars and gangsters, prostitutes and holy men, soldiers and actors, and Indians and exiles from other countries, who seek in this remarkable place what they cannot find elsewhere.

As a hunted man without a home, family, or identity, Lin searches for love and meaning while running a clinic in one of the city’s poorest slums, and serving his apprenticeship in the dark arts of the Bombay mafia. The search leads him to war, prison torture, murder, and a series of enigmatic and bloody betrayals. The keys to unlock the mysteries and intrigues that bind Lin are held by two people. The first is Khader Khan: mafia godfather, criminal-philosopher-saint, and mentor to Lin in the underworld of the Golden City. The second is Karla: elusive, dangerous, and beautiful, whose passions are driven by secrets that torment her and yet give her a terrible power.

Burning slums and five-star hotels, romantic love and prison agonies, criminal wars and Bollywood films, spiritual gurus and mujaheddin guerrillas—this huge novel has the world of human experience in its reach, and a passionate love for India at its heart. Based on the life of the author, it is by any measure the debut of an extraordinary voice in literature.

Buy the book: Amazon.com | B&N | Powell’s

About the Author

Photo by Anoush Abrar

Gregory David Roberts was born in Melbourne, Australia. A gifted writer and student, he became addicted to heroin when his marriage collapsed and he lost the custody of his daughter. When he committed a series of robberies with an imitation pistol, he was described as the Gentleman Bandit. Sentenced to nineteen years in prison, he escaped and journeyed to New Zealand, Asia, Africa, and Europe. For ten of those fugitive years he lived in Bombay-where he established a free medical clinic for slum-dwellers, and worked as a counterfeiter, smuggler, gunrunner, and street soldier for a branch of the Bombay mafia. Recaptured in Germany, he served out his sentence there and in Australian prisons. Upon his release, he established a successful multimedia company, and since the international publication of Shantaram, he is a full-time writer, at home in several countries.

[Source: Amazon.com]

Hosts

David Gaian is the co-founder and COO of Symbio Life Sciences, a Colorado-based Public Benefit Corporation. After more than twenty years of international consulting work in molecular science, bioremediation, fair trade, and global community development and more than thirty years of diverse planetary living, cultural immersion, and spiritual exploration, David and his wife Dasha have finally unpacked, settled down, and started a family amongst the welcoming “natives” of Wild Sage Cohousing Community in Boulder, Colorado.

Marco V Morelli is the founder and CCO of Cosmos Cooperative and creative director of Metapsychosis Journal. He studied Philosophy and Comparative Literature at Binghamton University, and worked for Ken Wilber’s Integral Institute from 2003 to 2007, co-authoring the book Integral Life Practice, before leaving to follow the pathways of art. He is currently at work on a new book of poems, stories, and essays titled I AM THE SINGULARITY.

Participation

This reading is open to all Readers Underground and Cosmos Beta members.

If you’re not yet a member, please sign up today!

Join Us

HyperNormalisation (Review)

By

By  | 
Feature Image: AK Rockefeller, happy souls in hell [via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0]
Print

I don’t know how many people have the stomach or attention span for a sprawling, nearly 3-hour documentary covering the last 40 years of our civilization’s slide into metacrisis and narrative collapse. But for those who do, Adam Curtis’ HyperNormalisation, produced by the BBC, is well worth your time.

Released in October 2016, during a moment of peak political irreality (which obviously continues), the film traces and attempts to weave together a complex web of storylines, including the financialization of the economy; the spread of suicide bombing in the Middle East; the emergence of the internet, big data, and the surveillance state; the role of nihilism and narcissism in creating an atomized, subordinate society; the pull of techno-utopianism and our escape from material reality into social media; the promise and shortcomings of the Occupy movement and the Arab Spring; the rise of Donald Trump and the appearance of a political technology (oddly, yet unsurprisingly, influenced by Russian avant-garde science fiction) whose very intent is to shock, distract, confuse, and destabilize consciousness through practices of “perception management” and “non-linear warfare”; and, neither last nor least, the failure of artists, intellectuals, and the counterculture (i.e., the “liberal class”) to provide an effective, alternative vision for the world or advance a coherent political agenda.

It’s a lot to face and take in, and Curtis, who also wrote and directed The Century of the Self and All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace, doesn’t sugar coat. He tells a bleak, even horrifying tale of how these forces have collided and colluded to produce our interlocking crises. From this out-of-control global reality, Curtis argues, we escape into perceptual bubbles that deny, obscure, and oversimplify the ugly truth of the death-dealing machinations of power behind the scenes.

The result is an experience of “hypernormalisation,” where nobody really knows what’s going on, what’s real, or who or what to believe, but we go along with it anyway, as if it’s normal, because we don’t know what else to do.

Disturbing scenes of blood-streaked rooms, bombs blowing up people and buildings, drone attacks and dead children (killed by those same bombs) blend with archival footage of political super-villains (Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, Hafez al-Assad, and Vladimir Putin play prominent roles) and other key players and events. The scenes are carried forward by a dark, mostly electronic/ambient soundtrack, along with Curtis’ stark narration, which connects the disparate dots, like piecing together fragments of a puzzle from the chaos.

Unfortunately, HyperNormalisation does not offer the compelling political vision of a future that Curtis faults the liberal class for lacking. But the documentary serves as an incisive critique of our social complicity (which also appears to be personally our own) in the whacked out state of affairs.

The film manages to draw a messy and complex narrative into tenuous focus, and in so doing perhaps dispels some of the narcotic effect of easier, more simplistic explanations for how we’ve gotten to the brink as a civilization, and where we might be going next.

Watch HyperNormalisation on ThoughtMaybe.com

Prose for the Paranoid

By

By  | 
Feature Image: Fabrice Florin, Pataphysical Time [CC BY-SA 2.0]
Print

I am, I am slightly ashamed to admit, a little paranoid at the moment.

Some of it is genetic. My family has a history of “nerves”. My lovely cousin, who shares a big batch of genetics with me along with a childhood of school holidays spent together indulging our creative whimsy, is also prone to this state of heightened concern about what You think of me. We sometimes dream about being able to go back to those times where we did not have to worry about careers or non-careers. About how the money is drying up but it’s still your fault if you don’t have a satisfying career. About making our way in the world when we feel so highly sensitive. In that school holiday world of our childhood, we did not have to worry about ensuring our survival in it, and so we were free to dream of different ones. Alternate worlds unravelled out of us, effortlessly. Every day we climbed out of bed into the six weeks of a warm-to-hot Australian summer that felt like six months.

A desire for a return to such a world is not such a childish concept, really. The kind of world where you are able to rise above Maslow’s hierarchy seems really quite a sensible one. It’s an egalitarian one where all of the forms that are daydreamy are incorporated and valued within that world, not cut out of it by austerity, by misanthropy. Where it is safe to be human, unthreatened by the robotic, sleeping advancement towards the AI wiping Us out of it altogether. It’s not a childish world. It is, perhaps in our one-eyed cynicism, a utopia. But it is more a childlike than a childish one. Those two concepts are in actual fact a universe and a half away from each other.

My partner and I have new neighbours. We live in an “entry-level” street in the Dandenong Ranges, on the very outskirts of Melbourne’s hem, which means that there is a whirlwind of ‘For Sale’ billboards that regularly go up and then come down in the yards of all the people we don’t know yet whom we share the same street with. I think idly about going to introduce myself. If the current predominant facet of the diamond that is me was one of the less paranoid ones, I would maybe actually consider doing it.

But do people even do that anymore?

Because I’m not the only one who is paranoid in our Lever & Kitchened public commons, there is no basis upon which I can go and introduce myself to the people who live next door without it feeling on some level like an affront. (At least, not when I don’t have kids, who are the perfect buffer.) In some squirming part of their psyche that’s been distorted by too much screen time, face-to-face time is just so…well, physical now. It’s too messily analogue, too variable, too unwieldy. Too uncanny and uncategorisable. A human being, with all her brokenness bounded by her skin’s wholeness, is just Too Much on your front doorstep. Too alive. What is the point of her?

And of course, paradoxically, at the same time all the humans we come across are Too Much, we quickly judge them as Never Ever Enough. And so when I finally present myself to the neighbours, when we unavoidably run across each other, I will be aware of all the categorising our world of brands has entrained in them. I will be painfully aware of their propensity to box the whole messy being in front of them into easy-to-manage, easy-to-dislike categories. I will be Too Old or Not Young Enough. I will be Too Inclined To Use Big Words (if the brainfog’s not too bad), or will be Too Vague (if it is). I will be Too Friendly or Too Aloof because my neighbours’ thermostats are wildly temperamental and also very fussy about what temperature of person they can accommodate. They will be looking for a reason to put me into the Other box so as to allow them to go inside and return to their screens more quickly, without any quirks of discomfort about how they don’t know their neighbours and now they don’t even want to. They’ll return to the comfort of their screens, where everything good is happening somewhere else and to someone else. Far away. It’s safer that way, even though it hollows out your guts.

And I will judge my new neighbours for their obvious lack of understanding about the importance of banding together, of the absolute necessity at this time for the grassroots of Us to come together to renew the ground under our feet before our floppy culture really does crumble for good. The grassroots is always where the new flourishing comes from. Isn’t this what we want and what we thirst for? We yearn for safety within the commons of community where we are not necessarily friends, and we may sometimes even feel like enemies, but we are in a different category of neither friends nor acquaintances nor enemies but fellows within a community, a unity in diversity, a strength more powerful than any multinational corporation could be.

I will go inside feeling sad that my new neighbours do not understand all this. I will go inside and return to my screen and search elsewhere for those people who know community, who practise permaculture, and who are not judgmental. I will feel scared while looking online for these people in a place that is not here. What if I find them? Then I will feel inspected in a different way. I will feel not the heavy, metal stare of instant categorisation. This will be a different kind of look. I will feel even more exposed in one way, because the initial look will be friendly. A probe of interest maybe, from people who are comfortable juggling the wholeness of people and so who are not offended by the ways I am Too Much or Not Enough. They will not notice nor be offended that my tits are not acceptably perky. They will accept my many contradictory elements, my we-should-pay-more-tax socialism, my paranoia, my dislike of neighbours who pop in out of the blue but who I paradoxically wish to be part of my community.

And so I will withdraw again from the people on my screen who are the grassroots, and I will withdraw into writing an essay. Into tackling the subject of paranoia—learning, as the saying goes, what I think and know and feel about something by exploring it, tonguing it, smelling its opposite ends.

And then I will think about the people who will ultimately read that essay that I am writing, with one-and-a-half eyes set on maybe getting someone to publish it for a hundred bucks so I can pay for the food shopping that week. Writing will buy me a tiny little bit of self-respect while my partner pays for the roof over us, the water that goes into us, the air that warms and cools us, for the rubbish collection that takes away both our rubbish and the rubbish of our neighbours who I haven’t even met but who I already dislike because they disappoint me by their non-understanding of the need for community regeneration.

And so then I will start thinking about the faceless editor at the end of my internet connection who will read and judge and critique my piece of writing. Even though I have had many good and encouraging rejections asking me to please submit again, at this moment I just simply can’t bear the whole fucking game of it. It’s a burden, submitting stuff into a space where we regularly talk about “content” without feeling freaked at how empty the box is when it has not much that’s not linked to you needing to buy something. I’m just too fucking paranoid right now. And so I will stop writing that essay because the world has ridden in on its laser horse of judgment and judged me wanting with its pointy harsh fluorescent laser. Futility will ride in afterwards, like the two horses of the writing apocalypse. What’s the fucking point, really?

And so I will sulk until the urge to write is too itchy, and finally I will turn to the only space that really satisfies when feeling paranoid. When the world is too much or too little, a launch into the space of fiction provides a safe landing. Here, you are the god of your own world. But not the nasty god that orders Old Testamentonians to bash other tribes’ babies against rocks. Or at least not unless that god, who seems like the bad guy at the start of the story, is actually instructing this horror because (as you find out in the second to last page of the story) the other tribe is actually robots from the sixth dimension who in the 21st century will try and kill the humans with AI (and whose babies, by the way, cry very realistically).

And then, just to not make it quite so good-and-bad simple Cartesian, the god himself turns out in the end to be one of the many aliens who has tinkered with your species over the years. And so then your story goes from science fiction to esoterica, and it turns out that although this god is a good god overall, you really need to learn not to call him that because just because his species is from the sixth density doesn’t mean they are gods in the ultimate sense of a completely good being you could absolutely depend upon.

And then you try and write something about the good god idea being really the Source From Which All Comes, Good and Bad, but it’s really hard to write about that stuff so you will leave it out when you finally write the essay and submit it maybe to somewhere like Asimovs or something.

Etcetera, etcetera.

In fiction, since you are the god of your own world, you can love all the people who inhabit the stories that sometimes come unravelling out of you like ribbon. Only later, whilst in the shower washing your tits with the unacceptable level of perk, do you realise that you have been daydreaming. You have been flowing through your own mind in pleasure, pondering things that maybe are very droll and dry like politics, but putting disparate pieces together to see what space they create in the middle. And then into that space pops a scenario, maybe populated with two people. From them a ‘what if’ emerges. And suddenly there is this little glowing orb of possibility that rushes you out of the shower and towards a pen or a keyboard to start fleshing the story out, not knowing where it goes. If you’re a god in this world, you’re not separate from your own creation. You are making it while you’re inside it and it is all far, far too big for instant categories and labels. You have suddenly slipped, unnoticed, into this world, and in describing it a few paragraphs back you were an excruciatingly self-conscious first person, and now you are in a wide, warm bath of the second person.

Here, finally, is a space big enough to breathe.

Alliance in Arms

By

By  | 
Feature Image: Colored Appropriation of Hans Baldung's Three Ages of Woman and Death by Cea+ [CC BY 2.0]
Print

He’s a big barreled suave broad caster (he casts broads) who smokes a cigar, the phallus broadcasted on his exclusive speaker. His voice is pinched with a husky drawl, ever sure, and he declares whatever he wants and you appease.

The Brute: Step right up in this horse race, honey. Pick your horse. I’ve got Fight, Flight and Response . We got blue, green and red, honey. You pick your horse and your color…a pause and grin: I picked it honey, its Red. The horse is Flight.

The Wise Man stands tall with aged hair, a philosopher of intent, set and a crook at his back. What crook is this? Is it the weight of the world on his shoulders, the burden of sins from these cheats, so claimed, yet they are in their way. It’s the burden and grace which arrives when the crook is a weigh, some scale balanced, and some wisdom given and gained.

The Wise Man: Pick your poison or purpose. Is it a poison with a purpose? Or a poison purpose? Or a poise and purpose.

The Maiden is fair of face and hair. An innocent infantilized. Let them decide, where is all, some center thrown from the mother, a birth digress, a stopping feat. Father gathering her sheaves in hand but it’s not fair, an unfair process and progress. A woman solely bred in men.

Maiden: I’m so helpless in this design.

The Wise Man: Don’t be so helpless in this you designed it, what do you wish? This brute gives a clue, without knowing it, there’s dear blue.

The Brute: This design is red, he’s fitted, get set. Lorrie, the broad is cast, panic. What a waste, Flight, Helpless can’t steer her mane, this design in circles. It’s a Hopeless blue. Your type can’t conclude.

Maiden: This design haunts me. What can I see, where can I go, how do I feel, all these maids around in fleece, I’m sheared from head to toe, and these remnants scattered. My design is obsolete. Calling and haunting me, they do.

The Wise Man: Take your hand, it’s not false, it’s yours as you want it. A black recess made stronghold. Don’t give up your hold on your right. Fight. You can build your own design.

Maiden: I don’t compare. Not for anything worthwhile, beauty can’t exist as it is and develop inside the lines of my mind; it’s deranged in might, yet passive in defeat. The way is outside me, floating. I’m this helpless cause. Horses that run but aren’t free.

The Wise Man: She’s become the brute, but doesn’t know it…in time she’ll give up the mime. In time she’ll combine.Flight: Wo. Fight: Man. Response: Human kind.

Maiden: It’s in me but it’s gone then. How old? Years until I meet me somewhere. Colors in a sea and smear, running faces, running laps, Flight, and chastised speed…anger never aired. What women did this to me; they are the ones, no protection from this animal force? I could not receive it nor create it; it was given, not provided for.

The Brute: Women they are my ultimatum, she is not dear, they are each a helpless witch I possess.

Maiden: There’s no beauty reckoning, we all break, there’s no me in she, I’m a man, it’s safe and sound…the noise is mine but it isn’t, how can I know, the face and stance, the course, the horse and colors, the way to anger against men is all women are brute, thus I’m a me helpless she, power substitute, whose feminine is masculine displaced inappropriately instead….Women can’t stand, they can’t think, they can’t feel, they are hated.

The Wise Man: Therefore you are a helpless he, for women is you and with this expression you’ve fled from the receptive creation, and the mate in your creation.

The Brute: You are embedded in my style. Lines spasmodic and my center. Spiraling red looking glass that cracks, petrified, a repeating pattern, this broad cast in space. Nowhere set.

The Wise Man: This is it. What can you do in this, your baby is, you’re her the helpless, you repeat and what is achieved? No mother could love your maiden. No mother could suckle your baby. No mother can love your earth, you’re mass, a tyrant: horses, colors, and course, the podium enlarged, the broadcast cast and its skill. You give this whether you know. To women a hell in home they can elope, and without you, just herself. Ovation and a standing. Women are the slate you write your epitaph on. It’s you.

Maiden: What man could take away and bore, his scape to my bone, a vision I couldn’t be. They were all alone. Their design etched in stone. They could do anything fly in the air, land on their feet, crash cars and toll bells for supper one minute and crook the next, the cheat sheet, white blanketing, like snake skin, a cloud—no molting for me into something else.

The Brute: It life, red to sear. Watch her grow diseased, fall and its light, for me.

Maiden: It’s here, this fear, what design we can make. A blue vitality stretched across eons. Flight, with its second sight, the brute sows what he reaps, a green fight for life. I create this response.From this poison and bewitching arrives wisdom.

We’re cast along the broad race to fall. We’re built up in the broadcast to race the next. We fall into a summit in our time and rise to fall in time. This wisdom in Wo-man runs its course with its poison antidote. It has it has its poise and purpose.

Suspension Framed the Matter and Cast Our Source

What Relief Can We Make from this Still Expulsion

It is Our Design

Songs of Sodom

By

By  | 
Feature Image: "astral dreams04" by swangull is licensed under CC BY 2.0
Print
Editor’s Note: For readers who would prefer to read this long-form article offline, click here to download as a PDF (25 pages).

“A belief in clairvoyance, telepathy, or a ‘sixth sense’ is a symptom of schizotypal personality disorder.” (American Psychiatric Association, 2013)

We were lost. Daddy sucked on a fat cigar, leaned across the steering wheel, stared at the dark road up ahead and let out a stream of four letter words, which my mother told me never to repeat. She snapped off the radio, got real quiet. The car filled with smoke, my eyeballs burned. I rolled down the window, gulped the night wind, and squinted at the crescent moon, which to my blurred vision looked like a clove of garlic. I imagined the vast black ocean and wanted to be swallowed by it, drown it in its deep dark belly. I often had dreams about being swallowed by something big and black. Holding back the pressure to go to the bathroom, I squirmed in the back seat, my stomach ached, hands clenched, ready for a fight.

“This is not the way to go,” Mama said, getting the map out of the glove compartment. “You should have turned right back there. Now we are going to be late. Shoot. Now we are going to miss the beginning of the movie. I like to see the credits.”

“That’s the Gulf of Mexico,” I said to distract them,” and I know that the Coronkowa Indians lived near here. They were cannibals and used to eat people—”

“You learn that in geography class, Kensey?”

“Yes, mam. I made an A on the test.”

“You did? Well I’m real proud of you, honey. Too bad your daddy didn’t study his geography.”

“It wasn’t geography, Mama, it was Texas history.”

Daddy yelled, “Would you two shut the fuck up!”

We got real quiet again. She didn’t want me to lose respect for that man. That man that was my father. That man that was her husband. That mad man that was driving the car in circles on a back road that seemed to be going nowhere.

“Are we there yet?” I fidgeted, trying to stop what I knew was going to happen. “My stomach hurts.”

“If you don’t shut up,” Daddy glared at me in the rear-view mirror, “I’ll give you something to cry about, you little sissy.”

“Now Big Kensey,” Mama said to Daddy, “you shouldn’t talk to little Kensey that way. Turn right at the next intersection.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Daddy said, between clenched teeth. “I know what I’m doing.”

“Can’t you go a little faster?”

“I’m doing the speed limit, God damn it! I’m not going to get a ticket because of you. Woman, you think you’re so smart, you drive the fucking car!” Daddy slammed on the brakes, the tires screeched, the car came to a dead halt. Surrounding the little car was a big black silence, the big black thing that was going to swallow us, and just the sound of the surf and some crickets singing in unison along the side of the road.

“What’s wrong, sugar?” Mama asked. “I just said to turn right.”

“Woman, you make my ass crave stove wood! Fucking bitch!” Daddy threw the lit cigar in her face but luckily the cigar stuck to the lens of her eyeglasses. Both of my parents, in the front seat of the car, facing each other. She with her mouth wide open unable to scream, a lit cigar stuck to her eyeglasses. He with a red face shouting four letter words. From a distance, faintly, then getting louder, I heard the rumble of a diesel truck, the blast of the horn.

This madman was my father, who taught me how to tie a tie and shine my shoes, and who always said the blessing each evening over our supper. This man opened the car door and got out and disappeared into the dark, just as the diesel truck zoomed past. Kicking up a big gust of wind that lifted my mother’s loose cotton dress, it blew debris from the road into the car through the door he left wide open—a smashed Styrofoam cup, a torn brown paper bag, a knotted up plastic straw, white paper napkins. The cigar was blown off her glasses and into her lap where it made a crimson glow. I guess she didn’t notice it.

She sat there, unresponsive to the faint glow from that cigar on her lap, still wet with my daddy’s saliva. She looked as if she was frozen, numb; a slight small smile on her face as if she was relieved, as if she were warming herself before a friendly camp fire.

Then a spark from that still hot cigar leaped into life, a real live fire that had no respect for anyone’s property, a wild fire she had to pay attention to. Her body became a fluid rapid movement, a trapped bird, flapping its wings. I helped her put out the fire, swatting my hands at it, afraid of touching what was the most vulnerable part of her body. When we were sure the fire was out we sat there motionless. Her white dress had a hole in the middle of it, her pale pink flesh, exposed. I knew something evil was happening.

“I can’t go anywhere like this.” She said quietly, trembling. “We won’t be seeing the movie tonight. It’s too late. It has already started. I guess your Daddy has left us.”

“He’ll come back.” I said, “He always does.” I paused for a moment. “I wish he would stay away. We could do okay without him.”

“Don’t you love your father?”

“I love him but he don’t love me. He caught your dress on fire. Can’t we just leave him?”

“He’s got the money.”

“We don’t need his money. Just get behind the wheel and drive the car.”

“He took the keys. Where can we go? He’ll find us. We’re stuck Kensey Jr., right in the middle of nowhere.”

“Please, Mama, let’s get out of here. He’s delusional.”

“Delusional? Where did you learn that word from?”

“I looked it up in the dictionary. That’s what he is. Delusional.”

“That’s no way to talk about your father.” Mama got out of the car, and chased after Daddy as he stumbled down the dark road.

She screamed. “You walk away? Just like that? When I’m on fire? Look at my dress! It’s ruined. You do this in front of your son? He thinks you’re delusional.”

“Mama, would you be quiet and get in the car?” I begged.

“Is this the way you teach your son? What kind of man are you? What kind of man would abandon his wife and child in the middle of the night on a back road in the middle of nowhere?” They were swinging at each other, shouts, screams, slaps. I still smelled the fire, the stench of mama’s scorched hair.

“I demand respect,” he shouted. “Why can’t you be on my side just once?”

Then I heard the sound of another diesel truck coming from the distance. I saw the glare of the headlights in the rear view mirror. I saw the shadow of their bodies in the fierce white glare, locked together, on all fours, then rolling around on top of each other, then crying, pleading, and cursing. They didn’t see it coming. I watched it all in the rear view mirror. The white hot glare, the loud blast of the big truck’s horn.

I don’t remember much about what happened next.

I began to hurt all over. Everything turned into the color of blood.

I began to feel like I was floating through the roof of the car and then above the ocean, up into the night sky, up beyond the moon and the stars. Flying with my mother beside me holding my hand, she was laughing as we changed direction and headed back toward the earth with tremendous speed. Turning into falling stars we hit the ocean and went deep into the crust of the earth and into the real dark.

I was warm at first, but then I couldn’t find my mama. I felt frozen and couldn’t move and there was nothing there or anywhere except the sound of my father’s growling voice in a language I couldn’t understand. This language was pure evil; the language of the devil. I started screaming but no one could hear me scream. I was all alone in the dark forever, in a great big coffin with no TV, no food to eat, no body to feel. And then I started to forget. I forgot about everything except that feeling of evil and it was the worst evil I ever felt. I was floating and heard some voices talking about me somewhere over my head. As I became aware of the voices they started to whisper and trying to hear them became a strain. I gave up.

I came out of a long dream, a long dream with lots of blood in it. When I woke up I discovered it wasn’t a dream. It had really happened. My father was there beside my bed with a worried expression on his dirty face. There were policemen there, too, and a nurse, with a long needle gleaming in the harsh overhead light. They stood in a silent circle around the bed.

“Where’s Mama?”

Daddy whispered to me, “Son, listen to your father. They want to take me away from you. Tell them not to take me away. Tell them you want to stay with me. Whatever I’ve done, I’m your father and I love you.” He put his trembling hands on my shoulders and looked at me with bloodshot eyes. “At first you only remember the bad things, then you only remember the good things and then one day you won’t remember anything at all.” He gripped me tight and cried. His hot tears fell on my neck. He smelled like an old cigar. “If they take me away, you’ll never see me again.”

I asked for Mama again. No one answered me so I knew what had happened. My father was crying and I reached out towards him but the cops held him down while the nurse injected him with a needle. They dragged him toward the door and I pleaded to go with him. “I’ll go with you,” I cried out after him, as they led him in handcuffs down the corridor. “Take me with you.”

The nurse told me they were going to take him to a place where he would be safe. Then she gave me a pill to swallow, looked at her watch, and jotted something down on a clipboard. Closing my eyes, feeling numb all over, I wanted to feel numb like that as long as I could. The pain went somewhere else. Dark, down into the dark.

There was a warm washcloth on my forehead. Then a cool hand on my cheek. Suddenly there was sunshine again. I squinted into a bright room, feeling a stiff thermometer stuck under my tongue, which was withdrawn quickly. I was told my fever was broken, that I was back to normal. The kind nurse left and I opened my eyes. Studying the bright room I noticed in the next bed a scrungy looking teenage boy with matted hair sticking up on his head, unshaven face, a few years older than me. There was a bag of golden liquid tied to a pole next to his bed that leaked through a tube and into the needle taped to his arm. He smiled sweetly at me, got out of his bed, and wrapping his hospital gown around him he limped over to my bed. He placed his lips near my ear and told me I had been screaming for days. He said he had been afraid I was a real goner. He said that he had prayed for my recovery. I felt my tear roll down my cheek and I closed my eyes again and fell asleep.

I made a swift recovery. I was surprised how much I loved the hospital. They were so nice to me. Because I was an orphan, they were extra nice. Gave me a menu each morning, told me I could pick out whatever I wanted, three square meals on time every day, extra desserts. All the TV I wanted. This was the kind of attention I never got at home. And home. Where was my home going to be?

Sharing the room with that teenage boy for a couple of weeks was a lot like having a brother, and for the first time I felt at home with another human being. He had been in a motorcycle accident and ruptured his spleen, was often in pain, sometimes had to vomit, especially at night. When he was feeling good he was talkative, spoke freely about his motorcycle accident. About the girls he had fucked. He knew I had never balled a chick before, that I was too young for that. But he enjoyed telling me the details of his love life. I listened, enjoying his pleasure in the telling of it. I wondered why that special girl he liked never paid him a visit. But most of all I wondered about the feelings. The strange desire I had to share his excitement, to be with him when he was with his girl, to enter his body and become him. That’s when I suspected there was something wrong with me because I had fallen in love, but not with the girl. I had read enough definitions in the dictionary to suspect that I was a bisexual or a pervert or a deviant or maybe even something worse.

My roommate was very good looking.

When I left the hospital, and said goodbye to my roommate, I was depressed because I liked the hospital. I liked the three meals a day. I liked him. Liked him more than I should. When I said goodbye, and shook his hand, I knew I was in love with a lonesome teenage boy with a ruptured spleen, who received no visitors and would be in the hospital for a very long time. I knew I would never see him again. I knew I would miss him, miss his kindness. Miss his talk about girls and sex. I was in big trouble, because I was in love with a boy rather than a girl.

∞

I’m a Caucasian man, well built, wearing tight jeans with a bulge in my crotch. Moving lightly, a trace of paranoia in each step, I’m walking on a tree lined street in Harlem searching for a Love Supreme. I feel as if I have lived here in this Caucasian body, on this street for a short time. I’m a stranger here. Enjoying the brisk weather and the falling leaves, I observe from a distance the kids playing basketball behind a fence. I sit on the bench and daydream and the backstory of this new incarnation returns to me in waves. The mood is tragically romantic. And gay.

My lover, Bismarck, who happens to be black, wants to adopt children. I love kids, too. But I’m not ready for that. We are an interracial gay couple, just starting out, and it’s hard to imagine that happening. Becoming a parent is not something I aspire to, but Bismarck does. He’s the kind of man who likes to hold babies, to rock babies to sleep. I’m Bismarck’s first gay relationship and he’s having a hard time making the adjustment to gay culture. He doesn’t like it.

I hear Motown playing loudly on a boombox. Rick James sings, “Give it to me, that funky stuff, give it to me.” As I sit watching the boys play basketball, suddenly, the ball bounces towards me, and rolls to my feet. A youth that reminds me of a younger teenaged version of Bismarck, shouts, “Pass me the ball.”

I’m too shy, too afraid they will think I’m a sissy as well as a honky. Frozen in a cramped posture, unable to respond, negative thoughts darken the mood. The bright colors start to fade into gray and dull tones. There is a shadow that passes next to me. My attention is distracted by the shadow and I forget my purpose. Forget that I was once a High Priest. Forget the old Negro woman, the Harlem hooker, as I start to get pulled slowly into the lower astral by some demonic force. I start to shiver.

I notice a junkyard car parked across the street. For some reason it looks familiar. As I focus, the blurred outlines of the car sharpen in detail. I notice it carries a Texas license plate, making my heart race wildly. Daddy. It’s my father’s car. He has found me, destroying all my good luck. I’m trapped in my demonic father’s fury. His sins have fallen upon me. I feel swept up into a cosmic struggle, a titanic battle coming towards me. A howling tornado is rushing towards our little village and will turn it into shards of glass and twisted car parts and uprooted trees.

I unlock the door of the brownstone and throw it open, shouting, “Bismarck? Are you home?” It’s a dark, silent house. I turn on the light. My voice rises in a panic, “Baby, are you home?” I walk through the living room, the downstairs, and the upstairs. I return to the kitchen.

My demonic father is standing at the back door. “Who’s there? Son, is that you?” he asks in a gentle southern drawl.

I stare at him speechless as he steps into the light. He’s not what I remember. He’s a small, frail man, silver haired, wearing a faded denim jacket, holding a baseball cap nervously in his hands. “Son, it’s your Daddy. May I come in?”

I can’t speak. I just watch him, tongue tied, wide-eyed with terror. Feeling as if I’m in the presence of my own self when I get old. He walks carefully into the house, and this is the moment I’ve dreaded.

“I told Aunt Peggy I don’t want to see you.”

He smiles. “Well, son, you know Peggy never was a good messenger. That woman doesn’t know her ass from a hole in the ground. Besides, you and I have a lot of catching up to do.” His voice sounds kind of tender, like when he read to me when I was little. “I’m an old man, Kensey, and I ain’t well. Do you mind if I smoke?”

“Get out!” I scream, “You don’t belong here! I don’t want you here, God damn you!”

“What are you afraid of? I don’t bite,” he chuckles as he strikes a match and lights up his cigar. “I can’t believe you’re my son. You’re so handsome. You used to be such a scrawny kid. Come give your Daddy a hug.”

I feel the current flow, a surge from his pelvis towards mine, and I block his move. He’s become a vampire, and he knows he’s met his match. I’m no longer the boy he could torture, intimidate, turn into mush. He exhales a cloud of acrid cigar smoke.

“No matter what you think of me, I’m still your father; you’re my son. Nothing can ever change that.”

“What kind of son would I be if I let the man who killed my mother into my house?” Holding steady, connected to my center, I notice a long forgotten southern accent has crept back into my speech.

“You got a good point.” He looks off into space for a moment, a vacant stare in a fog of cigar smoke. He mumbles, “I see what you mean. This ain’t the way I hoped it would be. Hoped you would find it in your heart to forget and forgive.” He looks at the objects on the table. “Do you have an ash tray?”

He notices a picture of me and Bismarck taken on the rooftop of my apartment in the East Village. He asks, “Who the hell is that?” I grab the picture away from him.

“That’s none of your business.”

“You haven’t turned into a nigger lover, have you? That would break your mother’s heart.” The surge comes from the solar plexus and I feel the psychic heat. Once again I resist the temptation to play his way. He says, “I gave you life and I can take it away.” Before I respond to his blasphemy, I hear footsteps at the front door. Bismarck stands in the doorway, dressed in a police uniform. “Who called the cops? I ain’t done nothing wrong. I just traveled a thousand miles to see my son. Is that a crime?”

I kiss Bismarck proudly on the lips and then sneer at my father who turns pale. Daddy has a look of fear on his face. “I hate cigars!” I grab the cigar out of his mouth, and stomp it on the floor. I grab the handcuffs on Bismarck’s police uniform, grab the stick, and strike the Demon Daddy on his shin. A crack of bone. He falls to his knees with a cry and I cuff Daddy’s wrist, just like a pro. I handcuff him to the grate around the fireplace, so that he’s trapped, like a lamb being led to the slaughter.

“You like rough sex, don’t you Daddy? I remember how you used to slap mama’s face and spit on her. Call her a bitch and make her cry for mercy. Fuck you, old man! Now it’s your turn to suffer.” He starts to shake like a dog that’s wet the floor.

“Daddy, there’s something you need to know about me. I want you to know who I am, Daddy. And then I want you to have a heart attack and die. Malcolm X said that the white man must learn to love the black man. Well that’s what I’ve learned to do. That’s right, Daddy, I’m your worst nightmare.”

Bismarck is mesmerized. Before my eyes he becomes like an angelic being, a halo around his head. I get down on my knees, look up into his eyes and say tenderly to him, “Bismarck I love you more than anyone else in the world. You saved my life, baby. I was miserable until I met you. I want you to marry me. Baby, will you marry me?”

“Yes, Kensey, I’ll marry you.”

“Trust me, baby. There’s something that I need you to do, so that Daddy can get to know me better and then he will go away and never bother us again. Will you do this for me?” Bismarck rests his hands on my shoulders and nods his head in agreement. “I want Daddy to know I’m your dick slave. I want Daddy to see my Master’s big cock. I want to service you now.” I unzip him. “Daddy, sorry, you can’t have any. I’m sure you’ve had plenty of cock where you come from.” I deep throat Bismarck with a supernatural fury. We go into ecstasy while Daddy goes into convulsions.

“Goddamn you!” Daddy roars. “I wish you had never been born than to be a nigger lover faggot!”

Before Bismarck shoots his load, I pull off him and cry out to Daddy’s demon. “Daddy, I love it when Bismarck corn holes me. You want to watch him corn hole me, the way you used to corn hole Mama?”

Daddy’s face has turned red, slobbering at the mouth, eyes bulging, gasping for air. He tries desperately to get out of the handcuffs, furious that he can’t hurt me anymore. Bismarck shoots his load on my bare chest.

Daddy stops struggling, his eyes are staring into infinity.

I recite the monk’s prayer.

“NOW BY THE POWER OF THE CHRIST OF GOD WITHIN ME WHOM I WORSHIP WITH ALL MY HEART AND ALL MY SOUL AND ALL MY STRENGTH I ENCOMPASS BISMARK AND MYSELF WITHIN THE DIVINE CIRCLE OF HIS PROTECTION. GET THEE GONE!”

The Daddy Demon returns to the body, opens his red eyes and screams, “That prayer doesn’t work unless you believe in it!” His long tongue slithers out at me but I take a drop of Bismarck’s holy semen, pooled in the hollow space between my nipples and smear it upon the demon’s rough leathery tongue. The Demon cries,” I AM YOU!!!”

“GET THEE GONE!”

And the Demon removes his presence. Daddy’s corpse shrivels up into a fetal position, turns into a big hair ball, and then blows away, without a trace.

I open a bottle of champagne. We raise our glasses and I propose a toast. “Here’s to our future, Bismarck. Here’s to our vast future.” We put down our glasses and embrace. I feel the stiffness of his police uniform, his virile smell, the roughness of his unshaven face. We begin to slow dance, dreaming of things to come. But I stop. I hear a rumbling. We disentangle and I feel that we are being blown apart by a whirlwind. I cling to him until the force pulls us asunder and I’m falling into another world. A hard world with sharp angles, kicks, screams and groans. It is still Harlem, a strict Timespace with dense connections. I am crossing over the threshold, bringing with me the memories of the High Priest, the Harlem hooker, the boy from Texas, and the Demon Daddy, arriving again into impossible living arrangements. I had a mission but I am forgetting my purpose.

“Kensey! Wake up!” I open my eyes to see Bismarck, now, in the physical, waking, world, standing over the bed, calling my name. He brings me back into the sharp angles and the hard surfaces of Timespace, with a past, present, future and many rational perspectives. He shakes me awake, with fear in his face and asks, “Hey, baby, you okay?”

I look around the room seeing phantoms from other Timespaces disappear, going through the walls and out the windows into a black sky. I bring with me my knowledge of the yet to be liberated astral worlds back into the rational world of lawyers and doctors and bills to pay. Someone else was there in the room, behind Bismarck’s tall, muscular, nude body. A thin, light skinned woman wearing an ill-fitting wig and a cotton, pink nightgown stood by his side with a grim look on her face. I was ashamed for I was buck naked, too, and this was Bismarck’s mother.

“What’s the matter with this white boy?” she asked Bismarck.

“Nightmare.” Bismarck said to her, “He’ll be okay. Go back to bed, Mama.”

“He’s sure high strung.” She seemed to float out of the room, back to her room downstairs, the old floors creaking beneath her bare feet. I sensed that she was in the wrong Timespace. She had died of cancer a decade ago, but still hung around haunting Bismarck who was unaware of her influence.

Bismarck returned to our bed. Agitated, I got up and paced the room, with the bed sheet wrapped around me like a toga, and peered out the window into the warm, black night. I stood half naked before him, feeling his erotic, hungry gaze upon my body. I thumped on my chest, trying to return to a heart center, for I felt my energies were scattered across several dimensions. But I knew Bismarck and I shared the same heart, shared a familiar quality of safety. I always seemed to find him, in whatever world we met, like a homing pigeon returning to the right place after flights across great distance.

“Don’t you ever have bad dreams?” I asked.

“Never,” he replied. “Sleep like a rock. I never dream.”

“But everyone dreams.”

“Not me. Now, come back to bed, knucklehead.” He pulled back the covers.

Bismarck had become an intellectual. He has covered up and shut down on his psychic abilities, I thought. It was then I noticed on the table beside the bed, a fat book. The book was Being and Time.

“Do you read that stuff?” I opened the title page and got a feeling of nausea. Puzzled by the sudden exaggerated, intellectual side of his nature, I returned to the bed feeling slightly dizzy. It was as if I was floating again, weightless, transparent, between two worlds, neither here nor there. I rested my head on his shoulder and immediately felt the protection of his big warmth, coming back to planet Earth.

“You know what really impresses a white guy?” Bismarck asked.

“A big black dick,” I reached down and held his sex. He smiled at my provocation but didn’t respond.

“Heidegger,” he answered. “If you quote Heidegger they’re really impressed. They’re impressed to find out a black guy knows who Heidegger was. They also are shocked if you have been to Paris. I’ve been to Paris and I can talk about existentialist shit, and being thrown into the world. If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life. And only then will I be free to become myself. I am more than just a big dick.”

“Sorry that I objectify you. I’ll stop doing that.” I smiled at his audacity, his making fun of white people. “James Baldwin said black people are inside white people and white people are inside black people.” His sex organ came to life, throbbed in my hand, pulsed with pleasure.

I also felt something vague, like a snake slithering in the grass. I meandered through the maze of my troubled memories, searching for the tail of that snake. I figured I would have to wrestle with it. I saw, against my will, an image of a black man hanging in a tree. I felt a wave of terror.

Forcing the image from my mind, not knowing for sure what was real, what was imagined, I pushed back the image of the hanged man into the far away recesses of the mind. Bismarck kissed my lips, as if he could taste the fear.

“I remember something that happened long ago.” I spoke slowly, in a trance state, from the middle of nowhere, “It was a string of pearls. Mama was putting on a string of pearls and I am brushing her thick dark hair. She was getting ready for work. She was a bookkeeper at a store downtown. She was telling me to be a good boy and do what Mary says.”

“Who was Mary?” he asked, sleepily.

“Mary was a Creole, our black maid. I heard Daddy say that we gave her a dollar a day and all she could steal. I was maybe four years old. I remember one morning, Mary watched Mama get into that green Chevrolet and drive off to work. She told me we were going to her house and that we were going to have fun. We waited for the bus. It was a hot day, and her house was by the river. I remember chickens running around in the yard. Daddy had said to my mother, that Mary lived in Nigger Town.

“She had two grandchildren, a girl who was taller than me and a boy who was my size. I can’t remember his name, but I remember he took me by the hand and we walked down to a stream to catch crawdads. We had poles with string on them and we would catch them and put them in a bucket, wiggling and squirming in the noonday sun. We saw a woodpecker hammer its head into the bark of a tree. Swarms of dragonflies were all around us. We watched some big boys shoot a big snake with a BB gun. They picked it up and carried it over their heads with its mouth wide open. Then Mama drove up in the green Chevrolet and she was cursing out Mary, yelling at her, ‘What have you done with my baby? Kensey, where are you?’ She carried me back to the car, hysterical.

“‘What have these people done to you? You’re filthy.’ I started crying. I said I didn’t want to go home. I wanted to stay with Mary. I wanted to stay in Nigger Town. She said, ‘You hush up. You keep crying like that and I’ll give you something to cry about.'”

“What happened to Mary?” Bismarck asked.

“I don’t remember. I guess that was when I first became aware that I was a white person and that I wanted to live in Nigger Town.”

We were quiet, now. Bismarck was drifting off to sleep, and I was too fragile to initiate love making. He mumbled, “Don’t like being a symbol of three hundred years of oppression.” He rolled over on his side and pulled my arm around his torso. The cat had jumped onto the bed and made himself comfortable.

Out of the window, over the sleepy houses, I could see the moon. ‘Oh mama! What would you have me do? Oh, mama.’ Bismarck’s snore faded away as I followed that snake in the grass, and the snake turned into a cat, and at the end of the meadow the cat turned into a woman, a woman who was running in fear from me. She stumbled and fell in the mud. Mama?

We are both adults, wrestling in a muddy ditch. She tries to run away from me. I shout at her, “I am not your husband! I am not your father! I am not your lover! I am your son!”

She is trembling in the rain and tells me, “I’m afraid of you. I was afraid of you before you were born.” Then she runs into a field of gray and the field bursts into bright sparks and like a celluloid film that gets overheated, the image burns, melts and turns into blinding white light.

The light was so bright that even with my eyes closed it filled the inside of my skull. I opened my eyes. Wide eyed, filled with a nameless fear, I remained motionless for hours, staring at the ceiling, aware of the sound of the traffic. I sensed there was another room, in another village, where my mother slept. I was aware of my body humming, of my irregular heartbeat, of death, of her death and mine. My human body, I knew, had been enslaved, sold and resold, raped and killed, burnt alive. I have been beggar, priest and whore, man, woman, child, Angel and Demon. Each lifetime we think we will make it turn out right but it always turns into just another ugly, unforgiving dream.

∞

As I opened my eyes I smelled bacon frying. The room was still dark, the cat curled at my feet. Bismarck was downstairs cooking breakfast. The cat leaped to the floor as I wrapped a terry cloth robe around me. Then I noticed, sitting in the corner of the bedroom, dressed in a police uniform, was Bismarck’s mother. I picked up her story telepathically.

She had been raised in foster care. Then as a teenager she married Bismarck’s father, who abandoned them. She became a police officer. She was a single mom who raised two sons. One of them was Bismarck, her eldest son. The other son had died of an overdose. She wondered what Bismarck was doing with a loser like me. I wanted her to love me, but I knew that was an irrational want. She asked, bluntly, “What do you want with my son?”

“Love him, I guess.”

“Love?” She looked like she wanted to spit “You doin’ drugs?”

“No, mam, I don’t do drugs.”

“You from the South?”

“Yes, mam, raised in Texas, born in Alabama, Tuscaloosa.”

“Tuscaloosa?” She looked horrified. “The killing fields. More black folks lynched in that hell hole than the rest of the South put together. What are you doing here in New York?”

“An actor. I want to be an actor, but I’m tending bar downtown in a place called the Monster.”

“The Monster? I know that place. An evil place, where all the faggots go.”

I noticed on her lap was sheet music. It was Mahler’s second symphony. “Resurrection Symphony?” I asked, surprised, “Are you working on this music? Are you in the chorus?”

“I’m a soloist.” she laughed, sardonically, “Ich bin von Gott und will wieder zu Gott!” She stood and faced me, and a chill came from her. “Use an alternate route.” And then she faded into the yellow roses of the old wall paper.

I went downstairs, feeling troubled, trying to figure out what she meant by an alternate route? Where were these ancestors, my father and Bismarck’s mother, located? And why were they appearing in my energy field in such a haphazard way? I let go of my memories of those other realms and pretended that I was a denizen of this slice of reality that some believed was all there is. I realized it was best to surrender my memories of that other world, just to see if I could. Then I heard some delightful music.

The radio played a Schubert quartet as Bismarck cooked. Nothing sexier than my man in the kitchen, dressed in heavy denim and a white T-shirt, moving lightly, gracefully to the music. He was so sure of himself, so completely inside his body. Tall, broad shouldered, with a thin waist, shaved head. I had a desire for him. As I watched him make breakfast, swaying to the music, unaware of my presence, I thought how different we were.

I was not on equal terms with my body. Something was wrong with it. No matter how much I meditated, no matter how much yoga I did, I could never completely relax into it. Bismarck was just himself. I felt his expectation as I put my hands around his waist while he stirred the frying pan. I rubbed my crotch against his butt. “You want a little sugar in your bowl?” I whispered in his ear.

“You sure are horny, all of a sudden.” He turned off the stove. He sat down at the dining room table and ate quickly. He looked like a fine thoroughbred, getting into the starting gate, full of energy.

“Do you always get up so fucking early?” I yawned. “The sun isn’t even up yet.” I sat down and started to eat, too.

“Early rehearsal at Lincoln Center. I like to walk through the park before work.” His viola was in the case on the table. He finished his last mouthful, gulped down his coffee, laced up his sneakers. I felt uneasy. “Are you rehearsing Mahler?”

“How did you know?”

“I’m psychic,” I replied. “Seriously, I am.” Bismarck looked nervous. “What’s wrong, baby? Is it about last night?”

“You should talk to your father,” he said, firmly. “How long has he been out of jail?”

“Not a jail, an insane asylum. And you want me to talk to that pig?” I poured a cup of coffee, my hands shaking. I turned off the radio. My voice rose, loudly “After all the shit he’s done you think I should talk to him? What part of it do you not understand? My father thinks Martin Luther King was an uppity nigger! He thought Hitler was a good man! My father was too fucking weird even for the Ku Klux Klan!”

“That’s not the point!” Bismarck shouted back at me. “He’s still your father. You’ve made up half of this shit. You haven’t seen him since you were ten years old. You don’t know who he is. You always daydreaming. Going off into some fantasy. It’s reality time, baby, it’s time to face reality.”

“I don’t want reality, baby, I want magic!”

“You rely too much on the kindness of strangers.” Bismarck shot back at me.

“I support myself,” I said, feeling defensive, “I have my own place. I can become an investment banker if I want to.”

“Well, good luck, baby, don’t let me stand in your way.” He sat in the chair across from me, with a creased forehead, wiping his mouth with a paper napkin. I stared down at his big Nikes. I put my bare foot on his sneaker, feeling my desire for him. Bismarck spoke quietly, in his deep baritone, in a reasonable tone. “Look at it this way. Your father is an old man. He’s sick. He has no power over you. You and me…we’re trying to make a go of it. We need to start with a clean slate. I’m not telling you what to do, but if you got a problem with him that affects me too.” He put his hand on his heart.

“He does have power.” I corrected him. “He’s got the evil eye. He wants to destroy me.”

“Never, never land,” Bismarck said. “You be Peter Pan, living in Neverland with your lost boys down in the Village, almost forty years old, still waiting tables.”

“Okay, girl,” I turned sarcastic, “and if I be Peter Pan that makes you my Tinkerbell!”

“Shut the fuck up! Don’t ever call me girl! Not in my house.” He stopped himself as he saw my testosterone rising to match his, like two alley cats hissing at each other. “Get dressed and walk with me to work. Let’s go through the park.”

I washed my face, dressed fast, and met Bismarck outside on the stoop. He locked the front door. I saw the sun rising over the park at the end of the block and started to feel a sense of vertigo, that weird feeling again, as if I was dropped in the middle of a Hollywood set and that this was just make believe. The quality of the light bathed the park in a celestial glow.

As we walked across the street towards the park, I noticed a big tattooed guy with his shirt off. He was being pulled by two ferocious pit bulls which were snarling at each other. They were coming towards us and I could tell the guy with the tattoos thought we were faggots. I got ready for a fight and sent him a wave of energy. I watched him and the dogs pass us by and suddenly felt a rush of relief that we escaped from being attacked.

Within minutes we were sitting by the edge of the lake in Central Park, listening to the gentle lapping of the waves. Far away in the distance we heard mute sounds of traffic. Above us a jet passed over, like a silver bullet in slow motion. Bismarck closed his eyes while I stayed alert, watchful, determined to protect him. I dared not touch him for he was shy about touch in public and it might trigger a bad reaction.

“By the way,” I said, gently, “did your mother wear a wig?”

His eyes widened. “How the fuck did you know that?”

“Saw her last night. She was talking to you about me. Told you that I was high strung.”

“Oh shit,” he said sounding amazed. “She’s right about that.”

“She died of cancer, didn’t she? She stayed in the maid’s room downstairs, to save you the trouble of carrying her up and down the stairs.”

“Kensey, I don’t want to hear this,” he said, reluctantly. “Deep down inside of you, there is a black woman. You just got a vivid imagination.”

“That’s true,” I agreed. ”I’ve listened to enough Billie Holiday, but it’s not my imagination. It’s real. Your mother is still hanging around your house. I know nothing about Heidegger but feel it’s just a lot of pretentious crap. You are afraid of knowing your past too.”

The ducks floated on the shimmering surface of the lake. A rank smell of rotting weeds wafted along the bank. Voluptuous clouds rose up majestically, reflected in the water. All of it arising and passing away. Rough magic. Breathing quietly, I no longer wanted to be a bodhisattva nor did I want to share the merit of my meditation with all sentient beings. I just wanted Bismarck and me to be okay.

Then it happened. A great rush of wings, bird shrieks, twigs from above fell onto our heads. Crows making harsh cries circled all around us and their shadowy shapes flapped ominously. All of this reflected in the broken up water of the lake.

What I saw next astonished me. It was something I had never seen before. There on the ground, a dozen yards away from us, landed a great hawk. It sat upon the struggling body of a smaller bird that flopped helplessly in the bigger bird’s talons. The hawk was probably young and still a clumsy hunter for it looked confused by the condemning crows who took turns swooping down to peck his noble head. The crows seemed to hate this cannibal hawk that was going to feed on the defenseless bird.

Feathers were flying. The hawk could not fly off with its struggling prey while the crows were attacking him. Determined to take off, the hawk gathered strength for its big flight. I watched his innocent victim struggle. I was tempted to throw something at the hawk but a deeper wisdom held me back. The hawk may appear evil but he was beautiful and I knew I had no right to interfere with his natural desire to hunt and prey on the weaker creatures. He had his chicks to feed.

Finally, awfully, the hawk lifted its wings, which were dappled with delicate creamy feathers, and lifted into the air. He struggled to hold onto his exhausted bloodied prey. He began a crooked flight above the shrubs along the shore, and then flew straight across the lake. He was soon above the trees, finding open space and an escape towards the horizon, as angry crows followed the hawk in hot pursuit.

“Oh shit!” I gasped, in awe. “Did you see that?” I felt chills go through my body. My mind was suddenly empty, without a plan, without a hope. Cuddling up against Bismarck, my body softened into his, overwhelmed by gratitude. “You are right, baby. I do need to see my father. Thank you.” He nodded his head in agreement, kissed me tenderly on the lips, in public. This was a sign that he was letting go of his being stuck in the closet. I released his hand and told him I was going to book a flight to Houston, to go back home, back to Texas. To the scene of the crime. To see my father.

We took a brisk walk through the park as the lazy summer morning started gathering momentum. More pedestrians and bikers appeared, moving all around us. The great Manhattan madness was starting up again.

“Will I see you before you go?” he asked.

“Better get this over with my father before I see you again. I have bad boundaries with you. I can’t help it. When I get back we’ll start with a clean slate. You are inside of me.” We embraced, a long embrace, as pedestrians rushed off to work around us, totally ignoring us, giving us our privacy. I waved farewell to Bismarck as I heard the A train arriving at the station, preparing to go back downtown to the Village.

∞

After Happy Hour at the Monster, I got off work and hooked up with Barry, my best friend. Barry had blue eyes, blonde hair, and was a real hunk. We started out at the Barracuda, on the West side. It was a stuffy professional scene, mostly actors and models. The same old, boring, cookie-cutter crowd. After the Chelsea circuit, feeling discouraged by the slim pickings, we decided to go to a salt and pepper bar down in the Village.

On the back of Barry’s bike, I balanced on the narrow seat while he pumped up and down with his strong legs. Holding on tightly to his broad shoulders, I marveled that we kept our balance after all the booze we’ve been drinking. “I love you Barry!” I shouted over his shoulder.

He shouted back, “Love you too, darling!”

Familiar stores and restaurants looked strange, whizzing past us in a neon blur. We stopped to pee on the street. I told him I was going to catch a flight to Houston, to see my lunatic father.

“Are you sure you want to do that?” he asked.

“Bismarck thinks it’s good therapy.”

“Good luck,” he said, keeping it superficial. He locked up his bike on the street and we strolled arm in arm into the club. It was a late night vampire crowd. Old trolls and an assortment of pretty boys up way past their bedtime, high on coke. The diva sang, “Sweet dreams are made of this, who am I to disagree, some of them want to use you, some of them want to be used by you.”

Barry looked startled as he glanced at someone in the dark corner on the other side of the pool table. Barry looked away. As we ordered drinks and sat at the bar, in the mirror above the bottles, I could see the tall black guy with Dreadlocks, a jewel sparkling in his ear, gazing fixedly at Barry. The black guy’s body was gracefully poised, like a cheetah that’s been running across the savannas, hiding in trees from the lions, ready to leap out of the trees when he feels safe.

“Who’s that guy staring at you?” I asked. “He’s cute.”

“That’s Dr. Feel Good.” Barry said, as he lit a cigarette. “I’ve stopped seeing him. He’s the kinky doctor I told you about.”

“Why did you stop seeing him?”

“He’s a needy top,” Barry replied in a flip tone. “Always checking up on me. Too hot and heavy. He gets on my nerves. Would you stop staring at him? I don’t want to get involved with him.”

“Well, it’s too late now. Here he comes.”

The big cat moved from his perch, floated across the room, as if he was suspended by wires from the ceiling. “If you don’t want him, give him to me.”

“Don’t start with me, bitch.” Barry snapped at me.

The big cat stood next to Barry, waiting for his acknowledgement. “Why haven’t you returned my calls?” he asked Barry.

“I’ve been busy.” Barry replied, blowing smoke in his face.

“Hi, I’m Richard.” He turned to me and introduced himself in a dignified manner. We shook hands, then he gracefully put his arm around Barry, as I excused myself and went to the toilet. They needed to be alone.

As I emptied my bladder, I noticed the latrine next to me was occupied by the bouncer, a big black dude, three hundred pounds of steroid muscles. He had a nose ring, tattoos, and a heavy chain around his neck. Out of the corner of my eye I quickly glanced down at him. Huge. Uncut. I glanced away quickly. He zipped up, ignoring me completely. He didn’t wash his hands.

I had a sobering moment, gazing at my reflection in the mirror. If I pick up someone, then I won’t have to go home alone tonight. Missing Bismark already, I also want to be a no-good slut. I’m torn down the middle! I want that Sunday kind of love, but I love Bar Culture too.

I was startled by a look-alike Diana Ross drag queen who strutted into the bathroom and locked the door. I watched as she opened her purse, as if she was alone in the room, and casually spread out a line of coke on a cocktail napkin. She snorted it through a rolled up dollar bill. She turned, with her bleary eyes heavy with mascara, and offered the white powder to me. I took a hit, flattered by her attention. She smiled. “You’re cute.” She reached down for my dick. I stopped her. She shrugged her shoulders. “Did I get it wrong? Sorry, baby.”

“I’m a married man,” I opened the door, turned to her and said,” You look gorgeous.”

“I am an image,” she smiled at herself in the mirror. “A shadow of a dream, with a beautiful mind.”

At the bar, Dr. Feel Good was wrapped around Barry like a boa constrictor. I felt like I was in a bad porno movie. The bouncer, perched on a stool, near the entrance, was reading a paperback version of Pride and Prejudice. I gathered my courage and walked over, tried to start a conversation.

“So, you’re the literary type?” He ignored my comment but I foolishly pursued it. “Do you like Jane Austen?”

“You have a problem with Jane Austen?” He looked down at me as if I were a nerd. I walked away embarrassed. I had no rhythm tonight. And besides, I was just sabotaging myself. I needed to catch a flight the next morning. I should make my exit. I said goodnight to Barry and the good doctor.

“Take a cab,” Barry said. “Get home safe.”

I wished I had taken a cab. Maybe it wouldn’t have happened. I decided to walk home. I was bombed. Easy prey.

A few blocks away from my apartment I saw him emerge from the steamy heat, a gorgeous kid with a hipster’s walk. Rough trade. The color of French roast. The kind of kid that makes old ladies hold onto their purses. The kind of kid that I’d jump through hoops for. As he walked past me with a high indifference, I averted my gaze, not wanting to appear too obvious, getting a whiff of his strong patchouli oil. As few steps later I was surprised to find him walking behind me. Slowing down my pace, I turned and faced him.

I immediately felt the tornado coming right at me. He kept his eyes steady upon me. I felt like I was, once again, looking into the eyes of the King Cobra who was getting ready to spit. Alert to the danger, I was attracted to it nonetheless. He offered me a stick of gum. The sweet chew made me feel young, blasé, kind of naïve.

“I live with my girlfriend over on Avenue D,” he said. “Had a fight with her.”

“You got a girl? What do you want with me?”

“Pussy is easy to get.” He acted hyper. “A good piece of ass is hard to find.”

There was a construction site nearby. He took me into a dark area behind the dumpster. “You want to look at it?” He whipped it out. He’s huge. Fully erect. “Fifty bucks,” he said. “I’ll fuck you to death.”

“No thanks.” I turned away from him.

“Fuck you, faggot.” He hit me in the jaw.

I stumbled back onto the street, looking for a well-lit area. I felt grit in my mouth. Loose enamel. I was a block from my house. The street was empty. Stumbling towards my building, the street refused to stay still. I put my key in the door, opened it. I was pushed through the door, slammed to the floor with a blow to the back of the head. I kissed the concrete. Managing to rise, I stumbled towards the stairs, felt another blow. The gorgeous kid had a box cutter at my throat. Oh shit. The Angel of Death. Might as well relax. Get ready to meet my Maker. I swallowed the chewing gum.

“Why,” he asked,” did you make me show it to you if you didn’t want it?”

‘Pace, pace, mio Dio.‘  I heard Maria Callas singing from the crazy Italian lady’s apartment.

The kid reached down into my pocket, pulled out all I had, a ten-dollar bill, then walked out the building, slamming the front door shut. During the scuffle, I had pulled off his wristwatch. I stared at it in my hand. I just got mugged and I ended up with a nice watch, more valuable than the ten bucks he got from me.

The old Italian lady peeked through her door. Maria Callas flooded the hallway with her golden voice. Mrs. Pedone suffered from insomnia ever since her husband passed away. She didn’t even like opera, but her husband had been a big fan.

“It’s okay, Mrs. Pedone.” I tried to calm her. She was almost blind, but she knew my voice “Sorry to disturb you.”

“Oh, Mr. Jones. It’s you.” After she sniffed the air for danger, she closed the door.

I stared at the watch. Was this a message? A cosmic joke? I recalled the words to the song… ‘Does anybody really know what time it is?’ I hummed the melody as I climbed the steep stairs, hearing the echo of my lonesome voice. Tumbling into my apartment, grateful to be alone in my bed, alone in the dark, alone and alive.

The “Other” Globalization and Fear of the Feminine: a Mythological View

By

By  | 
Feature Image: Claudia Dea, The Kiss of the Goddess, via Flickr [CC BY 2.0]
Print

The advent of the Internet for the average citizen in the 1990s has proven both a blessing and a curse. One of its positive attributes is the way in which it introduced the world to itself. For the United States in particular it meant finally having a reliable and accessible channel to the rest of the world, allowing a glimpse of what was beyond our isolated position in the Atlantic. Communication across the globe has become cheap and easy, and allows us to expand our knowledge of other people and cultures. This leads to two possible outcomes: one possibility is that this will break down barriers of prejudice and nationalism. The other possibility is that it will reinforce these barriers. What we now see going on in the world is evidence of the latter.

“Globalization” is a dirty word to many people, but what does it mean? Jonathan Cobb provides an excellent summary of the economic definition of the term in his recent Metapsychosis article, “The Global Abyss.” When we hear about “globalization” in the capitalistic sense, it deals with colonialism and exploitation, and therefore it is rightly a “dirty word.” The terms of IMF loans required that they be spent developing businesses and trade. They were not to be used for public welfare of any kind. As incentives were offered to companies who opened up shop, labor was often exploited. This led to populations staying poor and international businesses getting rich. If there is one thing that the political left and right tend to agree on it’s that big business is exploitative. Here in the United States, prior to the rise of the Internet, we may not have noticed the exploitative nature of our home-grown companies before, but now it is happening to us. Legal decisions like Citizens United provide corporations with influence and rights that are harmful to the average working citizen. Jobs are being outsourced to places where unions don’t exist, and labor is so cheap it almost qualifies as slave labor. Technological advances and increased automation will require new thinking about the “work” economy, but in the meantime we are left with a workforce dependent on both manufacturing and service jobs.

But “globalization” can also mean something like the opposite of “nationalism.” Nationalism is often experienced as separate nations making war over resources and promoting false ideas of racial or ethnic superiority. Psychoanalyst Erik Erikson referred to these latter ideas as “pseudospeciation”: the idea that one group of humans is superior to another on some kind of economic, cultural, or moral grounds.1Erikson, Erik H. Childhood and Society. W.W. Norton, 1993, p. 10. In contrast, globalization is a perception of the world as one “country.” On a broader scale, this is embracing the collective human race over individual ethnic and political groups.

My own research in myth and psychology suggests that the underlying principle of this “collective” ideal is “feminine” in nature. In Carol Gilligan’s work entitled A Different Voice she speaks to the differences in the way boys and girls think. Gilligan illustrates this by presenting the “Heinz’s Dilemma,” which is a psychological problem constructed to test the moral and emotional maturity of children. The dilemma runs thus: Heinz’s wife has cancer. Heinz can’t afford the medicine his wife needs to get better. Should Heinz steal the drug or let his wife die? When an 11-year-old boy and girl from roughly the same background and education were asked to provide a response to “Heinz’s Dilemma,” they both thought of the problem in very different ways. The boy who answered this question gave a very rational, legalistic response to the problem. The girl offered a more ambiguous response, feeling that neither solution was adequate. She asked, ‘Couldn’t people raise money to help Heinz buy the drug? Wasn’t there another way?'2Gilligan, Carol. In a Different Voice: Women’s Conception of the Self and of Morality. Harvard University Press, 1977, p. 30. The girl’s way of thinking was frustrating to the researchers who rated her as lower in maturity than the boy. Gilligan points out that she is not immature; rather, she is thinking about the broader community rather than just the individual or the details of law. This mode of thought might be called a “feminine” way.

This distinction, between an individual/masculine perspective and a collective/female perspective has been made by several psychoanalysts over the years. Jung used the term logos to refer to the psychological “masculine” while the “feminine” is akin to eros. “Masculine” is related to the hero’s journey, the warrior moving away from the safety of home to make his way in the world, to later bring back his “boon” and provide a benefit to the community. The last part of the journey is seen by Jung as a reunion of “masculine” and “feminine,” which is about integrating once again with the collective—love, family, sharing, and community. Others, like Erich Neumann, likened the rational, conscious mind to a masculine Heaven and the collective powers “that threaten to devour” to the feminine Earth.3Neumann, Erich. The Fear of the Feminine and Other Essays on Feminine Psychology. Princeton University Press, 1994, p. 172. When feminine energy is described in this manner, as something which erases individuality and devours identity, it’s not surprising when it becomes something to be feared.

If we apply these concepts to our “globalized” world, with every person belonging to a network connected by technology, where social groups and shared experiences dominate our reality, we begin to see the problem. What happens when these two groups bump up against each other? If one group values independence and the other values inclusion, do they see one another as a threat? In Western culture, “feminine” or “collective” thinking has become associated with what is evil or weak. This frightening view of the collective, akin to the archetype of the Terrible Mother, is what drives a lot of the current global political and social narrative. It represents a fear of change, and on a broader level, of death. We don’t want to embrace the Other, or lose ourselves in the collective. Recognizing what we have in common might threaten what makes us special.

This view does not necessarily have to do with individual women per se, nor does it apply only to females. The terms “masculine” and “feminine” can apply to men or women, and all men and women have both masculine and feminine attributes.

This broader psychological view is important when we consider the role of narrative in our culture. Narratives which are accepted as truth often become the foundation of future behavior. The general assumption is that truth is supported by authoritative evidence. Library science has many theoretical and philosophical writings on the notion of the “authoritative.” It is assumed to be knowledge conveyed by an expert, and reviewed by that expert’s peers. The “expert” has spent time studying the question, problem, or topic in depth. For this reason, secular society prefers science over religion as a basis for its laws and decision-making, as noted by Alan Watts.4Watts, Alan. “The Ceramic and the Fully Automatic Model.” YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfNbmwiTIlE

While this is a very sensible approach to information about the world, nature, and the universe, it tends to fall too much on the side of logos. The “irrational” side of consciousness—intuition, emotion, perception—is viewed as unreliable and therefore false. The entire category of religion is labeled as such by some materialists and atheists, because belief in a god requires “faith” in unseen forces. Along with religion goes personal experience. Since an individual’s experience is easily influenced by emotions, the assessment of that experience is judged as not being objective. What is “felt” is dismissed in favor of what is “logical”; the “feminine” aspect of our consciousness is discredited and the “masculine” aspect is seen as the only credible one.

This is the root of the narrative problem. When society’s narrative is overly rationalistic and “masculine,” there’s no room for the “felt” truth of the individual. Likewise, when a “feminine” narrative arises out a common experience and a shared feeling, there can be a resistance to hearing any rationale behind what happened. A fundamental human desire is to feel validated. When our experiences are dismissed and our viewpoints ridiculed or ignored, we respond negatively to the sense of rejection. It doesn’t matter if we are actually right or wrong in a factual sense; not being listened to or believed is still alienating.

Fear of the unknown is also part of the equation. When confronted with new viewpoints or when forced to accept changes brought about by crisis, personal insecurity can bring about defensive behavior. Our belief in the principle of cause and effect makes us look for an “answer” to problems that are not easily articulated or defined. When we can’t seem to make sense of what’s happening, we look for a quick fix. One way is to demonize the supposed “cause” of the problem, thereby creating a scapegoat. Another way is to cling to belief systems that spell out every detail of behavior and promise to speak with the authority of the “ultimate” (i.e. God).

If we put all of this together into a society that pits reasoned, scientific observation against what is felt and shared, you end up with a backlash against both. This is why we are now left in a world that is increasingly fascist and nationalistic, with each side believing they are the superior group of humans based “on some kind of economic, cultural, or moral grounds.”

It also puts us into an information environment being described as “post-factual.” Facts no longer matter; an individual’s preferred narrative is all that matters. This may appear to be an appeal to the “feminine,” where large groups of people all buy into the same story, but it actually demonstrates an absence of the feminine: there is a war of worldviews, and accepting another’s worldview is viewed as weakness.

The choosing of a bullying, xenophobic white man for President of the United States reflects the narrative of a frightened America now on the defensive. He has identified and named our scapegoats and now we are going after them. It’s an action movie where the vigilante guy who doesn’t play by the rules destroys the evil villains. But where is the re-integration? In this version, Odysseus never comes home and “plants his oar”—he perpetually goes on plundering and making war. It is a hero narrative that has all the battle scenes and none of the re-integration or offering of boons to society. Carl Jung warned about repressing all of our natural archetypal instincts during the tumultuous events of his time.5Jung, C.G. “Epilogue to ‘Essays on Contemporary Events.’” Civilization in Transition. (Collected Works, v. 10), Pantheon Books 1964, pp. 235-236. The problem may be even worse today. The repression and neglect of the collective has led to something like a mass psychosis, with each side being driven mad by the Other.

The reader might object that much of this is rather abstract and somewhat general. But it is important to look at the drives, fears, and a priori assumptions that drive human behavior. It is no longer sufficient to simply dismiss certain narratives as “irrational” or “delusional” because they appear to originate outside our group. “Feminine” and “Masculine” thinking lies within us all. We must look deeper into the views we don’t understand to unearth the threads that tie us all together. We live in a world that is post-mythical. There is no longer a single convincing narrative that unites everyone. Joseph Campbell told Bill Moyers during their Power of Myth conversations that any future myth has to be a global one.6Joseph Campbell the Power of Myth with Bill Moyers. Edited by Betty Sue Flowers, Doubleday, 1988, p. 32. The time has come to write our new myth story; one which embraces the truth about who we are as people, the power of connectedness, and the real threats to our humanity.

The Internet has been a terrifying force for spreading harmful falsehoods that affect entire nations and the entire world. But the Internet is not “evil.” It has the potential to unite as well as divide. The question becomes: how does the individual find their way past collective fears and scapegoating without fear of losing themselves or their values? Even if we feel safe in our own familiar spaces, isolation and alienation will not lead to happiness.

We need to look at the positive aspects of the collective without fearing for our identities. Much like the Hindu concept of the divine, we are One with many facets like a diamond. We are not separate from each other—our shared experience of life happens in relationship to what is around ALL of us.

References   [ + ]

1. ↑ Erikson, Erik H. Childhood and Society. W.W. Norton, 1993, p. 10.
2. ↑ Gilligan, Carol. In a Different Voice: Women’s Conception of the Self and of Morality. Harvard University Press, 1977, p. 30.
3. ↑ Neumann, Erich. The Fear of the Feminine and Other Essays on Feminine Psychology. Princeton University Press, 1994, p. 172.
4. ↑ Watts, Alan. “The Ceramic and the Fully Automatic Model.” YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfNbmwiTIlE
5. ↑ Jung, C.G. “Epilogue to ‘Essays on Contemporary Events.’” Civilization in Transition. (Collected Works, v. 10), Pantheon Books 1964, pp. 235-236.
6. ↑ Joseph Campbell the Power of Myth with Bill Moyers. Edited by Betty Sue Flowers, Doubleday, 1988, p. 32.

The Global Abyss

By

By  | 
Feature Image: AK Rockerfeller, USA Abstract [via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0]
Print

It seemed unthinkable. A narcissistic reality show star with an authoritarian personality and a highly volatile temperament was elected to the highest office in the land on a platform of bigotry, xenophobia, and bullying. He was quite possibly the least qualified man to ever make it to the general election, let alone win the election. Yet against all expectations, here we are. The question has come up repeatedly over the course of this election as to whether he could legitimately be labeled a fascist. One Marxist history professor I spoke to suggested that “Bonapartist” would be more accurate, but for our purposes, “fascism” is about as useful a term as any to describe the current political atmosphere, but whatever the case, he is certainly part of a global far right uprising that has taken the Philippines, Britain, Brazil, and Turkey, and may soon include France. How did we get here?

Many pundits have been quick to point out that the Democrats sowed the seeds of their own destruction by pursuing neoliberal policies that outsourced jobs and abandoned the working class. I do not disagree with this, but I think it behooves us to look closely at what neoliberalism is, and how it developed in the first place.

The Global Empire

Our story begins in 1492. When Columbus landed on the island of Hispaniola, he and his fellow conquistadors enslaved the local population to mine gold for the Spanish empire. Later colonial powers including Britain, Portugal, France, and the Netherlands all followed suit, using enslaved peoples to extract natural resources from their homeland for export to their colonial masters. Finding indigenous slaves troublesome because of their tendency to know the lay of the land, slaves were purchased from kingdoms in Africa, before they themselves were conquered by European powers, and its citizens subjugated under laws that reduced them to indentured servitude. Resources previously held in the commons were privatized, and crushing debts were imposed on the population. After slavery was abolished and those countries gained their independence, those debts remained.

In the aftermath of World War II, two new superpowers emerged: The United States and the Soviet Union. The two competed with other over control of the rest of the world. An economic pact of countries from the capitalist west resulted in the Bretton Woods system, which established the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. These institutions issued loans to foreign governments, denominated in US dollars, with the intended purpose of developing and modernizing their country through infrastructure projects. This seemed to have great results at first, and countries were encouraged to borrow more. These debts compounded upon the existing debts they owed to their former colonizers since gaining their independence. At the same time, the leaders of these countries were being advised by western economists, who advised them to pursue policies that favored export-led development, switching from subsistence agriculture to cash crops and selling natural resources to the developed world, which had itself developed its industries through long periods of protectionism, opening their borders to trade primarily in finished goods. The US itself had major farm subsidies to give its agricultural exports a competitive edge. It didn’t help that many of the leaders of these countries were themselves educated in prestigious European and American universities, where they were taught the same economic canon that western advisers were feeding them.

This economic dogma was built on the idea of growth: People were made better off by expanding the scale of economic activity. In a growth economy, all boats would be lifted, so there was no need to redistribute wealth from the top to the bottom so that others could have a bigger piece of the pie. Instead, the pie itself would become larger. Policies were implemented that promoted free enterprise while taxing the poor through payroll and consumption taxes. Capital markets were opened so that investment would flood into these countries. So-called “export processing zones” were established offering a barrier-free environment for corporations to set up factories to produce goods for export.

These policies in many cases did result in growth, but the benefits did not spread to everyone as promised. Instead, they created a small economic elite while dispossessing countless others. Land and resources were sold off to extractive industries, forcing people off their land and into the cities to look for work, where they found it in factories built by Western corporations, the profits from which went not to their own country, but into the hands of corporate shareholders. These factories, otherwise known as “sweatshops,” would often have small dormitories for workers to live on-site, while working long days under poor working conditions with military-like discipline in order to send what little wages they made to their families. Others who were unable to get jobs in these factories ended up in slums, living in small improvised shacks put together from pieces of wood, scrap metal, and whatever else they could get their hands on, while turning to whatever kind of enterprise they could manage, legal or illegal. It’s a myth that poverty, in and of itself, produces crime. It is countries with high levels of inequality that see high levels of crime and violence. It is the existence of a wealthy elite that pushes others off to the margins, leaving them having to fight for survival any way they can.

Many countries had no choice but to take on these loans, due to their existing debt to their colonizers. When the loans went bad, as they tended to do in times of economic crisis, the World Bank and IMF implemented “structural adjustment programs,” in which they would send in advisors to “restructure” the economy according to a set of prevailing economic theories that became known as the “Washington consensus.” Those leaders that refused to go along with this scheme put their lives in danger. The CIA would often come in and arm rebel groups, supporting juntas that were friendly to American business interests. Guatemala, Iran, Chile, El Salvador, and several others all learned firsthand the consequences of defying the Washington consensus. When the CIA failed, only then would the US commit troops to the ground, as in Iraq and Libya.

Austerity

All of this extracted wealth funded the most prosperous economy in America’s history. Labor unions were strong, wages were rising, and a very progressive income tax redistributed this influx of money broadly to ordinary Americans. Even modern progressives who now look back fondly upon this time scarcely realize it was financed by blood money. This prosperous period began to see cracks in its façade sometime in the mid-70s. Factories began to close as corporations outsourced them overseas, where they could hire cheap labor and import the products back into America. Thatcher in Britain and Reagan in America each did their part to break up unions and dismantle the welfare state in their countries. Clinton signed the infamous NAFTA treaty, sending American jobs to Mexico, and bringing in an unprecedented wave of immigration from the south.

For the first time, the developed world was beginning to apply the Washington consensus to itself, with one notable exception: rather than using these economies to supply labor and natural resources, they would be service-based consumer economies that would buy the products produced in these other countries while working service jobs that produced nothing. These service jobs themselves were propped up by what is known as the FIRE sector: finance, insurance, and real estate. These extractive industries produce no value of their own either, but live parasitically off of wealth produced elsewhere. Rent and debt thus became a ghostly platform upon which neoliberalism constructed its house of cards, which came crashing down in the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. Obama came to power on the promise of fixing the economy, and bringing America back to prosperity. He bailed out the auto industry, passed a stimulus plan, and pushed the country’s first universal healthcare law, commonly referred to as “Obamacare.” However, Obamacare proved to be a huge corporate giveaway, the stimulus plan proved too small, and the so-called “auto industry” he bailed out was producing most of its cars in Mexico, and most of its activity in America was in the FIRE sector. Thus, it turned out to be yet another bank bailout. The economy did make a recovery, but mostly in low-wage part-time work. The fundamentals are still as weak as ever.

It is in this environment that we have just witnessed the most shocking election in this country’s history. A woman who was in the eyes of many the very embodiment of this neoliberal establishment faced off against a corrupt, authoritarian, narcissistic billionaire who campaigned against everything she stood for: feminism, political correctness, multiculturalism, and most of all, neoliberalism. The fascist won, and America is now in uncharted territory. This man promised to ban Muslims from entering the US, called Mexicans rapists and murderers and threatened to deport millions of them, declared war on the media, and threatened to jail his political opponent. The future has never looked more bleak.

Contradictions

What happened here? How did we arrive at this dark abyss? To understand this, we need to understand the inner workings of capitalism. Capitalism is built on the basis of profit. Profit, in accounting terms, simply means walking away from a deal with more than you came in with. However, if everyone is trading with each other, then for every profit there should be a corresponding loss, such that the two cancel each other out. On balance, there should be no aggregate profit. Yet capitalism sees massive profits for international corporations. So where is this profit coming from? It is extracted, first from the earth’s natural resources and then from the labor power of the workers. Labor, treated as a commodity, is consistently undersold. Land and natural resources have been monopolized, dispossessing people of the means to work for themselves, and forcing them to sell their labor for a wage just high enough to keep them working there. The surplus value they generate goes to the capitalist as profit, along with rents from natural resources.

But profit is not stable. All else being equal, it will tend to diminish over time as a result of competition. In order to maintain aggregate profits, capitalism must continuously expand. New natural resources and labor markets must be tapped to keep the cycle going. It is not merely that neoliberal ideology has everyone believing in growth as the solution to all economic problems. Capitalism does, in fact, structurally require growth in order to maintain itself. The neocolonialism of the 20th century funded the economic prosperity of America and the generous welfare states in Europe. However, sometime in the 70s, globalization started to reach certain limits. There were fewer new resources they hadn’t taken control of yet. There were fewer labor markets that could provide cheap labor. Western governments started to roll back the policies that had helped enable the standard of living their citizens were used to. Its grip on the Third World was starting to slip, so it had to start squeezing workers in the First World. Unions were crushed, jobs were outsourced, and the whole society was shifted towards a FIRE-sector economy. Even as the economy came crashing down in 2008, the main concern was not saving the workers or industry, but rather the banks, who were bailed out to the tune of about $700 billion. “Austerity,” as it’s called, was the trend in Europe where their welfare state apparatuses were slashed in order to discipline labor and increase corporate power.

It is in this context that the new Far Right has emerged. The target of their anger: globalists. What is meant by this broad term? In some respects, their anger is directed at many of the same groups opposed by the Left: international bankers, corporations that ship jobs overseas, politicians who sign trade agreements like NAFTA, and so on. But along with this anger against the elites, they also tapped into a popular anger against marginalized groups that had been brought along with globalism. Along with NAFTA came immigrants from south of the border seeking to escape the economic conditions wrought by neoliberalism. Refugees from the Middle East poured in seeking sanctuary from the conflicts wrought by US interventionist foreign policy. They do not care if these people are victims; they are contaminated with the stench of this social decay. Their grievance with globalization is not so much that it has disenfranchised so much of the world, but that it has cost them their own national identity, while forcing them to adopt to a global world of “political correctness” and multiculturalism.

Across the world, we are seeing a rise of ethno-nationalism, seeking to reclaim a national ethnic identity and essentially closing off the rest of the world to focus on the needs of a specific group identified as the rightful inheritors of the national legacy, to the exclusion of all others. It is a symptom of a culture in decay, in which the familiar structures of are withering away, while the new structures leave everyone isolated and abandoned. The result is a cathartic impulse to make their country great again, by purging those who are seen as symbols of this corrupted world order in a kind of cultural death drive that consumes the nation.

The Arc of History

In the short-term, the nation may in fact find renewed prosperity as the increased military and prison infrastructure provides a boost to the economy, while property of those groups that have been purged can be confiscated and redistributed among the “chosen” group. In the end, however, this primal upheaval devours its own and self-destructs as the forces of globalism can no longer be contained. This emerging fascism is a futile attempt to halt the unstoppable momentum of an emerging globalized world.

In the end, it is not a matter of whether we have globalization, but rather of what kind of globalization we have. As we fight the fascist menace in the years to come (and fight we must), let us also start building a new global economy. Through networking and organizing, we must attempt to build an alternative global economy, based on cooperation and mutual benefit rather than profit. Where local autonomy is respected while rhizomatic trade networks grow organically. The globalization of the world was brought about by plunder, but it can become the platform for our redemption. We cannot reverse the path it has taken, but we can steer it toward a new world of our making. Though the path ahead is dark and frightening, know that our liberation awaits us, if only we have the courage to claim it.

How to Live in the Future (Part 2)

By Leave a Comment

By  | 
Print

Camille Flammarion, L'Atmosphère: Météorologie Populaire (Paris, 1888)

“Sexual selection would appear to be a search engine for [compression algorithms] in the implicate order, an ecstatic browsing for patterns that will increase the capacity of any system to produce ever greater amounts of entropy.”
– Richard Doyle

If you plan to live in the future, you have failed already: one of its defining traits is that it’s unpredictable. We don’t need a technological event horizon for this to be true (but they are actually quite frequent). The real Singularity that Church of Kurzweil devotees displace into the fruiting moment of today’s still-juvenile Ecology of Stuff—that sharp discontinuity between what is and what can’t be imagined, lives right now and always now, and we’re inside it. It’s the canopy of stars we pierce when we embody old alchemical engravings, poking our explorers’ heads out through the sky-as-limit-of-the-known. It is the Bardo of Tibetan mysticism, that chaotic space between our incarnations in which everything occurs at once—and every moment is the Bardo, since our lives are tunnels made of gates, and every day’s a new year. Every moment’s an inflection point between the end and the beginning of innumerable stories flowing in all possible directions. (If you don’t agree, just sit and listen long enough, and evidence will come.)

Perhaps the most surprising thing about this Day That Changes Everything is that we’re swimming in it all the time. If some Omega Point in hyperspace, the Eschaton that waits for us at history’s end, draws all mundane phenomena into its all-embracing unity, we’re implicated in that vast conspiracy already. We can celebrate. But particles apparently pop in and out of being all the time, each moment a Creation. All of it occurs at once, a party more than a parade. So point me to “the” Singularity, again?

That said, the future seems to have a character that holds up to the deconstruction of our histories: it’s more of everything. Defining time as the apparent movement of relationships between entangled objects—space as measure of entanglement—“time’s arrow” points to greater entropy, an isotropic, isomorphic cosmos in which every game’s been played and all can come to rest at last. But en route to that final moment, entropy-as-evolution seeks the best-fit path to oceanic stillness, and contrives the paradox of order-as-a-means-to-emptiness: the metabolic flurry of our intricate ecologies, no niche unoccupied, the fractal map of river deltas fitting neatly over our phylogenies and food webs. Winding tributaries and the “tangled bank” of Darwin’s evolutionary wilderness take shape as the inevitable system-seeking-rest, its filaments forever reaching from the trauma of explosive origins to grasp at peace in full and evenly distributed disorder.

Every action has its equal, opposite reaction, though. The liberating “march of progress,” Eros constantly transcending limitation by devising and inhabiting more brilliant and adaptable new bodies, is actually the very definition of conservative: the conservation of momentum, energy, and information as the cosmos rearranges its components to achieve a quicker peace by “stepping on the gas” and dissipating everything more rapidly. The answer to the ever-loving question of how order comes from chaos is that order is just more efficient chaos—an accomplice, not an adversary. Every tidied desk results in larger landfills; every landfill is a mine awaiting artificially intelligent trash harvesters; the ecosystem that matures to weave together DNA and carbon nanotubule microprocessors in an Anthropocene beyond the over-simple categories “man” and “nature” is itself one giant dissipative structure, functioning as an excretive organ of the Sun as it assists in the accelerated burnoff of the Big Bang.

So: two things collide to make a third. The third thing causes a more intricate relationship between the now-three things that make a fourth. Each novel species founds new niches that are filled as soon as luck mutates a nearby organism up the slope of fitness to become a key to fit the lock. The whole thing drives itself, the ever-deepening complexity of Gaia just a crystal growing in solution, ratcheting on up the double helix, just the natural consequence of radiating heat.

(Intelligence is implicated in this: more complex environments create the need for teams of “individuals” to form and endosymbiotically enfold their members into larger creatures—smarter creatures that have more sophisticated needs and new dependencies—and these conditions favor more diverse and intricate societies, which count toward the increasing intricacy of the whole ecology, which favors teamwork as a strategy, and on we go until the Internet appears to link each nucleus of nation-state and corporation into one great planetwide amoeba, and beyond, our pseudopods already reaching into extraplanetary space…)

And so it is that evolution tilts the narrative toward more of everything. We didn’t leave bacteria behind when we got into bigger, and then bigger, huddles and grew tissues, organs, spines, societies; we made a hundred billion previously undreamed jobs for germs to do. It was (and is, in that eternal and apocalyptic light infusing all of time) a transmutation of the flesh: the simple taken up into the great complexity of something both ineffable and vast, and unimaginably generous. No evolutionary layer left behind, each one the platform for and beneficiary of the next. And when we fuse with our machines completely, we will not render humankind extinct; but will explode in our diversity to offer every variation possible upon the theme of “human,” most of which do not exist today.

The permeable membrane of the atmosphere, so wider than the borders of our nations, just as they were wider than the walls of cities, means a bigger social body, made of far more kinds of people, than were necessary to sustain the spirit of a fatherland or motherland. When cities came they made us all a little dumber, as they made us smarter—specialists in pottery or farming or religion lose a little bit of each as far as knowledge was, before, connected through and through to everything, and pottery was farming and religion, all of it one motion, not the purview of an educated expert. (Presumably, and likewise, DNA was once more flexible than it is now, more potent but less realized, far less speciose.) Now, we have so many kinds of jobs, they do not all have names, so myriad are human economic functions; and when our society has stabilized to know itself at global levels as a day-to-day sensation of each local human life, our tasks will be so fluid, numerous, and partial that we will have moved beyond the modern experts in both hyper-specialization and increased awareness of how miniscule our knowledge is to that of the entire Commons. Each of us will be so much more, such empowered emanations of the Biosphere, and so much less, tiny in the corner of our wide experience, compared to egocentric ancestors with relatively static “jobs” and personal identities. Eventually we will take new bodies with each thought, the epistemic line erased between the-generation-as-experiment by blind selection forces and the-metamorphic-flesh-as-proposition by machinery of spirit, assuming selves to take on certain tasks. The arrow is toward more life, more apparent choice, more radiant and dangerous diversity—all hung together, maddest-ever symphony, admired all at once.

This order, which we organize and make explicit, the “invisible environment” of the cosmos’s distributed intelligence as manifested in the Biosphere’s webwork of thoughts-as-species, is already “out there” waiting to be recognized and drawn down from the heavens (metaphorically). That is one way the Singularity is here already—it hasn’t gathered, coalesced, and focused into history yet, but all of it already lies in wait, the Eschaton at history’s end impressing every moment with its tugging yearning, showing itself to us in and as a universe compelled to speak.

And it can be no other way. The game was rigged “from the beginning,” which here means the origin beyond the Alpha and Omega, not “t = 0” but the architecture of the vacuum, in which past and future happen simultaneously, and the end and the beginning codetermine which of all nows swaddles us between. We are a path drawn from all possibilities, the likeliest of pasts and futures shaking hands to meet as now, and that’s why we get so confused about causality—because we haven’t caught our talk of time up to the networked and nonlinear epistemology of ecological, electric modern thinking.

That’s the essence of “time’s arrow”—echoing Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the narrative that our spacetime-projecting minds derive from pure unboxed experience in light of our best scientific work, the best-fit story to survive in this World-Wide-Webbed age is this: time moves from Singularity to “Intertwingularity,” and all the while The Great Perfection is and isn’t waiting round the bend for us.

The evolution of self-organizing parts to weave together an Omega Point that wakes up to itself at every level is the equal, opposite momentum to the involution of the already-and-always order ever seeking novel ways to manifest in form, not just potential. Nothing new exists, except new ways of saying it—the future is a dream we apprehend as best our tiny mammal bodies can, the poetry precipitating out of Holographic All to shape and wag our tongues and typing fingers. And as we approach the Eschaton to recognize it as the Self we’ve been this whole time, categories like “new” and “familiar” explode beneath the weight of our original experience, the only thing that ever was, as it unweaves and weaves us and our grand predictions.

So, in short: in some sense it is hard to be completely wrong about the future, if you say, “This thing will be remembered and repeated in some way.” A universe in which all possibilities occur is more entropic, thus more likely. And that makes the only certain thing that we can say about the future, that it is. (And also isn’t.)

∞

Read Part One