Frustrations
I watched the first hour of the much ballyhooed debate this week, relieved that Harris lived up to every expectation. She was forceful, articulate, acerbic, and made all the points President Biden could not. Her opponent was an old raging bull, driven to acrimonious distraction. Yet for all the promise of this encounter, a dread lingers that there may be enough macho males to restore their chieftain to power, in which case I shall remove myself to England, to die there in peace.
I turned off the television and went to bed when the question of Gaza came up, foremost of several grievous topics the root of which I have studied and broadcast in my essays. This one has often been a theme here on the blog, having been a thorny issue literally since the day I was born, 79 years ago. The ongoing war in the holy land, persecuted minorities intent on persecuting one another, is a tribal war, though commentators never seem to say it, out of fear perhaps, whether or not they are familiar with the book, War Before Civilization, by archeologist Lawrence Keeley, published in 1996. Ancient tribal wars were barbarous, their aim to completely annihilate the enemy tribe, man, woman and child.
From the meticulous evidence Keeley provides in this book, it seems clear why the human population took many millennia to reach a billion. And that is another thorny issue that frustrates me in the lack of attention it receives, though it is at the root of many dire problems we face. Can there be any question why we see global migration when the population continues to explode? Migrants are seeking a foothold, while severe effects of climate change destroy by fire and flood any shore to find that footing. And climate change has been brought about by the requirements of eight billion people, with that number a moving target, thwarting our mitigation efforts.
Is it possible that our return to tribal warfare will slaughter enough of us to save the planet? Time to turn off the news!
Spectra
There is a growing optimism here about the upcoming election, with a comfortable certainty that Ms. Harris has what it takes to finally face down the bully who is now aging and senile. All she need do is to emphasize and describe in no uncertain terms the transparent agenda of her opponent’s party. It is ghastly and unthinkable. Buoyed by that optimism, I put aside politics today to discuss spectra, though it is obliquely relevant as a matter misconstrued by people who carry their simple-mindedness into the voting booth.
A spectrum is a continuum upon which mathematically speaking there are infinite points. The most familiar of these is color, which is but one range of seven on the spectrum of electromagnetic radiation. The rainbow colors may be seen as bands, three primaries blending at their edges into three secondaries, but go to the paint section of the hardware store to see a vast number of shades that may be made of them. In human society other spectra have caused controversy, gender being the most contentious. To satisfy the simple-minded, who persist in believing that one is either male or female, options are now boiled down to five, LGBTQ. The addition of a “+” is suggestive, since to recognize gender as a spectrum is to realize that every person born will have a unique point on it, one that is not necessarily clear to themselves until puberty.
Another spectrum of humanity, only coming to light in recent history, is autism. The childhood version is widely known to cause degrees of dysfunction, while the high end of that spectrum, referred to as “high-functioning,” more often is not recognized until adulthood. There can be no better portrayal of this condition than the old television series “Monk,” in which detective Adrian Monk, wildly OCD, depicts other behaviors diagnostic of the spectrum: social awkwardness and avoidance; not understanding humor, especially sarcasm; amazing memory and powers of observation; and the foremost trait, an ability to focus intensely on a small area of interest coupled with an odd incompetence in common daily affairs. Many professional men display this neuro-divergence. Your doctor may be on the spectrum!
All about the women
In her courtyard post last week, my old friend Anna, after drawing a political inference from the feminine dresses of two women representative of the sartorial interest common at Panera, remarked that it is always about the women. Indeed hereabouts in this deep blue state, even after the boisterously upbeat convention of the Democrats, people will be holding their breath for the next two months worried as to the outcome of the presidential race. Why? Among undecided voters there appear to be two entrenched camps: those who believe any option would be better than Trump, and those preferring any option to a woman. Then in today’s morning paper comes news of legislation in Afghanistan concerning Virtue and Vice: the former being inherent in men, the latter in women. This from those studious leaders, the Taliban, who cannot bear the merest glimpse of the tiniest patch of exposed skin of a female human, without being instantly aroused to commit sinful acts that ought not be necessary for reproduction.
In my collected essays, Ruminata, are two that address this problem of women: the first in the book, “The Sexual Theory of Everything,” and “Misogyny.” The first explains how the early earth gave rise to self-replicating organic compounds, which over eons of time evolved the method of sexual reproduction. The other has the subtitle, “A modest proposal,” in the manner of Jonathan Swift, suggesting a way to exterminate the entire female population, reproducing only men - by means of a petri dish and gestation vats. Not that they would be clever enough, but let’s hope the Taliban does not catch wind of me.
Women have taken the opportunities of hard-won civil rights to improve their position in society, and I have no doubt that Harris has the experience and ability to serve as president. Those who disagree with her policies can be assured that the nation will continue to have checks and balances, while a win for her opponent will usher in a realm of tyranny - and if America joins Autocracy Inc. the fate of the world is sealed.
A new project
The original purpose of this web log, or blog, is expressed in the above introduction to “From the Moleskine,” along with something of its history, which goes back some years even before I retired in 2013. In addition to capturing those “elusive thoughts” above-mentioned, it serves to inform my friends and relatives who ask what I am writing. Since my essay collection, Ruminata, was published in 2022, I have slowed down to such a degree that at times even writing for this blog can be hard to work around medical appointments. Thus, rather than contemplate a larger project, I have begun to put together a chapbook of posts that have appeared in “The Weekly” organized by topic into chapters. Regular readers will recognize the challenge in such an organization, though there are recurring themes. Many posts have been political, but there also are those on the rise and fall of civilizations, the aging process, modern technology and culture, and of course the old country, England.
The internet has made it very easy to produce a book and have it printed on demand. Every new creation, for example, must be available on Amazon’s Kindle, and there are millions every year. However, like every other promised miracle of the web, the ease of publication is drowned by the overpopulation. Would be authors might as well submit their work to HarperCollins or their nineteenth century predecessors for all the attention they can expect to receive. Indeed there never has been a successor to Charles Dickens, in any respect.
As for a chapbook of posts or this blog itself, I have a short list of readers to whom I email a weekly précis of themes. But email is another of those internet promises that is now drowned in excess. Let loose your address and a tower of babel collapses on your computer. The rubble is stored in “the cloud”, and where is that? Not in the sky, it’s a data center! Readers, your email address is safe with me, or could you just click on the heart to signify your existence.
A dangerous world
It is a dangerous world we live in today, and tribal warfare may be the least of the dangers. For example, how do the nations of the world take care of eight billion people, a growing portion of which will be the elderly, and of those, thanks to the miracles of modern medicine, an untold number allowed to deteriorate into helpless enfeeblement? Gone are the days when anyone was allowed to drop dead of a sudden heart attack. Heaven forfend! They must be revived and carted off to a nursing home, there subjected to the tender mercies of whatever callous youth can be buttonholed from off the street, and at the expense of the taxpayer, which is the crux of the matter.
Of all the labels and epithets bandied about in this year of heated rhetoric, “progressive” is the one apparently considered by many to be the most searing. Progressives will “bust the budget,” tax and spend and ruin the economy, the argument goes, from people who will never acknowledge that there are two sides to an accounting ledger. Surely it is the multinational corporations that continue to escape contributing a fair share to the revenue side. In a dangerous world, any sensible, responsible policy however labeled will need to be adopted by any nation that would remain civilized.
Exactly, but instead, danger begets danger. Witness the rise of megalomaniacs, a strain that has plagued the species from the beginning, now like deadly parasites joining in a diabolical league intent not upon governing but on exploitation and extermination. My late Aunt Ethel, rest her soul, who wielded a notoriously aggressive cane, was wont to say, “There are worse things than dying.” In that regard, reference the aforementioned understaffed nursing home, and imagine wasting away slowly, blind, bed ridden, helpless and neglected. Or consider the dystopian and eerily prescient film Soylent Green, the thriller from 1973 that starred Charlton Heston.
Under the circumstances, it may be prudent as we age to provide ourselves with a cyanide capsule in the manner of a foreign spy - not to be taken alive.
A monstrosity
I need to update you, dear Readers, as to developments in my neighborhood, specifically the property where a vacant house was home to foxes for many years. Not that there is insufficient political news on which I might write. What a charming fellow now challenges the young upstart hillbilly for vice president here in the States - let’s see Mr.Trump try to stick a brand on him. But this week I will take a breather from the fray.
It was in January that I last posted about that gracious old house which was demolished in hours. A mammoth crater had been dug, leaving a mountain range of dirt by its side. The foundation was poured, and there it sat as speculation spread, among neighbors walking their dogs, that the place was someone’s idea of a bomb shelter. Many months past before iron girders went up reaching very high above the trees, all at right angles, boxy; and wild speculation turned to perhaps a parking garage. The girders had already begun to rust before there were signs of further construction. Meanwhile, on the mountain range of dirt saplings were taking root.
In my tenure of decades living here, there has been much turnover of houses as the old residents pass away. Some new owners stay just long enough for the children to graduate from the fine secondary schools. A few have remodeled the old houses tastefully to excellent effect. The ones notorious enough to warrant my posting are those who demonstrate the “arrogance of erasure” as I called it the last time. This painstaking fabrication of a monster is the perfect example. I do not know the people responsible, but clearly their decisions are the antithesis of neighborly. What motivates someone to buy into an old neighborhood of traditional homes and build something so out of scale and out of keeping? Egotism surely and immaturity, but more than that. In my opinion it is the attitude of that cadre of dictators now raining terror around the world: a conviction of their vast superiority over all others and a determination, devoid of any moral bearing, to crush them.
This monstrosity will obliterate any view of the sky from the house opposite. The couple who moved there only a few years ago now intend to sell.
Victoria and Charles
By now, Mycroft, my iPhone that is, must have every one of the Dickens novels, the popular ones rediscovered, all others newly relished. I am now reading the last one published before the author’s death in 1870, which is Our Mutual Friend. With this work from 1865, his maturity as a writer and acidulous social critic is sealed. His sarcastic skewering of the upper classes is deliciously funny and at times dead serious, where he interrupts the narrative to address “my Lords and gentlemen and Honourable Boards,” directly shaming them for their indifference to the hellish plight of the poor in Victorian England. Yet neither are those poor a class of angels in this plot of wills and wealth and their negative effects. The book begins on the River Thames where poor men are grubbing a meagre livelihood pulling the bodies of suicides from the water to pick their pockets.
I am stunned as I read, with the parity of this portrayal to the Republican agenda under the Trump thralldom here in the States. The “greatness” they talk about restoring is that of Britain before the Great War: a small aristocracy holding license over a large under class of servants and beggars. Ironically for those yearning to emulate these conditions, the social system in England was already unraveling before the flu pandemic and two world wars brought its collapse. Moreover, the greatness of America from its beginning has been the antithesis of monarchy; instead, a refuge from absolute power, from religious persecution. It was constituted and remains a place of freedom, to live in peace and pursue one's life away from the random interference of unchecked power.
And so, your Majesty, King Charles III, perhaps you might consider recolonizing this continental nation. Surely much was changed in the twentieth century, yet as we see, not a yearning for the old ways. Both our nations would be greatly strengthened by a closer alliance - now facing such dangerous times!
VP Harris
If there is any class of people more hated by the red-blooded American than those with dark skin, I would say it is women. Unique among the civilized nations, America has never elected a female head of state. Yet now we see such a person nominated for the position, after the sitting president was cowed, which is easy to do to an octogenarian. Nonetheless, given her opponent and the antediluvian platform of his party, Kamala Harris has a good chance to succeed by winning over independent voters. With her experience as a prosecutor, all she need do is to hammer home the outrageous proposals of Trump and his opportunist sidekick, JD, up from the “hollers.” Her victory would throw a wrench into the gears of a seemingly unstoppable slide toward tyranny, and the free world would rejoice, dare I say “will.”
Those of us who have long warned of conditions certain to result in the sociopolitical instability now seen in a drift away from democracy cannot be surprised by the global unrest. These conditions have often been the topics of this weekly blog, climate change being foremost. Even people who are paying attention now remark that they did not realize it would happen so fast; but science warns and common sense affirms that the melting of polar icecaps starts an accelerating cycle of melting and warming. The other condition pressing upon us is population growth, which is inherently exponential. It mushrooms, and suddenly there is desperation. But surely humans are compassionate and might share whatever food or fuel is yet produced? No, by no means! A few strongmen marshal their troops to seize it all for the one percent, the handful at the top, and allow the rest to perish in utter destitution. This is the true meaning of Trump’s MAGA, not the culture wars or the vilification of minorities, which are only red meat to agitate his disciples, but the very pinnacle of success: the ultimate widening of the wealth gap.
Meanwhile, should the Republicans consider President Biden’s abnegation a great gift, they might consult Cassandra: VP Harris is a Trojan Horse!
Up from the "hollers"
Literally, I cannot stomach the Trump carnival in Milwaukee this week, but even tuning in just for a weather report I am treated to a nauseating dose of sycophancy, including media personalities hard pressed to disguise their glee over anticipated chaos. I channel up to reruns of “Monk,” clever mysteries starring Tony Shalhoub as the neuro-divergent detective. What’s not to love about Randy Newman’s evermore relevant theme song, “It’s a Jungle Out There!” But we cannot hide our heads in the sand when a great nation threatens to unravel under the very system devised over 200 years ago to hold it together. Sickened indeed those worthy men of 1789 would have been if they could have foreseen the country reverting to authoritarian sentiments and a monarch’s rule such as they had fought to overthrow.
What then should we make of this excited veneration of an ignorant old scofflaw by seeming throngs bent upon coronating him? Let us consider his chosen running mate: JD Vance wrote his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, in 2016, a telling tale of his origins in Appalachia of a dysfunctional family. After high school, he escaped that fate by joining the Marines. He then went on to college and Yale law school, following which his path jerked forward: two years of law practice; two years in finance; two years in the US Senate, his first and only elected office. His memoir portrays a young man whose views are more enlightened than one might anticipate. When Trump entered politics, even then Vance recognized him as a dangerous charlatan. Now seeing the apparent invincibility of the Republican Mafia, JD proclaims his heartfelt conversion - from critic to zealot.
Is this a mission or naked ambition? Call me a skeptic, but inferences are eye popping: law practice was not lucrative enough, and venture capital capricious. The siren song of political power, especially absolute power, was irresistible. Now Vance stands nominated for the position second in line of succession behind an aging presidential candidate. The Republican Mob used the disastrous four years of Trump’s term to install their courtiers to the Supreme Court, which is poised to rubber stamp the Republican agenda. And if you believe the tables will be turned in future elections, you have not been paying attention. Future elections, if any, will follow the model of other dictatorships: Russia, Hungary, China, North Korea, Iran. First jail the opposition, then require voter participation at gunpoint, and finally declare a mandate from “the people” who obviously adore you. In the words of Randy Newman: “You better pay attention, or this world we love so much might just kill you. I could be wrong now - but I don’t think so!!!!”
Ageism
Born in 1945, I am of the same vintage as the US president, and on behalf of all who meet that description I am compelled to say that I am insulted and disgusted by the loud flapping of carrion crows besieging the man, only now noticing that he is not young - less than four months before the election. Most of these raucous scavengers are from the media, chaos being good for the bottom line whether at the NYT or the tabloids. What fun trying to find just the right young man to replace Biden in the race, and if Trump wins all the more chaos for years to come! What brought on this appalling exhibition of ageism was a preposterously unfair debate between the two: Biden being an honest man who follows the rules and tries to answer any question put to him; and Trump, a bombastic braggart who never burdens himself with factual information, ignores rules and questions, but is facile with vulgar epithets and outrageous hyperbole. I would challenge any of those craven critics to provide a thoughtful answer to a debate question in two minutes. Please talk as fast as you can, at least as fast as the disclaimer in a drug commercial.
It is the human condition to stiffen as we age, to move more slowly. “Instant recall” may not be so instant, but it comes. Mr. Biden was chosen for this moderate views - a rare win for moderation - not for an A+ in public speaking. Now members of his own party want to replace him with a young, articulate debater? I would remind them of their 2020 primaries and of the most well educated, articulate of candidates, Senator Michael Bennett of Colorado, whose qualifications were conspicuously ignored. The ability to think fast enough to construct a complete, rational sentence does not appear to poll well with the average American. Yet here we are, clamorous crows mobbing the President because he has a stiff gait.
The young are naturally impatient with the old, explaining why they seldom learn anything from their elders. But will they really sacrifice the sweet freedom they and generations of their forbears have enjoyed by installing a cruel bully who will be the puppet of powerful backers already disclosing extensive plans to make America White again, a realm where the White Christian male is supreme and all others are beggared? If the electorate allows this to happen, carrion crows will feast - on all of us.
Common threads
I would sincerely prefer to be thinking and writing about anything but politics, but the winds are too strong this year with so many elections in the world’s democracies seeming to be about democracy itself. In France, inexplicably, President Macron failed to learn from the example of Tony Blair’s Brexit fiasco and has needlessly given the far right advantage in the likes of LePen. British politics, meanwhile, leaves an observer in deep perplexity with the two main parties, Conservative and Labour, vying for the centre, making them indistinguishable. We must hope that the recent clean sweep of Conservative leadership may at least bring greater competency. The latter is especially important since in America the right wing, remaining hopelessly enraptured with their chosen dictator, is poised to restore him to the imperial throne, where he promises, with the aid of the minions he already installed on the Supreme Court, he will cleanse the government, aka the “deep state,” of all expertise. Shades of China’s “Crimson Revolution.”
If there is a common thread in these disturbing trends, foremost surely is a general anxiety that democracy is not working. Raise taxes on the wealthy and they may not be able to afford season tickets of the football games, or may miss the chance to check the South Pole off their bucket list. Tax pharmaceutical companies and they may have to scrap those lengthy, extravagant commercials with which they blanket the airways ad infinitum. No, the common good has few champions. Another common thread is dismay waxing to alarm at the influx of migrants from the global south. Directly or indirectly these immigrants are climate refugees: direct causes being the extreme heat, drought, famine, floods, disease; and indirectly the instability and violence that arise in consequence thereof.
The NATO summit convenes next week here in the capital city. I pray that President Biden will succeed there in rendering a more favorable account of his prowess and fortitude than he gave in the recent debate, which was a preposterous, half-baked exercise. Nevertheless, we must await 5 November to know the fate of the world.
Please have more babies!
I know I am asking too much to expect even a major newspaper to be able to sustain its print edition, but the modern world is asking much of me if I am forced to read the morning paper from the screen of a computer balanced on the sofa or my lap as I enjoy my morning pot of tea. I am a holdout and owe my sincere thanks to that great patron of The Washington Post, Jeff Bezos, though now I learn that even he is struggling with it, which is no wonder given its decline in quality since the death of Editor in Chief, Fred Hiatt.
A marker of that decline in the gravitas Hiatt had maintained was a lead editorial recently, headlined “De-growth is deranged,” which disparaged not only Thomas Malthus, but Cassandra and their modern counterparts as doomsayers, asserting rather that effects of overpopulation will continue to be rectified by human ingenuity - ad infinitum. Inclining to be charitable, let me surmise that the author of this piece is on the high end of the autism spectrum, whose chief area of expertise might be basketball, or maybe Taylor Swift. I have read that beyond their narrow sphere of genius, the “neurodivergent” need matters spelled out bluntly and plainly.
In 1804, six years after Malthus published “An Essay on the Principle of Population,” with 300,000 years of history and prehistory, the human population reached one billion. Since that time - in less than three centuries - it has grown to over eight billion. Malthus has not been alone in warning of the dangers. People need food and fuel. Thus to put it bluntly and plainly, it should be obvious that more people need more food and more fuel. Now we find that in producing those resources for continuously growing numbers, we are causing planetary destruction and extreme climate effects, bringing social instability and political anarchy. But the mills of God grind slowly. Over the years and generations people come to believe that resources are infinite. Even those ground exceeding fine in the aforesaid mills - losing everything in fires, floods, wars - look upon it as individual misfortune, not doom. Gradually they are waiting hours in endless queues for scarce commodities, packed cheek by jowl into the planes and the airports; they grow old and sick, and there are no more doctors - mere inconvenience? Ask Cassandra.
Karma
The doctrine of karma is simply the law of cause and effect, yet it can be a dangerous one to talk about. In the West, it is equivalent to one's “chickens coming home to roost.” At the individual’s level, in other words, it often is used with an agenda. Since ancient times, for example, religions used divine retribution as the threat in controlling social behavior. A tribe of believers might even be led to think of bad weather as punishment for failing to appease the gods. Today, I doubt many Tibetans believe they will pay for their sins in the bardo of rebirth by coming back in the lower realms. Still, the doctrine is at work as a rationale for bad deeds when a person claims he was driven to crime by his karma, relinquishing agency in saying he could not help himself.
There is a level beyond individuals, however, at which there really is no agency. The individual may exercise discipline, for instance, in restraining the drive to procreate; but the long history and prehistory of the species demonstrates that ours is even less able than others in controlling their numbers. More people require more food, more energy, and in a relatively short time we are going over a cliff, very fast.
As we overpopulate, what are we to do? We might give up our cars and cycle everywhere, until arthritis sets in, and at that point submit to euthanasia. We could expand use of aquaculture in areas now subject to continual flooding, and we could develop sources of renewable energy. The problem is inflation, which is widely misunderstood. Whatever is being inflated, prices or people, numbers will go up even if the rate of increase goes down. Thus as we thrash about, desperate to accommodate more people, our efforts will be overwhelmed by still greater numbers. That is karma, the effect of causes over which we have no agency. The agent was Nature all along.
There have been scores of Jeremiahs and Cassandras over the years sounding alarms much louder than mine can ever be. For us to witness the maturing of this karma, while inferring its cause, is more painful than even the enduring of it.
What will history say?
I have posted here before about looking for the “big picture.” The post bearing that headline is still to be found in Past Posts. That tendency to step back from the trees in order to see the forest, one that I claim albeit by no means uniquely, has led me into a variety of interests and studies throughout what is now a long life, including Zen Buddhism, nuclear physics, evolution, and how these bear upon society. The affairs of today’s world should give us all considerable pause; yet here again I am stepping back in hopes - or fears - of conjuring how future historians might view the long term trends, provided there is a future. If the people of this world are tending toward a preference for the merciless governance of dictatorship, for example, will the fascism of the 1930s be seen as the merest glimpse behind the curtain of what was inevitable? Was the desperate struggle of the free world against the Axis powers, at such enormous cost, the last that would succeed? Liberal democracy has but few precursors in human history, which instead is a very long tale of monarchs, emperors, and conquerors.
But what happened to us since that herculean fight with allied despots of the Second World War? How can it be that the world has forgotten the cruel nature of those despots? I will postulate that what we have forgotten is what we have never faced, which is human nature. To the contrary, in these times there has been a growing rejection of the idea that we have inherent traits, a reluctance even to notice differences for fear of stereotyping. Yet like our dogs, we are pack animals. We feel the sense of cohesion in our own tribe and an unease that waxes to hatred toward others. In good times we can ignore these feelings and live in harmony, but these are not good times. The population bomb has gone off, and the planet cannot sustain us. Migrants are on the move, fleeing climate crises and rising violence. Flouting the borders of once homogeneous nations in great numbers, they inflame the tribal passions of inhabitants made desperately uncomfortable by their otherness.
In this condition the world is ready to condone savagery. Will that be the wide-angle view of history? I fear there can be no doubt that people now enjoying the individual freedoms in democratic nations are losing faith, and are seen to be using the unwieldy tool of the ballot box to exercise some degree of agency in their governments.
Perpetual growth
An article in the Lancet concerning the decline in birth rates in wealthy nations caused a stir and got my attention by way of a column in the morning Post. This drop in birth rates might appear to be a positive development, but to the contrary it is regarded as dire by economists. Indeed, my readers must know by now that in Calhoun’s “Mouse Universe”, the mice stopped breeding before they all died. The striking thing in this recent study is that birth rates continue to rise in areas where there is poverty and conflict, notably in sub-Saharan Africa, a fact that is surely counterintuitive.
Despite the many conquests and subjugations there may have been to forge tribes into a civilization, easily forgotten by subsequent generations, the inference to be drawn from population data is that the civilized lifestyle can only be sustained by perpetual growth. Civilization should be seen then as icing on the cake of human society, growing thicker and heavier until the cake collapses. When this happens the standard of living gradually reverts to a primitive tribal state. Gone is the luxury of trading with other tribes, when rival chieftains vie fiercely for dwindling resources. Remember the siege of Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia, in the 1990s. The longest siege in history, it lasted four years, the city’s residents thrust back into Medieval conditions. It was occasioned by the collapse of the Soviet empire.
Personally I have never understood the rationale of “perpetual growth.” Why must population increase, along with the GDP, productivity, prices, all the economic indices? Why can there not be balance in our lives, contentment with what we have? We surely could learn the Finnish tango without overpopulating. Finland is reported by the United Nations to be the happiest country in the world, and in the top five since 2012. Are they chastened by Nature, the cold darkness of the north? Meanwhile, we fail in perspective on the horrific deprivations we may face through crowding, shortages, the degradation of the climate - and no less in empathy for those already suffering. Of course we cannot all be Finns!
Hair!
In certain phases of human life the matter of one’s hair takes on special importance, as it affects our appearance, our image. This is of particular concern in the mating phase, when puberty gives rise to desperate drives. In the 1960s, “Hair” was the title of the famous counterculture rock musical that made the rounds Off-Broadway and on with its antiwar message and its invitation to free sex and hallucinogens. It was the manifesto of the hippy generation, of which long hair was a hallmark. At the same time, the British offered the Beatles, their mop heads suggesting a tad more refinement. By now that generation has aged, yet with their hair grey or white, I still see it long. The irony is that they did not breed rebels.
In today’s world, the daughters and granddaughters of the hippies have discovered the hair iron, a modern version of which may be used either to straighten the hair, or with a twist of the wrist create the now ubiquitous Rapunzel ringlets. Turn on any television channel to note the near uniformity of these long locks draped over the right shoulder and ending just above those highly coveted “thoracic attributes.” Black women may go to great lengths, so to speak, to acquire this same image, by making long skinny braids of their hair, even dying them blonde, ceding any claim of racial pride.
As for the men, read my titular essay in Ruminata, “The Sexual Theory of Everything,” in which I consider the teleology of these mating behaviors. The term teleology simply refers to the root causes of natural phenomena of which individuals are not conscious, not even humans, the only species capable of discovering them. A healthy man of reproductive age can count on abundant sperm, and thus may be more cavalier as to his appearance. He may choose to emulate the hair style of his favorite basketball star, even to shave his head if he is balding, so as to obscure the receding hairline. For women, with just one egg per month for a limited time, there is more urgency.
Of course, those contumacious rebels of the sixties had no clue that the conformity they despised, being an essential weapon in the arsenal of the mating game, will always spring back - like a Rapunzel ringlet on a hot hair iron!
Desperation
In my recent post, “Peevish,” one of my complaints was the alarmism of the nightly newscasts: how many tornadoes last night in tornado alley; how many mass shootings here in the empire of firearms. No news there; when you ensure that every person can have a gun, every person will need a gun. There is a natural tendency of news agencies to grab attention in tabloid fashion, and I always turn to public television for more nuanced and extensive coverage. That said there is much evidence at which to be alarmed. Night after night it seems a toss up as to which spreading calamity will destroy us first, climate disaster or war.
The evidence for climate change is that the process is accelerating, so fast in fact that even Elon and friends will not have time to escape to Mars. We learn that prodigious storms bring flooding far up into the tributaries. One need not be on the riverbank to be swept under. Extreme heat itself sears the landscape creating the tinder for wildfires. The case for war is not so much in those already begun, as though they are not bad enough, but more so in the desperation of migrants from the global south fleeing famine, drought, and tribal barbarism. For that matter, refugees from all parts of the world, desperate to escape tyranny, attempt to transgress national borders into countries that still are free. Worst of all, in those same free countries the ignorant and misguided yearn for that same dreaded tyranny. Extreme desperation is likewise clear in the use of the internet by untold numbers of people across the world to scam anyone they can in prosperous nations, and cruelly targeting the most vulnerable.
Indeed there is much evidence to cause alarm. While such words as “existential” and “apocalyptic” seem timeworn clichés, in my judgement after 79 years of life, they truly grow in relevance. I watch the news, I see the record numbers, the swarms of people, with but one thought: we are the mice in John Calhoun’s experiment on the effects of overcrowding. Before they all died, they suffered this desperation, this violence. How can anyone imagine that our only way forward is barbarous despotism?
Preaching to the choir
I was never an especially religious person, though raised a Protestant and still a fan of the old hymns: Abide with Me, Amazing Grace, We Shall Gather at the River, Eternal Father Strong to Save. I strayed, as many do in the secular world, upon discovering Suzuki’s classic, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. Of course reality is paradoxical! We die and we do not die! Eureka! That idea becomes increasingly salient with each passing year. When I retired, the first book I wanted to put out had to be about Buddhism; and with my friend Anna collaborating, we published Conjuring Archangel in the style of creative nonfiction. It was rejected by Shambhala Publications, no surprise. Indeed I soon learned that Buddhism, like all other established religions of humankind, is characteristically supercilious. For awhile I subscribed to the quarterly, “Buddhadharma,” mouthpiece of the Tibetan diaspora. Over time, the periodicals stacking up, I had had enough of the exceedingly erudite who write for one another in their own patois, a slap in the face to the initiate, let alone the uninitiated. They preach to the choir, a common practice today. Granted the message of Buddhism is not widely appealing, but even avowed evangelists of other faiths are not truly evangelistic, when the preacher directs his sermon to choir members, already true believers.
Worse still in politics, populist demagogues preach to rabid followers the angry message of insurrection. That anger is the spark of violence that brings down the house of cards. It is just possible in today’s world that the global population is divided nearly in half with one side leaning toward a preference for autocracy. How else to restore order in the chaos of society but to vest all power in one powerful man? In that quarter is an undertow of yearning for certain of the old slavish values: women are naturally inferior to men, and Blacks to Whites; homosexuality is a sin; Jews and Muslims are dangerous; discoveries of modern science are suspect. That individual freedom would be sacrificed to the despot is not feared; his loyalists need only behave themselves. But then across the aisle in this chancel, I am only preaching to the choir!
Insurmountable conflicts
In human society, an objective observer will discern conflicts of all sorts as insurmountable, from foreign affairs and politics to personal relationships. Last week in this space I characterized current wars in that way, since being tribal they reemerge through history and before, clearly insurmountable. In our personal lives, people may change drastically over time, exposing aspects of themselves, even a vulnerability to mental illness, that cause conflict. A person may find themselves married to a hoarder. A successful person with undisclosed bipolar disorder may crash, devastating the finances of a family or business. Indeed, I am compelled to remark that insurmountable conflict is the bread and butter of the legal profession, because hope springs eternal.
Would that we could anticipate such conflicts in order to make better decisions and choices! In that same post last week I blamed our blindness to human nature, though of course the former is part of the latter, and there are other factors in our lack of percipience. In some cases there may be a lag time of generations between a decision and resulting conflict. One would need to be clairvoyant. The principal cause, however, is uncertainty in determining whether the root of a conflict is truly insurmountable. It could be in our genes, or otherwise might be subject to amelioration. In this century science has aided us by providing a map of our genome, revealing that some behaviors we for so long attributed to nurture are instead a matter of nature, expressed, moreover, in the manner of spectra: gender identity and autism as examples. While still stigmatized, mental illness is no longer seen as demonic possession but as a disease of the brain, and a disturbance rooted in DNA may or may not be hopeless.
But after hundreds of millions of years in a tribal state, we should not need a map to see that tribal conflicts are insurmountable, and where they bubble up, civilization is doomed. I cringe to see people dividing themselves into what they fail to distinguish as tribes. Political, racial, ethnic, gradually the pride of the various minorities stokes the tribal nature of their worst enemies. Consider instead the humble leaders of historically successful movements: Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela. Where is humility today?
"Genocide"
In the early days of television, as a child, I was thrilled to watch the coronation of Elizabeth II. What a marvelous new invention was the TV! It did indeed seem a marvel, except that it also brought into our living rooms horrific postwar newsreels showing the liberation of the camps: stacks of cadavers piled high and bulldozed into mass graves. How could this be? Even at that young age, I determined to find an answer. I have lived too long when I now see the term “genocide” bandied too loosely.
To me one of the pleasures of writing is being a wordsmith, finding not just a synonym but just the very word for what meaning I wish to convey. The dictionary defines genocide as “a deliberate, systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group,” in other words, the civilized way to eliminate enemies. The Nazi Holocaust remains the prime example. The bloody wars we witness today, the Middle East and Ukraine, are not genocidal: destructive, yes; systematic, hardly. They are the more distressing for being tribal, not genocide but barbaric tribal massacre.
My critics will doubtless split hairs with my dictionary definition, to which in retort I would argue that it is human blindness to our own inherent tribal nature, loosed to a grotesque and grisly degree by the loss of natural instincts, that exposes us to the worst troubles. The history of civilization, which we call ancient, is in fact only a very small portion of human existence. Yet even so small a span shows a dreadful tale of constant rising and falling and rising anew. With each new realm, civilized people have come to believe they represent the vanguard of human improvement, until the bombs begin to drop, and the barbarians breach the fortresses. Surely it is this hubris, without the humble consideration of human frailty, that appears to thwart social advancement for all eternity. The barbarians need not come from beyond the borders. Listen now to the insane ravings of the wannabe despot proposing to deport tens of thousands of migrants, after first rounding them up into camps. Now we are talking genocide!
Peevish
I was with Anna in the courtyard this morning, where icy fingers of wind belied the late April forecast by which poor Anna had been fooled. Buttoned to the chin in her Galway blazer, she was still cold. At this time of year temperature is irrelevant, and wind without sun is a misery. Nonetheless, our lively discussion of news added sufficient heat.
My pet peeve with the morning and evening reports on air is the drug commercials: beautifully staged and scripted vignettes of happy, healthy people sustained in that condition by that one pill from the sponsoring pharmaceutical company. I hit the mute button, especially eager to avoid the rapid fire disclaimers. I have no doubt that the cost of these commercials, including quantities of air time, could pay off the Federal deficit about which the congress - depending on party - is forever alarmed, and without leaving a dent in the research expenses of Big Pharma.
A growing trend on network news is to lead with a frenzied report of extreme weather. Of course the growing frenzy is not unfounded, but turn to public television for more detailed and informative accounts. The rising cost of disastrous weather, driving people from their homes, destroying houses, fields, swamping insurance companies, is a grim fact. Then there is the tinder box of foreign affairs, at which point one is tempted to shut off the television altogether for fear of having a stroke, or dyspepsia at least!
Anna and I spoke of Jewish friends and this year’s Passover Seder - a melancholy occasion - stories of the empty place at the table marked with a single rose, not alone for a family member passed, but now for hostages being held in Gaza. The holy land has been tribal and tendentious since the dawn of civilization, quashed only by imperial dominion. The very idea of a Jewish state there amid various tribes of bloodthirsty Arabs is insane, a hopeless conundrum, a Gordian Knot. The warrior classes of these tribes, by their very nature, have the one aim, which is the total annihilation of the other tribe. Until its current fundamentalist regime, Israel to its credit has been restrained, but now that ancient puzzle aforementioned is solved as before - with the sword.
Anna and I, meanwhile, agreeing that coverage of unavailing campus protests is gratuitous, move on.
Whose side are you on?
There is a new movie recently released generating considerable interest. It is “Civil War” by British director Alex Garland, not about any historical conflict but a dystopian future war in the US, the likelihood of which would seem to grow with every news cycle. Mr. Garland explained himself in an interview on public television, emphasizing that he sees this vulnerability not only in America but in other nations, including his own. I was intrigued by his repetition of a novel perspective of the conflict, one that I share. He insists that it is not actually a case of the right versus the left, but rather of extreme as opposed to centrist thinking. I have not seen the film, and in all honesty this Jeremiah has no desire to witness his prophecy fulfilled. The idea, however, is clearly an analog of the upcoming contest here between Trump and President Biden.
I must point out the undeniable fact of a terrible confusion in terms among the English speaking electorate, worldwide, when “conservative,” derived from “conserve,” is applied to radicals, whose aim is not stability but the restoration of a fabled past, by violence if necessary, as they freely attest. The real conservative is centrist, the one who avoids disruption while working to push carefully forward needed improvements. Such moderation typically has proven no match for opponents ready to use brute force, which is precisely the terrorism that gives rise to and sustains despotism.
Mr. Garland’s scenario has the country breaking into four parts, with three insurgent geographical factions, at war with loyalist states. But considering the sad history of centrist thinking, I hark back to the pendulum, the metaphor of which I have used here before; and I see only three: The pendulums swings from left to right; and as the amplitude increases, swinging from one extreme to its opposite, the faction standing in the center, sheltered only by laws and archaic institutions, is at risk of decapitation. When this condition obtains, when discourse rejects reasoned thought, when radicals believe they are conservative, one word alone is left to describe such a war: tribal.
Nature's glories
There was a good deal of hoopla here about the solar eclipse, the sight of which passed right across North America from the south to the northernmost tip. It is indeed an awesome natural phenomenon, among the best of splendors Nature offers us. This spring, which came so early, discomfiting the plants and animals with uncertainty, has been nonetheless beautiful and enjoyable. Still, as age has gotten the better of me, I find I cannot take long walks or keep a garden. The latter fell victim as well to extreme weather that necessitated covering young plants much of the time against torrential downpours. Surely it appears that we are the ones who have gotten the better of nature. So hurrah for a celestial event!
The movements we see springing up like warts around the world, on the right and the left, represent an urge to retreat, retrench, to undo civilization in hope of reversing the damage we do to manageable levels. Protohumans managed in caves, after all, for millions of years; our species managed in tribes like other primates. The threatening babble going up from wannabe despots might quickly put an end to civilization. Closing borders would be easy: send troops to mow down approaching migrants with automatic weapons. Ending free trade between nations would collapse economies in a heartbeat, helped along by the mandating of clean energy on continents where transportation alternatives are nil.
If you follow the Dokusan here, or have read my essay “On Buddhism” in Ruminata, you know of my belief that the affairs of this world, except insofar as they mitigate the suffering of sentient beings, are of no ultimate consequence, because there is an ultimate reality that is much, much deeper, so profound that the average person, blind even to its clarity and logic, turns away in horror. But do go to last week’s Dokusan, where Anna expresses her amazement that people view the glories of Nature as the last word in transcendence, when they are only refractions of ultimate oneness, which is more glorious by far. She queries Archangel about consciousness, a thing we dread losing above all else: when we are at last subsumed into the void, is there consciousness in that Singularity? Read his thought provoking response; you may lose your fear of death.
Vision vs. hindsight
The cataract surgery was successful, thank God. I can now see things I have not been able to see in years, like the little blue numbers on the clock radio sitting way over there on the dresser. Surgery on the second eye took place the day after my birthday; and when they asked for my DOB, I told them it was 79 years ago yesterday. I waited before having this procedure until my vision was badly affected, and I’m glad I had it before age 80, considering the sorry state of health care. It is indeed a blessing to have good vision, for which I will learn to tolerate the wrinkles I now see in the mirror, and the dust and dirt of which I was formerly oblivious.
At age 79, however, there is another kind of vision that is quickly becoming more of a curse, and that is hindsight, a perspective of so many years which are the basis of comparisons, mostly negative. Several of my essays in Ruminata were written as a way to acquaint younger generations with this perspective, giving them an idea of how things have changed so much in a lifetime. The first one in the book traces its root to the early days of television, when as a child I was exposed to footage of the Nazi camps, the horror of dead bodies piled high and bulldozed into mass graves. What could give rise to such brutality? I searched for an answer.
Now as civil society is being rapidly degraded by tribal instincts, I watch the evening news and shout at the television, while despots, unabashed, channel Adolf Hitler. Yes, Hitler, watch the newsreels of his rallies, calling people lower animals, promising their eradication, and crowds cheering. He’s back! Yet even aside from the accelerating decay of civilization, itself a boon to the opportunistic tyrant, there are still more conditions that I lament having lived long enough to witness. I’m thinking of the vast mischief done by sophomoric techies, the self-described “disrupters,” like Bezos and Zuckerberg. One by one old-line retailers shuttered their stores and went under. The pandemic, when the internet became habitual, closed and bolted the coffin on the old ways. Gone are the department stores, the gift shops, the lunch counters; and please do not trust a mendacious provocateur to bring them back, nor to make anything “great again.”
The Royals
Recently, yet another example of “nothing new under the sun,” the topic of last week, is the lurid interest of the British in their royal family, a grotesque but stubborn trait. It surfaces again upon the revelation of Princess Catherine’s cancer diagnosis, and her very personal and public announcement of it, including a plea for privacy. One may only speculate what might have bred this quirk in the ancient realm, where class consciousness comes close to the caste system in its former colony, India. Is it jealousy, resentment of the elite? Does it spring from a belief, in common with their most successful former colony, America, that all are created equal? Or to the contrary that royalty are no better than commoners, thus undeserving.
Nonetheless, even more disturbing, also noted in the press, is the fact that cancer is becoming more common at younger ages. Catherine has not even reached the age, nor has she risk factors, for early screening. Surely science is at work attempting to suss out a reason for this curious phenomenon, but there are known factors in this disease which, meanwhile, the rest of us might consider: contaminants in the environment; diet and lifestyle, depending on the site of the tumor; and the most elusive hence distressing of all, stress.
Compared to the postwar period when I was young, life today for young people is dangerously stressful. Extreme weather brings the constant threat of disasters; resurgent tribalism chips away at civilization; and they face desperate competition for all manner of resources. Readers must indulge me if I am compelled to mention that experiment from the mid-twentieth century, dubbed The Mouse Universe, the whole purpose of which was to study the effects of overcrowding. It did not end well. At that time there were warnings of a “population bomb,” numbers exploding exponentially, as anyone might observe in the burgeoning of each family tree. Now the bomb has exploded. Might the rise in early cancers be Nature rebalancing? A devolution of the human immune system? Just saying!
"Nothing New"
As the saying goes, “There is nothing new under the sun.” I find this amazingly demonstrated by Dickens in the great wealth of characters from his fiction, drawn for us with a studied meticulousness. These people are still here, closing on 200 years after that percipient author lived and wrote. For example, there is this from the villainous, irredeemable uncle Ralph in Nicholas Nickleby: “Do you think you can crush me? Do you think that a hundred suborned witnesses, or false curs at my heels, or a hundred canting speeches full of oily words will move me? Try me, and remember that I spit upon your fair words and false dealings, and dare you to do to me the very worst you can!” If there is anyone who may still be wondering about the true character of Donald Trump, here you have a most finely painted portrait. His so-called MAGA base know exactly what he is, and that is what they seek in a leader: boundless cruelty, mendacious braggadocio - Ralph Nickleby!
Dickens drew from life, and such people have never been missing from history. Nothing new here under the sun; the saying applies even to new technology. The spear, the arrow, were new technology, followed by the saber and the musket. Pen and ink, the printing press, the spinning wheel, the loom, every advance has been cause for adjustment, learning. But can an old dog live long enough to learn new tricks?
This blog has been on the website for a year now, and I have been posting on it weekly. Recently the editing has become very slow, and the chatbot of the web host is utterly unavailing. Surmising that accumulated posts may be the cause, I am winnowing early ones, which in any case are saved on my computer. My fear is that obsolete technology may be to blame, and I shy away from upgrading for reasons adduced by that useless chatbot. For all the call centers which support the burgeoning populations of Asia and the subcontinent, there is no help to be easily had in such matters. I daresay this old dog would not live long enough to learn new software - the operating system, the latest browser - only to have these changed again and again - fostering nothing so much as paranoia!
Presentism
If memory serves, I have posted here before, or at least alluded to, presentism: a view of history that imposes modern standards upon it, especially typical of the young, who have not lived long enough to have any personal sense of history. From what I observe of today’s youth, they are too undisciplined to submit to any education whatever and so will carry this attitude of presentism well into what was once considered adulthood. The most significant and egregious effects of presentism, to my mind, are seen in the matter of women’s rights, arising from an ignorance of just how recent was the development and availability of reliable birth control.
To understand the position of women prior to this liberating development one need only read the classic novels of the nineteenth century. Becoming pregnant and giving birth out of wedlock spelled doom for both mother and child. Read Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles or Jude the Obscure. Families were desperate to marry off daughters, offering them as sacrificial lambs if necessary. By the end of Nicholas Nickleby, one of Dickens’s early novels, he has two damsels under threat of being locked in marriage to wealthy old men through villainous conspiracy.
In terms of today’s licentious standards, we regard such melodrama as ridiculous. Why did these women not simply stand up for themselves? Well, Tess was raped, and look how she ended up; Jude fell victim to those primal drives I wrote about in the titular essay of Ruminata. Raising a child from infancy is difficult even today. In those times, before the conveniences and before modern medicine - before birth control - a woman had little chance of security aside from marriage, especially where there was no family wealth. And single she was fair game, as though she had stumbled into the bull running in Pamplona. The examples I cite are fictional, but fiction as social criticism; and how better to get a sense of history than from those who lived it? The conditions described are the very same that conservatives yearn to restore. Young women today who see no risk suffer a proud ignorance.
Media bias
Readers know my intent is not to harp on any single subject, especially not politics, though they may suspect me of straying from that intention, as political topics will be harder to avoid this year. In my defense, I do try to present the uncommon angle. For example, there is the widespread assumption of bias in all news media, with right wing outlets accused of the greater degree of sensationalism. The influence of Rupert Murdoch is strong there, and after all the British tabloid press began centuries ago with the “scandal sheet.” The trend emigrated to that wayward colony, America, where it was known as “yellow journalism,” and was equally fiery. But of course, communication was not easy in those days; news did not spread with the speed of electrons; politicians did not appear on television or jet from one big city to another, though they might take the train from town to town giving speeches from the caboose.
With today’s technology, speeds are greater, impacts formidable, and deceptions perilously easy, and media personalities know this. Yet it appears to me that broadcasters on both sides of the political spectrum are delivering news these days with but a thin veneer of neutrality, just enough for deniability and only somewhat thicker on the liberal outlets. Upon what evidence, you protest, do I base this impression? Here in the States, under its positively byzantine system of elections, we face a choice for president between two old white men. In one corner is a man only slightly younger who has made it clear he wants to be the nation’s first dictator, and the right wing media are likewise unreserved. The left-leaning media, in their coverage of the older man, smothering themselves under that cloak of neutrality, give us, night after night, feed of the man wobbling under the blades of Marine One, trying to shout in response to the random reporter. Then back to the anchor desk to report how many voters worry about his age. Well, aren’t they being solicitous! Surely there is no need to show him repeatedly at such a disadvantage. Are they careless of the consequences, untroubled by the specter of tyranny? Or is it self interest? Lawlessness and misrule sells.
Diamond cutters
Imagine if you will our modern civilization with its multi-ethnic nations, relatively diverse as to race and tolerant as to religion, as an enormous diamond in the rough. Being crystallized charcoal, the diamond already possesses lines upon which it can be easily splintered. Likewise in modern society we recognize these divisions: in politics, religion, race, gender, class, and of late in geography. Now do we not see a number of greedy tyrants eyeing this gem as the ultimate prize, world domination? Already we can tell that, like ham-handed diamond cutters in their clumsiness, they will only smash the thing to smithereens.
Surely in former civilizations there remained a stronger sense of tribal identity that might re-emerge when central power declined. Modern times are very different in that our divisions do not cleave to lines of kinship. We are even now choosing our own preferred tribes: Shall I join the White Christian tribe; the Black Lives Matter tribe; the Me Too ultra feminist tribe; the LGBTQ tribe? Concomitant with this decision will be choosing a tribal area, which must be carefully researched, lest one stray into one of the more bellicose and risk violence. Having settled these questions, each tribe will select a chieftain. Then and only then will the warriors be liberated - from laws, norms, and any other vestige of refinement that once graced the civilized.
Perhaps you note the irony: that the tyrants, once having smashed it to pieces, will never get their hands on the gem. You may also have remarked that I left out age as one of our significant divisions, which it clearly is. Many of today’s youth have fled their rural and suburban childhoods to gather in cities, which have become their fortresses, in some cases located in hostile tribal areas. Because of technology created by and for them, they wield great influence in controlling the pace of change. Thus are they able to push aside those elders who are unlucky enough to still be alive. Mockery is the signal, when its humor becomes vicious, targeting the old and other vulnerable groups. Those who still laugh, even if they know history, do not understand history.
Fight fire with fire
Contentious elections are going on in various countries tis year, but the one here in America, where hyper-partisanship has been infamous since its very beginning, this election is especially fraught. Not since the destructive campaign of Senator Joe McCarthy in the mid-twentieth century has one man spread such paranoia and so cowed the legislature. What irony that it was the first woman senator, Margaret Chase Smith, who had the courage to speak up and recognize the Emperor’s nakedness. But what are we to do now with megalomaniacs sprouting up everywhere like hideous fungi? Europe itself in mortal danger again?
Among the more curious attractions of Mr. Trump to his followers is his bluntness; he gives voice to their meanest thoughts with his own signature coarseness, ironical for a man who always dresses in a suit and tie. And he is clever in the pithy epithets that he sticks on every opponent like chewing gum. In opposing such a demagog, leaders are being too fastidious, too effete. Now they must be equally blunt, if not coarse, in driving home realities consequent to courting dictatorship: Do his staunch supporters seriously believe, despite the lessons of history, that they will be spared the gulag? To the contrary, they will have seats reserved on the first boat to oblivion. Do we want to watch supersonic missiles from North Korea and Russian occupied Poland lay waste to our cities, east and west, so as to subdue and rob us for the benefit of a global alliance of tyrants? A dictator has no interest in problem solving, only in fanning the flames of anger and suspicion while he squeezes the population for his own advantage. And he will never yield power, being enormously “popular” with those he has terrorized. If you view these consequences as preferable to a nation that remains a magnet to immigrants, be prepared to send your own children to the meat packing plants and out to pick crops all day, if anything can still grow. And get ready to become desperately hungry.
Rule Britannia
That I have become a fan of Charles Dickens, especially since the pandemic left the world adrift, readers of the blog well know; and the more I read, the more I begin to see a striking similarity between his Victorian England and the ideal society sought after by today’s right wing, a world where a relatively small class of the obscenely wealthy ruled with unquestioned privilege over the masses of poor who were given neither mercy nor regard. Please note that the poison pen of Dickens was an equal opportunity skewer, pinning with exquisite sarcasm the peerage, the landed gentry, the courts, hypocrites of all classes, gender or religion. Equally spot on are the grainy portraits of the hopeless poverty and ignorance of the rest.
It took the enormous debt of two world wars to upend this entrenched, ages old caste system. Taxes drained the elite class, throwing them into the labor market alongside their own butlers and maids. A few great estates were preserved in a National Trust. Now comes another century, and many generations have passed. Memories are short, and nonexistent among the young with no knowledge of history. Large factions in the liberal democracies, having begun to acquire extreme wealth, begin concomitantly to yearn for merry old England, where they could again exploit the masses of their inferiors. To restore a monarchy is too time consuming, unless the current Royal family were to accept my invitation to intervene.
No, no, these new robber barons must start from scratch: first to undermine democracy by ensuring that the majority is powerless - elections by damne; next keep them poor by refusing to tax wealth while bemoaning the lack of revenue to ease poverty - make them go to work! Finally gain control of media to keep them ignorant of reality, at which point they are easily persuaded of the most ancient and peculiar superstitions. We are witnessing the consummation of this campaign. Will it require another world war?
Most curious!
There can be no more curious aspect of our species than the genius we have in devising ways to torture and to kill one another, and our readiness to demonstrate that genius given any opportunity. In my essays, compiled in Ruminata, I reference ethologist Konrad Lorenz and his book On Aggression in which he observes that other predatory species display an instinct against harming their own kind. Instinct may not be a hard and fast law, but obviously if wolves could turn their fangs on other wolves they would lose out in the lottery of natural selection and disappear.
The inference is indubitable: when homo sapiens lost the natural instincts, gone was that inhibition against murder and mayhem. Lately, as we have been forced to witness the consequences anew, following a long period in which we enjoyed the restraint of superpower dominion, there is across the globe a reversion to our tribal state. We have modern words like genocide, guerrilla warfare, terrorism, for what is simply tribe on tribe, mano a mano.
A thought came to me recently in discussion with a dear old friend, as my ideas do often come, to observe why the dominant wolf holds back when the kill is another wolf. Instinct is a dictate; the wolf is not restrained by compassion. Thus humanity, having lost the instinct, may only elude its own evil genius by choosing the option of compassion. Fortunately, as a social species, most of us still have that fellow feeling that compels us to identify and empathize with one another. Aside from the seriously deranged, not many have a taste for blood and gore, and in general we incline towards sympathy for the suffering of any human. At the same time, once tribal passions are roused there is no constraint on our potential for savagery, as history and prehistory attest.
Young and old
(32)I regret that I am going to wax cantankerous this week, but it cannot be helped, as I begin to understand the sentiment in this country for strangling the government. The matter concerns a form I submitted online at the end of last year. Apparently I made a mistake which to rectify required a different form, which I duly sent. This morning I was called by Patricia from the local office of this department. From the rapid fire of her speech, I deduce she is a young woman. She reports that she has the second form but cannot find the first anywhere; she will email a blank form for me to redo. I can then bring it to the local office. They cannot receive email from outside the government.
I suspect my first submission is floating somewhere in their Microsoft universe, and if I send another the confusion will only grow, coming more and more to resemble Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce, the dispute in Bleak House over two wills. I must say I cannot blame Patricia; her job must be overwhelming, and she never asked to be one of a population of eight billion any more than any one of us. Who is there who can lack sympathy for the plight of younger generations crowded out of housing, subject to climate extremes? To the extent they come too appreciate their unfortunate place in history they are naturally angry.
And yet the posture they too often show in the face of such conditions, particularly as regards their elders, is decidedly disadvantageous: always in haste, impatient, disdainful of listening. Excusable perhaps, but most certainly suspending all possibility of exchange. Some of those elders surely have earned resentment, and many more are clearly obtuse in dealing with modern life. A scant few may be found to resonate what now can seem an ancient wisdom. Restrain your celerity then, youngsters. Lean close and listen!
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