The pendulum revisited
The metaphor of the pendulum has been very useful for many years now, an era of bitterly opposing politics worldwide. I have used it to caution extremists that pushing the amplitude in one direction increases it to a like extreme the other way. At the same time I often have wondered what might happen should the two extremes crash into one another at the top, the “pivot point.” The question comes up because it seems the more extreme opponents become the more alike they appear to be. I thought of it upon reading in the morning paper of the trouble in the French parliament where the far right aided the far left in ousting the prime minister over deficit spending and the national debt, a problem in many countries burdened by the world’s overpopulation and unable or unwilling to tap into wealth.
A curious instance of merging extremes here in the States is Robert Kennedy, Jr., among the rogues gallery of incompetents selected by the dictator to destroy the government. Kennedy’s far out ideas on health matters, which he would control, ideas contrary to accepted science and long standing practice, bear a close resemblance to the hippy culture of the 1960s, the counterculture - fluoride in water, vaccines, food additives, and such.
May we still use the pendulum as metaphor? If the amplitude is at the maximum, will the bob swing round over the pivot? Do the opposite sides collide violently? Then the metaphor is not a pendulum but a counterweight trebuchet, the ultimate medieval weapon, catapulting destruction over the fortress wall. We must pray things never come to that. For now I am sticking with the pendulum upon which, notwithstanding amplitude, the bob is returned to the "position of equilibrium" by the "restoring force of gravity." The people we involve in our analogy are driven by very different views toward opposing ends, but they begin with one common trait, which is impatience. They never achieve unity, but eventually, having been driven to the maximum extremes, they are restored to the equilibrium position by a second common trait: futility - it is their restoring force, their gravity. It may be a long wait!
Agency
The term “agency,” now enjoying popularity with the commentariat, is closely related to the theme of my last post which was fatalism, still available in Past Posts. Agency is defined as “the capacity, condition, or state of acting or exerting power.” The fatalist, depending on his level of pessimism, appears to deny agency to humankind. With his “Origin of Species,” Darwin bumped into controversy by proposing that natural processes were the cause of amazing diversity, rather than divine creation. We have since learned that nature itself has intelligence, so evolution is not necessarily accidental or random. Just read The Hidden Life of Trees to learn how these woody perennials, with neither brain nor nervous system, communicate through their roots, share information, and cooperate in defense against pests. Even trees have agency, up to a point.
Thus fatalism can only define a boundary of agency. In my last post it was “writ large,” going further to say, “We are subsumed in a painting with no signature,” their being an even larger point. Theist religions envision an anthropomorphic God, creator of all things. Perhaps this Theos instills us with a soul, perhaps he set evolution in motion, but he exists fundamentally apart. This theology may or may not be true, and even if it is, then God is not the ultimate reality of all encompassing paradox, which is not infinite but boundless, not eternal but timeless. One way or another the nature of the universe we perceive is cause and effect, a karmic kaleidoscope, and our agency here is bounded by our own nature. As that nature is inherent, it is fateful.
Consider civilization, seeming to have advanced far since ancient times, modern technology now threatening to surpass human intelligence altogether with a superior computer version. The term “guardrails” sweeps into currency, referring to the need for laws to protect the human race from AI gone rogue. What has been the motivation to rush into a dangerous technology? We must compete against our enemies. It is our tribal nature still, the inescapable boundary of our fantastic agency. Do we really believe guardrails will stop us? No, by no means. Like the trees we obey our nature, with the critical difference that trees, remaining subject to evolution, can still adapt. Trees can learn; we never will.
Fatalism
In my nearly 80 years of life and particularly through the studies and research of my adult years, I have become a fatalist. Regular readers of the blog and anyone who has read my book of essays will agree with that assessment. Fatalism is the belief that what happens is not within our power to control, and any student or close observer of human nature must finally arrive at this posture. As Einstein mused, we can do what we will, but do we will what we will? The first sentence of the first essay in Ruminata sums it up: “The world is not ruled by men, it is ruled by sperm.” In all species subject to sexual reproduction, the germ cells have their distinct agendas which direct an individual’s behavior unbeknownst. These are the primal drives, so richly exploited in literature. Homo sapiens may have the will to resist them, but clearly they almost never will what they will in this case.
Closely related to the primal drives are the tribal emotions. The tribe is home, safety, belonging, a kinship group from which one may choose a mate and expect children with some resemblance to oneself. For the men of the tribe there is the challenge of tribal warfare and the opportunity to vent the murderous impulse unique to our kind in a just cause. Over time the coalescence of many tribes allows for civilization, but inevitably these will eventually fester and perish. Our civilization started to get out of hand at least two centuries ago, and now is on course to destroy planet Earth, rendering the species extinct. The tribal mindset is clearly ingrained in human nature and thus ultimately beyond our power to control.
But wait! I hear the screams go up. What about good karma? What about the butterfly effect? Even small changes by individuals can influence results. The flap of a butterfly’s wing may disturb the atmosphere in such a way as to create a tornado. Are we not masters of our fate? Indeed, the interconnectedness of our milieu is far more massive and intricate than we know. The human brain, having bypassed evolution, will never master it, nor will its robotic surrogates. Our behaviors in this life may have benign or evil effects, but writ large we are subsumed in a transcendent reality, part of a painting with no signature.
A trivial matter
When the principal of the Priory School is beached upon the hearth rug at 221B Baker Street, having fainted, the great detective takes the liberty of examining his person, explaining to him upon his awakening, what he found: “Your watch unblemished in years, scratched when you thrust those coins into your pocket. A small occurrence perhaps, but only small I think in the way a moving needle may signify an earthquake.” This passage comes to mind where post election analysis blames catastrophic results on the trivial matter of grocery prices. As final numbers come in they show that just three percent of the electorate swung the vote, seemingly putting their personal freedom at risk based on the high cost of food. A small occurrence? Perhaps not.
Food, like housing, which is an even greater problem, are both markets where prices are determined by supply and demand, barring major disruptions like the pandemic. Turn to the weather report so as to avoid the news, and one finds the weather is the news, and I would contend, the root of all other news: Record high temperatures, rain, drought, are reported routinely. Ruinously destructive storms wash away whole towns leaving only heaps of rubble downstream. With tinder baked in heat and drought, wildfires are all consuming. Around the world, the climate is destroying arable land, the sea eats away at coastlines, and large regions become uninhabitable.
Food supplies have become erratic while populations rise, even if more slowly, and people flee those places where they no longer can survive. Housing options dwindle. Prices rise. Given the reciprocal tension between climate change and the human population - a negative feedback loop - where is there room for prices to go down? The wealthy are already prepared to pay any price for that rare box of strawberries, just as they pay multi-millions for their penthouse and their several villas. And they will reserve that ability to themselves, withholding it individually and as a class as long as they can. Populism is only evidence of a cynical fraudulence of the obscenely rich. People are not rising - except in numbers and desperation.
I will venture further to wonder if the recent outbreak of desperate unreason may not indeed be a psychological effect, an anxiety in many, caused by the disturbance of seasons. Thus it might have been foreseen, much as the flap of a butterfly wing, due to a very small error in the initial data, may forecast a tornado as demonstrated by meteorologist Edward Lorenz in the 1990s. As for Dr. Huxtable of the Priory School, his earthquake was the abduction of Lord Saltaire, son of the Duke of Holderness. Holmes took the case!
El Caudillo
Unwittingly, they made their final choice, based on the price of groceries, unwilling to believe it will be their last choice. They chose to resurrect the White Christian patriarchy in the most vulgar and cruel manifestation since slavery. A purge will soon begin, similar to the Crimson Revolution of Mao’s China. With no foreign enemies, there will be no wars. Instead, the immense power of the state will be trained on those “enemies within,” the press, protesters, the opposing party and anyone whose past opposition has been deemed by the patriarchs to deserve punishment. There will be no recourse to law, its rule being suspended; and all those who will swear to uphold the Constitution will be lying under oath.
Those few of us left clinging to the shores defining the content, about to be swallowed up by rising seas, had hoped for a reprieve from this fate, but just this outcome was as inexorable as those rising seas. We are the mice in that 1950s experiment on the effects of overcrowding. Before they all died, those rodents must have been very angry and violent. The difference is that they were forced into that condition. We in contrast have chosen this destiny, inexplicably.
There were signs though, subtle in their certainty. The machismo of American culture has been greatly amplified by immigrants from like cultures. Their communities, despite being vilified and threatened by the victorious campaign, demonstrated that their hatred of women exceeds their fear of deportation. And there have been more subtle signs of a backlash against women’s rights, even among women themselves, some of whom would rather go back to being chattel than have to support themselves and their children. In evidence, their Rapunzel locks will be a handy way to drag them into a cave. The party of tyranny has closed the circle of power, and I am not as sanguine as some that checks protecting vital institutions will hold. The electorate did not turn the page. They slammed the book shut on democracy, and dictators around the world rejoice while Europe trembles and civilization quakes. America has its own caudillo!
My final scream
I sincerely hope my good friends and compatriots in England who follow this blog are not aggrieved with me for my apparent focus on American politics. In my defense, I must assert my firm belief that the rightwing here, which like the rotten apple in a barrel has for long been slowly spreading its rot of anarchism - taking over state houses and courts, including the highest - now stands on the cusp of consummating a project that would be a global calamity. It must be observed further that the supposed leader of this movement is neither its author nor will he be its executive. He is a doofus, who has served as a lure to gather enough other doofuses about him to finally effect the unchecked power of tyranny. Clearly this depraved reprobate has opened a sluice for septic effluents, giving permission to brutes, scoundrels and vulgarians to let loose their racism and misogyny.
Consider only the economic proposals to recognize the global disaster to follow upon victory of such a campaign: high tariffs; renewed tax cuts for the wealthy corporations; cuts to health care; dismantling the “administrative state,” i.e. the Federal government; political control of the Federal Reserve; and the deportation of untold numbers of immigrants. Consult sophisticated economic models of the well-regarded Peterson Institute for the results: the GDP would shrink; the dollar would sink; employment would tank; and prices would rise. All together along with the flight of capital, the equation yields depression, starting in the US and spreading worldwide.
The motivation of followers needed to perpetrate this horror we find in the strong emotions born of the culture wars, including a sanctimony that is sacrilege in disguise. Nothing will move the zealots to ban assault rifles, but they will ban abortion. Thus will the sons of women forced by the state to give birth wield their long guns to massacre more school children - before they too can multiply. For the rest of the world, along with the economic danger, there is the threat of the “America First” isolationism. This era might resemble the 1930s and ‘40s but look what it took to rid the world of Hitler. If America elects a fascist regime, it will be allied with Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, with obvious results. Ukraine will fall to Russia, Taiwan to China, Israel to Iran and South Korea to North. There will never again be a peaceful transfer of power such as America has blithely enjoyed with such complacency. It is clearly not in a dictator’s playbook. No, no! But as I wrote last week, the fiefdoms will clash soon enough. Once they are engorged with the blood of innocents, and tire of spoiling about in their new territories, they will want more. They always want more!
The unavoidable topic
The trees here have been stressed by drought and summer’s heat, and only now begin to make a valiant effort to show some color, however drab. My friend Anna and I bewail this situation, as you will note from her poem this week under “The Carriage Lamp.” I could write about the growing disaster of climate change, but I daresay, evidence of the gravity of the impending election here abides in the fact that there is no subject which will not be impacted by the result, which is therefore the unavoidable topic. This gravity is felt around the world, with dread in Europe and Britain, relish by dictators. Harris is articulate, quick witted, intelligent, and experienced. She pulls no punches in telling her audience in no uncertain terms what is at stake in the agenda of her opposition. But hers is the voice of a woman, and the ridiculously pertinacious stereotyping of the gender cannot be over-exaggerated.
I made the case here last week concerning cracks in the veneer of civilization and the tribal mindset showing through. Again I am caused to reflect on how the Romans may have felt during the centuries of their defeat by tribes. Surely if Autocracy, Inc, becomes the norm for all of society, peace will reign - for awhile - thanks to the ghost of Neville Chamberlain. But the fiefdoms will covet, they will war, they will be carved up into smaller fiefdoms, until the species will have reverted to its prehistoric status, and a new Dark Age will ensue.
There is no freedom in a tribe. The individual conforms or is purged in some way - exile, shunning, death by torture. Today where freedom still exists, tribal fissures are already evident through political self segregation. In the dictatorships, rulers are able to suppress large populations by means of propaganda, terror, and sham elections. Free people do not deliberately choose to live in fear. If such a reign of terror is installed in America, it will be on the heads of a minority - those voters in the notorious swing states, already being manipulated by propaganda. And the world will pay a heavy price.
Signs of cracks
My essay, “Decline and Fall,” in Ruminata is subtitled “The Tribal Mindset.” As this tribalism flares up like wildfire around the world, I offer a few quotes: “The foundation of tribal instincts is an underlying attitude that people who are like me are good and trustworthy, while those who are not, are inferior and suspect. This prejudice is easily stoked, as every tyrant knows well, with appeals to communal fears or tribal allegiance.” Some pages on I wrote, “The cracks in a civilization begin to show when, after many even innumerable generations, people take its blessings so entirely for granted that they feel free to criticize.” In today’s world signs of such cracks are harder than ever to ignore, as the tribal mindset is constantly being inflamed by hyper partisanship - and the goal of absolute power justifies any and all means conceivable.
Here in the States, there is a sense that hundreds of millions stand fixed with bated breath awaiting the election, still two weeks off as I write. Polls show the parties in the final stretch like two race horses neck and neck, voters already locked into their choices. Personally, I believe there may be a landslide in the popular vote, which may or may not translate into winning that hoary institution, the electoral college, concocted centuries ago to appease the slave states. Partisanship here is glaringly obvious, yet a graver crack in civil society is that one side, taking their freedoms for granted, stands eager to embrace fascism. These benighted innocents have neither knowledge nor imagination to conceive the environment of universal fear installed under a regime of absolute unchecked power. Fixated on their feeble minded blackguard of a chieftain, they may contend that he does not mean what he threatens, or that he will be stopped by the laws. In truth he is just the puppet of his own minions, who even now are bold enough to crawl out from under their rocks to tell us openly of their intention to seize and hollow out the government, punish anyone who protests and expel all “foreigners,” honoring no laws at all.
Should this brand of autocracy be deliberately chosen here, it will spread across the globe like canker.
A pea soup fog
Four years ago, September, when we were still wearing masks, keeping six feet of distance between us, and flying to Maine was out of the question, I took it into my head that the altitude of the nearby Blue Ridge Mountains would provide some relief from the summer heat of the mid-Atlantic, and so took a week’s vacation in the Shenandoah National Park. The weather was indeed refreshing and views of the colorful sunsets and the valley below - with lights twinkling on at dusk - delightful. Accommodations were a bit primitive but acceptable, while the food was in a word execrable, but I discovered a camp store well stocked with options. Last week I posted describing my interim misadventures and of my intention of returning to Shenandoah this year in fond hopes of discerning some improvement. This is my report, which I warn will corroborate the laws of entropy.
This time, having given up on escaping endless summer, it was the beginning of October, following the disastrous hurricane Helene, and remnants were being felt in the mountains when I set out westward. There were no views of stunning peaks or ridges, all being shrouded in fog. Entering the park, the serpentine climb was treacherous through low visibility, no views at all. I checked in at the lodge, a different one than the last visit, but promising on the website. To reach the room, I proceeded down a slope of crumbling pavement and up some stairs to a tiny chamber, vintage 1950s and apparently neglected ever since. Food in the dining room was even worse than I remembered. I suspected the cook of being a high school dropout whose qualifying experience was a summer job stocking shelves at the discount supermarket. Concessionaires of these accommodations, seemingly, hire only those who are gap-toothed, heavily tattooed and having the requisite facial piercings. Thus the engines of entropy I witness grind and rattle on the way to ruination: climate disturbance worsens and weather systems wreak untold havoc; many oak trees in the park have died of blight, inviting fires; great accomplishments of the past, like the national park system itself and their once grand lodges, are left in the hands of incompetents. It is a great sadness when the verdicts of nature are amplified by the obstinate ignorance of the condemned.
The pea soup fog, as Londoners call it, did not clear the hills for days. Indeed as I left the mountains in the rearview mirror, they were still draped in low clouds. A poetic sight - from a distance!
Heading for the hills
In my preface to Ruminata I explain that having been born a few months before the end of World War II, thus not among the baby boom generation, my experience of life was nonetheless impacted by those “hordes of somewhat younger people,” going on the elaborate that “I no sooner would discover a quiet inn in Maine than it would begin filling up months in advance, tribes of cyclists descending on it, then cruise ship passengers clogging the streets of town.” I included this prefatory information because several essays in the collection reflect my resulting world view, for example, “Travel: You Can’t Get There From Here.”
I continued to go to that quiet inn in Maine for decades, learning to book in winter for a week in summer, a reliable northerly escape from the heat. Then came the pandemic. Dead silence in the skies, amid deadly contagion. By September, however, I had struck upon nearby Shenandoah National Park, where the altitude of the Blue Ridge Mountains would offer some relief. The following year, newly vaccinated, I returned to Maine. The only appropriate word for my reaction is gobsmacked. The place was despoiled, overrun by a goodly portion of the global population, to the point that no restaurant would take dinner reservations.
The airlines, of course, have been equally overwhelmed. Thus for the past two years I have hit the road northward, anticipating at least some degree of cooler weather. A day’s journey brought me as far as New York State. These trips have been instructive, which is the most I can say for them. This year I am returning to Shenandoah a month later than usual, having given up the hope of escaping “endless summer.” Meanwhile, the coast of Maine is being destroyed by more violent nor’easters, and a beloved shore path I would walk every morning is now impassable. At the end of my essay “Travel” I write that for me it has become an “aggravating, deplorable experience,” going on to observe, “I differ from younger people in remembering a time when travel was slower, easier, and more comfortable. Without this basis for comparison, they are oblivious.”
Seasons
After a rather brutal summer here, we are enjoying the mercy of an early autumn; and being my favorite season, I am loving it: the longer nights, the morning fogs, the chorus of crickets, now audible with the locusts gone. It amazes me that the word “crickets” is being used as a kind of meme to signify dead silence among young people immersed in a perpetual atmosphere of pulsatile, monotone noise. Early morning in my garage the crickets are a match for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.
When the time comes I will move “My November Guest” to the top of The Carriage Lamp column here on the blog. The famous poem is by Robert Frost, whose work, along with that of Edna St. Vincent Millay, represent in my opinion the strongest argument against the idea that verse - a poem with rhyme and rhythm - is only doggerel. I had always thought the aforesaid poem was a late work, written in late life when losses accumulate. The guest is the poet’s sorrow, whom he speaks of in the feminine. Learning, however, that it appeared in Frost’s first collection, A Boy’s Will, I now wonder if it might be expressive of a youthful romantic disappointment. But there is greater depth here to reflect upon. His guest loves the “dark days of autumn rain,” “the bare, the withered tree.” She “walks the sodden pasture lane.” She tries to persuade him of their loveliness, and in the last stanza he confesses to us that he did not need persuading. “But I were vain to tell her so, and they are better for her praise.”
Surely the seasons give us contrast, the dark and the light, likewise the seasons of life. In our more enlightened moments we recognize their mutual beauty. That recognition is our intuition of their transcendent reality, that essence which inheres in all that is real - with the important exception of evil, a dark ignorance which totally obscures natural intuitions. Reflection should further inform us just how prejudicial our notions of reality can be.
What genius to convey such meaning and nuance in the perfect architecture of true poetry! What passes for the art today is merely a peroration of prose in a singsong cadence.
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?
(32)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.
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