Ogblog

A Recent (sort of) Rant

2013-04-22T00:00:00.000-07:00

A Review of "The Hunger Games"

2013-01-28T00:30:00.000-08:00

Ballade Pour Adeline

2013-01-09T00:17:00.001-08:00

Sixto: Sugarman

2013-01-08T00:30:00.000-08:00

Sixto

2013-01-08T00:00:00.000-08:00

Human Nature Above Human Systems

2012-11-19T00:30:00.000-08:00

I've been asked what economic "system" do I believe in. Is it "capitalism" or "socialism" or some other such mental contraption? I must say that I do not disbelieve or believe in anything called an "economic system." I don't begin or end with such "ideas" as these,even if I were completely aware of what they meant or certain whether others using the terms meant them in exactly the way I might think of them at a given moment.

I begin at the beginning,with the fundamental Nature of (Wo)Man. Humans are thinking beings,social beings, and spiritual beings all at the same time. Therefore, we must be free to think,we must be free to live with one another in peace and with whom we choose or not choose,and we must be free to exercise our capacity as partially non-corporeal beings, meaning that our needs and desires are not purely or even primarily material or economic.

And so we see that Man does not live,in the first instance, within an economic "system." She lives within her Nature as a human being. It is only in the expression of that Nature that we create "systems." These include the economic of course. They also include the spiritual, the legal,the political, the recreational and a whole host of other systems that I cannot think of and would not presume to think of for others.

The political system we create,what we usually call a government, is simply another one of these systems that is created in response to our nature as human beings. However, it must be said that the political systems and the economic systems we create are closely tied to one another as the former must fund the latter and the latter must in some way be legally sanctioned in such a way as to avoid a kind of anarchy that would make the maintenance of any kind of economy virtually impossible.

Viewed from this perspective then, we see that the governmental "system" and the economic "system" do not stand OUTSIDE of the society of humans and their nature but firmly within that society and expressive of the common nature of the beings within it. In other words, from my perspective, I do not BEGIN by saying that I want to impose a certain political or economic system on a particular group of human beings or God forbid on humanity in its entirety. No. This is the meaning of the Declaration when it says that "governments are derived among men", and gain their just powers from them. We might say our "systems" are not our creator. The Creator is our creator and WE create, as expressions of our humanity, the "systems" that we believe best facilitate that expression.

So, to return to the beginning, what "economic system" do I believe in? I do not believe that the economy is a system. The economy is an organic interaction of human beings. People, as human beings, are social. We want to live among each other. We are lost without each other. This means that part of the way we interact with each other is to fulfill each others economic needs. We buy from one another, we sell to each other, we trade with one another, we barter, haggle, negotiate, finagle with one another, sometimes, yes, we steal from one another. The common way people throughout history have done all these things, for better or worse, (and yes sometimes it is worse), is to set up what we call "markets" where people can come together in all sorts of capacities and venues to interact with each other in an economic way. This is not to say, as I said above, that there is a complete separation between the political "system" and the economic "system". They must interact with each other, for the reasons that all humans must interact with each other and because of the special link between government and economics. This is not even to say that something called "Capitalism" whatever that has come to mean as a "system" of economics is good or bad. After all, we must admit that any maintenance of a "Capitalist System" at time requires a strong government. It is to say, however, that any suppression of the activity that occurs within a market by the political "system" is, in general, a suppression of some aspect of human nature. One might say at times this is a good thing and no doubt, at times, you'd be correct. But make no mistake this suppression will be resisted as a matter of course. And if the suppression goes too far and circumscribes Justice, it risks becoming a tyranny and suppressing the very Nature of BOTH our politics AND our economics it ought to be fostering.

We might say that we begin again with Human Nature. Our minds, our relationships, and our being(spirit) all constitute this Nature. All of our systems are simply our ways of expressing these fundamental aspects of ourselves. From my perspective, any "system" that tries to impose itself into this nature, whether called Capitalist, Socialist or Communist and takes it not into account but attempts to take it into its sway, is pernicious, destructive, and doomed to fail.

Governor Romney's chances/strategy of winning in 2012

2012-10-25T01:58:00.000-07:00

President Obama's re-election chances/strategy

2012-10-25T01:36:00.003-07:00

The American Revolution as an Advancement of Empire

2012-08-13T14:19:00.000-07:00

It can be asserted, one may submit, that the American Revolution was fought in defense of the idea of an ever expansive British Empire of Liberty. This idea was simply continued after independence as the idea and reality of an American Empire of Liberty.

The English Parliament never had the universal conception of the British Empire that the Americans, especially Ben Franklin, had. Some of the anti-Monarchical Whigs had such a conception. However, the Whigs were not powerful enough politically in the late 18th-century as to be able to change the nature of the Empire.

The majority of the English parliament was still Tory and in favor of a monarchical, centralized idea of an empire administered from the Parliament in London on behalf of the King.

Ben Franklin to the Constitutional Convention

2012-07-16T01:11:00.001-07:00

The more I learn about Franklin, the more I know that his wisdom and genius and a better understanding of them are a small key to maintaining the fraying tapestry of our Union. He has a beautiful, brilliant, elegant, and lovely mind. I love him like a brother. His writings are intoxicating for those of you of any political persuasion. All humans can benefit from reading his Autobiography. It is the tale of a solitary soul imbibing the world with the fire of his overwhelming curiosity. It shows that a life of "book learning" or "hands on learning" are not opposed to one another but essential in their combination to nourish the soul and create that inner light that, when combined with a generous spirit, can illuminate the world, quite literally in the case of Dr. Franklin.

Here is Franklin's Speech to the Constitutional Convention on September 17, 1787. He was a man of 81 years at this point and could hardly get enough breath to speak, but his mind was alight with wisdom, courage and patriotism.

Romney Rice 2012??

2012-07-14T12:06:00.002-07:00

I can't imagine why Mitt Romney would be seriously considering Condi Rice to be his running mate. It makes no sense politically. It is nonsense in terms of practical government if Romney happens to be elected.

On a political level, Rice has no constituency whatsoever. She is an academic and is very intelligent. However, she has no base of support which will automatically flow into the Romney column by his choice of her. Her race, let's be blunt, is probably at least one thing Romney is considering as an attribute in order to counter Obama's significant and probably growing lead among all racial groups other than whites. But even on the crude racial level, the choice makes no sense. African-Americans, generally, have a distaste for Rice. They, to a large extent, view her as an opportunist who is used by whites as a black-face to put into a white administration. She will be viewed this way even more so while running as vice-President. Whites tend to distrust Rice because she conjures up memories of the W. Bush administration, by definition bad for Romney.

On another political level, Rice is viewed as extremely liberal by Conservatives, especially on social issues. She will be viewed as an opportunist pick to "make the minorities happy" and it will further racialize this election which is exactly Obama's goal. The more the election is about race the better for Obama. The residual pride in the election of an African-American President in 2008 still lingers and is flamed up again when race becomes an issue. The choice of Condi will simply keep the election's focus on race, something Romney needs to avoid.

On a practical governing level, all of Rice's experience is in foreign policy in a moment where the economy is in a state of slow train wreck, and becoming faster. Romney, if elected, will need all the help he can receive in order to solve economic problems and a Vice-President that has all the attributes of a Secretary of State does not necessarily help in that area.

I can only conclude that the Condi Rice moment is just a moment. It is a story put out by the Romney campaign to gauge the reaction of the Public and of Conservatives to a Rice ticket. I can't imagine Romney will actually choose her. I expect other people to have their moment as "trial balloons" before this long process is over.

Some Business and Ben Franklin

2012-07-13T01:21:00.001-07:00

Unbelievably this blog is linked to on an actual rather popular blog run by a rather popular MSNBC "talking head" and thegrio.com journalist and I've been negligent in my thanks. My views tend to be about 180 degrees away from my former interlocutor and "rival" but I thank her for the link especially in this year where it is easier to view our political differences as unbridgeable chasms. The wonderful blog is reidreport.com So, thanks again Joy.

My internal demographics for this blog tell me I have around 5,500 views. That is not a lot considering, however it is quite a few considering the random and deleterious nature of my postings. I fancy that most of the views are readers of the reid report clicking on my site by accident and seeing the politically heretical nature of my opinions recoiling in horror and returning to the decidedly left-leaning views of their favorite amateur turned professional pundit. :) (Oddly, about a third of the views come from Russia, so to my Russian readers, I'm re-reading my War and Peace and starting in on Anna Karenina so brace yourselves for some GREAT reviews!! Tolstoy is the friggin' BOLSHOI!!:) And to any FSB "friends" reading this:stop wasting your time and go blow up some more apartment buildings to blame on Chechens!!

As an aside, I am finishing up the wonderful Charles Van Doren 1939 Benjamin Franklin biography. It won the Pulitzer Prize that year. It is beautifully written using many of Franklin's exquisite letters to give a real sense of this patient,patriotic,stoic,genius,eclectic,wonderful and wise First American. Franklin's diplomatic engineering of Parliament's repeal of the Stamp Act in 1766 was a lesson in the art of using peacefully persuasive leverage upon a rival in order to patiently and pacifically achieve the interests of one's nation. I can only vainly hope that we modern Americans will study and remember that first great peaceful victory where we united as a nation to boycott British goods until the repeal of the Stamp Act. It is important to remember, perhaps as much for this country as any, that not all "victories" must be bathed in the blood of the innocents.

So, as always, I say remember American history and remember the peaceful victory of 1766 where Franklin cultivated friendships in the very bowels of our future enemy and helped unify our country for peaceful and noble ends: the defense of our ancient Liberties brought down to us by the very nation trying to abrogate them.

The Four Parts of "Seeing" (Introduction)

2012-06-14T00:00:00.000-07:00

There are multiple ways of thinking about the idea of "seeing" an object. It is too simplistic to say that when when we see an object with the eye, that it is the eye doing the "seeing." This would be like saying the view we see through a clear window is the product of that window.

Seeing is a mental activity much more than a visual activity. Every glance, even if we try to avoid it, conjures up a hundred thoughts, a thousand ideas. For the eye is no instrument, but simply a lifeless vacancy, save for the mind that guides it both in its direction and depth of vision. The ability of the human eye to see depth is unparalleled in Nature. The human mind's corresponding ability to imagine a world, a "vision" beyond the world that is perceived by the physical eye, is unmatched and scarcely imagined by other beings.

There are four aspects to "seeing" an object. First, the object being seen is actually in the eye. It occupies space in the eye. This is true both in the functioning of the eye as an organ doing the "work" of seeing AND it is physically true. It is physically true in that the light from an observed object, the product of that object, literally occupies space in the eye. Our observations are, in this sense, the physical acquisition of at least some elements of the object being observed. (As an aside, this physical occupation of the eye by an observed object is why we receive a rush of emotional pleasure when we see a loved one after some time of absence. It is an emotional thrill because that person has literally entered our mind through our eye and occupies a portion of it. For instance, observe human behavior at an airport when loved one's greet each other off of a flight.)

The second aspect of vision is that the observed object is correlated by all of one's senses.This means that sight becomes related to the other senses. For instance, when we see a triple chocolate ice cream cone with a cherry on top, we can taste and smell the chocolate on our tongue and smell it in our nose even if we cannot physically approach the ice cream and imbibe it into our senses. Therefore, through vision and the mind, all the senses can be molded into one. So that when we see an object it becomes a complete object, not just a vision but a fully formed object in our mind.

In this instance of the correlation of the five senses around an object, they unify into what might be called "human sense." The five senses become one, briefly, in relation to the object being observed. The object becomes a unified whole that exists not only in space, but in time, and in one's mind.

The third aspect of vision is that the envisioned object is fixed in space-time at a given point. In this sense any changes taking place to the object cease to be observed, temporarily, because time is fixed by the mind in relation to the object. Likewise, any movement the object may be doing is temporarily disregarded as the mind fixed the object into a given point in space.

The fourth aspect of vision is that the envisioned object is fixed in the space-time of the mind. This is generally called one's "memory" of an object. Memory, among human being and perhaps some other being, can be conjured up spontaneously or through stimuli. Stimuli are usually other perceptions such as auditory or smell that one experiences at the same time that the object is envisioned. So, here we can thus understand the terms "smell of death" or "sounds of battle."

In the context of the unity of the four types of vision through the integration of all sensory experience, we can understand the close relationship between perceptions and memories. Perceptions are both "over there" in the world and "over here" in my mind at a given moment. In the same way memories are both "in the past" AND "in the present." Their existence in the past is brought forward into the present by the actions of one's mind and through action can affect the future. So, we here see the existence of what one might describe as the "past-present." This is the melding of the transitory moments we exist in with the depth of our memory that is constantly enmeshed and intertwined with past events, people, ideas etc. We can thus imagine a present that is much deeper than the superficial flashes of meaningless sights and sounds we often lament it to be. We can live in a past-present, integrating our memories and those of others into a deeper, more meaningful, and more fulfilling present that thus propels us into a future that is at once more challenging and more hopeful.

This "past-present" is, I suspect, a field of existence that human beings tend to forget and then remember in the oscillations of time and change that our species has lived through. In periods such as the one that we can sense is now ending,where we live in the present only, technology is viewed as something we "interact" with, but it exists in a fundamentally separate way from our minds. This creates a disconnection and disruption between the present of the technology that we are using and the past that our mind is constantly inventing, rearranging and remembering. Thus technology tends to do the work for our mind, in many instances, tending to enervate it.

I suspect we are moving into another age of the "past-present." We will remember again that technology and mind are one and the same thing. They do not interact so much as act in concert. If one is off key, the other creates disharmony, no matter how sophisticated or enlightened it imagines itself to be. The mind, through its ability to connect to a past, can bring technology up to a level that can allow it to be the tool of transformation for the individual it potentially is. Technology, with its ability to master the present moment in an astonishingly powerful wide range, can propel this transformed individual into the broad sunny uplands of a boundless future.

Dominus Vobiscum

2012-06-13T00:30:00.000-07:00

In the light of day
I saw the world as it would be when night befalls
And when dusk fell
The wail of a thousand voices pierced the air
And prepared the spirit for the coming trials

Had the pleasure of reading recently.....

2012-06-02T00:00:00.000-07:00

The famous history by Jacob Burkhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy. This is an excellent study of Italian culture between about 1350 and 1550. I begins with Petrarch's brilliance.

In Petrarch we see a man who was the first person since classical times to ascend to a mountaintop and describe what he experienced. For Petrarch, nature became Nature. Nature took on a beatific and aesthetic quality. It became sublime.

Also Niccolo Machiavelli's two greatest works The Prince and The Discourses on Livy. Machiavelli's most sincere warnings in both works were his admonitions to avoid the implementation and use of a standing mercenary army. He especially uses the Carthaginian example in this. The mercenary army of Carthage turned against its patron city after its defeat at Zama by the Roman legions of Scipio.

Random Ramblings

2012-05-31T00:36:00.002-07:00

The State of the Union is fraying and tarnished. It seems in every election year we say this. However, I don't think it is just that. There is today a lack of understanding among people that my trusting and naive nature fails to grasp.

The people of this age seem to think that society can continue to function without any upkeep, without any new ideas, thoughts or plans. It has never been and will never be thus. A society is really a continual renewal, like an ancient city with layer and layer built up over centuries. Our job, as inhabitants of the present, is to make our contribution to our layer. In this sense, it is our interest and our obligation to have SOMETHING to contribute, some passion, some feeling, thought, or interjection that breaks the monotonous rhythmic patterns in order to create new patterns that move in the direction the human spirit needs to go at that particular point. When so many people stagnate, when they fail to strive, to think,, to be curious, to challenge and rise and dream and stand up for themselves, this has a cumulative negative effect over time and distance. It leads to stagnation. The stagnation in our souls translates into a stagnant society. A society is nothing without the spirit of humanity electrifying and animating its core. It becomes a congeries of seething fears, recriminations, paranoia, and petty interests. It settles into a conglomeration of menacing mediocrities glowering at one another across imaginary divides.

I remember other times and other people. In the past I enjoyed having discussions with people much older than myself. They were freer and more spontaneous in their thoughts, broader and deeper in their knowledge, and didn't give a flying damn about what other people thought of those thoughts and ideas. They seemed bolder, more spontaneous, like a spark was continually igniting and illuminating parts of their mind that they wanted, NEEDED to share with you. And they didn't think this way of being at all unusual because it wasn't. I once, when I was younger, subscribed this behavior to their older age. This is the way "old people" act, talk, think, behave etc. Now, as I get older, I am not so certain of this. I think people have changed from the inside. There is a fear in people today of all ages; a circumspection, an enervating self-consciousness that continually asks for the permission, approval, and attention of others; any others, anywhere.

We seem to have regressed as a species. I don't like this change. I admit I am conservative by nature and tend to venerate the past, perhaps a little too much. But I also remember. I remember everything. And I know, I am certain of the changes I speak of above and I just don't know the cause. It is an issue of disturbance to me. We are all and only human and beings. We live and love and hate and hope together. But we must never forget that all we do together is meaningless and empty if our individual souls have lost the bright, burning thoughts and passions that enlighten and envigorate an otherwise dark and barren world.

We are brilliant and good created and creative beings with hearts and minds electrified and sparked by a soulful fire. That is the human in our being. That is the essence that will reinvigorate our humanity into the pillar of wisdom and strength that will reanimate and uplift ourselves and our society.

Writers on writing

2012-05-09T00:00:00.000-07:00

The State and the Government

2012-05-02T09:15:00.002-07:00

The Three Freedoms

2012-05-02T09:13:00.002-07:00

Machiavelli

2012-05-01T06:07:00.002-07:00

The vastly misunderstood Niccolo Machiavelli writing to Ricciardo Becchi: January 31, 1515

"Anyone who might see our letters. my dear friend,, and might note their diversity would be very amazed, for at one point he would think that we were very serious men, involved in weighty matters, and that we never entertained a thought which was not lofty and honest. But then, turning the page, he would discover that these same serious men were frivolous, inconstant, lustful, and occupied with trifles. This manner of ours, although to some it may be disgraceful, seems worthy of praise to me, because we imitate Nature, which herself is various, and anyone who imitates Nature cannot be criticized."

The tragedy and necessity of the present age is that we must know much about one or a few things. Compartmentalization of knowledge is all around us, especially in social media. This has created a psychological condition that leads us to see other people as what they are in the moment. Everything we do is supposed to be a "representation of who we are" from our clothes to our looks to what we read, listen to, write....this leads to a lack of creativity, spontaneous thought, and innovation. All we do is now "seen" by someone and that creates an unavoidable self-consciousness in all our actions that is something new in it all-encompassing pervasiveness. When all we do and write and say and sing and think is SEEN constantly, we cannot help but internalize the gaze of others into a vice of self critique that can be stifling if we are not careful.

Of course, we choose for all of it to be seen and heard as well. This is a choice born of the urgency and necessity of the present and is understandable and unavoidable. But a small place must still be saved, I think, for the fearless state of just pure, brilliant, joyous, uninhibited experimentation in thought that a too pervasive self awareness caused by the audiences we seek out might stifle. It is this freedom that belonged to people like Machiavelli who were free to experiment in thinking about a whole range of topics without fear of being placed into a category by his thought and musings in the moment. Now we are expected to be on one "side" or the other, one camp or the other. Those expectations can be the tragic death of innovative thought and the stifling of possibilities that might preclude solutions.

Nabokov's Lolita Compared to Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Terhan

2012-04-30T00:00:00.000-07:00

In both Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita and Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran there is a general overriding conflict. That is the clash between the world one creates in her own head and the real world of actual things and events that never ceases to intrude upon the private world that one creates for herself.

Literature and reading enable one to both know more about the actual world and to build upon one's own private world through the use of fiction. In Lolita Humbert is constantly alluding to the world of mythology when discussing his desire for young girls. Humbert also displays an extensive knowledge of actual past societies when he describes common sexual practices between adults and children in times past. In Reading Lolita in Tehran Nafisi's girls use the fiction of Nabokov, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Jane Austen, and Henry James to try to create worlds within their minds that are ameliorative to the everyday indignities and cruelties they live through as women in the Islamic Republic of Iran. These fictitious worlds, however, are constantly being intruded upon by the actual world and so a blend of the ordinary and the cruel world is created. This is referred to as "posh-lust" by Nabokov. The Islamic Republic also builds its own fantasy world through the use of popaganda and ideology in order to justify its seduction and rape of Iranian society. The Islamic Republic uses ideology to shape its own version of the actual past in which the government of the Shah was entirely Evil and so the structure of society must be torn away.

In the same way, Humbert often uses references to mythology when attempting to explain or justify his lust foir and rape of underage girls. Humbert uses his concept of the "nymphet", a clear reference to mythology. Humbert describes nymphets as maidens between the ages of 9 and 14. The nymphets, in the warped world of Humbert's mind, live on "an enchanted Island....surrounded by a vast misty sea." This clearly is a reference to the mythical Sirens who tempted sailors at sea with song. Humbert depicts the nymphets as non-humans there to simply serve blind lust and satiate his "super voluptuous flame permantly aglow." If a nymphet is simply a myth and not a person, then to have sex with her is not the vile act of rape and the theft of a young girl's future, but the playful act of a carefree Pan or Puck, dancing through the forest having his little mymphs as it pleases him. Afterall, a myth has no past, no future and therefore no present meaning, no reality. In myth one is free to play and act upon impulse.

Humbert not only uses mythology to justify his actions but also references to the past and present real worlds. He states Virgil, "probably preferred a lad's perineum", referring to the Greco-Roman world's instances of man-boy sensual relationships, although more common among the Greeks than the Romans. From the relative present, Humbert mentions the Young Person's Act of 1933 in England where the term "girld-child" is defined as a girl beteen the ages of 9 and 14. Here we see Humbert cloking the outrageous action of the rape of a young child in the respected cloak of English Common Law!! It is the combination of the horrific and the banal, posh-lust to the extreme.

In Reading Lolita in Tehran Nafisi's girls use fiction, especially that of Nabokov's Lolita to try to build a private world that explains the public hell they live in the Islamic Republic. Nafisi states that her girls (her students) discussed Lolita and the "discussions were colored by my students' hidden personal sorrows and joys." The girls, as stated by Nafisi, had not LOST a normal life, they ALWAYS lacked a normal life. The girls had never lived before the Islamic Republic. Therefore, they lacked any real-life reference points to the make-believe reality portrayed in Lolita and the other novels they read. The world they read about in the novels, "would turn into something more pure and golden than it ever was or will be." This is the reason that Nafisi is quite adamant that her girls are not like Lolita. These girls could never imagine living life in the consumerized nation that the USA had become even by 1947 (the year Lolita is set).

So, the reality of the Islamic Republic is never separate from the world of the novels that the girls read. To fully place themselves in the world of the novel, as the reader can do in a sane nation not driven by ideological fantasies, is impossible for the girls. The pervasive nature of the regime makes this impossible. This is shown when one of the girls goes on a Caspian Sea trip with her girlfriends. She is castigated by her own family for doing this. The regime has so embedded in the peoples' reality that they become its willing enforcers and executioners. A simple road-trip to a beach, part of a normal life that one might see in a novel, is not possible. The regime, through its lack of respect for the Rights of its citizens, has invaded not only the girls' real lives but also any world of the imagination they had created for themselves through fiction. The ideologically horrific mixes with the normal and Nabokov's posh-lust oozes forth. As John Stewart Mill understood, societal conformity is a stronger and more pernicious force than legal conformity. The State could wither away but the People would still chain themselves to its corpse.

The Islamic Republic busies itself creating its own myths to justify its subjugation of the Iranian people. The myth of the Islamic Republic is best represented in the mind of Mr. Bahri, a radical Islamic student leader. In the Islamic Republic, "a philosopher-King ...had decided to impose his dream on a country....to re-create us...." Mr. Bahri has completely bought into that vision, even though he is intelligent and young. He tries to shape Nafisi into the kind of person he thinks an "Islamic teacher" should be. In the person of Mr. Bahri we see how not only the ignorant are influenced by ideological myths, but the intelligent as well.

The Islamic Republic uses old-fashioned real-world ideological propaganda in addition to its dreams and myths. When the Iran-Iraq War began the Ayatollah Khomeini state, "this war is a blessing for us." "War" and "blessing" being related to each other only makes sense in an atmosphere where ideas have become ideologies. The idea of war is its reality: killing and human suffering. The ideology of war is the advancement of the Islamic Revolution. The killing and suffering is but a means to an end. War is the health of a State in permanent revolution.

We can thus see clearly the difference between ideas and ideologies. The former is promoted through the normal institutions of a free country designed to separate the world of the mind and fantasy from the world of reality. In such a country fiction is possible. Living in one's own mind is possible and therefore Art is possible. This writer can think of no better definition than this of a "free" society. In a totalitarian society, like the Islamic Republic, ideas become solidified into ideologies, the Tyranny of the Idea. The great flowing river of conversation that has a past, future and therefore a present is dried up in the mass chant of the unquestionable "truth": the ideology.

It is Lolita who desperately seeks to maintain the idea of herself and not to succumb to Humbert's ideological notion of her as the nymphet chained to his loins. It is Nafisi's girls who vainly to maintain the idea of themselves as independent women as more of their fellow Iranians fall to the ideology of the Islamic State.

Ideas are the great product of the power of the human mind. Ideologies are the great perversion of that power. It is this notion of the perversion of power through the seduction of ideology that is the common thread of Nabokov's Lolita and Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran. It is this perversion that twists the individual person into a category, ready to be counted, collated, questioned, and if necessary destroyed all "for the greater good." Perhaps this is the common thread that in many ways renders our modern world so tragic.

A Literary Analysis of Three Short Stories

2012-04-29T06:23:00.001-07:00

In Alexie Sherman's "This Is What It Means To Say Phoenix,Arizona", Russell Banks' "Sarah Cole:A Type of Love Story" and Kate Braverman's "Tall Tales From The Mekong Delta" we see the contemporary absence of God or the spiritual realm in modern life. We are turning to new gods such as consumerism, narcissism and drugs.

The course of the 20th century in the United States has moved away from the mainstream spirtual traditions that guided the country at its origins. In the 1880's Nietzche declared that "God is dead." He was not simply referring to the God of Christianity that had been in decline for at least 100 years. He meant the outlook and focus of intellectual thought had lost its center, its logos, its guiding word and spirit. The outlook had crashed to earth, into the jumble and chaos of the world of things and away from the Platonic and Kantian spiritual realm. In order to fill the spirtual realm, new "gods", perhaps even a new religion, would have to be created. The new religion was supplied by the State in the form of totalitarianism in Germany and Russia. By the middle of the 20th century these had been discredited, the one by fire-bombing and Auschwitz and the other by Stalin and the terror of famines and gulags.

After this we might have expected a return, especially in the US to a more traditional God. To some extent we saw this in the perversion of the religious Right, however, for the most part we have seen an increasing escape into personal "gods" be they consumer goods, self-love or drugs.

This worship of "brave new gods" is understandable in the context of the bankruptcy of statism and the seeming confirmation of God's non-existence in the smoldering radioactive rubble of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the simmering flesh-filled ovens of Auschwitz. If Man can do THIS to Man without God's intercession, then there must be NO God. As Voltaire's Candide eventually learned, we must simply tend our own garden in the end.

Man's greatest discovery, the splitting of the atom, spelled his spiritual descent into post-modern angst and chaos. The intellect in its timeless tumult with the soul stood gawking and dumbstruck at the soulless inferno it had wrought and looked forward in horror to the soulless being who would inhabit the dead and earthly realm, untethered from its spiritual sustenance, like the Blue Devil frozen in the depths of Dante's Hell.

Sherman, Banks, and Braverman, in their excellent stories, examine this new world and the new gods that we have created to fill the spiritual void.

"This Is What It Means To Say Phoenix, Arizona" is Sherman's tale of Victor's loss of his father and his journey to recover the body accompanied by Thomas. They are American Indians living on a reservation. Thomas is a spiritual man who tries to teach his people through the use of stories. Nobody wants to listen to him. When they are seven, Thomas tells Victor that he senses his father is sick.

When he was a boy Thomas believed that he could fly and he jumped off a roof to prove it. He actually flew a bit. However, the world caught him and he fell to the ground and broke his arm. The spiritual had defied the concrete and secular for a few moments. But the concrete firmly and harshly reasserted its dominance. The other boys watch could simply taunt Thomas about the broken arm.

As they are driving back to Washington through a dead Nevada landscape devoid of all spirit, Thomas and Victor hit a Jack-Rabbit, the only living thing they have seen. Ironically it is the spiritual Thomas who is the driver after Victor had driven all day.

As they arrive back at the Reservation the two men see the rising on a new day. The people are arising and praying to the secular gods of work, breakfast, and the paper, "just like everybody else does."

Thomas professes his philosophy of "take care of each other" and "nothing stops." These profoundly spirited statements express the Amerindian spirit of the circular pattern to life where actions and reactions rebound together in a perpetual path of Being. In response to this Victor reflects that the most he shares with his friends is a beer bottle. In the end Victor and Thomas cannot remain friends. After one brief acquaintance the earth and spirit must separate again.

In "Sarah Cole: A Type of Love Story", we see the narcissistic love of self replace spiritual love and existence. Ron is the self-described handsome man who becomes the lover of an extremely fat and ugly woman, Sarah Cole. Sarah is in love with Ron's physical appearance and approaches him in a bar. Ron objectifies Sarah not in the usual sense of wanting to possess beauty, but in the warped sense of wanting to possess the ugliest person he had ever seen.

At one point Sarah asks if Ron wants to make love to her. Of course he does. "What could be be simpler", he thinks. Here the self-loving and loathing aspiritual attitude of Ron is at its most obvious. He equates sex to a simple mechanical process in which it is obvious he and she both want it. Ron seems to see it as similar to munching a bag of chips. It is the ultimate victory of the long sexual revolution of the 20th century that has culminated in a world where sex is relatively easy to find, without consequences if we are careful, and more an act of soulless self-love than love. This triumph in some ways has been a godsend, as we can quench our loneliness in the soft and moist body of another. In the short-run much pleasure has been gained from this. In the long-run many lives are broken and ruined by the suppression of the soul that results. It becomes impossible to love.

By the end Ron experiences this inability to love Sarah. "Go on and leave you ugly bitch", Ron says to her during an argument. He describes Sarah as wrapped in a golden light. He is left alone with his beautiful hands in his beautiful face, spiritually dead.

Kate Braverman's "Tall Tales From The Mekong Delta" is the story of a woman's (let's call her Kate) descent back into the morass of drug addiction. Her gods are cocaine, cigarettes and booze. Lenny, a drug-dealer and cocaine addict, becomes Kate's anti-Moses, leading her back into the bitter land of the slavery of drug addiction. Lenny is shorth, fat and rude. Kate surrenders to the only temptation Lenny can offer: the forbidden fruit of this exciting, fast, soul-killing and ultimately suicidal world.

Lenny has money and he reminds Kate of her love of material things. "Want a rolex?" Lenny asks. This gets Kate's attention.

Like the color of Dante's Devil, blue is the prevailing color in the air. China Blue is the drug Lenny sells. "The air was a pale blue, bleeding into the horizon taking the sky." The oxygen is being sucked out of Kate and blue death is being injected into her. For Kate it feels good and comforting. It is a structured environment, as Lenny says. Never mind that the structure is rotten and infected where mental anguish and pain is not confronted but smothered by chemical concoctions that kill the pain but dull the mind. No matter, a mind is superfluous in modern Los Angeles where pleasure and ease are what is desired. The drugs deliver this comfortably and painlessly for Kate.

Eventually Kate gives Lenny the sex that he craves. She opens her lips and legs to him as the Santa Ana winds howl. She is left wedded to her god of drugs, addicted again and floating in a blue haze, dead spiritually and perhaps soon dead physically.

In Sherman, Banks, and Braverman we see the world of soulless creatures that we have become. Sherman shows the secular embraced at the expense of the spirit. Banks shows how narcissism can twist love inward rendering it unable to reach out for another. Braverman demonstrates the dominating aspects of drug abuse demanding the submission of the soul in obeisance to a mind dulled to a flame flickering out.

Commonality, narcissism, and drugs are just three of the many post-modern gods that we have embraced in the Nietzchean world of "God's Death" and the atom bomb. It seems that there are as many gods as persons and they have become death, the demons within us squeezing the life from souls screaming in agony, ultimately to be our destroyers. Living Being cannot long inhabit a dead world. Either we regain our souls from the depths into which we have buried them or we ourselves, humankind, will descend into the recesses and catacombs from which nothing emerges save the darkness of lost souls.

Have a good Sunday...wherever you might be, John.

Fear As A Political Weapon

2012-04-27T00:00:00.000-07:00

The oscillation between "reform" and repression is the common practice of all totalitarian states. In Soviet Russia Lenin introduced the New Economic Policy, followed by Stalin's purges, followed by Khruschev's reforms, followed by Bhreznev's repression, followed by Gorbachev's and Yeltsin's reforms, followed by Putin's repression.
In China we saw Mao's "Hundred Flowers" movement, followed by the Cultural Revolution, followed by the opening to the West, followed by the massacre in Tiennamen Square.
The common thread in such states is fear in both times of reform and repression. In times of repression the fear is political, present, and real, taking the form of violence. In times of "reform" the fear is psychological as the People still remember the slaughter of the time of repression. They are kept in line not by actual violence, but by the memory of it; not by the bullet from the gun, but by the smoke which still emanates from the last shot. Fear is a potent weapon.
Let us work for that weapon to never be turned upon the American People.

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

2012-04-22T00:30:00.000-07:00

Oration on the Dignity of Man

"impatient of mediocrity, we pant after the highest things...."

Walter Pater's Biography of Mirandola

Fearing Hoping

2012-04-21T14:30:00.000-07:00

And when we embarked it was already dusk
Stumbling silently, intently, fearing and hoping
Blackness enveloped us in its raven wings aloft
Groping, grasping always peering ahead
Daybreak
Golden drops of air awash in color faces beaming