HALLOWEEN

HALLOWEEN

Halloween has always struck me as a strange time. It is Christianity’s flirtation with its own dark side, a piece of itself never completely resolved. It’s a footnote added in order to absolve itself from a guilt started long ago from never telling the whole truth.

And today, not unlike Easter and Christmas, it’s been safely reduced to a children’s fantasyland, ghosts and goblins and free candy. Innocent enough. It succeeds in allowing Christians to gloss over those parts of history no one wants to remember. In fact, there’s so much illiteracy today it wouldn’t surprise me if most of them thought of Halloween as just that, a children’s time, and nothing more. It hails from the same mindset that announces, “If English was good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for me.”

I stroll through the neighborhood, looking at all the lanterns, spooky signs, pumpkins, and animated ghosts, and think “what an exquisitely perfect system of cultural indoctrination this is on children.” It’s handed down, again and again – 3% truth, 97% fabrication (myth descends into folklore, folklore descends into fairy tale). It’s part of the American Dream. “They call it the Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it,” said George Carlin.

It also has its own fail-safe protection: To scrutinize it is to attack “our children and an American institution” celebrated by Norman Rockwell and Billy Graham. It’s not just un-American and un-Christian, it’s cynical and spoils a good time for the kids. It’s the rantings of a curmudgeon who must have never had kids and who probably suffered a deprived childhood. “It’s too bad, and we’ll pray for him.” – All the guns are ready to fire!

I have nothing against children having a good time. In fact, I think they need much more of it. But during the most formative time of their lives it’s also critical not to “edit” the truth before they receive it. Historians all say that what ends up more powerful than anything isn’t what citizens are told but what they’re not told, what’s kept out of the national conversation. The conversation here is at the dinner table, in history books, the media, movies, and in Sunday School. The same fairy tales are passed down like a baton.

Until they can be passed down no more. Eventually the truth is felt like a rock-hard cement floor that doesn’t let sewage sink any lower. The foundation in this case is (global) consciousness. It forces knowledge to percolate from culture to culture, belief system to belief system. And everyone is forced to listen. In the case of Halloween (Christmas and Easter), children are faced with conflicting messages they want answered truthfully. When they don’t get it, when asking just earns more denial and ignorance, they get angry. And Halloween turns from something fun and harmless into something “oppositional defiant” and “conduct disordered.”

We can easily place the ritual in the same category along with Christopher Columbus, Plymouth Rock, and Manifest Destiny. The roots of Halloween are what children are asking for, the honest truth (as always), even though they may not even be old enough to understand it. – A brief precis to follow is what awaits them:

It all started with investigations into the problem of Church “sacrifice.” And it is now being investigated like never before. Remember Judas? Even he is now being rethought as someone chosen or instructed by Christ to betray him, as his “closest ally.” But that’s subject for another time.

Deliberate sacrifice acknowledges that man lives on only because of the sacrifice of something else. In other words, he is sacrificed to “the worms” (earth) to sustain the cycle of “eternal life.” The subject of “worms” (and burial) is something our society does not like to indulge, except in the context of “hell/purgatory,” or under the black veil of fear and loathing – in this case associated with All Hollowed Evening (Halloween).

After Passover comes Pentecost, which begins March 25th, just a few days after the Vernal Equinox. After the life of Christ, his death, Resurrection, and Ascension, the whole cycle begins anew with the Incarnation in Mary’s womb again. But now, while Mary begins another symbolic (nine month) pregnancy, it’s as if the Church has nothing to do or say. References to “harvests” and fruits begin: Acts 2:1 says, “They were all with one accord in one place …” as if it were time to simply wait. And simply “waiting” becomes a kind of dilemma that only deepens in the ensuing months after the Summer Solstice.

During this phase something happens to the Christian calendar. Until now all the rites surrounding the Incarnation follow the “solar” calendar, ecclesia-solis (everything “masculine” in connotation) in association with the birth of the Sun (or Son). But now all references begin following the “lunar” calendar, ecclesia luna – the waning and waxing of the moon (all “feminine” connotations). Indeed, gestation is a feminine experience. But this is another way of saying we now proceed towards “seasons of darkness” where active communion subsides and becomes mere observances and commemorations of saints. It’s as if the Book of Hours doesn’t know what to do with the remaining months of the year. The “feasts” to follow reveal much more.

The most obvious (most awkward) feast for the Church after the Summer Solstice is Halloween. This was a seasonal feast first begun by the pagan Celts around 1000 B.C. It was a time of celebrating the harvest represented by the god Sowen. The Romans also worshipped the goddess Pomona for the same reason. Around 60 B.C. the two rituals merged as the cultures became intermixed. Both worshiped nature spirits, and both peoples dressed up as animal spirits.

Then came the Christians and their agenda to convert (or kill) everything pagan. Interestingly, The Council of Nicaea led by Pope Gregory actually knew this feast was too powerful to kill off entirely. It was too deeply woven into the fabric of ancient Europe. So, the Council decided to allow “diluted” forms of the pagan gods in, while gently infusing its religion at the same time. As they referred to it: “flexible at the periphery, adamant at the core.”

The Council turned November 1st – Sowen – into “All Saints Day” which became “All Hallowed Evening” or “Halloween.” Today we make it October 31^st. But not before making the day after “All Souls Day” meant to commemorate the Christian Saints. The Church would bend only so far. It was a gesture of derision meant to trivialize Sowen.

People still dressed up as spirits which officially didn’t bother the Church. But by the fourth century it had begun recognizing “witches.” Their extermination began slowly, but escalated for the next millennium (the worst witch hunts occurring between 1350 and 1750 AD). And in the year 1517, Luther even ended Halloween. He eliminated All Saints Day while trying to eliminate bishops and saints at the same time (“apostolic succession”). The Protestant Church decided Halloween was simply a) too pagan, and b) too Catholic.

We should mention that the Catholics also felt pressured to cover the time surrounding the Autumnal Equinox in some way. So it created Michaelmas (September 29th) after St Michael who in the Book of Revelation is the principle fighter in the heavenly battle against the dragon (devil). In England and Wales he is often the “patron of cemeteries.” And in Medieval art he “weighs souls” between Doom and Heaven.

In spite of Luther, Halloween still managed to survive in the American colonies. This was because many colonists believed in the occult and pagan spirits (“gingerly” mentioned in history books). At this time there were the American Puritans persecuting witches, but pagan worship thrived nonetheless. They held “play parties” that included, among other things, apple bobbing. Still later the Irish arrived and brought yet more rituals to add to the holiday.

As time passed the Puritan-Protestant influence had no choice but to compromise with the the occultists in the same way the Romans had to compromise with the Celts. And by the early 20th century, Halloween, like most myths and folklore, had been watered down to little more than a children’s “holiday eve.” – Despite the fact that by the 1970s it had again become a kind of “adult” celebration again. Today, children and adults dress up in spirit costumes. The Church basically ignores it. In fact, it’s interesting how the Church remains conveniently silent and invisible at this time.

The Virgin Mary is pregnant during Pentecost (a time when all the fruits have been gathered in and Christ’s work is completed). And Mary stands for the Church itself. But just as there is an obvious absence of feasts during the remainder of the year, the Church now prohibits(!) any new encounters or revelations prior to Christmas. There will be no “objective increase in revealed truth” or in what Carl Jung called the numinosum. It almost sounds like a decree sent forth that no one shall have the privilege of a religious experience of any kind (by order of the Pope), based on the fact that the Church itself has none. The Church becomes the problem – not the numinosum.

Big words and concepts for children today (tomorrow’s leaders). But it’s the real history. Personally, I think the biggest fear is that the children of Christians will leave the Church. But this has been on-going anyway since the 1970s. “The Flock” has been leaving in droves (except in the Third World where illiteracy and fear keep members so afraid of Satan – and God – that they still humble themselves to the Church). In all other parts of the industrialized world the Church is typically only at one-quarter capacity on any given Sunday. In fact, the Church in Europe has become more of a tourist attraction and museum than a place of worship. Tourist dollars are the only thing keeping the famous cathedrals open.

The second biggest fear is that they become converts to other faiths (or no faith). But again, it’s a moot point. There are more atheists, agnostics, and apostates today than ever before, in the US and worldwide. Literacy and knowledge are simply growing. There’s no way the Church will ever return human populations back to the equivalent of a “medieval” consciousness – illiterate, superstitious, “lost,” desperate to be saved.

The consciousness of Christian history can be divided three ways: the Dark Ages were the “child’s phase” when, again, people were scared, desperate, and alone. It was easy for a religion to come along and promise salvation. The second “adolescent phase” arrived with the Renaissance – the “age of reason” – when people began thinking for themselves and questioning authority. The Church needed a Counter Reformation to stem an Enlightenment. The “adult phase” came with the industrial revolution and modernism. People now think for themselves and can’t be fooled with the same rhetoric pontificated over a thousand years ago.

This is what convened the Second Vatican Council in 1965 – the need to modernize. The aggornamento was all about becoming “more Catholic and less Roman, less monarchic and more constitutional, less doctrinaire and more dialogic, less monolithic and more mosaic, less static and more mobile, less preoccupied with the City of God and more in love with the City of Man” (quoted from Life Magazine, Dec.,1965).

With all that in mind, let’s all enjoy Halloween – but let’s also remember its real history. Let’s not deny it to our children. If they don’t want to know it now, they will.

© 2021 Richard Hiatt

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THE IMAGE

THE IMAGE

Exactly how much gravity do we put into a photo – of ourselves, or anything? Especially when it comes to ourselves, the photo has taken us over, it seems. From the most vain among us to the slob with no self-esteem, it doesn’t matter. Even the slob uses a mirror/photo to “keep up appearances” befitting the image possessing him.

The mirror is a photo taken in real time. Don’t like what you see? Just change the aperture, distance, lighting, angles, contours, framing, clothing, and facial “enhancements” – and it’s the photo you always wanted to freeze-frame. That is, if something doesn’t slip, run, shake, or you need to sneeze. Human vanity is the only vanity that “preys upon itself” (Shakespeare) and overtakes commonsense. In fact, it’s the only vanity, since we’re the only ones “who blush, or need to.”

But it’s more than just about vanity. The image has taken over everything. Never have I seen people go completely still, as if transfixed by a laser beam, when finding themselves facing a mirror. The world drops off and there’s nothing else except the shakti between image and self-image, truth and desire. The same applies with the “selfie.” The mirror and photo are those phenomena whose functions are all about anticipation and hope, while simultaneously telling us how it really is.

We are inundated with photos. Orwell’s TV screens (eyes) seem evermore real. And where they’re absent, we compensate with I-phones. Can’t waste one minute without checking in with a message tailored to each of us on how to look, act, and where to go. I personally don’t need an I-phone (don’t own one) to get a full spectrum of visual cues drowning me with smiling faces living some utopian dream. It’s the first rule of capitalism: always keep the consumer unfulfilled and wanting more.

Even God is for sale. His “salesmen” are everywhere: “For $19.95 and the purchase of my set of CDs (with complimentary book), you too can join God’s family. We accept VISA and Mastercard.” – It’s the one thing that spiritual communities on both “left and right” (gurus and evangelicals, mystics and Christian ministers) have in common – mammon. God and his “green” angel are just as omnipresent on billboards, road signs, texts, e-mails, TV, and mailbox flyers.

Everyday that I walk downtown I face endless billboards. I slow down to absorb exactly what it is that tries to suck me into its orbit, forcing a dialogue between myself and an image magnified tenfold. Years of study and planning by ad experts (social psychologists, marketing analysts) make it their passion to know everything about me, even my moods and the cat food I buy. And the first thing I think about is the shear amount of effort it took to put that image in front of me, with all its theories and subliminal devices. Algorithms, profit curves, and risk analyses are firing off about a piece of shit which will most likely be obsolete in six months. And yet obsolescence doesn’t seem to be a problem here. Waste always seems to be somebody else’s problem in this throw-away economy. Fuck the landfills as long as it makes money “today.”

The photo-image is what captivates me much more than the product. This is what holds me in its grasp as I stand there on a public sidewalk. I sense that behind the image is an ideological function in play, a collaborative scheme: economies confirm ideology; ideology confirms economies. Susan Sontag said, “To consume means to burn, to use up – and, therefore, the need to be replenished. As we make images and consume them, we need still more images, and still more.” The image is thus eternally dated. It keeps summoning improvements: “New!,” “groundbreaking,” “the latest,” “cutting edge,” “unsurpassed,” “revolutionary,” “never before” – but only for today. Everything has a shelf-life. Then we need more and better.

I wonder if society is actually regressing backwards. Since the beginning reality has been interpreted by the image. In the earliest cultures reality was not reported through the image but as the image itself. The totem was the deity. This appeared later as well in early Catholicism and the other Abrahamic religions: periods where the icon “revealed” the living God through stigmata and signs. However, most of the time the icon was also merely a symbol or channel to God (evidenced through levels of substantiation). Either way, the image has always been “living testimony” to one degree or another. It has “saved,” and it has “killed.”

And yet today, we experience what might be called “modern primitivism.” We place living faith into the photo-image. It becomes a living soul without which (if mishandled) one feels the loss of life itself. (S)He experiences extreme trauma, The whole of life is different. This is the power given even to the mirror.

Between those two extremes – mere reflection and total helplessness – most of us today have learned to associate or dissociate from images. We’ve learned to possess them so they don’t possess us (while also “letting them” possess us “just enough” if we want them to). Which again indicates a kind of consumer relationship. We can discriminate types of experience and information. They help us contain life in meaningful structures. Through images we can surveil reality and control it by saying “this is real, but that isn’t.” One image is discarded, another enthralls us and is an omniscient god.

This, by the way, was Balzac’s biggest nightmare. Knowing these dynamics happening even in his lifetime, he saw the photo-image’s power of reducing life down to “details.” He saw cameras (the new invention) consuming everything. Reality itself would then become less interesting, more depleted; while the image would then bolster it up again artificially. The camera was consuming society. – Very much like the I-phone today.

Photos, always recording what is past, take on a seductive (sexual) role as well. The past can be possessed, and possession is what we want (of people and things). Even more, possessions are never fulfilled. We are never satiated. So we crave more images to ”fix” the desire. It becomes an addiction. We want to both possess and voyeur at the same time. The visual acuity of sight has become the most powerful instrument of sexual desire and perpetual disappointment. And we never get enough.

Roland Barthes wrote that the photo-image “bears witness … to [our] own subjectivity.” It is a mediated “portrait of the mind.” This is what scares and seduces us at the same time. Hence our need to postpone, edit, crop, and doctor the image – i.e., keep possessing it. The photo records what is both absent (which can be filled in) and what is past (what can be changed). Meanwhile, as we “fill in” and “change,” the image consumes us and becomes us.

This, by the way, is in contrast to the painting. While the photo-image is always about what has just happened (“reality in a past state,” said Barthes), the painting captures an eternal presence, a sense of timelessness. It captures the “soul” of a subject locked in an eternal “now” moment. This is where the photo fails. It tries relentlessly to capture the living present (“One Hour Photos” demonstrated this). But the second the picture is taken, it’s already past and must be replaced by another. The camera must also be carried around everywhere to ensure we stay as close to real time as possible. – The painting cannot be carried around. It’s function therefore is to breathe and capture the eternal moment – forever. It has only one chance to succeed.

With all this rushing through my subconscious, I suddenly reawaken and find myself still standing in front of the billboard on a downtown street. It seems like an hour has passed, but it’s just been a few seconds. I get very self-conscious and need to shake free of where I am. I walk on — until I encounter the next billboard just a few seconds later – or a photo – on a wall, the side of a bus, a book cover, t-shirt, shopping bag, coffee cup. The image is stalking me like a ghost. And it doesn’t matter what image it is. It wants to consume me just as much as it wants to be consumed. It never lets up.

The question I’m left with is, at day’s end with everything turned off, how much of “me” is left? How much is still myself and not a composite (melange, assemblage, pastiche) of all the elements I unvoluntarily consumed today? There’s no way to know, because the tools we use to find out are on loan from the very monster we want to separate from.

It’s just interesting how, when we do manage to extricate from all those influences, we begin to free-fall into a time warp. First, we become strangers to ourselves, then old acquaintances. Then finally – like the painting – we become a rediscovered soul, temporarily lost but not forgotten.

© 2021 Richard Hiatt

CONVERSATION & DIALOGUE

CONVERSATION & DIALOGUE

This one we owe to the women. No doubt about it. There’s conversation, and then there’s cutting through all the crap meant to keep us divided, fearful, and lost. In other words, “out of touch.” What does it say when a “man” wants to cross that divide and enter a conversation (with anyone) about art, animal rights, the joys of flaneury, George Sand, David Bowie, or the letters between George Bernard Shaw and Beatrice Campbell?

Not that I actively seek out those connections. I’m too introverted, and meeting people has always been difficult. But I’m at least tuned into the “dialogic species” enough to know that if it ever found refinement and higher intelligence within its grasp, it would be due to the feminine intermediaries of that species – despite the inertia of religion, despotism, and political retrogression.

The question is a valid one to ask: Has social refinement (and intelligence) actually decayed in the last 400 hundred years? Or has it simply gone underground in the wake of all the violent (neanderthal) predations and savagery orchestrated by men? Since the days of “the cave,” women have learned the skills of keeping the “gentler arts” sub rosa and out of sight. Men have condemned them, punished them, lampooned them, and dismissed them altogether. Which means that real (substantive) communication is what was most feared. It has obviously opened doors to the male psyche threatening the fortresses of masculinity.

For the more “evolved” male, this dilemma has been a challenge, putting it mildly. He is quite literally stuck between the norms of cultural expectation and a much finer (refined) space which is unavoidable and inevitable. It entails “communication” which challenges old norms and stereotypes. Personally, I miss what was once called the salon culture in the 16^th and 17^th centuries. It nurtured a kind of conversation I can only find in reading or on the History Channel. Admittedly, I would have little to add to the conversation. But I would be there to learn, not to talk. And learning for me (not power) is what this journey is all about.

The first individuals brave enough to forge such a literary presence were the women of France between the reign of Louis XIII and the French Revolution (roughly between 1620 and 1789). It was a time dedicated to the definition of taste. Consider the times: uneasy alliances between Church and Crown, endless plotting and bargaining between high-ranking nobility and the monarchy, assassinations and coups, threats of imprisonment for speaking out on virtually anything, demands of loyalty and obedience to the sovereign, and most of all an entrenched patriarchy teaming with codes of behavior. To fight for even one’s simple right to privacy could be treasonous and worthy of a prison sentence (privacy was still a luxury enjoyed by the nobility).

However, this era also invited forms of self-made attrition. The codes of behavior and expectation were wearing thin. Religious wars were proving themselves futile, with no real victors and just endless violence. It brought on an existential moment in the minds of men – an “identity crisis” in today’s terms. The old certainties of life were collapsing and the nobility was obliged to seriously rethink itself. – All of which brought on an amazing metamorphosis.

There was a new game in town – one created by the women of nobility. It inspired not only an integration between sexes but a new literati. It invited a new collaboration between high society, literature and “leisure pursuits.” Perhaps most important for the mental health of its players was the introduction of play and levity. It brought on a new intellectual conversation about “the arts.” Groups gathered in salons where a new sensibility was congealing around “aesthetic perfection.” Free time was now devoted to art, literature, music, dance, theatre, and conversation – training for mind and body.

To be sure, there were also rules: of clarity, forbearance, and in showing respect to others. In other words, it cultivated a talent for “listening.” – As someone said: “No men in France hang more together than literary men; no men defend their order with more tenacity.” They were learning from the women.

The mix of humor and depth, elegance and pleasure, and the search for truth made high society more androgynous and worldly. Sophistication and symbolic heraldry now replaced the need for constant displays blood sacrifice and proofs of loyalty to the Crown. It was the wives, mistresses, female artists and intellectuals forming a blueprint for a “civil” social etiquette.

The first salons were initiated by women – for women – going back 400 years. They led the way, mostly out of reactions from discrimination to formal education. A 16^th century Italian concept, the word salone itself simply meant a literary gathering area. It referred to a room, usually the boudoir (of all places), where a lady could receive close friends in private. The French word ruelle, later used by Louis XIV, meant “lane” or “narrow street” designating the narrow spaces between the bed and wall, where visitors took their seats in a semi-circle. By the early 17^th century these became public and they could now leave the boudoir. They were led by patronesses called “blue stockings” (originating in England). The term derives from members showing up in casual attire because they couldn’t afford fine clothing. Hence, the emphasis leaning on high conversation and not fashion.

These salonnieres allowed that there would be no universal agreement as to what constituted proper or improper conversation. According to author Dene Goodman, these were “not social climbers but intelligent, self-educated, and educating women….”

The trend quickly spread throughout Europe, and by the 18^th and 19^th centuries the salon was modeling itself on the Parisian standard. Since conversation inevitably branched into political debate and the many changes in the art world, men inevitably joined in and began their own salons. Some included “only men.” Particularly in France and Germany, and with the profusion of formally educated women artists and authors, they eventually became mixed groups.

The salon culture then traveled overseas. Since the French Revolution there were many interruptions and pauses in the art of conversation. It actually experienced a diaspora. And with the American temperament already so well documented by Tocqueville – uncouth, boorish, rough-hewn– one wouldn’t think it would ever survive in a place like the American frontier. But it did – again disguised, private, discrete, and desperately guarded.

The east coast gentry had no cause to conceal anything. The European (blue stocking) salon was quick to start up there. It had its book clubs, lecture series, and visiting authors. It had myriad reasons to gather under the peerage of souls thirsty for knowledge, enlightenment, and “taste” through poetry and art. At first it found sanctuary at colleges and universities, but then spread into town halls, churches, parks, and other venues.

But again, it also made its way out onto “the frontier” – albeit in more generic and assimilated forms. It had to disguise itself in ways that incorporated a whole different kind of male-oriented culture. Many of the women either had no formal education or were self-educated. Nevertheless, they needed reasons to gather, to share and support one another. One such environment became the “cult of quilting.”

Quilting was a façade while producing deeply needed materials for families with little or no money. They produced recycled comforters, blankets, and heavy work clothing. Their labors allowed a dozen or so women to sit at a large table, in a circle, and engage in conversation – with eyes and hands busy with needle and thread. At some level it was all about bringing life back into balance. It was also a makeshift gestalting of endless emotional issues that wives, siblings, and mothers faced everyday living extremely difficult and isolated lives on the prairie. It was the first group “therapy session” of its kind in America. Their men of course remained oblivious to this ulterior motive.

What these gatherings shared in common with the salons of New York and Paris were the sensibilities of the human spirit laid bare. The former did it through art; the latter through instinct and raw primal need.

Variations and improvisations of the quilter society carried on into the next century. Industry and progress finally improved “leisure” enough to enable more privacy and free time. But one constant remained, and survives today: refinement, subtlety, listening, mutual respect, and a thirst for knowledge.

Many women then and today may be uneducated or self-educated, but it misses the point anyway. What carries on is the art of being “in touch” – a forsaken art in too many sectors of society today. As a man particularly, one has to go out and actively pursue it – which I personally am very bad at doing.

Gore Vidal said it best: “I was speaking of a category to which I once belonged that has now ceased to exist. I am still here but the category is not. To speak today of a famous novelist is like speaking of a famous cabinetmaker or speedboat designer. Adjective is inappropriate to noun. How can a novelist be famous … if the novel itself is of little consequence to the civilized, much less to the generality?”

For what it’s worth, I feel better not being alone in that sense. One doesn’t need to be introverted to feel the vacuum that even Vidal felt. He was the most gregarious, socially-oriented, salon-attending, party-participating public figure that ever was. Which tells me that even in the company of intellectuals, celebrities, and tankards of alcohol, one still encounters a dearth of conversation. Toilet humor, sex, people “on the make” and “working the rooms,” yes!! But substance has gone south along with patience, openness, common (professional) courtesy, and deep sharing.

I remember a comment Phil Donahue once made about his mostly female audiences. It had to do with the art of “listening.” He was grateful that it wasn’t men who filled his studio because, instead of listening, instead of asking “what happened then, how did you feel,” men aggressively “compete.” Men interrupt and say, “that’s nothing, wait ‘til you hear what happened to me!” It’s either a contest of “one-downmanship” or “one-upmanship.” Hence the reason men feel empty when out “with the guys” and lay the burden of endless listening onto their wives and girlfriends. Men simply don’t know how to shut up.

I confess: This entry is really about a fairly consistent void in my life at this time. There’s an emptiness that forces me to dialogue with all I have in my possession — an alter ego, four walls, and a family of cats — not exactly the same thing. Dating is also a challenge, as it’s always been. I pride myself at least in knowing that I’m a good listener (hearing Mr. Donahue’s caveat loud and clear). I was a “shrink” once (by definition a “professional listener”) and I learned the art of listening fairly well — and I ask questions. But dating alone doesn’t automatically fill the void I’m talking about. Many women today, alas, are “talkers” and horrible listeners – a sign of the times. They’ve managed to learn from the men.

I’m not quite sure exactly what it is I’m looking for here, where I’m going, on the deepest personal level. But when I run into it, I’ll know it. It seems to be about touching something extremely deep and existential, needing implicit trust. When I meet that person (or persons) I’ll be the first to say, “now we’re talking!”

© 2021 Richard Hiatt

THE CIRCLE OF NECESSITY

THE CIRCLE OF NECESSITY

Once in awhile we all step back and either consciously and deliberately (or subconsciously and accidentally) look at the world through a wider lens. When I’ve done this I sometimes see just how inextricably, almost hopelessly, locked we are in our own suffering. It reminds me of rats running around on a Mobius strip, thinking they’re going somewhere, while not. The “official” remedy for suffering is to simply run faster.

What makes this so weirdly inscrutable, in my opinion, is that we (my generation and all those born after) have been raised on mass media, mostly television. We are the “TV generations.” The media has been branded into our DNA since the days of infancy. And its bag of tricks has only gotten more sophisticated (hence dangerous). The “boomers” now look aghast at the Millennials and Generation Z at what they carry around with them 24/7 in I-phones. The TV addiction is now complete.

That means simply they/we are also victims of a very controlling advertising culture. Ads rule us. They define the parameters of normalcy at every level of our lives. They instruct us about our value systems, our relations with others, give us our categories of “otherness,” and define how ideas are connected together. Most stunning of all is their success in having us think this is all nonsense. They keep “friendly/informal” relations with us and have us thinking they’re speaking specifically to “us” – like old neighbors. And even more stunning is the fact that they are. This is because we are in fact talking to ourselves. – The waters get very deep here.

And so, how can this be? Ideas don’t exist in a vacuum. They depend on what has come before them. Social conventions and linguistic rules have histories. They support two kinds of discourse: primary – telling us simply about goods and services; and secondary (more powerful) — supplying us with images and messages, many of them subliminal, with hierarchies of meaning. They put reality into “contexts.”

In one way or another, directly or not, most messages are about power and submission. The context is one of “you and me” finding power according to what power means, how it’s attained, who has it, who doesn’t, and what life means without it. Like it or not, Freud (i.e., sexual power) has a huge investment in this game.

In my opinion, the theorists who have the best understanding of advertising and TV are those who deconstruct it. One must “back into it” rather than try to analyze it head-on and take its meanings for granted. There’s no other way. The French theorists, for example, reduce meanings into “referent systems” and “texts” which are always transparent and tentative. “What is the proof behind your proof, the premise behind your premise?” – This is not a popular approach in America, and it’s why advertising has such an indomitable hold on everything.

On the other hand, those in America who have studied this phenomenon deeply agree with the French. One preeminent scholar and the author of Advertising the American Dream (Roland Marchand), said, “I have tried to work backward to the underlying social realities.” It was the only way to undo the many “refractions introduced by such biases motives, and assumptions” forced onto a largely inattentive and passive society – one searching for something called “the American Dream.”

Just as an aside, what exactly is the American Dream anyway? It’s probably the most impressive mythology ever produced by the makers of myths. It wasn’t something that wanted anything to do with reality. Since the 1920s Americans wanted to escape reality and believe in something they were not. Advertisers quickly learned that citizens did not want ads to reflect themselves. They wanted a “Zerrspiegel” – a distorted mirror that would enhance their world. They wanted images of “life as it ought to be” over and above the way it was. And so, they delivered in spades. As Marchand wrote: It was “a thoroughly modern dream, adaptable to a modern scale. It offered new and exciting forms of individualism, equality, personal interaction, and coast-free progress within the emerging mass-society. We may discount the solutions they offered to modern problems.” – I’m reminded of what George Carlin once said: “That’s why they call it the American dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.”

We take for granted that we are just consumers buying products. But after awhile it becomes clear that the guided distortions forced upon us conflict with commonsense. We all have original ideas intuitively generated which normal intelligence defends. And eventually we put “two & two” together and realize that something fishy is going on (without our knowledge or permission). The epiphany we have is that the ideas that are created for us are amplified everyday by advertising. The ideas are ours, and they’re not ours. We create them, and we don’t create them. In that sense, the media itself is an extension of our consciousness. There’s a symbiotic relationship between giver and receiver in a collaborative system. It is a vicious “circle of necessity.” ^*

So, a piece of us decides to “read into” the ad and we find layers of meanings. We don’t exactly qualify as “conspiracy theorists” (not yet), but we discover forces at play that are never fully disclosed. We begin asking questions of whether or not the message is authored by “sources” which expect a certain set of returns. And what are those returns?

When we decide that it’s not “us” doing it to ourselves, but someone else, we become aware of an Orwellian dynamic. Reversely, when we decide that it is us doing it to ourselves, it’s a Huxleyian dynamic. In other words, Orwell addresses tyranny “from above” and tells us who’s to blame. Huxley addresses tyranny “from below” and tells us that we’ve convinced ourselves that everything’s okay and nothing is wrong.

The power of the ad requires considerable support (from us). Products actually talk to us, and we talk back to them. The dialogue involves symbols and relationships that keep us locked in a carefully structured reality. Normally, when we interpret them, those interpretations depend on meanings created elsewhere (again, ideas don’t live in a vacuum). Those ideas, notions, feelings, fears, and desires also generate from somewhere else. It is an endlessly enmeshed circle (Mobius strip) of mass-consciousness. And this becomes the main defense of advertisers: Since there’s “no one specifically to blame,” all it’s doing is giving citizens what they want. It’s the same rationale in the news media. “We just report,” they say. They also follow “ratings” determined by us (they say).

A favorite analogy to this: A grocery store selling only certain products because its customers keep buying just those things. But the reason they buy them is because they’re the only products being offered. They have no choice but to buy them. The store manager sells what he wants to sell. He isn’t responding to public demand; he’s dictating demand. The customer is told “this apparently is what you want because it’s what you’re buying.” Huxley says “and we believe it.”

One might ask, how has all this changed from sixty years ago (when “the boomers” were booming away)? In the 1950s and 60s the message was still predominantly about division and exclusion – men vs. women, black vs. white, domestic vs. foreign, Christian vs. non-Christian, young vs. old, society vs. nature. There were strong protocols of “otherness” celebrated and defended. Not anymore.

In the interim between then and now advertising has mirrored many changes (very nervously). Borders and barriers have collapsed, taboos have fallen, and a new “global” sensibility has taken over. Ads struggled with this in the 1980s, and it was notable that for a period of time no company actually put a real-life person on TV to sell a product. Voices were kept off-camera. This was because they weren’t sure how exactly to portray “the new young, upwardly mobile adult” without giving offense to someone. Norms were morphing quickly in terms of skin color, gender, and race. Soon, the “Coca-Cola” generation (for example) became mulatto, female, upwardly mobile, liberated, urbane, and progressive.

Advertisers also knew that the “generic consumer” in Japan looked different from the generic consumer in Africa and Mexico. But they didn’t dwell on differences. They dwelt on what they had in common and on messages addressing a new “global family.” The idea of “exclusion” was gone. There had to be a common message here, things valued collectively, in what brought people together. At the same time they were careful not to undermine the importance of individuality. The world was not just a melting pot but a patchwork quilt of many voices. – Ideas now “traveled,” as did communication. The generic consumer was now a world citizen.

Power continued to shift, and still does. There is always a reordering of social relations. At the same time, something fundamentally “deep” remains unchanged through all this. — What is it?

As TV (and internet) generations, we collectively put more stock into celebrity lifestyles and sitcoms than we do politics, war, propaganda, or social indoctrination. The proof is in what we watch and how we respond. The media defines us, leads us along – thereby giving us the tools to lead ourselves along. – And we do it so addictively that we literally get (existentially) lost without an I-phone in our hands every minute of the day and night. — From the vantage point of someone (myself) still refusing to own an I-phone, it literally looks like a world receiving instructions from an alien mothership on what to do minute-to-minute. Humans are at the mothership’s mercy.

A real example of the feedback loop of “our values” is politics. With the news and ads both reporting and dictating, telling what ‘s real and not, we respond to politicians (power and control) in a very odd way. We hate them while voting for them over and over again. We blame “the system” for narrowing our choices; but again, who is doing that to whom, and why? What exactly are our “interests” in doing so? – At the same time, in other areas of wrongful dominance we seldom even complain at all. We simply acquiesce to those managing our lives and values.

This is where the majority truly is “silent.” The “hate” we feel is actually hate at ourselves for getting lost in this mental morass. As George Carlin also once said in response to this: “garbage in, garbage out.” We get back what we create. We don’t question our reasoning processes, our “syllogistic” associations, metaphors, syntactical patterns, verbal and visual “vocabularies,” even while knowing that they manufacture false assumptions, faulty logic, and dangerous consequences. To this we have only ourselves to blame.

On the other hand, in our own defense, all this is pressed into our DNA from infancy. It starts a whole reasoning process so inextricably enmeshed and dysfunctional that it’s impossible to get our heads around it. – Children are taught how to make decisions based on how to think and feel 24/7 — from ads, school, the internet, and their parents. They are what they consume.

Next time you turn on the TV, the news, or I-phone, try an experiment: Imagine everything you’re seeing and hearing is coming directly from yourself. Because that’s exactly what’s happening. Then ask why? What are we getting from it, psychologically? In the end Huxley trumps Orwell.

© 2021 Richard Hiatt

*The phrase was coined by writer and critic Judith Williamson.

PHASES

PHASES

Since turning sixty I’ve been experiencing “age” in what now can be described in three phases. The first phase was the Kuber-Ross “five stage” continuum, going back-and-forth between wishing and retreating, defiance and defeat, self-deception and hard reality. Some of this still stirs in me I suppose, to the extent that my body still gasps for vital signs of “middle age” – the old days.

Phase two has been the virtual elimination of Kuber-Ross’ first three stages – denial, anger, and bargaining. Now I simply sit with a reality that drifts in and out between mild depression and acceptance. – Alert: Enter a new Twilight Zone door monitored by friends who are waving me inside.

These friends are alerting me to a “third” phase (feeling like Scrooge with the ghost of things yet to come). It’s when old structures and foundations begin to crumble, sending us into an existential free-fall. It’s traumatizing and definitely frightening. And when an illness accompanies it, the world we once knew simply unravels. What I’m also noticing, because of this, is a very subtle but progressive unraveling of ties we once had between us. Everyone is facing new challenges (or old ones with new faces). Every challenge is unique to each person, but collectively I see this group drifting apart. It’s becoming every man for himself (and woman).

The lapse-time between e-mails is widening. I’m projecting here, but I sense that maybe each of us is losing touch with how everyone else is doing, because tending to oneself takes longer. Hearing from a friend is almost like seeing a flare going up, saying “still here!!.” It says something about the eroding of old ties. And this is the most sobering part of “phase three”: Though you’re still a cherished friend, you’re being replaced by more important things. Things are happening that are insurmountable.

I personally have not yet reached phase three. But I anticipate its arrival either slowly or abruptly. I have no idea how or in what shape events will overwhelm me to the point of pushing me away from the table, and I don’t want to know. But my task can only be one of preparation.

On the other hand, there are those octogenarians out there who don’t acknowledge phase three at all; they carry themselves as if they’re twenty (even thirty) years younger. “It’s all in the mind,” they say, and I want to believe it. And as long as I “have” my mind, I suppose this is the best attitude one can keep while edging into the Twilight Zone. It comes down to anticipating anything and expecting nothing. “No fantasies or expectations,” as a mentor (long absent from the table) used to say.

Meanwhile, part of phase three (I sense) is a deeper connection with oneself, a reckoning inside one’s soul while facing “endings” (of all kinds), nearby and still distant. We are all witnessing peers “disappearing” in one way or another. Some whose stories we know intimately; others we can only guess about. We wonder, worry, reflect, and try to put it in perspective while trying to keep an emotional equilibrium.

The nature of our own problems is also “change.” Not the problems themselves but our ability to handle them with the same efficacy. Personally, I tend to write them off by simply rationalizing that they (the problems) are just not important anymore. They just “don’t matter.” But, though this may be partly true, the larger truth is that I simply haven’t the energy to “grapple” anymore. Attrition is winning out. Everything moves slower now, or not at all. I put things off until tomorrow, or next week – or never.

The window sill on the front of my house was a project I started in May. I bought the paint and brush in August. Now it’s October and I’m thinking about getting the ladder out of the shed – all for a job that will take about 30 minutes. Meanwhile, trips to the grocery store are less frequent as well. I wait until I’m down to my last apple, bagel, and can of soup before forcing myself into the car. And then, getting home, I often find myself “spent.” For someone who still jogs 3 miles a day, it’s teaching me how energy is stored and rationed out. Much of this truly is mental.

In all, this is a time when I think we face the meaning of aloneness – specifically, in three different ways: the fear of being alone, the wish to be alone, and the ability to be alone. Three different, albeit related levels converging all at once. And for myself I can almost gauge the e-mails I receive with how well or poorly friends are dealing with that convergence. — One friend has long-term MS, another “athletic” friend is losing her physical ability, another has lost her husband. Still another found herself in a Walmart wheelchair for the first time – embarrassed and angry – unable to reach the third shelf. Still another, retail employee, can no longer help customers because his knees won’t allow him to bend far enough to reach the first shelf. – Just yesterday we were all “young.”

It all sends one into new and unexplored regions of the self, ones requiring significant alone time. It’s frightening to the extent that we can no longer lie or deceive, because it is ourselves we are talking to. There’s no “conning a con” in even the most cleverly cloaked and nuanced ways. No more white lies, half-truths, or lying (by omission).

It’s “intervention” time. But we’re the only one here in an empty room. It reminds me of an Edward Hopper painting and/or the surreal art of several European artists.

It seems to me that the problem of being alone is one of two things happening in mutual opposition. The first is the relief of retreating into a private and safe sanctum. We know ourselves and can (at least to a degree) let down our facades. The other is the experience of loss of those facades which induces a kind of depression and mourning. We’re naked and vulnerable, and we feel safe only for as long as we can remain alone. Anxiety then comes from both directions: the desire to let down our facades while needing them at the same time. It presents the first conflict with the self. It’s the fear and wish factor.

Ability is a whole new ballgame. It’s comes down to an equivalence with self-actualization – or “awakening.” It’s the surrendering of facades and deceptions and the navigating of personal discovery at a deep level – and in a spirit of complete surrender. The idea of “humility” fades because there’s nothing in the way of its opposite – arrogance – with which to compare it. There is no duality in that sense. In other words, even the arrogance is embraced as simply a shallow coping skill – no longer needed. Neither is aloneness compared with “loneliness.” Again, it embraces both sides and includes (forgives) them as different facets of our being.

Ability comes in layers and stages, and we have to be patient. It’s the final path to personal healing. It awaits us all and reminds us that we came into the world alone and we leave it alone. – A reality lost to ancient pharaohs and emperors buried with food, slaves, animals, chariots, and concubines.

Far less dramatic than a pharaoh, emperor, or an enlightened soul, most of us fade away more like Townes Van Vandt’s “Poncho & Lefty.” One disappears in the deserts of Mexico, the other “splits for Ohio” and lives his last years in “a cheap motel.” Two old compadres (full of history) drift in opposite directions obvious to the other’s fate. And then, “it ends.” It’s that simple. Far less romantic than we might hope. But I think that’s the way it is and what we should expect. We will all play out some variation on this theme. – And, it’s okay. It has to be.

Nature is kind to us in this way – that is, if our egos don’t interfere (demanding that we don’t fade away alone). But in fact we do. Hopefully, we end up so self-consumed that we’re oblivious to the other’s journeys. We go so deeply within that we forget everyone “without.” I see it as nature’s way and nature’s gift.

I remember my maternal grandparents spending their final years in a nursing home. They ended up in separate rooms and virtually oblivious to one another’s presence. One day Jim died, and for the next three years Gladys never even knew it. She said “he’s watching TV in the next room.” And that’s where the nurses just “left it alone.” Because if she ever fully realized that he had died, it would have broken her heart, and stopped it.

I’ll go out on a limb and a step further: Somehow, it just feels like everything we think we know, we don’t. It is most definitely “crazy.” But there’s nothing to know because there’s no one there to know it. But we don’t know that, until we “wake up.” “Phase three” (the Twilight Zone) is that slow process of drifting into and re-membering that. Call me crazy.

© 2021 Richard Hiatt

THE WALL

THE WALL

“Every saint has a past, every sinner has a future.” It’s the mantra for accountability and forgiveness. It squares the circle and levies all remaining accounts. In the end it reminds us that we’re all basically alike. No one comes into the world or leaves it any differently than anyone else – we’re alone and naked before the unknown.

In between entrances and exits then, it’s astonishing how we make such a big “ado” about ourselves. Stages are set, objects and stages are laid out, faces are painted, scripts are written, and we set out on dramatic crusades, alarums & excursions, storms and stressers, all of which simply rearrange the furniture, mount enormous clamor, impress with lots of melodrama. And then we’re done and we leave. Stage right to stage left, endless processions of beings claiming to be special and new, when in fact they’re just the blur of faceless repetition.

All that’s left is the debris and devastation of our having been here. The earth then cleans up our messes and awaits the next species to have its turn at thinking it rules everything. And the cycle repeats. But at least the circle curves like a helix – the single most powerful incentive for staying around – hope. Everything is familiar but different each time. And just maybe a moment comes when a generation arrives that begins to understand the laws of cyclicity. It invites us to respond differently. And for once, maybe, nature smiles on her children.

Alas, we are not that generation. We’re still the damaged goods of tremendous dysfunction, the survivors of the survivors of the survivors of a very violent mass-consciousness. All we can do is continue believing that somewhere in our DNA there exists a latent genetic code just waiting for its time to awaken. If not a code then at least a genetic “space” awaiting its occupant.

Personally, for myself, I know that I’ve said (time and time again) that less and less makes any sense anymore. But this is literally true now in this world of techno-geeks, microchipped devices, smart-phones, 24-hour surveillance, virtual consumption, “apps” for every need, users and passwords – all to obtain “simple” needs. There’s no such thing as a “simple” straight line anymore. But just maybe, this time, we’re beginning to see that as clue to terrible redundancies. It’s not always the case that “repeating the same thing over and over to get a different result” constitutes insanity. But in this case, it’s true. Maybe there’s a meaning hidden here somewhere.

When things become so impossible to navigate, when there is a clear running-out of commonsense, natural rhythms and tempos, one runs into a wall of his own design. He butts up against it in defiance for as long as he can, believing that his survival tools will meet the challenge – until they don’t. He pretends to retreat and thinks he can regroup. But there’s no going back anywhere. He hits his head so many times on the wall that all he draws is blood and confusion. It’s time to breakthrough or breakdown.

Nature takes over, and evolutional saltation happens. Our hero falls out of his tree and finds a tool. He plans and organizes. He sees the stars and rethinks the cosmos. But this time he’s part of it. He is it. He sees himself in the reflection. He even dreams that the dreamer is dreaming him “having a dream.” A new kind of insanity ushers in a new intelligence. And suddenly he’s no longer there, because he’s no longer who he thought he was.

Droplets of this have fallen on “our” generation. But they’re only droplets, and they evaporate much too quickly. They’re still aberrations and clinical abnormalities needing “intervention.” But our walls are also manifesting with a thickness that cannot be ignored.

I see Kuber-Ross’s “five stages” of mourning here. Those of us currently inhabiting the earth are passing through (five) portals of loss. Everyone is in his own stage and handling it in his own way. But what we all share in common is what loss portends. Loss is death, and death prefigures new birth, and new beginnings are frightening. It’s the “wall” again.

It’s the oldest story on earth. There’s nothing new or unusual about it. We’ve all been there many times, and we’re here again, But this time hopefully the wall begins to take on new texture and shape. Hopefully it poses new questions to new answers and new secrets. Every wall is unique and tailor-made. But mass futility has the power to turn the heads of many all at once in a new direction.

The world is getting louder and louder, more clamorous than ever. It’s about heads and gadgets violently colliding in every which way imaginable, like mice in a maze. It becomes the “first sign” of trouble. It’s the mix of all five of Kubler-Ross’s stages churning together. – The baffling thing about “loss” is that it never follows a straight line, though we often assume that it does. There’s nothing linear about it. One can be in phase “one and four” today, and “two and five” tomorrow. And back to just “three” the next day. The unconscious has its own timeline and rhythm. And to not know this just adds to the clamor (the problem).

Along with all the noise are the amazingly new and innovative anodynes invented to deal with it. Some techniques help us avoid, while others help us stay in the bubble of denial. – “Nothing wrong with me. God is in his heaven, the world is right! I’m the captain of my ship and master of my fate!!” – This noise is still quite common. One hears it every day followed with the most impressive facades of self-confidence.

In this culture we glorify “strong egos,” and the paradox here is about wanting to compete with the wall. The most impressive instruments of war against it are religion, politics, and business as usual. The nearer the wall, the noisier and busier we get. The mice begin to scurry and climb over each other, and some suffocate. “Better to be right than to be whole, and at peace.”

The science of years ago once entertained the phrase “agitated depression.” The more looming one’s nightmares and bad memories, the faster he runs from them in the way of obsessive-compulsive behaviors and addictions. It’s the mouse running on its treadmill in hopes that it will outrun bad memories. – Running is quite literally an aspect of “denial, anger, bargaining, and depression.”

The treadmill spins like a top, and with overcrowding the centrifugal force is tossing more and more of us out into space. We all get thrown off differently, in our own time, according to our attachments (“baggage”). But collectively our reasons all balance out to basically the same thing. It’s all just about “stuff,” temporary, disposable, and very forgettable.

The great temptress here to stay alive is instinctive. Self-preservation is the strongest human instinct. We want to reproduce, love, seek pleasure, and thrive. It’s wanting to preserve home and family. We want to “live.” Faust appears (and Pascal); but hopefully we see the trap of deals and wagers. The wall is still there. But the riddle now is one of navigating and negotiating with it in a way that makes us examine what “survival” means. We can examine new meanings.

What so many stories about “transcendence” all have in common is that they never go far enough. They always get stuck somewhere in the “middle distance.” The Grail myth for example always suffers because of its interpreter getting lost in a literal translation along the way. Even Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code fell into this trap (the Grail ending up being a person, the Sangraal a literal bloodline). When in fact, in the end, all such myths inevitably lead to just one thing – consciousness. The Grail is consciousness (in everyone) which cannot be touched, measured, or killed.

Consciousness here is about learning how to integrate the new into the old, while not killing off one in order to have the other. It’s hologrammatic and macro-/microcosmic. One exists within the other – not a transposition, but an encompassing paradigm. – This is the key to the wall.

Finding the key and turning it will be the day all the noise stops and the clamor subsides. The mice will stop running, the treadmill will stop, and everything will rest. Again, not literally, but in a manner yet to be found. There is an audible silence in the noise, and rest between the notes.

© 2021 Richard Hiatt