THE THIN VEIL

THE THIN VEIL

Sixty years ago artists like Warhol and Basquiat peered under the surface of the American consciousness, Warhol with soup cans and Basquiat on subway walls. They took America and threw it back in its face. “This is who we are. This is what we’re about.” Some years later George Carlin did the same thing with his ”Advertising Lullaby,” doing five nonstop minutes of advertising slogans we hear every day, lines so drilled into us that they’ve become “who we are.”

Today Americans are doing the same thing themselves, albeit subconsciously. That’s right – subconsciously looking beneath their own consciousness. The difference between then and now is that Warhol (& Co.) did it voluntarily. Today it’s involuntary and definitely unwanted.

So how are they/we doing this and why if it’s involuntary? When ideals, plans, beliefs, visions, pledges, and fears go so far in one direction, they begin to leak. Their airtightness begins to crack and it becomes harder and harder to keep them afloat. The metaphor is clear enough. But what are some concrete examples?

Those looming most largely: First politics. The party of “law & order” (the GOP) has become the most criminal in US history. Every president indicted and/or impeached since the 1960s has been a Republican with the exception of Clinton (who committed the egregiously horrible crime of receiving fellatio in a closet). Nixon (and Mondale) need no explanation. George Bush Jr. is still “wanted” by the International Court (and seven nations) for “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity.” If he goes into any of their airspaces he could (would) be arrested. The same goes for his top staff. Reagan’s own top officials still hold the record for the most number (244) who committed crimes serious enough to warrant fines and/or jail time. And Trump, again, no explanation needed.

Confession: I’m going to pick on the Republicans here for good reason, even if the real problem is “the system.” Credit must be paid to wherever the system reveals itself most egregiously and shamelessly. And in my view the Republicans are the embodiment of the system. As a single entity they defend it more than anyone. And, apropos of the topic at hand, they are the dark underside of the American psyche whose job it is to validate (and celebrate) greed. The image of Gordon Gekko (from the film Wall Street) is the symbol of a true American.

That said, what is most baffling is why voters keep ignoring history and voting for the same criminal element, those best known for doublespeak, shifty personalities, and vacuous but melodramatic promises. Short-term memory loss is the most obvious answer. They “learn nothing because [they] remember nothing,” said Vidal. The national consciousness “loses” consciousness. Another more problematic reason might just be that voters unconsciously desire the very kinds of corruption that validate their own urges and prejudices. It’s true that we elect those who we like to think are most like ourselves. We never want saints, just criminals and liars. George Bush Jr. sent out the message (in so many words), “hey, look at me, it’s okay to be stupid.”

Economically speaking, Americans have enjoyed the good life ever since the end of World War II. And we’ve been the most profligate nation is world history, far more so than ancient Greece and Rome. The late 1960s and early ’70s marked our official “high imperial noon” as a civilization. From then on our indulgences and waste really began to show consequences. We had already lost a war, experienced gas lines for the first time since the 1940s, impeached a president, and had a recession. Rachel Carson’s warnings in Silent Spring began reverberating in Washington for the first time.

By the time Reagan arrived in 1980 with his neo-liberals, all the stops were pulled in terms of profligacy and greed, and we became a debtor-nation for the first time in our history. The motto was “short-term profitability, tomorrow is someone else’s problem.” They mortgaged off their children’s futures for the pleasures of the moment. But they claimed that it was simply market capitalism hard at work promising to let wealth “trickle down.” It was the “American Way.” It was rugged individualism and entrepreneurialism also saying “put up and shut up.”

The national debt has been out of reach ever since. Whenever the Republicans have been in office the debt has meant “nothing.” When out of office they would veto every single bill using “the debt” as their excuse: It “costs too much,” “it’s bad for jobs,” “it’s inflationary,” it will “make Americans pay more in the long run,” and on and on. When the only real objective has been to simply sabotage any and all signs of progress across the isle, then making failure (to get anything done) their own ticket back into office. Along with constant filibustering and gerrymandering (and some of the ugliest tricks imaginable) the GOP always finds its way back to the Oval Office.

Yes, to be fair, the Dems have done their share of the same skullduggery, but never at the levels committed by the Right with their unwavering corporate support. Such is American politics. – At day’s end (as usual) nothing gets done, one side blames the other side, and the American people end up with nothing – except footing the bill for all the blunders, miscalculations, and shady deals Congress made along the way.

Sociologically, there are simply too many of us with high expectations. Since the war we’ve learned that the “American Way” has always had its standards – affordable homes, good jobs, affordable education, healthcare, and simply “more of everything.” Apart from the planet running out of resources, we also assume that America offers more civil rights than other nations. A human “right” by definition is something that can’t be taken away. In other words, a right is a “birthright.” But what we call rights are being taken away almost everyday. Therefore, we mistake them for privileges.

We also mistake highly principled “privileges” for the most fatuous and ersatz “courtesies” imaginable (also taken away). For example, the fact that “we the people” own and run the government is a right. We are the government. But are we, really? To convince ourselves that we are we have little more to go on than “the right(?)” to vote or not vote (for just one of two parties), cash or charge, paper or plastic, window or isle seat, car or public transportation, recycle or throw away, organic or regular, premium or low-grade (gas), go to the mall or stay home, CNN or MSNBC? – all of which, by the way, are manipulated and sometimes even stopped. (“Smoking or non-smoking” used to be another one). Meanwhile, the critical decisions are made by politicians and corporate bosses. We call ourselves free and democratic and fail to see just how completely duped we’ve been. It’s shameful and embarrassing.

As another means of distracting Americans from the truth (regarding social indoctrination), life has gotten faster and faster. It flies by like billboard flashcards. But what’s happening subconsciously is that the faster things get, the slower they get. The human psyche begins to shut down and tries to self-adjust without our knowing. And since we don’t know it, the world is becoming an existential blur. The “happier” we appear to be with each other, the uglier things are. The cleaner, more perfect, sanitized, liberated, more ecologically and wholistically aware we become, the more confusing it all is. Life gets muddled and obstructive. Paradoxes turn into problems, problems into dilemmas, dilemmas into cul-de-sacs and no-win ultimatums.

So, we look more and more for simplicity through increasingly complex means (computers, virtual realities). The clarity we think we’ve achieved is nothing more than sublimated confusion. We’re in a hole asking for the proverbial shovel instead of a rope.

What happens then is “in the name of freedom,” we kill freedom. The most “liberal” leaders now have us so boxed-in with rules that we have fewer and fewer rights. In the name of tolerance, there is unprecedented intolerance – or “0” tolerance. Political correctness has taken over and become the new fascism – aka, “freedom brigade.”

Lastly, religion. This is a big one (and long one). It’s something that’s losing ground more and more as people desperately search for the very answers it’s supposed to provide. Christianity, especially Catholicism, has lost millions of members around the globe ever since the 1960s (and Vatican II – which was an emergency session). Atheism has grown exponentially in its place. People are finding their own paths and journeys to spiritual fulfillment.

Jungian Analyst Edward Edinger once said: “As long as one is contained within a church or religious creed he is spared the dangers of the direct experience. But once one has fallen out of containment in a religious myth he becomes a candidate for individuation.” I would now go a step further and reverse the axiom. The phenomena of “direct experience” now holds organized religion at bay, subjecting it to a postmodern auto-de-fe.

Compare this with Catholicism since the 1960s. Remember what happened at the last Council. Unlike Vatican I, Vatican II lasted four years (until 1965), indicative of the gravity of issues. Policy usually dictates that councils are not called unless the Church is in some “grave crisis” – usually a heresy or schism. But this time the Christian faith itself was in trouble because of its growing “irrelevance” to current events and isolation from real world’s anxieties. Twenty-three hundred bishops spoke in nearly many tongues (the only lingua franca was very bad Latin), addressing issues that came to two conclusions: first, that the Church’s past had been an abominable letdown (i.e., it needed to focus on the past); second, changes were critically needed (i.e., it needed to focus on the present).

It held 168 “general congregations,” took 544 votes, and promulgated 16 decrees and declarations on Roman Catholic policy. The periti were the “brains and drudges” who drafted and redrafted documents. But two negative memories from history again reared up. One was the old power struggle between the spiritual and temporal (the “Two Swords”) between kings and bishops. The second was the Church’s stand on the Jews, particularly after World War II (when the Church remained embarrassingly neutral and virtually invisible during Hitler’s carnage, some say because of the German-born Pope). Indeed, it was shameful realizing that throughout and after the war Hitler was never excommunicated, whereas many Communist Party members were. Pius XII made communism the “real evil” even over fascism. Hence, something had to be said about the Jews.

The response was less than impressive when addressing the Jews. Up until now the Church had been taught to distinguish between anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism (i.e., love the sinner but hate the sin). But it was also identified with the scriptures which said that “Jews killed Christ” (the Book of John making this very clear).

In response to the Holocaust, the Vatican produced the Nostra Aetate which declared that its covenant with the Jews had not been broken and that the Jewish religion was still part of God’s plan. The international press quickly interpreted this to mean that the Church was “absolving” the Jews for “their” sins against Christ. And many took offense. This was not the Nostra’s purpose (or was it?). The question remained: Which one was to be declared the truth? The scriptures (warning of the perfidis judaeis) or the new Nostra which only implied anti-Semitism and the idea that Jews killed Christ? And where did Jesus’ own teachings fit into this mess?

All the confusion notwithstanding, the general impression was that the Vatican decided to “exonerate” the Jews from “corporate” guilt (for the crucifixion) in the wake of the Holocaust. It was a “self”-administered expiation from the sins of anti-Semitism. In hindsight, it would have been more politic to simply to repeat Pius XI’s statement, “Spiritually we are Semites,” or Pope John XXIII’s “I am Joseph, your brother!”

More recently, in January, 1998, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (the new Pontiff as of 2005) boldly opened the archives of the Holy Office. He said it was the pre-millennial time for a “thorough Catholic examination of conscience” (James Carroll). Unfortunately, “conscience” (as defined by John Paul II) came to mean the awareness of the “sinfulness of her children.”

One could already smell a rat. On one level it was an official effort to finally confront the Church’s relationship to the Holocaust, as mentioned. But the Church and Pius XII were exonerated, while individual members, “her sinful children,” were the ones who “departed from the Spirit of Christ” and were blamed for the atrocities.

Talk about an institution’s policies being thrown “right back in its face” (borrowing Warhol’s effect on American culture). It has been (is being) forced to confront some very ugly demons. The lasting effect has been that “the flock” has finally begun to leave altogether. Not just the Church but Christianity and organized religion in toto.

In his book Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews ((Houghton Mifflin, New York, 2011) Catholic priest James Carroll said, “The time has come for a gathering of those invested in the future of this Church, which, as is clear by now, means a gathering more broadly defined than any in Church history. Centrally Catholic, it will include Jews and Protestants, people of other faiths and of no faith [my italics], clergy and laity and, emphatically, women. The time has come for the convening of Vatican Council III.” He adds, “Vatican III must help Christians learn to read anti-Jewish texts as if they were themselves Jews (and anti-female texts as if they were women, and, for that matter, as I heard a Jewish scholar say, anti-Canaanite texts as if they were Canaanites.” – Amen.

As mentioned, the biggest crisis is in its diminishing numbers worldwide. The only money coming in to support the Vatican today is arriving from the 3^rd world (where literacy is low). In Europe the famous cathedrals are only a quarter-filled on any given Sunday. Tourist money is what keeps them open. With the exception of the “mega-church” phenomenon in America’s most conservative towns and cities (where millions of dollars go into TV & radio, concerts, bookstores, schools, libraries, and even sports events – as if desperately needing to indoctrinate children), overall support of Christianity is facing a more “literate” population for the first time. They know religion more deeply, it’s history and roots, and they’re simply turning to other things, or nothing at all.

Getting back to what is forcing Americans to look beneath the veil of consciousness, these are all “involuntary reflexes.” Survival always trumps self-deception and evasion when it comes to its final moments – when lies and facades no longer work. We’re “lost” at the moment because we have no vernacular to understand it yet. It’s still under a veil and remains out of reach. Robert Crumb and Warhol took this problem head-on in the Sixties, as did Reverend James Carroll in 2011. Themes of the subconscious were held in plain sight and addressed (LSD facilitated some of this). But since then the subject (along with psychotropics) retreated again into the ectoplasm.

And, once again, retreat has translated to fresh waves of denial. And denial into delusional fantasies which have become so weighty that the walls have once again begun to leak. Drippings from the unconscious have begun to bleed into the “simplicity” and “happiness” we all supposedly feel. And once any infraction of that “happiness” is committed, citizens react with rage and fear. It’s a knee-jerk reaction. The veneer has cracked. The more we try for happiness, the greater the anxiety to remain happy. A dark shadow hangs over us like an assemblage of unfinished business.

My only response to this is to once again take a lesson from the Sixties. Bring back the spirit (and clarity) of its artists. It will require a new kind of insight as yet uncovered because we already know what they said – that we are a consumer culture of soup cans and unconscious (subway wall) secrets, etc. We already know about our “dark side”. So where do we go from there? Something is missing, something not being addressed. We’re simply not being honest with ourselves, once again. It will take an artist (painter, photographer, poet, writer, songwriter) of extraordinary grit and talent to bring it into the light.

© 2022 Richard Hiatt

GUNS

GUNS

Someone once said that a gun is “an instrument which fulfills its purpose only through destruction.” Its only function is to threaten, injure, or kill. Based on that alone, imagine the mindset that treats the gun like a religious icon, elevated to the status of a Greek god. Imagine the impotency and fear this mindset has without one. Imagine the existential confusion he experiences in contexts where threats and intimidation are verboten.

The sound alone from a gun is piercing and violent, designed to exceed the average person’s pain threshold. There’s nothing pleasant about the discharging of a bullet. It’s meant to deliver shock and draw attention. People instinctively cower and seek out the source and direction of a bullet — both reactions which deliver a certain exhilaration to the shooter.

There is also absolutely nothing else like the sound of a gun in nature. Nature, everything in nature, recoils. It’s the most discordant invention to have ever been thrown into nature. Even to those who read auras, the report is that auras shatter, much like a protective layer of light instantly disintegrating, exposing one’s core. One is left mentally-emotionally vulnerable and exposed. – All of which again must deliver a certain “sick” thrill to the shooter. One can only surmise that he somehow needs to stand out from nature, to dominate it, either by killing something or by simply making everything genuflect involuntarily – as people are forced to do in a sick cultish ritual. Affixed to this might also be the “manhood” component, the need to prove one’s resiliency in spite of any consequences.

As a slight digression, I personally would go one step further in naming “the most” destructive invention of all time – the Chinese invention of gunpowder. Just imagine a world without gunpowder. Imagine wars being forced to slow down, being more limited in terms of killing-capacity, as well as keeping war on a more local, regional scale because of that limitation. ¹

Alas, the gun is with us, along with gun powder. It serves up a notoriously evil legacy. With what it’s done in American history alone is enough to ponder. We can begin with the controversial 2^nd Amendment – which was not about guns or even militias but “slave patrol” militias.

The south feared losing the slave trade because of the north freeing the Negro and forcing the issue back onto the south. It therefore wanted an amendment to the Constitution legalizing armed militias to keep slaves in check. James Madison (a devoted southerner) wrote a first draft calling for the “country” to oblige. But the south knew the northern states would never sign on. So he did a second draft replacing the word “country” with “state,” so each state could vote independently.

But Madison went even further. He advanced the right to control slaves to the individual himself, so “the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” Again, the issue wasn’t about owning a firearm; it was about controlling slaves. – Little did he realize that 200 years later his words would catapult to the right of weapons-manufacturing corporations (now considered “persons”) having the “right” to sell assault-style weapons to anyone. Such is the length to which political “license” has been taken to distort the truth. – But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The distortion didn’t end there. Later came the 2008 Supreme Court decision in The District of Columbia vs. Heller, led by Antonin Scalia. This was the final step that basically rewrote the 2^nd Amendment. To the amazement (and confusion) among his fellow judges, Scalia wrote that there was a secret and private “right” to private ownership.

Remember, the founders’ problem with the amendment was twofold: a standing army that might overthrow the federal government, and a standing army that might overwhelm the “slave patrol militias” in the deep south. That was it. But from that Scalia saw the “right of the people” as the go-ahead for the right for “everyone” to keep and bear arms. He compared it to the First and Fourth Amendments, where “the people” include all citizens unconditionally. But “the people” even here, said his colleagues, involved only a specific population of “law-abiding, responsible citizens.” Scalia ignored even this.

Scalia also argued that people had a right to guns for “self-defense.” But again, the other judges reminded him that “bearing arms” originally referred to militias and standing armies. They said, “The phrase ‘bear arms’ had at the time of the founding an idiomatic meaning … to serve as a soldier, do military service, fight or to wage war…. in conjunction with service in a well-regulated militia.”

What’s most astonishing is that when military service and gun ownership were discussed in Madison’s time, not one reference was ever made to the individual’s right to own a gun to protect hearth and home, not even for sport or hunting. No such phrasing exists in the original notes and documents on the 2^nd Amendment. Scalia, putting it mildly, took his active (political) imagination to the extreme.

This twist in the definition is also so recent that we forget that Nixon himself ran on a strong “gun control” ticket on “cheap handguns.” And no president before Reagan was ever even endorsed by the NRA. We also forget that, before the media and sensationalist writers blurred the truth about the “Old West,” the vast majority of boom-towns had strict laws about carrying guns inside town limits. If guns were not checked in properly with marshals, gun carriers could be fined, jailed, or simply shot.

The 2^nd Amendment was also written at a time when the state-of-the-art rifle (and pistol) could only be loaded and discharged “three times per minute” by the best marksmen around. Again, the rule applied to a very different need at a very different time with a very different technology.

But all that means nothing today, to the NRA, the gun industry, or to the typical resident of Stupid-Town, USA. Compare colonial America (and the Old West) to society today with its AR-15s, bump-stocks, and cop-killing bullets (considered “reasonable” by most gun nuts) and we’re comparing two completely different worlds.

The NRA also took one additional step in furthering the lies around gun rights. It cleverly borrowed a phrase from the Declaration of Independence that says citizens have a right to overthrow their government when they deem it no longer representative. The NRA promoted the idea that the founders actually wanted citizens to be wary of their government and be prepared to organize armed revolts. They called it the “right of rebellion” against oppression. This is the rhetoric we hear today. There is no such language anywhere, in the Constitution or Declaration of Independence, about the right to own guns for inevitable rebellions and coups. The idea was to protect the republic, not tear it down.

Far more than just the right to bears arms is going on in the minds of most gun nuts. Everyone from Freud to George Wallace to Ronald Reagan and Billy Graham collectively fill the cauldrons of consciousness that lead these people along. But that’s another digression. Suffice it to say, the point to be made goes back again to exactly what guns do (and don’t do): Their only purpose is destruction, to threaten and do harm. There is absolutely no other function for this invention.

So what does that say about those who have love-affairs with their guns, who worship them, who put them in display cases and on walls like religious icons, who frame photos of their destruction/killing as “special memories,” and who put “ gun rights” above everything else? What does it say about that twisted psychology?

When I was growing up I witnessed two kinds of families: One’s children were brought up in an atmosphere of trust. Kids were encouraged to think for themselves, to explore and ask questions, and to learn through experience. They learned that the world was safe and supportive. The other’s children were brought up in an atmosphere of mistrust and fear – usually inside a gun-oriented subculture. The world was “evil” and life was about defending oneself and constantly preparing oneself for the worst. This kind of nuclear unit usually described the typical military family.

It goes without saying that the former had a perception of the world that was predominantly liberal and progressive. The latter was constantly conserving, preserving, and shoring up – stacking sandbags, as it were, around their lives, learning and repeating mantras of mistrust and fear (if not also hatred). The most visible manifestations of this today are the survivalist groups staked out in the rural states waiting either for the total collapse of “the system” or Armageddon.

The differences are largely environmental and learned, though it can also be a congenital phenomenon. Stanislav Grof proved that learning about the world is already preconditioned in the womb. One is born already fearing or trusting (though mistrust can be healed with good parenting). Either way, it’s apparent which family type gravitates to guns, and which doesn’t. For the former group the gun is virtually the only source of instant relief and respite it can depend on (in addition to religious superstition which often justifies guns). It’s where they place implicit trust because it can kill and harm. The gun also delivers the darkest forms of pleasure then as well, even sexual pleasure. The phallic component of guns needs no explanation – Freud is alive & well in this area. The pleasure principle is rooted in violence and intimidation.

Rape is not about sex. It’s about violence done to another which later translates to sexual release. Violence and forced domination over another is the only release-valve to feeling alive. Exhilaration is sensual and addictive. Violence in fact is the only way they can feel anything. Without it there’s just withdrawal, depression, and dissociation.

The same “rush” happens with guns. It’s the momentary realization that you have “the drop” on someone and can do anything you want with that person. You see the other stop, cower, while his/her body language changes completely – hastened breath, turning ashen white, palpitations, reticence, widened eyes. For someone learning that life is about “dominance over,” experiencing this can induce deep pleasure. – Like rape, the pleasure is in violence. Unlike rape, it can be sexual.

But enough psychology. The bigger problem is that one raised in a military-like environment, where one praises guns, who finds the only source of personal empowerment they know in guns, will generally listen to nothing about the “true” history of guns, to what they do to society and to nature. Guns are far too important as a core identifier. Without guns they would become existentially lost and deeply insecure (like the policeman I knew who could not sleep at night if he didn’t have a revolver under his pillow). They would simply decompensate, and some would probably even require mental counseling of some kind– in my opinion. Though, to be fair, some would adjust sufficiently enough. But the security blanket would be gone (like one’s aura).

Therein lies an enormous irony. Sometimes people don’t actually get help for themselves until they “bottom out.” They have to “crash & burn” before accepting the fact that their worldview is twisted and that they are the cause of their own suffering. A year of intensive psychotherapy wouldn’t be the worst thing for the gun community (in my view). Neither would a careful examination of the entire gun (and military) culture. In general it’s what separates the Left from the Right, inclusion from exclusion, evolution from devolution, progression from retrogression, and learning from “willed” ignorance and fear.

When one reaches enough clarity about this whole business, it also becomes clear as to who in our society, by contrast, are the most secure people. It happens to be those who never make guns part of their lives, who never own them or carry them. In fact, guns aren’t even an afterthought. They carry instead an entirely different mindset – of trust in the world.

Alas, fear always leaves a heavier footprint. Where trust is gentle and patient, fear is violent. It invades, coerces, and takes over. The result is the gun-culture being forced upon those of us who have learned to trust. There are now (as we speak) 300 million guns “on the ground” today in the US. Thirty-thousand die each year from gun violence. Someone recently said that, thanks to guns, “violence is the natural human environment.” It truly is now.

A few years ago I got “into it” with a man running for political office. He was a big advocate for gun-rights and the (typically misunderstood interpretation of) the 2^nd Amendment. He had a daughter who he constantly worried about. So I asked him, ”Do want your daughter to go to school everyday having to look over her shoulder in fear of a gun going off? Do you want her to have to carry a gun wherever she goes knowing that she might have to use it at any moment?” All I heard on the phone was silence. I knew that I didn’t change his mind about anything. But I hoped that I at least planted a seed about the direction our society is heading and the society his daughter is now inheriting.

The bottom line is, we don’t need to go there. It doesn’t have to be this way. But then, again, fear overshadows trust every time. I suppose it’s in our nature. Religionists differ as usual, saying that “love prevails.” But just look at history. Just look at this gun-insane culture now engulfing us.

There’s always an ocean of ignorance and just a very small island of insight. And it’s the ignorant who actually see themselves as the island – which then needs to conquer all the other islands. The real island of insight is never charted, never seen.

© 2022 Richard Hiatt

1 And as long as I’m on this tangent, I would also call out the “combustion engine” as the next most destructive invention of man. Without it the world be reduced to the speed of (real) horsepower, and the fossil fuel industry as a whole would be marginal. Without mass-transportation the entire urban suburban, exurban, and rural phenomenon and its demographics would be different – tailored to slower, more localized communities. Gridded road and highways systems wouldn’t exist which have forced cities and towns into gridded street patterns. The ancient “radial” design of the medieval village would probably still be with us.

SEX and WAR

SEX and WAR

It’s a long journey from how war became an art form, and then how an art form became a sexual fetish. But it’s an important one, particularly since Freud arrived at the very moment this journey began.

The supreme authority on this subject was (has always been) Walter Benjamin. His famous essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1935) remains the definitive “go-to” reference. It all harkens back to the idea of authenticity. What is it? What’s happened to it, and because of what? If there’s one word that encompasses Benjamin’s thesis more than any other, it’s the problem of “authenticity.”

Until the introduction of modern technology in the Industrial Age art retained its full authenticity. Technology changed that because, first, it looked at the original thing through lenses that allowed for different perceptions. One could interpret it from new angles. It gave interpretations wider latitude. Second, technology allowed original art to be reproduced in a way that allowed it to travel. Original sculptures, statues, architecture and even original paintings could not move. Art now had mobility. And moving it into unnatural environments made authenticity virtually irrelevant.

The result threatened the value of art because “value” had to be redefined. Art’s very physicality was jeopardized by reproduction, hence also the “authority” of the object. In art’s own defense came the idea of “art for art’s sake (l’art pour l’art) which defended the idea of “pure” art, as opposed to reproduction. The real danger of reproduced art was that it could also be used in other (social, political) contexts. Even the artist could find himself as a pawn for non-artistic interests – causes, agendas, etc. Pure art rejected all social-political connotations.

Interestingly, the whole reproduction phenomenon also happened to surface at the time Marx and socialism became turbulent topics. Marx was all about recovering and protecting “economic” purity – the laborer identifying with and taking pride in his work — as opposed to working in factories, being reduced to a number, making parts for other parts to things he couldn’t even recognize, being a cog in a huge impersonal factory wheel. The “purity” of one’s craft (and his identity) was disappearing.

But there was no stopping technology. Photography was the most obvious game-changer of all. With the photographic plate one could make prints, and then one could ask for “authentic” prints, and any number of them. The very criterion of authenticity began to change, and with it the “social” function of art. It now took on more political ramifications and contexts. – Then came film: “the first art form whose artistic character is entirely determined by its reproducibility.” From the time of the Greeks art was defined by its “eternal value,” it inability to be altered or improved upon. Photography and film changed that.

Enter the dilemma of self-alienation coming with new factory jobs, mass-migrations to urban areas, the merging of cultures, mass-appeal for “heroes” in the cinema (as citizens used cinema to escape miserable conditions) — and with that the loss of knowing (existentially) who/what one was anymore. In other words, the reproduction of the human being himself. “[T]he mirror image has become detachable from the person mirrored, and is transportable. And where it is transported? To a site in front of the masses” (i.e., movie heroes, postcards, posters).

Enter the screen actor as the ideal American stereotype – a total fabrication tailored to the interests of “markets” owned by private companies. Like the new propaganda model itself, it was a new way to exploit the masses (via fashion, trendsetting, and status). Here was, said Benjamin, the “cult of the movie star” which was fostering the “cult of the audience” at the same time – “reinforcing the corruption by which fascism is seeking to supplant the class consciousness of the masses.”

Thus began the 20^th century “reproducible man” – a widespread system tailor-made for social indoctrination, one so embedded and thorough that we still defend it today as part of “the American Way.” Aldous Huxley wrote about tyranny from “the bottom up,” while George Orwell wrote about tyranny from the “top down.” Both recognized the symptoms of social indoctrination. From this, even today, we need to step back and examine our notions of freedom and pleasure – still labeled “subversive.”

Along with art now as a commercial product, the idea of “progress” itself has been reinvented to mistake quantity for quality. “Conspicuous consumption” (Veblen) has become the standard of human happiness. Art has been reduced to an instrument of entertainment, distraction, and escape. When we look at classical art in museums we stand in a time-lock, confused, because we look at it through consumer filters and wonder how to place a value on it. Objects which cannot be priced (or privately owned) are forced upon by an arbitrary monetary standard. We want to put a price tag on it because it’s the only way we can understand “value.” We want a “number” to compare with other numbers. But amazingly, the art refuses to be boxed in.

From the growing “arts” of generating mass movements on the grandest scales, mixed with the new industry called “public relations,” comes the new linkage with the social-political applications of art. We’re now talking about the new science of mass mobilization and control. And nothing facilitates both of these more than the institution of war. “Only war makes it possible to mobilize all of today’s technological resources.” And thus, from this, we get the new “aesthetic of modern warfare” through technological progress and speed, using human collateral for unnatural agendas. When it comes to indoctrination and exploitation of the masses, nothing puts both to use more completely than war.

Society learns that “happiness” is an intangible that is never realized. It is never fulfilled. Neither is it ever stagnant. It will always disappoint. Hence the need to take, to invade, to sacrifice, and to kill in the name of fulfillment. It’s the only answer we have, to seek El Dorado elsewhere. The nature of capitalism is also eternal dissatisfaction. “Conquest brings progress,” and war is the glue to the perpetuity of civilization.

Add to this the ablutionary component of war. Historians have always said that cultural “success” is a recipe for “violence.” One must take to remain happy, but then too much taking (and having) for too long also breeds guilt. And guilt breeds an ancient need to “appease the gods” in return for so much prosperity. Thus we sacrifice whole generations of young men every 20 years to ritual death for atonement. Technology hastens this along with media propaganda, advertising, and the marketing of ideology. – There is always an “us” versus “them” mentality, along with a sense of who is more deserving and righteous. Art is now fully in the service of this much broader process of entitlement. Fiat ars – pereat mundus, says fascism (”let art be created, though the world perish”).

Art by now has become a completely different institution with its own modern aesthetic, and Benjamin concludes that “self-alienation has reached the point where it can experience its own annihilation as a supreme aesthetic pleasure. Such is the aestheticising of politics….” Martyrdom becomes as “American” as apple pie and the flag. We learn that it’s an honor to die for one’s country – an abstract idea, a manifesto, a pledge. And of course everyone in a military graveyard is a hero.

We’ve come a long way from the Greeks and “art for art’s sake.” And it’s only a short step from “annihilation as a supreme aesthetic pleasure” to pleasure becoming a sexual fetish. It plays right in to the theme so well explored by Susan Sontag years ago with her essay on “fascinating fascism.” What is it about whips and leather, masks, S&M and B&D, torture, denial, and denied pleasure that renders sexual pleasure? Especially among those very communities (homosexuals) who were most persecuted by the users of that very accoutrement (Nazis)?

Finally, entering stage left – Freud and his psychology of repression, sublimation, and delayed pleasure through punishment. Freud introduces the many forms of shame and guilt learned in childhood and later in society at large. Especially how (delayed) pleasure is only possible through the experience of pain (self-administered or administered by others).

Through attire and staged forms of deprivation and pain come substituted enactments of war. War is “played with” in many forms. It not only defines cultures, it teases out the “subversive” inside those cultures. It keeps the wheels of human predation turning and changing. There is also the sexual element of conquest and dominion (B&D) over whole populations and cultures, as well as the instruments used to achieve it. Dr. Helen Caldicott famously coined the phrase “missile envy,” referring to the obvious parading of “who has the biggest” in the streets of powerful nations.

Again, with cultural success comes violence and war. War is the great purger and purifier(the big orgasm). It actually destroys the technology that built it. It restores a sensory presence in the body-politic, the primal reunion of mind and body – but with a twist. It binds together two polarities – “construction and destruction,” said Benjamin. The destructive is all part of the constructive process, and visa versa. Orgasm is both creation and destruction, birth and death. In the end Benjamin says “The products of war are justified from a distance” (my italics).

And so, what is the point of this little adventure into sex and war? I’m not exactly sure, except for the fact that when I look upon the general mindset of the American nation, I contrast it with the whole Benjamin thesis. What then becomes crystal clear is futility and tragedy. In spite of learning the above, there is no changing the consciousness of the culture. As someone said, “we take comfort in our limitations” – a painful understatement. How does one possibly hope to enlighten so many who are so indoctrinated in a culture of guns, war, patriotism, and simulacra (imitations with no originals)? How does one begin to explain to a gun-toting “patriot” decked out in military olive-drab the intricacies of social indoctrination? The degree to which that remains impossible is the litmus test of a retrograde culture diminished in IQ, literacy, and vision.

I end up in a vacuum of my own making, on an island remote from all the noise of human habitation. It’s a self-imposed exile, and the only way off the island is by stepping back into the noise. At least the museums are still there – marbled tabernacles for getting out of the heat, for communion with art untouched by time.

© 2022 Richard Hiatt

TRIVIALIZING VIRTUE

TRIVIALIZING VIRTUE

Hannah Arendt made history with her investigation into Eichmann. It was obvious that she did not look for excuses for Eichmann’s contribution to evil. The “banality of evil” was not about trivializing his actions but about how “normalizing” evil changes human behavior. She too considered him guilty of extraordinary crimes. Her indictment was on the culture of the court itself and the biases that prohibited it from judging Eichmann on his mental perspective apart from his crimes.

Arendt said it was the duty of the court to investigate and determine the substance of a unique criminal character. In other words, to understand the mindset that would compel someone to commit such crimes as simply normal, part of “taking orders,” without compunction or hindsight. – Still, her criticism of the court and the handling of the trial earned her severe condemnation, not just from the Jewish community but in Western Europe and America. – So much for simply being objective and wanting to learn about the deeper seeds of evil. She was not willing to simply conform with the knee-jerk and politically correct responses to fascism after the war. More needed to be learned about the human capacity to inflict suffering.

Again, the normalizing of evil was about looking deeper into the character of the criminal, not the crime. It was addressing the ease with which it could recur in the future. In the extreme it was suggesting that anyone could conceivably become an Eichmann under the right conditions. Eichmann himself, according to Arendt, was “neither perverted nor sadistic,.” but “terrifyingly normal.” He wasn’t a sadistic monster. At the time he simply had self-advancement in mind for a military (possibly political) career. He committed evil deeds without evil intentions which required a clear disengagement from reality. He “never realized what he was doing due to an inability … to think from the standpoint of someone else. [He] committed crimes under circumstances that made it … impossible for him to know or to feel that he [was] doing wrong.”

This was about the rise of a set of conditions that, when unchecked, could fuel a sobering reality about the human psyche. Eichmann stood for us all in that sense. Unfortunately, Arendt’s thesis also introduced the notion that Eichmann was just a scapegoat for Israel and for West Germany, which then brought even more wrath down upon her. Scapegoating was not her intent. Eichmann needed to be punished. But the point was lost when the psychology (character study) got confused with the criminal.

With all that said, let’s suppose the reverse could also be true. That is, let’s reverse the indictment – not about evil but our notions of virtue. What exactly does it mean to be virtuous? What do we expect of it? Is there a similar disengagement from reality? Could it mean doing “virtuous” deeds without virtue? Can it mean the inability to “think from the standpoint of someone else?” Can one “commit” a virtuous act while knowing that he’s doing evil?

Do we commit acts of virtue just because it’s written somewhere that it’s the thing to do? Do we make people into heroes without really knowing the dark side of what heroism is? Could we actually say that ritual acts of good behavior are “terrifyingly normal?” Is there fear that if we look too deeply into this we could earn the same wrath that came down on Arendt?

And then another dimension: How is it that we emphasize “the positive” in society? By what standards? This implies a need to look into our whole system of rewards and punishments. The prevalent attitude goes by the rule: “Do this and you’ll get that.” It comes down to a method of manipulating with incentives that work in the short-term but fail in the long-term. We dangle “goodies” (rewards) in front of adults just as much as we do children to bribe them into doing certain behaviors. The result is nothing more than obedience and praise for more of it. We get hooked on approval. Virtue could be seen as a candy bar used to bribe citizens into acceptable norms.

So one might ask, if virtue shouldn’t be taught by rewards, then how should it be taught? Instead of simple rewards and punishments (“operant conditioning” as used with dogs), we want children to act responsibly without bribes. If they feel safe, they take creative risks, ask questions, and trust in their own development. If their own emotional needs are met, they will meet the needs of others as well. There’s also teaching by example, called “modeling.”

Explaining is another skill, versus negative threats. To explain is to treat the child as an intelligent person capable of figuring things out. They respond with positivity and confidence in a caring environment. We don’t want them to merely do good things. We want them to understand why they’re doing them. – Just a few examples of how real virtue is cultivated.

We often refer to virtue as a moral good. We equate it with strength, courage, valor, and purity. But it also means “conforming to a standard.” And from the word virtue we get the adjective “virtual.” And anything virtual means “not formally recognized or admitted,” as well as something “whose existence is inferred from indirect evidence” – as opposed to direct evidence. All of which means that virtue is mostly – well, “virtual.”

One concrete example I can think of that illustrates the relativity of virtue are the general attitudes towards war and peace. An advocate for peace is, believe it or not, considered to be a “radical.” Whereas an advocate for war is considered a patriot. And let’s not forget Samuel Johnson’s famous quote: ”Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel.”

Historians agree that, like it or not, war is the glue that cements all civilizations. The purpose and driving force of all cultures “is war.” This is because of man’s competitive nature. “Conquest brings progress.” This why “success” in any culture is the first recipe for violence. It’s one of life’s ironies, but war is inevitable with progress. War and civilization are symbiotically intertwined.

Hence the reason we use war more than anything else to measure virtue. Insofar as virtue gets reduced down to things like valor, bravery, patriotism, and character-building, it is proven by the standards of personal sacrifice. It is also then rewarded according to things performed. — But if true virtue is something that can’t be taken away or diminished, then how can it be measured or proven at all? How is it that one can be brave and sacrificing one day (virtuous) and self-absorbed and callous the next (without virtue)? How can it be a virtue if one can cherry-pick the tests of virtue?

At the same time we use war to enable the most twisted psychological phenomena of all; that is, war becomes the only opportunity men have to exercise another virtue – unconditional love. They need extreme violence to demonstrate extreme love. Short of war then men don’t really want help; they find security in their limitations. – Consider the power war has over our notions of virtue. Consider what Johnson meant by “scoundrel.” And consider our unwillingness to think more deeply into these dynamics. We simply go along and agree not to think about them.

Most tragic of all is when men learn the truth that war measures nothing much more than stupidity. Virtue has nothing to do with war, and visa versa. But then they/we forget, and/or die off. And then, as Toynbee said, “When the last man who remembers the last great war dies, the next great war becomes inevitable.”

In reflection, Hannah Arendt said this: “There are no dangerous thoughts. Thinking itself is dangerous.” It’s a reminder to be careful of where you go with your thoughts. It may be okay to think them but not to say them. It’s the hypocrisy of it all that grips us. It brings up a quote by Chomsky: “If I were in the mainstream, I’d have to ask myself what I’m doing wrong.” Why am I there? The first order of business should be to examine exactly what we mean by good and evil, and what questions are we not asking.

© 2022 Richard Hiatt

THE DASH and the MARK

THE DASH AND THE MARK

It’s like saying nature or nurture, up or down, East or West, Poncho & Lefty. But they’re also regulators, turnstiles, in the phenomenon of “fast or slow.” The two grammatical glyphs symbolize more than just punctuation marks. They seem to be benchmarks of technological change, and with that shifts in exactly how we think. It’s amazing how these otherwise insignificant small marks on a page hold such power over us.

I personally am a devotee of the dash. Anyone who has read anything here knows that. It’s easy, but it also facilitates swiftness in thought transition and flow from one idea to the next. Sometimes I just refuse to let punctuation interfere if it holds up an idea. I want to move forward, and to hell with the rules of how to say it. It was said that Henry James agreed with this – disgusted with how “dogmatizing” kills the “felicity” of thought. That made me feel better.

But the dash is also a mark which is so popular now that it’s virtually eliminates commas, colons, semicolons, and even periods. So it does have its dark side. There’s no time for grammar in the age of computers. Sentences “run on” like lower-case vers libre falling off an e e cummings typewriter. Texting and digital chat combine with acronyms and cyber-signs that make the The Chicago Manuel of Style a museum relic.

There’s always a downside, right? Technology takes just as it gives. The inability to slow down and contextualize, to shore up specific thoughts before getting lost in others, leads to a sense of helplessness in a sea of white noise. And without a doubt, “noise” along with psychobabble, doublespeak, and chatty semaphore has us all existentially lost. Nothing makes much sense. Hence the need to slow things down again, at least long enough to allow our minds to get around what’s being said.

Hello, once again, to the simple period, first cousin to the comma which is second cousin to the semicolon (distant cousin to the colon). The period stops everything. It demands a complete break between sounds, audible rests between notes. Thoughts need to be gathered and processed before moving forward. There used to be a good argument for preserving the cousins of punctuation, like the colon and semicolon, but now it’s down to even defending the period.

I used to be a great defender of the semicolon – not an absolute stop in transmitting thoughts, but just enough to ready ourselves for another round of the same thought. It says there’s “more to this” before stopping.

The semicolon is relaxed, bottom-heavy, asymmetrically negotiable. The “crescent moon” part says there’s more to this thought, but we can pause before moving on. It separates and unites. Multiple semicolons in tandem is a family divided between parents and children, where each has something to say. To leave one out is to silence the whole family. It’s an e pluribus unum writ small.

Many today attack the colon and semicolon, and even the comma, calling them pretentious, unnecessary, highbrow, too slow, obstructive, old school, and ironically as “empty of meaning” as the dash. And yet the dash is used precisely because it is empty of meaning. Meaninglessness is the trend. It reminds me of the prophet suddenly landing in the midst of chaos, telling everyone to slow down and regroup, only to discover that chaos is what they want. Regrouping is not. The prophet is yesterday’s comma, period and colon.

Not to totally condemn speed. Computers have given us lots. Instant communications, access to information never before available, human connectivity, etc. The dash facilitates this. In that sense the dash is almost like a horizontal line allowing uninterrupted flow with what’s in front, like passing a baton in a relay race. The “rational and logical” may get blurred, but it (hopefully) spills over into the poetic and allegorical, if not the lyrical. The muse is always hovering at the edge of that precipice, between form and formless, like a hummingbird.

Buckminster Fuller said, “I seem to be a verb.” In that spirit I almost find myself using the dash as an escutcheon — my way of plowing through reams of bullshit. But the comma and semicolon are also faithful allies. They slow me down and make me re-collect and sort out. It’s a mesalliance that becomes an “odd couple” in the new world of sharing. “Sharing” becomes the new subject of scrutiny. What exactly is it?

One needs to keep up with the computer age while also knowing where to pause, when to take a breath. Every speedway needs a speedbump with which to measure distance. The “bump” is all that’s left in the parsing of thoughts and ideas, in the contextualizing of things. It triggers ideas and emotions. It concentrates and distills and allows thoughts to be expressed (orally and written).

This is the modern narrative and the modern dilemma. But the comma and semicolon also have a hidden history of their own. Many of us aren’t aware that many punctuation marks like them did not survive. The velocity of earlier times even then made them prohibitive. Responding to many such marks, scholars actually said “there’s no time for this!” But the three compadres here did survive. Why? Fortuitously, each allowed just enough stylistic “flow” to turn confusion into refreshing clarity. And that opened the door, opportunistically speaking, to grammatical eloquence. It coincided with the “art of expression” as it needed to be in 15^th century Italy. It also lent elbowroom for annotation to be more or less left up to the writer’s personal taste and style and less on prescribed rules. In other words, there was just enough play between rules and artful flexibility for the comma, semicolon, and colon to live on.

Through the centuries many efforts have been made to force the written word to follow strict guidelines, meticulously hammered out by scholars. But once a very good (or great) writer came along, it became apparent that creative innovation was due mostly to liberties taken without rules, setting them aside which then sent academics into a tailspin. Grammatical rules, more than any other kinds of rules, were always meant to be broken. They’re just a backdrop for lines to be overstepped, risks to be taken, envelopes pushed. Defenders of the Manuel of Style to this day cringe at the thought.

Today, we might say that the purpose of any punctuation mark is the reverse of “risk-taking” – again, to slow things down (the academics get the last laugh). The “syntactical offenders” of yesterday who used the “wrong” punctuation are those who now use no punctuation. Even the “half semicolon” (comma), the final stopgap against free-floating stream of consciousness, the quarter-guard against unharnessed babble, is anathema to the “noise” of digital chat. The comma is an annoyance, just as taking a breath is almost an annoyance, a valuable waste of time. – So why not just do away with the “human” element altogether?! – asks the computer.

Again, just a few years ago I was defending the semicolon. Now it’s the comma — that sickled/crescent moon that keeps me from being swept into an abyss of white noise without end or beginning – 24/7 cacophonous distortion. Even the apostrophe, that silent sibling hovering above like a quarter-moon, is in danger of the same currents of ungoverned, unrestrained free agency.

What stuns me most, as my last fingernail holds on to the crescent’s edge, is that the world now spins with its own tech-no-logic. It lives on without hooks and dots. Human beings continue on pretending to communicate – again, the question of what “sharing” actually means. Their only common denominator seems to be through the medium of data. Even feelings and emotions don’t make sense unless sifted through the filters of numbers, averages, polls, deviations, and probabilities. When someone cries or laughs, he or she subconsciously measures it against “curves,” “norms,” and “averages.” Am I normal? Am I okay?” The superego takes over. Computer data (especially numbers) doesn’t need punctuation or a literary “style.”

And so, survival (for me) is a matter of negotiating velocity and flow with points of restraint, disruption, pressure and reticence. It becomes a battle between making an imprint along the steady current of undisturbed and undisciplined primal release. The flow is so strong that an occasional “hook” (by way of an apostrophe or comma) is like a paddle trying to slow up a river. The straight line (dash) goes with the current; the hook attempts to divert the water and make a splash just for a moment.

Points are made everyday. But fewer and fewer are actually heard. There are simply too many drowning in that river of noise. Every person is an individual, which means there are no individuals. Everyone seeks to stand out, which means no one stands out. The difference is that some of us know this, while many do not. Their “noise” is unconscious and random, and they treat any silence between sounds as something to fear and loathe. Vacuums invite pauses which invite unwanted thoughts. Best to stay submerged and deaf.

And so, again, when I see a punctuation mark anymore, I see a relic, a dinosaur, a memento from a lost time submerging and drowning. I see myself holding on to a branch along the river’s edge hoping not to be swept away. My fingers hold on but are are already weakening, and I see my fate downstream. But at least I know other branches live on ahead. I will always stop myself somehow, somewhere, as the current takes me along, if only to make sense of certain things along the way.

© 2022 Richard Hiatt

GROTESQUES

GROTESQUES

Every living-breathing anachronism has the job of superimposing the past onto the present. Every present moment gets its significance and meaning from comparisons with what it no longer is. Such is the task of this entry.

Something is missing from the theater of men, something that brings the theater aspect back. Since the world is a stage, what it needs are its Gothic adornments, the accoutrement of classic theatre, to remind itself that it is theatre. Its function and purpose is all about perspective – and remembrance.

We can begin with its own version of the Janis Gate – the masks of comedy and tragedy. The masks should be carved in lapidary marble and placed front & center above every marquee. The patron should be entering an anti-chamber to his own role as a player. The play itself is the constant shifting of tragedy that eventually (with time) transforms into comedies of error. Walking down the darkened isle inside is a portal of remembrance leading us to isles and seat assignments – aka. of who/where we are under the vault of heaven.

That’s just for starters. Before, during, and after the performance “of our lives” we’re surrounded with the grotesques (chimeras, gargoyles) of the human comedy. These are the masks we wear on and off stage, though we’re never “off” stage.

The gargoyle is fitting more than ever. The word shares a Latin root which means to “gargle” and a French derivation meaning “throat” or “gullet.” Hence to swallow, but also to spew (or “throw up”). The Gothic gargoyle “tosses” the used water which cleanses the body of Christ (or Mary) into the streets. The function is ablutionary – washing/purging for purification. It’s similar to the chamberlain ridding the queen of her foul water.

On the surface (architecturally), the grotesque was used as a whimsical and humorous addition to fill in empty spaces. In that spirit it was easy (and permissible) to conjoin human and animal features to entertain fables and superstitions – something very unusual at a time when the church took superstition seriously (still burning witches and looking for signs of Satan). It suggests that maybe not all was as humorously treated as assumed – a split-mindedness that survives today. We’re “over” the superstitions about black cats and witches; and yet we’re not. We still look for witchmarks in the subtleties of deportment, language, and ideas. Stereotypes still await their opportunity.

Split-mindedness was no joke. On one level the church and society was playfully seeking out the abnormal to make fun of and caricaturize. On the other hand, this was the Age of Faith, and grotesques were there to ward of evil, including all things subversive. It was an odd and seldom agreed upon interpretation of the sacred and profane working together to soothe the ambivalent attitudes around evil and Satan. The dumbed-down version of that today might be the rabbit’s foot and the amethyst crystal – playful and (for some) serious.

The term grotesque also comes from the Italian grottesca meaning “of the cave.” It alludes to grottos, basements, caves, corridors, and/or rooms that have become overgrown, buried, and forgotten. The labyrinths and skull-lined catacombs of the medieval church are the same passageways that reside under the boardwalks of waking consciousness. They hold us up while staying buried in the muck of everything we repress.

A big part of that muck is how seriously we take ourselves. We (humans) are important and righteous, and everything nonhuman is “less than.” The gargoyle is the grotesqueness of that moral pronouncement. It laughs at us for such pride and arrogance. This is its unexpected function.

Another unexpected function: They happen to adorn the most “official” public buildings, albeit is smaller (tamer) versions in the US – those very buildings where leaders convene to do their very worst to people (in the name of “leadership”). They’re the headquarters for human suffering. The dark shadows they create, behind every act of “goodwill,” is brought forth inside the marbled halls of civil service. The grotesque reminds us all how relative the phrase “dark age” really is. Civilization (civility, civil authority) is measured by clever methods of sublimating our worst instincts.

More deeply than anything the chimera/gargoyle/grotesque is about a conversation with ourselves. They’re caricatures in the eternal effort to escape the entanglements we design for ourselves. Compact and intense, with sharp features and eyes that never cease to stare, they laugh at us, haunt us, mock us, remind us, while “throwing up” at the same time. They touch the very core of our deceptions, frauds, impostures, and artifice. The more we fool ourselves, the more grotesque the face which sometimes laughs, sometimes cries.

Hence they offer us an ultimatum: Either invite them down and in for a cuppa tea, or keep the world going as it is — laden with, propelled by, superstition, subterfuge, and hypocrisy. Again, the stronger the superstition (and fear), the more distorted they get. It’s Dorian Gray looking into the mirror.

Alas, in the last 700 years the grotesque has neither diminished in scope or in appearance. We think it has, and we laugh at them as reminders of illiteracy and ignorance long ago. But they force us to witness the same dysfunctions today. Superstition has not diminished, and nothing has changed. The overtures and calls for change remain just as they’ve been for seven centuries. But listening is still our problem, and our cartoonish friends keep reminding us to reset the boundaries of understanding and the edifice of images and ideas. There’s nothing the caricature would love more than a) to finally come down and retire, or b) be the ludicrous comic opera we (wrongfully) think they already are.

Our leaders and many of their devotees are walking, breathing gargoyles. The only difference is that they don’t perch on gutters, valleys, soffits, and downspouts. That indicates the degree to which we’ve denied our darkest secrets to ourselves. The more denial sets in, the more our demons hang in high places. And what we have today are people wearing the masks of what they loathe most. They define the “persona” as what it is. They also define the “complex” – the voluntary projection of parts of ourselves we don’t like but believe to be true (as in the “inferiority complex”).

The grotesque is often confused with the gargoyle, but the latter is the one with the water spout in its mouth. Meanwhile, the grotesque without a spout is also called the chimera. In the Middle Ages the term for both gargoyle and grotesque was derived from the Italian word for “baboon.”

That said, the chimera is the most revealing of the grotesques. It is known in three different ways: The first is that of a Greek monster with a lion’s head, goat’s body, and a serpent’s tail. The second refers to a deception, fantasy, or delusion. And the third is a medical reference meaning an organism that has cells from more than one body (or genotype). In provincial and colloquial terms, it is a “freak” of nature.

Think of the body politic metaphorically. It thinks of itself as a fixed entity, unchanging and solid, from preferred sources and roots. Or, it thinks of itself as a process, a state of mind, a mental invention. In the first case the head is a stranger to its tail. It consumes it without knowing it (like the ouroboros), – In the second case, it identifies with the balance between ends (masculine and feminine) which is in a constant transposition. One is never oneself entirely. All things are conditional and ephemeral. The “freak” today is both the collision and confluence of masculine and feminine, hermaphroditic (“trans-) consciousness, role-reversals, and gender-neutral careers. This is also a constant theme in the arts. The chimera shifts in color and form like the chameleon. – In the end, what we see looking down at us depends on us.

An interesting final thought becomes a whimsical hypothetical: If evolution is all about doffing our personas and no longer needing to defend them, then what happens to the grotesque? In other words, what will it look like in the years hereafter? My guess is it will be the many faces of “us,” but more human, androgynous, friendly, smiling. A thousand years from now we’ll all look up at our medieval forms and recognize what we once were, just as we do now with the tortured faces at Salisbury Cathedral, Florence Cathedral, Notre-Dame de Paris.

Whatever the time or place, the grotesque “has our number.” He’s the alter ego on our shoulders mirroring everything we think, believe, and do. They’re the “preachers in stone” said one 13^th century Pope. Whether they simply amuse and entertain, or rain on us with our foul waters, is our decision.

© 2022 Richard Hiatt