INVENTORY III

INVENTORY III

I’ve been waking up with a stronger awareness of being old – an already “old” theme. I’m taking on symptoms which I knew to be common in the elderly ranks, but now others as well which one doesn’t anticipate until he has them. You hear yourself mumbling, “Oh shit, what’s this now?!”

Apropos of that is the fact that my “inventories” are getting closer together. Changes are surfacing with greater frequency, each encased inside their own micro-dramas. Earlier inventories might have been more about events “out there.” More recent ones have more to do with “in here” – today, right now, inside my body. While still listening to the world’s dramas, at another level I’m extricating myself from all that and tending to matters, as it were, at my own doorstep.

Two small epiphanies: first, I’m finally learning that in life nothing really changes; second, smaller things are demanding more attention from all parts of myself, mentally and physically. If I’m going to sweep out a room, I “calculate” exactly how much, how far, and how long it will take – and to hell with what’s left over. Corners and crevasses are sacrificed. I talk to them and promise “next time.” But next time never comes.

Somehow, I always thought there was a silent wisdom shared among those achieving seventy (+) years on earth, those who stay home more and grow gardens. Well, it’s true in part. But it’s also because of the wearing out of body parts and simple exhaustion. A wisdom is derived (I suppose) in learning just how those two forced intersect with inscrutable synchronicity.

Then there are those I know – neighbors and friends. My seventy-year-old neighbor to the west is having “senior moments” now, while another to the north (younger than myself) can’t lift a ladder anymore because of his catheter. Another neighbor to the south (considerably younger) is dealing with debilitating diabetes and surgeries. – I am surrounded on three sides by seriously debilitated people. Then a fourth friend, in Pennsylvania, has MS and is slowly “slipping” away after a 20 year correspondence, being consumed by more and more symptoms from that awful disease. Just getting around with a stroller, making it to the couch without falling, doctors visits, horrible meds that cause more side-effects than relief, are finally taking their toll.

Lastly, there’s the lady across the street (my own age thereabouts) who is just this side of total deafness. She’s a recluse and lives in one of those bubbles that makes her oblivious to everything around her. She tends to her flowers and a litter of feral cats. I can’t exactly count her as a friend because I don’t know her. Still, she’s the fourth leg (to the east) that completes an entire zone of debilitation which encircles me.

In all, it leaves me feeling like I’m in a rest-home community. But here the natives haven’t yet even made it to the rest-home. They’ve become “old” before their time and it’s taken hold so tightly that they struggle between independence and “assisted living” – in other words, reality and denial.

Meanwhile, I miraculously still jog and work out as I have for years, albeit at a slower pace, with less enthusiasm, with fewer push-ups and distances covered. Then I feel like a Mack Truck hit me the next morning. Relative to “the zone,” I’m doing quite well. I don’t take any prescription drugs which amazes doctors, and what that indicates to me is just how unhealthy others are regarding lifestyles, diets, and simple misfortune. I happen to be vegan, and I know many still have a horrible time just thinking about giving up pork and cigarettes. That said, I see people in their fifties who look “eighty.” But that’s all part of the American health-plan, is it not? Still passionately defended – until the doc says “no more” one day. And for many it’s too late.

What all of us do share in common is this new discovery called “the nap.” It fills in more unused time than ever before, at all hours of the day and night (mostly the day). It’s what happens when so much has already flooded your mind (thoughts, concerns, worries, regrets, good memories, lingering needs) that the body can’t handle it anymore. There’s just one response left: “take a load off” and say to yourself “I’ll get to it later.”

Denial plays its part here. At first we say “I just want to sit down.” Sometimes we listen, sometimes we don’t. Then the message gets gradually stronger and more consistent. When we listen we eventually hear that “to sit down” really means to “lie down.” And not just to lie down but to close one’s eyes. Dreams are the stuff of unfinished business. They let us get right to what our waking hours have been avoiding. And when we get to the flip-side of our dreams and wake up, we’re inexplicably, albeit temporarily, refreshed. There’s the sense of not knowing where (or when) we are. We look around to get oriented. The world seems new again, and only some of our worries and obsessions return to us. We brush them off as “unreal” (trivial) as long as we can, at least a few moments, as if wanting to extend the dream that was just here a minute ago. We remember once again where the real work is being done – versus – the world where we collect our problems.

Naps carry an old-person’s stigma. It’s what “they” do. Whereas, we have too much to do, there’s too much on our minds to waste such time. But while saying it, we find ourselves sitting down. Then lying down. Then we doze off, mumbling, “I just need a few moments.” – I have to say here that I also have to thank my lucky stars for having cats (versus dogs). Cats (wild & domestic) sleep “eighteen hours a day” on average. They’re the greatest sleep companions/travel guides/psychic co-conspirators of all time.

Then, another symptom surfaces – attention spans. I’ve noticed that I simply don’t listen as long as I once did – to anything. Two reasons: One is, again, fatigue. The other is that more and more of everything is a broken record. I’ve heard it ten-thousand times, though in different words and forms. It becomes a variation of a shrinking theme. It reminds me of a mentor I once lived with in the Colorado mountains. One morning I asked, “Did you read the news this morning?” “I already read it,” he said, “in 1958. It was boring, redundant, and poorly written then,” he said . “Believe me, nothing’s changed.” – Unless it’s a good joke or a remarkably intelligent observation, I barely hold onto conversations anymore.

Then there are those “alpha” moments, when the mind goes into its hypnagogic “twilight zone,” and you just sit there and stare at things. You’re not even there. You’re a void inside a vacuum. It’s actually a good feeling because it feels like everything “rests.” There’s nothing to interfere and no stress or pressure in thoughts, urges, or impulses. It’s those moments when animals, cats in particular again, become amazingly responsive. The world’s most famous (Cheshire) lap-cats find the laps most thoroughly (dis-)engaged – as if saying, “welcome.”

Next, reading material. Unlike “the people” department where I’m more cautious than ever about sharing space, the antithesis is true with art and reading. In other words, unlike people, both have become amazing open-ended stress-reducers. I read a variety of everything now, and topics I never thought were related are intersecting footnotes. Everything is remarkably, strangely, connected. Is that somehow related to not holding on to specific conversations anymore, to hearing “shrinking themes?” I don’t know. I’m also an “equal opportunity” reader because trying to find just the right material for so long has become exhaustive and futile. “I give up,” and I stray over into subjects I know nothing about. It’s interesting how everything joins and guides me back to basic assumptions that started my day.

The same habit applies to music and film – how could it not? I’ve been a fan of two or three musical genres since my high school days. But the habit has grown stale. After stepping over some genres which I still absolutely hate, I’m plugging into sounds that are stirring my curiosity — voices and instrumentals. They’re opening windows into myself. There are films I wouldn’t have given a hoot about ten years ago. Now I watch, and watch again. I’m looking for portals, membranes, thresholds.

It all seems to say one thing: With walls closing in, lights going out, rooms shutting down, there’s something inside wanting to be transported out of this “zone” and into others. It’s that time. Some zones are better than others. Sometimes the key to a particular zone is elusive. It floats freely, randomly, and dances on a key-chain belonging to those like the Mad Hatter or White Rabbit in Alice’s adventure – the perfect dream for the perfect nap for the perfect rest. There’s no grabbing it until I sit down and have tea with those who know the way.

© 2022 Richard Hiatt

SAD DAY FOR THE LIBERAL WARRIOR

SAD DAY FOR THE LIBERAL WARRIOR

Years ago when I saw the phrase “liberal fascism” I thought I was reading a misprint. It was the most absurd oxymoron I had ever heard. Then I saw Jonah Goldberg’s book Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Change, andI knew then that readers were beginning to actually believe in the possibility of such a concept.

I read some of Goldberg’s ideas from which he formulated his thesis. Some are true, but most are unbelievably, preposterously false. One summation read:

Contrary to what most people think, the Nazis were ardent socialists (hence the term “National socialism”). They believed in free health care and guaranteed jobs. They confiscated inherited wealth and spent vast sums on public education. They purged the church from public policy, promoted a new form of pagan spirituality, and inserted the authority of the state into every nook and cranny of daily life. The Nazis declared war on smoking, supported abortion, euthanasia, and gun control. They loathed the free market, provided generous pensions for the elderly, and maintained a strict racial quota system in their universities—where campus speech codes were all the rage. The Nazis led the world in organic farming and alternative medicine. Hitler was a strict vegetarian, and Himmler was an animal rights activist.

A critique of my own I could not resist:

First, the Nazis were not Socialists. This was a political ruse meant to lure citizens over to Hitler’s ideology. They were “fascists,” and that meant “far right extremists.” Guaranteed jobs yes; but free healthcare was free only if you were in some way conscripted into Hitler’s regime. Hitler was a devout capitalist (his biggest American hero was Henry Ford), and he supported private enterprise above and beyond anything “socialist.” Yes, they spent vast sums on education but only to propagandize it. Hitler purged the church and infused paganism only to support the myth of Arianism (that the spiritual “chosen” were known by their DNA). Yes, the State took over, but only when corporations were in need of financing. Yes, again, they supported abortions and euthanasia (but guess why?), and what does that (and smoking) have to do with socialism in the first place?? That they “loathed the free market” is an abject lie!! “Pensions to the elderly,” perhaps, but the Reich lasted only 12 years and anything like it never even got off the ground. Yes, Hitler DID “maintain a strict racial quota,” but again, guess why? Yes, public speaking was “free” as long as it promoted Hitler’s plan and anti-Semitism.

And lastly, in those days virtually all farming was organic, even industrialized farming before harmful fertilizers and pesticides were even discovered. Hitler was a vegetarian and Himmler probably believed in animal rights (in some twisted way). But Hitler also had horrible ulcers, his doctors put on a vegetarian diet of bland food, and his rationale for not harming animals was probably as twisted as Himmler’s. And again, what does that have to do with socialism?

This is nothing less than STUNNING how this author has tried to take Hitler. Mussolini, and an an entire “right wing” ideology and push it over to the left. An impressive and desperate attempt to win literary notoriety through mental gymnastics and an over-active imagination. This book is a bad joke.

Nonetheless, Goldberg’s book came out in 2007, and it sold well. And since then something unprecedented has taken place, something which has been disappointing but, I have to admit, not surprising. The shadow that now looms over everything “liberal” is extremism. And extremism, whether left or right, has all the earmarks of fascism – which again, is by definition “right” of center. Initially it championed “rights” in every corner of society, at every level. But in the name of those rights, no one has any anymore.

So many laws have been passed to protect against discrimination (in any form, to any degree) that no leeway is given for one to even breathe anymore. Anything off-color or remotely “controversial” or “racy” is off-limits because it just might offend someone’s delicate sensibilities. A good example was the humor/satire we once heard on TV and in the movies back in the 1970s and 80s – now verboten. Beyond that, even if “constructive” criticism is still welcomed in business and society at large, it can only be “positive” criticism. If you make the slightest racy remark about someone’s appearance you’d better couch it in calming humor and defusing participial phrases, and be ready to assume that someone’s feelings will be “violated.”

I’ll never forget Robert Hughes’ response to this crippling syndrome in his book Culture of Complaint, published prior to Goldberg’s book in 1993: Addressing the failing educational system at the time (replacing academic discipline with “personal expression” and “self-esteem”), he wrote:

Untrained in logical analysis, ill-equipped to develop and construct formal arguments about issues, unused to mining texts for deposits of factual material, the students fell back to the only position they could truly call their own: what the felt about things. When feelings and attitudes are the main referents of argument, to attack any position is automatically to insult its holder, or even to assail his or her perceived ‘rights’; every argumentum becomes ad hominum, approaching the condition of harassment, if not quite rape.

And so, all things considered, it’s with great regret that, though I still find his historical analysis terribly flawed, I must nonetheless submit to the idea of Goldberg’s “liberal fascism.” It does exist after all. In fact I now hear about it all the time on “liberal” talk-shows like The Problem with John Stuart, The Thom Hartmann Show, and Real Time with Bill Maher. It’s the new pandemic inside the liberal ranks, on the college campus, in leftist journals and websites, and in daily conversation.

The humor, alacrity, and open-mindedness that was once the rock of liberal thinking (free-wheeling, “intelligently/constructively” willing to cross lines and offend egos) – the very idea of liberalis (L. “the free man”) – is now poisoned with the fear of stepping on someone’s toes. We’ve become just as cautious, purse-lipped, and anal as the most buttoned-up, Bible-thumping, 19^th century schoolmarm – while still calling ourselves progressives and leftists.

As for being self-deluded, Gore Vidal said this way back in 1980:, “Although there has never been a left wing in the United States, certain gentle conservatives like to think of themselves as liberals, as defenders of the environment, as enemies of our dumber wars…. But not one single gentle liberal voice has ever been raised against the bank. I suppose this is because too many of them work for the Bank… [i.e.,] shorthand for… the actual ownership of the United States…. The Bank is the Cosa Nostra of the 4.4 percent [now the “one-percenters”]. The United States Government is the Cosa Nostra of the Bank.”

Ten years later he said, “The word ‘radical’ derives from the Latin word for root. Therefore, if you want to get to the root of anything you must be radical. It is no accident that the word has now been totally demonized…. In politics, to be liberal is to want to extend democracy through change and reform. One can see why that word had to be erased from our political lexicon.”

William Gladstone once defined left & right in this manner: “Liberalism is trust of the people tempered by prudence; conservatism is distrust of the people tempered by fear.” Liberals no longer trust, and prudence is now a quaint notion needing to be dodged lest someone crosses a line and speaks out of turn. The “PC-Police” are after him.

When you add the fact that the political terrain has also made a seismic shift to the right (since Reagan) – political “center” is far right of center — it’s no surprise that there’s such confusion and contradiction inside the ranks. True liberalism isn’t even on the radar anymore, and we can hardly even recognize each other. Tragically, this is where we are. There’s also little chance of changing it back since so much now rides on deeply entrenched “conservative” agendas (where no gray areas or ambiguity are allowed – because, frankly, ambiguity is “weakness,” and weakness is cowardice, and cowardice is unpatriotic, and unpatriotic is unChristian, and anything unChristian must be “liberal”).

Apparently, banning books, restricting speech in classrooms, criminalizing women and doctors, making it harder to vote, and putting religion before science (in addition to all the points mentioned by Goldberg “in reverse”) is now the mark of “democracy” in America. It’s what Americans believe, apparently. To mention a disconnect here in any way, shape, or form, is to make yourself the disconnect. You’re the “fascist.”

Yes, it’s a sad day for those still holding fast to real democratic socialism and the true left. We’re relics under glass strictly for amusement.

© 2022 Richard Hiatt

THE MALL

THE MALL

The more color is added in the world, the more monochromatic it gets. The more sounds we add, the more it becomes white noise. So much of everything flies by us everyday, like flashcards, that it blurs into a hugely meaningless light. We’re the deer in the headlights.

One example that can’t be ignored. The American landscape. The storybooks still insist on painting the nation as an urban complex surrounded by a distinct suburbia/exurbia, which again is surrounded by a bucolic countryside with amber waves and small farms. Perhaps it was, once upon a time, and briefly. But Americans gave all that up. They grew an appetite for convenience, accessibility, and speed. Which meant another phenomenon altogether – the mall – and the blurring of boundaries. Enter a mall and you’re everywhere all at once. Don’t like where you are? Just go next door. Americans invented the mall. The mall is “all-American.”

The nation today is one enormous mega-mall, and as the late George Carlin said, “in between the mega-malls are the mini-malls, and in between the mini-malls are the mini-marts, and in between the mini-marts are the car lots, gas stations, muffler shops, laundromats, cheap hotels, fast-food joints, strip clubs, and dirty bookstores. One big transcontinental, commercial cesspool.” He couldn’t avoid premising this with the comment “Have you seen it lately? It’s embarrassing.” But the mall facilitates America’s two favorite pastimes (said Carlin again): ”shopping and eating” – buying things they “don’t need and can’t afford,” while stuffing their already over-sized bodies with fast food. – Welcome to the US of A. – Bored? Nothing to do? Go to the mall!

The mall now defines and finances the American landscape. Every small town envelops itself around one. Hence, every town is like every other town. There’s absolutely no difference from one to the other, with the exception of dilapidated, old and forgotten “downtown” blocks which either struggle to stay alive or are already dead. Each old downtown area is still unique, even as they all decay together.

This phenomenon planted just outside the city limits, earmarked by the Walmarts, Targets, Safeways, and Home Depots, is the epicenter of everything. Which means if you’re thinking about moving to another town or city, just pick one – anywhere. Yearly temperatures, politics, team sports, and regional dialects aside, it’s all the same place. Frankly, it reminds me of the time I traveled with a group to Italy. Since we were Americans, someone got it in his head that we’d appreciate staying in an environment familiar, safe, and “close to home.” So they stuck us in a place called the “American Hotel” (cousin to a Holiday Inn). Our friendly travel guides completely missed the point.

Fortuitously, the mall has served one unanticipated function: It is now America’s answer to the latchkey-kid problem. While mom works, Johnny and Becky hang out there after school (that is, if they’re going to school) until she can pick them up. Kids on skateboards learn their social skills schmoozing with peers who have used their own creative skills to drum up “things to do,” not always lawful. It’s those intermediate hours when they have too much time on their hands.

The question is: How did we become a culture so enamored with things made in foreign sweatshops, tasteless/processed food, appliances/gadgets designed for obsolescence, images and first impressions (styles, trends, looks, soundbites, jingles, catchphrases, attitudes) that override substance in every department imaginable? Where it’s hard to tell the difference between a mannequin and a real human being, let alone outdoors from indoors?

Believe it or not, it all started with the Supreme Court. The corruption began in 1971 when Lewis Powell, later appointed to the Supreme Court by Nixon, outlined how the very wealthy and big corporations could essentially take over the American culture and the government itself. It was kept “Confidential at the top” and in the rarefied circles of the rich. His memo stated that the Court could become a “spokesman for American business” if it was “willing to provide the funds.” Later Robert Bork’s 1987 nomination to the Court sealed the deal by putting an end to America’s antitrust laws – designed to protect small competitors, protect communities from corruption, maintain vibrant markets where small business owners had a chance.

The Bork Doctrine, embraced again by Reagan, literally wiped out millions of small and local businesses. As Thom Hartmann wrote in his book The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America, it is “the main reason why every American city today looks pretty much like every other one, with the same low-cost fast-food joints, chain hotels, and Walmarts.” While the rich control virtually everything, citizens have become an homogenized melting pot of compromised, disenfranchised, and politically-correct sheep – conservative, white bread, silenced voters afraid to stand out, afraid of giving offense – while thinking they’re free and empowered. Such is the awesome power of media propaganda and subliminal messaging. It’s the “ghost of Huxley” in our midst.

I avoid malls, always have – just to avoid the plasticity and homogenizing effect on things “real.” I also avoid what has happened to the psyches of those employed at malls and of the notorious “mall rat” (customer). The experience just amplifies the truth of what has happened to the American psyche – attitudes, ambitions, appetites, desires, and general perception of things. It breeds and thrives in an air-tight, climate-controlled, never-changing bubble, an artificial outdoors away from the elements and of all things dangerous and unpredictable. Meanwhile, it brings its own dangers indoors which have become even more violent. Is there a connection?

The dilemma however for someone who avoids malls is that it leaves nowhere else to go. Even where there are no shops and retail stores, we’ve made the outdoors into a parking lot extension of the mall. TV monitors, billboards, warning signs, rules, fees, guidelines, instruction guides, parking attendants and police, maps, public restrooms, commercial ads, and overstuffed trash cans are what we see at trail-heads, parks, and recreation areas. The outdoors is a suburb of the mega-mall without the roof and climate-controlled air. We are swimming in the throw-away junk bought at the mall.

The only alternative is to either hike so high into the back-country that few can follow, or to stay home. “Home” is the final bastion of breathable air that doesn’t smell like caramel-corn, plastic, and engine exhaust. The music isn’t piped in either. And although it fills up with the “stuff” of malls, at least I have the choice of letting it marinate in its own age – which isn’t difficult since everything is “old” within just weeks anyway (outdated, user-unfriendly, passse, no longer adaptable). I have “relics” before I even know it – some are six-weeks old, others sixty-years old. If time doesn’t stand still, at least it slows down enough to see how fast everything else is moving.

But, I say let it. I’m part of that “old” cobblestone block that’s been abandoned and forsaken for all the ruckus happening out on the edge of town. I see the old red brick, 19^th century storefronts with their ornate facades, lancet arches, and mullioned windows, the decorative designs no one notices or appreciates anymore, and that’s where I perch myself when I’m “out and about.” I’m in good company too. I’m with the spirits of a lost and forgotten time. One day they’ll bulldoze us down for another mini-mall and a gas station – while still calling their town “unique,” “different”, “one of a kind,” “home of the original ??,” and “country fresh.” If it weren’t so tragic, it would be laughable.

Don’t look now, but the “rich & shameless” live in their own mall-culture as well, even as they avoid malls (where the”low-borne” hold out). Their gated communities are festooned with transplanted trees and topiaries not native to the environment. Everything is imported or made locally by “minorities” with green cards. They live in their own oxygen-rich, bacteria-free stratosphere. They’re just as afraid of leaving their driveways as the low-borne are afraid of leaving the mall – both prisoners of their own invention. The only real difference is that ordinary people are addicted to crowds. The rich avoid crowds, are even agoraphobic and germaphobic, unless they manufacture their own groups – RSVP.

The mall is a universal phenomenon, more a state of mind than anything geographical. It’s a kind of sickness that took root with the Industrial Revolution and the desire for comfort, access, and convenience (Veblen called it “conspicuous consumption”). But eventually the focus became making convenience more and more affordable under the principle of “progress.” Granted, life has become easier for everyone, and lifespans have grown, etc. We’re more “civilized” now, say sociologists. But the cost of convenience is complacency and torpor. We get lazy and we lose sight of the connection with ourselves and nature. In fact, we exploit nature for more and more convenience and access which never seems to end. And not unlike sweatshops, if it’s “out of sight,” it’s “out of mind,” and we can pretend the damage done doesn’t exist. We just want our pre-packaged products cheap and ready to go.

As a retired therapist, this is the “national psyche” I look at and try to understand everyday. It’s daunting and has many layers. It reminds me of being a non-smoker and/or a vegan (believe it or not). When you don’t smoke, you’re the first to smell cigarette smoke. If you walk into a room full of smokers and complain that the room stinks, they call you crazy. They of course smell nothing. The same applies to eating meat, particularly red meat. Soon you not only develop a natural bond with animals, but (for instance) those who eat pigs begin to smell like pigs (literally) and (for some) even look like pigs. They are what they eat. Watching people consume meat from a vegan standpoint is disgusting. But again, they call you crazy.

This is what happens when you take that big leap to extricate yourself from habits long considered to be natural but are not – if in fact you listen to what you’re body is telling you – and to the principle that (in the grand scheme of things) we’re here not just to consume lighter food but less of it. It’s a hard sell, to be sure, in the West where the general attitude is the opposite: where they think the human appendix is “fading out” in our natural evolution (when it’s coming in); where they say the wisdom teeth are “fading out” (but are coming in) – both to chew and digest cereal grains. What IS fading out are the human canines. It’s a body-message we should be listening to.

The mall is the manifestation of a sickness. But you’re the one with the problem. Many bridle at this, but I extend this analogy to the smartphone too – the mall by extension. I’ve never owned one, which again gives me the advantage of objectively watching what I don’t have (though I’ve “experienced” them). The world now walks around looking into those little boxes (at the dinner table, on the bed-stand, even during sex) as if needing a celestial voice to tell them what to do next and where to go. The mall is now portable, along with “community.” Things, friends, the world, everything, is just a click away.

I really don’t know which type of mall is worse in the long run. The verdict is out. At least with a physical mall there’s physical connectivity. In the “touch & go” universe I’ve heard there’s already an epidemic of isolation, depression, and alienation. But tell that to all the users! They are more unwilling to give up their phones than they are to forego climate-controlled atmospheres and hot dogs. The perfect situation for them of course is to have both: a phone stuck in one’s ear while perambulating the shiny floors in between store outlets. They call it “multitasking.” I call it “agitated depression.” But that’s just me.

So, here I am, an anachronism living along the perimeter of a smartphone-mall-culture. Indeed, I must be crazy. I’m one of the last holdouts still looking from the outside-in.

© 2022 Richard Hiatt

TRIAL BY JURY

TRIAL BY JURY

Imagine for a moment having made close (intimate) connections with friends in Canada. Imagine relationships having ensued for years. Then war breaks out and you find yourself in a country dedicated to a political ideology that clashes with Canada’s. Then you find your Canadian friends conscripted and forced to support the invasion of America.

In 1944 many Parisians found themselves sitting on a fence, the no-win situation of allegiances. They wanted nothing to do with the war and even resisted labels which compelled them to officially belong to a party or a cause. But as war raged on, as the Allies neared Paris, it was obvious that no one would be allowed to remain neutral. One had to declare himself either for the Allies or for Germany. Neutrality was synonymous with the “wrong” side, and there would be consequences.

That same year Jean-Paul Sartre wrote a play entitled Huis Clos. Its literal translation from Latin was “In Camera,” used to refer to a trial held in private chambers. It was a camera’s focus on three self-indulgent sinners locked in a room with no exit. They would have to confront each other’s indiscretions. It was the perfect metaphor for what Parisians faced, and the play became very popular.

Who did not sin during the war when it came to forced allegiances between adversary nations? Particularly when the battleground between them was their own backyard? Parisians were trapped behind their own doors. There was no way out. They faced an inevitable auto de fe from both sides unless one could prove the absence of fraternization (and assignations). Fortuitously, perhaps, Huis Clos captured this dilemma.

Many managed to ignore the fact that France had official ideological leanings and convictions, one of which was anti-fascism. One could not escape this. But they also indulged their belief in democracy and free speech which they thought overrode official positions. They soon discovered the reverse was true and that “denial” was a real problem. Ignoring facts for too long meant ignoring one’s responsibility to the realities facing France and the world.

Fast-forward to today. The dilemma has never disappeared. It’s just mutated to a larger stage. This time Sartre’s “room” is the world. We’re in one atmosphere with many compartments, one large space with closets, each closet being a nation, a culture, or a government. Each closet has a door that opens into a large round courtroom. The trial has begun and cameras are rolling.

The charges here are multiple, but they rest on two primary levels. First, the indictment of who we elect to lead us, and government leadership in general. Leaders simply reflect the ignorance of those who have chosen them. And the current climate shows an obvious plummeting into stupidity and greed. We’re getting what we deserve, and we obviously do not deserve more than what we have. – The second indictment relates to the first: abuse and neglect of the one vulnerable, finite, and terribly stressed entity which sustains us – the planet. The room that encircles us is closing in and turning our stupidity into a repercussive hell which is now testing our survival and sanity.

The plaintiff is the human conscience. The defense are the voices of ignorance and denial still claiming that the accusers have no ground to stand on – “all charges are false.” The latter still argues that democracy and freedom mean “rising above” everything, which is a clever excuse to include the planet as well – using war, violence, desecration, extermination (“neutralization,” “depopulation”), and the poisoning of everything to achieve that. In fact “progress” warns that getting soft on nature (and people) is unproductive, regressive, and weak. Conscience is “naive.” It’s in the way of progress and needs to be disposed of. It’s market capitalism itself (rugged individualism, entrepreneurialism) that must prevail. This is not denial in the eyes of the defense; it’s nature’s (Darwinian) design.

The trial began a long time ago, when Rachel Carson introduced her book Silent Spring in 1962. But no one knew it or believed it. The courtroom was just beginning to fill up. It’s taken years, but everyone has finally arrived. All it’s taken were a few massive floods, hurricanes, massive overcrowding, food shortages, a pandemic, and global warming to get everyone here. But they’re finally crowding the courtroom. At the same time shouts from “the bench” are coming down on us all: “You’re late!!”

The guilt, stress and blame are electric in the room. Various public defenders, defending individual clients, are pointing fingers, looking for excuses to exculpate and fabricate any residue of innocence they can muster. But it’s all noise. No one is hearing anyone else. Fingers point left and others point right. No one is “outside” the courtroom looking in anymore.

Parisians cavorted with, had romantic trysts with, Nazi officers long before the war started. They were very public, and no one had strong political leanings one way or another. But they should have.

One lady of note was the prototype of that mindset which lives on today. A forty-six-year-old cabaret singer/movie star named Leonie Marie Julie Bathiat, known to all in France simply as Arletty. In fact she and her Nazi lover attended Sartre’s Huis Clos together the night of its premier. They were seen everywhere. The press took photos. There was no judgment or social repercussion.

In time, when they realized the Allies were approaching Paris, Arletty stood her ground thinking she could declare herself politically neutral. She said she was not a supporter of de Gaulle, but neither was she a Nazi. The popular term used to designate that kind of neutrality was “Gauloise” — a popular French cigarette smoked widely in the art community, which included Sartre and Picasso.

But being a Gauloise! would never hold. Her closest friends urged her to leave Paris when there was still time, well before the Normandy Invasion, but she refused. She thought her reputation, fame, political stand, and the principle of democracy alone would be enough to protect her. They did not, and she found herself hiding in homes, wine cellars, basements, and sheds belonging to friends. And again, she was not alone. Hundreds found themselves in the same horrible fix. They all knew what was coming. They were all huis clos.

What happened to Arletty after the Allies arrived is not clear. She survived the war but was resolved to remain extremely private. It’s not clear if she found herself among the many women publicly scorned under the epuration sauvage, or “savage purging” — stripped, heads shaved, swastikas painted on their foreheads, and paraded through the streets in shame. Some say she got off lightly and remained bitterly defiant. At first she tried to justify her relationship, saying “If you hadn’t let them in, I wouldn’t have slept with him” – a lame and desperate excuse which failed miserably. In the end she announced, “My heart is French, but my ass in international.” Soon after the war she drifted into obscurity.

Many of us today grew up inside a culture where exploitation and abuse (of people, of nature in general) was normal, expected, even considered morally correct. It was “God’s will.” Many of us grew up in the Calvinist tradition which became popular in the 17^th century precisely because Calvanists were brilliant economic strategists. The triumph of Puritanism was about turning Christianity into an economic “method.” Frugality, diligence, prudence, moderation, sobriety, honesty, and so on became known as “economic” virtues – which segued into the “sign of divine election.” Riches became the “blessings that God heaps”; whereas poverty was a sign of moral failure. This comported well with the myths of exploiting everything on earth, including human beings. “White Christian Europeans” were doing God’s work.

My generation grew up dependent on fossil fuels (oil & gas), plastics, and horrible chemicals that we now know are killing everything. We were told (are still told) that we need these products lest everything would collapse without them. The rationale is equivalent to an analogy of a baby born on crack cocaine. The baby grows up and realizes that he’s been poisoned. He tries to ween himself from it but is told “if you stop, your system won’t take ‘the withdrawal,’ and you’ll die. Your very life depends on it.” There’s simply too much money in crack cocaine to stop production.

Hence, the majority of the world’s citizens are innocent, naive, and guilty at the same time. We’ve grown up in a mental climate that stubbornly dictated a moral righteousness. But just knowing that now doesn’t exonerate us or give us the freedom to exit the courtroom. No one leaves here because there’s nowhere to go. We’re caught between two ideologies and we need to decide.

We’re court-ordered to “community service” from here on out. We need to get informed and follow new rules. If we don’t, the punishment will be handed down by the very forces that sustain us. There’ no going back and there’s no more room for rebuttals and cross-examinations. Our asses are, as Arletty said, “international.”

It’s a strange sensation to be expecting a verdict. But that’s exactly what we’re doing. The case is being filed as “human citizen v. planet,” or more accurately, “human v. himself.” We’re on trial by ourselves.

In 1944 there were two kinds of purges to deal with collaborators: the first was (as mentioned) the violent and vigilante kind. The second was the epuration legale – a legal process where people were tried before a legitimate court. The consequence of the decisions we make will be as varied as the levels of atonement we achieve. But we’re all in court now, at one level or another. We’re all sitting in a row, on one long, hard wooden bench, waiting our turn to testify under oath.

© 2022 Richard Hiatt

ENDINGS

ENDINGS

There’s something that fascinates us about them. We obsess about them, either wanting them to arrive or to never arrive. We’re seldom casual or indifferent about them. They give form, structure, and meaning to everything. They are the walls we walk through to keep our houses standing.

But endings in the penultimate (teleological) sense is one that involves deep (unconscious) drama. It has to do with why we create forms and structures and meanings in the first place. It is in fact to end them. In other words, rules and barriers are there to be trespassed and torn down. Ultimately we invent endings to end endings.

A wall/ limitation/divide/schism/mark is made, and it gives comfort by gridding reality. Euclid steps in along with language, calendars, charted patterns of all kinds, and we dissect everything. Progress ensues and civilizations grow. We prosper and can’t imagine life without structure. It separates sanity from insanity.

But deep inside the collective unconscious lies a death wish. There’s an instinct to destroy those very walls created to protect us. We call it “expanding our horizons,” but it goes further than that. It has to do with the end of horizons altogether. We reach and reach, but we really don’t know what for or to what end. We reach into the darkness always “in hopes” of finding light. But existentially the reaching is for the end of having to reach. The middle-English word for belief is lief (“to hope for”). We hope that some things are this way and others are not. But there’s a kind of entropic exhaustion that underlies the hoping. We tire of having to defend beliefs altogether.

Hence the very subtle, buried, sublimated urge to create fences in order to bust through them. The teleological principle steps in – toying (playing) with knowing that endings are immanent – all designs, causes and meanings. The final purpose is to have no purpose.

The metaphor to best illustrate this is war (and all subtler forms of war). After all, what is not a kind of warfare, an agon (contest or conflict) between things separated by walls? All that’s required is the knowing that two sides are equal in a certain way. Expectations and rules are all that’s required to justify a competitive movement. We play at war even when its deadly serious (and the reverse: we make war out of playing even when it’s seriously frivolous). War has rules and can only be waged when two sides agree on them. But finally, in real war, the rules are tossed and killing is done at any cost. Insanity ensues and an invitation to self-annihilation. In other words, war is just a prelude to a greater end. And that end is not “peace,” because peace is just another wall in between wars.

Something else happens. War is glorified as a divine injunction to end conflict – we often say to the “greater glory of God.” In the most extreme cases, the contest is interpreted as a moral obligation because it’s God’s calling. War suddenly takes on holy significance, and war is conceived as a form of divination. It implies that war is used, not to restore civilization, but to end human suffering; hence, original sin, hence “the falling from grace.” It all points to finality and earthly atonement. But then something else happens: Instead of ending the human struggle, the strongest human instinct of all kicks in to stop it – self-preservation (and with that, guilt).

In medieval times kings and monarchs seemed to have a handle on the whole meaning of war. Unlike the stereotypes we have of kings (assumed to have resolved conflict only through bloodshed), they in fact held mock battles (jousts) to settle the most serious disputes. “Better for one to fall than an entire army.” Needless to say, it was the Christians who stopped it, saying that battle needed to include bloodshed if it was to mean anything at all (to show sacrifice to God). – Today we split the difference between real war and jousting with playing fields, chessboards, courts, and Olympian fields. But it’s still all-out war.

The play element on the court or in the stadium is simply taken to another level in real war. The stakes (points) are measured in honor, revenge, spoils, appeasing the gods, guilt, pride, fear, arrogance, and so forth. The “agony of defeat” in sport is realized in real war by everyone. Everyone loses, is a victim, and learns the lesson to end all wars thereafter. There’s nothing but futility even for the presumed winners. We sacrifice entire generations of men and women and we take human sanity to a final precipice. But for what reason?” To end the contract we have with ourselves around our own bondage. We dare ourselves to face death. But then, again, we pull back and endeavor to preserve ourselves. We never “break through” after “breaking down” and call it “peace restored.”

We play with this every day at many levels. Hence also the importance of keeping nuclear arsenals. The Cold War and the seduction of nuclear Armageddon is all about the fascination with death. We’ve become experts at daring each other with the prospect of final endings. But we dare not cross that line. – What is different today however is a sense of exhaustion about it all.

Here I add a “footnote” to myself: “Exhaustion” is conjectural. I sense it being “out there” but I also sense it in myself. And I’m unsure which end is consuming the other end. Hence, “projection” is a factor here. Being in my seventies has the advantages of hindsight (and some knowledge) but also the effects of being worn down by the same “games” played everyday while nothing changes. Hence to ask myself “Are these thoughts simply self-analysis?” is a question I can’t answer. There’s no escaping the obliquity of light through one’s own lens.

The play element is ubiquitous, nevertheless. And play is all about seduction and unconscious desire. There is play in law, play in religion, play in language, play in civilizing functions, play in philosophy and knowing, play in the arts, and in what Johan Huizinga called “western civilization sub specie ludi.” Nothing is not play. Hence, nothing is not without the teleological component. Play is the most serious form of human interaction there is. Play’s ultimate purpose is to finally end the game.

We speak of human tragedy, and Shakespeare did more than anyone. Is this what it’s really about? The “mystery” of why we suffer? If this is true, perhaps it isn’t just “me” (in my seventies) after all, but the fact that we live in an “age of tragedy” now more than ever? We are a “free” people, but it just means we’re free to choose the kinds of bondage we want. There is also the symbiosis between tragedy and comedy – suffering and play, war and war-games – which again Shakespeare made clear. One doesn’t exist without the other. “The tragic man impels him to fight against his destiny.” And it’s just a matter of time and distance that his own tragedy becomes a comedy “of errors.” Someone once said that comedy is just “tragedy plus time.”

Speaking of tragedy (Christianity and western philosophy in general), philosophers have themselves said “The hero does the deed and finds repose in the universal, the knight of faith is kept in constant tension.” In other words, the universal is about “non-being” and the ultimate detachment/deliverance from tragedy (suffering and death). Reversely, the “knight of faith” places a heavy burden on suffering and death and a terrifying responsibility on “the soul” (what Christopher Marlowe called a “tragic battleground”). The soul only exists when it engenders feelings, memories, burdens, guilt, remorse, shame, and, as always, the pressure of faith. But the real hero regards all these “myths” (of “consequence,” “karma,” “soul”) as human-made and sees only an enormous abyss (of entrapment).

In The Vision of Tragedy, author Richard Sewall wrote “’The one fixed star’ of tragedy … is the hero’s urge to ‘realize himself’ fully in the face of all that would rob him of… what he feels to be his true nature; and the gauge of his heroism is the magnitude of the risk he is willing to take.” – What is that ultimate risk? What is his “true nature? And what “robs” him of it?

“Is man no more than this?” asks Lear. We bridle at the suggestion of being so small. So we loom large as a species of “action.” Then we take everything very seriously. We map out everything and kill and die over beliefs (lief – hope) – until we reach a juncture when we see only futility, the ship of fools, the comedy of errors. In other words, we reach “our seventies” (or eighties and nineties), and we begin seeing that it all signified absolutely nothing. This is the ending, the real eschatology, we strive for without religion and without knowing. It is beyond hope and beyond our reality. It is beyond even that which transcends. It can’t be fully understood, but we know it’s there.

There’s the final scene in the 1983 film WarGames. The master computer at NORAD, called WOPR, thinks it’s just playing a game called “Global Thermonuclear War.” But it is about to launch real nuclear missiles and no on can stop it – until our hero/protagonist (a wiz-kid programmer) tells it to play “tic-tac-toe” – a game that has no winners and only ends in futility. He hopes it will “learn.” Just seconds before launching everything stops and all is quiet. He asks what it’s doing. It replies: “A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.”

© 2022 Richard Hiatt

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THE HUMAN SPIRIT

THE HUMAN SPIRIT

What exactly is it? More importantly, why is it? It must have a function particular to the needs of this world, because beyond this world there is no such thing. We want to think so, but perhaps this is what the fear of death is really about.

For instance, spirit lives in a dimension of eternity (everlasting time) as opposed to timelessness. Eternity implies space which implies time which implies the presence of spirit. There is also nothing in eternal space-time that condemns the spirit to an ending. Space and time therefore imply other phenomena as well – direction, order, symmetry, perfection, beauty, truth, and so on – and ultimately the presence of a godhead. Eternity is an extension of a reality born of this world, of temporality, through filters of the senses and intellect. All notions of spirit (including “perfection,” “virtue,” etc.) only make sense (i.e., to the senses) in space-time.

The “temporal” goal is to essentially give form to formlessness, symmetry and order to the absence of symmetry and order. Meaning can only be derived through the spacializing of time. In the end however it becomes a futility – using time/space to attain eternity (which is not timeless), which then keeps us from attaining what we’re destined for in the first place. We “play” with death but never really go near it. “God” is always in the way. Only God can be a “timeless witness to time,” transcendent of time & space. We are never allowed (nor do we want) that kind of transcendence. We seek instead for kingdoms of heaven and/or other dimensions of consciousness where “rules” apply.

I always come back to the belief that the reason we’re here in the first place is to be done with it. And what does that mean? It means to be done with the filters we construct that create the world we live in. What do you suppose happens when the senses and mind suddenly disappear? All the previous notions of “beyond” perish as well, since both are rooted in the premise of time & space. All theories simply go defunct, and what Kant called “the noumenal” (that which cannot be experienced but is known to exist anyway) suddenly “is.”

Frankly, I think this is the death experience. There may be a few initial moments of astonishment and disbelief, but then “we” disappear like drops of oil in a bucket of water. So then, the obvious question: What about ghosts, apparitions, etc.? We’re talking about universal phenomena, hence spacelessness and timelessness which include all possibilities and limitless dimensions, some of which include “spirits” that cling to rules. Perhaps some refuse complete transcendence in its purest form; or perhaps they disappear and come back again, like bodhisattvas (teachers who refrain from nirvana) helping others to “be done” with this world.

Those who regard a heaven (in time) are focused on futures. Life sits on a linear rail of forwards and backwards. They’re always leaving one place and going to another. A state of “here & now” is rubbish to them. In fact at most they even think of the here & now as something “eternal” – which again implies time. There is nothing eternal about it. Those who “die” into the present die completely. Those who return to time (as the enlightened do) come back to essentially eliminate the obstacles (Buddhist avidya – “ignorance”) that get in the way of that.

Even the idea of death (a temporal concept) is “no more.” Huxley said, “Death is wholly transcended only when time is transcended; immortality is for the consciousness that has broken through the temporal into the timeless.” But (another red flag): Beware the term “immortality.” Language itself is a trap forever pulling us back into the domain which created it and which depends on it. From this I can understand the Hebrew choosing of “g-d” and “YHVH” – and the Buddhist insistence that there is no term that can sufficiently contain everything. There’s just the default term – tao.

This is where I get confused, and I recede back into the woodwork. When I hear about all the noble efforts to save the planet, with or without the help of bodhisattvas and aliens, the wisdom of Atlantis, the Hopis, etc., I think about “the human spirit” and what it really is. Then I’m forced to sit on a fence regarding what it is we’re here to actually do. I see two completely different, even antagonistic, forces at play. The former calls the latter nihilistic, and from a temporal point of view (designed to preserve a temporal understanding) it is. But in fact it is not nihilistic at all.

As an analogy, I also think about the “human spirit” doing a lifetime’s work “preparing” oneself for the hereafter – either for eternity (or even nirvana). Then he’s ends up on his deathbed and all those beliefs and convictions are laid bare “here & now.” There is no more future (except in his belief system). And then he leaves “the coil” and with it everything sensory and mental. The filters of what made his world are gone. He faces (not eternity) but timelessness. It’s death beyond death. But it’s also tao. When we say “he is no more,” we barely know what that means.

The only rationale I can muster to intelligently understand this “push-pull” is the old saying “honor your incarnation as long as you’re here, knowing at the same time that it doesn’t make any difference.” It’s the oxymoronic “directionless guidance, “ “purposeless design,” or “perfect imperfection.” As long as we’re here, play the game. The old Latin term ludi comes to mind along with the “cosmic giggle” of the Buddhist hotai (laughing Buddha). Herman Hesse’s Magister Ludi was the master of “nothing,” and that was the game.

Homo ludens means “man the player.” As opposed to homo faber, “man the maker.” which is more fitting than sapien. Author Johan Huizinga said, “In play there is something ‘at play’ which transcends the immediate needs of life… All play means something.” Regarding our notions of play, “they all start from the assumption that play must serve something which is not play.” But in fact, nothing is not play. So, insofar as it serves itself, nothing is served.

Huizinga then makes another point germane to the entrapment of spirit through words: Language in fact “plays” with spirit and matter. “Language allows him to distinguish, to establish, to state things; in short, to name them and by naming them to raise them into the domain of the spirit. In the making of speech and language the spirit is continually ‘sparking’ between matter and mind, as it were, playing with this wondrous nominative faculty…. [M]an creates a second, poetic world….” – In my view, then, man is “three times” removed from tao (from nothingness. the Void, the Cosmos): first, from nature to physical body, then from body to mind, finally from mind to spirit. In the end, spirit becomes nature again which is “everything and nothing.”

It all makes my head spin – as it’s meant to do. There is no clarity about this (because one cannot understand itself through its own lens). We enter domains that preclude the possibility of explanation. All I sense is that when this life is over, it never made any difference in the first place. Whenever someone approaches me and asks “Aren’t you worried about the afterlife?” I give them the same response David Hume gave to a priest as he was dying: that he was just as worried about what came after his life as he was before he came into it. Meanwhile, whoever said “Row your boat, life is but a dream” knew exactly what he was talking about.

© 2022 Richard Hiatt