WAR and PEACE

I can’t speak for others, but in my world I’m increasingly inundated with themes about patriotism, war, sacrifice, PTSD, veteran’s needs, terrorism, war stories, and memorials. Hollywood floods us with films about wars past and present, fictional and real. At the very same time, civilians are reminded every single day about terrorism at home, armed thieves and radicals, and warfare in our streets. We’re told to “arm up” and learn defensive strategies and tactics against unknown assailants.

What strikes me about all this is that all the so-called “sacrifice” meant to create and preserve peace is doing the exact opposite. In other words, it’s moving the civilian world in the wrong direction. Instead of wars being fought to “end wars,” we’re learning how to fight wars, thus perpetuating war. We’re learning the principles of soldiering, how to think like them, even molding our lifestyles as soldiers. We’re incorporating the theater/culture of war into civilian life which means we live in a state of “war readiness.” The only difference between a uniformed soldier and a civilian are the uniforms themselves (though boots and khaki are now casual attire) and the proximity to actual war. But the “battlefield” is now a metaphor for many things, as is “war” (on drugs, homelessness, cancer, crime, debt, and godlessness). We even use the same kinds of assault weapons designed for the express purpose of killing human beings.

What this says is that civilian life now includes the symptoms of war – PTSD, depression, and suicidal ideation which just a generation ago was restricted to military personnel. To go through all the medical symptoms of PTSD is to list the things civilian doctors report daily about patients: re-experiencing trauma, repetitive memories or “flashbacks” which are hard to control and which intrude into daily life, nightmares, extreme bouts of stress from reminders of trauma, disturbing thoughts, feelings, and memories caused by smells, sounds, words, and other triggers. Then there are those specific to women: hyper-arousal, emotional numbness, re-experiencing trauma, mood and anxiety disorders, shame and guilt.

I have to say that this whole trend started 40 + years ago with the Reagan administration. The new era of neoliberalism included an interesting psychological “predisposition” to literally everything. I wrote about this previously, but it bears repeating: A child is born into the world basically as a blank slate, unpredisposed, unbiased. Hence, the environment he’s exposed to predetermines his view of the world-at-large. In other words, it’s either a world he can trust, or not. If born into a family that’s supportive, encouraging, sharing and loving, he will meet the world with confidence, open-mindedness, curiosity, with a will to learn and explore. If born into one riddled with fear, the world will appear dangerous and entrapping. Boundaries of suspicion and wariness dictate most of his decision-making through life. It’s pretty straight forward. Simply witnessing who lives by the principle of liberalis (“the free man”) – versus – those who define peace as “mutual deterrence and wariness” is one way of constellating the kinds of people we meet in life.

Enter the 1980s. It was when William Bennett repeated that the 1960s “must never happen again,” televangelism skyrocketed (Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Baker, Pat Robertson, and Reagan all read the Scofield Reference Bible together in the Rose Garden on Sunday mornings), “PC” took on constrictive powers with new waves of censorship (courtesy of Phyllis Schlafly, et alia), and Hollywood was tasked to mend the military’s damaged reputation after Vietnam. And after the Berlin Wall came down, they used it as an opportunity to reinvent a new national “enemy,” one which (this time) could never be defeated (for its chameleon qualities, for its ability to appear anywhere at any time, even at home, especially in the minds of those who think “wrongly” about America). This was terrorism. It was conveniently abstract enough to allow itself a new face whenever Uncle Sam needed one. Most importantly, it ensured the perpetuity of an already egregiously swollen military budget.

“Terrorism” keeps us on guard 24/7 by the seductive powers of fear. It takes on the dimensionality of a medieval Satan. It/He can appear anywhere, anytime, in any form, even in the mind of your next-door neighbor. And I have to confess, it was a stroke of genius to fabricate a uniquely different face for evil to hide behind, one which can never be killed and will never go away.

This set the larger stage on what has been turning us into a barracks & barricade aware nation. We don’t follow reality anymore. We follow dictations from what might look like a Joint Chiefs cabinet, lower echelons of government, and corporations constantly suiting us up for an ever-impending terrorist onslaught (a la 9/11) or an apocalypse. Preparedness (survival gear, duct tape, survival foods, wilderness skills, how to bivouac in the wild, how to field-dress fresh kill, khaki & boots, military grade knives, binoculars, flashlights, and, as always, guns) arrives daily via the internet and TV ads. Meanwhile, Hollywood mythmakers flood us with video wars, computer-enhanced with perfect sprinkles of animation and “AI.” Theaters of war on screen are now real theater – killing bad guys while singing country songs about American munificence.

Political leaders arrive on scene like Roman proconsuls, masters of the earth, ready to lead voluntary platoons through America’s war-torn neighborhoods. They hold the mandate to heaven and receive the blessings of volunteer soldiers armed with AK-47s. The leader’s other mandate is to constantly redraw “axes of evil,” whether it’s between Christianity and “malevolent races” or between good citizens and degenerate druggies and thieves in the neighborhood. The moral righteousness of it reminds me of Urban II in the Year of Our Lord 1095, who, with a mighty swift sword “laid waste by fire” Turks, Persians, Arabs, and all who were estranged from God, declaring Deos Lo Volt, “God wills it.!” – God still wills it, because it’s still a holy crusade. Granted, it’s done with modern weapons, but they’re still pledged to the bones of saints.

In those early days the icons of worship were also the “tools of war.” The Crusades were led by the “Doctrine of the Two Swords” where the Church and King both displayed weapons like religious statuary. Missiles, high-tech tanks, and small arms are symbols of divinity today (absolute, final, unseen, omnipotent). A military spokesman advises the press about our latest symbol of religious pride — the aircraft carrier, the F-35 Fighter Jet – and it looks like a Jesuit priest telling Christians about Christ’s presence in Galilee. The sounds of heaven and hell are anxiously mixed. Both Christ and adviser together warn about the needle’s eye between salvation and “multilateral chaos” in the “final hour” of victory.

I have to say, this is the shit shared not just on navel carriers and military posts but across the cities and prairies of America. Amber fields of wheat and purple mountain majesties are God’s holy citadel for his “chosen” warriors out to save civilization and General Motors.

Network television fills in the remaining gaps. It’s the old marriage between Hollywood and Washington, both skilled in dramaturgy. Policy advisers are synonymous with movie critics concerned more with daily signals, symbolism, deniability, ratings, photo-ops, fashion statements, and imagery than national security. The sound of “the perfectly delivered line” matters more than when a hospital is bombed in Gaza by American fighter jets.

War is presented in the same manner as Monday Night Football (aired with commercial breaks for Taylor Swift and Domino’s Pizza). Video “highlights” are aired at 6 o’clock with instant replays. The “blitz, bomb, and frontal assault into the enemy’s front line” is a video war game. The only difference is in the color of the helmets and the oriflamme on pennants and flags. – In theater everything is perception and symbolism. What matters is how the day’s events are aired on prime-time evening news – fire and brimstone from cockpits (pulpits) and bombers (flying citadels) and warnings to infidel races.

No one needs to even bother with the details about foreign lands and other races, or with lists of names no one can pronounce. Our own importance mandates that every foreign country be reduced to a national stereotype (good/evil, Christian/pagan). It paves the way for American currency, American banks, American military bases, American corporations/sweatshops, and America’s national religion – what we call “democratizing” the world.

This essentially launched America in a direction which has not only not wavered but has only increased in momentum in the last forty years. And today we reap what we’ve sewed. It’s a culture resting on a powder keg of lies and neighborhood pathologies. Civilians can’t own enough guns, surveillance systems, or anti-depressants, and they dread simply going out to their cars at night and into grocery store parking lots.

What baffles me more than anything are the naysayers to all this, who are so blind that they equate vigilance, mutual deterrence, wariness, and preparedness with “peace.” This is as close to their understanding of peace as they get. It’s the kind known chiefly among cops, military veterans, neoliberals, and even some evangelists. They know nothing else. In fact, to mention a “deeper” notion of peace (minus fear and wariness, one with unconditional trust, love, patience, and tolerance) is to them the equivalent of gullibility, naivety, and stupidity. – We come back again to the child growing up either in an atmosphere of trust or one of fear.

I’ve experienced a small confirmation of this just recently. I submitted a letter on this very subject to a local chat group of about 10,000 members. The reaction was painfully predictable. Most respondents almost literally didn’t know what I was talking about. They saw no difference between spiritual (“Christ-like”) peace and peace as defined by military readiness and mutual deterrence. To even speak in a language which echoed “spiritual” overtones was more than just odd to them. It was offensive. They could not connect the dots in a context unfitted to their train of thought and resented the very attempt to do so. It caused such venom that the letter was taken down and “removed.” My intention wasn’t to stir up angst but to simply make an observation, something to think about in the context of “guns.” It failed miserably.

Perhaps I’m somewhat biased for having resided in a city for ten years which is home to five military bases, the ultra-conservative Focus on the Family, and the Christian Coalition – with its Bible Park, America the Beautiful Park, the Citadel Mall, and Ronald Reagan Boulevard. But as I read and watch what goes down each day in Everywhere, USA, I really don’t think it’s just about Colorado Springs. I see this as a national dilemma. Proof is at hand when merely bringing up the subject of guns, again – America’s new national symbol. Where there used to be arrows and olive branches, I see the remaking of Christian-inspired war posters with crucifixes strewn with barbed wire, crossed rifles and bayonets draped in the American flag.

So again, the current notion of “peace” on Maple Street, USA, is one which is garrisoned, protected by cameras, “neighborhood watches,” and daily helpings of news reports about home-protection and terrorism. The proof of systemic indoctrination is seen in how Americans weave that lifestyle in with religion without batting an eye. It’s “Onward Christian Soldiers” with battlements, caissons, military muscle, and “wariness” as proof of God’s presence.

“Victory” over vanquished “others,” by the way, starts all the way down with sports at the elementary level, planting its seeds into young minds. Teams are told to pray before events, crediting “God” for victories (“winning is not everything, it’s the only thing”), and calling it “God’s will” for losses. When cheating and bad sportsmanship are witnessed, it must be Satan on the field.

From a strictly psychological point of view of all this, it’s a pandemic that nobody sees. Of course, it’s subversive, “liberal,” and un-American to even suggest it. But I come back to the larger picture of what we’ve become. The old saying that peace is just the preparation for war has never been truer, considering how “peace” is practiced. Given that, there’s one mantra we hear more and more today (occasionally seen on bumpers) which I support more than ever: “I’m already against the next war.” I’m also against peace, as practiced. – But then, I also hail from a fairly supportive family.

© 2024 Richard Hiatt

THE MEMORY MUSEUM

… the public repository, also a euphemism for the propaganda which works for a specific ideology or collective undertaking. Think of America, and an instant flood of vignetted images surface. Think of patriotism, crime, family, God, evil, happiness, or pleasure, and it’s like opening separate drawers containing files of archived responses. This morning someone knocked at my door. First drawer marked “F” for fear. Second drawer marked “C” for curiosity. Third drawer marked “P through S” for perspective, responsibility, and sobriety. – What did they all have in common? Not one response was that of my own making.

Images and responses are what society chooses. They are what it decides is important. And in that sense, there’s no such thing as a collective memory. It is, as Susan Sontag once said, a “collective instruction.” It is not memory at stake but (rehearsed, dictated) selection. The flip side is that if you don’t respond in the way you’re supposed to, you’re flawed and/or intentionally subversive.

This is why someone who follows her/his gut or intuition is often not a candidate for “good citizenship.” It depends on how deeply the indoctrination is and if the gut and the drawer are simpatico. If so, then the drawer is either exceptional or the gut is blind. The files are either intelligent or the gut leads to senseless conformity. You question nothing, and if you do, the questions themselves are scripted enough so as not to endanger the file. – I think of this every time I watch a national news program. The conversation is scripted beforehand and decided on what subjects will be discussed and what questions will not be asked. If the interviewer oversteps the contract (even worse embarrasses his guest, especially a Senator or governor), the program risks a defamation lawsuit and lost ratings for the future. This is why “subversives” (those who ask the “wrong” questions, submit the “wrong” answers) are never invited.

The memory museum therefore is how to think about everything. It is a public library where we’re encouraged to visit regularly for refresher courses on how to be good citizens. And if we can’t go to the museum-library, it comes to us in a myriad of ways, especially by way of the internet. The internet is another drawer.

Another drawer is the mass media. It’s a huge collection of files that says “Give us 22 minutes, and we’ll give you the world.” That says it all! There’s no hesitation or ambiguity about it. In his book, The Problem of the Media (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2004), Robert McChesney wrote that the very first problem is how to define a “problem.” “The policies, structures, subsidies and institutions that are created to control, direct, and regulate the media will be responsible for the logic and nature of the media system.” This is the problem “for any society.” The first problem is with “content.” The second problem “deals with the structure that generates that content.” In other words, society which decides the media it listens to, which in turn informs it – a continuous feedback loop. Overall, the media system (corporate-owned), supports its own empire and “minimizes effective opposition.” Hence, the “corporatocracy.” It’s pretty straight forward.

But something else happens too. In time, as these drawers keep opening and closing, they’re no longer the selected drawers. They’re the only drawers. Every objective choice, every “thought about another thought” is erased (in other words, consciousness itself). It’s no longer even the erasure of free will, not even “operant conditioning,” but the erasing of even the notion of free will. It’s a thorough brainwashing. The “subversive” element has finally been wiped clean from the collective imagination. Society is now sanitized. This was Nazi Germany’s stranglehold in the mid- to late 1930s. Half the population was already completely sold on Nazi ideology, while the other half held back just enough to (silently) question what they were doing. But half of those obeyed orders anyway, while those who didn’t suffered terribly.

This is also the Huxleyan (versus the Orwellian) theory of social control: tyranny from the “bottom up” – versus – tyranny from the “top down.” Huxley’s way has more staying power because citizens don’t know that they’re own thought patterns are being manipulated, exploited, and erased. When one is born into it, how can he possibly know? My previous analogy of the “crack baby born to an addict” illustrated this point. Orwell’s 1984 is the reverse of this, where power if coerced from the top-down, where citizens are fully aware of their oppression.

This is where America hovers today, somewhere between Huxley and Orwell – in a gray middle-distance between total allegiance to “the drawer” and those who open the drawer but remember another room with another set of drawers. One manifestation of this is (by now) an already very sore subject – guns. I bring this up because the subject will simply not resolve itself. This is because we’ve always had guns. Guns are an American staple. We put them up there with hot dogs, apple pie, and the flag. At the same time “part of who we are” is killing Americans. We hover over them like a parent who doesn’t understand her own child. The two are complete strangers to one another. So, the memory museum opens a drawer with a script telling us how to respond. It’s not about understanding the problem but image-building by way of a forced narrative.

Regarding the file “G” (for guns), there’s the narrative we learn: Guns symbolize strength, stability, patriotism, the 2^nd Amendment, the flag, heroism, martyrdom in battle, and songs about American pride. The indoctrination come in when the mind automatically makes it a synonym for ten different things at once, homogenized into a single national image with its own drawer. To speak of one is to speak about all the others at the same time. We’re exalted the gun to an unimpeachable height, and to criticize it is tantamount to spitting on the flag and cursing Jesus Christ.

Ordinarily, narratives help us understand. But they’re also intended to keep us in the dark. This is why they haunt us. No matter what we do as a nation today – go to war, build a wall, help the inner-city, address street crime, go to church, attend a football game – it doesn’t matter. We open the drawers we’re supposed to and read the intended files. But “some of us” retain just enough cryptic memory to recall another golden rule: not simply to read more, but question what we read.

Nazi Germany decided to exterminate the mentally ill because they embarrassed the “master race.” The gun-community blames mental illness as the cause of gun-related violence. Which must cause considerable anguish because it means scapegoating that which keeps vindicating it. Without them they’d be left to face the heat. The gun community also says it’s “not the gun but the user.” But that’s like saying that road rage is caused by mental illness. Obviously, it is not. It’s mostly the cause of normal people simply having “bad day.” The problem with so many guns (400 million and counting) is access into the hands of people having a “bad day.”

The malaise we feel today is double layered. This is because there’s hypocrisy even about our indictments on hypocrisy. The messenger himself is being fooled. In other words, our memories must also be under suspicion. The problem of memory goes much deeper than political-cultural indoctrination. This may seem a little over the top, but in fact it’s where the “gut” (intuition) actually collides with the drawers, the files, and sometimes even the room itself. It’s a domain which is immune from the infestations of (super-)ego, guilt, shame, social “belongingness needs” and expectations. It simply knows what it knows and has a nasty habit of showing up uninvited (on talk-shows). It tells us what we don’t want to know about drawers and takes on a drawer of its own. It then comes down to the extent and depth to which we decide to “listen.” – What comes up for me is Borges Library of Babel. Somewhere in that cemetery of galleries sits a drawer marked “Empty.”

There’s an ancient meditation exercise whereby one imagines the room he’s in existing inside himself. He then becomes larger than the room. He looks down upon the room with himself inside (this works well with claustrophobia). It’s a useful (and timely) exercise as we might imagine an entire library-museum with ourselves wandering down its hallways. We say “there we are.” From there we can erase the entire room and rest in free flotation, without words, without files and drawers. Or we can keep opening drawers and files. A meditation is what you do with it. – Something to play with, something to ponder.

© 2024 Richard Hiatt

“NEEDS MUST when the DEVIL DRIVES”

It’s a beautiful religious proverb originating in 1420, meaning “the devil is in control.” More loosely, it means that when we are desperate, we do things we ordinarily would not do. Someone should have informed the Vatican of this when it planned the Crusades, when the Goths, Vandals, and Huns invaded Rome, and when the (German born) Pope Pius XII stayed silent about the Nazi death camps. But no matter. Wisdom is always easier to preach than practice.

It’s interesting that such literary eloquence comes out of an era that was so barbaric and brutal. On the other hand, an argument could be made that the times we experience today have taken barbarism to a new (low) precedent. Thus, the above proverb has more gravitas than in the year 1420. We no longer torture (oh wait, we do); we no longer commit mass-genocide and pogroms (oh wait, we do); we no longer behead people, hang people, or display public executions (oh wait, yep). The only difference is in the technology available to commit the same atrocities. – And if that’s so, then do people and societies really, truly “evolve?” Are we more intelligent? Or is “evolving” just more sophisticated brutality, intelligence just more knowledge, and knowledge just more information? – Knowledge is not wisdom or intelligence (which measure what we do with information). In all, I see “barbarians at the gate” simply equipped with machines and gadgets that make their deeds easier and more accessible. It’s putting a loaded gun the hands of a Neanderthal, or a drunken sociopath inside an armored vehicle.

In fact, if we were to measure social evolution simply by our literacy and/or our ability to come up with eloquent expressions (like “Needs must when…”), it would appear that we’ve actually slipped behind the 1420 marker. Today, people can hardly speak in complete sentences or read simple paragraphs. And in my view, it contributes to what “the devil drives.”

Back in 2023, I wrote that the number of words the average high school graduate knew in 1941 was around 10,000. Today it’s 5,000. If literacy has taken a hit, then so has comprehension; and if comprehension has taken a hit, so has communication. Americans in particular now settle for colloquial word-signs, cyber-shorthand, regional slang, and acronyms to convey everything. It used to be that the average adult could back into a sentence with a participial phrase. Now sharing information, whether officially or informally, is done typically in “Dick & Jane” sentences surrounded with redundancies and expletives – e.g., “dude,” “man,” “holmes,” and that all-time filler-favorite – “fuck.”

People navigate today primarily through pictograms and rebuses (short words interspersed with pictures) or simplified diagrams with as few words as possible. Just push a button with the desired logo, and out shoots your reality. We wouldn’t know where an airport was, a public restroom, public park, restaurant, library, or rest stop without pictures plastered in plain view and arrows pointing the way. Billboards, directional signs, and markers look like third-grade geography books. Restaurants are “forks & knives,” hospitals are “H” signs, the library is the picture of a book, public restrooms are male & female figures on doors, avalanche danger is a sign showing falling rock, “children playing” is a sign with two kids kicking a soccer ball, and “wildlife crossing” is a picture of a deer jumping a fence.

No one can program a computer or flat-screen TV without manuals with “Dick and Jane” pictures and a simple (1,2,3) instructional guide. The computer’s job (along with AI) is to simplify so we can exert as little manual and “mental” labor as possible. It’s all about convenience and instant access with the most minimum effort. We call it “progress.” – Meanwhile, no one worries about cognitive skills, the ability to learn, and most of all the loss of identity. We have basically surrendered “who we are” to a machine which is letting us know on a daily basis.

Ultimately, it comes down to “God” again. Since the Second Coming” never arrived, and still doesn’t appear imminent, and since religionists (unlike pagans and atheists) still wait to be “saved” by some supreme deity, they’ve decided to invent a savior-messiah of their own. They gladly bow to the Supreme Being of the deus ex machina, giving alms by way of better programming and the capacity to think/choose/decide for us.

And so, again we come back to the subject of “the devil” – the deepest of all waters. We do things we don’t ordinarily do when we’re desperate. But what are we desperate for (or against), and what are those things we “ordinarily would not do,” and why? Have our forms of desperation changed since the 15^th century? Or is it just the same devil behind a different mask?

Satan himself has something to say about this. Especially in terms of what we should be desperate about. Also regarding “intelligence” as compared to the intelligence of an Aborigine or a Stone Age tribesman which is totally different from our own. “Literacy” to the forest dweller was once measured by things like the ability to smell urine on a leaf from 80 feet away. Intelligence was measured by knowing the forest (with senses which were first olfactory, then auditory, and lastly visual). The pagan measures his own literacy and intelligence according to his own connectivity with nature. – But Western religion threw in a monkey wrench – the element of “good and evil” which redirected the whole meaning of right and wrong, harmony and desperation. In other words, it introduced morality.

The three Abrahamic religions gave Satan incredible power, and in doing so redefined the meaning of literacy and intelligence. Together they reset the trajectory of making us do what “we would not ordinarily do.” In her book The Origin of Satan, Elaine Pagels wrote that for thousands of years Satan “evoked more than the greed, envy, lust, and anger we identify with our own worst impulses, and more than what we call brutality, which imputes to human beings a resemblance to animals (‘brutes’).” Thousands of years of tradition have characterized Satan as “just a spirit among other spirits.”

But today he “mirrors aspects of our own confrontations with otherness.” “Becoming either a Jew or a Christian polarized a pagan’s view of the universe and moralized it [my italics].” They introduced God’s “divine judgment on human sin.” They redefined not only “God’s will” but the “malevolence of Satan.” The regula fidei (“rule of faith”) henceforth became an enforced belief (not faith) in a God filled with commandments to banish Satan. The world filled up with heretics, pagans, infidels, apostates, and “evil.”

It explains so much when we’re taught to kill, desecrate, exterminate, “neutralize,” “depopulate,” or exploit nature to meet our needs. Something shuts down inside our consciousness when we go against nature, and the extent of how far (and convincingly) we shut down has become the measure of implementing “God’s plan.” It proves our righteousness, toughness, and even psychological “manhood.” We’ve preached these mantras over and over (for centuries) in the interest of “self-interest” and today continue to lend each other (immoral) support by means of endless rationalizations and faux justifications. Only to find ourselves alone with a guilty intuition which never leaves us. The world then divides between those who listen to that intuition, and those who don’t. Today, the world is run in this way more than ever. It’s a world divided by how Satan is understood, between religions, and between religion and no religion. Satan is either just another aspect of who we are – or – he’s morally condemned, feared, and “evil.”

As we watch ourselves applying “needs that must,” the world also divides up in a much subtler way. And here is where guilt and shame land on us like a ton of bricks. Guilt (fault/blame/regret for what we do) and shame (fault/blame/regret for what we are) come at us in different ways. First, the pagan feels guilt when he’s not listening to nature, but never shame because he knows his place in nature. When he listens, there is neither guilt or shame. – The religionist on the other hand fights both off, and their haunting presence is Satan. He sublimates and denies any guilt or shame for what he does to nature and is actually taught to feel both when he listens too much to nature. His “work” for God is, after all, to rise above nature.

In the light of global warming and thousands of years of environmental ruin brought on by a largely Christian-(and Muslim-) run planet, the Church has tried to modify its stand on this. The sermons now attempt to incorporate “God’s work” with nature. At the same time however, the message on how to understand it, what to do with it, is still firmly wrapped in a morality model. It’s still “God’s plan” to make the world Christian and to prepare for an eschatological end. Being on earth is just about preparing oneself for an afterlife which ultimately (again) makes nature unimportant anyway (since they’re leaving it). The guilt and shame felt after a lifetime of this is then erased by atoning with God. – The pagan response to this is, Satan is what you make of it, and so is “god.” Heaven/Hell is here & now, depending on the peace you make with both.

“The devil in control” is also what we make it. And to me, what follows in the coming years will translate directly into exactly how we choose to understand and apply that 15^th century proverb. Pagels’ reference to “otherness” will be the litmus test of that understanding. – Alas, from what I see on the immediate horizon, the offing doesn’t look good. The Hindu kali yuga is going full throttle as the epoch of destruction. We are head over heels in full military mode, citizens armed with guns in their homes, guns in their cars, guns on their persons, and guns shipped abroad – all pledged to do what a higher intuition “would not ordinarily do.”

My only regret is that more people don’t think ahead when having children in this gung-ho suicidal global stink. I personally have no guilt about that because I have no children. But I cringe when thinking about what children are going to inherit, what we failed to correct as adults and are conveniently bequeathing to them. They have every right to be enraged.

May the gods protect and guide those with wisdom, intuition, and maturity, those like Greta Thunberg. She and others will have to face what the “devil drives” while dodging countless acts of desperation.

© 2024 Richard Hiatt

PLAYING the GAME

I think that what separates people more than anything, in politics, religion, or society, are the lengths we are willing to go to play fictional parts while believing they’re real. Telling the truth is applauded until it becomes too much truth. Then society pounces and condemns. Daniel Ellsberg, Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, and Julian Assange are exemplars of that (victims). But so are politicians, clergy, teachers, employers, and car salesmen (victimizers).

We all agree to play parts as if they’re theater roles. William Hazlett said, “Man is a make-believe animal – he is never so truly himself as when he is acting a part.” Each role is granted its latitude and breathing room, just enough to allow us to think we’re genuine. The irony comes when we get so good at it that it begins to offend. Then others call us out. It’s a sign we’ve crossed an interdicting line, some taboo that exposes the act itself. It’s a warning to back down again and use more discretion.

Consider those who, for one reason or another, are famous and admired for their roles. Take for example Bernard Arnault, the richest billionaire in the world (net worth $233 billion). What makes him famous, after all, besides his money-making skills? And reversely, what commonly brings someone like Arnault down? He simply plays his part well, and everyone genuflects to him for it. As a socialite he knows all the jingles and slogans, party faces and nonsense rhymes. He “works the room” and hangs with all his fellow heirs to huge fortunes. They know financial markets and all the right people. Some have even served in the military. They wear their bow ties and tell bad jokes back and forth, sip martinis and smoke cigars. They schmooze with celebrities and together they live lives they know are counterfeit. But no one says it.

They gain self-confidence and take on the rich man’s swagger. They appear invincible as long as the crest they’re riding keeps moving along. Until, that is, he gets so good at it that it separates him from the other players. Then two things happen: envy and conspicuousness (exposing too much “game”) which then endangers the others. Reversely, when something goes wrong or crashes, a scapegoat is required. And here is where it reaches the preeminence of a supermarket tabloid. The same people distinguished for the same self-deception accuse him of letting his own get out of hand. But also of a deeper (ethical, moral) hypocrisy while faking innocence and even naivety. He not only stole their thunder but (even worse) endangered the game. To be sure, those who are too successful often actually believe in their own purity. They wax sanctimonious and call out “the thieves” on Wall Street, everyone unlike themselves. They even confess their own sins in court and willingly pay millions in fines, knowing it’s just pocket change anyway. They want atonement and redemption with the public before publishing memoirs and doing TV shows.

Even going to jail means a commuted sentence to four months in a minimum-security facility, complements of a judge (or President) who is part of the same fraternity of thieves. Nixon is granted a full pardon, Reagan is fully pardoned for trading “arms for hostages,” Clinton is impeached and reinstated, Bush Jr, is pardoned for war crimes, and the ninety-one proven felonies changed to Trump are (hitherto) ignored – gamesters pardoning gamesters.

The ordinary citizen goes to prison for twelve years for tax evasion and five years for failing to pay alimony or possessing an ounce of pot. This is the “other end” of the game, when it comes home to the average Joe. Not because the top players are necessarily good at it, but because it has to claim its victims at the bottom. Shouts of hypocrisy are heard in the streets and citizens get violent. They can’t play the game anymore.

If America is about anything at all, it’s about the invention of the self. We are characters of those inventions. This is especially true in America because we are given the opportunity to invent; hence the expectation to invent. We must all have plausible selves, and what plausibility means is being a player at fictional parts. Historically, this was the country’s task as well, the search for a plausible national identity. Tocqueville observed the thousands of unsettled immigrants passing each other, always on their way to somewhere else in the American wilderness, sharing stories without endings, hasty entrances and departures, the pilgrim’s progress — not unlike passengers at airport arrival & departure gates. No one ever knew enough about anything, yet they all set out for El Dorado – the spring which fed the best fictions.

Prior to 1917, few people ever even described themselves as “Americans.” Most had just arrived from somewhere else, and they only knew themselves as Irish or German or Polish, etc. After settling, they still only referred to themselves as from a particular state or region. The country understood itself only as an assembly of regional interests, customs, dress habits and dialects. There was no national sense of itself.

The nation didn’t even begin seeing itself as “united” states until World War I, and even then not until 1918 when it entered the war. During this time it was Edward Bernays who invented America’s first “Public Relations Industry,” the official euphemism for a “propaganda” system. War required that citizens unite behind banners they had never heard of before; in wartime, the “pure and innocent” against the Hun. As serendipity would also have it, it happened to be when Hollywood’s silent film industry introduced itself. Uncle Sam and film producers started a long and lucrative relationship of waving the flag and promoting America as the land of milk and honey. Eventually Washington would make a permanent deal with Hollywood: “You wave the flag, and we’ll wave the regs” (the government waved fees and regulations for filmmakers). This threw the propaganda industry into full gear. Eventually, what were “united states” (plural) became “the United States” (singular).

But we digress. These are facts which only supplemented and encouraged the games Americans played, games which always perpetuate themselves through the rewards of “faking it.” And it begs the inevitable question: What would happen if we all agreed to stop playing? In other words, commit the most subversive offenses by stopping to kowtow to expectations? It’s what author Alfie Kohn referred to as “pop behaviorism” – exposing the rewarding/praising of expectations as a strategy to achieve conformity.¹ Kohn’s thesis is that we reward each other with praise and incentives for all the wrong things. “Do this and you’ll get that.” “We dangle goodies (from candy bars to sales commissions) in front of people in the same way that we train the family pet.” But if we stopped negative rewarding it would allow us to think for ourselves and act responsibly, something which is critical for children.

At a national level alone, what would happen if we spilled the beans about the myths and folktales about the great myth which is America? The stuff which is purely the work of the imagination? The facts about who we really are and how this nation really began: the pogroms and planned genocides, barbarism and slavery, the wish for aristocracy, class division, betrayals, wildlife exterminations, unchecked environmental desecrations – that it was “customary” in the Old West to shoot someone in the back, that Davy Crockett deserted his wife and did not die at the Alamo, that the earliest students at Harvard were not chosen for intelligence but according to social standing and religious affiliation, that General George Custer “deserved” what he got, that America started as many wars as it didn’t start, that the USS Maine was blown up by the American government operatives, that the USS Maddox fired the first shot in the Gulf of Tonkin and lied that it was attacked (starting the Vietnam War), that the earliest settlers were not stalwart seekers of truth and virtue but sycophants and “courtiers” chasing new money wherever they could find it (said Tocqueville), that the Vietnam War had nothing to do with Communism, etc.?

What if we admitted that America had no national mythology of its own until Hollywood fabricated one out of whole cloth, invented by predominantly Jewish immigrants (screenwriters, editors, fiction writers, directors, producers, composers, authors) fleeing Hitler’s Europe, who barely spoke English, and who knew virtually nothing about American history? That our very first cowboy heroes (Tom Mix, William S. Hart, Harry Carey, Sr., John Wayne) owed their very careers to newly arriving (minority) immigrants willing to pander to anything/anyone if it meant not being deported back to Europe. – The point here is that nations and their citizens do not thrive by living the truth. They thrive by means of mental games and lies and “winners” who write the history – either by egregious lies, or lies so subliminal that they don’t even consciously know them.

Not consciously knowing them suggests that we veer into the depths of ego psychology. But for purposes of avoiding that, let’s just keep it simple and specific: We play the same games and condemn those who either don’t play them, or play them too well. We do so because we see ourselves in them and don’t like ourselves for it. The long-term consequence is a culture of people who never truly, thoroughly, trust each other about anything. There’s always a sense of mutual distrust going on (fears of betrayal), one which we cannot react to because we’re playing the game ourselves. We can’t shake it because our very filters used to analyze it is the problem itself – actors ridiculing the act.

Hence, the existential dilemma, once again. We preach the truth and strive for a perfect sense of honesty, but through the very lens which disallows it. We reach into ourselves for answers, but what we get is always tainted with “conditions” and “givens” which predetermine the outcome. There seems to be no way out until/unless we decide to extricate ourselves from the game, which means society. It’s no wonder that the craziest and wise are those who sequester themselves and live hermetic lives.

This is why nothing changes. At the same time everything changes because the game must be constantly reinforced as it morphs with the times and circumstances. We either role with the dice or “the game is up.” Meanwhile, the question looms: If we are characters of our own invention, is what we fight for and defend even real? Is it morally right to play; and if so, to what extent and for how long? Is it just Shakespearean psychodrama? If it’s just theater, are we not also the screenwriters and directors of our own play? We constantly and bravely wave the flag “of truth” and carry on as if believing in what we’re doing. We don’t question it or the psychological “dark nights” which follow in predictable cycles. Our only apparent solution (aside from leaving civilization) seems to be death itself. We intuit that “when it’s all over,” the game will finally end.

© 2024 Richard Hiatt

1Alfie Kohn, Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1999).

MOVING

Knowing little to nothing about numerology, I do know that “numbers” on occasion can add up to a minor intrigue, if not a passing interest. According to Merlin the Numbers Wizard, the year doesn’t bode anything uniquely spectacular, but the months of March and July evidently do. March has passed, but July holds the possibility of something which may be “life-altering,” a minor intrigue at least.

In the offing the only thing I can think of which may require “good” numbers is the prospect of moving. Yes, “moving,” again! A subject which has overstayed its welcome. I have to say, it’s never been anything less than traumatic, a grouping of numbers which always adds up to hell. The common cliché heard among many after having done it — “I’ll never do that again” — is more than a hackneyed expression meant to fill a silent void. It’s a red flag to others.

On the other hand, I’ve always been glad to have moved after all the dust had settled. It may have taken weeks to recover, but the change of scenery definitely presented its own intrigue. It fostered a shift in outlook and attitude. “Change in latitude, change in attitude” is the going mantra, and there’s definitely a progressive link between cause & effect. A new cause is the effect of an old cause, chicken & egg, but the effect always seems to cycle “upward” like a helix.

Since March has now faded to black, Merlin’s instructions are to focus on July. And I can only hope that the “latitude-attitude” rule holds firm. But to what latitude in July? Denver, probably? Or should I say, to a sheltered community buried deep within that huge stone borough. If it weren’t for its walled privacy from all the chaos orbiting around it, I’d be searching for a different latitude. But in that case, I don’t know where I’d go and would probably end up not going anywhere. Such is my focus on this one address which is a “do or die, all or nothing” target.

The only floating variable in this numerological equation is variability. That is, Merlin is an apostle of Hermes (protector of travelers, “soul guide”) and hermeneutics, and, just maybe, the month of July could mean April or May. The cosmic charting on Merlin’s desk floats in an ectoplasm of free space and bent light. Interpretability is high. “July” could mean anything. Hermes is the divine trickster.

The idea of moving floats like a TV commercial, cycling round & round on the hour. It shows itself in dazzling lights and loud decibels. There are no specific (helpful) details except for the impossible-to-read fine print down below. The only difference is that this is an ad I’m creating myself. There’s no one to blame or hold accountable for its ubiquity. What that says is that I’m pushing myself to a precipice which will eventually force me to jump. Maybe life has simply gotten stale. Maybe things are just too predictable and routined anymore. I’m unclear on these points.

For the out-of-staters, Denver is that newly paved urban jungle just “over the hump” of Monument Hill, settled in that once peaceful valley where the Platte River and Cherry Creek converge. It’s that “Mile High” place where altimeters read “5,280 feet” at the Capital steps. The Capital dome itself is made of real gold plates extracted from a long history of environmental desecration and unbridled thirst for the eureka.

Through what I suppose is the result of a scotomatic mindset (the mind sees what it wants to see), people “of age” look around and see only those parts of the city which were real to them “back in the day.” When they “see” Denver, they envision Capital Hill. LoDo, City Park, and Cherry Creek as they were a half a century ago. Whereas newcomers see only the appendages/appurtenances which have attached themselves to a corpus delicti, like tumors. Eventually the tumors became the city, and the flesh & bone got lost in the debris of “progress.” A newcomer will look right at a city landmark and not see it. Worse, he doesn’t even care that he doesn’t see it. His focus is on the present and future. Whereas, the old-timer is an anachronism, turned to stone by gaucho Medusas.

This is how the city and the old-timer form a kind of mesalliance. They never really get along, and the alienation just grows as the “burbs” continue to take over. The older generation hides where it can, when it can, and gets lost in memories. Life slows down, even with cellphones and GPS. But I have to say that some of us stay where we are, regardless of all the “tumors.” The stereotype is that older people gravitate to quieter and more spacious abodes. This is true to an extent, but not every egg stays in that basket.

It’s true that after sixty-five, more life is behind you than before you. Hence, there’s more to dwell on in the past than the future. And this is what sells the rural lifestyle. It’s where time stands still, where the past is preserved in an amber sheen, and everything “future” is anathema. It’s where slowness allows one to pause, reflect, and resist change in every form. Naturally then, it clashes with everything the city is all about. The city is the future and never looks back.

And so, as I seem to be heading in the direction of “peaceful meadows” and “paradise valleys,” it’s incumbent upon me to at least try to defend that “other” human variable, where “older” does not mean slower or an exodus to Smalltown, USA. It deserves its own defense, especially since it’s doing what I do best – taking a road less traveled.

Granted, the abominations of bad air, crime, poverty, noise, crowds, traffic and exorbitant rents are hard sells for the city. On the other hand, fear of the city is also a fear of freedom – as strange at that sounds. Reversely, fear of the country is the fear of expectation, rigidity, strictness, and conformity. The freedom of the city is the freedom of expression and the freedom of mind. Freedom implies change which disturbs the comforting nest of complacency. And those preferring those freedoms are willing to concede all the urban negatives. It’s a fair trade. The future is dangerous. Hence, cities are dangerous (and landmarks suffer). It’s the danger of unknowns which unleash creative freedom.

Herein lies the existential dilemma “older” urbanites find themselves in. They’re sandwiched between craving the past AND being seduced by “bringing the new into being,” which is creativity. – Fortunately for myself, I’ve found both without diminishing the one or the other. There is a space for both to coexist (more on that below).

The “rural” artist is quick to defend the country, saying that it not only allows “more” freedoms but that the ambient silence enables “more” creativity. Well, in my experience, it’s an au contrare. Everyone’s different, but the fact is, the creative spark needs endless prodding, and it doesn’t always hail from within (or in nature’s silence). It needs a kick in the ass from without more times than not. I remember too many moments (in the country) where the muses just fell asleep, floating (as a friend once said) “like turds in a punch bowl,” just repeating the same sounds over and over. Sorry, but historically speaking, the best, most inventive, controversial, stirring, and inspiring creativity always materializes in the city. It’s like a wild animal stirring around in search of itself.

The city has never won a comfortable place in the American imagination. The spirit of our own New Age is still feudal, and people still measure the distance between vice and virtue by the distance between city and country. From the view seen from the country, all we hear about is urban apocalypse and the need for reform, despite the city constantly changing. – But we make the mistake of “fusing and confusing” aesthetics with politics, good with the bad, and painting the subject with a wide brush stroke. It’s either black or white (which, by the way, is what gave birth to the suburbs –that dead zone/no-man’s land which dilutes, compromises, and diminishes both country and city). The burbs are “starter homes” for young families just moving in, afraid of too much in either direction.

Given all the above, I find myself looking at the northern horizon, for better or worse – those 50 square miles of nervous energy. Every time I mention the topic to friends, I’m told flat out that I’m crazy. It’s a lion’s den, fitting all the metaphors of retrogression, ports of entry for everything depraved and toxic. But I simply don’t see it that way. Again, scotomatic seeing – perhaps.

One measures the length, width, and depth of aging by how much he dwells in either direction – past or future. Strangely, both together carve out a somewhat dysfunctional and surreal “present.” We sit on a fence where the past pulls us backwards and the future forwards. But I find myself having been put in a slightly different place (this time) while “perched.” I’m seeing Merlin’s numbers in a way which allows me to see a future infused in the past, or the past in the future. In other words, in a kind of Chicago School modernist mode – Old West and Modern, mesquite and turquoise bookstores, Charles Ward murals and marble floors in public buildings, Navajo mugs and Bronco caps stacked together, the “Big Blue Bear” by Lawrence Argent, a timeless Mount Evans eclipsing man’s footprint at the confluence of Cherry Creek and Platte River. Mt. Evans looks pensively down at her “modernist” prodigal children. It’s a rich mélange of old and new, bringing past and future back to the present. – The newcomer can play at being a native; the old-timer can be one.

As for my fellow urbanites, I feel genuine sorrow for those thousands of haggard souls drifting, lost, hungry, rootless, who come into the city, some from the windward side of “the border,” others from its leeward. Both equally lost and desperate for a sense of home. At the same time I’m angry at the irreparable damage they’ve caused around those quasi-sacred landmarks we “older” folks gravitate to, like naji pilgrims to Mecca, for our own sense of place – landmarks so buried by human debris that they’re almost impossible to find. They look like discarded grave markers covered with weeds and graffiti, long neglected. One has to clear away the growth just to find cornerstones and lapidaried commemorative plaques marking historical moments and amazing stories. – The landmark is a good metaphor for how the “old-timer” also feels — covered with weeds, irrelevant, forgotten, yet still solid as granite, going nowhere, and available for information or a tall tale, should anyone ask.

Denver presents a visual impression. But it also hides things which can only be discovered by going into, spending time in, that concrete maze. Things are unseen about which people in surrounding towns are amazingly oblivious – bookstores, venues, organic food marts, jazz clubs, small theaters. “Patronage” takes on a whole different meaning based on access, variety, and “the unexpected.” One cannot appreciate what one doesn’t know exists.

Lastly, there are always those hard and practical reasons for moving which can’t be ignored – cost of living, financial downsizing, and (in my case) moving to where no children or teenagers roam (in a “55 and older” community). My hardwiring towards children and teens has never been exactly warm or inviting (though I have mellowed). Otherwise, I would have had both years ago. Age is leading me to calmer waters and quiet breezes and the font of urban creativity and art. That does not include toys, motorcycles, graffiti, loud music, or young parents looking for starter homes. Thank the gods for “55 and older.”

Throw all the above into a cement mixer, and just maybe Merlin will take it and carve something out of fresh stone. Or maybe the cement will just fall to the ground and go to waste. I haven’t a clue. The Ides of March may be upon us (in April, or July), but Rome might just find itself rebuilding again.

© 2024 Richard Hiatt