James Rozoff's Blog, page 3

An Awakening To The Power Of The Media From The Novel "The Association"

 

In 2014, I wrote a fictional account of someone awakening from the existing paradigm to become aware of the narratives that shape our lives. As a paradigm dies, the institutions that have best served the paradigm will continue to pump out narratives that no longer fit the current reality. I will try to deal with crises with tools that serve the outmoded paradigm and thus will only make the situation work. This then, in fiction, is a telling of one who is waking up to the power the media has to shape our consciousness. The Restaurant in question is, as you might have guessed, a Buffalo Wild Wings.

They were led through the noise of the crowd and a competing amount of televisions by a bubbly blond waitress. Everywhere, television screens stood as distractions to the patrons.

Dave and Johnny were seated at a table, rows of televisions on all sides of them. Johnny was talking, but Dave couldn’t help being distracted by the various action taking place on the many screens. There were three screens directly above him, another four neatly arranged one tier below. Televisions were on both sides of him, hanging at the periphery of his sight. One was showing sports highlights, another showing some college football game, still another a lacrosse game. One of the screens was asking trivia questions, but the wait between questions—stuffed with advertising—caused him to shift his gaze towards more kinetic offerings. Even the commercials distracted his attention, were designed to grab at his attention, he couldn’t help thinking. No, not grab his attention. That was not what they were designed to do. They were meant to grab his eye, to funnel their messages not to his attention but to somewhere beneath his attention to poke at his subconscious motivators.

He watched a commercial with two men sitting in a library, one of them eating a cookie. With no sound, Dave had to guess the message. One man soon becomes upset and dumps over the table. Soon, a woman comes up from behind him and smashes a chair over the back of his head. Another man then pushes over a bookshelf in anger, knocking over other bookshelves like dominoes. In mere seconds, the library is on fire as everyone and everything in it is being thrown or smashed. At the end of the commercial, an Oreo cookie is shown, along with directions on where to vote. Apparently, the argument that has destroyed an entire library was about a cookie. Dave could only imagine what kind of message he was supposed to have received from such a commercial.

Dave tore his attention away from the screens, looked at the people around him. They were for the better part ignoring those they sat with, as Dave felt himself doing with Johnny. As they watched the screens, the wait staff walked around doling out smaller, hand-held screens for the patrons to use in order to interact with the bigger screens mounted on the walls. Thus, Dave couldn’t help noticing, the people’s attention was further divided by having even more competing screens.

What interaction that took place at the tables was merely commentary of what was taking place on the screens. It was as though all of the information was sent funneling through screens until it was digested by the patrons. Like pigs at a trough, thought Dave, not knowing what it was they were consuming, nor caring why it was they were being fed. He found Johnny’s voice to be just one of many sources of information competing for his attention. Text scrolled across the televisions in front of him in layers, too quickly for him to process. And all the while the screens at the periphery of his sight were pumping out vast amounts of information and images, feeding his brain whether he wished them to or not.

It was not that they were drowning out what it was that Johnny was trying to convey to him, not even that they left no room in his mind for thoughts and ideas of his own. No, he felt that somehow, amidst the constant barrage of useless and ephemeral information, there was some sinister virus that was travelling along with it, the screens above him like UFOs beaming rays into his head, planting their seeds deeply into his subconscious like spidery aliens.

He tried to relax his mind, allow the messages to come without trying to process them. He thought that by silencing his own thoughts he would be able to witness in a tranquil manner the effects the messages were having upon his mind. He felt the placid aspect of his consciousness receiving the flow, being played upon by the constant influx like an instrument that has wind blown through it. He observed the images that stimulated his passive mind, felt the effect they had on it. He contemplated each message that seemed to excite his psyche, wondered what the intent of it was and who or what it was that sent it.

He found his mind working on an elevated level, even as he realized it was not capable of any kind of useful action at the moment. He was witnessing the working of his mind that was always occurring but of which he was seldom aware. A vast amount of thought was occurring beyond what he was ordinarily aware of, was always occurring. It was both fascinating and frightening. He was so much more than he gave himself credit for, and yet so little of what made him who he was ever was truly decided by his conscious self.

He found himself beginning to rebel against the information being thrust at him from so many different angles. They all wanted his attention, all wanted a piece of his consciousness, to take from him what was rightfully his. No, they didn’t want to take what was his, they wanted to take him, to own his mind, to replace his thoughts with their own. Some alien thing wished to replace his internal consciousness with some overlord kind of mind. And there was too much of it he was being bombarded by to fight back. Fleeing was the only option, and he found himself exiting the building in a less than polite manner, bumping into a crowd of young men as he went.

He did not stop until he was beyond the sound of the external speakers, back at the van. He soon noticed Johnny walking towards him, a look of concern on his face.

“What’s the matter, Dave?”

Dave looked into the tattooed face of Johnny, and he wondered if he had had anything to do with what had happened. “Did you do that to me? Was that you playing with my head? Is this some sort of display Doug had you put on for me?”

“Naw. You’re just beginning to see a little more clearly, that’s all. You’ll get used to it. It effects us all a little differently, we all come to it in our own way.”

“I don’t want to get used to this. I don’t want my consciousness changed.”

“Just think of it like you’re developing a new sense. Like smell. Some things stink, but you’re glad you have the ability to smell, nevertheless.”

“But…it was like there was something in the randomness, something I couldn’t quite understand but knew was there. Like there was something living amidst the thousands of messages the televisions were sending.”

“All human thought has a life of its own. That’s the problem. We don’t know a tenth of what’s going on in our minds, but they’re always working. When the conscious mind does not jibe with the subconscious, we waste our human powers, they get siphoned away and coalesce into something else, something not really living but alive, if you get me. That’s sort of what ghosts are on an individual level, a creation of energy made by emotion that could not be reconciled with thought. But when the power of the conscious mind is able to come together with the power of the sub-conscious, when they jibe, that’s what you’re starting to experience now. That’s you beginning to connect with your human powers. In observing what is out of joint, you are given the knowledge and ability to set it right. It’s just…well, it’s hard. It’s a long journey. And just like every other aspect of life, you never really arrive.”

Don���t Look Up���s Peter Isherwell Is A Much-Needed Archetype

 

Yesterday I wrote a review of Don���t Look Up and said of all the dysfunctional people in it, the most dysfunctional, the most lost of all, was the tech billionaire, Peter Isherwell. He was the perfect blend of the real-life tech giants we know so well, Bezos, Musk, Gates. Like those in real life, all of those within the establishment elite deferred to Ishenwell���s vision unquestioningly, as though they were in the presence of royalty or even divinity.

A movie, book, piece of music, is instantly worthy of being included in public conversation if it creates a new meme or an archetype which proves useful and enduring. Such is the case, I believe, with Peter Isherwell. He is the synthesized embodiment of the on-the-spectrum plutocrat who owns everything, understands nothing outside of how to create a monopoly, and is worshipped by the entire establishment.

It is to Peter Isherwell that all who are incapable of looking beyond the immediate paradigm blindly look to to lead us into the future. In his hands do we place our freewill and better judgment in exchange for some mystical belief that the future is an unavoidable fact that requires oracles such as Isherwell to explain to the rest of us.

I was thinking of this today as I came across a tweet from Bill Gates.

There are some people who reveal a glint of genius in everything they say or write. There are some, like Albert Einstein, capable of speaking intelligently and insightfully on a far-ranging array of subjects. There are some people whose genius will reach beyond their lifespan and be appreciated for generations to come.

Bill Gates is not one of those people.

Granted, there are vast areas of knowledge of which I know little or nothing. Bill Gates��� genius might very well be capable of being appreciated only by those with advanced knowledge of computers and coding. I will let others speak on that subject, as is only fitting. What I do know is that I have never come across anything that Bill Gates has said or written that has given any hint of an impressive intelligence.

I scoped him out today on Twitter. One who is of my generation often forgets that in this day and age our elites have such a need for adoration from the masses that they feel compelled to be on social media. I read a few of his tweets. They are trite, uninspiring, and lack any purpose for being. They do nothing to add to public discourse. I do believe Bill Gates would rather stand on a street corner naked than expose the inner workings of his mind. And God forbid, he would never say anything that would threaten existing power systems in any way.

The list of people Gates follows is further revealing of his intellectual vapidness. He follows people with power, sure, but I don���t find a single brilliant person among his 300+ follows. Assuredly Gates travels in different circles than I do and might well be aware of important thinkers of which I am ignorant, but I can���t help thinking there should be at least SOME overlap. Even if it is a pop-culture celebrity with a certain insight, I���d expect him to follow SOMEONE I know and respect.

Instead he follows Trevor Noah.

Of all the comedians to choose from, why follow someone guaranteed never to think outside the box or challenge establishment patterns in any way? The most obvious answer to this, and I���m not saying it���s the only answer, is that you yourself have a very mediocre and establishment brain.

Jack London said it best through a character in his novel, The Iron Heel: ���But, outside the realm of business, these men are stupid. They know only business. They do not know mankind nor society, and yet they set themselves up as arbiters of the fates of the hungry millions and all the other millions thrown in. History, some day, will have an excruciating laugh at their expense.���

London wrote these words over a century ago. I���m unsure whether this is a problem that has existed throughout history, but I have the sense that it has grown particularly acute in our age. And while London predicted history will have an excruciating laugh at their expense, there is no guarantee we will have a future capable of looking back on our era. We are a species facing unprecedented challenges, and we are allowing ourselves to be led by people who are ignorant of matters outside of building colossal financial empires for themselves.

People like Musk, Gates, and others tell us what books we should read, what our future is supposed to look like, how to solve hunger and disease, and the way to human happiness. They continue to increase their own wealth while the solutions they preach do nothing to prevent the catastrophes that are approaching.

They are remaking the world in their own image, and it is seldom that anyone with any access to a large audience is willing to call them out on it. Kudos to those who worked to bring Don���t Look Up to the screen.

Perhaps it is foolish to believe the establishment is going to bring about the change we need, but we shouldn���t turn up our noses when some of them are willing to sell us the rope we can use (metaphorically, of course) to set things right. Don���t Look Up deserves to be a subject of conversation we can all engage in. Kindly leave your ego at home.

  If you liked what I write enough to support me, you can buy me a coffee. If you liked it but don't have a credit card handy, please share. Also, follow me on Twitter or Facebook, sign up for my newsletter, or check me out on Amazon.

 

Don’t Look Up’s Peter Isherwell Is A Much-Needed Archetype

 

Yesterday I wrote a review of Don’t Look Up and said of all the dysfunctional people in it, the most dysfunctional, the most lost of all, was the tech billionaire, Peter Isherwell. He was the perfect blend of the real-life tech giants we know so well, Bezos, Musk, Gates. Like those in real life, all of those within the establishment elite deferred to Ishenwell’s vision unquestioningly, as though they were in the presence of royalty or even divinity.

A movie, book, piece of music, is instantly worthy of being included in public conversation if it creates a new meme or an archetype which proves useful and enduring. Such is the case, I believe, with Peter Isherwell. He is the synthesized embodiment of the on-the-spectrum plutocrat who owns everything, understands nothing outside of how to create a monopoly, and is worshipped by the entire establishment.

It is to Peter Isherwell that all who are incapable of looking beyond the immediate paradigm blindly look to to lead us into the future. In his hands do we place our freewill and better judgment in exchange for some mystical belief that the future is an unavoidable fact that requires oracles such as Isherwell to explain to the rest of us.

I was thinking of this today as I came across a tweet from Bill Gates.

There are some people who reveal a glint of genius in everything they say or write. There are some, like Albert Einstein, capable of speaking intelligently and insightfully on a far-ranging array of subjects. There are some people whose genius will reach beyond their lifespan and be appreciated for generations to come.

Bill Gates is not one of those people.

Granted, there are vast areas of knowledge of which I know little or nothing. Bill Gates’ genius might very well be capable of being appreciated only by those with advanced knowledge of computers and coding. I will let others speak on that subject, as is only fitting. What I do know is that I have never come across anything that Bill Gates has said or written that has given any hint of an impressive intelligence.

I scoped him out today on Twitter. One who is of my generation often forgets that in this day and age our elites have such a need for adoration from the masses that they feel compelled to be on social media. I read a few of his tweets. They are trite, uninspiring, and lack any purpose for being. They do nothing to add to public discourse. I do believe Bill Gates would rather stand on a street corner naked than expose the inner workings of his mind. And God forbid, he would never say anything that would threaten existing power systems in any way.

The list of people Gates follows is further revealing of his intellectual vapidness. He follows people with power, sure, but I don’t find a single brilliant person among his 300+ follows. Assuredly Gates travels in different circles than I do and might well be aware of important thinkers of which I am ignorant, but I can’t help thinking there should be at least SOME overlap. Even if it is a pop-culture celebrity with a certain insight, I’d expect him to follow SOMEONE I know and respect.

Instead he follows Trevor Noah.

Of all the comedians to choose from, why follow someone guaranteed never to think outside the box or challenge establishment patterns in any way? The most obvious answer to this, and I’m not saying it’s the only answer, is that you yourself have a very mediocre and establishment brain.

Jack London said it best through a character in his novel, The Iron Heel: “But, outside the realm of business, these men are stupid. They know only business. They do not know mankind nor society, and yet they set themselves up as arbiters of the fates of the hungry millions and all the other millions thrown in. History, some day, will have an excruciating laugh at their expense.”

London wrote these words over a century ago. I’m unsure whether this is a problem that has existed throughout history, but I have the sense that it has grown particularly acute in our age. And while London predicted history will have an excruciating laugh at their expense, there is no guarantee we will have a future capable of looking back on our era. We are a species facing unprecedented challenges, and we are allowing ourselves to be led by people who are ignorant of matters outside of building colossal financial empires for themselves.

People like Musk, Gates, and others tell us what books we should read, what our future is supposed to look like, how to solve hunger and disease, and the way to human happiness. They continue to increase their own wealth while the solutions they preach do nothing to prevent the catastrophes that are approaching.

They are remaking the world in their own image, and it is seldom that anyone with any access to a large audience is willing to call them out on it. Kudos to those who worked to bring Don’t Look Up to the screen.

Perhaps it is foolish to believe the establishment is going to bring about the change we need, but we shouldn’t turn up our noses when some of them are willing to sell us the rope we can use (metaphorically, of course) to set things right. Don’t Look Up deserves to be a subject of conversation we can all engage in. Kindly leave your ego at home.

  If you liked what I write enough to support me, you can buy me a coffee. If you liked it but don't have a credit card handy, please share. Also, follow me on Twitter or Facebook, sign up for my newsletter, or check me out on Amazon.

 

Should You Look Up? A Movie Review

The long and short of it is that yes, I think you should watch Don’t Look Up.

 

People say it’s an obvious allegory for climate change, but I would say its strength lies in the way it points out the utter inability of every powerful institution we have to deal with a serious problem seriously. Politicians, the media, billionaire entrepreneurs, they are all living within their own worlds, distinct and distanced from a larger reality.

 

I know the revolution will not be televised, nor will it be brought to you by Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, and Meryl Streep. But I don’t see it can do any harm for a lot of people to watch this movie. It does a pretty good job of putting on display the various dysfunctional patterns of those who are guiding our culture on its current trajectory. Maybe, just maybe, a few people will see this and be nudged into the realization that those we rely on to avert catastrophes are only going to make them worse.

 

Yes, the media has been exposed before. A Face In The Crowd, Network, They Live, even the 1989 Batman when the newscasters are forced to appear on camera without the use of any makeup, have pointed out the many ways in which the media is spectacle, meta, theater. But because the image of the media is constantly changing, it is necessary for our current media to be exposed to us. It is important to have today’s mask ripped off, the mask that is so ubiquitous and ever-present to us we run the risk of forgetting it is a mask. Every generation needs to experience this unmasking in the current vernacular.

 

I like that Don’t Look Up doesn’t try to make a scapegoat of a certain segment of the population but points out the foibles of all. No one is spared parody, so don’t be upset when it’s someone or something you consider sacred that’s being exposed.

 

Solutions are not to be had by joining one side to attack the other. And from what I’ve read from people I consider to be conservative, this came across as slightly liberal-leaning but overall fairly honest. Throwing in an older figure who likes to sniff women’s hair goes a long way in appeasing the Let’s Go Brandon crowd. And the greatest skewering of all goes to the mainstream media, which to be fair deserves it. Having been laid up the last week, I’ve resorted to spending some time watching television and am convinced more than ever of what a sewer pipe of disinformation and immorality it is.

 

Ultimately it is the billionaire entrepreneur who is shown to be the greatest villain of all. Conservatives may call such a person a socialist, but at least they have enough sense to despise this composite of Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk. Let’s not get hung up on semantics, am I right?

 

The media figures and the politicians are shown to be led by their compulsions, their egos, their self-interests, and their willingness to live within the tracks that they run in that write large across our culture. There is a need to push a false reality and these people are willing to live that false reality in order to reach the goals their crippled egos insist will make them worthy and admired. We are all running a mind program that doesn’t really jibe with the greater reality, but it is manifestly more obvious in the powerful than in those who follow them. The point being, I guess, is that we shouldn’t follow them, that we might come a long way in improving our own programming if we were to free ourselves from their leadership.

 

It is the billionaire entrepreneur who is most clearly disassociated from reality, even as it is the billionaire entrepreneur upon whom all the dysfunctional people of influence look to for guidance. They are not the manipulators of the masses, however, they are rather the idiot kings whom the rest of us are taught to believe possess a genius above our understanding or criticism.

 

This is a movie for the masses, it is a movie which everyone should discuss. It is an invitation to get out of your own little group and raise the mean popular awareness. This is what art is supposed to do. Undoubtedly it will alienate a few purists who feel the need to be beyond anything that reaches the masses, but it’s their loss should they sit outside the conversation.

 

One word of warning: I fear such a movie runs the risk of leading some to hopelessness. Weak people are constantly at risk of moving directly from obliviousness to despair. That’s why they stay so long in a fantasy world. If you’ve watched this flick, you probably have Netflix. If you do, watch A Boy Called Christmas. It’s written for a younger audience in mind but it is smartly done and it is hopeful. You need to be reminded not only that the world is in need of improvement, but that people have the power to actually make positive changes.

 

It is possible to be guided both by truth and by hope. In fact, I highly recommend it. Look up, because it’s worth doing. You are a grown-up who can deal with the truth, even if it is sometimes unpleasant. That’s how individuals survive, and that is how our species and our planet will, as well.

 

Wise Words From A Pig

 

“What is freedom?” asked a pig to another pig standing close to him amid thousands of other pigs all crammed together. Though the two pigs were of the same age and had the same life experience, the one pig recognized in the other a greater intelligence. It seemed as if he were graced by God with a greater mind, if words like grace and God could be uttered in such a place. You see, they lived in a factory farm, where the whole purpose to their lives was to grow to be eaten.

“Ah, to tell you what freedom means would require me to tell you the story of our species. I would have to tell you the history of our planet.”

“Please do,” said the first pig. “There is nothing else to do in this place. There is no room to move about, nothing to see, nothing to do. It would help us pass the time until the big truck comes to take us away.”

“Well,” said the second pig, “imagine if there were no walls to this building and we could walk wherever we chose.”

“Why…no walls?” said Pig #1.“What would protect us?”

“Protect us from what?” said Pig #2. “No, the walls do not protect you. They are not there to keep harm out, they are there to keep you in. There was a time when every one of us pigs lived without walls.”

“A time without walls? I…I can’t even imagine such a thing. What protected us from the giant machines that roar up and down the streets? I have seen many a poor little animal lying dead on the side of the street near here. Or, at least I’ve heard them cry as they got hit. And to get anywhere, you have to cross those streets.”

“There was a time when there were no streets,” said Pig #2. For Pig #2 he was, a plastic tag with the number 2 had been attached to his ear when he was a mere piglet.

“No streets? Then what kept the giant machines from rampaging all over the land?”

“There were no giant machines then,” said Pig #2.

“Ah, I see,” said Pig #1. “That sounds nice. But tell me, if there were no walls and we were free to wander wherever we liked, did we not still need to stay put in order that we should be there when the humans filled the feed troughs for us? Or did they follow us around and feed us wherever it was we roamed?”

“They did not feed us at all,” said Pig #2.

“Not feed us?” said Pig #1, making a pronounced snort. “Why, that’s terrible!”

“Not at all,” said the wiser pig. “In the days before the walls, we were quite adept at rooting out our own food.”

“What is rooting?” asked the less knowledgeable pig.

“It is when you use your tusks to dig into the earth in search of roots and grubs.”

“And what are tusks?”

“They are something that were removed from you when you were a younger pig.”

“Removed from me? Whatever do you mean?”

“You likely don’t remember because they drugged you before they ripped them from you, and perhaps you have blotted out the whole memory of having tusks because the ordeal was too traumatic.”

“Oh, gosh,” said Pig #1, “that does sound traumatic.”

Pig #1 sat silently for a moment, chewing on a piece of gristle from the slop that was earlier fed to him. At length he spoke up.

“So you say we once were able to feed ourselves? That we could walk where we would, sleep wherever we liked, could feed ourselves whenever we were hungry, and were safe from the giant machines that are always noisily going by? And that we had tusks that were ripped from us?”

“Strong tusks, which we could use to defend ourselves against whatever creature attempted to make a meal of us. Yes. The Earth was once a place that was mainly safe for us and was ours to explore as we wished.”

“Well,” said Pig #1, “if this is ‘freedom’ it is a most wonderful thing.”

“Oh, no,” said Pig #2, “This is not freedom, this was simply the way things were before people learned words such as ‘freedom’. Freedom…freedom is a most horrible thing.

“Well, what is freedom, then?” asked Pig #1, confused.

“Freedom is just a word invented by humans. Using the word freedom they invented man’s laws, which stated that humans could do anything they wished to do and that nobody could stop them. In the name of freedom they created their own laws and put aside all of nature’s laws. In the name of freedom they claimed the land as their own, constructing their deadly roads that permit their loud, smoke-belching machines to drive over any animals that dare cross them. In the name of freedom, they cut down the forests in which our ancestors used to roam. In the name of freedom, they put aside all of…”

“All of what?” asked Pig #1, gazing at Pig #2 with rapt attention.

“Well…” said Pig #2, “I do not speak from knowledge on this, it is mere rumor. But I have heard that there is such a being as the Great Pig, one who looks out for and loves us all. It is hard to imagine such a being could exist in a world where we are treated the way we are, but it is a nice idea to contemplate. And while you might consider me a very wise pig, I am after all merely a pig, a simple creature who in the grand scheme of things knows very little. But if a Great Pig exists, I have no doubt that humans are going against every one of his laws, as well, and they do so in the name of freedom, in their belief that they are free to do whatever they want in this world. I can only pray that there is an all-powerful and all-knowing Pig who will one day disabuse them of this notion.”

“I, too, hope that the Great Pig exists,” said Pig #1 after a moment. “I hope that he sees all the violence and the damage humans do to animals in the name of freedom.”

“In the name of freedom, the humans cause more than just violence to animals and to the planet,” said Pig #2. “In the name of freedom, they do violence to each other, as well. The freedom many of them prize more than any other is the freedom to own and carry weapons that are made to kill. In the name of freedom they put in cages even other humans.”

“They keep other humans behind walls like they do us?” asked Pig #1.

“Yes, and sometimes they even kill them.” And seeing the look of horror on the face of Pig #1, Pig #2 hastened to add, “But they don’t eat them.”

“Who said anything about anybody being eaten?” asked Pig #1.

Recognizing the ignorance of his fellow pig and deeming it preferable than him knowing the truth, Pig #2 ignored the question and continued. “And in the name of freedom, the humans rise up in the thousands and even millions to fight and kill each other. They launch great big bombs against people living in other lands in order to destroy them. And in the process, killing a great many pigs and other animals as well. In the name of freedom they rile up hatred in their hearts for those who perceive of freedom in a different way. And with great self-righteousness they lead armies to kill others, even as they deprive those who are forced to fight of any freedom of their own.”

“That sound horrible,” said Pig #1. “I had always thought that human beings were intelligent creatures. Now I see they have less brains than a pig.”

“Oh, they are not stupid creatures, these humans. In truth, they have more intelligence than the average pig. But when it comes to wisdom and humility, the average pig has them beat.”

*

As A Child I Wanted To Explore Space, Now I Want To Save The Earth

I was born in 1966. For me that meant growing up in the era where space exploration was, as was said in the greatest Sci-Fi TV series of the time, the final frontier. I got to watch as human beings blasted off to the moon and returned to tell about it. If you were not of that era I cannot express to you what an amazing thing it was to consider traveling off-planet for the first time. It was my greatest goal to explore new worlds. It almost seemed like my generation’s destiny. It was my dream to rescue space babes from alien creatures as I had seen it done in so many movies and comic books.

 But I never imagined doing so while leaving a burned-out husk of a planet behind. For me, space exploration meant bringing all that was good and noble about humanity out into the broader universe.

 Now it just seems like a way of leaving all that is worst of us behind. At the cost of a planet. At the cost of every other living being that now inhabits it. And if we are to be quite honest about it, at the expense of about 99.999% of our fellow human beings. Because the vast preponderance of us humans are never getting off this rock alive. All of us with the possible exception of a very elect few have always been and will always be Earthlings.

 I am shocked at how many of us are willing to invest the future of our species in the dreams and aspirations of an elite few. But somehow that flaw seems to run deep in the human species. Parents have since the beginning of recorded history given their children up to die in wars that only serve the interests of kings. I guess it’s kind of selfless, but it’s kind of stupid, too.

 I am older now, and the idea of space travel still intrigues me. But I have other interests now. From my earliest years I was concerned about the environment. At one time I just assumed that humanity was capable of both exploring other worlds AND preserving the only world we had ever known. I mean, it only seemed logical that a species intelligent enough to escape the planet of its origin would also be intelligent enough to take care of its home. And God knows, we should be decent enough to do this, as well.

 But preserving our planet no longer seems a priority to us. Instead, we have decided we must move beyond it before our inability to act sustainably puts an end to our species. This is the mindset we have acquired because we have adopted the values of a very tiny but narcissistic, loud, and confident portion of us. But it is not my mindset, and it never will be.

 Do I feel it is my responsibility to aid in sending a few of our species outward into space to colonize other worlds? Not if my species is one which is incapable of sustaining life on its own planet. Not if my species is incapable of coming in peace. Not if my species is intent on visiting other planets only to exploit their resources and leave whatever life they encounter to die in the pollution it creates. If my species is directly involved in the killing of other terrestrial species and perhaps life itself on the very planet that gave birth to it, why would I wish that on the rest of the universe?

 Should it not be my responsibility to contain this deadly virus before it is able to spread? Is it any different from what we encounter with a pandemic?

 I look at the stars not too differently than I did as a child. I view them with reverence and awe and wonder, and my spirit soars with the desire to know more about the universe of which I am a part. But whatever confusion I had as a child about the difference between exploration and conquest is now gone. The culture I grew up in was very different than the one in which I now find myself. Star Trek was not merely revelatory to the child I was because of the scientific possibilities, but because of the cultural advancements it suggested would coincide with technological progress. At the present moment, scientific and moral progress have been entirely uncoupled.

 Perhaps there will come a time when the human species will be capable of traveling to distant planets. But that is no longer an interest of mine. My priorities are to preserve the planet of my birth, and all the life that lives upon it. I have no desire to view humankind as a parasite that kills its host and moves onto another. I believe we are more than that and that we have not yet shown the best of who we are. To achieve such moral and spiritual progress will require a belief and vision beyond any we’ve demonstrated before. But there was a time not long ago when space flight was just as unthinkable. And yet it was only a matter of three-score and six years between when human flight was unknown to human beings placing footprints upon the moon. Miraculous change can come in the span of a single person’s lifetime. I not only expect such change, I demand it. Until such a change has come, though, don’t expect me to care about Elon Musk’s plans for humanity.

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As A Child I Wanted To Eplore Space, Now I Want To Save The Earth

I was born in 1966. For me that meant growing up in the era where space exploration was, as was said in the greatest Sci-Fi TV series of the time, the final frontier. I got to watch as human beings blasted off to the moon and returned to tell about it. If you were not of that era I cannot express to you what an amazing thing it was to consider traveling off-planet for the first time. It was my greatest goal to explore new worlds. It almost seemed like my generation’s destiny. It was my dream to rescue space babes from alien creatures as I had seen it done in so many movies and comic books.

 But I never imagined doing so while leaving a burned-out husk of a planet behind. For me, space exploration meant bringing all that was good and noble about humanity out into the broader universe.

 Now it just seems like a way of leaving all that is worst of us behind. At the cost of a planet. At the cost of every other living being that now inhabits it. And if we are to be quite honest about it, at the expense of about 99.999% of our fellow human beings. Because the vast preponderance of us humans are never getting off this rock alive. All of us with the possible exception of a very elect few have always been and will always be Earthlings.

 I am shocked at how many of us are willing to invest the future of our species in the dreams and aspirations of an elite few. But somehow that flaw seems to run deep in the human species. Parents have since the beginning of recorded history given their children up to die in wars that only serve the interests of kings. I guess it’s kind of selfless, but it’s kind of stupid, too.

 I am older now, and the idea of space travel still intrigues me. But I have other interests now. From my earliest years I was concerned about the environment. At one time I just assumed that humanity was capable of both exploring other worlds AND preserving the only world we had ever known. I mean, it only seemed logical that a species intelligent enough to escape the planet of its origin would also be intelligent enough to take care of its home. And God knows, we should be decent enough to do this, as well.

 But preserving our planet no longer seems a priority to us. Instead, we have decided we must move beyond it before our inability to act sustainably puts an end to our species. This is the mindset we have acquired because we have adopted the values of a very tiny but narcissistic, loud, and confident portion of us. But it is not my mindset, and it never will be.

 Do I feel it is my responsibility to aid in sending a few of our species outward into space to colonize other worlds? Not if my species is one which is incapable of sustaining life on its own planet. Not if my species is incapable of coming in peace. Not if my species is intent on visiting other planets only to exploit their resources and leave whatever life they encounter to die in the pollution it creates. If my species is directly involved in the killing of other terrestrial species and perhaps life itself on the very planet that gave birth to it, why would I wish that on the rest of the universe?

 Should it not be my responsibility to contain this deadly virus before it is able to spread? Is it any different from what we encounter with a pandemic?

 I look at the stars not too differently than I did as a child. I view them with reverence and awe and wonder, and my spirit soars with the desire to know more about the universe of which I am a part. But whatever confusion I had as a child about the difference between exploration and conquest is now gone. The culture I grew up in was very different than the one in which I now find myself. Star Trek was not merely revelatory to the child I was because of the scientific possibilities, but because of the cultural advancements it suggested would coincide with technological progress. At the present moment, scientific and moral progress have been entirely uncoupled.

 Perhaps there will come a time when the human species will be capable of traveling to distant planets. But that is no longer an interest of mine. My priorities are to preserve the planet of my birth, and all the life that lives upon it. I have no desire to view humankind as a parasite that kills its host and moves onto another. I believe we are more than that and that we have not yet shown the best of who we are. To achieve such moral and spiritual progress will require a belief and vision beyond any we’ve demonstrated before. But there was a time not long ago when space flight was just as unthinkable. And yet it was only a matter of three-score and six years between when human flight was unknown to human beings placing footprints upon the moon. Miraculous change can come in the span of a single person’s lifetime. I not only expect such change, I demand it. Until such a change has come, though, don’t expect me to care about Elon Musk’s plans for humanity.

  If you liked what I write enough to support me, you can buy me a coffee. If you liked it but don't have a credit card handy, please share. Also, follow me on Twitter or Facebook, sign up for my newsletter, or check me out on Amazon.

 

Jack London’s The Iron Heel And Our Ability To Overlook And Rationalize Injustice

 

In the movie The Lady Vanishes, a young woman meets and befriends an older woman aboard a train. When the young woman later seeks out her new-found friend after receiving a bump on her head, suddenly the old woman is nowhere to be found. Worse, no one on the train admits to having seen such a woman at all. People the young woman knew had seen her friend suddenly say she must have imagined it all.

 It turns out each of the people on the train has a reason for not admitting to having seen the old woman: a pair of sports fans are anxious to get to a football match, another man is having an affair and doesn’t want to involve himself in a police investigation, etc. The bottom line is, a group of people are willing to permit a woman to simply vanish without looking for her for purely individual and selfish reasons.

 In the chapter, Jackson’s Arm, from The Iron Heel, a woman named Avis goes in search of the truth regarding the case of a worker who lost his arm in an industrial accident without receiving any compensation from the company he worked for. Avis is quite ensconced and comfortable in society and has no desire to discover a company her father has stock in is capable of treating a worker so unjustly. Surely there must have been something Jackson did wrong to not only be deprived of compensation for his lost arm but also fired from his job. Before she begins her investigation, she is told by the young revolutionary who has challenged her to seek the truth that those people who have helped prevent Jackson receive justice are all tied to the machine that profits from depriving him his due.

 The lawyer who took Jackson’s case admitted that, had he won, he would have taken Jackson for all he was worth in order to escape his situation. But as it was, he never had any chance against the high-powered lawyers aligned against him. But, you see, he was tied to the machine by his children who were not prospering in the filthy neighborhood in which they lived.

 The foreman was willing to speak in confidence to Avis that he thought Jackson should have won his case, though in court he testified against him. He too blamed his actions on his love for his family, saying “it wouldn't a-ben healthy," to speak the truth. He had worked at the mills since he was a child, gradually working his way up to a foreman position. To go against the company would be to surrender everything he had worked so hard for. Asked about how he was able to go against his own conscience and lie to keep Jackson from his rightful settlement, he says “"I'd let me soul an' body burn in everlastin' hell for them children of mine."

 A further meeting with the supervisor at the mill says the same things as the foreman, adding that “It won't do you any good to repeat anything I've said. I'll deny it, and there are no witnesses. I'll deny every word of it; and if I have to, I'll do it under oath on the witness stand."

 Returning to her revolutionary, she tells him, "He seems to have been badly treated. I—I—think some of his blood is dripping from our roof-beams."

 And here she hits on a very important point. Of the people she has spoken to so far, they have each acted unjustly but for reasonable causes: the wellbeing of their families. Avis is the daughter of a college professor. Though far from being wealthy himself, he is nonetheless in a position to acquire a degree of wealth from the labor of others (i.e. he owns stock in the mill where Jackson worked). Whereas those further down the class system than he have no delusions about the wrongness of what they are forced to do, Avis and her father are detached from the reality of it enough that they can deny the wrongness of a system that abandons a worker who has lost his arm while reaching into a machine to try to save it from being wrecked.

 When one does not directly see the ugliness of a system but instead sits in comfort because of it, it is far easier to justify it and even sanctify such a system. That is the role of those who sit between the upper class and the lower. This is where Avis and her father sit, and it is not easy for her to rip herself away from the illusions that have permitted her thus far to have a privileged life. As she sees how others are tied to the machine, she realizes too that she and her father are tied to it as well, and that if she pushes too far into unpleasant truths that it will harm their family as it would those who serve the machine below.

 Avis finds herself in the position of Oedipus, determined to find the truth while sensing the pursuit will only bring about her ruin. Still, she presses on. She speaks with Colonel Ingram, the lawyer for the corporation, whose work prevented a payment to the injured party. He admits that Jackson was due compensation but that his professional duty was to argue on the side of the company. She asks him:

 "Tell me," I said, "when one surrenders his personal feelings to his professional feelings, may not the action be defined as a sort of spiritual mayhem?" I did not get an answer. Colonel Ingram had ingloriously bolted, overturning a palm in his flight.

 She next speaks to a young reporter for one of the papers that did not report on Jackson’s case. He is full of excuses for why the paper did not cover it, saying first of all that it was an editorial decision that did not involve him. He says, “I, myself, do not write untruthful things.” Implicit in the statement is that he is okay with staying silent on issues that might be important. Still more implied is the notion that one who is able to stay silent on important issues is not far from lying about them. Or rationalizing about them.

 Lastly she interviews two of the major stockholders in the mill that has deprived Jackson of his due compensation. Of them, her revolutionary friend says “They were convinced that they were the saviours of society, and that it was they who made happiness for the many. And they drew pathetic pictures of what would be the sufferings of the working class were it not for the employment that they, and they alone, by their wisdom, provided for it…Like all the rest of humanity, (they) are tied to the machine, but they are so tied that they sit on top of it."

 Avis describes them thus: “They talked in large ways of policy, and they identified policy and right. And to me they talked in fatherly ways, patronizing my youth and inexperience. They were the most hopeless of all I had encountered in my quest. They believed absolutely that their conduct was right. There was no question about it, no discussion.”

 Wherever you are positioned in the machine, it is difficult to speak against it. Because whether your life is one of unceasing struggle or pampered ease, the machine is quick to discard the cog that is not serving it. And while those at the bottom recognize that their service is due to necessity, those tied to the top view it as beneficent. While those at the bottom see the injustice done to the many, those who sit on top see only the fineness of the machine, and can only imagine the suffering that occurs at the bottom of the machine to be due to the moral failings of those upon which the entire machinery rests. Too often, their attitudes trickle down to those who uphold them.

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The Sea Wolf And The Oppressed Oppressor

 

Many decades before Ayn Rand developed her theory of selfishness as a virtue, Jack London had already debunked it in his novel, The Sea Wolf. More than that, The Sea Wolf was an attack on Social Darwinism and Nietzscheism, which were popular at the time. The idea that success and survival were built on strength and will alone. Wolf Larson was a man not only of tremendous strength but also great intellect. More than that, he was a man unafraid to use his strengths in order to be supreme ruler of his ship.

 The story begins with a civilized man who is merely taking a ferry across the bay from Oakland to visit a friend in San Francisco. When the ferry sinks in a collision in the fog, he is dragged out into the ocean and is rescued by the Ghost, the ship upon which Wolf Larson rules as a dictator rules a nation.

 Wolf Larson is the oppressor of all his crew. But dominance is a trait which is taught, so that the stronger of those being dominated by the alpha-male, Wolf, mirror his behavior towards the less strong. Thus, at the bottom of the rung there exists one who is bullied by all, the cook Thomas Mugridge. That is, of course, until the rescued and refined main character, Humphry Van Weydon, is brought aboard.

 Humphry is given the demeaning nickname “Hump”, and now sits at the bottom of the ship’s food chain. And rather than getting any sympathy from or solidarity with Mugridge, he is treated as poorly by Mugridge as Mugridge is treated by everybody else.

 I have sadly experienced people like Mugridge myself. There are those who look in their small ways to use the cruelty they've been taught on others even less capable of defending themselves. So often it is the kind person, the person not used to living in a cruel environment, who become the victim of such people. They become victims not because they are weaker but because they assume that treating one such as he with kindness might help him become a better person.

 I swear to you that I have known people who perceive the kindness shown by others as weakness. Do a favor for someone such as he and he will think he has found an easy touch and will seek to exploit you. He will show you no respect so long as you try to treat him fairly. He will not back off until you demonstrate the only thing he knows as real: strength.

 Sadly, there are many people who are victims of power who become like lesser models of their victimizer. People among oppressed classes, nations, genders, or races who mirror the very thing they should most despise. Aboard the Ghost, cruelty is the lesson taught by Wolf Larson and the lesson learned by his crew.

 “Hump” has come from a different environment, one which is more civilized and less obviously oppressive. Being aboard the Ghost, he is forced to fight for his own rights and dignity, but he does not lose his ideals. He believes viscerally that this is not the way to run a ship.

 This is the only sane reaction to such cruelty, a cruelty that has echoed through Twentieth Century in the guise of fascism and imperialism. We’ve seen societies based on strength, cruelty, and violence. Such ways of organizing either a ship or a society have always been opposed by those seeking justice, whether it be through mutiny or political revolution. Unfortunately, the lesson of cruelty has been learned too well among some belonging to the oppressed class. And while they might support a revolution that will get rid of their oppressor, they are not doing it to achieve justice. They are doing it so that they might get the upper hand over others where before they were powerless.

 In The Sea Wolf, Wolf Larson is unable to live in the world he has shaped for himself and unwilling to imagine another world is possible. He has created a philosophy where cruelty is necessary and strength is the only thing that can shape the world. But inwardly, despite his immense physical and mental strength, he is being destroyed by incapacitating headaches and the very ugliness of his own convictions.

Mugridge and Wolf Larson are eventually killed by the cruel world they cannot escape. Hump has also been forced to contend with the cruelty of the “real” world, the law of struggle, of tooth and claw, and is made stronger as a result. But he refuses to believe it is the only reality possible, and so survives it. 

 Jack London was no stranger to the struggle for life. He was an adventurer in an age of adventurers, exploring a better part of the world the way the underclass does, by hard labor and great courage and endurance. But while he went to the Arctic in search of gold and worked as a crewmember on ships that sailed the oceans, while he saw the cruelty to be found in nature and in man, while he knew what it took to survive distanced from civilization, he maintained a vision of a better world possible.

 We need to be able to maintain a foothold in both camps if we are to build a world that is not ruled by the likes of a Wolf Larson. We need to envision a nobler world while being able to survive in the harsh world as it exists today. To do this we will have to engage with the Mugridges and force them to respect us, because if we do nothing they will eat away at the world we long to create. Because they are incapable of or unwilling to see a world that is not just some smaller version of Wolf Larson’s. I see them today in various groups that talk about building a better society. While they rail against those who oppress them, you clearly see them mirroring the very behavior they say they oppose. They are the ones saying you must fight fire with fire. And while they are not quite emboldened enough yet to use actual violence, they will use whatever tools they have at their disposal to maintain their own personal positions of power and security.

 I see it too in people who were once oppressed who, having the opportunity to rule over others, are little better than their former oppressors.

The problem with a Mugridge is that they live entirely within the world shaped by the Wolf Larsons. They will never shake free of it, and while they may say they are fighting oppression, they are doing so only to free themselves from it, not eradicate it. Such a mindset can never lead to a more just society, it will only change who will be the oppressor and who the oppressed.

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To Go Forward, First You Must Go Inward

This is the door you’ve feared to open. It is the door you must walk through. The way will be dark but I promise you the only true (redeeming) light is to be found on the other side of that darkness. You cannot lock away the darkness, for it will stay inside of you and eat at you. All of us must confront the things we locked away in childhood, the things that warped us and made us grow up into people we never wanted to be.

 I was looking at stock photos on MS Word today, and so many of them made me think “Oh God, I want to be there.” And every single image I saw that elicited that response from me was of something from the natural world. A flower, impossibly complex and beautiful. A panda in the wild, staring at me with eyes that were windows into a soul not so different than yours or mine. A stretch of forest in peak autumn colors. The sky surrendering the sun into the sea for the evening.

 This is where I wanted to be, with nature. Pretty much anywhere. How few of us have the privilege to spend much of our lives in communion with it. How few of us have the time to appreciate it as we drive through our busy lives in order to acquire and build the very things that are destroying all that we should hold most dear.

 We have seriously screwed up, people. As I continued to look through images while caged within the confines of my workspace, I was reminded of the joy and awe that I was able to experience as a child who had the time and the opportunity to witness even the simplest of nature’s wonders. A picture of robin’s eggs in a nest built upon the limb of a blossoming tree, small symbols of the overwhelming renewal of spring.

 This was our lives once upon a time. This is the environment we were created for. Not just on vacation. Not just on the weekend. We were meant to live our lives in nature. We ARE nature. When we cut ourselves off from her, we cut ourselves off from ourselves. Our true selves are locked in a dark room, afraid to even whisper. And yet that we are aware of that truth, though we do not permit it to enter our thoughts.

 We have cut ourselves off from the songs of birds. We do not witness the awesome experience of a sunrise. We do not really understand what the word awesome once meant. We use the word to describe pizza now.

 We do not know nature. We do not know the home that was made for us, that we were made for. We look to the stars as though we were explorers, never admitting we are not running to but running away. We fancy it a great and grand goal to be able to escape the environment we’ve very nearly destroyed.

 Put away your fanciful notions—you will die on this planet. You and everyone you know will die on this planet. The question is will you ever truly live on it? Because you cannot truly live when the better part of you sits in the darkness of fear and repression. Society has taught you its trauma and you have incorporated it into your being and will pass it on to your children, and they to theirs, until someone is willing to open that door and face the pain. That which does not kill you will make you stronger, but first you must feel it. You must be willing to let it touch you. You must open yourself up to it when for your entire life you’ve allowed yourself to believe it does not exist at all.

 We have to accept what we have done if we ever want to change for the better. What we have done because we have allowed others to tell us that's the way the world works. That murder is okay if you can justify it, that polluting our Earth is okay if someone makes money from it. We have to accept what has been done to us if we ever want to be free of it. And we can’t just do that with our intellect, we have to open up our deepest selves to it. Otherwise we are kidding ourselves to the grave.

 We’ve got to set aside all our distracting and comforting beliefs, our looping programs that are triggered whenever discomfort creeps up in us. We have to let go of all the crap society has told us and just feel. We have to feel Hiroshima. We have to experience its full horror without trying to rationalize it. We have to feel centuries of slavery. We have to feel the Holocaust, the rape of Nanking, the Armenian Genocide, the Massacre of the Congo. Feel it. Feel all the horrors humans are capable of. Not to fellow humans only but to every living thing. Admit the horrors of factory farming. Acknowledge how it must feel to work at an animal processing plant, see yourself as that person operating the bulldozer that is tearing down a forest while an orangutan tries to step between the machine and its home. Feel it, admit it, let it inside, because that is what you and I and us are.

 We are the ones polluting our rivers and streams, killing the life of the oceans themselves. It is not them, it is not the system, it is not the government it is not the corporations it is not capitalism or communism or men or white people or the Chinese or the Jews or the Trump supporters or the liberals. Don’t blame it on the powerful, because we are all the powerful, most of us just refuse to believe it. Most of us choose to lock the belief in the power we have by right of birth away because we have been traumatized. Most of us would rather live our entire lives only half-living because we are afraid to confront the trauma brought upon us. Because the people who caused it were grownups beating the resistance out of children the way it was once beaten out of them.

 Just let yourself feel. Open yourself up to the inside voice rather than trying to make peace with the outside voices, those voices that were put inside your brain to silence your own. Whatever you feel is yours, no one can explain it to you. No one can judge you, no one can call you weak for confronting and dealing with that which tried to control you from the outside, which planted its seed in you and tried to make you act according to its example. Finding your own true self may make you think you look weak in the eyes of others, but it is far more important to feel strong in your own skin.

 Feel what needs to be felt. Don’t defend, don’t deflect, don’t deny, just feel. It will feel as if there is a wave so great behind the damn of fear you have built that it will crush you, will destroy your entire world.

 Let it splash over you. These are your feelings. Don’t deny them. They ARE you. Let it be released. Let YOU be released. As it does rushes over you, it will so completely cleanse your insides that the water will pour out of your eyes. Let the tears flow. Let yourself feel like you have never allowed yourself to feel before. It is healing. It will make you strong. It will make you strong in the way you always tried to be but never really believed you could.

 When you open up that door, you are not letting the darkness out, you are letting the light in. You are letting it in so that you will never have to feel that fear again, you will never have to run from yourself or the life you want again. You will never again have to carry around that darkness, that fear, that lie.

 You will never have to try to be strong again because the strength will flow through you, a strength greater than any you could ever have summoned through will. You have misunderstood what strength means. You have thought it meant the ability to behave as someone once told you you should if you were to be a man. Or a woman. Or acceptable. Or loved. Strength does not come from the outside, but from the inside. Strength is not achieved by carrying the bull shit of others but by freeing yourself of it. Strength is never again having to defend the stories and the narratives of others.

 You will never have to be afraid again, because fear no longer has a place to live within you. You have opened that door where it sought refuge. You have subjected it to the light, and it has withered.

 This is the door you feared to open, and it has brought light into the dark places. This is the dark path you feared to walk through, and it has brought you to a light that made all things clear. You are once again a child of nature, in touch with your own nature which cries out for the natural. Your path is clear, your mind is clear, your heart is clear.

 You are free. 

You are powerful.

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