I said to the Yeti, wash yo’ butt! Quit leaping out like that, you’ll scare the children. Second graders by the looks of them, more-or-less absorbed in their crayoning, which I can only imagine features yellow suns in the corner and birds in the shape of the letter m. Motherly letter, how well I remember learning its name! M’s the one that looks like mountains and the birds that circle them, idiotically, in old cracked paintings from the Renaissance – which I still can’t spell without help. Every day is Earth Day, but today is special because my ISP is down and I am forced to go wandering outside, peering closely at the unfamiliar trees and wondering where I left my clothes, all of a sudden, and why I have grown so hairy. I’ve been taking howling lessons from Elvis, listen: [fire alarm]. Then there’s [a train whistle, only it’s nothing like a whistle]. I am walking lightly on the earth, I am stopping to smell the flowers, let me hear you say Hail Yeah. My feet are shaped like large, cracked gourds, my nose drips like a candle. My eyes – Lord knows – are bloodshot from too much peering in peoples’ windows to watch TV. I am registered to vote – no party affiliation. The last time I tried to affiliate, no one was willing to swear in blood. What the hell good was that? You want friendship, you want brotherhood, get out the goddamn knife. Nobody wants to commit anymore: no walking under turf, no trials by ordeal. It’s enough just to enter a couple digits somewhere, move a decimal point and poof! someone’s nonexistent wallet gets heavier, poof! a mountain turns into a valley, poof! mercury is good for us. Easy come, easy go. My friend the coyote stopped by and left his calling card, a pungent remark bristling with the hair of somebody’s dog. It was in fact shaped like the letter C. You can read into that whatever you want. And since today is Earth Day, I expect some fool will try.
The bloody sire
On Sunday night I finally got a chance to see Bowling for Columbine. I was extremely impressed. As a gun-toting freedom-lover, I was especially pleased that Moore did not simply blame the surfeit of easily available weaponry for the astonishing levels of gun violence in this country. He went to Canada to find out why its similarly well armed citizens manage to avoid shooting each other, and discovered an astonishing fact: Canadians don’t live in fear of their neighbors. He couldn’t find anyone in Ottawa or Toronto who admitted to locking their doors – “It makes us feel like we’re imprisoning ourselves,” one explained. They were also proud of the fact that their government shies away from violence as a tool of first resort in international diplomacy. Their nightly news features long, boring analyses of tedious issues such as health care and the environment, rather than hysterical reports about the latest threats to civilization and decency. About 11 percent of Canadians belong to ethnic minorities, yet white-skinned inhabitants of the suburbs seem to lack their U.S. counterparts’ obsession with looming invasions by armies of the less-fortunate. Moore interviews some African American men from Detroit who love to spend their weekends in Windsor – “I can RELAX here. People treat me like I’m just a normal person!” My father points out that Canadians won their independence as a result of an act of the British parliament – not from a revolution.
The same thing that bothered me at the time of the Columbine shootings four years ago had also stuck in Michael Moore’s craw. Here you had the president making strong statements about the need to lessen the appeal of violence among our nation’s youth, at the same time that he was sending young people in uniform to Serbia to bomb schools, bridges and power plants. What makes the U.S. different from Great Britain, Canada and Australia? Simply put: we have a unique and unshakeable belief in the redemptive power of violence. Hollywood movies are popular everywhere, but only in the U.S.A. are we so unsophisticated to think that John Wayne and Dirty Harry have the right approach. A lone ranger, armed with a six-shooter and his own moral rectitude, can make everything right again. Call it naivete or call it idealism: over 80 percent of USians tell pollsters they believe in angels and in heaven – but not in hell. Hell is for other people.
Watching Bowling for Columbine reminded me that I too had made a collage of sorts – though my results weren’t nearly as effective as Moore’s. I stitched together sentences and phrases from issues of The Christian Science Monitor from March-April 1999. (Why not The New York Times? The Monitor is the only daily newspaper I read. Plus, it features much better writing than the Times.) I discovered a curious symmetry in descriptions of and statements from the two presidents, Milosovic and Clinton. See if you can match the phrase with the administration.
BALKANIZATION: PIECING TOGETHER THE NEWS
Will this be the end of Mortal Kombat & Street Fighter? Peace in the Balkans, says Henry Kissinger, has existed only when a superior force has imposed it from above. Public opinion is very volatile. The two sides are increasingly locked in a contest to influence what plays on television. Their instructions: create & execute a marketing campaign that will get people thinking about God. Who’s in charge of watching the watchman? The images are so overwhelming.
The Serbs are unable to compete with the slick production of Western companies & TV stations. Boy Scouts have been going into the inner cities–U.S. protectorates where peace depends on F-15Es and Humvees. It worked well, but they were always being watched by the secret police. They’ve built war rooms & use sophisticated computer programs to look for crime patterns.
Police with pistols drawn jumped the car of two foreign journalists for no apparent reason. Many minority youths complain that they are routinely frisked. When it comes to going to a concert or dance, they are afraid of getting pulled over or arrested & beaten. Many of the worst atrocities are believed to have been carried out by paramilitary groups. Men & women, including the elderly, nurse wounds from batons or rifle butts. What researchers have documented is that prolonged consumption of this kind of stuff cultivates scripts in people’s heads.
I don’t think anyone knows the endgame. The situation has simply become too polarized by bullets & bombs. Even the waiter in the only hotel packs a .45. Drivers don’t stop at red lights any more. One of the state-controlled television stations showed hard-core pornography in the middle of the day. Body parts could be seen sticking out of a massive pile of bricks & twisted metal that was littered with plastic decorative flowers, old shoes & a Rubik’s Cube. Even “good” kids were potential victims of un-structured spare time–hanging out, boredom, lack of direction & cynicism. Budget restraints & a Republican Congress forced a mini-agenda of school uniforms and V-chips.
Now we’re one, like a fist. We are at war & this is propaganda. It shows the world that we are capable of doing something generous. The administration, with public opinion on its side, seems to want the bombing to continue. Airstrikes are helping the president. Touted as a test case for the “New World Order,” it was a diabolical extension of what he’s done before. The media’s depiction of violence as a means of resolving conflict & a national culture which tends to glorify violence further condoned his thinking. And in the macho warrior culture of the Balkans, to the victor goes not only the glory & spoils but also leadership & authority.
At stake now is the administration’s credibility in the eyes of its enemy. The worst thing you can have is people standing & shooting at each other in the White House. They were given a few minutes to leave their homes, which were looted & then burned, some with the infirm left inside. The president succeeded because he understood the power of fear & knew how to use it for his own purposes. The decibel level of the debate & its content, rich with mixed messages, made it especially dangerous. He will live in a bunker & take as many people with him as he can.
The jets are a kind of high-tech insurance. The squadron cancelled a war-game exercise in Las Vegas to head to the bombings. One by one, pilots balled their fists & pumped them in a “Rocky” pose, completing a familiar air warrior salute. Gambling is exhausting, so nothing less than the best will do for the tired gambler. General Electric’s chairman John Welch Jr. pocketed $52.6 million, while Viacom head Sumner Redstone got options worth $50.5 million. “Our demands are clear & he has to accept them. If not, the bridges keep coming down, the factories keep coming down, & hunger is just over the horizon.”
Such images play to a common weakness of democracies: a reluctance to sustain a long war. The Clinton administration is famous for being “on message,” with everyone singing the same policy chorus. “We love your music, your television, everything. We hope we can work with American companies when the war is over. The video games numb our youth to the issue of violence or violent acts, like trying to hit a puddle of mercury with a hammer.” And few can remember the last time any warrior took scissors in hand, signalling that something was being built & not being destroyed.
On not learning: some quotes
The Spring/Summer 2004 issue of Wild Earth has several thought-provoking pieces. Here are a few excerpts.
“Pressed flowers. Bird nests, butterflies behind glass, shells. Hand lenses and tattered field guides. A child reaching for a feather in the grass. Natural history.
“It’s going extinct, and nowhere more quickly than where we need it the most – in our colleges and universities. These days, you don’t need an understanding of – or even an interest in – natural history to get into a graduate program in ecology or any other branch of biology. Financial support for basic natural history research is all but gone. The close, scrupulous observation of nature has a long and illustrious history, but it is now sliding into oblivion . . .
“It’s as if biology has split into two kinds: for-profit and not-for-profit. The for-profit kind: that’s molecular biology, the ‘New Biology’ much in vogue these days – understandably so. Discoveries at the molecular level have revealed layer upon layer, wonder after wonder, in a world of complexity none of us could have guessed at a half century ago when the revelation of the double helix set the genomic era in motion. Yet this has led to the reductionist point of view that everything in biology is explicable by molecular processes, that explaining biological events at the molecular level is the ultimate goal of biology . . .
“And the not-for-profit biology? That’s natural history. Knowledge for its own sake. A field for the passionate amateur and the inspired schoolteacher – and until lately, the professional biologist. Biology departments are phasing out traditional courses in natural history. It’s incipient at some universities and well underway at many others.”
Thomas Eisner and Mary M. Woodsen, “The Science of Wonder: Natural History in the Balance”
*
“No one knows how many synthetic chemicals act as endocrine disrupters. A partial list includes a variety of pesticides, products associated with plastics (including plastic drinking bottles), breakdown products of household detergents, cosmetics, and a number of common industrial chemicals. Little is known about endocrine disrupters because previous tests for health effects focused on cancer. Endocrine disruption, like the earlier discovery of synthetic carcinogens, is a novel surprise.
“Can we think our way out of this problem? Endocrine disruption is impossible to predict based on a molecule’s structure, and effects may be difficult to evaluate experimentally because they include behavioral changes that are often less obvious than physical abnormalities. Moreover, endocrine disruption may occur during very brief windows of embryological exposure (as short as a few days), and may involve interactions between different chemicals. How many interactions are possible among the 58 endocrine disrupters that the Environmental Working Group found in the blood and urine of its nine study subjects? Are we smart enough to understand and manage the cascade of possible effects?”
* * * *
“A rat on a treadmill learns that if it runs when it hears a beep it can avoid an electric shock. The rat can also learn to turn to avoid a shock. But rats cannot learn to rear up on their hind legs to avoid being shocked. The explanation for a rat’s learning pattern is simple: shocks are unpleasant, and running and turning are innate avoidance responses. In contrast, rearing occurs to satisfy curiosity and is an innately exploratory behavior. The rat’s bran cannot learn to avoid danger using a naturally exploratory behavior. So even when rats frequently happen to avoid a shock by rearing, they never make the connection and learn to avoid the shock by rearing when the beep sounds. In fact, over a number of trials, a rat will rear less and less when rearing is the only way to avoid the shock. In an environment alien to its intelligence, the rat exhibits less, not more, of the behavior that could help it to avoid an unpleasant outcome.”
Matthew Orr, “Intelligence Lost: Pitfalls of a Tamed Planet”
*
“Rain drummed on the hatches and splashed off the decks, but still we could make out the sound of a wolf howling from the cliffs over the cove where we dropped anchor. There was only one wolf, although we listened carefully to make sure. The howl started low, leapt up, slid across the water, and sank away. Nothing answered the wolf’s call. Frank and I listened, as the wolf must have listened, the question probing the clouds and damping out in the forest, in the draperies of lichens and drooping hemlock boughs. . . .
“When my colleague, a concert pianist, explained the augmented fourth, she brought both hands in front of her body, palms skyward, fingers spread, and lifted the air. For her, words are not enough to explain this interval. This is a sound that floods the soul, she said, and she strained forward from the waist. The augmented fourth is a heartbreaking interval, dissonance that comes close to consonance, pulls itself so close, but never reaches the perfect fifth that is almost within its grasp.
“She leaned over the keyboard and played two notes: C, F-sharp. Then she flooded the room with music made of the unfinished intervals, harmonies that lead to resolution but never reach a place of peace. Tony, reaching for Maria. A Greek chorus pleading with the gods to have mercy on Orestes’ soul, this man who has murdered his mother. Tristan, reaching for the white sail that will bring his beloved Isolde on a following wind. And Robert Schumann, poor lovesick Schumann, yearning for Clara. Yearning: this ancient word, diving straight through history from the beginnings of language itself, a word as old as home and earth. No one in Christian medieval Europe sang the augmented fourth, my colleague said. It was the diabolus in musica, the devil’s chord – so powerful it could grab a parishioner, drag him to his knees and pull him, scraping on the paving stones, straight to hell. And there I was in that tide-dragged island wilderness, also on my knees, trying to understand the pull of these same two notes.”
Kathleen Dean Moore, “The Augmented Fourth”
Faulty intelligence
It is by now bleedingly obvious that the occupation of Iraq is unraveling for entirely preventable reasons. As Noam Chomsky pointed out the other day, it takes real talent to fail so spectacularly.
Now, I realize people don’t come here for politics. But the question of how common sense can be so consistently and flagrantly hijacked by idiocy relates directly to the main theme of this weblog. While the architects of the Iraq policy (going back through the Clinton regime to George I) may not have been exactly “the best and the brightest,” they were far from stupid – in the sense that they had (with one or two obvious exceptions) the best educations money could buy. And as we all know, formal education makes people more broad-minded and tolerant, right?
What I am working towards here is a hypothesis about the relationship of arrogance to ignorance and spectacular failure. There’s more than one kind of ignorance. The worst kind comes from people who think they do know it all, who fail to recognize the limits of their own intelligence – and who refuse to listen to the councils of any higher power, be it vox populi or vox dei.
I’ll develop these ideas more fully another time. For now, check out this report from the Guardian about the march of folly in Argentina.
A confused chorus
.
To a Lonely Hermaphrodite
Know
thyself.
John M. Burns, Biograffiti: A Natural Selection, Norton, 1975
“Most European languages have two verbs with the sense of ‘to know,’ one meaning to know a person in the sense of friendship or acquaintance (French, connaitre; German, kennen; Spanish, conocer, Russian, poznakomit’), and other meaning to know facts (French, savoir; German, wissen; Spanish, saber; Russian, znat’).”
Curtis Brautigam
And Adam knew (yada’) Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD.
Genesis 4:1
“Yada’: a primitive root; to know (properly, to ascertain by seeing); used in a great variety of senses, figuratively, literally, euphemistically and inferentially (including observation, care, recognition; and causatively, instruction, designation, punishment, etc.) (as follow):–acknowledge, acquaintance(-ted with), advise, answer, appoint, assuredly, be aware, (un-)awares, can(-not), certainly, comprehend, consider, X could they, cunning, declare, be diligent, (can, cause to) discern, discover, endued with, familiar friend, famous, feel, can have, be (ig-)norant, instruct, kinsfolk, kinsman, (cause to let, make) know, (come to give, have, take) knowledge, have (knowledge), (be, make, make to be, make self) known, + be learned, + lie by man, mark, perceive, privy to, X prognosticator, regard, have respect, skilful, shew, can (man of) skill, be sure, of a surety, teach, (can) tell, understand, have (understanding), X will be, wist, wit, wot.”
Strong’s Bible Dictionary
“The verb yada’ (‘to know’) exhibits a wide array of meanings in biblical Hebrew. In various contexts yada’ and its cognates may denote sense perception, intellectual apprehension, possession of facts and information that can be learned and transmitted, practical skill, discriminating judgment, even physical intimacy. However, when yada’ has God as its object, it implies far more than simple ‘acknowledgment.’ Nahum Sarna writes:
In the biblical conception, knowledge is not essentially or even primarily rooted in the intellect and mental activity. Rather, it is more experiential and is embedded in the emotions, so that it may encompass such qualities as contact, intimacy, concern, relatedness and mutuality (Exodus, JPS Torah Commentary, p. 5).”
Commentary Press
Know thyself. (Gnothi seauton)
“ATTRIBUTION: Delphic Oracle. Inscription on the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi, Greece, 6th century B.C.
“The words are traditionally ascribed to the ‘Seven Sages’ or ‘Seven Wise Men’ of ancient Greece, and specifically to Solon of Athens (c. 640-c. 558 B.C.).”
The Columbia World of Quotations
“The Greeks were always careful to solicit approval from their gods before setting out from home, whether for commercial voyages or colonization. The god most frequently consulted about sending out a colony was Apollo in his sanctuary at Delphi, a hauntingly beautiful spot in the mountains of central Greece. The Delphic sanctuary began to be internationally renowned in the eighth century B.C. because it housed an oracular shrine in which a prophetess, the Pythia, spoke the will of Apollo in response to questions from visiting petitioners. The Delphic oracle operated for a limited number of days over nine months of the year, and demand for its services was so high that the operators of the sanctuary rewarded generous contributors with the privilege of jumping to the head of the line. The great majority of visitors to Delphi consulted the oracle about personal matters such as marriage and having children. That Greeks hoping to found a colony felt they had to secure the approval of Apollo of Delphi demonstrates the oracle was held in high esteem already as early as the 700s B.C., a reputation that continued to make the oracle a force in Greek international affairs in the centuries to come.”
Thomas R. Martin, An Overview of Classical Greek History from Mycenae to Alexander
“Reality and rhetoric are becoming confused. The means through which the United States pursued its Cold War goals – world leadership, global responsibility, strategic alliances, declaratory morality, and so on – have become ends in themselves. Geopolitical analysis is taking second place”.
Jonathan Clarke, “America, Know Thyself”
“Apollo ritually purifies Orestes after the murder of his mother Clytemnestra. The ritual cleanses Orestes of guilt for having committed matricide. The pig’s blood symbolically absolves him from his crime. Delphi became associated with ritualistically cleansing moral pollution; thus, it became a place of exile for those who committed murder or other morally questionable deeds.
“Apollo returned to Delphi in the form of a dolphin (hence, the name Delphi). The Delphic oracle, known also as ‘Pythia,’ would be seated on a tripod (Apollo’s symbol of prophesy) in a trance. Scholars believe that the tripod might have been situated above a fissure in the floor of the temple from which arose the vapors. The oracle would also chew laurel leaves.
“The laurel is an important symbol for Apollo. Eros made Apollo fall in love with the nymph, Daphne, because Apollo mocked his archery skills. Daphne rejected Apollo and fled him. When he caught her and just as he was embracing her, she turned into a laurel tree. Thus, to commemorate his love for Daphne, Apollo made the laurel his sacred tree.
“The Pythia, in a trance state, would only mumble her answer, which a high priest would translate into Apollo’s prophesy. Everyone involved in the ritual had to be ritually washed in the springs. An animal would be sacrificed and, if conditions were favorable, the petitioner could then enter the sanctuary. The question, which had been previously written, was handed to the priest, who in turn asked the Pythia for Apollo’s answer. The priest would translate into hexameter verse.
“The Omphalos, literally the navel, sits in the middle of the sanctuary at Delphi. Pausanias refers to it as the center of the Earth. According to myth, Zeus, trying to determine the middle of the Earth, sent two eagles, one flying east and another flying west. They met at Delphi. It became an important symbol of the prophetic arts.
“Cassandra, a figure in the Oresteia, also is associated with Apollo. Apollo made overtures to Cassandra. She agreed to be with him if he gave her the gift of prophesy. After he taught her prophesy, Cassandra refused Apollo. There is some disagreement as to whether she outright refused him or she did not bear him any children. Nonetheless, to exact revenge, and since he could not take back his gift of prophesy, Apollo cursed Cassandra. All her prophesies, though true, would not be believed or understood. Agamemnon returns from the Trojan War with Cassandra as his concubine. She foretells his death and the Orestes’ revenge on Clytemnestra to a confused chorus.”
Angie M. Kenna, “Apollo: Background, Mythology and Images”
“I absolutely cannot believe that the U.S. is bombarding a mosque in Iraq. The stupidity, arrogance, and total lack of comprehensive thinking – not to mention foresight about the consequences of their actions – the administration is exhibiting are so appalling that there is nothing to say; one listens, reads the headlines, and goes away slack-jawed and stupified, and –shaking that off — desiring nothing more than to climb to the top of the highest building and shout ‘WAKE UP!!!’ But what would come back? A giant, empty echo?”
The automobile in the Walking Blues
Images of the holy and the damned. The police handcuffing a man who collected old copies of the New York Times and had them stuffed and mounted in flagrant violation of the Endangered Species Act. His two small children left to fend for themselves among the junker cars and the hippies with their experimental solar-powered aircraft. They were ready to go visit their daddy in jail if I would take them – but was that really the right thing to do? I was so confused! It’s never a good idea to sleep past dawn, I find.
Lethargy and impatience are conspiring against my enthusiasm for the written word. But is that all? This time of year can be unsettling for a confirmed bachelor, you know. Everything is thawing and flowing and springing up with unselfconscious abandon. (Is there any other kind?)
A body wishes to be held, & held, & what
Can you do about that?
wrote Larry Levis, greatest among the late 20th-century prophets of the heaven of loneliness –
. . . some final city made entirely
Of light . . .
And what did T.S. Eliot know about April? More than I might care to admit. Mixing memory and desire, I am finding it increasingly difficult to disappear between the keys on the keypad. Whose cruel idea was it to make this “National Poetry Month”? Hell, I can barely stomach Earth Day anymore. All those earnest pleas to be a responsible consumer, live lightly on the earth, etc. – as if that’s enough! But I have been guilty myself of indulging in the even more egregious delusion that Poetry Can Save Us. From which monstrous windmills, oh Don Coyote?
In truth, I woke up this morning with the blues for the blues. To wit: I sure do wish I hadn’t sold all my records off years ago to buy booze! That was so wrong. I especially miss my copy of the 1941 Library of Congress field recordings of Son House, about which an anonymous British reviewer somewhere out in cyberspace writes,
This is a rough ride, but he sure can drive any song home- as does the automobile heard going past on “Walking Blues.”
“Drive.” Where did that come from? And I’m wondering: can anyone who doesn’t own a car in the U.S. of A. – especially if they live out in the sticks – really ever possess “drive”? (Be careful, now!)
Or what about, you know, drives? Maybe I could just make do with a good old-fashioned urge or two. Once again. With feeling.
Got up this morning feelin’
’round for my shoes,
you know ’bout that musta had
them walkin’ blues . . .
Son of House, you knew only a heap of broken images, where the sun beats. But they sure sounded great coming out of that steel guitar! Not to mention the bottle’s severed neck riding on your littlest finger. That afterthought, that fifth wheel. Good for nothing but trouble –
When you vanish into that one cry which means
Your body is no longer quite your own
And when your face looks like a face stricken
From this world, a saint’s face, your eyes closing
On some final city made entirely
Of light . . .
(Levis again, in a completely different context.)
Unreal City, man.
More on compassion
Studies of giving patterns among Americans show that it is only the well-off who can afford “compassion fatigue.” In proportion to their income (and their free time), poorer folks donate much more time and money to charitable causes than the rich.
I believe this pattern is repeated around the world. I was just reading the family blog of some Palestinian-Iraqis, A Family in Baghdad, where the mother, Faiza, wrote:
Today I was driving my car to work and a convoy of American military vehicles passed to my left. We remained cautious and slowed down because we were afraid to come near them. I always pray that they return safely home because I’m a mother and I think with a mother’s heart not with a man’s cruel fighting heart.
They have another way in dealing with life and its problems.
************************
I was thinking what would happen if they got attacked right now? where will it be from? it’s a sunny day.
Just as I was thinking I saw in front of me a cloud of smoke first then a sound of explosion that remained in my ear for over an hour. The birds were frightened and flew away . . .
She is not quite so charitable toward the leaders, however.
Bosh and Sharon made a press conference in the evening; they buy and sell other people’s countries and ignoring the struggle of Palestinian people that lasted for the last fifty years.
The powerful evil always stand in front of the camera smiling, and forget that there is a god in the skies up there, who has rules and justice, that he implements it in his way, and defeats the stupid evil when he wants.
“Let them play till they face the promised day” God says in Quran.
Cue up Black Sabbath, “War Pigs.”
But if the war pigs have their way, the possibility of compassion from our side will become virtually impossible – because machines will do all the killing. Conn Hallinan wrote recently about the U.S. Department of “Defense” plan “to make one third of the military’s combat vehicles driverless by 2015.” This is part of an overarching strategy for fully mechanized warfare that would include “unmanned combat aircraft, robot tanks, submarines, and a supersonic bomber capable of delivering six tons of bombs and missiles to anyplace on the globe in two hours.”
If this plan is carried out, it will also deprive Iraqi mothers – and other kind-hearted souls among the lucky millions targeted for “liberation” – of any souls to pray for among their “liberators.” No one for her or her God to be merciful towards. No one to show mercy.
(Satan, laughing, spreads his wings.)
Gone/out
I think I can, I think I can . . . write a short blog post for once! Hang a virtual sign on the virtual door handle reading, Gone Out Walking. Because it’s that kind of morning: first clear blue day in over a week, with temperatures forecast to climb into the 50s or even 60s. At this rate, the last of our snowpack (on the north-facing side of the gap, right above the railroad tracks) may be gone by the weekend. Trailing arbutus is already starting to blossom, but I’m hoping this weather will bring out the shadbush. Those first splotches of white, contrasting with the red/orange blush of maple on the otherwise bare, brown mountainsides always fill me with delight. Well, “delight” doesn’t begin to express it, but . . . If I may indulge in a flagrant abuse of Christian jargon, this first major blooming event signals for me a transition from Nature’s kenosis (self-emptying, self-limitation) to pleroma (fullness, abundance). (Incidentally, anyone who’s stopping by in the vain hope of actually learning something about the via negativa can ponder what the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia has to say about kenosis.)
A stray thought from the vaults:
Nature writer and anthropologist Richard Nelson once wrote, “There may be more to learn from climbing the same mountain a hundred times than from climbing a hundred different mountains.” Yes, but one shouldn’t imagine that all discoveries are equally joyous. In my bleaker moods, I think: pain is simply the price of understanding. Of taking a stand.
But aside from the wordplay, what the heck does understanding have to do with taking a stand? I am such a sloppy thinker . . .
And now there’s a stray dog on my doorstep. Gotta go.
Compassion fatigue
Today I want to pose a simple question: can we – should we – feel compassion for those who lack all compassion? Does it even make sense to try and empathize with those who cannot empathize? As an act of imagination, this may be an interesting and even heroic effort. But in real life, things get messier. Psychologists tell us that people with sociopathic, psychopathic and narcissistic personalities are often very charming and charismatic. Many of them have become masters of feigned emotions that they don’t really feel. This strikes me as the perfect foil for a truly loving imagination.
I know I’ve made a number of slighting remarks about the science of psychology in the past, but this is a phenomenon that really interests me. One of my brothers first brought it to my attention several months back, as he struggled to understand the bizarre behavior of a colleague. And as I read descriptions of this disorder, I was reminded of several people I knew or knew of. Here’s some background:
“For many years, psychologists have studied the frightening reality of psychopathic or sociopathic personalities — the serial killers, the child abusers, the pathologically consistent liars and incorrigible thieves. The scientific study of these individuals was systemically organized by Hervey Cleckley and his 1941 classic The Mask of Sanity, and today the specialist Robert Hare is one of the foremost authorities in the field. According to Hare, the key emotional and interpersonal traits defining the psychopathic personality syndrome are: a smooth, glib capability to lie, manipulate and dissemble; a completely callous lack of empathy or concern for others; shallow emotional affect and lack of remorse; and egocentric grandiosity.”
If you happened to be watching television or listening to the radio yesterday evening, you may have heard this fascinating exchange:
“What would your biggest mistake be, would you say, and what lessons have you learned from it?”
“I wish you would have given me this written question ahead of time, so I could plan for it. (Laughter.) John, I’m sure historians will look back and say, gosh, he could have done it better this way, or that way. You know, I just – I’m sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, with all the pressure of trying to come up with an answer, but it hadn’t yet. . . .
“I hope I – I don’t want to sound like I’ve made no mistakes. I’m confident I have. I just haven’t – you just put me under the spot here, and maybe I’m not as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one.”
This same individual has often been dismissed as a shallow figurehead or a dimwit, but those who have had the occasion to observe him closely claim he’s neither. For example:
“He has no trouble speaking off the cuff when he’s speaking punitively, when he’s talking about violence, when he’s talking about revenge . . . When he struts and thumps his chest, his syntax and grammar are fine. It’s only when he leaps into the wild blue yonder of compassion, or idealism, or altruism, that he makes these hilarious mistakes. . . . [He] could not say, ‘Shame on me’ to save his life. That’s a completely alien idea to him. This is a guy who is absolutely proud of his own inflexibility and rectitude. . . . He’s all about punishment and death. It would be a grave mistake to just play him for laughs.”
A Google search turned up other curiosities. Some people evidently feel that the best way to deal with the compassion-deprived is with flower power:
“The most important consideration to keep in mind when we take on a difficult case, such as a sociopathic disorder with criminal behavior, is that the person who stands before us is in their essence, a soul/spiritual being, no matter how disturbed. We may need to work in a very slow, progressive way to retrieve the core part of the human soul, and we may very likely need the help of other professionals with specialized expertise. Our efforts will need to include not only what we can accomplish in a given professional session, but ongoing prayer and meditation that holds such a person in the light of understanding and summons their submerged aspects of compassionate feeling and morality. For the practitioner some of the flower essences that can facilitate the necessary insight, compassion and commitment to sustain the healing process are Holly, Yellow Star Tulip, Star Tulip, Calendula, Cosmos, Angelica and Impatiens.”
And it’s not as if such individuals have never laughed or cried:
“Soon after arriving, he was asked to write an essay on a soul-stirring experience in his life to date and he chose the death of his sister. His mother had drilled it into him that it was wrong when writing to repeat words already used. Having employed ‘tears’ once in the essay, he sought a substitute from a thesaurus she had given him and wrote ‘the lacerates ran down my cheeks.’ The essay received a fail grade, accompanied by derogatory comments such as ‘disgraceful.'”
The aforementioned book The Mask of Sanity, by Hervey Clecky, cautions that
“However intelligent, he apparently assumes that other persons are moved by and experience only the ghostly facsimiles of emotion or pseudoemotion known to him. However quick and rational a person may be and however subtle and articulate his teacher, he cannot be taught awareness of significance which he fails to feel. He can learn to use the ordinary words and, if he is very clever, even extraordinarily vivid and eloquent words that signify these matters to other people. He will also learn to reproduce appropriately all the pantomime of feeling; but, as Sherrington said of the decerebrated animal, the feeling itself does not come to pass.”
I have many reservations about the practice of inventing neat little categories to try and bring order to the staggering diversity of “personality types.” But that’s what discriminatory reasoning does, and it’s a powerful tool – where would science be without it? Another classification scheme describes the compassion-deprived as “authoritarian”:
“Authoritarian personalities are organised around rabid hostility to ‘legitimate’ targets, often ones nominated by their parents’ prejudices. Intensely moralistic, they direct it towards despised social groups. As people, they avoid introspection or loving displays, preferring toughness and cynicism. They regard others with suspicion, attributing ulterior motives to the most innocent behaviour. They are liable to be superstitious.”
Indeed, we can all probably think of examples like this one:
“This is a guy who was a torturer, a killer, a maimer; there’s mass graves. I mean, he was a horrible individual that really shocked the country in many ways, shocked it into a kind of – a fear of making decisions toward liberty.”
One might assume that the individual under discussion is Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov. “Independent human rights groups estimate that there are more than 600 politically motivated arrests a year in Uzbekistan, and 6,500 political prisoners, some tortured to death. According to a forensic report commissioned by the British embassy, in August two prisoners were even boiled to death.”
Or we could be discussing the supremely narcissistic and authoritarian Turkmenbashi, who seems rather in a class by himself:
“Last year Mr Niyazov instituted a holiday in honour of the muskmelon, a relative of the watermelon, complete with lavish festivities, and ordered that everybody take part. ‘This godsend has a glorious history,’ national television announced. ‘Our great leader, who has a great love of his nation, has brought the name of the tasty melons to the level of a national holiday.'”
As regular readers of this weblog know, I tend to agree with the Kabbalistic analysis of personality: the sefirot. There’s a lot of appeal to the idea that the will to power/judgement must be counterbalanced by a well-developed capacity to forgive, and that so-called evil results from an excess of the former. “Judge not, that ye be not judged” still seems like good advice – especially when dealing with those for whom the exercise of punitive judgement is second nature. But – to return to the question I began with – should we try and love such people? A woman named Hope advises against getting too close. As she wrote on a message board last week,
“Healing does come although I still have nightmares about this person once in a while however the dream has changed. I have dreamt lately that he’s come back asking for forgiveness and now many years later, I just smile in my dream when he talks about our great life together and in the dream I say who are you trying to kid. In real life the person of whom I speak did try to contact me 1 year later and feigned apologies, and as convincing as he had once been I knew I was not dealing with a normal person and knew I never would. I have been reading some of the postings and see many from people who say they still love their sociopaths and hope they change. They are not capable and never will. All the best to you.”
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ADDENDUM
My brother Mark sent along the following thoughts via e-mail, with permission to reprint here. He is reacting to the article from the Guardian cited above. The remark about all fundamentalists being authoritarian types struck him as particularly absurd. He went on to say, “As you know, I can’t stand Freud; he’s the Marx of the mind. Blaming everything on Mommy and Daddy is easy and convenient; it’s the oldest trick in the book for people trying to open up some sort of a space for Bush so that we may see him (or any/most leaders and bosses) as anything more or less than the (lying liar) sociopaths that they are.
“They are different from us, which is why they are where they are, and we are where we are. Their goals are the goals of the Prince, possibly the most horrifying truthful book ever written. Their lust for power–Stalinists, Maoists, Fascists, Nazis, neo-cons, the blacksmith and sorcerer–is destructive; the joy is in the destruction. All these ‘true’ feelings of the so-called monsters, Tamerlanes, are locked in their black-box interiors; what we get is shadows and creepy smiles, no admittance of guilt, hollow men. The thing is, they don’t UNDERSTAND guilt, because they have extremely reduced or possibly nonexistent capacities for empathy–they just don’t get what ‘society’ is about.
“It horrified me last night that Bush seemed so curious, so lacking–he just could not for the life of him figure out any flaw he might have. You might say ‘But they’re all that way. They have to be, to rule.’ That’s the point–rule IS what I call evil, and a God who rules is the evil/perfect projection. They ARE different, often geniuses, wonderfully creative; ‘no one understands them’; ‘they just can’t have their way.’ They realize with clarity–because they stand so far outside the networks of social relations that define the rest of us poor soaks–just how many flaws the rest of have. Because being social is not a ‘good’ thing, per se.
“They tap into our dissatisfactions. They help us channel our feelings of inadequacy, frustrations, outward, they teach us to hate others and to worship ourselves. They then sit back and enjoy the destruction–Nero fiddling, Rome burning. Capitalistic competition feeds on these principals; in the ‘community of states’ the US is the number one antisocial country in the world–collectively, the American hive-mind doesn’t understand why They hate Us; we’re cleverer than everyone else, we help them solve their problems, and this is how they reward us.
“All of what I am saying is found in one way or another in the classic clinical study of psychopathy, The Mask of Sanity, by Hervey Cleckley. Psychopathy, however, is present in all of us, but passes a threshold in some of us (one out of 25 or 30). It’s not uncommon, and it’s not insanity–it is simply a ‘personality type.’ And, we have very few self-professed psychopaths out there; it’s their ‘loved ones’ who turn for help. They don’t get what the fuss is all about.
“In terms of politicians and other [wielders of] of power, I do know that all this sounds like [the movie] ‘They Live.’ But the idea that they are ‘just like us, but with power’ I believe may be a lie. I haven’t stopped being the way I was just because I’m in charge of a classroom. I haven’t turned into a little dictator. I am not being shaped by my environment to such an extent. . . . Apparently psychopaths–10-20% of the population in jail, at most; probably less–are the ones most easy to ‘rehabilitate.'”
Diogenes’ Tub (14)
From the NY Times: “Dr. Frans B. M. de Waal, the director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center of Emory University in Atlanta, has shown that if the normally pugilistic rhesus monkeys are reared with the more conciliatory stumptailed monkeys, the rhesus monkeys learn the value of tolerance, peacemaking and mutual hip-hugging. Dr. de Waal, who wrote an essay to accompany the new baboon study, said in a telephone interview, ‘The good news for humans is that it looks like peaceful conditions, once established, can be maintained,’ he said. ‘And if baboons can do it,’ he said, ‘why not us? The bad news is that you might have to first knock out all the most aggressive males to get there.'”
First, let’s kill all the lawyers. Then, arrange to have all future lawyers reared by stumptailed monkeys. It just might work! And even if it doesn’t, it would make for some great reality TV.