Dissident Veteran For Peace

If you're automatically sure that you know what reality is and who and what is really important—if you want to operate on your default setting—then you, like me, will not consider possibilities that aren't pointless and annoying.

But if you've really learned how to think, how to pay attention, then you will know you have other options.

It will actually be within your power to experience a crowded, hot, slow, consumer-hell-type situation as not only meaningful but sacred, on fire with the same force that lit the stars—compassion, love, the sub-surface unity of all things.

Not that that mystical stuff's necessarily true: The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're going to try to see it. 

This, I submit, is the freedom of real education, of learning how to be well-adjusted: You get to consciously decide what has meaning and what doesn't.

You get to decide what to worship ...

Because here's something else that's true.

In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism.

There is no such thing as not worshipping.

Everybody worships.

The only choice we get is what to worship.

And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship—be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles—is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.

If you worship money and things—if they are where you tap real meaning in life—then you will never have enough.

Never feel you have enough.

It's the truth.

Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you.

On one level, we all know this stuff already—it's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story.

The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness.

Worship power—you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay.

Worship your intellect, being seen as smart—you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out.

And so on.

Look, the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful; it is that they are unconscious.

They are default settings.

They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing.

And the so-called "real world" will not discourage you from operating on your default settings, because the so-called "real world" of men and money and power hums along quite nicely on the fuel of fear and contempt and frustration and craving and the worship of self.

Our own present culture has harnessed these forces in ways that have yielded extraordinary wealth and comfort and personal freedom.

The freedom to be lords of our own tiny skull-sized kingdoms, alone at the center of all creation.

This kind of freedom has much to recommend it.

But of course there are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of winning and achieving and displaying.

The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.

That is real freedom.

Source: David Foster Wallace, This is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion about Living a Compassionate Life (Little, Brown and Co.: 2009) pp. 91-121.

Labels: art and literature, philosophy, quotations

For Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays:

Determinist forces are wrong,

And irresistibly strong;

While of God there's a dearth

For He visits the Earth,

But not for sufficiently long.

For Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays:

Determinist forces are wrong,

And irresistibly strong;

But of God there's no dearth

For He visits the Earth,

Source: Philip K. Dick as quoted by Tim Powers in Bryce Carlson, ed., Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, vol. 4, (BOOM! Studios, 2011).

Labels: art and literature, Philip K Dick, quotations, religion

'You shall not make any cuts in your body for the dead nor make any tattoo marks on yourselves: I am the LORD. - Leviticus 19:28 (NASB)

From now on let no one cause trouble for me, for I bear on my body the brand-marks of Jesus. -Galatians 6:17 (NASB)

In the Septuagint (Vetus Testementum Graece LXX Tischendorf 1856), the phrase "tattoo marks" in Lev. 19:28 above appears as γράμματα στικτὰ, which is transliterated as grammata stikta. Liddell and Scott indicate tattoo is indeed the correct translation.

In the Greek New Testament (Novum Testamentum Graece Nestle-Aland 28th ed. 2012), the phrase "the brand-marks" in Gal. 6:17 above appears as στίγματα. It is transliterated as stigmata and, according to Danker's The Concise Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (UChicago Pr., 2009), is defined as an "indelible graphic mark made on the body".

Lucian of Samosata's (born 120 A.D.) De Dea Syria is another ancient Greek text that mentions tattooing. Section 59 of that work says: "στίζονται δὲ πάντες, οἱ μὲν ἐς καρπούς, οἱ δὲ ἐς αὐχένας: καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦδε ἅπαντες Ἀσσύριοι στιγματηφορέουσιν". Strong translates this passage as: "They all tattoo [στίζονται] themselves—some on the hands and some on the neck—and so it comes that all the Assyrians bear stigmata [στιγματηφορέουσιν]."

The Coptic church of Egypt is believed to have been established around 50 A.D. Copts have long used tattoos with distinctive Christian motifs, sometimes to their peril. According to Carswell, as quoted in Coptic Christianity in Ottoman Egypt by Febe Armanios (Oxford UP, 2011; p. 208, n. 145) Syrian, Armenian, and Ethiopian Christians also followed this practice.

Coptic tattoo design print from John Carswell's Coptic Tattoo Designs, 2nd ed. (American Univ. of Beirut, 1958) via http://www.crosscrucifix.com/glossaryhome.htm

Labels: art and literature, Christianity, culture, history

" ... Where do you stand on this gun stuff?"

"I own them and know how to use them, as you are aware," Cantrell says.

... Cantrell has evidently decided that a more thorough answer to Randy's gun question is merited. "But the more I practiced with them the more scared I got. Or maybe depressed."

"What do you mean?" ...

"Holding one of those things in your hands, cleaning the barrel and shoving the rounds into clips, really brings you face-to-face with what a desperate, last-ditch measure they really are. I mean, if it gets to the point where we are shooting at people and vice versa, then we have completely screwed up. So in the end, they only strengthened my interest in making sure we could do without them."

"And hence the Crypt?" Randy asks.

"My involvement in the Crypt is arguably a direct result of a few very bad dreams that I had about guns."

     Source: Neal Stephenson. Cryptonomicon, 2000 Harper Perennial paperback edition, p. 719.

"Wealth that is stored up in gold is dead. It rots and stinks. True wealth is made every day by men getting up out of bed and going to work. By schoolchildren doing their lessons, improving their minds ..."

     Source: Character of Goto Dengo in Cryptonomicon, p. 861.

Labels: art and literature, economics, guns, philosophy, quotations

I finally got around to reading Starship Troopers (1959, 2006) by Robert A. Heinlein and The Forever War (1974, 2009) by Joe Haldeman this summer. Over the years I've heard and read a lot about the books.

I also watched Paul Verhoeven's film treatment of Starship Troopers (ST) not long after its 1997 theatrical debut. Regarding the film, I am in general agreement with Joseph Sale's take (which I've edited slightly below):

Paul Verhoeven's 1997 film, while a masterpiece in its own right, misses much of the nuance of the original novel. He makes Starship Troopers into a satire of fascist states, casting Aryan, white, blonde, beautiful people in the lead roles to further his point, and it works brilliantly, but the novel itself is not an advocate of fascism to begin with. Johnnie is not an Aryan, he is Filipino (Juan Rico is his real name), and the [Mobile Infantry] is made up of people from all over the world. In fact, Heinlein bizarrely presents us with one of the most utopian and unified visions of future human society I have ever read. The film also makes use of over-the-top violence to contrast with its propaganda-interludes, no doubt highlighting how the lies of the state juxtapose with the realities of war. This is intriguing, almost a reverse of the novel which flits between Johnnie’s excruciating mental and physical training, which make explicit the gravity of war on every level of understanding, and the action sequences, which it's undeniable Johnnie seems to enjoy. In the novel, the state is far more responsible than Johnnie is.

It's interesting that at least one key didactic point that Heinlein wrote into ST was more or less faithfully preserved in Verhoeven's film. In the book, Major Reid, an Officer Candidate School instructor in History and Moral Philosophy asserts:

To vote is to wield authority; it is the supreme authority from which all other authority derives—such as mine to make your lives miserable once a day. Force, if you will!—the franchise is force, naked and raw, the Power of the Rods and the Ax. Whether it is exerted by ten men or by ten billion, political authority is force.¹

Why did Verhoeven leave this (without the reference to the fasces) in the film? I suspect it is because he believed it furthered his case concerning the alleged fascism of Heinlein and/or ST. In fact, it is a profound truth that force and violence underlie voting and political power. Yes, even in representative democracies.

Why is it acceptable to coerce people simply because 51% of the voting population agrees that people should be punished for doing or not doing x, y, or z? In nearly all cases, criminal laws are never even put to voters, they are enacted by politicians viewed unfavorably by large segments of the population.

The case that is made in ST is that the truth about voting logically leads to the following solution:

Since sovereign franchise is the ultimate in human authority, we insure that all who wield it accept the ultimate in social responsibility—we require each person who wishes to exert control over the state to wager his own life—and lose it, if need be—to save the life of the state. The maximum responsibility a human can accept is thus equated to the ultimate authority a human can exert. Yin and yang, perfect and equal.²

Approached from a slightly different angle it seems to me quite reasonable to expect from those who would wield the coercive power of the state against others to demonstrate some tangible civic virtue, to have some literal skin in the game.

However, there is an unspoken corollary that I find even more appealing. That is, by reducing the coercive power of the state—if you're going to have a state at all—one can expand the franchise and lower the bar to participation. That is, a widespread franchise would be appropriate only where the state has little or no coercive power. Steps in this direction might be to abolish capital punishment and military conscription and then to progressively redistribute centralized authority downward.

(The most interesting take I've read of 'the voting problem' in ST is in Dan Thompson's account of a discussion he was involved in at a WorldCon in Baltimore. I've included a link to it below in the See also section.)

Recurrent accusations of Heinlein's alleged personal and literary fascism are well known. Despite the many problems I have with some of Heinlein's later political positions, I think the charge of fascism is an unfounded example of the scurrilous name-calling too common among political ideologues.

It's interesting that Haldeman and Heinlein were friends. Moreover, in 1999, Haldeman was asked "about the whole 'fascist' argument, that ST is a novel about fascism, etc.?" He responded: " 'Fascist' is too easy an epithet. My problem with ST is more complex than that." Haldeman also penned the introduction to the 2018 Folio Society edition of ST (I have not read it yet though I would like to).

It is almost a commonplace that ST is an inadvertently dystopian novel meant to present a (fascistic) utopian vision. By contrast, The Forever War (TFW) is often taken as "an anti-war classic" and a refutation of ST. However, Haldeman himself has said that although he did not pen a reply to it, he was influenced by Heinlein's book.

In any case, of the two books I find TFW to be markedly more dystopian than ST. If forced to choose between living in the sci-fi future world of ST or TFW I would unhesitatingly choose ST.

I do not subscribe to the view that every act or idea in a work of fiction is endorsed by the author. Yet, authors generally do not let acts and ideas to which they object go unchallenged. Moreover, Haldeman has stated the TFW is based on his own experiences in the Vietnam War and, as others have pointed out the main character's name (Mandella) is a near anagram of the author's surname. Haldeman earned a degree in physics before he was drafted as did Mandella.³ Mandella's lover and companion is Marygay Potter while Haldeman's wife's maiden name is Mary Gay Potter.

So, I think it's fair, in this case, to assume that TFW reflects, in no small part, the author's personal views at the time he wrote the book. And Haldeman leaves a number of objectionable things in TFW unchallenged. For instance, in Haldeman's fictional world women are integrated into the military by requiring them to be sexually "compliant and promiscuous by military custom (and law)".⁴

In TFW, several dubious ideas about war are also left unchallenged: War is good for the general economy, the war in TFW is mainly the fault of bellicose veterans, and once begun, "only continued because the two races were unable to communicate".⁵

In fact, economists have shown that wars and unnecessarily large peacetime military establishments are macroeconomically detrimental. Arguably, wars may sometimes be necessary but as the authors of Economic Consequences of War on the U.S. Economy concluded, "Regardless of the way a war is financed, the overall macroeconomic effect on the economy tends to be negative." Wars benefit those who supply the weapons, munitions, and other material used to wage war but everyone else loses, especially the human casualties which seldom, if ever, include war profiteers.

As for bellicose veterans starting wars, it is perhaps just as likely that veterans will oppose offensive wars. For instance, in the aftermath of WW I, the American Legion was founded in 1919 proclaiming that a "large standing army is uneconomic and un-American" and pursuing "National safety with freedom from militarism ..."

In its early years the Legion was a major actor on the international stage in a citizen-led peace movement. Among other things, it actively supported and endorsed the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact "condemn[ing] recourse to war for the solution of international controversies, and renounc[ing] it, as an instrument of national policy". Though largely ignored this treaty remains in force. While it has arguably drifted far away from it roots, the Legion, to this day, exists, in part, "to promote peace and good will on earth".

In any case, modern large scale wars are not initiated by a single individual or small group of people. One could argue that a veteran named Hitler started World War II but that war was set in motion by the outcome of World War I and Hitler could not have initiated it without the support of the German establishment and a large segment of the German population. Likewise, I am aware of no war in history that continued (or began) simply because of a miscommunication.

Sexual orientation in TFW is also problematic. Haldeman seems to see it as strongly dichotomous, culturally determined, and easily changed.⁶ In TFW, human sexual orientation collectively swings between extremes. Without going into further detail I am a bit troubled that Haldeman did not imagine a future where society was not so polarized in terms of sexuality.

Finally, Haldeman also tacitly endorse eugenics.⁷ His solution to ending war is to erase nearly all human diversity and individuality. At the end of TFW, most of "humanity" is comprised mainly of "clones of a single individual."⁸ In TFW, humanity's fate is to become something resembling the Bugs—with their "total communism"—in Heinlein's ST. ⁹

I'd like to hope that humanity will one day abandon war and I disagree with some of Heinlein's ideas. However, if the price of peace is a future like Haldeman imagines in TFW (and I don't think it is) then I would choose war in the ST-like world.

Notes:
1. ST, p. 193. Emphasis is in the original. All ST page references in this post are from the 2006 Ace trade paperback edition.
2. ST, p. 194. It is often asserted, mostly by those critical of Heinlein, that in the ST's Terran Federation the only way to earn the franchise is to serve in the military. Although Heinlein could have been clearer in ST on this subject there are several passages suggesting what is required is not necessarily military service (see pp. 32-33, 190-194). For an in-depth and fair discussion of this perennial controversy see "The Nature of "Federal Service" in Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers" by James Gifford.
3. TFW, p. 7. All TFW page references in this post are from the 2009 Thomas Dunne Books paperback edition.
4. TFW, p. 45.
5. TFW, pp. 139, 261, 281.
6. TFW, pp. 118, 129, 189, 197, 260.
7. TFW, pp. 197, 260.
8. TFW, pp. 260-262.
9. TFW, p. 261; ST p. 194.

See also:

• "Who Deserves To Be A Citizen? A Reflection On Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers" by Farzan Sabet
• "Starship Troopers and the Right to Vote" by Dan Thompson
• "Over the hump: Robert A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers" by Jo Walton
• "Blasting bugs is more complicated than you think" by Sam Jordison
• "Fascism and Starship Troopers, Once More" by hyperpat
• "Heinlein's Female Troubles" by M. G. Lord

Labels: anarchism, art and literature, communism, culture, eugenics, gender, Heinlein, human reproduction, LGBT, military, politics, quotations, voting, War

(click on images to enlarge them)

Source: Brian K. Vaughn & Fiona Staples, Saga (Image Comics, 2018) vol. 8

Labels: art and literature, gender, quotations, Saga

... anyone who thinks one book has all the answers hasn't read enough books.

Source: Character of Noreen in Saga (Image Comics, 2016) vol. 6, chap. 34 by Fiona Staples and Brian K. Vaughn.

Labels: art and literature, critical thinking, quotations, Saga

If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about the answers.

Source: Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (Penguin, 2000) p. 255.

Labels: art and literature, critical thinking, quotations

"... nothing is the way I thought it was. I went to war thinking of myself as Galahad, out to free fellow human beings from the intolerable bondage of slavery. But it wasn't as simple as that. There were other, less pure issues being fought over, with little concern for the souls which would perish for nothing more grand than political greed, corruption, and conniving for power ... I saw a man with his face blown off and no mouth to scream with, and yet he screamed and could not die. I saw two brothers, and one was in blue and one was in grey, and I will not tell you which one took his saber and ran it through the other. Oh God, it was brother against brother, Cain and Abel all over again. And I was turned into Cain. What would God have to do with a nation where brothers can turn against each other with such brutality?"


"... there were many nights during the war when God withdrew from our battlefields. When the sons of men fight against each other in hardness of heart, why should God not withdraw? Slavery is evil, God knows, but war is evil, too, evil, evil."

Labels: art and literature, Madeleine L'Engle, quotations, War

Not everybody is able to see me ... I'm real and most earthlings can bear very little reality.


The temptation ... is to stay an immature pleasure-seeker. When we seek our own pleasure as the ultimate good we place ourselves as the center of the universe ... nothing created is the center.


When everything is nothing there will be no more war, no illness, no death. There will be no more poverty, no more pain, no more slums, no more starvation ...

Labels: art and literature, Madeleine L'Engle, philosophy, psychology, quotations, religion

... to take away a man's freedom of choice, even his freedom to make the wrong choice, is to manipulate him as though he were a puppet and not a person.

Source: Character of Canon Tom Tallis in Madeleine L'Engle's The Young Unicorns (Macmillan, 2008), p. 202.

... when evil declares itself in its absolute form, it declares itself as an angel of light.

Source: Tallis, p. 237.

... Utopia ... is always a heresy, no matter how nobly conceived.

Source: Tallis, p. 241.

Labels: art and literature, Christianity, freedom, Madeleine L'Engle, philosophy, quotations

John Ridley's and Steve McQueen's Academy Award-winning 12 Years a Slave is a compelling film but it is not a courageous or honest film—not if truth matters. Ridley and McQueen shrink from portraying Solomon Northrup's experience and attitude toward slavery in all its complexity. This is, no doubt, because we moderns are not supposed to think critically about such things as slavery in cultural-historical context. Instead, we are to employ contemporary, Western standards in simple binary terms—good vs. evil—and judge those involved (and their figurative or literal descendants) as either oppressors or victims.

To ensure we think correct thoughts people such as Ridley and McQueen are entitled to take such liberties as may be necessary to shield us from whatever actual moral and historical complexity may be found in the true story. Our cultural guardians safely assume that the very few among us who may take the trouble to dig deeper into a story will be safely marginal. Marginality notwithstanding, I will endeavor below to share with you a few key examples of the fabrications and distortions in the 12 Years a Slave film.

In his written memoir, Twelve Years a Slave (1853, 1997), Solomon Nothrup wrote:

... I came not to the conclusion, even once, that the southern slave, fed, clothed, whipped and protected by his master, is happier than the free colored citizen of the North. To that conclusion I have never since arrived. There are many, however, even in the Northern States, benevolent and well-disposed men, who will pronounce my opinion erroneous, and gravely proceed to substantiate the assertion with an argument. Alas! they have never drank, as I have, from the bitter cup of slavery. [p. 121]

Yet, this same Solomon Northrup also wrote:

Our master's name was William Ford. He resided then in the "Great Pine Woods," in the parish of Avoyelles, situated on the right bank of Red River, in the heart of Louisiana. He is now a Baptist preacher. Throughout the whole parish of Avoyelles, and especially along both shores of Bayou Boeuf, where he is more intimately known, he is accounted by his fellow-citizens as a worthy minister of God. In many northern minds, perhaps, the idea of a man holding his brother man in servitude, and the traffic in human flesh, may seem altogether incompatible with their conceptions of a moral or religious life. From descriptions of such men as Burch and Freeman, and others hereinafter mentioned, they are led to despise and execrate the whole class of slaveholders, indiscriminately. But I was sometime his slave, and had an opportunity of learning well his character and disposition, and it is but simple justice to him when I say, in my opinion, there never was a more kind, noble, candid, Christian man than William Ford. The influences and associations that had always surrounded him, blinded him to the inherent wrong at the bottom of the system of Slavery. He never doubted the moral right of one man holding another in subjection. Looking through the same medium with his fathers before him, he saw things in the same light. Brought up under other circumstances and other influences, his notions would undoubtedly have been different. Nevertheless, he was a model master, walking uprightly, according to the light of his understanding, and fortunate was the slave who came to his possession. Were all men such as he, Slavery would be deprived of more than half its bitterness. [pp. 89-90]

And:

During my residence with Master Ford I had seen only the bright side of slavery. His was no heavy hand crushing us to the earth. He pointed upwards, and with benign and cheering words addressed us as his fellow-mortals, accountable, like himself, to the Maker of us all. I think of him with affection, and had my family been with me, could have borne his gentle servitude, without murmuring, all my days. [pp. 104-105]

When Northrup runs away from an abusive part-owner John M. Tibeats (his actual surname was Tibaut, according to Fiske et al., The Complete Story of the Author of Twelve Years a Slave (Praeger, 2013; p. 7), he flees to William Ford and describes the reunion and his recovery as follows:

... I continued my travels, and finally, about eight o'clock, reached the house of Master Ford.

The slaves were all absent from the quarters, at their work. Stepping on to the piazza, I knocked at the door, which was soon opened by Mistress Ford. My appearance was so changed—I was in such a wobegone and forlorn condition, she did not know me. Inquiring if Master Ford was at home, that good man made his appearance, before the question could be answered. I told him of my flight, and all the particulars connected with it. He listened attentively, and when I had concluded, spoke to me kindly and sympathetically, and taking me to the kitchen, called John, and ordered him to prepare me food. I had; tasted nothing since daylight the previous morning.

When John had set the meal before me, the madam came out with a bowl of milk, and many little delicious dainties, such as rarely please the palate of a slave. I was hungry, and I was weary, but neither food nor rest afforded half the pleasure as did the blessed voices speaking kindness and consolation. It was the oil and the wine which the Good Samaritan in the "Great Pine Woods" was ready to pour into the wounded spirit of the slave, who came to him, stripped of his raiment and half-dead.

They left me in the cabin, that I might rest ...

AFTER a long sleep, sometime in the afternoon I awoke, refreshed, but very sore and stiff. Sally came in and talked with me, while John cooked me some dinner. Sally was in great trouble, as well as myself, one of her children being ill, and she feared it could not survive. Dinner over, after walking about the quarters for a while, visiting Sally's cabin and looking at the sick child, I strolled into the madam's garden ...

I indulged the most grateful feelings towards Master and Mistress Ford, and wishing in some manner to repay their kindness, commenced trimming the vines, and afterwards weeding out the grass from among the orange and pomegranate trees. The latter grows eight or ten feet high, and its fruit, though larger, is similar in appearance to the jelly-flower. It has the luscious flavor of the strawberry. Oranges, peaches, plums, and most other fruits are indigenous to the rich, warm soil of Avoyelles; but the apple, the most common of them all in colder latitudes, is rarely to be seen.

Mistress Ford came out presently, saying it was praise-worthy in me, but I was not in a condition to labor, and might rest myself at the quarters until master should go down to Bayou Boeuf, which would not be that day, and it might not be the next. I said to her—to be sure, I felt bad, and was stiff, and that my foot pained me, the stubs and thorns having so torn it, but thought such exercise would not hurt me, and that it was a great pleasure to work for so good a mistress. Thereupon she returned to the great house, and for three days I was diligent in the garden, cleaning the walks, weeding the flower beds, and pulling up the rank grass beneath the jessamine vines, which the gentle and generous hand of my protectress had taught to clamber along the walls.

The fourth morning, having become recruited and refreshed, Master Ford ordered me to make ready to accompany him to the bayou. There was but one saddle horse at the opening, all the others with the mules having been sent down to the plantation. I said I could walk, and bidding Sally and John good-bye, left the opening, trotting along by the horse's side. That little paradise in the Great Pine Woods was the oasis in the desert, towards which my heart turned lovingly, during many years of bondage. I went forth from it now with regret and sorrow, not so overwhelming, however, as if it had then been given me to know that I should never return to it again. [pp. 144-148]

Needless to say, Ridley and McQueen omit all of this material from Northrup's memoir. They further contrive to paint William Ford (Benedict Cumberbatch) in a decidedly more sinister light. For example, Ridley and McQueen invent a scene (at ~36:00) where a fellow slave, Eliza (Adepero Oduye), and Northrup (Chiwetel Ejiofor) dispute over Ford's morality. Northrup mounts no defense of Ford such as we find in his memoir, where the dispute does not even appear.

Ridley and McQueen also significantly alter an incident that does appear in the book. When Tibeats (Paul Dano) tries to lynch Northrup (at ~48:00), they have Ford's overseer, Chapin, defending Northrup solely as a piece of valuable property who is nevertheless left dangling from a hangman's noose for hours. Here's how Northrup described the actual event:

At length, as they were dragging me towards the tree, Chapin, who had momentarily disappeared from the piazza, came out of the house and walked towards us. He had a pistol in each hand, and as near as I can now recall to mind, spoke in a firm, determined manner, as follows:

"Gentlemen, I have a few words to say. You had better listen to them. Whoever moves that slave another foot from where he stands is a dead man. In the first place, he does not deserve this treatment. It is a shame to murder him in this manner. I never knew a more faithful boy than Platt. You, Tibeats, are in the fault yourself. You are pretty much of a scoundrel, and I know it, and you richly deserve the flogging [from Northrup] you have received. In the next place, I have been overseer on this plantation seven years, and, in the absence of William Ford, am master here. My duty is to protect his interests, and that duty I shall perform. You are not responsible-you are a worthless fellow. Ford holds a mortgage on Platt of four hundred dollars. If you hang him he loses his debt. Until that is canceled you have no right to take his life. You have no right to take it any way. There is a law for the slave as well as for the white man. You are no better than a murderer.

"As for you," addressing Cook and Ramsay, a couple of overseers from neighboring plantations, "as for you—begone! If you have any regard for your own safety, I say, begone."

Cook and Ramsay, without a further word, mounted their horses and rode away. Tibeats, in a few minutes, evidently in fear, and overawed by the decided tone of Chapin, sneaked off like a coward, as he was, and mounting his horse, followed his companions. [pp. 115-116]

So, contra Ridley and McQueen, by Northrup's own account, he was never actually hung and there is rather more to Chapin's defense. However, Northrup was inexplicably left suffering in the hot sun:

As the sun approached the meridian that day it became insufferably warm. ... I would gladly have given a long year of service to have been enabled to exchange the heated oven, as it were, wherein I stood, for a seat beneath their branches. But I was yet bound, the rope still dangling from my neck, and standing in the same tracks where Tibeats and his comrades left me. I could not move an inch, so firmly had I been bound. To have been enabled to lean against the weaving house would have been a luxury indeed. But it was far beyond my reach, though distant less than twenty feet. I wanted to lie down, but knew I could not rise again. [pp. 118-119]

Ridley and McQueen seem to want us to understand this as indifference to Northrup's suffering, they even concoct an appearance by Mistress Ford who, in stark contrast to Northrup's written characterization of her, gazes upon the choking Northrup and then calmly walks away. She makes no such appearance in Northrup's memoir and, concerning Chapin, Northrup writes:

All day Chapin walked back and forth upon the stoop, but not once approached me. He appeared to be in a state of great uneasiness, looking first towards me, and then up the road, as if expecting some arrival every moment. He did not go to the field, as was his custom. It was evident from his manner that he supposed Tibeats would return with more and better armed assistance, perhaps, to renew the quarrel, and it was equally evident he had prepared his mind to defend my life at whatever hazard. Why he did not relieve me—why he suffered me to remain in agony the whole weary day, I never knew. It was not for want of sympathy, I am certain. Perhaps he wished Ford to see the rope about my neck, and the brutal manner in which I had been bound; perhaps his interference with another's property in which he had no legal interest might have been a trespass, which would have subjected him to the penalty of the law. [pp. 119-120]

When the incident first begins William Ford is miles away in the Great Pine Woods. Chapin sends for him as soon as Tibeats departs. When Ford arrives, Northrup, according to his memoir, literally thanks God and Ford cuts his bindings. In the film (at ~53:00), Ridley and McQueen uses the immediate aftermath to contrive to have Eliza's harsh judgment of Ford vindicated. When Northrup tries to tell him he is not a slave, but a freeman, Ford protests: "I cannot hear that."

In fact, according to Northrup, he never disclosed his status to Ford: "Sometimes, not only then, but afterwards, I was almost on the point of disclosing fully to Ford the facts of my history. I am inclined now to the opinion it would have resulted in my benefit. This course was often considered, but through fear of its miscarriage, never put into execution ... " (p. 91). Ridley and McQueen also use this scene as an opportunity to have Ford call Northrup a "nigger," something Northrup never recorded Ford doing in his memoir.

Ford was not the only slave owner for whom Northrup had kind words. Here is how he described Mary McCoy:

... a lovely girl, some twenty years of age. She is the beauty and the glory of Bayou Bouef. She owns about a hundred working hands, besides a great many house servants, yard boys, and young children. Her brother-in-law, who resides on the adjoining estate, is her general agent. She is beloved by all her slaves, and good reason indeed have they to be thankful that they have fallen into such gentle hands ...

I dwell with delight upon the description of this fair and gentle lady, not only because she inspired me with emotions of gratitude and admiration, but because I would have the reader understand that all slave-owners on Bayou Boeuf are not like Epps, or Tibeats, or Jim Burns. Occasionally can be found, rarely it may be, indeed, a good man like William Ford, or an angel of kindness like young Mistress McCoy. [pp. 284-286]

Finally, Ridley and McQueen take liberties with the historical figure of Harriet Shaw. Northrup (who refers to her once as "Charlotte" on p. 231) notes that she is the slave cum wife of Pleasant Shaw and she is a kind friend to Patsey, unwilling concubine of the cruel Edwin Epps (pp. 254-255). Beyond this, Northrup says little else.

Well, this is an opportunity Ridley and McQueen cannot pass up. So, in their film, there is no apparent love between Harriet and Pleasant Shaw. There is no allowance that Blacks could and did accommodate themselves to American slavery as slave-owners. No, instead Ridley and McQueen invent dialogue (at ~67:00) not found in Northrup's memoir where Harriet Shaw (Alfre Woodard) coldly prophesies an apocalyptic vengeance: "In his own time, the good Lord will manage them all. The curse of the pharoahs were a poor example of what wait for the plantation class."

In fact, Black women, such as Anna Madgigine Jai Kingsley, fully assimilated into the "plantation class". So, did Black men such as Anthony Johnson, who in 1655 became the "first slaveholder" in the thirteen colonies that became the United States. And don't even think about mentioning the 5.6 million slaves in present-day sub-Saharan Africa. No, the unsettling facts of slavery must not be allowed to contaminate the slaveowner = White = evil equation because 12 Years a Slave was created in support of a modern-day racial agenda and that agenda is not to be held hostage to the truthful retelling of Solomon Northrup's story or any other inconvenient facts.

In Northrup's lifetime his memoir was hailed for, not despite, its complex honesty: "NORTHRUP will be believed, because, instead of indiscriminate accusations, he gives you the good and evil of Slavery just as he found it. All kindnesses are remembered with gratitude. Masters and Overseers who treated slaves humanely are commended; for there, as here, were good and bad men" (Salem [NY] Press, July 26, 1853, as quoted in Fiske et al., p. 115). Today, such truth is seen as inconvenient, at best, and, perhaps, a Stockholm syndrome-type expression of internalized self-deception or, at worst, an unconscionable apology for evil.

See also: Black Slaveowners

Labels: art and literature, critical thinking, film & television, history, politics, race, slavery

The most pernicious image of all is the anarchist-hero figure. A creation of commodity culture, he allows us to buy into an inauthentic simulation of revolutionary praxis. The hero encourages passive spectating and revolt becomes another product to be consumed.

Source: Character of King Mob in Grant Morrison's The Invisibles: Counting to None (New York: DC Comics, 1999) p. 213.

Labels: anarchism, art and literature, quotations

Labels: art and literature, film & television, psychology, video

Labels: art and literature, humor, identity, sport, United States

"What I feel most moved to write, that is banned,—it will not pay. Yet, altogether, write the other way I cannot. So the product is a final hash, and all my books are botches." -Herman Melville's June 1851 letter to Nathaniel Hawthorne.

"Melville, as he always does, began to reason of Providence and futurity, and of everything that lies beyond human ken, and informed me that he had 'pretty much made up his mind to be annihilated'; but still he does not seem to rest in that anticipation; and, I think, will never rest until he gets hold of a definite belief. It is strange how he persists—and has persisted ever since I knew him, and probably long before—in wondering to-and-fro over these deserts, as dismal and monotonous as the sand hills amid which we were sitting. He can neither believe, nor be comfortable in his unbelief; and he is too honest and courageous not to try to do one or the other. If he were a religious man, he would be one of the most truly religious and reverential; he has a very high and noble nature, and better worth immortality than most of us." -Nathaniel Hawthorne's notebook entry of November 20 1856.

Notes: Moby-Dick was first published on October 18, 1851. The book was a relative financial failure during Melville's lifetime. The two quotes above appear in Nathaniel Philbrick's Why Read Moby- Dick? (Viking, 2011) pp. 59, 125.

Labels: art and literature, Herman Melville, quotations, religion

Labels: art and literature, military, poetry

One of the first questions that popped into my mind after watching "Fatty Boom Boom" is what the hell was that? I came across the South African group Die Antwoord while trying to dig deeper into Neill Blomkamp's Elysium. It turns out that Die Antwoord's frontman, Ninja, was Blomkamp's first choice for the role played by Matt Damon. I learned this via a review by Steve Sailer that I read after I watched the film.

Sailer claims the "American culturati's hive mind" has got Blomkamp, who also directed and co-wrote District 9, all wrong. According to Sailer, Blomkamp is a "young Boer refugee" and his new movie is "about the horrors of mass immigration and nonwhite overpopulation". It is, like District 9, "another Malthusian tale" by Blomkamp, "a gun-loving Afrikaner whose movies are based around his fear that the rapid breeding of Third Worlders threatens to bring down civilization". I'm not sure if Sailer is right about Blomkamp or his cinematic intentions but he makes a compelling case and his review put the film in a different light for me.

Sailer also opines that "Elysium would have been more interesting with either" Eminem or Ninja in the lead and refers to Die Antwoord as "a satirical Afrikaner duo who are always on the verge of getting denounced as racist." I'd never heard of Die Antwoord before and was intrigued. Below is Die Antwoord's "Fatty Boom Boom" video. Following that is their response to some comments on the video by YouTube users (you can also watch a 'making of' video here).

The last video is an illuminating video essay by Chris English entitled "Wat Kyk Jy: Die Antwoord and the Appropriation of Jane Alexander's Butcher Boys". Jane Alexander is a South African sculptor whose 1985/86 work, The Butcher Boys, is widely recognized as an artistic critique of South African apartheid.

Labels: art and literature, film & television, music, South Africa, video

"... When mass murder's been answered with mass murder, rape with rape, hate with hate, there's no longer much meaning in asking whose ax is bloodier. Evil, on evil, piled on evil. Was there any justification in our 'police action' ...? Certainly there was no justification for what they did―or was there? We only know what that thing [a radio or television--VFPD] says, and that thing is a captive. The Asian radio has to say what will least displease it's government; ours has to say what will least displease our fine patriotic opinionated rabble, which is what, coincidentally, the government wants it to say anyhow, so where's the difference?"  (p. 281)

"You don't have a soul, Doctor. You are a soul. You have a body, temporarily." (p. 295)

"To minimize suffering and to maximize security were natural and proper ends of society and Caesar. But then they became the only ends, somehow, and the only basis of law—a perversion. Inevitably, then, in seeking only them, we found only their opposites: maximum suffering and minimum security." (p. 330)

Source: Character of Abbot Jethras Zerchi in A Canticle for Leibowitz (Bantam Books, 1959, 2007) by Walter M. Miller, Jr.

See also: "A Canticle for Leibowitz Is Divine, But It's the Opposite of Science Fiction" by Josh Wimmer on io9

Labels: art and literature, media, nuclear weapons, quotations, religion

This will be my fifth post mentioning One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Yesterday, I finished reading A Casebook on Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by George J. Searles, ed. (Univ. of New Mexico Pr., 1992). Several of essays in the book make mention of the Christian symbolism in Cuckoo's Nest. This theme is central to one essay in particular, Bruce Wallis' "Christ in the Cuckoo's Nest: Or, the Gospel According to Ken Kesey," which was first published in Cithara 12:1 (November, 1972). Below is an excerpt from Wallis' article.

... the novel is expressly formulated as nothing less than the bible for a twentieth-century religion of self-assertive action, with a message of salvation modulated to the needs of repressed individuals in a constrictively conformist society.

The novel is replete with specific comparisons of McMurphy to Christ, references designed to elevate the protagonist's martyrdom to a high level of significance. But the novel is also integrated by a sustained Biblical analogy, of which those comparisons are only a part, that begins as a series of unobtrusive allusions in the early chapters, intensifies in the novel's third section (the fishing trip), and completely dominates its conclusion. The analogy compares McMurphy to Christ not merely in terms of their martyrdoms, but more extensively in terms of some of the principal figures and events in the life of each. By doing so, it enables the novel to assume the configurations of a gospel, which, like the original Gospels, may serve as a source of inspiration for emulative and redemptive action ...

The analogy between the lives of McMurphy and Christ is thus fairly complete, and the elements composing it are too numerous and too sustained—especially in their repetition—to be accidental or incidental. The analogy functions to elevate the action of the novel to a high plane of significance, for it suggests that contemporary civilization is suffering from a spiritual illness so severe, that a redirection of spiritual focus, such as that effected by the life and death of Christ, is in order. The analogy makes of the novel, moreover, a bible for contemporary action, because by systematically comparing McMurphy to Christ, it implies that the life of this contemporary redemptive figure must, like the life of Christ, offer a pattern for active emulation. The analogy culminates in the author's assignment of the narration to the particular "you" that the "giant come out of the sky" has most dramatically saved from the cuckoo's nest. In narrating the life of the martyred McMurphy, Chief Broom has become an apostle in the fullest sense of the word.

That the gospel Chief Broom prepares is intended for serious adoption by its readers is evidenced by Mr. Kesey's ensuing endeavor to emulate R. P. McMurphy's experiences in his own life. The failure of that endeavour, the dropping away of his own disciples and of the crowd of followers he initially collected, suggests that the doctrine he formulated in theory cannot be effected in practice. [The "failure" Wallis is referring to here is Kesey's 1960s escapades with the "Merry Pranksters" as documented by Tom Wolfe in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. I haven't read Wolfe's book but I have seen Magic Trip, the 2011 documentary of the 1964 cross-country bus trip by Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, and on that basis concur in Wallis' judgment.—VFPD] The cause of its practical failure is not hard to discover, for the religion he postulates, that of self-aggrandizement (call it by any contemporary term: "doing one's own thing," to the cost of the social fabric), fails to take into account original sin—the ineluctable depravity of man for which religion alone is necessary to atone.

It is no difficult task then, within the configurations of a purely fictional action, to demonstrate the felicitous effects of independent and self-centered activity. One is bound to sympathize with a fictional hero who performs as an adult the pranks we all engaged in as children but are inhibited from indulging in as adults ourselves. It is also safe to suppose that the people around such a hero, moved by a like sympathy with his basic human desire to indulge the self, will feel a natural inclination to act the way he does. But one is not bound to make a logical extension of fiction into fact, nor to suppose that such self-indulgence will have in reality the same meritorious outcome that it can be manipulated to achieve in art. One cannot gainsay the author's contention that the self-abnegation implicit in our conformity to social and ethical norms is dangerously frustrating. In theological, as well as psychological terms, it is inevitably frustrating to attempt to contain the beast within. Yet life presents little evidence that the release from frustration attained by allowing that beast a freer rein is to be more desired than feared.

It is ironic, of course, that Mr. Kesey should compare directly to Christ, the paradigm of humility, a man whose life is intended to exemplify the value of pride. Rather than lose the self in order to save it, the gospel according to Ken Kesey suggests, one must assert the self in order to save it. In contradiction to the fundamentally Christian view of human depravity, which considers the self one might assert as a potential Kurtz in the jungle [A reference to a key character in Joseph Conrad's 1899 novella Heart of Darkness.—VFPD], Mr. Kesey has predicated his novel upon the romantic philosophy that man is naturally benevolent, and that his natural actions, undistorted by the pressures of social necessity, will invariably conduce to the greatest good. Mr. Kesey fails at any point in his novel to consider the possibility that the natural, self-assertive actions of his protagonists might be at least as often destructive as the presumably unnatural actions of his antagonists—that all human action will in fact be subject to the same human limitations.

The problem in Mr. Kesey's philosophy is not that the Combine, his word for the establishment, is less evil than Mr. Kesey supposes (although it may possibly be so). It is rather that it is not the Combine which generates the evil Mr. Kesey observes, but the evil which generates the Combine, or at least makes of it what it is. The flaws in the system exist only because of anterior flaws in the men who created and maintain it. Attacking the system itself is attacking the symptom instead of the disease. That alternative systems will fall heir to the same human failings Mr. Kesey discovered. His Utopia collapsed as Utopias have persisted in doing.

But Mr. Kesey's Utopia was more foredoomed than most, since his prescription to combat the symptom, as we see in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, was simply a larger dose of the disease. The most fundamental precept of the religion Mr. Kesey exploits for his literary analogy is the danger of pride, the original sin in the sense of that self-love or self-absorption that makes all other sins possible. Yet the cardinal virtue in what might be termed the "cuckoo philosophy," repeatedly exemplified by McMurphy despite his paradoxical (and improbable) self-immolation, is that very self-loving self-assertion. Kesey suggests that by throwing butter at walls, breaking in windows, stealing boats, and doing in general whatever comes naturally, the inmates will become carefree and vital individuals at last. A Utopia composed of such self-centered children can spare itself the trouble of making any long-range plans.

Wallis' article was published in a journal of a Roman Catholic institution, St. Bonaventure University. One need not subscribe to Roman Catholic doctrine on, for instance, "original sin" to see the strength of Wallis' case or to appreciate the depth of his analysis. In fact, I don't completely agree with Wallis and I still like Kesey's novel but I do appreciate that Wallis has helped me to see more in the book and to see it more truly than I had before.

Labels: art and literature, Ken Kesey, religion