Juliet_A responded to my previous ‘blog thusly:

“I like your analogy, but I don’t think you can fix human nature.”

I would offer that it is no more or less part of human nature to be violent than it is to work towards peace. It’s simply easier to lash out, because there’s no self-reflection required.

IN FACT… That’s exactly why we criticize the terrorists, and say they’re evil and despicable: Because they don’t want to work amicably towards peace, and would rather blow us up.

It isn’t human nature that needs fixing. No, we need to fix the broken social, economic, and spiritual structures within our local and world societies that allow such things as terrorism to be possible. That doesn’t mean merely ‘stamping out terrorism,’ but represents the hard work of social justice.

Episode IV: A New Hope or Making Peace The Hard Way

The rebel forces have made a smashing blow to our Death Star. Most folks around here don’t view the World Trade Center as the Death Star, but I’m here to tell you that in many ways, the workings of the US economy and foreign policy enslaves many many people around the world. A discussion of how that happens is beyond the scope of this article, but if you doubt it, please do even a little research into the matter. If we can see ourselves — in the form of US foreign policy and the seat of much of the global economy — as the Bad Naughty Empire, then why would we *not* cheer a kamikaze Luke Skywalker of a terrorist? Think about it: You cheered when Luke blew up the Death Star in ‘Star Wars.’ Were you concerned about the bazillion people (and cute androids) who made their living there? In principle, blowing up the Death Star was a good idea, wasn’t it, when Luke was attractive and charming and On Our Side?

The point of this stupid analogy is: We’re not so far removed from the mind-set of those terrorists as we’d like to think. And I make this point for a reason: We can understand them, and by understanding them, we can reduce our fear of them. And then, since fear and terror are their ammunition, their ammunition ceases to be.

And, more importantly: What we fear in them is what we fear in ourselves. Much of the rhetoric I’ve heard and read since this World Trade Center tragedy has to do with catching and seriously mangling those responsible. This is exactly the same motivation that caused the tragedy to begin with; people don’t hijack airliners and smash them into buildings for fun, they do it because they’re pissed off. On some level we know that it’s true; that our anger and frustration is no more or less human than theirs. But we wish it weren’t true, so we build concepts of ‘justice’ and ‘civilization’ to buoy our resolve. Ultimately, though, we fear our own bloodlust as much as we fear the bloodlust of the terrorist.

I’m not saying we all have ‘inner terrorists’ waiting to get out; I seriously doubt that anyone who could reasonably be called a terrorist woke up one morning and decided, on a whim, to be such. No, I’m suggesting that each of us contains the seed for violence based in fear or frustration or anger, and that if our social and economic and spiritual situations allow for it, that seed can grow and bear an awful fruit.

And that’s where the hope comes in. We’re presented with an astonishing opportunity to shed the fear, both of the terrorist and of ourselves. Social and economic and spiritual situations which give rise to violence are obviously broken and need to be fixed. If we seek peace, we need to look where the seed of violence is taking root within ourselves. We have to understand the context of our own violence, and the context of the violence of others, before we can address the violence itself. People who are violent are hurting. Take away the hurt, and the violence loses its context; it becomes featureless, meaningless. It loses its power to manifest into action.

Our hurt as a nation comes from seeing our fellow citizens incinerated and crushed in a huge catastrophe. We’re dealing with that hurt. Where does the hurt of the terrorist come from? Where does hope begin for him? Answer these questions and the process of peace has begun. If you believe that these questions sound naive and unjustified, then peace is not your goal.

The world was broken long before 9/11/01. How do we fix it?

Ape And Erroneous

When I blogged about ‘Ape and Essence,’ goinhome responded, saying it looks like a good book recommendation.

Well, it’s not. Just that part of the book. The rest of it is your basic utopian novel with cardboard cutout characters, just deep enough to ask the right questions, wandering through a future world.

The future world in ‘Ape and Essence’ is one where a nuclear holocaust has mutated the human species into a yearly time of fertility; folks gotta breed in the spring or it won’t happen at all. A sort of Satanic preisthood has taken over the reigns of social control, in a dark parody of the Catholic church during the Dark Ages in Europe. From there it goes to predictable dystopian places, thematically, dealing with social power structures, religion, and the sexual revolution. If you’ve read much science fiction at all, you’ve read better treatments of these themes than this particular book.

High school kids aren’t required to read this book, as they are Huxley’s ‘Brave New World,’ because it’s so marginal. What *should* be required of high school kids, however, is that they read ‘Brave New World’ and then it’s true sequel: ‘Island.’

‘Island’ is the sustainable antidote to the oppression of ‘Brave New World,’ and if you’re going to read any Huxley novel on my recommendation, it had better be ‘Island.’

‘Island’ is another utopian novel, with flat characters that exist to talk about society, but in this case, the vision is so grand and beautiful that it’s hard to knock. And one of the points of the book is that the high drama that humans act out leads more to their sorrow than their edification; Hitler and Stalin were tremendously three-dimensional, after all. Most interesting for me, however, is that as part of its thesis, ‘Island’ wants to adapt Mahayana Buddhism to technological advancement, giving those who inhabit the island a desire to understand enough-ness, as opposed to unbridled advancement.

Leave ‘Ape and Essence’ for when you get obsessed with Huxley and end up writing an academic thesis on his use of psychedelics or something. Read ‘Island’ instead.

Still More Light Notes

(This is one of those things where you know the punchline as soon as you hear the premise, but still admire the fact that someone carried through with it.)

This just in: a new World Trade Center design. Hopefully the architect will be better at his job than whoever did the Photoshopping.

On The Lighter Side

Remember Jerry Falwell? Well, he says that the attack on 9/11/01 was the fault of pagans, feminists, homosexuals, and the ACLU.

Thank you, Jerry Falwell, for providing us with such amazing self-parody. Finally, there’s something in this situation that we can laugh at: You.

Ape And Essence

All of yesterday I kept thinking about the introduction to a novel by Aldous Huxley called ‘Ape and Essence.’ The story is presented in the form of a screenplay, being reviewed by a reader at a Hollywood studio.

The opening scene is one where apes lead intellectual figures around on leashes. They force their slave-Einstein to build an atomic bomb, and force their slave-Faraday to build a detonator and push the button. A narrator speaks:

“Surely it’s obvious
Doesn’t every schoolboy know it?
The ends are ape-chosen; only the means are man’s.
Papio’s procurer, bursar to baboons,
Reason comes running, eager to ratify;
Comes a catch-fart with Philosophy, truckling to tyrants;
Comes a pimp for Prussia, with Hegel’s Patent History;
Comes with Medicine to administer Ape-King’s aphrodisiac;
Comes with rhyming and Rhetoric, to write his orations;
Comes with Calculus to aim his rockets
Accurately at the orphanage across the ocean;
Comes, having aimed, with incense to impetrate
Our Lady devoutly for a direct hit.”

I figure Wednesday isn’t too soon to stop being the Cult Of Homer.

Farewell, you wacky cult.

The Cult Of Homer would like to announce that it was some other cult which perpetrated the act of aggression on the eastern seaboard.

The Cult Of Homer would also like to remind you that when George W. Bush (and Clinton and G.H.W. Bush and Reagan before him) bombed the middle east, he justified his actions as ‘routine’ and ‘neccessary.’

This isn’t to say that today’s events were in any way justified, or to point the finger of blame at the middle-east, merely that as you sow, so shall ye reap. We cheered such actions as recently as the beginning of this Presidential administration. We can’t be surprised now.

The Most Wholly Homer asks that you join him in a moment of silent meditation, and think not only of those harmed in New York and the Pentagon, but also those harmed by similar US aggression in faraway lands. Only then will such events as this even begin to make sense.

And then, when you’ve considered it, go to the blood bank and make a deposit or two.

Homer Speaks

Navel gazing: “It’s your navel! Get over it!”

Your mantra: “Tom Robbins says there are two universal mantras which bring about enlightenment. They are ‘Yuck!’ and ‘Yum!’ Say them with me now: YUCK! YUM! Very good.”

Cell phones: “We are the dentrites. Telecommunication technology bridge the synapses. Cell phones are BAD NEUROTRANSMITTERS.”

Meaning: “Mathematicians have given us a model called a ‘strange attractor.’ The strange attractor, if I’m geting this right, is said to be a part of the equation which produces a recognizable, if still chaotic, pattern in the result. I think mathematicians have got it all wrong; the strange attractor isn’t in the numbers, it’s in the mind of whoever’s describing those numbers. Saying there are such things as ‘strange attractors’ is like saying ‘God has a plan for me, or he wouldn’t be putting me through all this bullshit.’”

Futons: “Futons rule.”

Wine: “Wine rules.”

The Internet: “The Victorians could send messages around the world in four hours over the telegraph. It takes my computer that long to boot up. What’s the big deal?”

So Have I Heard:

Verily, before the Most Holy Homer (this cult crap will be over on Thursday, I swear!) saw his own divinity, the walls around him were built of the bricks of his own insecurity. The fallacy of the undemonstrated incompetence loomed over his Mighty Crown Chakra in an unholy parody of enlightenment.

Then, he set off to do something he thought he’d never do: Ride his bicycle from Ballard to Bellevue. Now, it was not true that Homer’s Mighty Consciousness told him that he must accomplish this task. No, it was something more primitive, something that knew it was within the realm of human possibility, and thus within the realm of Homeric Possibility, too.

It started small. Homer wanted to go downtown, a trip he’d made many times on a bike. He landed at Pike Place Market for some lunch. Then, verily, did he ponder going to RePC to see if they had a cheap USB keyboard to plug into his laptop for desktop use. They did, but it was unsuitable, not having a Mac power key.

So, on a lark, Homer rode to the Goodwill mothership of Seattle. Finding nothing interesting there, he decided to learn how to get from there to the I-90 bridge bike lane entrance. And then he decided to go down it. And then he was in the middle of the bridge. And then he pedaled up the other side. And then he was on Mercer Island. And then he was on the other side of Lake Washington. And then he was in downtown Bellevue, trying to figure out where to eat dinner.

It’s important to understand Homer’s state of mind at the time: He had always believed that one day, he’d make some kind of trek like this, but he never knew when. And now, he had acted out that idea, that dream. And it wasn’t so hard.

So, the lesson of Homer And The Bike Trip is this: Just start, and if you don’t finish, no biggie. And if you do finish, well, that was nice, wasn’t it?