Dark Times – Page 2 – Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3

Too Many Frankensteins

There’s a reason they call it science FICTION.

Why does no one ever read the end of the story? Or if they do, why don’t they pay attention?

Ever since Mary Shelley gave us Frankenstein, laying out a moral of a story proving that just because you can, doesn’t mean you should, there seems to be a preponderance of ignorance running alongside the obvious capabilities our current day Dr. Frankensteins possess. It feels like the story is playing on an endless Youtube Short or TikTok or Reel without ever reaching the end and the story’s point. The only thing coming close to the volume of ignorance is the overdose of hubris that someone must be selling somewhere on some street corner. Or maybe it’s testosterone injections.

Whatever it is, whether in tech and AI, politics, sports, media, or fill in the blank for any field that can issue a press release and attract attention like flies to rotting flesh, it’s past the epidemic stage and has spread like a plague.

The fever stokes flames on Wall Street, which seems content to fuel them further until it all melts down. As long as they make their fees. Makes one wonder how the prediction markets on any number of popping bubbles are doing?

Between AI companies climbing over each other to fight over which model can cause more damage when they break free, companies creating horror movie-like robots to do damage control in dangerous circumstances, companies working to create AI powered glasses that will be used for mass surveillance — much less trouble making privacy violations, the tech sector seems to be outrunning the rest when it comes to the mad scientist wannabe game.

Politicians aren’t far behind, lagging only by their inability to keep up with and understand the changes happening around them as they count the cash being stuffed in their pockets. Sports teams intent on winning today don’t seem to care that they may be permanently damaging their game.

And there’s a media that doesn’t actually care who wins and who loses as long as they have access to the story of the rise and the story of the fall. Imagine if today’s media had covered Dr. Frankenstein’s efforts the way they cover Musk, Altman, Zuckerberg, or any of the others.

It’s too broad a generalization to say these stories never end well, even though many fail whether the consequences are intended or not. But in a world seemingly being driven by a bunch of geeks who profess a love for science fiction, and those who can’t help but take their money to drive their own ambitions, you’d think someone along the way would understand that they don’t get to write the end.

But that would require more than reading a summary.

Thanks for reading. You can subscribe to this blog if you care to. You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above. This site does not use affilate links.

More Thoughts on Resilience as Our Strength and Our Weakness

The damnation of short and painful memories.

Warning. This is going to be a very long, very personal and very cynical take. A lot of this has been bubbling in my gut for far too long, and I’m tired of the taste in my mouth when it regurgitates. So I write.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a piece titled Resilience Is Our Strength But Also Our Weakness. The slug line for the piece was “Time to break a few things.” I stand by the title, the slug line, and the content.

That said, I’m going to write further based on a conversation generated from the piece on Mastodon with fellow Mastodonians David Todd McCarty and Denny Henke. Henke, while admiring the piece, took me to task for not offering specifics about what to tear down. He was correct. I didn’t. I’ll offer what few I think there are throughout and towards the end of this essay.

Nasty hint. I don’t think there are many. That’s one reason it’s taken me so long to think and write this essay. There are questions. Nothing I’m going to say here should come as a surprise. Anyone reading this has probably already had many of the same thoughts. If you haven’t I don’t know why you’re here.

Before I get into that, let me toss out a few links for context for anyone interested. First, take a look at McCarty’s piece linked to in my previous piece called A Quiet Truth, and also his attempt to answer Henke’s response in this piece Democratic Socialism: Keeping The Great American Experiment Alive.

I’ll also reprint Henke’s intial thoughts in his response to me below:

Great post Warner and I generally agree but you don’t offer much detail. You’re focused on the Reconstruction and the historical rooting of our current moment in the Confederacy, which I would interpret as the unresolved issues of 150ish years ago.

But shouldn’t we go back 250 years? That would seem to get us closer to the foundational problems.

Also, coming back to today and the notion of breaking things. What is it you want to break? What do you see as being the goal? And how do you see us getting there?

I’d ask the same of DTM. You both SEEM to be calling for a sort of soft revolution without really saying it. And though you both seem to be rejecting the previous normal, you’re seemingly okay with many aspects of what we had.

What level of inequality are you willing to accept or is it none? What level of general social-ecological-economic violence are you willing to accept or is it none?

History

Both McCarty and Henke mention my historical references to our country’s capacity for compassion and resilience in my earlier piece, specifically how we as a nation chose a path of reconciliation over one of punishment after the American Civil War. History can nag, and be both instructive and problematic. I’m not one who thinks looking past the past, or picking your past (as I did) helps tremendously, though it instructs if you pay attention. Otherwise why would the dark hearted forces that seize control keep trying to erase or change it every time the cycle swings them back into power? History doesn’t only contain a recounting of events, it contains what’s behind those events should you care to look.

We may not step foot in the same river twice, but we keep recycling the water in history’s reflecting pools.

In my view, as a species (expand for a moment those borders and blinders beyond the U.S.) we’ve more than proven that we’re incapable of the persuasion necessary to promote positive change in the grand scheme of things. We’re also incapable of enough horror to counter dark underlying forces eager to exploit., explode and yes, extinguish in their quest for power and dominion. We don’t want to be the monsters we need to counter.

It’s a doom loop humans have been caught in long before anyone reading this was born. And it’s a loop so overstuffed with doom that we want to physiologically and psychologically wipe it from our memories the moment we begin coming up for air after one catastrophe or the other. It’s amazing how we even find ways to ignore the scar tissue.

For the moment then , set aside history. Why continue to dissect it to death for no great real benefit? Set aside also discussions of racism, religious intolerance, class warfare, and all flavors of hatred of the other. More words have been written about those topics, some here, and in countless other places by countless other writers. None seeming to have any real lasting effect beyond blowing off steam on trains stalled on the tracks. Words do have meaning. Meaning meanders through the mediums and get muddled in the summaries.

Dig beneath to what in my opinion is the rotten root behind most of the ills humans continue to bring on one another. The thirst for dominion reveals dark hearts fueled with an appetite for self aggrandizement that makes the sin of gluttony feel like a mild teenage eating disorder. You can’t read a history of any civilization without finding that to be the case. Oh, shit. There’s history again.

What? Too big? Too broad a topic? Too much to tackle?

Spot on.

It is too big. Also too unsolvable. Too deep. You can erase moments of history. You can’t erase who we are. It is who we are. At least as demonstrated by a collective human history of repeating and revisiting the motivations behind the moments that stand out on the surface, that iceberg-like signal greater horrors underneath. Perhaps we’re waiting for some AI to solve it. That’s only partially a joke. Easier to laugh than accept responsibility.

Not recognizing the enormity of the larger root cause makes it far too easy to focus on what comparatively is the day-to-day (these days overwhelming) minutiae of corrupt and poisonous politics, legal morasses, greed in all forms, and debates over a constitution that has essentially been abused as much as the people it supposedly protects. Every day there’s a moment that feels crucial (it is always the most important election of our lifetime!), always feels pressing, and always ends up, in the grand scheme of things, rewarding a few while screwing over the rest. Always.

Admitting the larger problem is indeed too much, but also too much a condemnation of us all. And we generally shy away from that. Focusing on the immediate threat always and often more urgently satisfies the emotional need to rage against that which can’t be changed or controlled. And that brings me to violence.

Violence and Monsters

I’m not advocating violence. I’m not a violent person. I have resorted to it a couple of times to defend myself and loved ones. Beyond self defense, (too often a convenient excuse) I am acknowledging that violence is usually what most of what we’re experiencing evolves (devolves?) into. Not always. But usually. And usually when it counts.

Frankly, in my world view, if you’re not prepared for a violent outcome you’re being naive in the best case. In the worst, you’re just a willing victim and actually a part of the problem. Regardless, those willing to accept violence as a piece of the puzzle are at least the ones who have chance of winning each moment’s argument.

Yes, violence begats an endless cycle. One good deed may deserve another, but one bad one too often breeds many more. But without the threat of violence or punishment, power and the restriction of it is essentially meaningless.

Reiterating, I’m not advocating violence. I just think we need to be prepared for it. Frankly, I’m surprised we haven’t already seen it on a larger scale in this country in the reactions to the violence visited on us by our government. To say you’re incapable of it, means you’ve never been under serious threat, real or imagined. Reason is always preferred. Until you confront the unreasonable.

But what about the important non-violent movements throughout history? Gandhi? Martin Luther King and civil rights? Labor strikes? What about Victor Orban stepping down after being defeated in an election?

Don’t kid yourself. While non-violent organizers fighting for civil rights practiced and preached non-violence, realize in most situations they were prepared to have violence done on them. Those organizers were no fools. In too many cases throughout history (damn, there it is again) it wasn’t until things turned violent that things begin to change. The presence of cameras made a difference during the US civil rights struggles of the 1960’s. They don’t seem to do so with the same result in the 2020’s. It takes sociopaths to not blanche at the sight of bloodshed of others. It takes courage to bleed for them.

But what about Orban? Perhaps the most sensible tyrant in history. He read the writing on the wall, knew he’d already made his bundle, and had changed the structure of his country in ways that will take decades to fix and tie his opponents into knots. He got out while the getting was good. It’s a rare villain who knows to quit when he’s ahead. Or still has one. U.S. tyrant hopefuls who have been taking cues from Orban should heed his last one.

This country just quasi-celebrated its 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. If it wasn’t for a group of men willing to publicly sign their name to a document at the risk of being hung for treason, who knows what this continent would have become? Would you have signed it with your neck on the line?

Violence is being done on citizens of this country almost daily by its government, as well as on others around the world. Dark hearted monsters have more than proven their lust for it. As for the rest of us?

With the possible exception of some citizens in cities invaded by ICE, I’m not sure enough are willing to stand in the way when the guns come out. Certainly that would require sacrifice in such action. Would you be willing to make it?

The fact that ICE murders haven’t yet turned the tide is something I find hard to grasp in the same way a collective catastrophe like COVID did not. When it is easy to exploit death and destruction for selfish gain we’ve turned a corner into a very dark alley.

As twisted as all of this is, it’s also become some sort of an even more twisted spectator sport to watch the clock hopefully run out on Trump one way or the other. Allies and enemies abroad have joined in on the watching, waiting for a flashpoint or an act of God that may or may not come before too much more damage is done. Meanwhile the violence continues.

I’m not condemning anyone by saying that. I’m just acknowledging that we’re more willing spectators than we are victims watching a losing match, while somehow still trying to manage our lives, than we might believe. Much like the small folk in any Game of Thrones episode helplessly watching dragons fly overhead.

And therein lies one of my larger points.

It pisses me off when I hear criticisms about those who are too comfortable to do what it takes to change things. Certainly there are those who don’t want their comfort zones turned upside down. They deserve condemnation. But there are far too many just trying to provide for their families and get through the day-to-day. I know quite a few for whom that struggle is as all consuming as any political struggle.

It also pisses me off that those who do have enough capacity to work for change have chosen to do so so weakly. They piss me off more than those that willingly attach to the predators like remorseless remoras.

Folks may be willing to boycott a retailer, or a streaming service, or attend a weekend march for a few hours. But I don’t see any concerted actions or desire to do what the Albanians are currently doing to protest their government’s collusion with the Kushner/Trump family attempts to steal and develop a piece of that country’s shoreline. I think the Albanians have now been in the streets for longer than 40 days. That’s a long weekend that’s not short on courage.

So, as to one specific. Until a large enough portion of the population of this country is willing to stand in the streets for periods longer than a few hours on a weekend afternoon, I don’t think on the whole we’re ready for the moment, or the struggle. Those afraid of losing their comfort and those willing to enable by sitting on the sidelines don’t deserve a voice in fixing what has been broken, if or when the time comes.

The citizens of Minnesota and other cities invaded by ICE showed great resilience in the face of government violence. Tragically, it wasn’t enough. That winter furor cooled off as warmer spring temperatures crept in, though it seems to be sparking anew in the heat of the summer after similar recent government sponsored murders in Texas and Maine. I have my doubts.

It’s monstrous what’s happening. And we need to meet the monsters where they are. There’s a great theme in Emily St. John Mandel’s novel, Station Eleven, later made into a streaming series. “To the monsters, we’re the monsters” is perhaps more proverb than theme. There’s always fear on either side of a conflict. Do we need to be more monstrous?

For those who think this sounds like anarchy, you’re probably correct in the strict sense of the term. Here’s the thing. I happen to believe that active tyranny is worse than anarchy. I’m not alone in that. Anarchy is chaos without control. Active tyranny is chaos under the guise of control. That’s where we are. Both bring chaos. Both bring horror.

We’re living under active tyranny masquerading as a constitutional republic that controls too many of the world’s purse strings, constantly tilting every axis it can find, led by a decadent decaying thug, held up and held together by sniveling supplicants, none of whom know when or how to quit, or desire to. Trading one flavor of chaos for another often sounds appealing. It usually never is. Until there is no alternative.

Damnatio Memoriae

The condemnation of memory is an ancient practice of wiping the memory banks clean. The Romans get first credit for attempting to remove all instances of those no longer in favor. Rather than be faced with reminders of those unwanted, remove all instances of their likeness and wipe them from the history books. Don’t mention their names. Damnatio Memoriae resurfaces throughout history like a bad memory popping up out of nowhere, as those controlling the roads patch over the potholes created by the destruction of those who stood in their path. Sorry. History rearing its ugly head again.

I was in Russia directing an American musical when the statue of the founder of the KGB, Felix Dzerzhinksy, was removed from the square in Moscow bearing his name. Joshua Yaffa has an interesting take on the moment, the history, and its aftermath. Here’s a quote:

…in a civic culture that placed more emphasis on forgetting than remembering its more painful moments, Memorial never became part of the mainstream. In 1992, an investigation into the legality of the Communist Party’s actions ended with a whimper. There was never any formal reckoning or judgment on seventy years of Communist rule and those who carried it out.

I grew up in the South in the era when those with long memories and lingering hatreds began turning their dream of rising again into the ugly reality that has led us to where we are now. It was subtle, insidious, and largely ignored outside of the region.

The same media institutions we rightfully condemn for their capitulation today essentially did the same thing during and after the civil rights struggles in the 1960’s. Sainted as they may be for turning their cameras on the Bull Conners and the Edmund Pettus Bridge, they largely ignored the raising of statues and Civil War memorials celebrating traitors, hiding as easily as behind a hood, a politician’s platform, or the masks today’s ICE goons wear in cowardice. The media treats losing soccer coaches with more disdain than it has the legacy of losers who ripped a country apart once and are doing so again.

Politics

In Conor McPherson’s underrated musical Girl From The North Country, featuring the music of Bob Dylan, one of the characters speaking to another, his face pummeled from a boxing match, says:

Marianne: Boxing is so foolish. They say that in the bible, you know?

Scott: Yeah?

Marianne: Leviticus. Chapter 3 verse 4.

Scott: What?

Marianne: I’m making it up. You can say anything is in Leviticus.

The same is true about politics. You can say anything in politics. It’s in the bible. I’m making that up. The opposite is true and you can find it hanging on the walls of schoolhouses in some states. Irony isn’t dead, it just can’t outrun political comedy.

Built into the Constitution since its ratification, the speech and debate clause allowed members of Congress to lie through their teeth while working during attendance at sessions. It’s expanded well beyond the wells of congressional chambers, but then the constitution itself, much like the bible, expands and contracts depending on the moment, the speaker, and the number of social media followers.

One of the cardinal rule of politics is to make your opponent spend time and resources defending themselves. As to one of those specifics I left out, we don’t practice that skill enough. The monsters do. We do not. We need to.

Call me crazy, but as the Democratic Party searches in vain to try and grab a coherent message, their consultant driven attempts keep missing the mark against opponents tossing slop at them from the gutter. If you didn’t want to wrestle the pig on his home turf, you should have never gotten into politics.

The consultants want to call the intersection where the right and left meet a horseshoe. It’s actually a circle. But closing that gap rhetorically might just mean making those who hate each other for different reasons find too many similarities to make the comfortable classes uncomfortable, and put the consultant class out of work.

To me, there is only one message that should be leveled in any and all attacks. “You want the shootings in our streets to stop? You want health care? You want to afford a living for you and your family? You want an expanded Supreme Court? You want..(fill in the blank with any other issue currently sizzling on the hot plate)? Then first you have to vote these criminals and cowards out of office.”

If you’re not calling them a criminal and a coward every time you speak, in exactly those terms, you’re missing the moment. And if your candidate refuses to do so, find another one who will.

I hate to say it about myself, but I look several family members in their face on Zoom calls and bluntly say, “when you stop supporting pedophiles, rapists, and criminals, then we’ll talk.” I hate being brought to that place. It’s damn painful. But here we are.

The dark hearted monsters have made sure there is no longer a middle road. We need to quit looking for one. Stop also looking for the high road. Everyone is in the same ditch. Don’t debate nonsense. Don’t try to reason with the unreasonable. If your compassionate muscle begins to twitch, exercise it in support of those who literally find it hard to manage through a day or a week, and can’t find the time or energy for anything else.

Henke asked me “What level of inequality am I willing to accept, or is it none?” I’d love to say it was none, but that would be naive. Like Thomas More I don’t think there could ever be a Utopia. There is always going to be inequality. Thinking equality for everyone is a fiction that can really only be achieved from a perch above those you want to help. There’s irony in there somewhere.

The question isn’t what level of inequality would you accept, the question is what levels of support for those on the lower rungs of the ladder are you willing to pay for.

For some, politics may be about creating equality, opportunity, or possibility. We like to hear that. Some desperately want to believe that. And yes, laws do matter. But laws can be undone. More swiftly than they can be created. Laws can be evil. Slavery was legal. Laws can be ignored. But at its root, politics is, and always was, about dividing up what resources are available or finding new ones when those run out. If you think it’s about anything else, you’re wrong.

More Specifics and Breaking Things

I promised to list some specifics beyond the few sprinkled above. And here you go.

As to the upcoming elections.

Pay Attention: There are no secrets. We’re told and we see daily what the plans are. If you dismiss them as the ravings of a lunatic, you’re wrong. Pay attention.

Vote. The only way to defend the right to vote is to vote. That sounds easy and trite. I don’t think it will be for some this year. Whatever obstacles (and there are quite a few) that the president has declared he wants to throw in your path need to be overcome. Voting is going to be more of an act of defiance than it has ever been.

Organize. Yes, it helps. But it only helps if you do so strategically with the simple goal of tossing the bums out. Everything else is secondary. Certainly if we lose.

Be ready to protest after the election and whatever bullshit the coward and criminal-in-chief tries to pull to keep himself in power and out of jail. The largest mistake we made after the 2024 election was staying in shock and not causing trouble in the immediate aftermath. We allowed the criminals the time to carry out the plans they had made very public for all to see. None of what we are seeing should be a surprise. If it is or was, you weren’t paying attention.

Sharpen your steel. The steel in your spine. Know you’re already under attack and know what you stand for or don’t. Know what you’re willing to compromise on and what you’re willing to sacrifice and what you’re not. That won’t be easy. It never is.

Call and write your representatives. Or visit their local offices. Certainly call and write them on an issue and how you feel about it. But let whomever answers the phone or greets you at reception that your support stops depending on how they fight. More importantly tell them straight up that if they want a donation they have to ask in person and be prepared to stand accountable. Remind them that the country you want them to fight for was birthed by a minority who pledged it all and that you expect them to do the same.

Write. Not just on social media. Not just your representatives. Not just on the Internet. Write your friends. Write your family. Write the CEOs of companies you do business with. Turn your mind into one that isn’t afraid to make waves. Let whomever you write know that you hold them responsible as the ones that broke the dam and caused the damage. Put them on the defensive. If they are going to tell you to get lost, they are already lost to you. Don’t try to reason with the unreasonable. Write them off and let them know you’ve done so.

As to breaking things.

The only reason the president hasn’t declared some sort of state of emergency and taken complete control is it would bring political fundraising to a halt. Not just for him. He doesn’t need it while he sits in office and collects the bribes that spill over his desk like golden showers. But it would end most political fundraising for the rest of the hangers on and lickspittles. That of course would be a blow to the media as well, because that’s where the dollars raised mostly go after the consultants take their cut.

I have no doubt in my mind that Trump will do some such action either before or after the election. At that point the money will have already been raised and spent and it’s one of the few gambits he has left.

“Things” are already broken. Congress. The Courts. The Justice Department. The Constitution. The economy. Global alliances. The list is too long before you even get to the defacing destruction of Washington DC and the White House.

I’m reminded of when now senator Mark Warner was elected governor of Virginia in 2002. (Sorry, not sorry, but it’s another history moment.) He came to power to discover that the Republican Party had been essentially cooking the books. Warner had to scale back some of his plans to put the state’s finances back together. It wasn’t easy. But he largely succeeded by setting aside some of his promised priorities.

That pales in comparison to what whomever is elected in 2028 will face, or assuming the democrats come back into the majority in Congress after the midterms.

Like Orban’s Hungary, so much is broken it is going to take years if not generations to restore. I’d suggest restoration shouldn’t be the goal. Neither should reconciliation.

Sure, we’d all like to see some of the physical manifestations of Trump’s classless remodeling of the capital city and other places torn down and ripped asunder. That would probably feel good, and provide a cathartic cleansing. A symbolic, yet perhaps necessary one. But we should never attempt to erase the memory of what we’re living through. Don’t damn the memory, damn those who created them and forever remember their evil. At least for seventy or 80 years or so. That seems to be our capacity.

Certainly we’d like to see many of these barbarians sent to jail for their crimes. If we don’t, forget about the current system of laws that they’ve already spit on and torn asunder. The criminals have. We should too.

The harder work will be in closing the holes that our constitutional republic has left open that let this madman run through and over. Those holes exist because the founding fathers believed in honor, checks and balances, and to some extent the will of the people. This decade has more than proven that we don’t care so much about honor, much less checks and balances or the will of the people.

Break what’s left, and I’d suggest taking advantage of the opportunity to make something new. If it requires a constitutional convention, do it. If it requires being more monstrous to meet the monsters where they are, do so. It can’t be any messier or more dangerous than things stand now.

I’ll close with something I post on social media twice a week.

Act like it.

(Image from Halinskyi Max on Shutterstock)

Sunday Morning Reading

Still milling milestones

It’s a Sunday. It’s a Sunday when I can say I’ve hung around for seven decades as the clock ticked past 70 yesterday. Spending the weekend celebrating with the grandkids, dodging in an out of pockets of time when the air is breathable, so there’s only a few links to share in this week’s Sunday Morning Reading. Hope you enjoy them as much as I have spending it with two innocents watching them approach the world from that perspective. When they look to you for answers, it’s awesomely terrifying.

David Todd McCarty thinks We’re Teaching Our Kinds The Wrong Lessons. As someone who wonders why we spend so much time teaching them not to lie in a world that rewards liars, I often think the same.

NatashaMH writes about An Artist’s Search For Meaning. The quote below she included from Viktor E. Frankel, hit in a different way on this birthday weekend.

“It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life — daily and hourly.”

It wouldn’t be a Sunday Morning Reading column without at least one nod to politics, Her’s the nod from Carlyn Beccia, wondering Has America Crossed The Asshole Threshold? I would argue yes, but wouldn’t limit it to just America.

Claire Stapleton worked at Google. She saw most of it. She tells what she saw in The Voice Of Google in a piece that is so much more than just about Google and the tech culture.

Thanks for reading. Feel free to subscribe if you want. It’s free. If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. If you’d like more click on the Sunday Morning Reading link in the category column to check out what’s been shared on Sunday’s past. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. This site does not use affilate links.

Sunday Morning Reading

Reading is a gateway drug. Get your buzz on.

Sunday Morning Reading is about…well, it’s about reading. In my personal opinion some don’t read nearly enough. Read. Read those you agree with. Just as important, read those you disagree with. Stretch those reading muscles and stretch your mind.

I linked to a Rose Horowitch piece earlier in the week entitled The End of Reading Is Here. It’s controversial. I don’t agree completely. But that’s the point of reading. If that’s still a thing.

Follow that piece up with Sonny Bunch’s R.I.P. Attention Span. Closing his essay he says “The end of reading may be here. But so too might be the end of watching anything that lasts longer than the time it took you to read this sentence.”

In an age where some are eager to ban books (surprised we haven’t seen any book burnings yet) Mendel Uminer chose to move rather than reduce his collection of books after his landlord complained. Check out Alex Vadukul’s story Too Many Books.

You know that reading can satisfy curiosity. It can also raise it to new levels. Neil Steinberg’s Etymological Field Notes tells such a tale. Do you flânuer?

And for those who tell you not to believe everything you read, here’s John Semley on The Fanfare Around The Band Geese Actually Was a Psyop.

In the wake of all of the seemingly unending horrible daily doping of bad political news, (some about wakes to be, some about wakes possibly delayed), James L. Bruno writes The “Last Best Hope On Earth” Crashes & Burns.

With the act and art of reading being in question, especially when it comes to the news, the click matters more than the content now that most of what we’re presented isn’t worth being displayed in a supermarket checkout line tabloid rack. Or does it? According to Pete Pachal when it comes to the news Speed Still Matters In News, But The Prize Is No Longer The Click. Maybe there never was a prize.

Speaking of prizes. Winning isn’t everything. Unless it is. JA Westenberg reminds us that A Battle Won Is A Terrible Thing.

Rob Urie tells us Why AI Doesn’t Think, Cannot Reason, Isn’t Intelligent and Will Never Achieve Consciousness. It’s not magic.

(image from the author)

The Myth of Character

There’s nothing new under the sun

I’m a pretty good judge of character. My profession as a theatre director trained me to understand a character in a play’s dramatis personae from reading a script. I hear you. That’s life on the stage. That’s make believe.

Shutterstock 1782039683.

Here’s the secret. No character on a stage ever appeared for the first time in a play. They debuted in life and someone described them in words and brought them to theatrical life. Playwrights don’t create characters out of whole cloth. They, like poets and writers before them, write characters as they have experienced them in the real world, or borrow them from those that have written them before. We are a decidedly unoriginal species.

If you live long enough and pay attention to the world, you develop the same skills as writers and theatre directors. You quickly come to realize that there are indeed a limited number of character types around us and they are easily identifiable. There are apparently a finite number of molds we’re baked in.

Hell, dogs recognize good and bad characters much like humans. Often faster. So do children, but something happens as we mature that dulls that instinct.

Writers for the page, stage and cinema people their stories with recognizable types, not for lack of trying, but as recognition that we don’t really change that much through the ages. In the theatre trade we call these easily identifiable types “stock characters.” Stock, as in picking them down off of a shelf.

Aristophanes and Theophrastus for the Greeks, and Plautus for the Romans get most of the credit for this. Although most consider Plautus to have simply borrowed the concept. Later, Commedia dell’Arte became famous for its stock characters, and also the masks created for them. The humans behind the masks became less important to the story than the costume. That should tell you something.

Supposedly the first time the term “stock character” appeared in the English language was in the 1860’s. Other cultures had and have their own versions of stock characters. Asian and African forms of storytelling also developed their own easily recognizable familiar characters.

When it comes to literature and entertainment there haven’t been that many new characters recreated from life’s observances since antiquity. “Good” characters have a flaw or two or three. So do the “bad.” That’s what makes them human. Even the dramas written in the days of multiple gods featured those beings as flawed. Without flaws there is no conflict, no drama, no comedy.

In today’s highly charged political atmosphere, with villains currently holding winning hands here and abroad, looking for perfect characters to defeat them is a fool’s errand. And yes, there are more than plenty who fit the character mold of fool.

When a person creates a role behind a mask representing good character or one on a path of redemption, that’s an age old character trait also. Those characters always get their comeuppance in the end when the flaws are exposed. It’s only recently in the history of literature that we’ve forced happy endings that include the irredemable into the mix. It’s a sad and unfunny joke that people keep trying the trick. Audiences, like dogs, sniff it out.

When someone says a man or woman is of good character it doesn’t mean they’re perfect, pristine, or pure. We might like it to, but that’s wish casting. Flaws will always emerge. Otherwise the story generally sucks.

I wish we’d stop looking for those mythical creatures and recognize that the good and bad ones that populate our real life off the stage are just copying what came before and mirroring the life most of us lead.

(Image from mariesacha on Shutterstock)

The End of Reading?

Let’s not make it so. At least until you read this piece.

File this one in the “Depressing If True” category. Rose Horowitch has written an excellent piece for The Atlantic entitled The End Of Reading Is Here. Yes, you read the title correctly. Unless you’ve already given up on reading you should give the piece more than just a look. If you have given up, try to remember how.

I’m not sure I’d agree completely that we’ve reached or are nearing the end point of reading, but I have to admit that we sure seem to be rushing headlong to cliff noting, bullet pointing, and summarizing everything to a point that it’s far too easy for some to break the habit and shy away from reading as a way to discover knowledge, new ideas, and well…advance ourselves and civilization while understanding from whence we came.

An excerpt:

Reading has never been natural. Humans have no innate cognitive machinery designed to string letters into words and connect them to their real-world analogues. To read, people had to repurpose regions of their brain used for speech and object recognition. The practice first emerged 6,000 years ago in Mesopotamia.

Horowitch traipses through the history of the written word hitting the high and low water marks, many easily recognizable, some not nearly as discernible, pointing to an age when Marshall McLuhan predicted we would become “post-literate.” He predicted that in 1962. She marches on from there.

The usual, and occasionally unusual, list of the enemies of writing and reading make their appearance on her march through the ages, but Horowitch lays them out, dare I say, in only the way a writer could. And yes, AI makes its appearance on that list. For it is not just reading, it’s also the writing of the words we read that is under threat.

Another excerpt:

The written word is fundamentally different from oral language. Writing detaches the message from the messenger, allowing for a more dispassionate spread of information than was possible in oral societies. Because writing a phrase takes longer than speaking it, writing forces the author to slow down and reflect. Written language tends to employ more complex sentence structures and vocabulary than spoken language. And unlike speech, it doesn’t disappear into the ether.

In her conclusion Horowitch reminds us that in our digital age we have the capability to read much more than at any point in human history.

When the Library of Alexandria disappeared, the knowledge inscribed on its scrolls was lost forever. We can only guess what else Eratosthenes and Euclid might have written. The text turned to dust. That won’t happen today; all of the words in the great library could be stored on a single computer chip. Nowadays, even the most obscure academic monographs are scanned and digitized. Google Books and the Internet Archive represent libraries of unfathomable proportions. We can navigate to them with a few keystrokes, not a perilous journey across the Mediterranean. There’s little risk of their texts succumbing to humidity or mice.

But the threat of apathy remains. What we’re losing is the ability and inclination to read those texts. An astonishing wealth of information and wisdom has been bequeathed to us. What we’ll do with this inheritance is up to us.

That makes it all a choice, does it not?

I won’t question the assumptions, nor the excellent way she has written them. I will add that if we are indeed reaching the end of reading, the logical next step is the end of thinking.

The piece is more than worth your time, should you have in the inclination to read it. I hope you do. It might actually make you think.

Sunday Morning Reading

Words, words, words…

Meaning. It means so much. So do the words that deliver it to us. But remember, there was meaning before we constructed words into language. This week’s Sunday Morning Reading comes on the final day of a weird and wacky 4th of July weekend in the U.S when an often mean Mother Nature reminded us who is really in control no matter which words we choose or manipulate to pretend we are. It was kinda fun to watch. There’s also a few interesting pieces about America’s founding, and the myths and the meaning behind it all.

Kicking it off is a short piece from JA Westenberg asking Remember When Words Had Meaning? What comes first the distortion of language or the devaluing of the culture that employs them?

Speaking of meaning, Jack Loftus gives us The U.S. Constitution Is For Simple Folk Still Burdened By The Belief That Words Have Meaning. You can argue it was always thus, but we sure do spend an awful amount of time, energy and money arguing the opposite.

In this age of WTF, it has become an accelerating trend to see pieces disemboweling many of the myths we assign to the founding of America around the 4th of July. We used to share common myths more than we did a common history, but now even the myths get mangled. So it’s no surprise when the powers that currently be toil to rewrite both. Noah Berlatsky‘s The Constitution Sucks is a good example of how we can forever flip the coin looking for the right result, ignoring the edge.

T.H. Breen takes a look at some of the too often un-heralded folks and local movements during America’s revolutionary war period in It Wasn’t Just The Founders.

John Warner offers up For The Fourth, 9 Books For Your Sense Of Patriotism, saying “I’ve come to (personally) understand patriotism as a not a fan-like allegiance to a team, but a responsibility to understand the country’s history, warts and all as we pursue the illusive promise of life, liberty and happiness for all from the Declaration.” The key is knowing we all “come” to understanding.

Will Frivolous Charges Be Brought Against Future Ex-POTUSes? That’s Okay Too by Josh Marshall offers up an excellent piece on how we can twist and morph words in a legal context that shift the ground under most mythical mountains like “no man is above the law. “

Speaking of words and meaning, the bad guys seeking to survive a legal onslaught ahead of what they fear is a political tsunami coming for them are trying to rekindle old fears about communism and socialism as their latest talking points. Not sure those old saws will cut the same way they used to, but it demonstrates just how limited the dictionary is. David Todd McCarty takes a look behind the hooting and hollering in Democratic Socialism: Keeping The Great American Experiment Alive.

And in a quasi-hysterical look at shifting meanings and changing words, Rogé Karma is wondering Why Everyone Is Suddenly Talking About ‘Universal Basic Capital’. The quasi-hysterical part is that it’s coming from the AI market masters and a few politicians substituting the word “capital” for “income” following the words “universal basic.” Language is hard. When you can say anything to get what you want.

And in another word substitution, Doc Searls suggests we shift from an “attention economy” to an “intention economy.” Check out The First Source Of Personal Intent. I’m not sure the meaning changes with the substitution.

(Image from Alexandra on Unsplash)

Thoughts Swirling On This 4th of July

Celebrate who we want to be, not who dark hearts keep reminding us we are.

The 4th of July hasn’t felt the same to me in quite some time. The country I was born in doesn’t feel the same as it once did. Yet it does. In ways I wish I could ignore. Those are obvious observations many share, I’m sure. To me they are painful ones. Very painful.

I’m not one who ever believed that this country (or any country), given the way governments and people work, was divinely founded or inspired to do what is right. Humankind is too arrogant, too selfish, and too human to think that doesn’t spill over into governing and social intercourse any more or less so than it does into any other field of endeavor. The American musicalized version of our founding is indeed powerful and seductive, but it mostly hides the sour notes, even if at times it reveals truths it often obscures.

In this last decade plus it’s become excruciating to watch centuries-old hatreds arise from wounds once thought closed and healed, unleashed by a madman able to turn others just as mad. Insidious infections have popped through the surface and festered anew, revealing that far too many have no understanding of or desire to understand the bonds we share as humans on a rock orbiting a star, divided by arbitrary borders and divisions, assuming we can somehow control the chaos we continue to create.

Yes, the Declaration of Independence broke new ground in humankind’s advance, but in our current moment, it’s challenging, bordering on disingenuous, to say it altered the course of its continuing evolution.

For those who say that this 4th of July is for celebrating our 250th anniversary as a country, I’d offer this. Kinda yes, mostly no.

The years before and immediately following the Declaration proved just how close we came to not seeing those grievances become more than bold and dangerous statements on a piece of parchment. Yes, we won the American Revolution that sprung from the Declaration. But there were as many on this continent who were quite content to remain under the rule of a king, as those who revolted against it.

The men who wrote and signed that document were willing to hang for their actions. I don’t see too many (or enough) willing to do the same today.

In the 250 years since, we’ve had other close runs at seeing it all rent asunder. The Declaration in and of itself opened a door, it didn’t build as firm a foundation as many thought and hoped, or a country. That came later.

We’re living through another close run at tearing it all down, somehow finding too many of our fellow citizens content, as many of their forbearers were, to putting their lives in the hands of a king-like ruler once again. It will take decades to overcome this era, not because rulings and laws can’t be changed. They can. Surprisingly we’re finding they are also easy enough to ignore. We’ve given new life to dark and sickened hearts that will poison not only themselves and that which they touch, but the generation or two that comes after them.

The Declaration of Independence and the country that came after were never perfect. Proving that neither are we, neither are those who preceded us, and neither will be those who will succeed us. It was actually an acknowledgment of humankind’s imperfections. It was a promise, and it was a start, following a shot heard round the world. We’re still running the race that shot started, against the same headwinds of our own making, the promise still unfulfilled.

The act of reaching the Declaration of Independence is indeed worth celebrating, even if we keep extending the play by adding repetitive acts that keep rehashing the same plot points that made it necessary.

The 4th of July is also worth celebrating for all of the Americans, past and present, who think it is still worth pushing back against those who don’t care for what it has meant, flawed in its creation or no, and only see in its imperfections and the constitution that followed years later, other tools for self aggrandizement and enrichment.

Celebrate who we want to be, not who dark hearts keep reminding us we are. Castigation is all they deserve.

A Flopping Turkey In Washington DC

Sad spectacle in Washington DC

I’ve directed a few shows in my time that were flops. Small audiences. Empty theaters. Never fun. Always embarrassing. Always a loss. We called flops and turkeys. I don’t think any of those experiences compares to the big show currently flopping in Washington DC as America tries to celebrate its 250th Anniversary under an extremely unpopular, flailing pedophile and adjudicated rapist still pretending to be president.

It’s one thing to give your all for a play or a musical and have the public not be interested, regardless of the quality of work. It’s another thing entirely to fail with egg on your face celebrating the biggest anniversary in the country’s history to date, simply because folks don’t bother to show up.

We always joked about a flop by saying the public stayed away in droves. From all of the photos and live coverage from DC, it looks like the droves are in on this joke. Oh, there are other celebrations around the country, but the public sure seems to be ignoring the big one put on by the big guy. You’d think someone so obsessed about ratings would take the hint.

The myth is that Benjamin Franklin wanted the turkey to be our national bird and not the eagle. Turns out we’ve got a real turkey of a 250th celebration on our hands. And this one is no myth.

Resilience Is Our Strength But Also Our Weakness

Time to break a few things

There are two big conversations popping around the political universe these days. Both seem to miss not only the larger point, but the stakes.

The first is how the Democratic Party is trying to still figure out what it wants to be in the wake of progressive victories in recent primaries. The centrists are appalled. The progressives are ecstatic. The people are pissed off. The politicians are clueless. This post isn’t really about that fight, only to say that it provides some context to the second.

The second conversation takes place on the larger battleground heading into the midterms and beyond. No, that’s not the inevitable mud fight between what was once the Republican Party and the clueless Democrats. It’s yet another intra-party scrap on the Dem side.

There are those who think we need to restore to what we had before. Achieve some sort of balance again. There are those, like me, that think playing that game is not only equally clueless, but is trying to pretend we can put all of the dismantling and destruction aside and find some sort of way forward in some semblance of what we used to call unity. As I said, I’m not buying into that myth. Reconstruction didn’t work the first time around. It won’t this time either.

The reconstruction and balance crowd makes a sadly profound observation about the electorate. As pissed off as most people are, the movers and shakers are counting on the resilience of the American people. Sad fact, the bad guys now in power and trying to desperately hang on to it out of fear of retribution, continue to count on that same resilience.

Resilience doesn’t always mean a stiffer spine. Many times it means hanging in and taking care of the immediate business of living day to day. When that daily struggle is the focus, it’s no surprise the bigger picture gets lost, or muddled up over passionate issues that in the larger scheme of things mean less than those that take advantage of them push like dope.

Yes, we are a resilient people. We can withstand a lot. But that resilience also makes us far too compliant, hoping that the next election, or some court decision will change things the way they always have in American politics. Those legal and civilized ways of bringing change have often, albeit slowly worked, but we’re finding that given everything that is broken, those same legal and civilized tools can be used to quash that progress at a quicker pace.

While we haven’t yet launched into a full-blown shooting Civil War, the damage that has been done since the Confederacy rose again and took over the federal government under the leadership of a Queens, New York conman and pedophile (something that strikes me as ironic and on the surface just damn funny) is in many ways just as damaging as was the end of the first Civil War, if not more so, because many of the institutions and norms that helped the Union survive have been and continue to be dismantled.

At the conclusion of that war in 1865 there was a great debate about how to handle the states and its leaders that formed the Confederacy. One side wanted retribution and punishment, the other not so much. Equal to our resilience is our capacity for compassion and our compunction to think that dark hearts can be changed. The compassionate side largely won out in an attempt to heal the nation’s wounds. Sad to say, here we are again.

The difference this time around is that on top of the fight for freedom, civil rights, and equality, we’re fighting a government that’s largely owned by a handful of billionaires. Many of which were on the other side of things not too long ago. Money talks and bullshit walks. They’ve largely made their haul, so the only reason I can see for them to continue what they’r doing is they’re also afraid of retribution.

In a brief conversation earlier today with friend David Todd McCarty after reading a new piece of his called The Quiet Truth, I remarked that his citing of the quote from Confucius about a willow that bends being stronger than the mighty oak that breaks in the storm, got me thinking. Those willows are indeed resilient. That same story appears in many cultures, proving its own resilience. But I’ve come to believe the only way out of this mess we’ve allowed ourselves to be in is going to require some breakage. Breakage that must require building something new, not restoring the old.

We made that mistake after the American Civil War. The country literally broke in two. In attempting to heal it, we proved our resilience as a people, but unfortunately left two many places for the losers to hide and lurk in the resilient reeds. They have resurfaced a few times since in our history, but have always been beaten back. Each time accepted back into the fold with that same practical compassion and resilience.

They’ve been openly enjoying breaking things. We might not enjoy it, but we need to break a few things with equal desperation and energy, before too much more is broken.

(Image from Halinskyi Max on Shutterstock)