I often feel as though I’m one of the few adults in a nation full of children. I watch Americans playing their ridiculous red hat/blue hat games, pretending that their arbitrarily-chosen schoolyard teams are really different from each other in some important way that justifies defending creepy molesters on their team while viciously attacking the same kind of creepy molesters on the other team. I see jackasses braying about how different things would be if only their team were in charge, despite the fact that both have had long periods in which they held strong majorities in individual states and in all branches of the federal government, yet failed miserably to create the Utopias they keep insisting they can create if only given one more chance; in fact, both have cooperated to build the fascist police state in which we are now trapped. I see politicians contradicting themselves egregiously while their fawning worshipers are too busy licking their boots to even look up and see both sides of their masters’ mouths projectile-vomiting different kinds of filth. I see adults so horrified at the basic awfulness of human nature that they try to pretend it’s some evil system imposed from outside (presumably by gods or aliens) like “capitalism” or “patriarchy” that creates the awfulness, when actually it’s just humanity. The next time someone prefaces a criticism of human behavior with “under capitalism” or “under patriarchy”, keep that in mind while reading it; you’ll see that they’re just whistling past the graveyard. Very few people can handle the realization that they’re nothing but highfalutin’ monkeys running million-year-old neurological programs that have never been debugged, and that Man’s garbage will have a much more lasting effect on this planet than he will. They yammer and bleat that this pathetic animal is “killing the Earth”, when in actuality he is at most making the surface environment more hostile for himself and a few closely-related species. But even beyond that, the Earth is going to die in a few billion years anyway; when the sun goes she’s going to take her children with her. Nor is this a unique situation; all stars die, some more quickly and spectacularly than most, but all of them go in the end, as will the galaxies they inhabit. Indeed, the entire universe, and every iota of it, is mortal; it is nothing more than a complex symphony echoing in the abyss. And when it’s over it will fade away, leaving nothing behind except the fact that it existed, and that it was savagely beautiful.
Whistling Past the Graveyard
December 1, 2017 by Maggie McNeill
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I remember years ago, having an American friend of mine online sort of sit me down and explain how the US political system works to me. I’m Canadian; we’ve been watching your TV and news programs for as long as you’ve had them, and still some facets are not widely understood, because they’re taken as natural assumptions that don’t warrant explanation.
My friend told of how he was, quite literally a card-carrying Republican. As in he has a membership card, which gains him discounts in a number of businesses (and perhaps other preferential treatment if the business owner is also “a Republican”). He also mentioned that he has HATED just about everything the Republican party has done in the last 2-3 decades… and yet he still proudly refers to himself as a “Republican”. The parallel between American voters like himself and sports fans who wear “their team’s” jersey while sitting on their couch at home watching the actual team play the sport was inescapable… except I think the political version is not nearly so harmless.
This was all quite alien to my Canadian self. We are not “Liberals” or “Conservatives” or “New Democratic Party” or even “Green Party”. Those are political organizations that we, THE CITIZENS vote for IF we favour having them having more say in how our country is run in the following period, but we don’t have member cards, or seriously consider ourselves to be an active part OF the political group, unless we’re actually drawing a salary. If we like what they’re doing (or at least what they’re promising to do; that discrepancy is a bit more universal. :P) then we vote for them this election. If we don’t like what they’re doing, we vote for one of the other parties whom we do, next election. That is OUR role as the citizenry; we are not chained to one political group for our entire lives by a false sense of group identification (to say nothing of documentation and a paper trail) whether the politicians heading said party are representing our needs and wants well, or shitting all over our lives. That’s insane! That’s a broken system! You do not keep feeding and caring for the monsterous dog that ate your own children just because you identify as a dog-lover, and hope he won’t devour your next child! You put that beast down and find a better dog to love!
I tried to tell my friend, that as long as he keeps his card, his name is on a Republican list somewhere of supporters endorsing every action they take. Regardless of how revolted he might personally be with said action, not only are they operating under the belief that they are doing what he wants, but he is quite literally and financially supporting their decisions. If a gay man who couldn’t visit his decades-long live partner/spouse in the hospital during his dying hours, had spat in my “Republican” friend’s face in hatred over his party’s actions against his basic human rights… No matter how much my quite decent and ethical friend disagreed with, even hated those legal decisions, his name is still on the list supporting and endorsing the political group that committed them; that face-spit was deserved. He seemed to struggle mightily to accept that idea.
I’m entirely certain you could swap “Democrat” for “Republican” into that entire wall of text and change not another word of it. My American friend just happened to be… to have allowed himself to be fooled into thinking he was “A Republican”. He remains a powerless citizen, whose only power is to pick his choice of people he loathes to support out of a false sense of group identification, or else to withdraw his support from politicians he doesn’t approve of entirely, but then have to give up on the fantasy that he is a member of powerful group running the country himself… and I don’t think he can break a lifetime of indoctrination of trying to “be on the winning side” to do so.
Yikes, here’s one of them smug, patronizing, blithering, Canawhatevers who ABSOLUTELY missed the point of the column. Keep deluding yourself with your imagined moral superiority, you’re doing just fine.
Did I come off as smug? I’m sorry. I was attempting to compliment Maggie’s own points of the irrelevance of voting redhat or bluehat, (perhaps not the final conclusion of today’s post, but certainly relevant to parts of it) adding in party registration (something non-US readers don’t even know about, for the most part) as another way besides elections that Americans may be tacitly endorsing the very actions they complain about, and remind that there are always other options than shrugging and continuing to support a government that isn’t serving you, the people, well.
I wonder, if I hadn’t mentioned I was Canadian specifically, would you have interpreted my post differently? We have our own problems, I freely admit. Not all the same ones, however.
“There are other ways to do things if you really don’t like the current system, even if you’re not the one in the oval office yourself” is all I meant to convey.
Even those who don’t identify with a party have a creepy habit of speaking of state actions, including those they abhor, in the first person (“we keep carrying on this stupid drug war”). I don’t think that is distinctively American.
I am quite curious about something which was mentioned in the post regarding Hugh Hefner’s remains parked next to Marilyn Monroe ‘s.
You mentioned that you believe in a soul whereas of course some of your readers do not.
I become more and more intrigued as to how you define soul and after reading the above post am surprised that the existence of a soul would be plausible.
Would appreciate your feedback as I find the subject interesting.
Why do you think a soul has to be literally eternal? Why can’t it just be much longer-lived than a physical body? Black and white thinking is even absurd in metaphysics.
Maggie wrote:
Ah yes, the heat death of the universe, when everything is in thermal equilibrium, so maximum possible entropy is reached. Good estimate for thermal equilibrium in our galaxy is about 10 to the 100th years. If you happen to see me around that time, be sure to wave and say hello.
The three laws of thermodynamics tell us why that is the ultimate fate of everything: perpetual motion is impossible.
Rephrased by sardonic physicists, the three laws of Thermodynamics:
1. You can’t win.
2. You can’t break even.
3. You can’t get out of the game.
Some cosmologists and particle physicists are still looking for loopholes.
Many religions claim there are eternal souls, or gods, or both.
Something about the human mind doesn’t find the ultimate transience or impermanence of all things and events easy to accept.
utopia is a myth and I agree that man’s garbage will impact the world more then man himself….
Very true this article… love the last part it is perfect and true. 🙂👍🏻