the other revolution

the revolution handbook has to be rewritten.

for a peaceful revolution, just stop paying your taxes, starve your oppressors right back, and elect new leaders in new elections supervised by yourselves.

that’s right. why ask tyrants to go away and make room for democracy? in canada, a democratic country, we have a minority government, so the majority is still dissatisfied (or they would be, if the majority wasn’t so apathetic about everything important.). People will never vote together, and think in harmony, until we cease wanting to profit from others and cease needing their attention.

and, after your political revolution, get on with the business of saving the people from the people? Who will be the first to build an environmental nation?

The Great Gatsby

I was aghast to find so many racist portraits in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby … especially a preponderance of stupid white men and women. In contrast, I found only one bad Jew and hardly a bad person of color to speak of … F. must have been a secret supporter of the Black Zoinists. Yes, I am certain of it.

To read Wolfsheim’s portrait as an anti-Semitic one is to miss its absurdities and F.’s ironic symbolism. Wofsheim wears cufflinks made of human molars and owns the Swastika Holding Company. Isn’t this the most absurd irony? Imagine—a Jewish character adopts the Nazi symbol and mimics its depraved inhumanity before it happens. What could the author’s intention have been? Perhaps, in so badly caricaturing a Jew he warned us, not only of Nazism, but that no race, nation, ethnic group or tribe has a monopoly on evil and stupidity, and the current treatment of Palestinians by Jews is evidence enough that history teaches its lessons very poorly indeed.

Why give us Wolfscheim at all? Was F. playing both sides of the table, catering to the then popular anti-Semitic sentiment in America while cleverly and quietly retracting the anti-Semitic portrait by providing a hidden critique of human behavior that transcends race? Why shouldn’t a man cater? Even intelligent men must earn their bread.

Let me leave The Great Gatsby for the right reason, that is, for its newspaper-like quality. Reading it, I feel like a paparazzi reporter spying on the corrupt well-to-do. The Great Fitz  has passed moral vomit off as literature—and quite easily, and not surprisingly, for nowadays moral-vomit is  accepted standard of literature.

Finally, let me also commend Fitzgerald for the right reasons; after all, The Great Gatsby makes a strong case against the power of love, romantic love in particular.

*

“It’s all beautiful when you read it […] but when you write it down plain it’s like a week in a nuthouse.”

Ironically, this quotation, from “Financing Finnegan,” applies to F. Fitzgerald, and likely does so quite intentionally, at least judging from the identity of the double F initials in both the story and the author.

The narrator in “Financing Finnegan” is an author making observations about another author, namely Finnegan. The narrator is likely a mask for the real author. Therefore, we might say the following: F’s remarkable observation about the false or fictional F’s fiction actually applies to a large number of “beautiful” books, not only his own but … well, I will not name names here.

The Great Profit Motive



The profit motive in literature – to claim that such a motive exists, motivates, inspires and even shapes literature, that might be to ring the death knell for literature. Our literati are accomplished critics of Gatsbys and Iagos, but hypocrites, too. Ultimately, no demonstable reason exists for writing a novel like The Great Gatsby instead of a maxim, or a series of aphorisms or proverbs warning against a life devoted to the pursuit of lucre, recognition and woman. The novel animates the underlying opinion that tragedy follows wherever the author’s view is ignored, but who is to say that the novel has persuaded anyone against the pursuit of lucre, recognition and ‘love’? Only one thing is certain: the public will not pay for maxims and aphorisms. It demands blood – flesh and blood characters. And—by and large, people love to look down and judge characters that are monstrous exaggerations of vice, because such characters make more common manifestations of vice easier to overlook. Thus, a novel intended to bring the public’s attention to a vice might actually help readers ignore all those expressions of vice that are—perhaps—less worthy of a novel, or are just slightly different from those proper to a tragic hero.

In short, tragedy as a moral device in fiction might be counterproductive, and for that reason it should be spurned until someone can prove otherwise.

But authors must make a living. Yes, but before that, let them attend to their dying.

Jesus and Work

Judging from the Gospels, Jesus was a devotee of laziness, and I mean that with no disrespect. In fact, while his laziness is rarely discussed, and is not noticed by anyone in the New Testament, Jesus’s striking freedom from work may well exert an unconscious power over the common man, who will, undoubtedly, view it as a divine quality.

Of course, despite having no record of doing any “honest work,” as the people call it, Jesus was in support of working on the Sabbath, the one day when people were not supposed to work. How’s that for counter-culture contrarianism?

The same anti-work ethic is evident when Martha, the sister of Mary, complained that her sister should be at home doing her chores instead of hanging out with Jesus. Jesus, of course, told her that Mary had “chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her” (Luke 10:42). But Jesus was wrong, for Jesus would be taken away from Mary.

So how did Jesus support himself during those three years of preaching? He knew tax collectors; he had friends in high places; when he needed a dining hall for his last supper, he simply told his disciples to speak to a certain person who would provide it.

Jesus didn’t even bear his own cross, as Simon, the one named Peter, helped him in that rare moment of honest work.

Jesus said, “The poor will inherit the Earth,” yet he did not stipulate that they would have to work for their inheritance. While this may be a great relief to Christians, the political function of this wild inheritance promise was likely to pacify the poor and to prevent their uprising against the rich land owners, slave owners and so on and so forth.

While Jesus did little or no work himself, he was not against using work as symbols of Christian devotion. When he spoke to the people, he even compared the struggle to enter Heaven to the field laborer’s work for a penny. If that image isn’t provocative enough, to provoke more questions he insisted that both the laborers who worked an inhumane 11 hour-day and those who worked for just 1 hour would get the same reward, a penny. There’s a good warning against making any effort for Heaven.

While the above mischievous reading of the one-penny parable may be entirely valid, it was not the one that pleased those who commissioned the Gospels, namely the clergy, who would have interpreted this same parable as clear proof of the Catholic Church’s right to administer a certain sacrament to people on their death bed, a sacrament which cleansed the soul of a lifetime of sin and, consequently, sent the 1-hour or death-bed Christian to the same reward as the 11-hour or lifetime Christian.

Without a trace of irony, the commissioned authors of the Bible achieve the same effect that one finds with literary irony: one level of Gospel meaning exists to preserve the political structure that benefits the powerful, the other level exists for the amusement of nut crackers and laughing owls.

Rumplestiltskin

Popular readings of “Rumplestiltskin” testify to the barbarism we still live in, as least, they testify to the lack of sophistication among readers. I am sorry, but Rumplestiltskin is not the villain of this story and he likely never entertained the idea of boiling and eating the newborn prince. He is the only one who says anything remote humane: “I value living things more than all the treasures of the world.” Contrast this with to the greedy king and the woman who traded her unborn child for a chance to become queen… Indeed, she valued being the queen more than life itself. If she had valued life, she could have escaped with Rumplestiltskin three times over, as he entered and left the tower at will.

Rumplestiltskin is the only humane being in the story. Three times he saves the ungrateful and foolish woman from her death, and each time did not ask his name or thank him. Ingrate!

Why did Rumplestiltskin ask the woman to pay for his first favor with her necklace if he does not care for all the treasures of the world? If he can make gold quite easily?

Why did Rumplestiltskin ask the woman to pay for his second favor with her ring? Does the ring symbolize a wedding ring, marriage, something which most dwarves would have never have achieved in the Middle Ages when most people travelled little and knew only villagers and farmers?

Rumplestiltskin requested for the firstborn child in return for his third gift because he valued life more than anything, and, as a man unlikely to ever marry, he sought to have a friend or child by some other means. His was a desperate but wholly forgivable request. His love of life is evident as he sings with pleasure about the child he expected to receive.

What horrors did Rumplestiltskin commit to be perceived as the villain? In the end, he committed suicide: he loved life too much to let it be utterly ruined by loneliness.

The greater villains are the father who risked his daughter’s life with his lie; the king, who thrice threatened to kill the woman and married her only for her gold; the woman, who traded her child’s life for her own, who never thanked her savior and who married the man who threatened her life and cared for nothing but his filthy gold.

Let’s be serious about our Obamas and all men and women in positions of power: they are not the stuff of fairytales. They are murderers and devourers of men. Rumplestiltskin did not grab his foot and tear himself in half; this is merely an allusion to the truth that he was captured by the King’s men and torn in half by horses, or by machine, a fate common enough in medieval Europe.

“Rumplestiltskin” is anything but a conventional work of folklore. It is a folk tale that challenges the most popular conventions of late European and Asian folklore. Moreover, as a tale that asks us to consider the social status of the dwarf and of all visible minorities, and ask us to reflect on the consequences of our dreams…

The following interpretations also work in German and/or Dutch, both of which the Grimm brothers were likely familiar:

RUMPLE: a possible variant of wrinkle – as in skin, or Rumple—-skin. A wrinkle is also a fold, or double. Rumplestiltskin tears himself in two, down the middle, along the spine. Stilt: A stick to walk, to make a short person taller – or perhaps a reference to stylus, the medieval writing instrument—though this word-meaning first appeared in 1807, just as the Grimm brothers collected their tales. Skin: Vellum? Parchment? Material used for writing medieval manuscripts. CONCLUSION: “Rumplestiltskin” is not oral literature, or certainly not a fairy tale.

Dickens’s Twist

Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist – a remarkable novel; it bristles with irony – like a porcupine. Its subject is the heart of injustice insofar as injustice is commonly conceived: poverty, class differences and income inequality. Its solution to this injustice? Is it that the wealthy should be nicer to the poor? Share more? Have pity on them?

I would prefer a book that recommended nobility in moderate poverty and laziness—assuming that book writing counts as a noble laziness.

On the surface, or, as a work with emotional appeal, pity is at the heart of Oliver Twist. The hero is a figure of exaggerated, pre-Lapsarian innocence; he is an unfortunate orphan, a victim of fate, a victim of society and so on and so forth. Who dares deny Oliver pity?

Perhaps, Charles Dickens himself? Given the relentless irony with which every page bristles, I think Charles viewed Oliver as a parody of himself—as an autobiographical joke.

Much irony is needed to make too much injustice palatable. Too much pity makes men insipid and life tasteless. Irony is the necessary antidote and invigorator.

Why not dispense with pity entirely and free mind and literature for unrestricted humor? Why feed the world the lie of good and evil characters candied over with feelings of pity and moral outrage? Why? Though Dickens was no simpleton, he did, however, depend on his writing for income. (Dickens the pick-pocket.)

To teach children to read Oliver Twist without teaching them to bristle with irony—does a great disservice to education. One cannot squeeze Oliver Twist into a handful of lessons. Oliver Twist, like all great art, can only be learned over years.

Thus spoke Dewey Dink.

The Nobel Peace Prize and My Underwear

Regarding the Nobel Peace Prize Committee: I award them my underwear for being the world’s greatest pack of egoists. To speak more politely: I know only one ego bigger than God’s, and that is the ego of the man who gave God a prize. And again: can anything be more juvenile, even adolescent, than the awarding of prizes? I send apologetic kisses to the good children I have slandered.

Lord of the Flies

To understand the absurdity of public school, consider that Lord of the Flies, a book that condemns public school education, is widely taught in public school. William Golding’s cunning denouncement of education and perhaps of civilization as we know it exposes the fact that school children are not taught the basic survival skills needed for an independent life as a biological being, are not taught to cooperate and share for mutual profit, and are not taught to face their fears as rational beings.

Yes, yes, yes, they were just kids, the eldest were barely teens, and yet, six years of public school education could have achieved so much more than textbook learning!

And little has changed since William Golding wrote his parable about modern man. In our own time, our Jesus-Simon remains an ineffective and ultimately useless figure; our best public figures, our Ralphs, remain ineffective leaders void of creative impulse and ever-ready to stand on their heads; while our tyrants, our Jacks, continue to appeal to the irrational instincts. Finally, half a century of high-tech horrors later, we still have our share of scientific Piggies, too; I refer to men and women who are so in love with their high-tech or nuclear world that they do not see the Garden of Eden before their eyes.

Speaking of the Garden of Eden, was Golding, perhaps, hinting at a vegetarian future? The insane pig hunt of the blood-thirsty children who killed Jesus-Simon may serve psychological fable, but, given Piggy’s name, and given the island’s “edible forest,” the pig hunt may also serve to condemn a civilization that does not even eat rationally.

Voltaire’s Candide

Pessimists exist because the world has an over-abundance of optimists.

I am optimistic about one day becoming an optimist, but I am also a pessimist about my ability to overcome pessimism. – Confessions of a Plastic Brain

Regarding Candide, we might ask: was it necessary for a philosopher to fill over a hundred pages to fictionally illustrate his simple point that optimism, when it isn’t paired with rational action? Moreover, since he illustrated it with over a hundred pages of imaginary pain and suffering, we are warranted in asking if history is so lacking in suffering that it needs the suffering related in Candide?

To be honest, Candide is not a newspaper; it is not ‘objective’ – not, it tells its story in order to illustrate a conclusion about life that everyone should have drawn long ago.

Then, was Voltaire an optimist about the power of his work?

Candide tortures its readers on another level as well, since its plot that leaves nothing to the imagination, generates no suspense, offers no protagonist to identify with (Candide is a fool, Cunegonde is not much better, and anyway, the narrator is so detached as to make empathy impossible), is completely predictable, and yet, is enjoyable… thought provoking … or is it?

The fact that Candide could be written at all is also a mystery. How does one write or live with a belief that death, pain and suffering exist without any respect for humans and human notions of justice, karma, and the divine will? For such a philosophy one needs a healthy dose of candy, I mean comedy, which Voltaire’s wit generously applied.

I Have A Dream—Beyond Copenhagen

The 2009 Copenhagen climate talks amounted to another waiting game among countries eager to protect their industrial economies or—and this is also appalling—gain financial compensation for ecological crimes committed by others. Perhaps one bright spot came from a contingent of 150 peasant farmers from the “global South.” While endangered by the global economy, they came to communicate that their non-industrial model of farming could save the planet.

They might well be right, but only if that model is also applied to the global North. And yet, in the North, the movement away from industrial farming is too slow, and might remain so unless governments get involved.

Presently that hardly seems possible, but reasons for getting involved are multiplying at a dizzying rate. In the U.S. alone, prisoners and persons on parole or on probation number over 7 million; persons in danger of losing their homes number in the millions; and, the unemployment number is above 15 million. Furthermore, these numbers are growing in most developed countries.

What can a government do with millions of homeless, unemployed people while the biosphere is under assault? What can any government do while desertification and drought begin to take their toll on agriculture, while peak oil is poised to ruin the industrial agricultural model, and while ailing “developed” economies struggle to subsidize agriculture?

Will it occur to governments that in just a few months they could train millions of unemployed people to grow food in desert-like conditions using permaculture or agroforestry techniques? Will it occur to governments that soldiers might be better employed building swales, cob and adobe houses, temporary wells and whatever else is needed to improve our environment and help create local food security?

If not, they have not considered the other likely benefits of such projects, especially if such a project is pursued in the U.S. Though it would be a social-ecological experiment, the outcomes are unknowns, those outcomes could hardly be worse than the current situation. Very likely, if such a resettlement project occurred in the U.S., the national crime rate would plunge, wars would cease, desertification would be stopped and reversed, carbon points would be scored, and participating ‘farmers’ could be taxed in the form of an organic food tax that would feed millions of ‘normal’ workers.

Why not?  Why shouldn’t an environmental solution also be a solution to poverty, crime and war? After all, all things are connected.