“You are living in the free
world and in the free world you must stay.” Phil Ochs
An Eclectic
Study of the Mundane and the Profane
By todd
boyd
Paradise
(Unbound)
I live in Sacramento, California, USA. It’s early November 2018. On a Thursday,
November 8th morning the people of Paradise, a northern California Sierra
Nevada foothill town comprised of retirees and working class people, are waking
up to the alarm of a fast moving fire, pushed by winds of up to fifty miles per
hour, and their town is in the bullseye seat.
In southern California, the same day, two wildfires begin to push
their way to the sea, threatening the city of Malibu, an enclave of beautiful
people and beautiful homes.
A short distance, and seven days away from Malibu, a lone gunman
kills 12 people in a crowded bar, just eleven days from the last mass murder
(killing of eleven Jews) in America.
For the past two years, fires have raged almost all year long in
California and my city has been enveloped by smoke, toxic air, and, maybe, the
least noticed effect, limited recreational respite for many of the people,
unless they get on a plane or travel hundreds of miles from the state, where
they may escape the fires and the smoke but their chances of being killed by a
gun will increase.
The following are some of my thoughts.
The Mundane (Change)
We
depend on science to tell us how the Future will happen, throw back the curtain
for us on the Wizard on all those mysteries about living which affect us in so
many ways. Yet, we have no control over any of it, not our natural environment
nor a social climate created for us by social, religious, political, and economic
leaders, most of whom remain anonymous, like the Wizard, and who have made us
who we are and what we are. It’s the perfect dystopian Present for those of us raised
in the middle of Western Civilization where there are too many choices and too
little time for contemplation upon what’s being done in our names. We are, in
some ways, the Artificial Intelligent beings science has been trying to create
since they started experimenting with the alchemy of changing imagination into
reality. We are relatively compliant, complacent, and perfectly fitted to
whatever tasks or choices are laid out for us.
This is quite different from those who are the vast majority of the
world’s population, who have been consistently affected by the adverse
consequences of so called Civilized Societies and their grandiose searches for
resources and/or other worlds to dominate/conquer in the name of Profit. This
majority continues to be more interested in its own survival rather than in strict
obedience to rules, regulations, and laws which have little to do with their
reality.
To those in the middle classes, issues such as Climate Change are an
example of the dilemma significant Change
in itself presents to modern society. In order for any society to try and
reverse the ill effects of Climate Change (if it can even be done at all is
still at the heart of the controversy) those who are comfortable with where
they are will need to give something up, maybe a lot of somethings, while even
those who have little, will find that even the little they do have is not
adequate.
Dealing with Climate Change also exposes another set of issues. It
requires a degree of imagination about what the future should look like and once
again, it’s obvious that the entire spectrum of current economics, politics,
power, equality, and a myriad of other ideals upon which we have lived or tried
to live will have to be brought into the ring of our thoughtful reconsiderations.
Climate Change is way too slow for the normal mind to grasp. It’s like
an advancing glacier. Based on anecdotal evidence, measured in increments of
less Toads, Roadrunners, Snakes, Amphibians, Bats, and Bees or based in scientific
statistical analysis only scientists and intellectuals can fully appreciate, it
all culminates in simple Belief and Trust in something or someone who says they
have the answers.
It’s not like you wake up one day and realize something’s missing. Maybe
you notice it more on the days it doesn’t rain but you think it should and you
try to remember when you realized it always used to at this time of year or
never did and you can’t quite put your finger on it.
Looking into the near future, we may eventually conclude there’s nothing
we can do, and if there is something, it’s more a matter of being too little,
too late. There’s nowhere we can go because unlike other mass social, cultural,
political, and natural changes, the World is now filled with nation states,
surrounding us with border walls, property lines, well-armed militaries, cruel dictatorships,
and regional, chauvinistic, and cannibalistic prejudices. On this future road
to nowhere millions will march, trying to escape whatever political, natural,
economic and social calamity besets them.
The fight for space and the musical chairs of rapid, thoughtless
development, redevelopment, and gentrification have already driven these
survivors further out to the fringes of our civilizations.
We are the generation that doesn’t feel the water in the pot getting
warmer as much as our children or grandchildren will. It’s something that can’t
be felt unless you are the one driven from your home, your land by not only the
helter-skelter of Mother Nature but also by the machinations of wars, and
economic stagnation. Our grandsons and granddaughters are the real frog
generation, not realizing that the water is getting hotter and they’re in a pot
with no escape.
We say it's burning fossil fuels or methane gas from the shit of
domesticated animals rising into the heavens that surround us, driving a smokescreen
wedge between us and our uncaring gods which have transfixed us with promises
of perfection, albeit not here but in the afterlife. They appeal to our vanity,
tell us how important we are, we are children of God, or citizens of the
greatest country on Earth, or whatever false claim we want to listen to, and we
believe them. They will save us, protect us, but they do not love us.
Our civilization merely dresses up a pig in whatever is the acceptable
way of the day but the pig’s character always stays the same, as the old adage
goes.
Change
in Western culture is partially based in a false belief that everyone will eventually
see how beneficial it is to take the train/bus/bicycle to work, to eat the
healthiest foods, to localize the education system by developing local school
community boards that manage and support education, to switch to solar and wind
power where hawks no longer need to fly, and where all the races are
assimilated enough that no one is completely white (hooray) and no one is
completely black (no longer beautiful). A Place where white, black, or brown
really doesn’t quite describe how beautiful every color is, where women and men
no longer describes how we like to have our sex or love one another, so maybe
it will be all right, the rationale goes, once we can accept the fact that a
different colored car is not more important than the many different colors of
happy neighborhood kids.
In the real world, imagine the resistance of
millions of people who don’t want to change or who say “Who wants all that regulation,
rigidity, conformity?” In addition to that sort of resistance, a society would
need a complete retooling of its military/industrial complex, essentially blocking
the ongoing onslaught of relentless natural resource destruction and struggle
between nations and the forces of profit and dictatorial power. We’re not only
up against Ourselves, we’re up against a Wall of our own oppression and making.
The
Profane (Prometheus Unleashed)
I spent
the last two summers trapped between the smoke and blazing, both north and
south and the heat and razing of what was north, south, west and east of me,
the only option of escape making my way through the smoking west until I hit
the ocean’s shore but even there was the red hot tides so I put aside any thoughts
of recreation I was allowed to imagine in lieu of my own survival.
I stole
Fire believing they could use it more than I, but they did nothing but abuse it
and for that I was tossed aside, into that flame from which I had risen, was
born, a phoenix, the smoke rising black like a dark cloak or cape against the
sky, fire crazy in its path all that which could not escape, I, merely an
observer, gazing on the devastation of what we are becoming, to want is not the
same as giving, we always want the easy meaning,
For
days on end, an inferno engulfing ponderosa pine, while to the north there was
flooding and homes sunk beneath the rising water lines, to the east, a
hurricane or tornados ripping through what two years ago was rebuilt from
another catastrophe, and finally to the south, a drought like no one’s ever
seen, mirages springing from the ground like boiling steam, migrations of
refugees wind their way over sand, roads, and walls, getting to the places,
that like Jonah, are in the belly of the Beast.
The Mundane (Anarchy and
the Gods)
I’ve always been intrigued with the End of
Days scenarios. I’m an anarchist at heart and also not a True Believer in any nation
or god with a personality but if there is one consideration I adhere to is the understanding
that whenever I come to a conclusion about modern life being unique, I remember that every idea about ‘who we are’ contemplated through rational
thought, I see it’s already the basis of, at least, a three thousand year old
tradition, religion, or teaching. And the idea that the Human Race, so to
speak, needs saving when it can’t save itself has always been around. It’s how
we got Prayer.
Religion loves a good moral tale. Look at Prometheus,
who steals fire from the gods, possibly out of good will for the People but he
must suffer for his good deed and while his suffering is his only reward, the promise
of the fires of Hell are our damnation for taking what is not ours.
There’s no compassion or empathy there, it
seems, in the hearts of gods or royalty.
We are
fated to suffer, unless like in the more modern versions of our belief that
things will work out if we are willing to redeem ourselves by sacrificing either
each other or some other part of humanity in the name of our Belief.
The gods are, indeed, harsh.
It is the Churches which have traditionally
spoken for us, been our intermediaries for what we wanted or desired. The
authority of the church has been how god speaks for us.
The woeful aspect of religion in the modern
world is that there has been no semblance of Democracy, that modern ideal upon
which modern nations have arisen, that
pride of Man[sic], as well as the secular ideal which has usurped the Church’s former
prerogative that God’s Will can resolve
the contradiction of imperfect Man on which we have been suckled. Now we are
left with the Secular State which has nurtured its Age of Reason rationale and fostered
an obscure abstract evolving promise that it is Democracy/civilization rather
than God, who will take care of its citizens. We are no longer the children of
God but citizens of the State. No matter how we allow them to define us, we are
still led by the same ring in the nose, Fear of the Future.
We all seem
more fearful in today’s world than we ever were when we were mere mortals at
the mercy of glowing eyes out in the dark peripheral shadows cast against a
campfire light. Now the Fear is instilled in us from birth without any context
to reality and it’s this abstract fear that sears our imagination. It’s largely
a question of “What if (shit)…happens?”
My own nihilism tries to negate these sources
of our lies, tries to get behind the
glitter and glamor of our institutions which, according to scholars and
experts, are the only ones who can save of us from ourselves.
One problem is our inability to see very far
into our future. Oh, we can imagine beautiful stainless steel cities rising
from the desert or jungle plains where all citizens wear togas or simple cloth
but our imagination cannot fathom a future without a dystopian element so there’s
always a wall protecting everyone from the unfathomable, uncontrollable mysteries
of the natural world that surrounds. Plus, everyone seems to have a job that
requires a security clearance. There are no simple janitors or plain Janes.
There is no gathering dust in our imaginations, thus no chamber maids, Science
will take care of those mundanities. What if they refuse to go away?
We’ve allowed Capitalism to get so far out of
hand its hard to fathom the majority of people who involuntary don’t have enough
to expect nothing more and those who have more than enough to accept less. It’s
an argument dependent upon whether or not you believe everyone can have what
even a typical middle class person (around the world) has today. It’s more than
just defining Economics, it’s about trusting that out there in the dark on the
other side of the moon no one will harm you. Even if you can accept that, the
notion of going backwards before we go forward is anathema to ideals in the
western world where Bigger, More, Newer, and Forever are big in the lexicon.
The
Profane (Waste)
Modern economic theory will never look for a better way to reuse
millions of ruined, empty, abandoned buildings that lay all over the land nor
will it ever look for a way to recycle billions of cans, cars, trains, plastic,
rusted iron and steel that it has created and disposed of simply because New is
always better than Old and Money is more important than Equality, Justice, and
the Rights we say we hold so dear.
We’ve strewn across the
landscape, piled high as hills in all our cities, filled up the landfills, spilled
it, drained it, wasted it, pumped it underground or mounted on ships and sunk it
at sea, shipped it to China, let them spill it, let it drift back to our
shores. Let it rust right where it sits. This is the waste we hide from each
other, all from our uncontrollable wants and needs.
The Mundane (Do Not Do
What Is Done to You)
Capitalism can only survive in a moralistic
religious world from which it was born and raised to the level of a new
religion. In most of the worldwide religions the relationship between wealth,
success, and power go hand in hand with god’s approval. No common, ordinary god
fearing Man is going to try and put back together what God or Nation has torn
asunder. We’re taught to turn the other cheek, do unto others, phony admonitions
to soothe our soul while we turn a blind eye to the so-called privileged Man[sic]
proscribed sanctioned approval, unrestrained by minimal rules, regulations or
laws.
Yet, the Marxian Dream is that Capitalism
would not survive if… What if ..We stood up and said NO to it?
Saying NO is only the beginning and not the
end.
The Profane
(What’s Inside)
Then will come the discovery of what really burns inside of us.
The instincts, the Reason, the real Dreams, and the wild imaginary Fears we’ve
built civilizations upon.
Archeologists and scholars have discovered the walls we once divided
and isolated ourselves with, uncovered our scorched temples and places of
worship we’ve prayed in, dusted off the scriptures we live and fight by, deconstructed
the histories we rely on, and finally all the scholars have concluded that
there are no real differences between us. Now what? We’ve put so much effort into believing those
superficial differences have to be the alchemy of all our fears.
There's nothing like real history to take us from the idyllic
reverie of false here and now, to where “there's smoke there's fire” hell hole
Reality was, is, and can be. Once the smell of smoke or burned remains dulls
our sense of danger to the rise, no one can escape the perpetual smoke in our eyes
that burns like napalm on the rumbled, crumbled twisted steel structures and
mud hutted cities of the Old and New World Order. It's never what it seems. We try
to live in unanswered dreams and timid prayers. We don't ask for enough nor ask
hard enough from those who promise us. Nor for the right things, saying we say
to them, “We’re here” and they answer, “Just wait and you’ll see what we mean,
before we crush you with our mighty ideals.”
The Mundane (A
Conversation of Sorts)
Come on! Does this seem?
Come on! Does this seem? Come on! Doesn't it seem as if it's all ready to
fucking blow out, blow UP, once and for all?
Blow like an incessant
wind the flames of our discontent, or the fake notions of Paradise we maintain
within, take us into a Future we can’t imagine or ever bend, and never return us
back to normal again, like a permafrost meltdown surrendering Artic towns or nuclear
holocaust fears that stifle our cries for Peace.
Come on! She thinks Capitalism
is the heartbeat to all our problems so I paternalistically try to explain that
when she gets older, a little closer to menopause say, and a little more
cynical about how miracles play, the world will look a lot softer in some ways while
Capitalism will look more like the sledge hammer it really is and she’ll feel
more like the head of a nail about to be slammed rather than like some goddess
lover of Thor, or Isis, all powerful in her youth, as she sees in herself
today.
The
Profane (Born Again)
We’re
all born into this worldly strife, the same as a squirmy rat, the best thing
about it is we haven’t been tattooed with a corporate logo yet. That comes
later but for now, on that original birthday, we have no understanding of what
awaits us upon arrival into our nation’s history. Depending on whether or not
we’re born black and all the shades of inequality, how much money our parents
have (or parent in many more cases than is satisfactory), or how much
equanimity and right circumstance we possess, we’ll plod through their
authoritarian fogs ignominiously, each individual according to their own
degrees, all the while lacking nobility.
Yes, I’m one of them who realizes
The world won’t abide by its own rules,
If you were born black, woman, brown, or countryside
Dreams were never what they were made to be,
Great men have died soon after no truer words
spoken,
Their words lost forever amongst smoke and
fire,
of many a forgotten generation’s confusion.
We burn dreams for Hope in smoke from the Paradises
of worldwide genocide,
Dreams speak of what’s to come,
Yet we sleep on. Dreaming…
Those false dreams pushing us down the path of
American supremacy, those false dreams that are pounded into our being from the
moment we are born, leaked into our hearts and minds, soaked into our porous
white skins of duplicity, darkened by genocide and slavery, greed, and superior
cultural ferocity, whilst others in the world just disappear in the consuming
fire of our forgotten wars and injustices of our historic false dream.
I’ve seen america burning while its leaders
fiddled with culturcide, fanning flames of color pride and blowing smoke of
false illusions.
It’s sad but true, america’s legacy is all
confused.
I’m mindful again of Langston Hughes (America
was never America to me). No one wants to believe they sacrificed for a lost
cause because there can be no acceptance of failure of the American dream as
false, no reconciliation with forces of good and hate, no empathy for all the
innocent victims of our own hand, no sorrow for the deeds we’ve done, no
forgiveness for each other nor for our so called enemies, america always moves
on without looking back and it’s future always looks as bleak as it’s past.
The Mundane ( Hope Is Out of the Box,
or Pandora is Vindicated)
Every living thing on Earth is made up
of the same stuff. When the least of us goes then we’ll all soon follow. Still,
there is a good reason to try and fix what we deny is broken. That fix is in Ourselves.
We’re the real masterminds of our own creation as well as our extinction and
the only saviors of our future. We don’t have to just stop making things worse
with our wars, our greed (read: our needs), our fears that each one of us has
inside, but we must also stand up and call for an Intervention, call for a Recovery,
call for Redemption.
This chaotic world is not the end of us. We
are resilient, that’s been proven. It’s just that civilization took the wrong
path. They invented the gun, they used war to conquer and destroy, they
developed a history of slavery and practiced and protected usury. These may be embedded
in the human genes, buried deep in evolution’s past. I don’t know. I don’t
think anyone else does either.
That’s why I can still Hope because I have
Faith that we are potentially capable of more than we think we could be. We
are made up of the ability to destroy right alongside the willingness to
sacrifice for another, made to persecute the weak alongside the patient nurturing
of a child, made to be a murderer of innocence and the one who turns the other
cheek.
The contradictions we
share can go on and on. In a way it is the capability to Hope, that no matter
what happens, Good will prevail, and assuredly, when that day happens, Bad will
still rise in many forms like a wisp of smoke, and when that happens, maybe it
will be noticed, the alarm sounded, we’ll stand up together and stamp it out before
it begins, and life will go on without it for a while longer, until the next
time the Fire comes.
