Ephemera, Alan Archibald (1997-2000)

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Alan: The following letters-to-the-editor were mostly submitted to Durham, North Carolina's Independent Weekly.

October 26, 2000

Editor (The Independent),

I was encouraged by Hal Crowther's recent categorization of our political economy as a "plutocracy." ("Alone on the Cliff," October 18-24, 2000)

I also admire Hal's courageous dismissal of "conglomerates and their parasites --- like political parties and universities."

However, when Hal laments the loss of culture, compassion, compass and conscience as the devolved outcome of Darwinian economics, I wish he would venture an opinion as to why the brutality of advantage has overwhelmed all opposition.

The encompassing consumerism that Hal briefly mentions is rooted in the philosophical -- if not theological -- premise that the obsessive pursuit of self-interest will liberate the "invisible hand of the marketplace" so that everyone will be saved by the resulting "trickle down" --- a sort of modern manna mediated by magnates and the mandates of materialism.

The question -- "Are we here, primarily, to serve self or others?" -- has been answered by the solipsistic certainty that Self is primary.

Lao Tzu observed that "Nature is not human-hearted." Tragically, we have extrapolated the zoological truth of Darwinism to dethrone the heart of Human nature. We humans are no longer "set apart from the world," but are swallowed up by its bloody maw.

I realize that my judgment steps on many "progressive" toes. However, given the dog-eat-dog nature of social Darwinism, only a fool would refuse to use fang and claw to reach the top of the plutocratic pecking order.

Change requires admission of wrong-doing - not the modern world's strongest suit. Unfortunately, there is no alternative to social Darwinism but to acknowledge the uniqueness of human life, locating within it sacred qualities rooted in a repository of value which --- subsisting by unspeakable mystery --- exists beyond the observable workings of Nature. (In this regard, I'm encouraged by a developing consensus among scientists that "Reality" is made up of eleven dimensions. At a recent, national convention of physicists, a provocatively mysterious question was set forth as central to the next century's scientific agenda: "If there are, in fact, eleven dimensions, why do we only live in three of them?")

Slurping at the smorgasbord of Nouveau Choice, we experience no need to make binding decisions that would steer us upward from the primordial swamp.

Instead, we have abused broad-mindedness so that transcendental value is disparaged when not ridiculed. Meanwhile, the plutocratic drift of social Darwinism -- coupled with totalitarian materialism -- have been deified as the twin foundations of existence.

Inevitably, we re-make ourselves in the image of our gods.

Or, as William Blake put it: "We become what we perceive."

In the end, there is no escape from choices which are  -- at least functionally -- of religious importance.

You pay your money. You take your chances.

Attentively,

Alan Archibald

***

Dear Editor (Newsweek),

I hold three university degrees, a high school teaching credential in Biological Science, and have taught at Managua, Nicaragua's National Medical School and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where I was contracted to write a Spanish language textbook ("La Charla").

In 1996, after teaching upper level high school Spanish in Hillsborough, North Carolina, for six years, the State Department of Public Instruction bluntly informed me that my "lateral entry teaching credential" would not be renewed unless I took 15 additional credit hours of Spanish language coursework. Ironically, I could have taught these courses as capably as the people from whom I was obliged to take them.

Rather than suffer this abuse, I quit.

If America's public schools "want teachers" -- Newsweek, October 2, 2000 -- it is important to lay responsibility for the shortage at their own doorstep.

It is difficult to describe the full scope of Public Instruction's metastatic foolishness. Still, one must start somewhere...

For example, it is absurd to require credentials of prospective teachers when these same candidates might be invited to demonstrate their capability (or lack thereof) in actual classroom settings. If "the proof is not in the pudding" then where does it reside? In a sheepskin?

Alternatively, the fruitless, state-mandated hazing whereby teachers secure their largely bogus credentials is rooted in the need to fleece a captive audience, thus insuring the financial survival of University Departments of Education, among the most counterproductive enterprises sponsored by The Ivory Tower.

Or consider the surfeit of administrative dead-wood. New York City's Public School District employs thirty (30) times as many administrators -- "per student" -- as NYC's Diocesan School District. These redundant, meddling ner-do-wells should get "real jobs." Every administrator returned to the classroom translates to 3 or 4 additional teachers hired with the savings.

It is true that the outsized scale of public instruction requires an unusually large number of "administrative wardens" to "keep the peace." However, non-stop skirmishes  -- and occasional pitched battles -- impeach the putative tranquility which administrators claim to maintain. There's a cheek-by-jowl relationship here with Mayor Richard Dailey's Freudian slip following the Democratic Convention riots in 1968: "The police are not here to create disorder, they're here to preserve it."

Although I will vote - reluctantly - for Al Gore or Ralph Nader, sustained Republican support for school vouchers is right on target.

Recently, Newsweek columnist George Will quoted Lisa Graham Keegan (Arizona's Superintendent of Public Instruction): "Everyone is complicit in trying to make the education system look good without merit... This country is so content not to know the truth about its children, it's horrifying." 

Help dismantle the conspiracy of silence.

Gratefully,

Alan Archibald

***

8/27/00

Editor (Newsweek),

In "Nader and the Push for Purity (8/28/00)," Anna Quindlen faults Ralph for an "either-or attitude that most of us had when very young (so that) his politics need never grow old."

I disagree.

America's two party, winner-take-all system is the template for "either-or" politics and creates the Peter Pan puerility Ms. Quindlen rightly laments. Stuck in this self-serving over-simplification, American democracy never matured, but slowly devolved into big money's "back forty."

There are many putative differences between Republicans and Democrats. However, when Al Gore insists  categorically  that we can have "growth" AND "ecological integrity," he's admitting philosophical kinship with the forces of consumerism that despoil the planet while pretending to put a populist face on plutocracy.

Ironically, it's Ralph Nader who breaks this "either-or" mould, advocating for multi-partisan, "parliamentarian" politics, staunchly refusing to sharecrop the droppings of big business. Quindlen construes this uncompromising view as childish.

Perhaps.

Perhaps an American politician has finally matured, finally decided to "make the children pick up after themselves."

I voted for Nader in the last presidential election, but am leaning toward Gore in 2000. My Democratic inclination isn't based on heartfelt conviction that Gore will resist the formidable pressures threatening representative democracy.

Rather, I consider Bush so dangerously empty-headed -- so appallingly self-preening  that, throughout his term, "the looking glass" would reflect nothing but his "pretty face" and a wraith-like "invisible hand" whose foremost function is to throttle the planet's poor.

Attentively,

Alan Archibald

***

8/27/00

Editor (Independent),

Although Hal Crowther's new book, "Cathedrals of Kudzu," brims with wit and insight, his description of the relationship between "belief," "doubt" and "drink" -- misses the mark.

As a Catholic living in the South, Hal's assessment of Walker Percy seems somewhat misrepresentative, both of Walker, and of Catholicism.

Catholics do not consider themselves "saved," although it is a rubric of our faith that "the far shore" will embrace those who have acted in harmony with the incarnation of love. 

Surely, the Church hasn't surrounded Percy with "the odor of sanctity:" rather, Catholics esteem Walker as one of our more fruitful sinners.

Nor is Percy as assailed by doubt as Hal would have it. Many incidental pieces in "Lost in the Cosmos" are egregiously orthodox --- religiously self-certain to an almost embarassing degree. Consider Percy's letter to the New York Times equating abortion-on-demand with the same sort of slippery slope logic used by Nazi social engineers in the 1930s. (Although Percy's argument is carefully crafted, the New York Times didn't even acknowledge its submission: apparently "the tone" was insufficiently avant garde to satisfy the Editors' penchant for that specifically modern oxymoron --- "broad-minded censorship.")

It's not my purpose to attack or defend the content of Percy's writing. Rather, I fault Hal's observation that "no first rate fiction was ever written by anyone who was too certain about anything." By this rubric, the collected writings of Tolstoy and Dostoevsky are summarily dismissed, not to mention Southern greats like Flannery O'Connor and Percy himself. I wonder how Hal accommodates the Bible, an anthology of texts, which -- while partially historical -- embody mytho-fictive writing at its best.

Admittedly, doubt is essential to tested belief, as Job bore eloquent witness. In this century, G. K. Chesterton -- the British Catholic and self-assured believer whom Hal himself holds in high regard  believed that Christ crucified was lacerated by doubt concerning the existence of God.

I do not dispute Hal's determination to focus on Percy's fondness for bourbon, as no one disputes Chesterton's fondness for beer and wine.

As distinct from tee-totaling sects, Catholics drink.

Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, the Czech Republic and Ireland - as well as the Catholic regions of Germany, Holland and Belgium - are the planetary cultures where drinking is most carefully woven into the tapestry of everyday life.

Oddly, Hal has difficulty recognizing this cultural fundament of earthy - at times, mucky - Catholicity, and in reaction, seems unduly determined to accord moonshine a sanctuary of its own, a place where unbelievers can participate in the true secular sacrament.

However, the well-documented relationship between writers and drink, while productive, has not - in the main - been happy. Hal's claims on behalf of "the boozy doubter's purgatory" make one wonder why these boozy doubters are so easily piqued by devout Catholic drinkers, particularly when so many boozers eventually "come in from the cold" to sip sacramental wine around a much larger table.

Out on the rim of the broken wheel, lonely regard for moonshine tends to be just that.

Attentively,

Alan Archibald

***

9/18/97

Editor, (Newsweek)

The opening paragraph of Germaine Greer's "Unmasking the Mother"

(Newsweek, 9/22/97) is so larded with sloppy logic I'm surprised Newsweek

editors let it pass.

Greer berates Mother Teresa for occupying a first class airline seat (a

seat that had been pre-arranged and pre-paid by people foreign to her

missionary organization), and then, in a dazzlingly self-centered

arabesque, tries to fault Mother Teresa for not consuming a single

sturgeon egg or drop of champagne. It seems to me yon Germaine doth

protest too much. Which end of the candle do you wish to burn my dear?

I would venture that Ms. Greer is comfortably ensconced in the ranks of

pop luminaries who shine only when their own celebrity is being toasted.

Like most modern cynics -- and strangely reminiscent of kindred spirits

who crucified the Nazarene -- Ms. Greer is incensed that relentless

goodness should reveal her own carefully concealed deficiencies. Irritated

by this rude - but unintentional - awakening, it is understandable that

Ms. Greer's eagerness to make peace with This World causes her to foam at

the mouth when contemplating someone who has made peace with The Next.

I doubt Ms. Greer is capable of conceiving that Mother Teresa's

globe-trotting marathons were trials rather than the festive occasions. Ms.

Greer presumes. As often happens, words reveal more than we intend.

Seemingly, it is Ms. Greer herself who genuflects at an altar of celebrity

that requires jet travel, clinking glasses and slavish adulation.

Ms. Greer's statement that Mother Teresa "rush(ed) in to grab the loot,

$30 million a year" is so void of credibility that one wonders if Germaine

is actually attacking Mother Teresa or, perhaps, trying to expunge her own

unresolved apostasy. Indeed, Mother Teresa insisted that her name and

image not be used in fund-raising efforts. She repeatedly declared that

"if God wants this work done, he will provide the money. If not, he

won't." Go ahead. Poll your friends. Not one of them has ever received a

fund-raising letter from the Missionaries of Charity.

From personal experience with Mother's missionary sisters and brothers, I

am aware that the Order performs desperately needed service throughout the

world. The task is daunting. In order to serve the poorest of the poor --

whose fetid stench, physical decay and shrill lunacy are often beyond the

reach of government welfare efforts -- Mother Teresa and her sisters

succeed in creating loving relationships with people whose distress is so

alarming that few dare to approach, much less love, them. Newsweek

readers would perhaps be intrigued to see how Ms. Greer - and her "sisters"

- would perform under identical circumstances. Picking maggots out of open

sores takes a toll on manicured nails.

As for Ms. Greer's rambling allegation that Mother Teresa cultivated an

image of India as "a hideous place", there is no record that Mother Teresa

ever failed to honor the religious, cultural and human richness of the

Indian sub-continent. Indeed, India's delight in considering Mother "one

of their own" was amply evident at her funeral.

On the other hand, the behavioral residue of the caste system - and the

widespread Indian belief that one's karmic fate is irrevocably

self-invoked - tends to justify the definitive dismissal of the

downtrodden. Had I not known that "Unmasking the Mother" was written by

Ms. Greer, I would have assumed the author was a curmudeonly colonialist;

certainly not a liberated - or liberating - human being.

As Ms. Greer points out, charity abounds in India, but to say that

"begging can only be a huge industry in India because people give" is akin

to claiming that the American welfare system exists only because we

gringos are so profoundly generous. Such socio-political naivete spotlights the

disdain of a highly theoretical woman who seems so full of personal and

intellectual vainglory that she is compelled to vent her bloated spleen on

the rest of the world.

It is a shame that the "tang of reproach" which Ms. Greer noted in "the

reverend mother of the convent where I went to school" failed to kindle in

Germaine any ability to examine her own conscience.

Attentively,

Alan Archibald

PS A provocative criticism that might have been laid at Mother's door was

her ingenuous acceptance of donations from sources as dubious as Papa Doc

Duvalier. Interestingly, Greer - in her ideological rush to savage Mother

Teresa - fails to exploit this real weakness.

                                                                                ***

10/99

Editor (Independent),

Patrick O'Neill's "Loyalty Oath" is so focused on one particular Tree that

it fails to see the Forest.

It's not so much the Pledge of Allegiance (in isolation), but the entire

gestalt of Compulsory Government Schooling that engenders a nation of

flag-waving sheep.

In the main, Compulsory Government Schooling is designed to create passive

consumers, enthralled by each "new-and-improved" version of "bread and

circuses."

I have taught in Public Schools at the elementary, middle school and high

school levels. I have served as a Central Office administrator. The

strictly hierarchical structures I've encountered are typically

anti-democratic, often despotic. With good reason O'Neill quotes Maria

Montessori: "The true concept of liberty is practically unknown to

educators."

Compulsory Government Schooling specializes in substantive inequality,

exculpating itself with ersatz gestures of superficial

"multi-culturalism." Patrick bemoans the shoddy treatment accorded

minorities in the nation's public schools, but only glimpses those rare

instances that escape the System's control.

Abuse and dishonor are not exceptional: they are the System's daily bread.

Under the sway of Compulsory Government Schooling -- and the spin doctors

who daily resurrect its corpse -- the Nation is increasingly unable (as

Susan Sontag recently observed) "to even ask any moral questions."

Patrick would make better use of his skills as an educational advocate by

quitting the grip of Compulsory Government Schooling altogether. By doing

"an end run," he would bypass the obfuscation, interference and intrinsic

counterproductivity that characterize contemporary public instruction.

It is hard to argue against Public Instruction since -- like the broader

culture it perpetuates -- its well-groomed surfaces often shine.

However, this superficial grooming hides a barely repressed shadow side,

which -- when it lunges from under its rock -- looks a lot like Littleton.

Attentively,

Alan Archibald

                                                            ***

Editor (Independent),

I almost stopped reading Godfrey Cheshire's diffidently expressed

approval of the "Taste of Cherries." Then, I was seized by his reference

to the "communal" aspect of suicide.

There is an unacknowledged urge in the modern psyche to make

suicide a social event.

People do not need Jack Kevorkian's technical assistance as much

as they need social sanction to end their lives.

Oddly, this unacknowledged need for social sanction is revealed by

the self-slaughter at Heaven's Gate.

Thirty eight people killed themselves. Not surprisingly, the event made headline news.

Yet not one news outlet commented on the remarkable ease and consummate efficiency

with which these space cadets snuffed out their lives.

How could we stonewall the effortlessness of this massive

enterprise?

Three dozen people take a sedative, lace on their Nikes, and

then place plastic bags over their heads.

Not one of these would-be suicides reconsidered the macabre

finality of their slowly unfolding decision. Once they laid down on their

individual beds, not one balked. Not one said: "This is more wacko than

Waco! I'm getting the hell out of here!"

And when it was done, not one of us said: "Damn! That was easy!

Iwonder why the assisted-suicide movement gets so lathered?"

I can not explain the many interactive impulses that lead to the

demand for socially sanctioned suicide. But it is wrong for us to pretend

that the mechanics of self-slaughter require a physician's expertise.

Suicide is a difficult decision.

It should be a difficult decision.

To render suicide another "prescribed" activity -- to be performed

in a socially sanctioned setting -- is to belittle the pitch and moment of

this appropriately agonizing choice.

We should not delude ourselves. If we really arrive at the determination to take our own life,

the practical mechanics of suicide are as easy as "bagging it." As recent events have born out,

Heaven's Gate may be crossed with extraordinary calm.

If the Nikes are a valid indicator, suicide may even be performed with a sense of humor.

It is, perhaps, the collapse of social support that undergirds many modern motivations to end life.

Instead of restoring the social support that once made life an transcendental good, we

now demand but sufficient support to end life whenever we deem it bad.

Can the demand for minimalist Muzak be far behind?

The socialization of suicide does not uproot the great questions

which inhabit death's bourn. Rather, "social suicide" fosters our

collective carelessness and ratifies a slowly emerging consensus that Big

Questions needn't be asked at all.

Attentively,

Alan Archibald

                                                                      ***

9/98

Editor (Independent),

It's a pleasure to read Hal Crowther's well-written articles.

Hal's willingness to "Give it a Rest" (September 2-8, 1998) is a

welcome departure from our national obsession with "The Job of Sex."

As Hal points out, "sex is the party no one wants to leave." I

wish Hal provided more insight into the philosophical underpinnings of

this party. Instead, he issues an oddly determinist observation that "sex

is bigger than politics, economics and religion combined."

Maybe...

A measured assessment might also take into account the

incalculable cultural impact of a celibate carpenter and three millennia

of Buddhist monks. While contemplating the shallow detritus of

voluptuaries from "Don Juan" to "Madonna," we must also contend with the

chaste asceticism of Teresa of Avila and Francis of Assisi.

Perhaps "sex, unacknowledged, is the ground zero of wishful

thinking," but the implicit dismissiveness of this statement ignores the

fundamental role played by wishful thinking in the development of

civilization.

Thirty years ago, it was popular to characterize the nascent

"sexual revolution" as part of a larger cultural urge to "let 'it' all

hang out."

Brief reflection on the plutocratic/pharmaceutic push to transform

Viagra and Testerex into "essential goods," makes one wonder whether

humankind's effort to contain "it'" wasn't the real Text of human

progress, whereas compulsive sexual expression may soon be recorded as The

Footnote whereby culture was undone.

Even Freud recognized the direct relationship between civilization

and the sublimation of sexual energy. Sadly, Hal has not achieved escape

velocity from the orbit of Freud whose fixated sexual outlook (coupled

with his cocaine habit) created dubious delusions concerning the

centrality of sex.

When Freud's heir apparent, Carl Jung, finally broke with Sigmund,

it was due to his growing realization that the religious instinct -- i.e.,

humankind's primary need to humble itself before the Mysterium Magnum of

which we are part -- was more fundamental than the sexual instinct.

Whether or not Jung was right, he at least expressed an ideological

position which Freudians - then, and now - painstakingly repress.

Hal's materialist model of reality is profoundly instructive.

However, great value gets lost when the purported primacy of "matter" is

not tempered by another set of hypotheses based on the centrality of

spirit.

Whether one agrees with the following statements, they are both

tenable hypotheses: 1.) "Human beings are primates whose baboon essence

does everlasting battle with humankind's ecclesiastical fictions," and

2.) "We are not human beings trying to be spiritual. We are spiritual

being trying to be human."

The hyper-sexualized root of America's endlessly prurient "party"

has given rise to a feeble culture that's a billion miles wide, and six

inches deep.

Our determination to "milk" these six inches for every cubic

centimeter of luscious liquid they contain prevents us from going deeper.

We are shoal-stranded: we are terminally shallow.

Obsessed by the clockwork pleasure surging in -- and around --

those delectable six inches, the nation's collective attention clamped

onto Bill Clinton's zipper the very day John Paul II arrived in Cuba for

his epochal encounter with Fidel Castro. How many "Independent" readers

are aware that the Pope used his Havana podium to excoriate consumer

culture and cowboy capitalism? In comparison with Clinton's economic

policy, the Pope might be mistaken for Marx himself. If such spirited

attacks on modern excess are the outcome of celibate sublimation, dose me

again....

Back on American shores -- having mistaken a prurient itch for

lasting satisfaction -- we await the panting details of Slick Willy's

willy, Willey and will he?

Our national obsession with sex pollutes everything. It's as if we

had discovered a Great Good and then corrupted it through the same mistake

Midas made. Lacking a "Golden Mean," we turned everything into precious -

but lifeless - metal.  Ironically, we have the wealth to purchase an

unprecedentedly wide-range of pleasures, but lack the psycho-spiritual

health to enjoy them. Oscar Wilde predicted America's fate when he noted

that "cynics know the price of everything and the value of nothing."

Which reminds me, how much does a dose of Viagra cost?

Even the lives of our children --- most notably Jon Benet Ramsey --- have

been debased by the universal mandate to declare priapism a virtue rather than a disease.

The Jon Benet case has assumed mythic proportion because

we're all attracted to the sexual saturation that fosters pre-adolescent beauty

queens endowed with the dubious grace of chrome-pole strippers.

Chesterton (whom Hal credits anonymously with the observation that

"sex is a Great Secret") believed that the modern world had taken an

essentially "wrong turn" and that it would be necessary to undergo a great

purge in order to re-chart our course, just as Chesterton argued that the

Dark Ages were the centuries-long "fast" by which Europe rid itself of

Roman decadence.

In this modern era, we are resolved - at least in fantasy - to

ensconce our "heads" in chambers so dark we need glass belly buttons to

see out.

Whether we awaken spontaneously from our erotic dreams -- or, if

rude circumstance awakens us -- there has been no shortage of keen

commentary describing the bleak milestones along our mobius dead-end.

Tennessee Williams noted "the deadening coarseness of sexual

obsession" and the fact that many moderns perform "their act of love like

jabbing a hypodermic needle to which they're addicted, but which is more

and more empty of real interest and surprise."

Elsewhere on the spectrum of sexual disillusion, Norman Mailer

described obsessive sexual activity as "jamming a piece of suet up a

drainpipe."

"If this is the result of sexual honesty in school and the media,

I advocate a return to virgin worship, arranged marriages and vicious nuns

with rulers."

Although Hal chortles disbelievingly at his own assessment, it is

notable that virgin worship has a far more honorable history than phallus

(or yoni) worship; that most East Indians enjoy their arranged marriages;

and that "the vicious nuns" have always done a demonstrably better job

educating the nation's young than government schools which warp the

population with daily doses of The Official Story.

It might prove tonic to ask which of the following is more

vicious? ... to use a rule(r) to insure a measure of discipline based on belief in

sexual restraint and the Greater Good of the over-arching Community, or,

to spawn pre-teen sexual predators, who know nothing of The Common Good

and whose pre-maturely active penises are used like lethal clubs?

Attentively,

Alan Archibald

                                                                      ***

6/98

Editor (Newsweek),

Although my soul aches for anyone blindsided by the brutal

finality of suicide, Robert Brudno's "Unfinished Business" (June 1st, My

Turn) does not mend fences.

Instead, he surveys the wreck of Vietnam and enjoins us to lend

"support whatever the cause, whatever the result."

In an understandable attempt to relieve the incalculable pain of

his loss, Mr. Brudno mistakes a stronger dose of the disease for the cure.

The enduring notion that Americans should support their country

"right or wrong" underlies the misguided pride that regularly pollutes our

foreign affairs.

Enthralled by thoughtless patriotism, we continue to raise our

children to accept the authority of government without question. Such

witless submission to "The Official Story" is not a truth I deem

self-evident.

Were we as committed to the well-being of our young as to the

perpetuation of institutional "power," we would teach our children

unvarnished history, presenting the full spectrum of our nobility and

wickedness. Together, this balanced view of light and dark would serve as

grist for the joint mill of morality and dialectical reflection.

Imagine a day when America's children are so well-trained in the

disciplines of truth that they spurn any belligerence wrought by

bureaucracies which deliberately ignore the havoc they unleash.

Alan Brudno was, in fact, "mortally wounded back here" by a system

of inter-locking, acculturative mechanisms that didn't even let him

speculate that the Vietnam horror might be ill-advised.

Attentively,

Alan Archibald

                                                            ***

Dear editor,

Albert Camus commented that "Genius is having a profound grasp of

the obvious."

Newsweek's March 2, 1998 edition contained two inter-related

articles that begged further examination.

"A Scare in the West" informed readers that Neo-Nazis can purchase

bubonic plague bacteria through the mail.

In "Saddam's Secret World" we learn of Washington's frenzied

efforts to destroy Iraq's biological weapons capability.

Even if Saddam were twice the fool he seems, why would he expend

needless energy to manufacture agents of mass destruction when American

agents can purchase these tools on the open market?

Saddam may not be a genius. Then again, it doesn't take a rocket

scientist to be a rocket scientist.

Attentively,

Alan Archibald

                                                            ***

2/98

Editor (Independent),

  Despite your panting effort, the Independent's "Summer of Love"

edition did not take a "Positive" Look at Sex.

  Carl Jung noted that "sex is eternally problematic. Too little sex

makes our spirit anemic; too much gives lopsided emphasis to our animal

nature."

  No matter how one defines the role of sex, it is a bald fact that

teenage males -- given license -- will f___ anything that moves.

  In light of this eternal combat between the male sexual urge and

the need to honor each individual's personhood, it is fortunate that some

measure of sexual suppression exists.

  Admittedly, suppression does, at times, cross the boundary into

pathological repression.

  However, to reify the human body - as your cover does - by showing

"it" without eyes and other personalizing facial features - is a classic

display of depersonalization rooted in fixated genital sexuality.

  The political "left" - to which I belong (in my idiosyncratic way)

- continually bounces between the mutually untenable poles of assuming

that The Truth is "obvious" to anyone with eyes to see, and the capricious

urge to redefine "truth" whenever re-definition suits its pragmatic

intent.

  For example, the Canadian Supreme Court has - rightly I believe -

ruled that heterosexual pornography is intrinsically "harmful to women."

Not surprisingly, Phil Harvey (founder of  "Adam and Eve," a North Carolina

"sex aids" emporium) will not countenance such claptrap.

  In league with deconstructionist allies who re-define prostitution

as "sex work," -- in the fey hope that nomenclatural change will diminish

the essential tawdriness of selling one's body -- "Adam and Eve" employs a

team of "psychologists" who "certify" that the wo/men who strip/fuck in

Harvey's films are vanguard rebels dedicated to personal, social and

political liberation.

  In your photo of Harvey, we observe the aging warrior himself,

brandishing his signature condom like a sacred badge. Try as he may,

the condom remains a shop-worn ruse to obfuscate his role as an unrepentant pornographer. (I was amused - but not surprised - by how many of your "Adam and Eve" product reviews found fault with the fabrication, function or exorbitant cost of these sex

toys, most of which display the embarrassing silliness and sad desperation that characterize "adult" entertainment.)

  Harvey's "understanding" of human sexuality trivializes an

unparalleled vehicle for interpersonal communication.

  To claim -- alongside the Independent's tester of the "Super

Stretch Sleeve" -- that "if it fits like a glove, it must be love," is to

affirm a grotesque confusion of the physical and the metaphysical.

Will your "Super Stretch Sleeve" tester go fuck himself again?

  And again? And again?

  "Probably. After all, love can do some crazy things."

  America's problem is not lack of sex, but confusion of sex with

love.  Erecting a phallic Tower of Babel on this mistaken premise, we

hasten to fill the gaping void in our lives -- not with the infinitely

diverse textures of dedicated relationship and communitarian commitment --

but by excessive focus on the hyper-excitation of genital encounter, as if

filling a vagina (or a rectum) were the solution to our personal, social

and political heart-ache.

  Although sexual liberation sounds plausible - and often imperative

- to juvenile ears, its net effect is the normalization of arrested

development.

  Your "Summer of Love" edition gives no indication that "Fall" and

"Winter" are just around the corner, and that we will all grow old and

die, (events which the Great Religions anticipate with a startling blend

of awe and hope.) The delusional fantasies of human sexuality propagated

by Mr. Harvey -- based as they are on the denial of death -- seduce the

sexually inexperienced into "arrested development" as a way-of-life.

In the end, the psycho-spiritual "stuckness" engendered by this

misdirected sexual energy causes more pain than pleasure.

  For many Americans, this ironic revelation comes into focus only

after youth has fled and flesh softened. By then -- having invested one's

adulthood in sexual child's play -- it is far too threatening to admit the

mistake of a lifetime.

  When -- finally -- Philip Harvey's sexual miscreants hear the

panicked whisper of a "wrong road taken," it will be easier for most to

live out their three score and ten chasing the consolations of

depersonalized - and depersonalizing - sexuality, rather than charting a

new course toward agape and the limitless passion that fires it.

Attentively,

Alan Archibald

                                                                      ***

12/98

Editor (Independent),

      "Wanna Teach?" (by Bob Geary, 12/16-22/98) attempts to validate

many guidelines laid down by State Departments of Education.          

      To devise his validation, Mr. Geary portrays Rep. Fran Shubert as

a conservative whose prime directive is to corrode the splendor of The

Academy and the luciferous system of Public Instruction that has

painstakingly been put in place.                                               

      I'm unfamiliar with Shubert's overall record.                          

      Generally, I'm cynical of politicians --- more so those on the         

right than the left. However, no matter how benighted Ms. Shubert's

conservatism, it is foolish to forget that "even broken clocks are right

twice a day."                                                            

     We might also recall that parents -- regardless the extent of

their formal training -- often have a sixth sense concerning structures

and policies that "short" their kids.

      Parents of minority children are even better attuned to buncombe

and abuse.

      Ten years ago I was a lateral-entry public school teacher in the

State of North Carolina. I quit The System after experiencing - and

witnessing - the commonplace outrages visited upon Anthony Solari, whom

Geary erroneously represents as an exception to the rule. (I might add

that Mr. Solari and I now both teach at UNC-Chapel Hill.)

      Two guiding principles undergird Public Instruction.

      One such priniciple is embedded in Adolf Hitler's observation that

"by means of shrewd lies, unremittingly repeated, it is possible to make

people believe that heaven is hell - and hell heaven... The great masses

of people will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one."

      The other principle --- also well-aligned with Hitler's rubric of

pervasive prevarication --- is that our instructional System is committed

to "quality."

      To the contrary, the bulk of Public School administrators construe

quality as a threat. Quality --- and the independent spirit from which it

grows --- are deemed mortal threats to the absolute power held by State

Departments of Instruction.

     It is misleading for Mr. Geary to declare that "custodial care" is

a recent corruption of Public Instruction. If one looks with steady gaze,

it soon becomes clear that Public Schools have long been places of

custodial care --- among the most dangerous and damaging places where

tender spirits might be consigned.

      The upshot of these "principles" is that the Public School System

has become fertile ground for America's Official Story --- the same

Official Story that recently resulted in a 417 to 5 (sic) congressional

vote approving those twinkling "points of light" over Baghdad.

Stars of wonder, stars of night, stars of fury burning bright.

Ah! For a gentler, kinder America...

      And lastly -- to salt the wound -- our instructional systems are

determined to make mediocrity acceptable.

      To cut through these multiple veils of mendacity, I suggest that

all hiring decisions be made by teams of Master Teachers (selected by

their peers) who observe candidates in actual teaching situations without

knowing whether prospective pedagogues are in possession of the State's

silly credential.

      The decisions of these teams would be final and binding.

      If "The Proof" is not "in the pudding," it will not be found in

certificates accessible to anyone with enough money to buy the "privilege"

of sitting in State-specified seats until The Academy has completed its

tedious hazing, a procedure not unlike the endless bombings

which the White House, Pentagon and dumbed-down American populace have

pre-approved for the people of Iraq.

      One thing is certain: America will not become a civilized country

until we escape the enchantment of public sector educators who insist that

radical change is un-necessary, and that anyone proposing radical change

is necessarily an enemy of liberality, integrity and conscience.

      Gilbert Keith Chesterton observed that: "...there are others whose

state of mind is still more extraordinary. They not only do not need the

landscape to corroborate their history, but they do not care if the

landscape contradicts their history... If the map marks the place as a

waterless desert, they will declare it as dry as a bone, though the whole

valley resound with the rushing river. A whole huge rock will be invisible

if a little book on geology says it is impossible. This is at the opposite

extreme to the irrational credulity of the rustic, but it is infinitely

more irrational... This great delusion of the prior claim of printed

matter, as something anterior to experience and capable of contradicting

it, is the main weakness of modern urban society.

      The chief mark of the modern man has been that he has gone through

a landscape with his eyes glued to a guidebook, and could actually deny in

the one, anything that he could not find in the other. (William Cobbett)

however, happened to look up from the book and see  things for himself; he

was a man of too impatient a temper, and later he showed too hasty a

disposition to tear the book up or toss the book away. But there had been

granted to him a strange and high and heroic sort of faith. He could

believe his eyes."

      State-sponsored Systems of Public Instruction would pluck out our

jellied orbs.

      Between Democratic Capitalism (masquerading as a form of

government bent on The Common Good) and the psychological colonization

imposed by Public Instruction (and televised celebrity culture,) it is

difficult to say which agency displays greater "insolence of office."

     Fifty years ago, it was sufficient for Dwight Eisenhower to finger

the "military-industrial complex."

     More recently, intellectual rigor requires people of conscience to

decry an upstart Trinity properly designated as the "military-industrial-educational" complex.

Attentively,

Alan Archibald

(I recommend "Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American

History Textbook Got Wrong," by James W. Loewen, The New Press, NYC, 1995)

                                                               ***

2/13/99

Editor (Independent),

   Hal Crowther's essay, "We're History" (February 10-16) depicts the

nation's power-brokers as "perverted and ambitious, animated by passions,

crimes and great disasters."

   Perhaps Hal is overly focused on the "mountebanks and frauds" who

"serve" as front-men (front-persons?) for the System, while

underestimating the tidal pull of culture itself. As Wendell Berry

observed: "The problem is not bad politics: it's a bad way of life."

   It is increasingly painful to witness the trivial workings of

power in a culture that is - as Neil Postman observed - "amusing itself to

death."

   American institutions have collaborated long and hard to convert

us into interchangeable "consumer-units" --- cradle-to-grave shoppers

convinced that each fabricated "want" will soon become an "essential

need."

   In lockstep sequence, we first became wanton; then proceeded to

consume every post-industrial opiate, hoping that one of these "designer

drugs" would eventually satisfy the soul.

   In 1922, Chesterton noted that "Materialism is really our

established Church."

   America's devotion to Materialism -- and its joined-at-the-hip

twin, Utilitarianism -- reduces history to absurdity, making

transcendental quest impossible and sexual obsession inevitable.

If human nature is in fact limited to instinctually mandated

behaviors, then we should expect - as Hal reported in a recent essay -

that the 500 most popular Internet sites are pornographic.

   Hey! As long as it doesn't hurt anybody...

   Having agreed that we are animals with no roots deeper than

zoology, what's left to discuss but the Pleasure Principle --- preferably

in its more extreme manifestations?

   I am not arguing here for the existence of God, but rather for a

minimalist - one might say a "utilitarian" - requirement that human beings

act "as if God were real" if human affairs are to be animated by any

principle other than prurience or pleasure. (I realize this argument will

make no sense to those not yet middle aged, and that America keeps its

elders at arm's length, if not in convalescent homes.)

   Given prevailing cultural currents, we choose from a sanctioned

list of "value-free" aspirations set forth by "the guardians" of

autonomous technopoly even though our lives and livelihoods are regularly

rendered "value-less" in the process.

   We are extremely well-provisioned people --- impeccably trained

(as technicians), too clever by half, able to extrude astute analyses of

problems-we're-still-struggling-to-create, determined to impose a morally

bankrupt vision on a world finally conditioned to cheer our

techno-heroics.

    And through it all, we remain compulsively absent from our own

lives. 

   The Mad Chase is afoot and no one has patience to possess their

soul. "Things are in the saddle and ride mankind." We are cogs, flogged by a Machine

that methodically salts the Ground of Being while deifying velleity and passion.

Meanwhile, Academia, Media, Industry, Journalism, Finance, Politics and most

of the Arts validate this New World Order in which technique is glorified and people reified.

   Nor has Religion escaped the clutch of Moloch's intent. Now more

than ever, nominal practitioners have become part of the problem, not the solution.

   All of us are suborned cheerleaders, witlessly rooting for the demise of history, if not the end of time.

   Gandhi observed that "there is more to life than increasing its

speed."

   Alternatively, America's secular Religion establishes Speed as the

Central Dogma of the Great god "Progress."

   It doesn't matter "where" we are going; only that we get there faster.

   Our unswerving dedication to this mindless progression --

carefully propagandized as "progress" -- becomes "curiouser and curiouser"

when we consider the mass of evidence that, finally, "there's no there

there."

   Heaven forbid we ask any of the right questions.

   We're too busy "staying on task."

   Besides, our obligatory aimlessness makes it inappropriate - if

not gauche - to speak of "final ends" or "first causes," the only

meta-level levers which might rescue us from terminal meaninglessness.

   And so, each of us pays extortionate rent to occupy this Cowardly

New World, predicated on the primacy of brute survival, glossed with the

neophiliac seduction of "The New & Improved."

   In this craven kingdom of "things in the saddle," only "means"

matter --- and these means are increasingly mean-spirited.

   According to the received wisdom, the twin concubines -- "Speed"

and "Progress" -- will be miraculously transformed by "the invisible hand"

of the omniscient marketplace into loving spouses who tend hearth in our

atomized pleasure domes.

   Ah, in Xanadu...

   American politicians have long slept with anyone who can slip, unseen,

into their stately mansions.But we focus on these front-men at our peril.

   Each of us is in bed with our worst enemy.

Attentively,

Alan Archibald

                                                            ***

2/20/98

Editor (Independent),

  Hal Crowther's analysis of "the septic emergency" afflicting the

fourth estate is well drawn. ("Hell to the Chief", February 18-24, 1998)

  However, random allegations and senseless acts of mudslinging

should not distract us from the core issue.

  How do Monica Lewinsky, Linda Tripp, obscure congregations of

Buddhist nuns and pay-as-you-go PAC-men secure such intimate contact with

the President of the United States?

  The fact that Linda Tripp receives an annual salary of $88,000.00

- and that Bill Clinton is paid thrice that amount - confirms my suspicion

that technocrats and policy wonks are plutocratic flunkies ---

bottle-necking gatekeepers receiving tidy sums of blood money to prevent

vision from rooting inside The Beltway.

  Small town gossips Lewinsky and Tripp elicit the same embarrassment

once reserved for the President should he conduct Affairs of State with his zipper down.

  No more.

  Hal rightly impugns Monica Lewinsky by turning her own testimony

against her: "I was brought up on lies. That's how you got along. I have

lied my entire life". Nevertheless, to dismiss Lewinsky on these grounds

-- without examining the lawyerly muteness that intermittently besets our

otherwise garrulous president -- is akin to "the pot calling the kettle

black."

  Can Mr. Crowther name a dozen contemporary politicians who would

not confess lifelong patterns of falsehood should they - in a moment of

weakness - muster a small measure of Ms. Lewinsky's candor?

  Bill Clinton's ferocious reluctance to provide straightforward

answers to gnawing questions recalls the quip: "'How do you know when a

lawyer's lying?' (Answer:) 'His lips are moving.'"

  I have no idea if President Clinton is guilty of the many

allegations infecting his airspace. I do know his pre-trial posturing

suggests a slick lawyer trying to dodge the necessity of "taking the

fifth."

  Without detailing the widening rift between the planet's rich and

poor -- a phenomenon exacerbated by Clinton's "globalizing economics" -- I

confess wonderment at Hal's triumphant reference to America's current

'moment' as embodying our "greatest influence and prosperity."

  What essay will Hal write when Clinton's pending climax ignites

"points of light" all over Bagdhad? If such random acts of thuggishness

constitute the apogee of American "influence," then the sorry state of

American journalism has found a fit bed-partner in Bill Clinton.

  History will judge Mr. Clinton.

  In the meantime, he has obliged his contemporaries to believe he

will bed anyone.

Attentively,

Alan Archibald

                                                                      ***

3/12/99

Editor (Independent),

  Recently, a friend recalled Carl Jung's belated renunciation of

Nazi Germany. In self-defense, Jung noted that everyone who participates

in a culture tends to accept its unexamined suppositions, even though

their superficial criticism may be scathing.

  "The Real Culture War" displays Hal Crowther's customary

brilliance. Yet, two of his comments point to this deeper level of

"unexamined supposition."

  "The resource gap between starving clubs and rich teams is so wide

that the have-nots have given up all pretense of competing." A half dozen

paragraphs later, we read that "the Greaseman... sells crude polemics and

vile politics to an audience of dangerous losers."

  Wherever competition is a cornerstone of cultural aspiration, most

people lose. Even in the rarefied realms of well-developed expertise,

competition insures that half of all participants leave "the arena" in an

emotional state indistinguishable from clinical depression.

  At the grass roots, American-style competition  insures that

"common folk" relinquish their integrity to over-achieving "experts" who

eagerly "outperform" one another in a relentless effort to provide

ever-more-clever renditions of "the unexamined life."

  Conditioned to idolize "the best and the brightest," most folks

slide into sluggish spectatorship, staring wide-eyed at their religious

disillusion and political dissolution.

  Deprived of meaningful choice by the culture's compulsion to

"succeed," most people quietly accept their fate as "losers."

In this world of Ted Turner "winners" and Willie Loman "losers"

there is acute need for a persuasive argument against "success."

  Lamentably, there is now little reference to the once commonplace

observation that "everything contains the seeds of its own destruction."

  Whatever its erstwhile utility, the competitive drive to succeed

-- as distinct from the self-generated (dare I say "God-given") urge to

create -- has become America's most dangerous toxin. 

  As "The Real Culture War" grinds on, I advocate for more of Grampa

Noll's semi-professional ball-playing, simultaneously disenfranchising

Yanqui powerhouses whose sublimated bloodsport re-enacts

"the Christians" and "the Lions."

Attentively,

Alan Archibald

                                                                      ***

July 15, 1999

Editor (Independent),

In his recent essay, "God's Holy Fire," Hal Crowther acknowledges

Reynolds Price and Annie Dillard as "beacons in the fog for the

disillusioned minority that might become drab atheists."

However, Hal's own faith is ultimately invested in a form of

reason that decides against the possibility of "a loving, caring God."

To make his case for the incompatibility of reason and a loving

God, Hal quotes Dillard's datum that there is "an annual death toll of 30

million children under 5."

What would Hal make of the fact that until 1750 A. D., half of all

human beings died before the age of 8?

Our ancestors -- far less sensitive than Hal and I, far less

accustomed to soul-softening consolations -- accepted suffering and death,

and still managed to extrude the genius of Mozart, Bach, Dante, Milton,

Francis, Aquinas, Cervantes, Da Vinci and Michelangelo. Such scope

highlights the unacknowledged narrowness of modern liberalism.

The nearest the 20th century has come to such titanic coupling of

intellectual force, steadiness of gaze and magnanimity of spirit is in the

person of Gilbert Keith Chesterton who, in keeping with the main thrust of

Judeo-Christianity, insisted that humankind is whipsawed by the ongoing

result of a primordial "shipwreck" --- that what is evident to our senses

reveals only part (an often honorable but frequently terrifying part) of

what will be revealed as the mysterion plays itself out.

We may indeed camp here, but it is perilous to call this place

home. Annie Dillard's best-known book, "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek," bears

witness to this same message of exile and pilgrimage.

History may record that the great heresy of the 20th century was

our attempt to declare Reason "sufficient," when, in fact, it is a single

tool among many --- a tool, which, if invested with primacy, results in

the unprecedented ravages of reason-run-rampant and the ever-bloody plans

of "the best and the brightest," the same folks who brought us Viet Nam

and who now earnestly sketch the lineaments of planet-trashing

"globalization."

H. L. Mencken (whose eponymous prize Hal has won) was no friend of

religion. Yet late in life he voiced unexpected praise for (Roman

Catholic) Christianity, saying that "life is indeed more like a poem than

a equation."

It is the usurpation of poetry by the presumptuous self-certainty

of data-drunk rationalists -- the bloody sacrifice of imagination on the

altar of knowledge -- that compelled Chesterton's observation that "to be

merely modern is to confine oneself to ultimate narrowness."

It may be foolish -- perhaps divinely foolish -- to believe with

Einstein that "imagination is more important than knowledge."

But it is ultimately claustrophobic and paradoxically

self-destructive to conclude that the mysterium magnum does not transcend

the predictable purview and too-common despair that attend

disproportionate faith in reason.

Thomas Aquinas, who laid the cornerstone of Western rationality,

held that "sin" is always characterized by loss of splendor and loss of

perspective. Left to its own Mephistophelean devices, reason epitomizes

this latter loss.

And so, having lost any perspective vouchsafed by a transcendent

touchstone, we have sunk into unbridled subjectivity, a swamp of sheer

imminence made more miasmic by deconstructionist academics who insist that

Existence does not even harbor the possibility of splendor.

William Blake declared that "we become what we perceive." If

Blake's vision is true - or if creative imagination might make it true - I

would sooner believe that we are children of a loving God than manipulable

consumer units - adrift in a sea of market research - desperately eager

that the guardians of Technopoly inform us which capricious want shall

become our next irrepressible need.

And then....

S/he who dies with the most toys, wins.

Attentively,

Alan Archibald

                                                            ***

"I thought that in princely dwellings folk would exhibit a higher

moral quality since they possess all the copious plenitude that may adorn

our nature. I found it the reverse Uranio. Men of high lineage were swift

to promise, but vastly slack in performance, and I found them the foes of

all simple goodness; gentle and reposed in aspect, but swollen in pride

like the whole sea. A race fair to outward seeming only...

What elsewhere is deemed virtue, here is held to be a defect. Nay,

shame is imputed to the deed that is not crooked, to the love that is not

simulated, to the simplicity of holiness, the faith that may not be

broken, the guileless heart and the clean hand --- all these are held as

the marks of low spirit, mere dull stupidities, and trifles to call up a

laugh. Trick and lie; fraud and robbery; spoliation hypocritically

disguised; to grow fat with gifts and ruin another; to find one's glory in

another's fall; these are the "manly" distinctions of this perfidious

crew... They are unrepressed by shame; respecting neither the claims of

affection nor those of blood; with no memory of any act of kindness. In a

word, nothing is more worshipful, holier, more conspicuously right, than

all the exact opposite of their vast hunger for court distinctions, their

ravenous appetite for gain."

Torquato Tasso

Born at Sorrento,

3/11/1544

                                                                      ***

3/00

Editor (Independent),

Howard Zinn's "Delusion 2000" is, itself, based on delusion.

Mr. Zinn asks "how can we support candidates who have nothing to say about the fact that our country, with 4 percent of the world's population, consumes 25 percent of its wealth?"

A more penetrating question would point the finger directly at ourselves and not at the poor bastards whose sorry fate makes them quadrennial whipping-boys.

Everyone is quick to espouse "curtailment of resource consumption." To compensate our environmental sins, do we not faithfully lug the recycling box to curbside? But beyond the window-dressing, how many of us do NOT yearn for salary increases, or the next "hot" IPO, or getting "cut in" on a lucrative options deal    mechanisms whose upshot is the dizzying acceleration of an already reckless rate of resource utilization . Who among us does not want to be a millionaire?

Spiritually, psychologically and economically, we have scant idea how to live without shrieking one continuous "MORE!"

The problem is not bad politics but an abominable way of life. Politics is the scapegoat that circumvents the need "to become the change we wish to see in the world. (Gandhi)" Traditional politics is the arena in which we delude ourselves that policy initiatives have "profound impact," when, in fact, the warp and weft of culture is dependent on family health and the range of acculturative mechanisms by which we raise our young. Admittedly, there is interaction between policy and acculturation. However, the drift of democratic capitalism has been to erode family integrity, to undermine any acculturative process that might "break the box" or otherwise achieve "escape velocity."

Two particular areas beg redress.

One is our inability to acknowledge that "monopoly government schooling" serves as a control mechanism, perpetuating the status quo and the psycho-social chaos on which the existing "order" stands. Several years ago, our well-schooled citizenry chose representatives who voted 413 to 5 to bomb Bagdhad. Predictably, chest-thumbing natives loved it.  Now, in the absence of a clearly defined enemy abroad, we settle for the increasingly frequent execution of dark-skinned natives, many of them scarred by the intrinsic dishonor of K-12 hazing.

The other item begging redress is our assumption that more  and faster  resource consumption is a mark of Progress. Could anything short of systematic indoctrination produce this witless belief? To emphasize the majesty of our achievement, we now proselytize "unlimited growth" as the sine qua non of enlightened "globalization."

Notably, the planet's most equitable resource distribution has taken place in the Indian state of Kerala, where 30 million people have a per capita annual income of $222.00, yet also enjoy life expectancy and literacy rates on a par with our own. Furthermore, Keralans are civilized enough to shun state-sponsored slaughter, in part because capital crimes  and the psycho-social chaos which provokes them -- are not embedded in the matrix of culture.

Bred to a culture that enters "depression" the moment metastatic expansion ceases, it is refreshing to see that a steady-state economy actually works.

                                                                               Attentively,

                                                                               Alan Archibald

                                                                              

"Poverty is not the problem. Wealth is the problem. Poverty is the solution." 

Satish Kumar, former Jain monk and current editor of "Resurgence" http://www.resurgence.org/

The wealthy make of poverty a vice.  Plato

        

Growth has become addictive. Like heroin addiction, the habit distorts basic value judgments. Addicts of any kind are willing to pay increasing amounts for declining satisfactions. They are blind to deeper frustrations because they are absorbed in playing for always mounting stakes. Products that are new and improved promise the concept of being 'better', but leave the concept of 'whether or not good' for the individual or society completely unaddressed. Often new and better products create more wants, dependency, and dissatisfaction for most, and constantly renovate poverty for the poor.  Ivan Illich

We Americans are an unprincipled nation, when you come down to it. Not that we're bad or anything. It's just that it's hard for us to pay attention to abstract matters when we have so many concrete matters -- cellular phones, ski boats, salad shooters, trail bikes, StairMasters, snow boards, pasta-making machines, four-door sport utility vehicles, palmcorders, rollerblade skates and CD players for our cars -- to occupy us. No wonder all the great intellectual concepts ... come from pastoral societies... P.J. O'Rourke

Without the inner beauty of a free and harmonious life, (fine food) and eau de cologne can become merely forms of barbarism. Without tolerance and broad spiritual understanding, hygiene will only make for clean animals, very clean and very healthy, but also very animal. External riches will merely smother us, if we do not cultivate inner riches.  Miguel de Unamuno

It is the greatest of all advantages to enjoy no advantage at all. I found it invariably true, the poorer I am the richer I am.  Thoreau

He is richest whose pleasures are cheapest.  Thoreau

Everything is so relativized. I think we've got ourselves into a terrible jam there, with all kinds of ideologies that have taught us not to be judgemental. Not being judgemental also, in a way, means not thinking.   Salman Rushdie, Mother Jones, July-August, 1999

                                                                                                                        ***

2/28/00

Editor (Independent),

Hal Crowther's comparison of contemporary liberalism to McCarthyism (February 23-29) is apt.

However, Hal's wish to reinterpret the First Amendment in order to discourage "the Larry Flynts of the Internet from preying on children" makes me wonder where to begin the revision.

When the Constitution was ratified, applicable communication technologies were limited to megaphone and type set. Our current First Amendment quandary was not caused by these particular manifestations of speech and print.

Rather, we find ourselves confounded by the pre-emptive impact of pictorial imagery. Saturated by the superficiality of pictorial images, it has become impossible to conduct meaningful discourse. In hindsight, the Supreme Court's decision to outlaw "yelling 'Fire!' in a crowded theater"  as if this were a meaningful contribution to First Amendment law -- seems laughably naïve, especially in contrast to the routine imagery that sets us all "afire."

Speech and press freedoms should guarantee anyone's right to yell anything --- even "Fire!" in a crowded theater.

If, however, we wish to reinterpret the First Amendment, it would be wise to recall the Framers' original intent. Here's a Truth we might hold to be self-evident. The authors of the Constitution did not intend the unimpeded spillage of pornographic, violent and otherwise degrading images. (One day, such spillage will be viewed as unregulated toxic waste disposal.)

Unfortunately, we are conditioned to believe that the First Amendment protects pictorial imagery. Consider Hollywood moguls whose livelihood depends on provocative images.  These "guardians of the popular imagination" routinely spearhead neo-liberal causes without a moment's consideration of the role they played at Columbine. Yes, the NRA and Smith/Wesson were culprits. But Hollywood?  I beg your pardon!

Interesting antecedents are afoot here. The 1st Commandment emphatically proscribes "graven images." On one hand, the outcome of this ancient "imagery ban" was the elimination of pictorial art in Jewish culture. Jewish temples displayed calligraphy and geometric patterns, but no representational images of man or beast. Simultaneously, by eliminating pictorial images, the First Commandment inculcated deep appreciation for "the Word," transforming Jewry into "the People of the Book."

By not dissipating attention on pictorial side-shows, Jews became unusually focused on the written and spoken word. The upshot of this attentiveness was the creation of a culture with unparalleled passion for higher-order thinking skills.

On the other hand, pictorial imagery tends to elicit visceral - rather than thoughtful - response. Note how television viewers stonewall thoughtful interaction with the universal utterance: "Shhh! I'm trying to watch this!" Not surprisingly, recent research revealed calamitous contraction in the range of vocabulary used by contemporary Americans.

Our national fondness for the passive consumption of images  whether pornographic, violent, political or commercial  leaves little time for conversation. In this discursive void, our larger cultural conversations become simple-minded sound-bites on those infrequent occasions when discourse rises above grunting.

Mind you, I like to grunt as much as the next guy. I too have been known to pick up stray copies of Playboy in order to lust after the Jimmy Carter interviews.

But, if our goal is to vivify the First Amendment so that it serves -- rather than corrodes -- culture, the crux of our current conundrum is not speech and print per se, but our de novo super-saturation with pictorial images that impassion us needlessly, simultaneously diminishing our ability to think, to speak, to read, to write and to interact with other living beings.

Attentively,

Alan Archibald

                                                                                                                        ***

1/11/00

Editor (Independent),

Although Michael Ventura's recent discussion of "corporatization" was apt, the opening paragraphs of "Millenial Nudity" (January 5-11, 2000) were somewhat inflated.

In Ventura's view, everyone should have engaged millennial soul-searching

while the Gregorian calendar - which missed Christ's birth by 5 to 10

years - rolled into a new, arbitrary cipher.

"The press of history" may have transformed this New Year's trumpery into a moment many "will never forget," but for those of us who retired at 10:30 there is, I'm afraid, nothing to remember.

Was there anything to celebrate?

New Year's Eve represents the essence of pagan celebration: "there's no there there." This year was no different, save the thousand-fold amplification of the event's intrinsic vacuity.

Ventura laments that Y2K distracted many from more meaningful considerations such as "Who and what am I now? What should I be doing and why?"

On New Year's eve, I dined with the director of a Duke medical institute, and during the course of our conversation he persuaded me to turn off my computer until Monday afternoon.

What I discovered from this needless precaution --- this circumstantially-imposed electronic "fast" --- was the incomparable bliss of not having to genuflect before the phosphorescent time-bandit.

In lieu of my customary "cuts, pastes and clicks," my life tumbled into the lusciousness of untrammeled Reality. Time unfolded of its own accord. There was no rush, no hurry, no frenzied "accomplishment" devoid of lasting satisfaction.

An epiphany emerged from all this... "What I should be doing now" is foreswearing cyber-serfdom in favor of real life.

Three years ago, I disposed of my television. Perhaps the computer is next.

I don't want to be overly hard on Mr. Ventura. He regularly graces us with substantial insight. However, it is a rare essay in which his writing doesn't reveal a significant admixture of "Calaughforlornia."

A native New Yorker, Ventura's move west has exposed him to new forms of hype and hyper-acceleration. In many ways, California is its own pontificate, preaching novelty as its central dogma, sacrificing virgins to the fascism of fashion, each new velleity morphing so fast that History and Contemplation become obnoxious intrusions.

                                                           Attentively,

                                                           Alan Archibald

                                                          

                                                                                                                        ***

10/17/97

Editor (Prism),

Mother Teresa's "Home for the Dying" is neither hospice nor

hospital.

Mother Teresa's Calcutta "Home for the Dying" is what its name

claims; a place to die.

The "Home" insures that people will not die - untouched - in

offal-clogged gutters.

It is hard for first-worlders to contemplate Calcutta without

projecting the prejudices of wealth onto Third World street-people.

Calcutta's "Home for the Dying" is the mirror image of a

catastrophe triage station. Instead of determining who might survive --

while letting the mortally wounded die unattended -- Mother Teresa's

sisters gather the broken bodies of the moribund and take them "Home."

I have never known any supporter of Mother Teresa's work who

mistook the Calcutta "Home" as a hospice or medical facility.... two

fairly widespread misconceptions among people who rely on the secular

press. At times, some of the people taken "Home" do suffer from treatable

diseases that remain undiagnosed. For some observers -- always observers

who live outside India -- this oversight inspires bitter recrimination.

In the global scheme of human suffering, I marvel that we

"northerners" routinely spend $150,000.00 to beat back lymphoma with

marrow transplants and laminar flow isolation rooms even though this same

sum could be used to inoculate entire countries against polio. Just 200

cases of "heroic" cancer treatment consume the equivalent of Mother

Teresa's world-wide operating budget.

Where are the voices of recrimination when needed most?

When I moved to Sandinista Nicaragua to teach at the Managua

Medical School, I advocated vehemently on behalf of simple sterile

procedures in municipal hospitals. However, as I grew accustomed to water

shortages, electrical blackouts and broken windows allowing flies to swarm

in torrid operating rooms, I settled for a plain plastic swatter as the

most appropriate means of discouraging "Beelzebub's minions" from settling

on "cracked" chests and prolapsed uteruses.

On one occasion I visited the National Leprosarium to document a

case of blastomycosis. Dona Mirjinda, a Miskito Indian woman, was so badly

infected that her leg had become mesmerizing in its repulsiveness. It took

me a full year - and "string pulling" on two continents - to get someone

to donate a course of the appropriate fungicide. The drug "only" cost

$300.00, but I was living on $100.00 per month.

Tell me: was the life-saving medicine "cheap", or "prohibitively

expensive"?

Christopher Hitchens has led the attack on Mother Teresa. He

highlights an episode in which the missionary nun refused to accept the

donation of a New Your City building because municipal codes required

installation of an elevator. Hitchens implies that by refusing  to install

the elevator - or even to let the City install it at municipal expense -

Mother Teresa behaved mean-spiritedly toward the handicapped.

Hitchens' first-world interpretation fits the facts well. However,

from Mother Teresa's vantage, any "inconvenience to the handicapped" paled

in comparison to the waste of a hundred thousand dollars that could have

been spent on bread.

The nitty-gritty exigencies of Calcutta distill to this stark

choice: either the destitute and dying are sheltered, cleansed and fed,

or, they die on the streets.

Before we harden in poses of self-satisfied outrage, I would ask

if occasional oversight of treatable diseases at Mother Teresa's "triage

stations" isn't of less moral weight than the routine practice of

high-tech "medicide" in the northern latitudes? "Medicide" is the ghoulish

compulsion to protract "life" at any cost. Patients subjected to medicide

are so tormented by associated procedures that traditional peoples view

their treatment as torture.

What ideological arabesques impel us to lambaste Mother Teresa's

version of "deathwatch" when Westerners construe death as a demon to be

vanquished, even at the expense of reducing life to mere metabolism and

artificially prolonged misery?

Tibetan Buddhist "rinpoches" - in union with Christian monks and

Hindu sanyassin - observe that fear-of-death is intimately linked to human

aggression. No sooner does Mother Teresa create a "Home for the Dying" --

a place in which death is not feared -- than Western analysts beat the

drums of witch-hunt.  A curious coincidence indeed...

Catholic moral teaching holds that there is no need to take any

extraordinary measure to prolong life. This seemingly cavalier attitude

may shock some, but what is the alternative? --- a consuming fear that

Life has "made" a horrible mistake, and that we mortals must repress death

at any cost?

However, I am not without misgiving.

I wish Mother Teresa had launched jeremiads against the wealthy. I

wish her Nobel acceptance speech were laced with incendiary condemnation

of the mighty. Having said that, it is also true that Mother Teresa

inhabited the choking miasma of irremediable poverty --- not a propitious

circumstance to strategize "draining the swamp."

I am also appalled by Mother Teresa's indiscriminate acceptance of

money from thugs. However, if unable to provide for the basic needs of my

loved ones, I too would accept charity from Papa Doc.

In the end, Mark Cook's savage treatment of Mother Teresa recalls

a recent comment by investigative reporter Seymour Hersh: "Let me tell you

about our profession. We are the meanest, nastiest bunch of jealous, petty

people who ever lived. You think I wouldn't sell my mother for My Lai?"

Like all of us, Mother Teresa was a flawed individual. She also

dedicated her life to an extraordinarily difficult rescue mission, a

mission so fraught with frustration, desperation, futility and burn-out

that the world ignored this weeping wound for millennia.

To create the impression that Mother Teresa murdered people with

malice aforethought is, to say the least, self-serving.

Attentively,

Alan Archibald