In Memory of an Unknown Cousin

 1.

They took you on a German day,

Europe still under its clouds.

You, who were certainly my cousin

however many times removed,

were removed from passive neighbors

still in unbombed houses, by night;

you were going to live and work and play

somewhere in Poland, they said.

2.

A scientist, a cook, a movie star,

a balding neurotic, or my son's teacher

(he hates him)--fifty years later

up from a nightmare, I wonder,

smoke, what you would be? Black

coffee. Morning's ritual begins. Again

water comes out of my shower, not gas;

I have no right to write your eulogy.

ll.

Fifty years later? You can tell that this poem was written long ago. It is now eighty years after the Holocaust began, a hell that still seers this old man's mind.  It occurred several generations ago, a great-grandfather's lifetime ago, yet we forget those times at our peril. Is jack-booted hate rising from the ashes of the past? I wish I could be sanguine; instead, I am scared.

The poem first appeared in a magazine, The Other Side, that is long since defunct. I better change the subject or I'll need an anti-depressant.

lll.

The poem was written in memory of a fictive cousin. My real cousin, the only one I had left, died yesterday. His name was William Dorsett. He passed away, I'm told, comfortably in his sleep on January 15, 2022.

Well, I guess I have the right to write a eulogy for him. It is, however, another eulogy for an unknown cousin, for we only had minimal contact in the past sixty years. 

Bill was born in September, 1940, a few days before my brother's birth. His namesake father and his mother, Ceil, had a second child 1n 1944, a boy named Richard; I was born a few months later. Soon tragedy struck: Richard died at about one year of age, from (perhaps) meningitis. My uncle Bill and my aunt Ceil took it hard and decided to move out of the area. They moved to Kirkland, Washington, a suburb of Seattle. There they remained and there they died.

They visited us often, at least for a while. I remember as a young lad waiting on our porch in Jersey City, waiting for their arrival. They drove cross-country and had just called to tell us their arrival was imminent. Our family sat on the outside steps of our house, located at 163 Congress Street in Jersey City. which my grandfather purchased in 1949. (He and my grandmother lived on the ground floor; my father, mother, brother and I lived on the two upper floors. There was no separation between us; we had the run of the house).

There were about a dozen steps on the outside of the house which led to our family's entrance on the second floor.  We could use the downstairs entrance as well, the door to which was located behind the outside stairs. Under the stairs was a huge coal bin--we heated the house by coal in those days. I remember crawling into it on several occasions and tossing lumps of coal about in the dark. I couldn't have been more than six years old.

There we were, my mother, father, my brother and I, arrayed on the front steps awaiting the arrival of the West-coast section of our family., circa 1956. After waiting an hour or so, I remember thinking, "I thought they were almost here. Where can they be?"

They arrived. I almost still can hear our shouts of merriment.

My Aunt Ceil was a stout woman who stood about five foot five. She was very sensitive about her weight. I remember one time, during a later visit, we took the local bus to New York City. We were in Central Park on a beautiful day. My bother wanted to snap a photo; Aunt Ceil made sure that her torso was hidden by the nearest tree. She thought she was too fat to stand full-bodied in a picture that was sure--in her mind--to cause embarrassment! This was well before our current let-it-all-out age; she wasn't obese at all. Aunt Ceil was adopted as a child from an orphanage in Finland. Whatever Finnish she had  known had long since been forgotten.

My Uncle Bill was slightly shorter than my father and stood at about 5' 7''; he was not overweight. He was a jolly sort; as an example of his humor, I remember him telling us that his wife 'had been vaccinated by a Victrola needle.' No, he couldn't have made it as a stand-up, but he was a good man.

My cousin Bill was tall, smart, lanky and high-strung. His parents loved him, but often--especially his mother--criticized him a lot. I think she expected perfection.

Every December for several years, we looked forward to receiving a box of Christmas gifts from them in the mail. I suppose they looked forward to receiving ours as well. I don't remember what any of those gifts were, but I sure remember that they had been lovingly and colorfully wrapped.

Cousin Bill and I corresponded for a while. Now that I think of it, I'm sure Aunt Ceil made him write to me--how else could you get a fifteen-year-old boy to write to his ten-year-old cousin? In one letter, I made a reference to 'Mow-Mows.' Somewhat later I received a reply in which I was informed that both he and his mother had been greatly amused by my misspelling of 'Mau Mau,' a reference to a Kenyan secret society bent on expelling Europeans from Africa.  Funny how some things stick in your mind despite so many things that have been forgotten!

In 1960, my mother and I took a trip to visit them in Washington state. (My mother wailed softly as we went over the Rockies in a propellered plane. She thought we were going to be 'sucked down into the mountains,' she later told me. This was the first plane trip for both of us.)

Our relatives had a small house surrounded by an acre of greenery. We had a good time, but most details of our trip remain a blur somewhere in my mind. One often recalls only emotionally charged events, and this trip was no exception. On one occasion, we were climbing down a hill in a national forest. It was a very hot day; my mother got overheated. While she lay on the grass to recover, I can still see and hear my aunt chewing out my poor cousin  for not having watched  over my mother more carefully. On another occasion, while visiting Mount Ranier, my uncle suddenly felt ill. He pulled the car over. Cousin Bill, then about 19, volunteered to take over the wheel. He didn't get very far. The car bucked and shimmied a bit, then came to a stop. (Perhaps my cousin forgot to disengage the emergency brake?) Well, Aunt Ceil yelled at Cousin Bill and wouldn't let him drive farther. I can still see the disappointment on my cousin's face; I think he wanted to show off his driving skills, poor guy.

Cousin Bill had developed a prominent nervous tic by this time, which included twitching of the mouth and eyes. Let me repeat: Aunt Ceil was a good woman, but could also be a stern critic.

Well, 1960 was the last time I saw Cousin Bill in the flesh, though we remained in periodic contact.

He contacted me about ten years ago. He had found an article in a German magazine that had to do with a sad event in the family. Another first cousin of mine had been shot down over Germany in 1944. He was the gunner of a bomber. He apparently survived the crash with a broken leg but didn't survive the war. What exactly happened to him we do not know.

When my uncle was informed over the phone, he apparently shouted, "Junior's been killed! Junior's been killed!"  I was born shortly after that terrible war was over.

I translated the article for him. We had a long and pleasant phone conversation at the time.

After that we lost contact again. 

Cousin Bill spent his professional life at a hospital in Regina, Canada. I'm not sure, but I think he was responsible for ordering technical equipment. This, I do know: he was quite intelligent.

I don't know how I knew, but Bill had been engaged to a woman with two children in Canada. It apparently didn't work out; Bill remained a bachelor until his death.

Another cousin--my father had been the youngest of nine--kept in contact with Bill. I talked with Cousin Jean many times. She was about to arrange a visit to the NBC Studios in New York, where another first cousin, David Dorsett, had been the chief cameraman for David Letterman for years. But the visit never occurred; Cousin Jean, who never smoked in her life, had contracted cancer of the lung and soon died from the disease. (She had told me that the doctors didn't want to aggressively treat the tumor, since she had become old and 'would probably die of something else.' Indeed.)

Jean had told me that Bill had become obese and a bit of a recluse. He died alone in a nursing home in Kirkland. Sad.

My wife's family, of which I am still a part, is large; mine isn't. I had been trying to contact my cousin to reconnect; I am ashamed to say that my attempts, however, were minimal. I didn't know about the nursing home until I had been informed of his death on the day after his passing. Strange to say, but I had been trying to find information on him online on the day of his death. I had a feeling that he was no longer with us. Unfortunately, I was right. 

The sketchy life of my cousin I have provided indicates that he was also an 'unknown cousin' like the one in the first poem. After Bill's death, I composed another "In Memory of an Unkown Cousin" which follows:

In Memory of an Unknown Cousin

                                      --William Dorsett (1940-2022)

 

1.

A peach shares its secret--

Misquoting a more famous

poet and pediatrician

I take communion from the fridge

and eat it in Bill’s memory—

The peach is delicious;

so juicy, so cold.

 

2.

Hope our shared genes 

expressed our shared humanity:

before you left, I hope you knew

what I know now: despite the pit,

life and death are exquisite,

inexplicable and whole

as an ordinary peach—

Last first cousin, rest in peace.

Thomas Dorsett, January 2022

The Wallace Syndrome or Liar, Liar, Earth's on Fire

1.

Barack Obama once made a comment that I now paraphrase: Politicians must stretch the truth sometimes (often?), if they want to stay in power, but they must know where to draw the line. If they don't have core beliefs--one of Obama's core beliefs, for instance, was the passage of universal health care; if they will do anything to stay in power, their core is like that of a not too recently discarded apple's, rotten mush, even as they present their deliciously shiny outer selves to the public. Sometimes (often?), they go too far and their inner core dies, like a spruce destroyed by climate change. I call this phenomenon, which plagues current politics, the Wallace Syndrome. George Wallace, (1919-1998). served as governor of Alabama for four terms; he is best known for his opposition to integration.

Quite possibly the most notorious day of his career occurred on June 11, 1963, when he stood in front of the door of Foster Auditorium of the University of Alabama in a failed attempt to block the passage of two Black students from entry. This occurred nine years after the Supreme Court decision, Brown vs. the Board of Education, began the process of ending racial segregation in 1954. Federal authorities demanded that segregation be ended, to which Wallace had the following reply, "The President (i.e. John F. Kennedy) wants us to surrender the state to Martin Luther King and his group of pro-communists..."

From that comment and from his attempts to thwart desegregation, one might conclude that Wallace was one of the most rabid racists in the history of Alabama, but this is not so. Earlier, he had demonstrated some liberal tendencies, at least for a man who practiced law in the Jim Crow South. For instance, it was the custom at the time for lawyers to address African-Americans in court by their first names only, while whites were addressed with first and last names. Wallace broke with that tradition. A Black lawyer, J.L. Chestnut, said that "Judge George Wallace was the most liberal judge I ever practiced law in front of. He was the first judge in Alabama to call me 'Mister' in a courtroom.

What happened?

Power politics, you might say. In 1958, he was defeated for the governorship by John Patterson, a rabid racist and Ku Klux Klan supporter. As judge, Wallace granted probation to several African-Americans, which, among other things, such as Wallace's opposition to the Klu Klux Klan, probably cost him the election. Hard to imagine it, but Wallace was endorsed by the NAACP.

After his defeat, Wallace made the following vile statement to an aide, "You know why I lost the governor's race? ...I was outniggered by John Patterson. And I'll tell you here and now, I will never be outniggered again."

Wallace thus provides a clear illustration of the subject of this essay, namely, that many  politicians are willing to sacrifice what they know to be right in order to hold onto power. 

Wallace said of his efforts to hold onto the little integrity he had, "You know I tried to talk about good roads and good schools and all these things that have been part of my career, and nobody listened. Then I started talking about niggers, and they stomped the floor."

The 'good Christian' Wallace might have been reminded of the words of Jesus, "For what should it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his soul?"

Wallace proceeded to blast to smithereens whatever core of decency he had. He played the race card with a vengeance--and won. During his inauguration speech in 1963, he said the following words which have stuck to him and tarnished his reputation forever: "In the name of the greatest people who ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny and I say, segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."

2.

Wallace is history, but history has a strange way of repeating itself. No politician these days can be as overtly racist as Wallace. Those days are over--thank goodness! (A good deal of racism, of course remains.) Yet examples of giving up integrity to hold onto power abound. I repeat: every politician needs to stretch the truth to get elected. Stomping on the truth, however, is another matter.

An example of a politician without core values is, well, you-know-who. I understand Trump's inability to admit that he lost the last election. He is a pathological narcissist, programmed by his father to believe defeat is a fate worse than death. His Big Lie, namely, that the election was fraudulent and that 'he won it by a landslide,' is part of his pathology. He reminds me a bit like a patient I encountered during a psychiatric rotation in medical school many years ago. This poor lost soul was convinced that he was the reincarnation of Napoleon Bonaparte. He would have been devastated to realize that he was a powerless man whom the world ignored. Believing that he was someone special, thus covering up, at least temporarily, the inner realization that he was anything but, was an essential belief for him. Deep within he believed he was nothing--an extremely destructive feeling; to survive, he presented himself to the world as the reincarnation of one of the most powerful men in history.

Similarly, Trump's psyche, in order to compensate for a shaky core, demands that he be better than everyone else. Calling him a loser is one of the worst insults one could hurl at him. Therefore, he constructed the Big Lie. I get that; he's a sick man. But what about the millions of his supporters; what about the leaders of the Republican party? About seventy percent of Republicans still believe that Trump won the election! Worse, very few Republican have stated publicly what so many are reported to admit privately, namely that the Big Lie, is, well a big lie. 

3.

Most Republicans in Congress, in my opinion, have made a pact with a two-faced devil,  Greed and Power.  As I have written before, the Republican  Party is the party of the rich. The rich, of course, are a minority; to win over majorities in elections, Republicans have decided to cheat rather than go directly to the majority of voters with new programs that might help them. Therefore, they want to limit voter participation; therefore, they want to gerrymander voting districts; therefore, they want to lower taxes for the wealthy; therefore, they are out to screw the working class. Many of them have lost whatever core of integrity they had. Money, money, money, aka Power, Power, Power, that's what has corrupted and displaced that spark of decency without which a politician is a con.

Many Republicans are shams, but not all. A case in point is J.D. Vance, the author of the 2016 memoir, Hillbilly Elegies, and who is currently running for senator in Ohio. As many know, he grew up poor and was deeply affected by the moral decay around him--drugs, dysfunctional families, etc. He previously advocated that people need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Now he blames the loss of industry, among other things, for devastating working-class America. He is against big-tech and very much against tax cuts, which have done their part in destroying much of America, at least according to him. And, as one might expect, he rails against woke liberalism.

In order to run as a Republican, and hope to win, he believed he had to make peace with Trump--whom he previously had called 'an idiot.' 

He is a proponent of 'National Conservatism,' a movement which advocates strong borders and nationalistic trade policies in an attempt to bring back America's lost industrial base.

Has he gone too far? I think he has. He says he is against tax cuts. How can one be an advocate for tax cuts in the Republican Party? He is running against a rabid Trumper. Vance has deleted all his anti-Trump tweets and has made up with the Big Liar.

Will being against immigration bring jobs back? I doubt it. Will being anti-tech bring jobs back? I doubt it. And if it were possible, would one be able to accomplish this as a Republican?

A tell-tale comment of his says it all. He said he was willing to shut down the government until Biden rescinds his  vaccine mandate. Shouldn't an advocate for the working class be for vaccine mandates?

Vance is willing to lie to gain power in order to achieve noble goals. To accomplish them as a Republican in today's America is wishful thinking.

Soon symptoms of the Wallace Syndrome will take over. He is too willing to kiss up to Trump and  his supporters. If elected, he will like his personal power so much he will forget what he had stood for as he kneels down before a golden idol. 

Decency will say, Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire!

Republicans and Democrats--all politicians--are subject to the temptation of wealth and power, but there is a marked difference in the degree to which they give into it. For instance, fascism has always existed; Nazi Germany, however, was its classic manifestation. Similarly, Republicans are the classic manifestations  of the Wallace Syndrome today.

Liars, Liars, Earth's on Fire!

Annual Christmas/New Years Message 2021

 One of my favorite Christmas songs is "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas," written in  1943 by Hugh Martin and Ralph Blaine; it became a standard, albeit with altered lyrics, when it was sung by Judy Garland in the 1944 film, Meet Me In Saint Louis.

The original song began as follows:

Have yourself a merry little Christmas,

it may be your last

Can you imagine a more un-American way to begin a song than with these opening lines? America, which has been the global Jingle Bells bellwether, spreading its sometimes mindless gospel of optimism around the world. Since the 1920s, America has swept death under the table; in this song, which, despite death and destruction (the song, I remind you, was written in 1943, when the defeat of fascism was far from certain), advocates having a Merry Christmas, albeit a little one, now.

The opening lines remind one of the mementos mori of 'yore.'  I imagine the following scene: a small family sits around a holiday table determined to celebrate despite everything. (The shades are drawn in anticipation of a possible air raid). One of the family members, feeling that the festive mood is a bit forced, lifts up the bright-green Christmas tablecloth, to see, as it were, what underlies the roasted turkey on the table. Suddenly he sees a skull, staring back from sockets which once sheltered eyes. Nevertheless, he lets the cloth fall back and continues the celebration with an ambiguous smile on his face.

This is not Schubert's  Winterreise, however; the song does indeed celebrate life despite its negative aspects.

The song ends with the following lines:

Faithful friends who were near to us

will be near to us no more.

But at least we all will be together,

if the Lord allows,

Until then, we'll have to muddle through somehow;

so have yourself a merry little Christmas now.

(Italics mine.)

Uh-oh. There is at least a potential problem here. The song posits an afterlife compared to which all the suffering of this life is a mere 'flash in the pan.' Many moderns, myself included, have at best a very uneasy relationship with anything that sounds like 'pie-in-the sky.'  For us the sky extends in all directions for unimaginably long distances; we might look up at the universe and smile, but there is absolutely no evidence that the universe will ever smile back.

Is there room for optimism? You bet; remember, I'm writing a basically upbeat message. If we are involved with work which has a positive effect on society; if we focus on relationships; if we focus on loving our neighbor as ourselves; if we realize that everything is connected (wisdom), we will experience profound joy--at least to the degree that these habits are assiduously practiced. If one lives life in this way, one becomes inevitably spiritual, loving, and wise. What better fulfilment can one hope to have?

All right, let's admit it. The self is an illusion; elements within us, albeit in different proportions, are the same elements in the outside world. Bergson was wrong; there is no life principle that animates flesh. Evolution developed a sense of self for survival purposes--and, 'thank God' it did, for without it the glories of culture and science, etc, would not have been possible. But that's the subject of another essay, one, in fact, that I've already written.

Let's return to having a merry little Christmas. The song, as we have seen, advocates the celebration of life despite its negative aspects. The latter aspects are always there; they shouldn't, however, stop us from making merry periodically. When negativity looms larger, though, Christmases become more and more little.

We are, alas! living in such an age now. Climate change, the result of untrammeled greed, (in which, by the way, so many of our problems have their origin), assures that we cannot continue living lives of mindless consumption. (How can it be that the world is run by ostriches with their heads in the sand--sand, by the way, that was once, not long ago, fertile soil?)

Climate change, of course, is not the only major problem. Inequality has reached painful levels. For instance, the richest country in the world has yet to provide its citizens with universal health care! In a country plagued by violence, we have yet to pass meaningful gun-control legislation! Our country, like much of the world, is almost hopelessly divided! The great American experiment, democracy, is in grave danger!

Serious problems indeed.

We must simplify our lives. Climate change demands it. Chicken littles eating beef while the sky is falling...Is it too late? 

It is never too late.

If we opened Pandora's box now, I imagine that a Trumpy puppet  would pop up like a Mad Hatter Jack-in-the-Box. But hope, that thing with feathers, would still remain.

Never give up trying to make this world a better place. Have faith and be thankful; love and wisdom will get us through somehow. In other words, have yourself a merry little Christmas now.

It may be your last.

Failure:Success Part ll: De Religione Neminis

In part l, I alluded to my many failures under the pseudonym, Andrew K. I think I had been reading too much Kafka, (I recently gave a lecture about Kafka)--truth is that I have had a good deal of successes in my life as well.

In this essay, I would like to discuss one of my greatest failures of all: the failure to be an atheist. I don't know how I do it, but I do. After all, I know well that every statement about God is untrue. In the Upanishads, the source of being is called Brahman. If one makes a statement about Brahman, the correct response is Neti-Neti, i.e Not This, Not That. How many adherents to one of the three Abrahamic faiths would respond to the doctrine that God loves us with an absolute negation? Nemo. Sed quis nemo sum.

The Catholic catechism might forge a community of believers; none of its statements, however, makes any literal sense--unless one is ready to give up science. When the great mathematician, LaPlace was asked by Napoleon how God fit into his philosophy, he replied, "Je n'avais pas besoin de cette hypothèse-là," "I never had any need for that hypothesis." Most scientists today would agree with him.

For me, God is just a word. Regarding religion, I sometimes paraphrase Tina Turner's famous hit with "What does God have to do with it?" Do I believe in God? No. Do I believe in Silence? You bet.

Can you believe two things at the same time? Aristotle says no. Nicholas de Cuna says yes. (The latter is the  philosopher best known for the concept of 'coincidentia oppositorum,' or the unity of opposites.) In mathematics, you don't want anyone telling you that, while e=mc2, e can equal m times the square of something else as well. But life, but consciousness, but religion, but God, is not mathematics. 

We Westerners tend to use logic to prove a hypothesis which simultaneously disproves its opposite. This is quite valid when, say, transmission photometry indicates that an exoplanet contains oxygen in its atmosphere. This is thence accepted as a scientific fact, unless someone can falsify the results by proving the methodology of determining the atmospheric composition was faulty. This is science.

Linear reasoning, however, gets a bit dicey when describing the attributes of consciousness. For instance, many scientists are pure materialists--how can consciousness, a product of the brain, affect matter? That would be a form of dualism, a belief, as it were, in a Ghost in the Machine. Therefore, such scientists conclude, there is no free will. Does that mean we shouldn't plan for tomorrow?

Of course not. Evolution has convinced us that free will exists; without it, culture, not to mention jurisprudence,  would collapse. As long as the I is believed to be a separate entity, the concept of free will is essential. Thus, for practical purposes, free will and its lack exist simultaneously. (If you exist in a realm where free will doesn't exist, you're either dead or living in Nirvana. Maybe someone has actually achieved Nirvana in their lifetime; if so, such entities are extremely rare--in addition, I sure wouldn't want to vote for Mr. or Ms. Nirvana to be our next president! Who puts down the sword dies on the Cross, wrote Simone Weil).

Similarly with religion and science. I am at home with the scientific view of the world. I do not believe in any of the basic tenets of the three Abrahamic religions. This means I don't literally believe that God gave the decalogue on Mount Sinai, nor do I believe that Jesus of Nazareth is literally the son of God, nor do I believe that Muhammad was the last of the prophets. But I do believe that all three are poetic expressions of a universal truth. 

Before the enlightenment, it was possible to believe in dogma and Silence. Dogma, however, was always prose that posed as poetry; literal belief in dogma is no longer possible for those with a functioning, informed head on their shoulders. Silence, a matter of the heart, however, has and cannot ever be wounded by the sticks and stones of Doubting Thomases.

I think that many stick to the old dogmas because they want certainty and consolation. Why do we suffer so? A question for which there are no convincing dogmatic answers. Grown-ups realize that the cosmos isn't able to embrace us; it has no arms. That it 'fans fresh our wits with wonder' I have no doubt. If we want something that fans fresh our hearts with wonder, we have to immerse ourselves in the human realm; we have to experience the miracle of human relationships. The cosmos teaches us awe; humanity teaches us love--what more do we need? Silence is the umbrella that includes and shelters both.

The paradoxical nature of reality was beautifully captured by Buddha when he taught that those who believe in life after death are wrong while those who don't believe in an afterlife are wrong as well. On a prose level, the level on which most of our lives are lived, life is ambiguous. It has its joyous peaks; it has its terrible valleys. We must learn to live with this ambiguity, as the great scientist, Carl Sagan, taught. What better way to forget death for a while than through meaningful work and relationships? What better way to forget death forever than through Silence?

Death is going to hit us hard if it hasn't deeply wounded us already. It wounds us even more deeply by earlier removals from life of those whom we love. There is no getting around that. 

There is a time for mourning, as Ecclesiastes wisely proclaims. But death does not negate the continuation of life, as Nietzsche knew. An individual might not survive the death of a loved one, but no individual is the center of the world; to think so, as many do, is hubris of the worst kind. Those individuals who know what Silence 'means' will, with the help of loved ones who remain, survive and even thrive once again.

Hindus speak of jnana, wisdom; it is the awe we feel when we experience and study the wonders of the cosmos. Hindus also speak of bhakti, the wisdom of devotion, the wisdom of love. The wisest Hindus teach their version of coincidentia oppositorum, namely that jnana and bhakti are one. 

Silence has known that from before the beginning of time. Do you?

Failure:Success, Part 1

 I am a failure, I admit it.

In my late seventies, I've had a lot of opportunities to fail, and I sure have taken advantage of them. The fact of my having grown up in a dysfunctional family has kept me on track, riding the rails of an express train to nowhere; my long journey began at Failure Central, the great invisible railway station in Jersey City, where I was born.

Now, so many years later, I can still see, as it were, the countless houses that whizzed by. I couldn't make them out clearly, but I imagined them all to be perfect little upper-class houses, each with a white picket fence, each like a moat surrounding the home of a jolly, white family, the parents of which were epitomes of success. I also imagined, if I could only get off the train, that I would somehow be able to find a house of my own in a squeaky-clean neighborhood; a house for which, with a lot of work, I would be able to mortgage myself and squeak by. But the ghost engineer rushed on full-throttle; the landscape whooshed past houses in which I imagined a Mr. and a Mrs. Success in every one, dining on caviar, silver spoon-feeding their two brilliant kids.

Now, so many decades later, the conductor informs me I'm rapidly approaching the last stop before that once-dreaded final destination. I have to get off and I do.

Old age is indeed a desolate station, but I'm not alone; my wife and my son have been waiting for me. We embrace. "Where's your luggage?" my wife asks. "Doesn't my smile prove I have none? I threw them out the window long ago." Our son drives us home.

I have arrived. Slightly physically bent, yet more than slightly content, I'm in no hurry to walk down that lonesome valley; what mystics call 'one's true home,' I have found here. There, after the heart's last tick, I must go, this I know, and, and, and...Who knows?

Finally, a sort-of, a for so long unthought-of, Success!

--Andrew K.

Irgendwelche Ähnlichkeit zwischen Andrew K. und einem gewissen, unbekannten Gedicht- und Blogverfasser ist reiner Zufall. Zufallsreinigkeit, aber, kommt selten vor.

(To be continued)

Toxic Individualism

 "I pledge allegiance to the flag of The United States of America,,,one nation...individuals, with liberty and justice for all."

That ain't right.

"...one nation, inderisibles..."

Inderisibles? Independents who've become risible? That isn't even a word.

That ain't right, either.

"...one nation, indivisible..." Yes, those are the words, but, unfortunately, at present, thanks in no small part to our homegrown Little Caeser, America est omnes divisa in partes duo.

So let's return to the first example whose incorrect wording captures the American spirit much more succinctly: individuals.

America is without a doubt the land of individualism. It started early. Transplanted from a nation which prized the individual much more than other countries, Jefferson famously wrote in the Constitution of 'the inalienable rights'...'of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;' --no mention of inalienable duties.

Individualism unbalanced by a sense of the collective is a cult. It is our cult.

The poem, Invictus, by William Ernest Henley, is a well-known (to many readers) poem that celebrates individualism. Many Americans would agree with its content; I quote the poem now in its entirety:

Out of the night that covers me,

      Black as the pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

     For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

      I have not winced nor cried aloud,

Under the bludgeonings of chance

      My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears

      Looms but the Horror of the shade,

And yet the menace of the years

     Finds and shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,

      How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,

     I am the captain of my soul.

True, this solid poem was written by an Englishman who died in 1903, yet it is very applicable to current ideas of toxic individualism. (This aberration, like a virus, has spread to many countries and not only affects and infects America. The poem  has the distinction of being a largely unknown, a hymn-like modern Internationale which nevertheless expresses how many people feel today. We will concern ourselves here with its classic manifestation: American Individualism).

An example of the attraction of this poem to hyper-individualistic minds is the fact that Timothy McVeigh, the domestic terrorist responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, wrote out this poem on the eve of his execution in 2001. It obviously represented his philosophy. He simply wrote out the poem in longhand, without  signing it with either his own or the author's name. A comic event occurred the next day. The now-disgraced announcer, Matt Lauer, discussed the execution on Good Morning America, a TV program which he co-hosted at the time. He mentioned the poem and commented that it was a badly written amateur poem. He thought McVeigh had followed in the footsteps of Chidiock Tichborne, who wrote a deservedly famous poem on the eve of his execution in 1586. The sexual predator and illiterate Lauer thought McVeigh had written the poem himself!

A hallmark of unbalanced individualism is an intense dislike of all things associated with government except for the military. I would dare say that the majority of Republicans would agree with Reagan's notorious dictum, spoken during his Inaugural Address in 1981: "Government is not  the solution to our problem, government is the problem."  The citizens of all other democracies respect their government and to a large degree identify with it. Only in America does a large swath of the population dislike, even hate, their own government. Why? Because government, in their minds, is there to limit their freedom as individuals. Some anti-Semitic 'patriots' once referred to the U.S. Government as Zog, (Zionist Occupied Government), a ridiculous designation which, thank goodness! has lost currency; but the view of government as something alien, worthy of hate and even violent opposition, unfortunately, remains.

These 'patriots' view government as a bunch of alien elites who want to impinge on their creed of rugged individualism. Don't tread on me me me; nobody is going to tell me what to do; this is the creed of me's in various states of ignorance. What happened to the plural of the first person, the we, the us?

Henley was definitely a poet, but the content of the poem is bosh. All one needs to do is change the workings of a self-sufficient consciousness by the administration of the right drugs, and that mind can become, depending on what is administered, confused, paranoid, depressed, etc. Yes, a so-called unconquerable soul can be conquered. A branch on a beautiful bonzai tree can be inexplicably majestic, and even usher in enlightenment in an enlightenment-primed beholder, it can, however, also be broken easily. 

An image has remained in my mind from an old movie about the Chinese invasion of Tibet. Enlightened monks, harboring no hatred, painstakingly created an elaborate sand painting to welcome the invaders. Chinese troops proceeded to step on the painting, ruining it without a shred of remorse, as if it had been nothing but dirt. Similarly, viruses can step on our souls, as it were, turning our brains into mush. 

Examples of toxic individualism abound in our culture. For instance, The I-I-I governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, recently said that the Land of the Free is heading toward a "Faucian dystopia"--Aye Yai Yai! The relationship between toxic individualism and science is proving to be, well, toxic.

Hatred of government also very much includes hatred of public health, As a retired pediatrician, I am amazed that vaccines, which have saved countless lives, have become the center of such bitter controversy. When I worked in public health, those who refused vaccines tended to be poor individuals whose chaotic lives obviated having a sense that vaccines were important. Once the requirement of certain vaccines were mandated for school entry, the population largely fell in line. 

Those mandates are still in effect. Still, this being America, a so-called religious exemption is allowed. Yet very few--at least in Baltimore--utilize the religious exemption. Very very few refuse the law requiring drivers and passengers to buckle up. Why is the Covid-19 vaccination treated so differently?

I listened to a reporter on Fox News who claimed that vaccination should be between the doctor and the patient and government should keep out of the sacred doctor-patient relationship. In other words, the recommendations of top-notch government scientists, like Dr. Fauci, should be ignored. In this view, the government scientists are cheer leaders of creeping socialism; a bunch of fancy-schmancy urban elites trying to put ballet shoes, as it were, on the feet of true-blooded rugged individuals. Scientists like Dr. Fauci should be counted as among our greatest heroes; instead they receive death threats.

Toxic individuals seem to be saying, We are good and they are bad; not thinking makes it so. Next thing they'll try to do is take away our guns. (In the case of A-15s, one can only hope.)

The Faucian bargain is well worth the price. But you have to be humble; you have to be nice.

Increasingly, both sentiments are in very short supply.

Who's to blame for everything? Them, never us; and them is another word for government. Drivel does not turn into wisdom when amplified by brainless tweets and twitters, no matter how many. The pernicious role that social media play in all this is well documented. 

Life is hard for us all, especially for members of the so-called lower class. There might be comfort and safety in numbers, but not necessarily wisdom. The countless tweets of countless uncritical thinkers result in a solipsistic cacophony; harmony has nothing to do with it.

Recently, I gave a two-hour Zoom lecture--in German, no less--about Bertolt Brecht. As I said in the lecture, I think Brecht is just the artist America needs at the moment. According to Brecht, everyone is formed by society; in his world, the real world, an individual doesn't emerge fully formed as the mythical Athena was said to emerge from Zeus's head. The individual is largely formed by the milieu in which he is raised. (The inner milieu, developed by outer circumstance and the workings of genetics was neglected by Brecht, but no matter; it is merely another factor in the impersonal determination of personality.)

For Brecht, the fostering of a more just society is what is most important. The sacrifice of an individual to make the world better is a frequent Brechtian theme. He might have emphasized the collective over the individual a bit too much, but for present-day America, which worships the me and ignores the we, Brecht provides a much-needed alternative. The times are certainly out of joint; a balance between love of others and love of self would provide a much needed relief from the damage caused by the idol of toxic individualism.

As Delmore Schwarz once wrote, in dreams begin responsibilities. An unbalanced stress of the needs of the individual over the needs of society will turn, without a doubt, the American dream into a nightmare.

A government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth? Immortal words, Mr. Lincoln, but immortal words do not heal a festering wound. If toxic individualism, which is fueling the toxic divisions of our nation, gets any worse, the American experiment just might end with a bang or a whimper, for toxic individualism can destroy what has been built faster than termites. 

A house divided against itself can not stand, Mr. Lincoln? You and Jesus of Nazareth were certainly right about that.

 

Liebe (Botschaft eines sterbenden Falke)

Auch  die Dämonen, die die Nation zerteilen.

Musst auch dem Weltall Treue schwören,

Fröhlich Dich und die Nachbarn feiern;

Sei dankbar, gedeihe und gib;

Sei achtsam; Freund,

Selbst ohne Gott, vergib;

Nicht vergessen, die lange oder kurze Fahrt

Kommt an demselben Zielpunkt an.

Möge Deine lang und friedvoll,

Gut und befriedigend sein.