Author: White Whale

It has long seemed odd to me that dogmatic atheists like Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris felt the need to address Christians within their own idiom.  This smacks to me more of psychology than principled science or philosophy.

God is a proper subject of scientific inquiry, an inquiry denuded of all religious belief, and a priori assumptions.  The existence and survival of a soul likewise.  These are scientific questions.  Religion is separate from science, but the most important core elements need not be.

This distinction is critical to make, because until it is made scientific work in these areas cannot begin from the middle of our intellectual world, and will remain consigned to the periphery.  Interesting work is indeed being done, but it is ignored by substantially everyone.

If someone could prove we survive death, would that not be worth a Nobel Prize?  Why are such important topics so ignored?  

What we call the demonic is closely tied to the survival instinct as expressed in hunger. 

For several reasons, at least one of which I won’t get into here, I am considering becoming a vegetarian again.  Spiritually, it’s what Buddhist creed requires.  Practically, though, for me, meat seems to anchor me, to keep me from floating away. 

I have not yet made up my mind.  And if I’m honest, even once I make up my mind I’m prone to change it.  I wish I were steadier, more steadfast, more consistent.  But my virtues and my flaws seem to come together.  What is best about me is the continual flow of energy through me, and I can’t control it. 

Not yet, at any rate.

I seem to be an intellectual cow.  I am a ruminant.  I have four intellectual stomachs, and ideas flow back and forth between them.  But I usually am done when I am done analyzing something, a process which can take years and years.  Most of the time, I’m chewing cud.

So my daughter tells me that the stars of Stranger Things are very trendy right now.  Millie Bobbie Brown (I’m guessing her mother is a bit eccentric) is talked about.  I looked at some of the gossip pages with pictures of everybody, and all the speculation about what might happen season three.

And I feel how the stars of shows like this come to seem like household companions. They literally become like people you know.  They are friends, and you feel you are a part of their world.  This is true of many people, in any event.

There was a time when I was much younger when I would like at these things and feel jealousy.  They are living the dream.  It is a vast fantasy, one where most consumers of these fantasies do not readily or fully differentiate the actors from their characters, their real lives from their screen lives.

And it seems to me that many Hollywood actors really have four lives.  They have the characters they play, who they pretend to be, and–at least in method acting–whose emotions they try to feel.  Since their stories are rich and passionate, their characters lives are rich and passionate.

Then there are the lives of the actors and actresses themselves.  There is, for many of them, seemingly a feedback loop between who they think they ought to be, as one form of rock star, and who they pretend to be.  They pretend to be who they think they ought to be seen to be.  In other words, they go on acting, even once the cameras stop rolling.  And I think this is particularly true if, as seems to be the case, the most famous actors are really once ordinary people–kids at some point–who wanted to get rich and famous and live “the lifestyle”.  They inhabit their vision of what was supposed to happen, outwardly.

Then there is who they pretend to be with intimates, with friends, with lovers.  This is when they become like the rest of us.

Finally, there is who they REALLY are, and, again like the rest of us, this is often quite different from what they pretend to be even with intimates, even within the quiet confines of their own inner voices.  But finding the true inner voice is made much more complicated with all the other layers, and the HABIT of being good at pretending.

Part of what got me thinking about all this was that I was talking with someone the other night about my brief non-career as an actor, where I was told by a casting professional that I was likely good enough to do commercials, but I never sent her a picture–the “head shot” I think they call it, which is a lot like an acting resume in a world where looks are vitally important.  For my part, I look like a construction worker, or maybe a cop.

Anyway, this person said that it sounded like fun, and I then tried to remember why I never pursued it.  Then I remembered: I have enough trouble being me.  I certainly do not want to grant myself easy access to other public personas.  Now, practically, I may in any event never have gotten any work.  Most actors do very little.  But even in principle I did not like the feeling of putting on the mood, the body language, the vocal tone, the gestalt of someone else.

But where we are as a culture is that everybody wants to be a rock star, or at least many of us.  They want to be movie stars.  They want to be rich and famous and beautiful and glamorous.  And failing all that, they want the excitement of movies they watch, the TV shows they watch.  This is pernicious.

Part of the reason Stranger Things works is that the period of adolescence remains somewhat unresolved for a great many people.  It is traumatizing for many, and elements of this lurk in the unconscious for long periods of time.  Add to this the mythos of Death–which is really what the Upside Down is, with the Hans Holzer book added in one scene to eliminate doubt–and you are incorporating most of the existential anxieties of most modern Americans in an interesting way that allows movement.

I myself vastly prefer an authoritative voice.  I like to say “it” is “this” or “that”.  I am going to start trying to change this habit though.  I submit these thoughts to perhaps enrich your own, and enable new perceptions.

Here is the question: at the deepest level, what is the mythic meaning of Hollywood within the American psyche?  And how is it changing, if it is?

I will add that the editorializing and politicking of the stars flows from their believing their own press.  They convince themselves they are important, and going from there to a self assurance that they know everything they need to know on whatever topic they choose to weigh in on is quite easy.

This is layer 2 of my analysis, which is to say the second type of acting they do.

And I also can’t resist commenting that the archetypal rock star, Elvis, died on his toilet, more or less from severe constipation brought on by a long term abuse of mood altering drugs.  And he was in his early 40’s.  He was miserable, absolutely miserable.  Are we really so stupid and superficial that this seems desirable?  Rock star and out of control are more or less synonymous.  But then ask: why are they out of control?  Because they are fucking miserable.  That is why.  Yes, Keith Richards and Mick Jagger are still alive, but they did try for a long time to drug and fuck their way to a happiness and contentment they never found when they were younger.  Perhaps one or both of them are there now.  But if so, would that fact not mean that felicity and being a “rock star” are largely incompatible?  Fucking only goes so far.  And drugs are a way of escaping, not enhancing, life; at least, most drugs, for most people.

Ah, that is enough for now.  I’m sure I’m not done, but that will do.

Are we rats with a water bottle with no cocaine in it, and a bottle WITH cocaine in it, and are we consistently choosing the one with the drug of violence in it, no matter the consequences?  Why?  What would underlie this? 

I will comment, without offering this as an explanation, but rather an idea that should be folded into the mix, that sacrifice was my particular interest in graduate school.  What social role (God has nothing to do with it) did sacrifice play in primitive societies?

I investigated many ideas.  One is that the taking of life at the center of a social scene represents a concrete expulsion and creation of difference, at least where human sacrifice–which was very widely practiced–is concerned.  There are the living and the living one moment, and then the living and the dead in the next.

And I think the recognition of difference is essential for human tribal instincts.  There was an article I might have posted the other day talking about how sacrifice seems to help cement social orders in societies of a certain size, but not once something large like a city has been built.

Difference precedes hierarchy, logically.  A hierarchy is merely one type of order.

Oh, this is a bit too deep for me at the moment.  I do think that we need to recognize that deep social order is much fuller than the mere absence of conflict, and that we all need to feel like we belong to orders.  This need is hard to meet in the modern world, and is made HARDER to meet by the people who call themselves egalitarians, but who seem to have evolved an impulse to throw themselves at the feet of anyone who asks them to, in a sort of will to power that is really a will to victimhood.

I need some tea.

There is a part of yourself you have to close off to watch scenes of people being hurt.  Sympathy is a natural sentiment.  It is built into us, and it never goes away, but we can teach ourselves to ignore it.  But why do that? 

Here is the thing: you do not really make yourself harder by watching movies.  You make yourself emotionally stupider, more isolated, and more paranoid.  And being paranoid might occasionally mean that you notice something other people don’t, but the difference between paranoia and alertness is the difference between continual arousal–which I can say from personal experience is exhausting–and appropriate situational arousal, and it can be argued that continual arousal actually blunts your intuition and survival instincts.  Most of the best soldiers I have known are very relaxed most of the time.  You can go farther that way.  Much farther. 

This is all good.  I don’t need violence in my life.  And I am usually always Condition Yellow anyway.  But in all my life, there have only been a handful of times where I was in actual physical danger, and I was able to get through those without actual violence.  And I may go get my CCP as a bookend.  It’s rare, but I do occasionally go places where it might help to be able to legally bring a friend.  One the one hand I stop adding unreal fantasies to my unconscious, and on the other I prepare for the unlikely event of actual violence.  This makes sense to me.

It is commented in many other parts of the world, I think, how superficial Americans are, how banal our culture is.  I think this is true and not true.  I think a generation ago we were like everyone else, and in fact happier, more open, and more spontaneous than most other countries.  We lived in peace and prosperity, with a society that was more just than, arguably, any in human history.  All of which is the human dream.

It might be that we were not creating great art–great poetry, great literature, great painting–but we had, and to the point continue to have, substantially EVERYTHING most humans have dreamed of for much of human history, including the freedom to suffer as much as we want to, in the pursuit of great art, if that is how we feel it is to be pursued.

We have warm comfortable beds, safe homes (mostly), effective policing in most cases, a strong national defense, good roads, stocked grocery stores, etc.

But the media we consume is sickening us.  I feel this.  Commercials are intended to make us feel that things make us happy.  Our media makes us fear the world as very violent, when in most cases it isn’t.  What we lack is a capacity to wind down, to relax deeply, to breathe freely, and much of his loss comes from media, from the refusal, for likely sound business reasons, for the writers of a series like Stranger  Things to grant us peace.

I am really evaluating right now the media I consume, the movies I watch.  Viewing Violence–which was the name of a book I read some years ago and commented on at that time–changes us.  It makes the world worse.  It makes the world worse.  This point cannot be overstated.  We are marinated, saturated, in violence.  I saw kids so small watching the Black Panther movie in the movie theater that they had to be carried in.  Literally before kids can talk they are watching murders, and violence. It’s a rare day when I watch TV I don’t see an image of someone tied down, and someone abusing them.  It’s standard fare now.  It’s ubiquitous.  Most cop shows will have it at least once in damn near every episode.

All of this, cumulatively, has an effect.  It makes us pessimistic.  It fosters a sense of helplessness.  It does make people emotionally shallow.  It stunts dreams.  It makes us less trusting of one another, and thus more lonely.  It pushes us apart, all to our separate TV’s.  If you could look at the world in the Upside Down of Stranger Things, you would see a hundred million people every night huddled in front of TV’s, largely disconnected even from the people on the couch with them, largely disconnected from their own intuitions, own feelings–their own life, in important respects.

All of this matters.  All of this should be discussed.  It is the absolute opposite of a partisan issue.  I’m not asking anyone to ban anything, or endorse anything.  I am asking YOU to think about the choices you make daily, and to ponder, carefully consider, in silence, what effect they are having.

Consider that if she knew she would have to endure round the clock insults, continuous harassment and threats, and a national campaign involving even American secret police and trained subversive agents working closely with most national media, THERE IS NO CHANCE SHE WOULD EVEN THINK ABOUT IT.  Oprah is not Trump.  Trump became who he is because he loves winning.  He loves entered tough playing fields, and outworking and outsmarting tough opponents.  He thrives on it.  Oprah became who she became because she needs to feel loved and adored.  I have never felt that she held any beliefs so strongly that she would not change them on a dime if she thought her audience was demanding it.

And I will remind you that, at least as I recollect the thing, her endorsement of Barack Obama was a very important early victory for him.  She lives in that world, and has for a long time.

Our political choices have become, on the one hand, continuing everything that has worked for America throughout its history, including promoting and supporting the best and brightest; or, on the other, abdicating all sense of responsibility to our children, and to those of anyone born here, and pursuing aggressively policies which breed, and have always bred, political tyranny, mass poverty, violence, the diminishment of the human spirit, gross injustices, and long term oligarchies.

I have of course written about all of this quite a bit.  The point I would make is that the question is not just “what happened to that child”.  I’m not even convinced that is the most important question.  The better question is “what did NOT happen to that child?”  What affection was withheld or absent throughout the child’s life?  What moral clarity was absent?  What early nurturing did not happen?

What we call PTSD is what, in my understanding, the professionals now call “Simple Trauma”.  It is simple because it stems from a series of events, or even a single event which, as horrific as it was, was time delimited, and known to the survivor.  Car accidents, medical emergencies, combat: these can all produce PTSD.

What in my own terms I will also call Complex Trauma, but which I might be defining in my own way (I have been diagnosed with it, so I do have some insight), consists in my view in traumas both of presence and absence.  Bad things happened, at an age when the brain was still developing, but the resources to deal with them were also absent.  Most kids, I suspect, endure multiple things in an average childhood which COULD, but don’t, produce traumatic after-shocks.  This is because in a loving, nurturing, emotionally aware environment, they are given the space and sense of safety to develop inner resources to deal with “bad” things.

Overall, though, and even though she does not say it directly here, and I very much doubt she has the courage (she is not actually, in my view, a genuinely brave woman, but one who has always had an instinct for what people want to hear, and a talent for making everyone feel special) to say it in the interview, which I don’t plan to watch, but in my own estimation traumatic stress is the principle factor “holding” the black community down.

We know that stress can be passed from parent to child epigenetically. as well as, of course, through the personality structures doing the parenting.  This was shown with regard to survivors of the Holocaust and their children.  And we know that, at least since roughly 1970, the average child in a black neighborhood has existed in a world largely denuded of healthy, nurturing two parent homes, has grown up in a world filled with violence and poverty, and has been faced with a schooling which was utterly inadequate to the task of preparing them for most jobs.  That such a system should be self perpetuating should surprise no one.  That throwing money at it is not the solution should be obvious.

What if we offered no or low cost Neurofeedback to all low income children whose parents wanted it?  What if we offered it to the kids who misbehave and act out?  What if we offered it to JAIL INMATES, most of whom, I strongly suspect, have been REPEATEDLY traumatized, not least by the prison system itself.

What if we state unambiguously that there is such a thing as sound emotional health, that it matters in all areas of life, including economically, and that supporting and increasing it should be a national priority?   What if we stop saying racism is the problem, and start saying that fucked up kids from fucked up homes are the problem, and that it is not a moral question, but a practical one, one amenable to solutions more effective than continued pontification, bloviation, objuscation, and predation being practiced by the purported allies of those suffering distress?

So many people, whose lives depend on this status quo, would hate the idea.

But, and this thinking underlies my work, the bastards don’t always win.  Sometimes the good guys and gals do.  Look at the world as it is.  But what it is is always also something possible, waiting to be born.  The first step on the path of the possible, if it is in fact possible, already exists.