Blame Theopompus for Herostratus!

The National Geographic History magazine always provides engaging perspective, as in The Temple Of Wonder by Francisco Javier Murcia (Nov/Dec/'17), which relates that the legendary Temple of Artemis at Ephesus (in Asia Minor), one of the original Seven Wonders of the World, was burned to the ground in 356 B.C., not by an enemy religion or empire, but by one man named Herostratus.  Murcia writes that Herostratus "confessed under torture that he had only started the fire because he wanted his name to be known across the world for having destroyed this most famous of buildings."

Herostratus is a familiar type today: a man (they are mostly men) so desperate to be noticed that all other considerations - such as the grief and pain of others- are dismissed.  

The need to be noticed, however, is not the motive we look for in today's mass vandals and killers.  The motive we look for is hatred. That is why we have been unable to figure out, for instance, the motive of the man who killed 58 people in Las Vegas on October 1. There were no online hate rantings in his internet record, no obvious incidents in his life that expressed particular types of rage.  It might be that rage was not the dominant motivator for this man.  Could his motive have been the same as Herostratus'? Did he anticipate a posthumous world in which his name would be broadcast to humanity for weeks and weeks, then recorded with his deed for posterity?

The Ephesians recognized the problem and, unsuccessfully, attempted a solution:

The Ephesians tried to punish [Herostratus] by publishing a decree that his name be wiped from all records.  But their efforts were in vain. Theopompus, a historian of the time, wrote down the story of Herostratus and helped preserve his name to this day.

Theopompus should be the patron saint of journalism.  In its pursuit of ratings, the media gives today's Herostratus's exactly what they want. No one is too undeserving to be transformed into a notorious icon. Consider the pastor of a small church in Florida, who in 2010 burned a Koran.  His action was filmed by reporters (whom he had summoned) and broadcast to every country in the world, repeatedly, for weeks- a grossly disproportionate response to the event, considering the discord it generated.

At this point I must apologize to the reader for an abrupt change of tone, following a visit from my companion Robert the Telepathic Gila Monster (his show-name) who trudged into my study a few minutes ago and started a telepathic conversation:

Harry, I think you should extend your discussion of media induced violence to include manipulation from third parties who want to start wars.  The media didn't promote the Koran burner just to bump ratings.

Robert, you were reading my thoughts outside my house before you came in. You know I don't like that.

Sorry, I can't help it.  Gilas consider it impolite to bar other gilas from their thoughts.

Don't you have any secrets?

What kind of question is that?  I'm supposed to say we have no secrets?  If I had a secret, I certainly wouldn't tell you.

Robert can be exhausting, but I felt he had a point about my thesis. Media portrayal of international relations is critical for every nation's foreign policy.  We should be as sensitive to third party influence on media as we are to elected officials taking bribes. 

I had an idea.

Robert, in the interest of cross-species understanding, I'm inviting you to collaborate with me on the ending of this piece.  Do you think I have enough supporting evidence for my thesis, which is that media promotes mass murder by making the perpetrators famous?

I thought the thesis was that every time someone builds a temple, someone else wants to tear it down.

That's a related thesis.

Must every element in the piece relate to one thesis?

Yes.  

The human race has OCD!

Robert, I'm just asking you how you think I should end this piece.

End it?  You've boxed yourself in with typical human juvenilia like "thesis," "beginning, middle and end," and all that.  Why must a collection of thoughts end, and why must it stay focused on one "thesis"? What a waste.  In gila communication, every segment of thought is its own thesis. Every thesis relates to every other thesis. Maybe I'd understand your way if gilas communicated in writing, but we're not interested in it.  We find your writing, and in fact your human language, unnecessarily complex and circuitous.  

That's really nice, Robert.  I'm happy for you and all the wise gilas.  I am writing in human style though, so I'm not just going to conclude with some random idea.

That's another thing, continued Robert, tenacious as ever, Why does your concept of "random" have a negative connotation?  Every event is random. The universe is random.  What's the point of the concept?

Ok, ok, we'll try it your way!  As a trans-conscious experiment, I will end on a gila inspired random note.  How about a quotation?

Go for it.  

I thought for a while, googled on my computer, then found what I thought was a suitably random quote from French novelist Michel Houellebecq:  

Good binds while evil unravels. Separation is another word for evil; it is also another word for deceit.

I gave Robert a look.

Is that random enough for you, Robert?

You're getting there, he conceded.

Hillary Clinton's new book

The book is one of the things I discussed with Jesus, Betty the Coyote Creator Goddess, Robert the Telepathic Gila Monster and a surprise guest at a new group I was invited to join: Trans-Consciousness Only, for those desiring to understand the subjective consciousness of beings alien to themselves for reasons other than to eat them.

It had been a long time since I'd been invited to anything so exclusive, and I jumped at the chance.  Robert came by last week to congratulate me on my acceptance and to inform me that the next meeting would be on new moon, which was last night.

Right on schedule, 9:00pm, Robert showed up at my shack and led me into the dark desert. We trudged among rocks, gullies and brush for about twenty minutes, when finally I spotted an orange glow flickering beyond a large boulder.  Rounding the boulder I beheld the group, seated around a small but determined fire: there were Jesus, Betty and Robert, of course, and also a tall, lean figure, with a shock of white hair and a long white beard, holding a wooden staff across his lap as he studied me over the fire.

Jesus greeted me first: "Welcome, Harry!"

Betty showed her brilliant white teeth and Robert spat dismissively (gila saliva is toxic) into the fire.

Betty said, "Harry, I'd like to introduce you to Gandalf," gesturing to the gaunt and grizzled figure to her left.

"What?"  

In retrospect that was a rude question, but it's not every day you meet a fictional character.  I stared at "Gandalf."  He did indeed conjure up the beneficent and powerful wizard in J.R.R Tolkien's Lord of the Rings. Gandalf: the redemption of the old man.

He leaned forward and extended a long arm.  We shook hands and the contact felt like I was reading about it in a book.

Gandalf spoke warmly, "Hello, Harry!  I've been following your journey."

"Really?"  

I took a seat to Gandalf's left.  With Robert to my left, the circle was complete.

"I know what you're thinking, Harry," Gandalf said, staring into the fire, "You're thinking I'm fictional, so what is going on?  By the way, I know I'm fictional, that my existence and all my attributes are made up and arguably not real."

"Arguably?" 

"Harry," Betty interrupted, "What if I told you that, strictly speaking, you are not real either- you too are fictional?"

"Meaning?"

"Start with a fact you already know: Your conscious inner-world is an artifact of your brain, a fiction."

"Let me ask you this, Harry," said Jesus, "Aren't I fictional, or mythical if you will?  You weren't bothered by that."

"Well, I...uh...."  

Gandalf laughed, "Harry, if you weren't a five-foot-nine human I'd call you Hobbit-like.  You are so simple in your needs, you want everything to follow unbreakable rules...."

"Hey, " I asked, hoping to change the subject, "where is Maury the Anointed One? [see "Jesus in the desert" below].  Shouldn't he be here?"

Jesus answered, "He's not really the social type, Harry.  It's awfully difficult to get anyone interested in being the Anointed One these days, by the way."

"You sure got a gem with Maury," Robert said, "I wouldn't anoint him with Vaseline."

Betty moved us forward, "OK, shall we begin?  I should explain, Harry, that each of us picks topics we feel need to be discussed, either from the subjective world of humans, or others. Watch us for a while and perhaps you'll throw in a topic."

"I have a topic," said Robert, "Modern media and its impact on the evolution of hive-humans."

"Robert, if I could interrupt briefly," said Betty, "on the subject of 'media,'  since information in our society is spread so differently than in Middle-earth, I'd like to explain to Gandalf that humans today are extraordinarily isolated from each other, almost as if the species were evolving from individual thinkers in small groups to semi-aware hive workers under central control. Ancient humans were flush with their world, receiving information directly from it and responding directly back.  Today, information about the world and its human governance comes to most humans (those not in human governance) electronically, from distant centralized sources. The flow of information is one-way; there is no interaction, no affecting of the world by the human recipient of 'the news.'  Since humans don't deal with the world directly, they are cut off from each other."  

Robert said, "Yes, and this is why few individual humans have any opportunity to influence the destiny of their species. Decisions are made by people no one sees who control the electronic information centers.  The decisions are jump-started into public reality by actors playing leaders who recite lines that, while approaching the sorts of things that a voter might say, do not deliver the goods, or they deliver the wrong goods.  Consider war, the inevitable outcome of humanity's perennial refusal to face reality and figure itself out.  War will now be handed to you on a platter, as if you ordered it, by breathless politicians and news anchors, though you did not order it.  I must say this sort of horror is absent from gila society, where any able individual can move the whole body."

I sighed (inwardly) at Robert's gila-centric universe. The group lapsed into silence.  Finally Jesus looked up and asked, "Does anyone else have a topic?"

"I do," said Betty, "I've been reading Hillary Clinton's new book. What strikes me is how stunned she was by her loss.  She had made plans for an extravagant inaugural under a symbolic glass ceiling, and she still expected those plans to be carried out as late as election eve. When Trump won it felt to her like being hit by a truck, with a concomitant lack of comprehension."

"Speak English, please, Betty," said Robert.

Betty looked benignly at the rest of us. "Robert, I bet you taste good. Of course, to deal with your needs I'll rephrase.  Clinton does not understand why she lost.  She is quite candid at least about that, and the admission strikes me as unusual."

Robert spoke again: "It is unusual for a public figure to admit to not understanding something.  My question is, why actually did she lose?"

Jesus said, "Here's what I see: Clinton promoted an agenda of liberal policy, of legislation allowing abortion and gay marriage, a more generous welfare state, etc.   What she saw in her opponent was an antithetical agenda that valorized selfishness and long- suppressed anti-social emotion. That agenda, according to the polls, was adhered to by about 30% of the electorate, so Trump should have lost.  What Clinton lacked, however, was understanding that the beneficiaries of the liberal agenda do not comprise everyone. She did not know that millions of people feel neglected and abused in spite of or by the liberal agenda. Hillary Clinton did not know that the liberal agenda, by itself, is no more able to solve the current American malaise than the conservative agenda."

"Then what kind of agenda would help the American malaise?" asked Betty.

I answered: "An agenda about things that are actually happening, like the AI and bioengineering revolutions that threaten to drive humans extinct." 

Silence reigned again as we drifted into personal thoughts.

Finally Gandalf spoke, "On the subject of war, I find it ironic that, especially in the 1960's, the anti-war population made up much of the fan base of Lord of the Rings, which is, of course, a war story, among the most violent you'll ever read."

"How do you account for that, Gandalf," asked Betty.

"I walked down Telegraph Avenue in 1969 one summer day (it's remarkable easy for fictional characters to pass as real in Berkeley), and I heard people say they liked Lord of the Rings because you can tell the good guys from the bad guys. You certainly can! Tolkien's bad guys are twisted and sadistic. His good guys, emphatically presented in the movies, are beautiful and virtuous beyond words. Who would follow a grotesque fiend into battle when you've got elven lords and transcendent fairy queens (not to mention my humble contribution). Poor humanity! Outside your fiction, you have to follow the most avaricious and deceptive of your kind, while potentially wise leaders scurry for cover."

Again we became quiet, staring into the fire and exploring our thoughts. After a while Betty asked, "Has anyone seen a movie lately?"

As it happens," I said,  "Robert and I saw a movie at the Lancaster Cineplex last week [I hide Robert in my jacket when we go to movies]. We usually watch National Theater Live, but it was not on. We were restless and decided to see a 'chick flick': Home Again, starring Reese Witherspoon."

"Excuse me, Harry, " said Jesus, "Please define 'chick flick.'"

"A chick-flick is a movie designed to entertain women.  Men often do not like them for that reason: they cater to women at the expense of the male view."

"The movie demonstrated a world of dysfunction," Robert added.

"I would have to agree," I said.

Betty said, "Harry, tell us about the movie."

"Sure.  The Witherspoon character, Alice, is a forty year old mother who can't stand her older husband, a successful filmmaker, because he is stuck on himself and an asshole.  She moves with her children to L.A. where she lives in her father's upscale house (he is a successful movie director living in New York who, as her father, was also stuck on himself and an asshole).  A chance encounter in a bar leads to four young and handsome guys, budding filmmakers, living for free in Alice's guest house.  In return, one of them makes love to her and the other three cook and take care of her kids. Thus, 'chick flick.'"

"Amen," said Jesus.

"The poignant part," I continued, "is the treatment of Alice's ex, who shows up at the house unexpectedly, desiring to reconcile with her. Although, true to chick flick requirements, his overall presence suggests a selfish asshole, there are glimpses of empathy when he seriously tries to figure out what to do, how to love.  In the end, though, he's an asshole and loses.  She wins, banishing the ex and keeping the four boys for sex and child rearing duties. Your heart will soar...my ass."

It felt strange to be spilling my guts like this in front of Jesus.  I looked at him, wondering what he thought of modern gender travails.

Jesus returned my look and said, "Do you know why Joseph was so tired?"

Silence greeted this riddle.

"Give up?  Because Mary rode his ass all the way to Bethlehem."

Sustained laughter fed the fire.  Only Robert held back.

"I couldn't stand the movie," he said.

"He sure couldn't," I confirmed, "I thought Robert was having a seizure. He doubled up and wouldn't speak until we were in the car. He took the film as the final indictment of human gender relations."

"How so, Robert,?" asked Betty.

Robert looked us over.  "Humans avoid reality, so they lack rational norms for heterosexual concepts. When it's time for me to mate with a gila female, I go into a frenzy of passion; I forget my own mind and can think of nothing but sticking something into something, and then it's over.  I don't have to figure out the 'other,' thank god.  I can go back to sticking other things into things, like sticking lizard and bird eggs into my mouth."  

Betty, the only female present, flashed her white teeth.  Jesus adjusted his sandals.  Gandalf poked the fire with his staff.  Robert spat.

Silent minutes passed.  Finally Betty said, "If there are no more topics then, shall we call it a night until next new moon?"

All agreed.

Jesus in the desert

I am a veteran telepath who can pick-up the baby-booming thoughts of his restless peers, and this is all I hear, a chorus of, I told you so!  I fucking told you so! 

I respond, No, I told you so!

Everyone has been watching human civilization totter (again); everyone saw it coming; now, in a nightmarish house of mirrors, everyone is telling everyone that they told everyone so.

It had been a while since I'd seen my desert friends, Betty the Coyote Creator Goddess and Robert the Telepathic Gila Monster, and I felt the need for their company. They sensed my desire.  One morning I wandered a few hundred random yards into the desert and there they were.

They scanned me as I approached.  Betty's thoughts arrived first.

Betty: Harry, we like your house of mirrors metaphor.

Me: Thanks.

Robert: If it makes you feel any better, all the gila monsters are saying "I told you so."

Me: That makes me feel so much better, Robert.

Betty: Harry, don't be cross.  The gods are saying it too.

Me: Jesus!

Jesus [suddenly appearing]: You rang?

Me: What the....?

Betty: It's ok, Harry.  Jesus visits us from time to time.

Jesus gave a nod to Robert.

Jesus: I was on my way to commune with you, Betty, when I picked up Harry's thoughts, about everyone saying "I told you so."  That's a subject close to my heart.  Harry [turning to me], as it happens there's something I've wanted to say to you.

Me: Really?  What is it? 

Jesus: I told you so.

Betty and Robert guffawed.

Jesus [to Betty and Robert]: Would you mind if I had a few words with Harry?

Betty and Robert exited the scene.  Jesus surveyed me for a moment, while I surveyed him.  He kept changing.  One second he was right out of those paintings of Jesus I used to see in Woolworth's, or like the guy on those devotional candles at the Family Dollar Store, idealized images of a man suffering from knowledge he is not supposed to have.

Then he shifted and looked like a homeless guy in ragged pants and flannel shirt holding a dusty bag of belongings.

Jesus: Sorry about that.  Meeting me for the first time can be disorienting.

Me: Sorry Jesus, I don't mean to be disrespectful- I'm a bit lost. What did you mean by, "I told you so"?

Jesus: Just joking.  But if we had spoken I would have told you so.

Me: What would you have told me?

Jesus: I would have told you that you are right: humankind is lost in a major way.  You have no bearings, no reference points, no morality.

Me: No morality?  I thought you and your father were supposed to give us that.

Jesus: No, we influence you to do or not do certain things, but it doesn't add up to a morality you would understand.

Me: What's the point, then?

Jesus: I can't tell you the point, because you would not understand it.

Me:  Figures.  Just to pursue this, why wouldn't we understand it?

Jesus: The mythic stories we inspired in you describe you as fallen.

Me: Yes.

Jesus: And that is literally true.  You have fallen from yourselves.  Your "minds" are not connected to your perceptions.

Me: But we see and hear things.

Jesus: I don't mean your five senses.  I mean other senses, stronger ones.

Me: Sometimes I feel or think things and don't know why.

Jesus: That's from your mind trying to assimilate perceptions from the hidden senses, trying to decipher and represent them to you. The hidden senses can only communicate with your mind in dream-like symbols, because straightforward perception would severely disrupt your ideas about who you are and your place in things.

Me: Why?  What is our place in things?

Jesus: I think you should talk to my disciple, and the next Anointed One: Maury Glickman.  He lives in Woodland Hills, under a freeway overpass.

Me: Woodland Hills!  You've got to be kidding!

Woodland Hills is a suburb of Los Angeles at its northwest limit. You may have heard of it from the movie My Parents Are Aliens, in which ET aggressors attack earth through Woodland Hills when they discover it is humanity's weak spot.

Me: Well, it would give me something to do.

Jesus: That's the spirit.

Me: Can I ask you something else?

Jesus: Yes.

Me: Well, I'm Jewish.  In the big picture, the one you see, what does that mean?

Jesus: You're not supposed to believe in me, of course.

Me: Yes, but... why aren't we supposed to believe in you?

Jesus: Because it is necessary, in order to guide your benighted species, that we "divide and conquer" you, for want of a nicer way to put it.  If your kind were united, spiritually, intellectually...if you were aware, prematurely, it would be a most unpleasant disruption for all concerned.

Me: But we seek enlightenment.

Jesus:  You won't find it while you seek it.

Me: Oi!  How long will it take me to attain enlightenment if I don't seek it?

The desert shook with Jesus' inscrutable laughter as he shimmered and vanished.

It was sundown and the western sky blazed pink and red through the mountains.  I walked to my little cabin and checked the gas in my car.  Next stop: Woodland Hills!

Maury Glickman - the Anointed One

Readers will recall my surprise encounter with Jesus last week while I was in the desert near Pearblossom visiting my friends Betty and Robert.  Jesus talked to me about our "hidden senses," by which he meant senses other than the five we rely on- senses we either use but don't know we use, or repress altogether.  In response to my incessant questions along the lines of, "But what does it all mean?", Jesus referred me to Maury Glickman, the next "Anointed One," he said, who lives under a freeway overpass in the Los Angeles suburb of Woodland Hills, where, as it happens, I was raised.

I felt I should charge my batteries before seeking Maury.  I let a few days go by while I tried to find patterns in the news, material I could discuss with him.  I detected a cycle in which the world media's focus shifts from one hotspot to another every three to four days. For instance, in a recent cycle it gave us three to four days each of race war in Charlottesville, followed by terrorist attacks in Spain, then Hurricane Harvey in Texas. The media follows this cycle and knows its meaning: If people look at the same thing for too long- even something fascinating like cars floating down the street- their neurons get fatigued and they need something new to look at.   Time is about up for Hurricane Harvey- it needs to dissipate fast to make room for Disaster X!

This rumination suggested questions for Maury: Why do natural and manmade disasters so often fit the three to four day network-mimicking human attention span?  Is the whole cosmos trying to get on prime-time because it's trying to exist, and it can only exist on prime-time where, ironically, its existence is ephemeral?

Armed with these and other pointed questions, I felt I was ready for Maury.  I woke my trusty 2007 Camry and we shoved off.  After about an hour on freeways (the 14, the 5, the 405, the 101), I arrived at the Winnetka Blvd. offramp in the heart of Woodland Hills.  A quick left took me through Maury's home, the 101 underpass, essentially a giant concrete exhaust accumulator and combustion engine echo chamber.  I crossed Ventura Boulevard and parked at Ralph's- with a quick glance across he street at my alma mater and former employer, Taft High School (Home of the Toreadors!)- then walked across Ventura to the east side of the overpass.  It was about 4:00pm. There was one homeless person on the sidewalk under the overpass on the west side, and two people, a man and a woman, on the east side. As I approached I saw that the woman was maybe in her forties, with a missing tooth, a ragged pea coat wrapped around her waist and a tank top T-shirt revealing muscular shoulders, sinewy arms and lots of tattoos: tigers and dragons, a dreamboat-boy and a blade slicing a heart.   She said, "What can I do for you, sonny?"

Her stocky male friend, who looked about 45, was enjoying the warm evening in a brown T-shirt with a faded Jimmy Hendrix logo. He had a crumpled paper bag with objects in it.

"Excuse me, I'm looking for Maury Glickman," I said.

They both laughed.  She said, "That's the motherfucker over there!," pointing to the lone figure across the street.

The man said, "Mutherfucker'll fuck with your head, man!"

She said, "No shit!  You'd best shut your ears!"

They continued to laugh as I walked to the corner and crossed the street.  As for the figure that was Maury, I squinted and made out a man with long darkish hair, maybe in his fifties, surrounded by his personal items, seated crossed-legged on a rug on the sidewalk.

I approached him.  From across the street came laughter and shouts of, "He'll fuck with your head, asshole!"  Maury watched me with a faint smile.

Hello, Harry!

I guess you were expecting me.  Nice to meet you, Maury.

Same here.  Have a seat.

Maury moved himself and his belongings and gestured for me to sit beside him on a square yard of rug.  

So Maury, Jesus told me you are the next Anointed One.  What's that about?

It's just show business; that's what people want.

What?

They want an anointed one who will know things, who will have answers.

And that would be you?

Yeah, go figure.  I don't know jack about shit.

We gazed across the street at the couple, who were watching me and making circular motions with their index fingers around their temples as if to ask, "Is he fucking with you yet?"

They are on my last nerve, Maury grumbled, with a malign stare at his tormentors.

Maury, tell me your story.

Well, it started here in Woodland Hills, where the semi-arid longs for the sea across the mountains, in the land that time and everything else forgot.

Great beginning, Maury!  I can definitely see you as anointed!

Thanks.  If you are from these parts you might remember Glickman Ford, not far from here on Ventura and Corbin.

Yours, huh?  How was business?

I did well for years, then ran into trouble with bad investments and was hit hard in 2008.  I sold everything and managed to salvage a comfortable retirement.  

From across the street the woman yelled:  Don't listen to that fucker!

Maury continued: All those years selling cars I was also doing advanced physics and cosmology in my head.

Why didn't you do that for a living, in a university?

There's more and easier money in cars, at least there used to be, leaving me time to think about things.  I solved all kinds of classic riddles and paradoxes while I'd be talking to someone about their power steering or some shit.

Like what paradoxes?  What's an example of something you solved?

Well, I solved the famous Card Paradox, where one side of a card says, "The statement on the other side of this card is true," and the other side says, "The statement on the other side of this card is false."

How did you solve that?

Easy.  Who gives a shit!

What?

Who cares what someone wrote on a card? What's that got to do with anything?

The Anointed One gazed dreamily at the mirthful couple, who continued to watch our doings.

So Maury, what did you do after retiring from business?

I sat around figuring things out.   It drove my wife crazy.  She would walk past, glance at me sitting on the couch with a certain look on my face and say things like, "Figuring things out again, Maury? Why don't you figure out how to unclog the garbage disposal?" Once she scolded me for putting the cheap silverware with the good, right after I had figured out the classic Fletcher's Paradox that has baffled the best minds for centuries.

What's the Fletcher's Paradox?

A fletcher, someone who makes arrows, starts thinking about an arrow flying through the air and realizes that the arrow can't actually move- in fact nothing can move. That's because at any one moment (whatever a moment is) the arrow is at one point only, so for the duration of that moment the arrow is in a fixed position; it is not moving. Therefore it is never moving.

Hmm.  How did you resolve that?

What's to resolve?  Nothing ever moves, but we see an animation of varying fixed points over time, which is an illusion.  Not a problem: I FIGURED IT OUT!

This last outburst was aimed across the street at our fellow dispossessed, who continued their mirth unabated.

Maury, what do you care about them?  Why are you here, anyway? I thought you were comfortably retired.  Where's your wife?

Living in our old house.  She was very upfront with me.  I had to give it to her for eloquence.  "Your problem, Maury," she'd say, "is that you have these brilliant, I mean, no shit Maury you have some fucking brilliant ideas!  But here's the thing, Maury, you are on your own planet.  Since you don't sell Fords you've stopped interacting. Let me be straight, Maury, I do not give a crap that you figured out fusion power, ok? Start a fucking company, sell the secret.  Do something!

Maury sighed and continued: "Do something!" -  She had a point.  I had concluded that Bertrand Russell was right in his 1935 book, "In Praise of Idleness" that it is critical that humans stop doing things. That would include making things and thinking about things in ways that lead to changing things.  

Should people stop doing everything?  Should they stop having sex?

They should stop having babies.  Sex itself burns calories and is harmless.

Would you say falling in love is harmless?

Harry, you sneaky wretch.  Are we to debate every nuance in my comments?  Are you jealous of me?  Have you come to sit with me because you are my rival?  Do you in fact desire to be the Anointed One?

No thanks!  What is that, anyway?

It's a title- beyond that, if it gets me out of the house [gesturing at his surroundings] I'm down with it.

How did you get this gig?  Did you interview with Betty the Coyote Creator Goddess?

It was a panel, her and Robert the Telepathic Gila Monster, Jesus and a few others.  I heard about it in a dream.  They wanted original thinking mammals, especially humans, who had figured out innovative ways to deal with humanity's latest implosion, but who needed some inside help to get their ideas out there. In my case, in return for endorsing human policy that is friendly, or at least not outright hostile to various "animal" and "divine" interests, I'll be promoted to the point where I end up the Anointed Savior or whatever.

Man!  What will you do then?

I'll try to roll with it.  Nobody better look behind the curtain.

You still haven't explained why you're living on the sidewalk.

Maury looked off into the distance of his mind, beyond the cackling couple across the street, to a place of logic and love.

You still have much to learn, Harry.

Like what?  Why do you live on the street?

It's cheaper.

Wonder Woman

One evening I needed something new to chomp on, so I decided to see the latest Wonder Woman movie, characterized by some reviewers as a feminist vision to counteract the current male resurgence.  I had planned to see it at the Cinemark 22 in Lancaster, but my altered ego D.L. called to see if I'd like to go with him to the Edwards Stadium 6 in Calabasas, a white enclave in the rolling hills northwest of the melting pot of the San Fernando Valley.  I was ready for human society and a break from the psychic importunings of my animal friends, so last night I drove 67 miles from Pearblossom to The Calabasas Commons, an upscale open-air mall that is quite pleasant though it looks like an Italian village re-dreamed by Disney and has speakers hidden in bushes that broadcast Rat Pack songs.

I parked as close to the theater as I could, which was fairly close because it was Wednesday night and local high schools had a few days before the weekend start of summer break.  There was a long line next to the theater where people were waiting for free ice cream at a newly opened Jeni's, and it was there I spotted D, waiting in line against his maxim that waiting in line is never worth it.

"I decided to try, 'Good things come to those who wait,'" he explained.  

I waited with him and in fact a good thing came, in the form of creamy, sweet ice cream, albeit on a tiny plastic spoon.

"Remind me why we're seeing Wonder Woman," said D.

"Because it's a distraction."

D nodded resignedly.

We bought tickets and entered the faux-palace, finding plush, reclining seats in the three-fourths filled auditorium.  I held down a button on my armrest and the seat moved horizontally until I was nearly supine.  It was not the most comfortable position for watching the screen, but I felt only the far setting would give me my money's worth.

Wonder Woman comprises a series of action scenes punctuated by lingering shots of actress Gal Gadot’s pretty face.  I was struck by the smart casting of this soft and hard looking woman to kick the crap out of many men (to be fair, she kicks the crap out of one woman, the weird Dr. Poison).  Gadot's Israeli identity has given the film a political dimension, and some are scouring for Zionist meaning.  I looked for something, but unless women are Hebrews and men are Canaanites, or vice versa, I'm not seeing it. 

Gadot was credible in the role and a strong choice, giving some depth to an otherwise ridiculous and lazy film.  It opens with a fantastical CGI city, carved into the mountains of a hidden island, where an all-female society known as the Amazons lives.  There are few biological details, but we get the impression that the women do not reproduce and are immortal.  The exception, and the only child on the island, is eight-year-old Diana (young Wonder Woman), who was fathered by Zeus and an Amazon back in the day.

A note on Zeus: even though he was a notorious male chauvinist and serial rapist, Zeus was apparently in the Amazons' court, defending them from the evil and ultra-male God of War, Aries, by making the Amazons' island invisible and by fathering the super-warrior Diana. For these signs of support, Zeus' rap sheet is forgotten.

Viewers expecting moral clarity in the movie for depicting women as a force for peace and nurture, and men as a force for brutality and war, may be confused by the Amazon culture, in which women continually train for battle against a hypothetical male army that will arise when Aries wakes up from an assumed dormancy (Diana learns when she arrives, fully grown, on the French front in World War I, that Aries has been anything but dormant).

Back to the idyllic island: Beautiful women smile and gaze at one another as they perfect man-killing arrows and magic cords that force men to tell the truth.  Everyone is in harmony with nature except, as noted, little Diana, who drives her elders crazy by wanting to practice warfare all the time.  Derivative and tedious dialogue reveals that Diana's mother wants to protect her from her warrior fate by not telling her the truth, that Zeus created Diana to be a "god killer" whose destiny is to kill Aries, so that there will be no more war and the Amazons can go back to designing man-killing weapons and perhaps quilting.

Symbolism: The only way Diana can kill Aries is with a magic sword designed by Zeus, giving us a story in which a woman must use a phallic symbol to kill a man. I'm not complaining about the symbolism; I'm just asking: What does it mean?  You'd think a true feminist story would entail a heroine killing a man with a symbolic vagina- maybe whacking Aries over the head with one of Judy Chicago's ceramic vulvas.

[Update, 7/27/18: I just watched the much superior Justice League, in which Wonder Woman (again Gadot) and a group of male superheroes join forces.  There is little of the gender bullshit of Wonder Woman.   The enemies in Justice League are not generic men, but a particular male, about ten feet tall with a goat's head and an itch to burn up the entire universe.  He is the opposite of nurturing.  Wonder Woman stays nurturing (to some hunks on her team and a stray Russian peasant) while she kicks Nihilism Man's butt!  Wonder Woman, you rock!]

On the drive home I absently turned on the radio and heard one of my favorite songs, the Pretenders', "My City was Gone."  Trying to relax to the soothing mantra, I pondered Wonder Woman and feminism.  The biological sciences will soon give us the ability to turn femininity and masculinity into anything we want them to be. If we're going to make educated decisions about that, we should look more realistically at what it means to be male and female. Hopefully we won't be burdened with too much Hollywood schlock on the subject.

Movie review: "A Quiet Passion"

I cannot live with You-
It would be Life-
And Life is over there-
Behind the Shelf

Emily Dickinson

A new movie about Emily Dickinson is always special.  "A Quiet Passion," insightfully directed by Terrence Davies, didn't make it to the desert, so last night I schlepped 57 miles to the Encino Laemlee Theater in the San Fernando Valley to see it.

The Encino theater is one of six Laemlee "art houses" spread around L.A., though you might also call them "senior citizen centers."  At the Encino Laemlee there were several older people in the ticket line.  The man at the head of the line was struggling to figure out first the schedule and then how to pay for his ticket, and I had my usual flash of inappropriate and uncalled for anger, thinking how slow this old guy was, before an anxious inner voice reminded me that I too am an old guy and that someone might be wanting me to hurry up. At the window I was so intent on a quick and youthful seeming purchase I didn't wonder until I had said them how the words One senior for a quiet passion might have sounded to the gum chewing teenager across from me, though she continued to chew gum and think about a better job as she impassively punched out my ticket.

I didn't expect a full house, since this was the Tuesday after the previous Friday's opening, which was probably well attended. The pool of like-minded souls I had nevertheless expected to find was as diminutive a human sample as I've seen at a Laemlee: a group of four or five women in an upper row, one couple halfway down, and one guy by himself in the front row. I had dozens of empty rows to choose from. Sweet!  

The movie starts with a group​ of soon to be graduated girls at the Mount Holyoke Female Seminary in Massachusetts in 1846, standing at attention as they are dressed down by a fearsome headmistress who demands that the girls who have decided to go to Christ move to her left, and that the girls who are undecided move to her right. Young Dickinson (wonderfully played by Emma Bell) is then revealed standing in the middle, in neither group, an agnostic among agnostics.  She proceeds to argue theology with the headmistress.

This adherence to inner feeling stays with Dickinson throughout life, costing her all her friends and suitors- both male and female- and often the love of her family. Dickinson in later years (remarkably played by Cynthia Nixon) takes us down a slope from youthful playfulness and innocent precocity to physical degeneration and horrifying self-knowledge, lived out in Dickinson's wealthy and prominent father's house, which she never left.  

Davies dwells on illness as Ingmar Bergman often did, with shots almost a minute long of Dickinson having a seizure, or staggering across her room (which she does not leave for the last 15 years of her life) in the throes of various collapses.  She was diagnosed with a kidney disorder that probably lead to her death at age 55, but her mental state would have been called melancholia or hysteria. There are long shots of her face, staring in her candle-lit room at something far away, or very close.

To live is so startling it leaves little room for anything else.

Her hope of escape from her cloistered life was fame and recognition for her poetry, but publication came in mutilated dribbles (seven poems total, revised without her consent by condescending male editors).  She knew her poetry was different, special. The film suggests that she knew she would be posthumously famous.  Davies gives her this striking line, spoken to her sister:

If I had fame, I would have a kind of love that is barred to me now.

Young people who wonder what draws older audiences to such movies may be told a secret: the story of Emily Dickinson is intensely erotic.  From her prized position beside her domineering father (her mother is a background figure), to her infatuations with married men who spurn her, to her intense feelings for female friends and her devastation when they marry, she is a black hole of longing for people who race away from her like a red-shifting universe.  During the mourning period for her mother, while the family is dressed in black, she wears white.  Her sister exclaims, "But we are in mourning!," and Dickinson replies, "So am I!"  She wears virginal white for the rest of her life.

If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, that is poetry.

She lived in a cold universe, I thought in the car heading home.  On the radio Stephen Hawking predicted that humans will need to leave the earth within one hundred years or go extinct.  What if Hawking was trapped in a room, No Exit style, with Emily Dickinson?  Would he compare her idea of a black hole to his?  

It was almost midnight when I walked into my one-roomer in the desert. There on my couch, having crawled in an open window, was Robert the Telepathic Gila Monster.  I had not seen him in weeks.

We need to talk, Robert thought at me.

Please, Robert, I thought back, no politics tonight.

Why didn't you take me with you to the Emily Dickinson movie?

I forget he can read my mind.

Sorry, Robert, sometimes I'm embarrassed by my species, what a hard time it's having as it takes over the world.

The takeover of the world Dickinson had in mind would have been different.

We agreed on that.