This is usually the day I have an essay to post, and I have one written and waiting - but it will have to wait first for an informal security clearance.  This is the story of a friend who had been a submariner in the 1960's, and of a particularly astounding thing that happened to him and the crew.  It is a cold war story, and as far as he knows, the information he gave me has not been cleared for a mass audience.  I have little doubt that he will clear it himself, but I must wait - I promised not to tell it to anyone before hearing the story, so must keep my promise.   Names have been changed, and there is nothing in it that one could not find in a Tom Clancey novel - even less as far as technology is concerned.  But this is, or was, for real, and I must wait, probably until Monday.  

What was there in the cold war era? - the A Bomb, as we then called it, and the probability of a nuclear war.  Until the mid 1960's, this was almost a sure thing, for large wars to that time had been common, and no weapon that had been invented that had not been used in one.  The A-bomb was no exception, as Japan knew, and it was expected that Japan would not be the exception, either.  As of now, so far, so good.  We worry about the smaller countries getting it now, though - Nevil Chute's "On the Beach" was written in the 1950's precisely about that.  Back then, as always is the case at any time, things had to be taken in stride, but we children had nightmares, and the grown-ups even bigger ones.  The fear of science and the end of the human era was palpable in the old black and white UFO films of the 1950's.  And yet - these were the Happy Days of the corny sitcom of the same name.  How can that be?  

There is a film out that I should have seen but didn't about an English boy growing up in England during the Blitzkrieg.  As I read, the boy (based on the author) had a great time working his way through the rubble left from the bombings of the night before.  All things, or at least many things, are relative.  We live, and we live happily or sadly as our disposition and talents for certain situations steer us, until we can live no more.  How bad, relatively speaking, is it now to live?  Are we really better off than our ancient ancestors or even our closer cousins of the Medieval period?  We tell ourselves that we are, but is that true?   After living with back-woods Indians for several months, I found that 1) I could probably not be happy living that way of life; and 2) I would probably be happier in that way of life if I had been brought up with it.  Now, I need the sense of connection with the greater world.  I believe that these Indians feel it as well.  But they were so free!  They did not have to worry about bosses or money or social prestige on a grand and complicated scale.  Yes, I believe they were fundamentally happier than we, but we are not exactly crying, en masse, in our beer ourselves.  And even with a bomb hanging over our heads, or with real bombs falling, people can be happy.

What, though, would be the best scenario for most?  We come to Graham Greene's travelogue into Liberia again, but once again we are out of time (another worry of our civilization - time).  Until another time, then, FK          

The primary theme of this blog will revolve around what Graham Greene said of his reasons for travel among primitives, but I could not help mentioning this item: In Indiana, one of the biggest stories now going is about a demonically possessed family, including the mother and several of her children.  With noises and screaming upsetting the neighbors, social workers and police were called to a house (I do not know who called - this was from a TV news summary) where they witnessed: one child levitate from her bed; and another walk up the wall, backwards.  The police chief and others swear by their observations.  An exorcist (Catholic priest) was called in to minister to the mother, who also (it is claimed) was possessed, while the children were sent either to psychiatric care or protective custody.  The priest claims that the woman and children were possessed.   However, there was also a claim by an "expert" that the house was infested with over 200 ghostly spirits.  To the TV reporter, that sent up a red flag - this is TOO weird.  Perhaps this latter claim is not true - but how would that make the other observed supernatural activities not true?

This, apparently, is making a big splash in Indiana, but it will do nothing towards changing the superficial and official cultural view on such things.  The proof of this is that such things have been scientifically tested and verified for well over 100 years, and yet still we are told to deny them.  Any mention of such things in a large general audience will get one labeled a "kook."  Of course, there are kooks - there are disabilities and distortions of all kinds among us - but the labeling is automatic and decidedly  NOT scientific, for science is not supposed to put on blinders; rather, it is supposed to observe all things, and once observed, to seek an explanation.  If the current models of reality do not coincide with what is observed, the current models are supposed to be altered to allow the observations to fit.  Instead, after the observations are verified, they are just as quickly dropped, kicked out as an aberration of some kind because they do not fit within the current theoretical mold of reality.    

Think about it: to do this is to assume that the operational model of the universe is already in our hands, all but complete.  This is no better, abstractly, than the old Catholic Church burning Galileo at the stake because his observations and natural conclusions did not coincide with what the Church wanted the world to look like.  We are, in effect, no better off now intellectually, in principle, than we were 500 years ago.   

However, I think there is more involved here than intellectual arrogance.  In Thomas Cahill's book, "How the Irish Saved Civilization," he shows how Ireland was the only European country that willfully converted to Christianity without threat of power.  Why they did this, explains Cahill, is out of fear; their eyes and ears were filled constantly with the visions and sounds of spirits of all kinds, all the time.  Young warriors, he said, would drink themselves into a stupor at night simply to not have dreams and visions of the spirits.  Christianity to them meant protection - protection from the demons, whom Christ could dispel.  And, in spite of seeing Leprechauns regularly, they clung fast to this protection until the last few decades, when at last the modern era caught up with them.


The modern era - it has given us more than a scientific model of the universe; it has given us a shield, what Christ was to the Irish, except this one is more complete.  In Catholicism there are still demons and a hellish underworld- but in the world of science, none of these exist.  We have traded the depth of the world for security, and have found it wanting, but few are ready to accept children walking up walls backwards.  In the news story from Indiana, one man talking of the incidents is shown rocking in his chair convulsively, obviously on the edge of terror (I forget who, but he is an official of some kind).  What he has seen he will never forget - although he would clearly like to.  Most of us, though, will never have to be so terrified.  Our barriers against this other world have been built well by our culture.  But it  seems to me that, as afraid as I also am of such things, it is cowardly and infantile to not accept the real. This barrier, this wall has also cut us off from portions of our self, from our soul, which has led to an unhappy and unfulfilled vision of reality.   But I must admit - to venture forth, I would need the sword and shield of my faith.  That other world scares the hell out of me, too.

Too late to move on to Graham Greene.  However, the subject above does coincide.  Greene's idea was that living with the primitive is a sort of psychotherapy, where one is forced to relive emotions from childhood that scared us so that they have been buried, or repressed.  These include bugs, snakes, disease, death, and the worst of all - the presence of spiritual entities.  This, though, for another date.  FK       

In a book talked about a few months ago, "How the West Really Lost God" by Mary Eberstadt, the thesis was this: that family and religion went hand in hand.  In other words, if one wants more intact families, one should support religious observance, and vice versa.  If one wants less of one, then attack the other.  In this, the relationship was made clear, at least for the Western-influenced (formerly) Christian nations.  

Last week, a comprehensive study came out from a group of sociologists from prestigious institutions such as Harvard and Stanford concerning poverty.  I did not read the report, but rather the summation that was made of it in the newspaper.  In it, the reporter quotes one of the authors as saying, "we were surprised; we did not expect to get these results."  The  results were unequivocal: a two-parent family, or the absence of one, were far and away the most important factors in determining poverty rates and later rates of upward mobility.  

With such results, the role of government and society for improving the overall population is clear: increase the likelihood of intact families; and, following Eberstadt's thesis, one of the primary - if not mandatory - ways of doing that is to promote religious practice.  Is that what American and European societies are doing?  

Clearly they are not.  Why this is so is complex - as complex as Eberstadt's lengthy book - but, in America's case, do we see even a hint of promotion among the academic and political elite?  It is present, but only in marginalized and sometimes ridiculous individuals - Duck Dynasty comes to mind, as do some politicians considered too extreme for the national stage.  My own inside knowledge of academia has shown me that the mainstream in most prestigious universities not only do NOT offer some encouragement for family and religion, but are downright hostile to both.  Their attitudes towards traditional institutions have been graphically reflected in the novel, "A Handmaiden's Tale," a Reagan era book that shows, from an academic point of view, what a religiously re-awakened America would look like.  It is a nightmare of racism, environmental destruction and women's subjugation.  The heroes are freedom fighters of the Che Guevara type - wild, poor, dedicated.  By the middle of the book, if one still supports the dominant religious elite, one must certainly be a Nazi fascist.

It is, of course, propaganda, but it correctly reflects the view of America's power elite.  They draw on the hypocrisy of the "Leave It to Beaver" family stereotype as well as the religious conman, Elmer Gantry - not to mention pedophile priests.  We do work in stereotypes, but another balancing one is forgotten - that of the godless, government-run society.  On this, Orwell did the reverse of the "Handmaiden" with "1984," which was created after his overwhelming disappointment with Communism during the Stalinist era, which the elite have all but  ignored.  In fact, the greatest monsters, by far, of the last one hundred years have come from totalitarian states antithetical to the autonomy of the family and to religion (Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot).  In comparison, the ravishings of theocracies, including the Inquisition and the current assortment of Muslim radicals, pale to nothing in comparison.

But I write not to get into an argument over what forms of government have been the biggest threats to the world - but rather to point out the central issue of family and religion.  They, both, are essential for free, democratic societies, for without one we eventually lose much of the other - and without family, we must come to rely on government, which can never, ever provide the personal care that an intact family can.  We do not want a theocracy, either...but a practical approach to this by our government easily prevents such an occurrence.  That is to say, the governmental policy can avoid the dark side of religious adherence while promoting the good side - and yet, it doesn't.  In effect, it has given in to the ideals of the elites who mock Beaver and the Church lady, and not just for laughs  - but, in fact, to keep government away from any family or religious-based initiatives under the false banner of "separation of church and state."  Again, it is too complex a thing to ask 'why' in this blog - but only to see that it is happening.  In an era where we have learned to be respectful of diverse cultures and religions - unlike in the nightmare world of the Christian right in "Handmaiden" - there seems to be no practical excuse for the avoidance our elites of the truth of the issue ; that for a better society, we  should promote religion (any mainstream or canonically non-violent religion) and the two-parent family.

But there is something more: religion to a sociologist is a sociological thing; but it is much more than that.  And even though all religions (and I include shamanism and animism in the category of religion) are partial truths, they all, at the core, point to a greater truth - about why we are here and what we should do about it.  It is, for many people, the only thing in their lives that might tear away the cloth of socio-economic blinders, if only for a while.  Rather than being a palliative for a suffering society, religion offers the ways and means to get beyond ourselves - and into the meaning of life itself.  In the end , nothing is more important for an individual, and for society at large, for when society loses its grander vision, there is only decay - until something else comes along to provide a greater vision.  And the 20th century saw more than enough of these "something else's."  FK                   

Graham Greene - a fascinating man of contradictions - a converted Catholic, scrupulous in observing Catholic ritual, yet a great womanizer and drinker - and a man with atheistic beliefs of which he said, "I doubt my doubt."  Could it become more complex?

The last book I read by him was "The Power and the Glory," perhaps his most lauded novel, and it showed his complexity.  The story of a whiskey priest hiding from the despotic anti-Catholic regime of the governor of Tabasco State in Mexico during the Cristero conflict in the 1930's, it leads us to no conclusion.  The priest, afraid of being shot, still is compelled to do his duty as he moves from one hovel of a town to another, drenched in all the stench and heat of old Mexico.  The government forces would hack to death those unwilling to renounce Christ and feed their remains to the pigs - the priest had something to worry about - and yet.  He is shot in the end, confused, dedicated, redeemed and yet still doubtful - the picture of Graham Greene himself.  

In a way, it felt good to read this biography, for here was a man worse in actions and more conflicted than I could ever be.  Yet one priest friend confided to him that he was closer to God than he - in that his struggle forced an eternal preoccupation with God.  Greene himself recognized this, although not in a self- congratulatory way.  For him, "one who is awakened to good also is awakened to evil."  This is not a novel idea, and Greene was familiar with the lives of the Saints, including Teresa of Avila and St John of the Cross - the latter the first in recent times to coin the phrase "the dark night of the soul."  And in this, I think that he is right: for in the acknowledgment of the good, one tires to BE the good.  In so doing, one becomes aware of his shortcomings and is hounded by his own evil.  Such are many of Greene's characters - forlorn of becoming good, they practice evil with intent, as if it were a religion.  The two, to him, touch each other in the circle of life and are, to mix metaphors, two sides of the same coin.  There is ample precedent to this in the Bible, the one most apparent to me being the Gospel where Jesus is tempted by the devil after a 40 day fast in the desert.  He is offered the world, if only he would forsake God.  His answer is well known: "Get thee behind me, Satan!"  So we see that the man (or Son of Man) of the greatest good is offered the greatest reward for evil - that is, the higher up one may aspire, the louder are the calls from below.  

Most of us are not so good and are offered no great reward for evil.  Greene apparently lived both - as a fearless man of conviction and as a whore monger who abused his wealth and fame.  For me, this conflict is not a distant abstraction.  About 20 years ago, shortly before the birth of our son, I became involved (for the first time in almost 20 years) with meditation and  prayer after many years of playing with the abstractions of academia, or simply working.  I found almost immediately that, as enlightenment seemed at times to descend - or almost descend - so did thoughts that could act to the contrary.  In linguistic or computer terms, such negatives are necessary to evoke meaning.  But it is a different thing in moral terms.  While resolving to do good, we already know of evil.  And yet we are confounded, or tempted constantly from our goal as if by an inward genius - some would say demon - who wishes to confront us.  For me, the meaning and distinction between the two have been clear since early adolescence - and yet, the confrontation grows as we decide to work towards its opposite.  Again, this is not a logically necessary condition of prevailing goodness, and yet it is so.  As in the metaphor that life is, every thing that is lit must have its shadow, and it does not go away once we recognize the thing.  It is a part of its condition.

The saints and gurus have talked for centuries of this conflict.  Some modern saints, like Bede Griffith, were not cured of this until the last days of death (or so it seemed).  Others, most notably the Indian gurus, talk of overcoming this dark side permanently, much as Christ did - but not before years and decades of asceticism, far more than I and most are willing to do.  

And so we have Greene as our martyr - the man who went far in both directions, granting us a sense of self-relief, but also of inadequacy, for he DID go far - further than most of us into the obscene and the horrible to find the good.  That, I believe, is what the priest acquaintance was referring to.

On a last note to genius, Greene had said that once his characters were set up in his novels, his work was essentially done.  Writing then was, to quote, "on autopilot," as the characters worked out their own inner progressions.  This is how it happens.  But further, and of this he did not speak, from where comes the formulation of the book in the first place?  Not the idea of the good man and bad man and such, but the overall pattern that will emerge - for characters alone do not create this pattern but rather work within it.  While writing the book may go on autopilot, the set-up, too (I would argue) also comes from without.  Just as many would say that the set-up to our lives have come from without - or beyond - as well.  FK   

Finishing with McMahon's "Divine Fury," we find that today, we are all geniuses - or, as he quotes commentator Charles Spearman, "every normal man, woman, and child is...a genius at something."  Quoting from the ever-great 19th century commentator on American, Alexis de Tocqueville: "Scientific and literary genius is as rare as ability is common" in the United States; in advanced conditions of democracy and equality, "genius becomes rarer and enlightenment more common; what in aristocratic societies was concentrated, here it would be "divided equally among all," and with tremendous possibilities, unleashing a combined creative ingenuity greater than anything the world had known.'   

So - is genius among us all, or has it been diluted by democracy?  And if the latter, does this really lead to a "combined creative ingenuity greater that anything the world has known"?  For those who have been to Europe, they might have found that even in countries where wealth has been heavily redistributed, there is still a notion of aristocracy that is expressed in both manners and bloodlines.  And yet: where are the geniuses of yesteryear?  Has Europe now attained such a level of equality (in custom, not cash) that it has banished its geniuses for the ingenuity of the masses? 

Good questions, but ones that I will not attempt to answer here, because something more important was alluded to in the conclusion of the book: that is, that we have returned more to the time of the Romans and the Greeks (and to earlier societies) with our notion of genius.  If the reader might recall, the Romans invented the birthday party not for the corporeal being but for his spirit companion, or his genii (or genius).  This was not a fun idea, but something taken seriously, for they did not have modern psychology to explain to them how ideas and passions came to them. During the Classical era, then, it was thought that, even as everyone did not have the genius of Socrates, everyone DID have a genius, or a connection to a larger, more insightful world that is normally invisible to us. 

When I compare the different perspectives on genius - the sociological, the psychological and the magical, I admit that I prefer, from experience, the last.  The sociological explanation might explain the difference in the celebrity of genius, but it does not explain genius itself.  Yes, it tries to, in fashioning a complex theory of socially constructed personality, but that does not wash with me concerning genius - that is, concerning the reception of ideas that, by definition, transcend society.  As for psychology, that, too, is wanting - for the "subconscious" is nothing more than an abstract construction, similar to the social being itself.  How does originality and creativity stem from a suppressed element in ourselves?  Yes, here there might be great energy, but novel ideas that transcend personal and social knowledge?  I am not convinced, to say the least.  Rather, I believe the modern and ancient concepts are correct in that we all have, or can express, genius; but also that the ancients, and non-Western orientated moderns, are correct, or at least more correct, when they say that the genius exists outside of ourselves.  Fred Myers claimed that "genius" exists at a common base that we all share and can access, but this amounts to the same thing as the spirits of the ancients - it, genius, is a thing apart, an element either foreign to or beyond our normal social persona.  In both cases, it appears to the one experiencing it to have a mind of its own.     

Thus while I wouldn't claim that all of us are geniuses - this is indeed a complex construct of an era - I would say that all of us have access to (or if you prefer, "a") genius.  Most everyone reading this has encountered it - in flashes of insight as well as in odd moments of synchronicity.   For those like myself who regularly engage in creative tasks, it often comes in sustained measures.  In writing, for instance, I am often lost to time and myself in the task, and just as often wonder who the hell just wrote what apparently I did?  Even more so than in the words, I find the strangeness in the overall structure and in its resolution, often demanding far greater insight - intelligence, if you wish to call it - than I normally possess.  But that is not genius - that is accessing, or being accessed by genius.  the final results, as one might guess, are in how the ephemeral personality handles the inspiration - and that is what separates the OK from the great.  Why some have the ability to express this genius more clearly than others still remains a question, but for me, the question of genius, at least as to who has it, does not; we all do, as McMahon said.  But it is not in response to democracy or society or our suppressed desires. Rather, it is a part of our total humanity, and truly the last - and endless - frontier for all of us.  FK          

Today, a new essay, "A Misunderstood Man," under Essays in the website.  FK

Thanks to my regular contributors for some excellent comments.  "You know someone you die with better than someone you live with;" and the 'ol crouch under the desk, hold your hands over your head, and kiss your ass goodbye memories.  Yes, some good nightmares from that one.  

And, one way or another, it points back to genius.  As the book, Divine Fury, draws to a conclusion, we can see that the author is drawing us inevitably to the greatest monster - the worst evil genius - in the European pantheon of monsters.  Lenin and Stalin are up there, too, but their's was the bizarre, semi-Asiatic world of far Eastern Europe.  But Germany, people thought they knew - as the very rulers of rationality, the British, had Germans as their rulers (and were in part Anglo-Saxon, or German, themselves).   We saw in the book "The Garden of Beasts", how quickly Hitler was able to dominate the German public, as if by magic - but we learn from McMahon, our author on genius, that they were well-prepped to do so, as was much of Europe, due to the radical development of the cult of genius.  Edgar Zilsel was the first to be explicit about this cult, publishing his findings in 1918.  What troubled him most was the amorality of genius then conceived - that Genius, like god, made its own rules, taking up the voice of the people to further them, and him, to a higher level.  And this was not a territory for anti-Semites and right-wingers alone.  In 1925, the USSR formed the so-called Moscow Brain Institute, initially to proclaim scientifically the genius of Vladimir Lenin as well as his successor, Stalin, but its long-term goals were eugenic in nature - to try to determine what made the genius and thus cultivate it for the "people's paradise." Later in the USSR, Marx was cited as being contrary to natural genius, himself being a strict social environmentalist, and the institute was officially closed - but its work continued, and continues, the author claims, to this day.  Such was and is the reach of the cult of genius.  

As mentioned, the genius was seen as free - above - morality, and thus could do anything at all for the greater good of the future of Man, a good which only he could foresee.  Among intellectuals throughout Europe, this notion took hold, and filtered down the learning chain to the general populations at large.  As Lenin famously said, "you've got to break some eggs to make an omelette," and many in Europe, their ties to the old religions weakened or shattered, agreed (this is a key point, the author tells us - that genius substituted for religion and god).  They admired the geniuses in their midst and excused or even admired their eccentricities and even moral outrages.  This has continued in some form to us today - isn't the genius strange?  Isn't he often given to special urges? (even the good genius Einstein had numerous mistresses.)   Thus we see that the table was set; all Europe needed was a country that saw itself either in desperate straights (Russia in 1918) or rudderless (Germany in the Wiemar Republic; post WWII China - its leaders influenced by Europe - was both).  When genius in these nations- evil or not, as no one could tell but the genius himself - showed itself, the people fell in line with ready quickness.   

Genius: savior or Satan? They can be both.  And in the quest for survival - in those desperate situations - there arises in many one aspect or the other: the saint or the devil.  And I believe, just as the people did and do in the cult of genius, that a certain leader can make all the difference - that he or she can coalesce the fears and hates or the hopes and dreams of a people, turning them towards angels or demons.  In Democracy, it is thought that the will of the people at large signals the will of heaven  - or, put in a less spiritual way, it is the will that directs us to the good and the right.  We are, our founders believed, endowed with such goodness - and communal genius - by our creator.  But still we flirt with the cult of genius - the cult of the singular being -  all the time.  How many elections have been won by a charismatic presentation?  How many presidents have been elected on a wave of sentiment that carries little to nothing in substance?  Without our certain laws, there is little question that we could fall to the singular power of the political genius.  Heaven forbid.  And our laws will only so protect us as long as we insist that the laws are followed.  

The price of Freedom is, indeed, vigilance, but we need our geniuses, too.  It seems that the price of freedom might also lie in the curtailing of certain freedoms among our geniuses.  That this seems contradictory to the law of genius is fitting - as a genius, by definition, never really fits in.  FK                           

Reading hours have been eclipsed by a mini-series on the Discovery Channel called, I think, "Klondike," based, as they say, "on actual events."  Yes, although loosely, for the women are beautiful and romance flourishes among the mud fields and brutal murders.  There is a continuous theme, though, based not so much on actual events but on Jack London's books (Jack is a side character in the series, lightly disguised) which show how thin a veil civilization is.  As many characters state, "nature in bent on bringing us down to her level," a low level indeed in the harsh land of gold-crazed prospectors in 1890's Yukon gold rush. 

Such extreme situations have always fascinated me - what do people do in a group when life is nearly intolerable?  We have hundreds of such accounts - from the concentration camps to shipwrecks to rugged frontier life.  Many times, people behave exactly as one might think - in a desperate, selfish way so that they might survive regardless of cultural or religious rules.  It is, as London made famous, the Call of the Wild - which also coincided with the popularity of Social Darwinism of the time, as well as eugenics.  The superior rise to the top, and in extreme situations, very quickly, "superior" meaning "most suited for survival."  In the book we all had to read in high school, The Lord of the Flies, society becomes just that - the strong dominate, or even kill off, the weak.  But is this true?

In survival accounts, everything happens.   The Shackleton expedition, in the famous disastrous voyage to Antarctica in the early 20th century, shows how a whole group led by a certain type of man (Shackleton), can remain 'civilized' - that is, concerned with the well-being of others even as their own lives are threatened.  In other cases - the Jamestown colony being one - it was found that the people resorted to theft, murder, and cannibalism - not just of the dead who died naturally, but of the dead killed off exactly to provide nourishment.  This had happened in a few notorious cases of shipwreck as well, although usually the person killed for food was done in by lot, certainly a more egalitarian and civilized method than the man at Jamestown who killed his wife to fill a stew pot.  In the Andean flight wreck, where in the 1970's a soccer team's plane crashed in the Andes, they had to survive in freezing temperatures for several months, kept alive by eating those who died in the crash - men first, in regard to a gentlemanly decorum (and all of those who survived said that they had had transcendental experiences of God during the ordeal, making it a positive event by in large).  The noted writer Laurens Van der Post recalled his two years in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in Burma, stating with wonder that all the men were self-sacrificing to the others, so much so that they did not hate the Japanese for their brutality, but felt sorry for them for their fall from humanity.

And yet - many civilizations in NICE areas were brutal.  While pre-colonial Hawaii is often idolized and lamented  - and what the colonialists did was often terrible - the chiefdoms of the Islands were in many ways brutal theocracies that put the Ayatollah to shame.  The Aztecs lived in a pretty nice area themselves, and if we are honest must admit that they were worse than their Spanish conquerors - so much so that it was the Indian subjects of the Aztecs themselves who provided the bulk of the army to subdue them.  Meanwhile, the Eskimos, who lived to the north of the Klondike in the most brutal land of all, lived fairly quiet - and social -lives.  

Much has to do with levels of society - larger ones usually have hierarchies which choose winners and losers - and much to do with leadership.  The Chinese wrote of kings who followed the will of heaven - people who were lauded for their fairness - and of tyrants, who created dreadful societies of fear and greed.  Their idea was that a leader could channel the divine will towards harmony, or he could refute it, and in that lay all the difference.  

In the Klondike, as with many frontier areas, there was little to no leadership, and many of the men (for they were mostly men) were adventurous types or downright criminals who had little respect for civilized niceties - even as the surrounding native populations maintained their own ordered societies in the same natural environment.  Jack London, it would seem, was wrong - the brutality of nature did not make men brutal.  Rather, people made themselves brutal, or were forced into brutality by social (not natural) circumstances.  It is sometimes hard to believe the decorum people have maintained in horrible circumstances, and much easier to imagine a dog-eat-dog mentality in, say, a lifeboat with limited supplies.  And yet such examples are many.  It is also hard to imagine a contentious and violent society in the midst of affluence, but we have experienced it, at least to a certain degree, in our own. In our own society where leadership is limited, it seems that we must be held together by a great idea or body of ideas.  Is our discontent due to a failure to embrace such ideas?  And are some purposefully spreading discord for their own selfish or neurotic needs?  Or are we really about as content as one can expect, given life, and our discord is only purposefully magnified to sell news?  

In the Klondike, I imagine that one had to be tough, although one could (and probably many did) balance that with a kinder nature when toughness wasn't necessary.  For most of us in the affluent West, our reality seems more likely to rest on our perception - and perception can be changed, just like that; and it seems that each of us, for lack of a king, must find his own way - by his own will - to grasp the will of heaven.  FK     

       

Yesterday I referred to the aspects of ego - what we see as ourselves - and how "face" is used to cover up unsocial thoughts and insecurities.  Going back again to my stupid days of drug experimentation, the loss of face - of a facade - that made communication so embarrassingly difficult was often followed by several other phases (I will count 3 here, the way I see it); first, as one is pulled towards the peak, the embarrassments of self-transparency fade into unimportance.  Here, one goes into the transcendental phase, where an infinite reality of complete connection and timelessness is experienced.  This is the mystical high that drew so many hippies and experimenters to Eastern religions, as they often emphasize direct union with the Beyond (rather than worship from afar).  Here, the former ego is seen as a nothing, a thin membrane over a vast ocean of realization that is not only accessible to everyone, but IS everyone - that is, one feels that it IS the real you.  From there, as one falls back from the peak, the "humanity head" as one friend called it, reigns; that is, one becomes encased once again in an individual self, but feels great sympathy and love for everyone else.  From there, one becomes grateful for just being alive - and often begins to plan the next trip.  

In terms of Christianity, it is the peak phase that makes us worthy of redemption.  We are not the invidious, selfish individuals of our ego, but something far greater.  This small self is the sinful self, one that we have descended into from our fall from Eden.  To realize Godhead is to see our connection with everything and everyone, and our own immortality and god-like qualities.  As this experience is difficult to achieve without drugs, and dangerous to reach with drugs, most never encounter it.  Rather, the "humanity head" phase is recommended - although this is very hard to maintain without constant reference to the mystical experience, and thus difficult for most of us to live with.  We fall back into the small ego and all its pettiness - and again make use of the social face.  We rely, then, on faith to save us.

One can find all of this in books on mysticism or on prime drug experiences.  However, through the research on genius, we find a fly in the ointment.   We find, as the mystics have always known, that until we are fully assumed into Godhead, we have real, deep personalities that reach deeper than the common ego.  That is, that even at the mystical height there is a real and separate "us" present.  Most people find this comforting, but it is not always so.  In Castaneda's books on sorcery, his enigmatic teacher Don Juan tells him that some are simply born to evil, just as some animals are born to be predators.  One cannot know who one is until the greater depth of the self is experienced.  In the discussion on genius through the ages, it is usually recognized that "genius" comes either from a separate spirit, or is experienced as one is brought (mentally) into a spiritual, or higher, world - one similar to that found in mystical experience.  And just like Don Juan's sorcerers, the genius or man influenced by genius can bring either harm or good - that is, he can be the good genius or the evil genius.  Literature is replete with this complex; but we have to ask: how can one who is so elevated become evil?  Shouldn't a greater knowledge of the whole make on more saint-like?  In Christianity, one would say that one has been tricked by the devil.  For Don Juan, the universe is an amoral place, where things and beings simply are as they were made, that decision based on something beyond our knowledge.  


Eastern mystics have long had their own explanation - they say that not only do we all have individual temperaments that may pull us towards good or evil, but that there are different levels, or heavens, beyond ordinary reality that one may obtain.  At some levels, one is conferred with great powers, or siddhus (if I remember the word correctly).  The great sages tell us to ignore these  powers, for they can pull us in and entrap us - even unto doing evil.  For them, there is only one great goal - complete immersion in God, or the No-thing (nirvana).  They do recognize that even the saints on earth, of those who communicate directly with us mere mortals, have unique personalities.  But these have not let themselves become fixated in the temptations of power in the lesser heavens.  Thus, it seems, free will is restored amid greater and greater temptations.  The effective genius is one who has access to one of these higher levels - not  necessarily THE level - where he may become enmeshed in its power and what it lends to his own image on earth - the image of the "genius."  In this, we may consider the thin film of ego that we normally observe as something real; for while it is only small and relatively powerless, it still expresses the possibilities of temptation that a deeper self might find in higher consciousness.  FK                

I recall back in my stupid days the low point of "trips" on mind-altering drugs.  One could have bummers, for sure, but they were very uncommon.  Almost guaranteed, however, was a point where you and your fellow travelers came to where thoughts could not be hidden.  It was not so much telepathy - although there was some of that - but rather body language and the tone of voice.  At that point, anything but authenticity was seen for what it was, an artifice to support a public vision of self that did not coincide with the inner self.  While we all were subject to it, I will pick on a friend no longer alive as a sample case.  A cool guy, tall and athletic and sought after by girls, he normally had a high place in the overall social hierarchy of young adults.  On a large group trip, however, he pulled out a ridiculous and vulgar cartoon from his pocket to share for a laugh.  We could not hide our reactions: the joke was infantile and we could not help but laugh at the guy rather than with him.  He then attempted to save face by giving it to another of us, saying, "here - I don't want it!", causing us to laugh at him again for his clumsy attempt at a  cover-up.  It sounds cruel, but it couldn't be helped; there was no way to cover up thoughts and emotions.

In the Gospels of the New Testament there is the famous encounter between Jesus and a crowd who has condemned a woman to death for adultery.  "He who has no sin throw the first stone," was his final dare - and none threw the stone.  Behind the facade of self-righteousness they were all very much aware of the secrets they kept to themselves.  Nearly 2000 years later, the hippies of the 60's, made aware of the openness that hallucinogens forced on one, sought to be open and honest about everything.  Free Love was a cornerstone, where the "mating game" of the young was ditched for the reality of general lust.  And yet the communes that they formed for such things failed famously.  They found that the superficiality of the cultural self was not as much about protecting "face" as it was about masking the true inner selfishness of the individual.  "Face," it was discovered, was a necessary evil that mediated between inner desire and social harmony.  Of course, Jesus was right in questioning the condemning crowd, for he came to teach about hypocrisy and truth and the nature of Sin: the Son of Man was indeed necessary because we were all sinners.  There was no commune or social system that could erase it, but only the Son of God as a man who would atone for that sin through a very bad death.  One does not have to believe in the divinity of Jesus, however, to see that he had touched on a universal truth: regardless of the social ideals, there was, at least some times, a monster who lurked behind the Face.   


This brings out the growing New Age belief that a quantum moment is becoming imminent (personally, I am not convinced of this one way or the other - but I do think it would be interesting).  In this moment, we will (would) become aware of our union with everything at the roots of our existence (quantum physics calls for such a unitive connection in the universe).  We will, then, have no "face" to hide behind - all secrets will be known.  Mentioning this to others, many are more worried about bizarre sexual fantasies surfacing than anything else, but I think that those will be small potatoes, well shared.  Rather, and much worse, we will see the ill and hostile will of the ego - its envy, its ranking of others - in all, its overall selfishness.  In the hippie communes, this was enough to do them in; and in Marxist societies, where such thoughts were supposed to disappear with the "peoples will," they found themselves mistaken, much to their demise.  But what would this openness mean for the world at large?  Would we fall apart into mean solo unites, huddled in our selfish caves, or would we learn to cast that self aside for something greater?  And if so, what would be this 'something greater' that has yet to survive in an overall social system in the historical world?  


Some questions for thought - and it oddly dovetails with the subject of Genius currently being discussed.  More on that tomorrow, FK