The Game of Becoming

Part 43 of Prisoners of the Real

Although history illustrates that one civilization may be buried beneath the foundations of another, this isn't always the case. Sometimes only the ashes remain. If human society is to be rescued and transformed, moving from the aggressively “rational” to the receptively Dionysian, many of our psychic road maps will have to be redrawn. Dionysian capacities are latent possibilities. But they may or may not become actualities.

One step toward the necessary change is honest reflection concerning our fundamental assumption about ourselves. The heart of the rational thesis is the belief that humans are essentially self-serving beasts. This belief has produced fear of our neighbors, and led to wall-building and extreme defensiveness. It has been safer, or so it has seemed, to turn control over to impersonal structures than to trust human nature. Gradually, each village, city, state and nation has come to look upon its neighbors as threats, "aliens," competitors who will either dominate or be controlled. Domination means defeat. And defeat, at the hands of the dehumanized beast called the enemy, normally means destruction.

Fear has given power to elite competitors who claim that control over others – in other words, victory – is the only route to independence and security. But in a hostile world, independence actually turns out to mean isolation. And the "rational" people who achieve the mastery they seek so diligently through self-discipline, ethical neutrality and mechanical effort find at the end that a beast confronts them still. The arrogant dragon has become themselves.

But this beast, who also whispers that everyone else is a brute, is no more than a nightmare image brought into the "real world" by our own minds. It is imagination run amok within a psyche that fears imagination and other natural impulses.

And yet...it can be changed. Reshaped by human will into a pleasing form.

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Trust and love aren't merely options that we can take when we have finished with hard-nosed business dealings in the "jungle.” They are demands of the self for warmth and aceptance and "irrational" emotions.

To this rational managers reply, "Of course, that may be so, but it is also important to be prepared for the unexpected. We have to watch out for those who have rejected their better angels. That's why we need a strong defense to ward off predators, and an aggressive offense to push 'em back." Some also argue that intuition, while acceptable in those not in positions of power, is no substitute for facts. And after all, they will add, it's no crime to guard your flanks, lock up at night, keep a weather eye out, or even to get ahead of the game. "You see," they claim, "the name of the game is winning."

But is it? Just as we teach our children about the value of competition we also tell them that it isn't winning but how you play the game that really matters. Perhaps our task then is simply to figure out what the game of living really means to us as individuals and as a group of potentially beautiful beasts.

There is a life's work for all of us.

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In the end, the purpose of the game isn't winning. It is playing well. In order to do that in any group experience, as most athletes know, you must work both against and with competitors. The most exhilarating moments aren't those in which you devastate an unwary opponent, but rather occur when the outcome remains in play. Then you feel a dynamic tension of united opposition, a cooperative exchange in which the elation of winning emerges from the excitement generated along the way.

Overcoming the fear that others will dominate us, let us down, steal affection like some finite commodity, and rob us of time, we must begin to build a new faith. Neither time nor love is finite. When our boundaries expand far enough beyond our physical borders, they can become infinite. Dragons need not be fire-breathing beasts. They can breathe life-sustaining warmth if they wish, if they are convinced that is their purpose.

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When Konrad Lorenz wrote On Aggression, many readers confused the word "aggression" with "violence," even though the ethologist emphasized that most animals actually avoid killing. He subsequently realized that in translating his title from German the connotation of the word "aggressivity" had been lost.

Lorenz' insight is that animals and humans do seek some sort of dominance, in the form of a drive that differentiates all of us as individuals. "If you lack personal aggressivity," he wrote, "you are not an individual. You have no pride in yourself and you are everyone else's man." The collective enthusiasm that, unfortunately, produces war is also the motivator for our most creative achievements. "Without the instinct of collective enthusiasm, a (human being) is an emotional cripple; he cannot get involved in anything."

The point is that aggressivity is actually a potential force for spontaneous invention, and doesn't necessarily imply hostility or evil. But when aggressivity lacks purpose, dominance can produce devastation. Purpose tells us where we are heading, and when we have arrived. Its absence leaves us roaming the planet, searching for victories we won't even recognize.

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The key to our purpose is intuition, more reliable as a guide than analysis alone has been. The Dionysian approach – spontaneous, lunar-centered, reflective rather than reactive – rests upon the naturally aggressive nature of any inspired idea that struggles to impose itself upon reality.

Intuitive processes demand intimate involvement with the subject of one's attention. You can't be a detached, disinterested observer and maintain the necessary intellectual sympathy. Centuries ago rational men resigned themselves to watching and reacting to what they observed. They called it the "practical" path. In contrast, the Dionsyian path is a "romantic" alternative, one that recognizes the value inherent in the infinite variability of individual acts.

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The Receptive brings completion to the Creative.
And feels the pulsing rhythms of matter in space
which is nature.
Creativity is the light power of consciousness;
thinking and seeing.
Receptivity is the dark power of what is inside;
unconscious and
Invisible. What I cannot see may feel threatening.
By yielding, the dark mystery is revealed.
My Creative spirit soars to Heaven and leads with
energetic ideas.
As I am Receptive and absorb them in practical and
Earth-bound work.
A doubled Earth signifies fixed lasting conditions
and mysterious
Powers within that have strength to bring Creativity
to birth and nourish it devotedly.

-- Adele Aldridge, I Ching Meditations

The image of harmony within duality is the root of many knowledge systems. The first two hexagrams of the I Ching illustrate the need for both aggressive creativity and intuitive receptivity. The hexagram on which the meditation above is based, the six broken lines known as K'un, The Receptive, says that although The Creative begets things – ideas, plans, machines – they are brought to life through the complimentary action of The Receptive, which helps us to act in conformity with our situation. This bespeaks an attitude of acceptance.

As Richard Wilhelm explained in his commentaries on the Chinese oracle, the "superior" person allows him or herself to be guided, learning from each situation what is demanded and then following this intimation from fate. This calls for both effort and planning. The Receptive is a planner who uses solitude to discover plans that grow from unique experiences.

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Both formal and intuitive knowledge are valuable in building humane institutions. As Bergson wrote, instinct and intelligence, manifested through voluntary and reflex actions, embody two views of a primordial, indivisible activity which can become both at once.

"As a rule," he explained, "they have been developed only in succession...one of them will be clung to first; with this one we shall move more or less forward, generally as far as possible; then, with what we have acquired in the course of this evolution, we shall come back to take up the one we left behind." Of course, cooperation would be preferable, with each one intervening when circumstances require. But the signs don't point in this direction. For several centuries we have relied on the rational, the predictable, the efficient, the material, the absolute. Therefore, it is likely that, as we fully realize the physical and psychic costs of this approach, we will turn – perhaps too much – to the intuitive, the spontaneous, the romantic, the spiritual, the relative.

Still, there is always hope. If we are wise the pendulum will not swing too far this time around from the cool, harsh light in which we now stand toward a fiery darkness. If we are wise the rational and Dionysian will not become antagonists again.

The two are, after all, complimentary opposites. They could fuse into a new synthesis of intuition and analysis and create a community of subjects, a flexible whole in which science and art merge, in which infinity is glimpsed in its temporary structure, and through which we humanize our machines rather than allowing mechanisms to destroy us.

In such a New World, we would replace static order with dynamic tension, re-energizing the dialectic of spirit and matter. In that world, Apollo and Dionysus unite to play the endless game of becoming.

Until then, let us dream.

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Originally posted on June 3, 2010. To read other chapters, go to Prisoners of the Real: An Odyssey

The Struggle for Africa's Soul

From the Persian Gulf to Capetown, religious ideals have long fueled cultural confrontation and political combat. In Northern Africa, a center of Islamic civilization for centuries, fundamentalist sects have pressured national elites to create a social order based on the Koran – or face violent consequences. Throughout the Christian and Animist south, meanwhile, both independent churches and traditional religions have struggled against state repression and clerical imperialism.

The independence movement, which decades ago led nations like Ghana out of colonial domination, did not complete the process of emancipation. Kwame Nkrumah, the ardent pan-Africanist who led Ghana's movement and inspired others, noted that national liberation was merely a step in a long revolutionary process. In a multipolar world, that process pits nationalist states against religious values and aspirations for freedom.

As dictators fall, will Islamic "radicals" roll back the secular modernization of Muslim states? Can Christian churches resist the marginalizing of faith by one-party governments which impose a "development" model geared to foreign powers? Must "traditional religion" be sacrificed on the altar of "progress"? Is an endless string of "holy" wars avoidable?

We need only consider Iraq and Iran in the 1980s to see the fate that could await many African states. These two Muslim societies, at war for most of a decade, sacrificed several hundred thousand lives in a battle over conflicting concepts of humanity. In most of the reportage about United States' involvement in that Gulf War – arms to Iran, intelligence data to Iraq – the reason for the fighting was lost. Simply put, Iran's radical Shiites saw moral decay in the gradual secularizing of Arab societies. They rejected Arab nationalism and wanted instead an Islamic revolution. The Iraqi approach, based on Arab unity and cultural diversity, was simply unacceptable to the Shiites.

In one of few honest attempts to unravel the Iran-Iraq war at the time, Milton Viorst, writing in Foreign Affairs, noted that, "By the standards of Iran's revolution, Baathism (Iraq's dominant philosophy) has made of Baghdad not a model for the future but a den in which the virtues of Islam have given way to modernist corruption." Viorst was clearly too kind to Baghdad, which he described as "debonair" and westernized, but he did at least acknowledge the religious underpinning of the war.

II.

Although the Shi'a are a minority in the Islamic world, and tend to split into rival groups, they have spurred a revival of Muslim militancy that deepened conflicts in Muslim-dominated states such as Egypt and Sudan. Islam is still the main religion in Northern Africa – from Senegal on the Atlantic to Somalia on the Red Sea. In most Muslim countries ruling regimes claim to follow the essence of Islam, but beginning in the 1980s militant groups, looking to Iran as a model, saw societies "corrupted" by Christianity, Jewish “Zionism” and Communism. For some of them, humanity consisted of non-believers and believers, and holy war was inevitable.

It is nevertheless unfair to portray Islam as a fanatical faith spread by barbaric zealots. That approach, taken by historians and orientalists such as Bernard Lewis, has distorted Muslim beliefs and its historic capacity for tolerance and accommodation. One contribution by Lewis to public misinformation, Semites and Anti-Semites, attempted to shield Israel from criticism for its own ruthless acts by degrading the entire Muslim civilization. At least Lewis admitted elsewhere that Sunni Muslims – dominant in Egypt, Libya, Morocco and Somalia, among other states – were more open to accommodation, and that even the Shi'a have a "pragmatic" faction prepared to settle for Shiism in one country. Most tracts about the Middle East and North Africa play to deep prejudices.

In several North African states, the Muslim crusade also put Islam on a collision course with Christianity in the period prior to the US war with Iraq. Sunni Muslims in Egypt considered Coptic Christians Trojan horses, opening the door to secularization and raproachement with Israel. And in Sudan, fundamentalists, dominant in the North, fueled war with the Christian/Animist South. After the imposition of Islamic law (Sharia), Sudanese Christians weren't even free to pray in church. The excesses, which deeply alienated southern provinces and fueled guerilla war, eventually led to a military coup. Even if Sharia was rescinded later by the more moderate new regime, considerable damage had been done. Archbishop Paolina Lukudu, who led a 1987 Christian peace delegation in Sudan, charged that Blacks faced the threat of cultural extinction due to the Islamization promoted by the Arab world.

III.

Until the 15th Century, the Islamic world was a cordon between Europe and Africa. But eventually British, French and assorted other colonizers began to bypass North Africa to reach the continents' riches. Although native African religions dominated, Christian missionary movements spread along with colonial crusades.

These movements, designed to uplift and "civilize" as well as to exploit, created an evangelism rooted in repressive ideology. Despite independent missionary efforts, Church expansion was essentially an aspect of Western colonialism. Cameroonian theologian Jean-Marc Ela concluded in African Cry that, "For many generations, Christianity would be a religion of whites. It would propagate a manner of being Christian that was foreign to local cultures."

But Africa has experienced a new, indigenous missionary movement in more recent years, an attempt to find a way to real emancipation. Independent sects and churches, often in defiance of mainline churches, have attempted to reaffirm African identity. According to Rev. Maxime Rafransoa, general secretary of the All Africa Conference of Churches (AACC), nationalistic movements and liberation theology have promoted changes in African religion. The challenge of the future will be to develop theologies that "respond to the needs of the continent."

The World Council of Churches has attempted to take part by tackling problems such as human rights and refugees. One Council declaration stated that "our liberation remains the most fundamental issue." Yet Ela noted that Christianity remains primarily an ideological tool of foreign capitalists, promoting a developmental model at odds with the deepest aspirations of black peasants.

In passionate prose, Ela bared the poignant choice confronting Christianity: "The church cannot allow itself to rest content with the privileges accorded it in the area of worship. In the one-party regimes that are spreading across Africa, the ideal way of divesting the church of its critical function in society is to restrict it to the sphere of the religious. At most it is allowed a place in education and health, where its activities hark back to a tradition of charitable works. But the poor in the one-party states may be deposed chiefs, a silenced and socially disenfranchised elite, ethnic minorities serving as scapegoats, outlawed opposition movements or pressure groups under close official surveillance and control. How can one testify to basic values of the gospel before this new category of 'poor'? The answer can only come if the church refuses the false security it is promised by the powers that be on condition it accept the privatization and marginalization of the Christian faith."

Cedric Mayson, a British minister who spent 30 years in South Africa before his expulsion on charges of high treason in 1983, made much the same case in A Certain Sound: The Struggle for Liberation in South Africa. Although churches in this most avowedly Christian of African states engaged in anti-apartheid struggles, Mayson documented that most church thinking equated Christianity with the capitalist way of life. Contact with the liberation struggle was usually secondhand. Most whites and even some blacks upheld traditional principles or opposed political activism. It was among grass roots people that Mayson found the clearest understanding of the gospel as a blueprint for fundamental change.

The crossroad to which Christianity had advanced could be seen quite clearly in Kenya, independent since 1963 yet dominated by a corrupt elite that continued to govern in the colonial style. In the 1980s, church leaders began to challenge President Daniel arap Moi and his ruling party. Ministers urged free national debate about Kenya's future, and opposed Constitutional and election "reforms" that would further consolidate state power.

One of the most objectionable developments was abolition of the secret ballot. In future primary elections, voters would have to line up behind the candidate of their choice, a change ensuring that no opposition leader would be elected. Pastors and bishops joined the Kenyan Law Society in condemning the new procedure. The government responded by blacklisting churches for "subversion" and banning open air religious meetings and prayer – unless the group obtained a permit. Moi also pressured clerics to resign or stay out of politics. The Kenyan government was prepared to go quite far in muzzling the churches of this predominantly Christian land, forcing them to weigh the full consequences of becoming a formal part of the "opposition."

IV.

In the struggle for Zimbabwe's independence, nationalist politics joined forces with ancestral religion to create a powerful movement which drew heavily from spiritual beliefs. The key to the relationship between guerillas and local mediums of the Shona religion was a shared mission: protection of the fertility of the land. The guerillas promised to return the land to the peasants; the mediums "represented" ancestors who had once controlled it. Traditional religion provided an idiom within which the legitimacy of resistance could be expressed.

After winning independence, the government continued to make use of Shona images, and the Shona, a large and autonomous community, managed to survive, retaining their central belief in the existence of life after death. But in most of southern Africa, where a majority of the people remain animist, these traditional beliefs have been under severe attack.

In African Cry, Ela wondered whether "traditional religion" is really the obstacle to progress that most modernists suggest. Although animist beliefs often do act as a brake on social changes, he noted that the same traditions provide peasants with "reasons for rejecting a developmental model that generates an economic surplus to be divided up by foreign capitalists and local bureaucracies. Their religious life has even enabled African peoples to fight foreign economic, political and cultural domination."

Promoters of development label ancestral religions as the source of most African woes. This is "organized mystification," wrote Ela, designed to deflect criticism of continued European-U.S. exploitation. In truth, African traditional religion is an assertion of the sacred which has much in common with ecology's cult of Mother Earth, a search for harmony with nature and the past.

Some indigenous African churches have incorporated aspects of traditional religion. According to Kofi Asare Opoki, professor of Religion at Zambia's University of Legon, "This development is rather new and is by no means complete, but it at least points the way." He noted that the clash between the two belief systems stems from the West's interpretation of Christianity, but that the Biblical and African world view often agree. Courses in various schools attempt to overcome misconceptions and the persistent ridiculing of traditional beliefs.

In the long run, nevertheless, the most crucial struggle will not be between tradition and modernism, animism and Christianity, or even between church and state; it will be the conflict between domination – by foreign beliefs and interests – and the liberation of Africa's living culture.

V.

The map of Africa has changed dramatically since 1957, when Ghana became the first colonial territory south of the Sahara to regain its independence. One by one the colonial powers surrendered or lost control, eventually leaving South Africa as the last bastion of overt racism.

However, the emergence from direct colonial oppression produced a new set of problems. The economies of the new nations remained dependent on foreign financial interests, and in many places nationalism became the excuse for cultural and political repression. In the North, Muslim radicals persisted in a "holy" crusade that could damage or destroy minority cultures. In the South, one-party rule permitted little opposition from "dissidents" who found inspiration in Christian faith and, as Cedric Mayson puts it, wanted "God's will to be done in the world." And throughout the vast continent, followers of traditional religions – still the largest single group – faced condescension, censure and the virtual extermination of their cultures in the name of science and progress.

These clashes persisted long after the political struggle in South Africa was resolved. In truth, they are much more intractable than any oppressive regime. They can only be settled in the souls of women and men, in the gradual emergence of a unity that transcends religious boundaries, through a process of cultural emancipation – the real liberation of the oppressed.

This was my first article as editor of Toward Freedom. The original version was published in January 1987, Vol. 36. No. 1.

MAVERICK CHRONICLES: 2/11/11

A CREATIONIST NATION?

Four in 10 Americans believe that humans were created by God about 10,000 years ago, while only 16 percent of us think we developed over millions of years without divine assistance. The rest say we’ve been evolving for millions of years – but God certainly helped.

Actually it’s not as bad as it sounds. The number of people who accept the “creationist” idea has actually gone down. The high was 47 percent back in the 1990s. As you might suspect, people with less education are more like to be creationists.

Most Americans believe in some sort of God, so it’s no shock that about 8 in 10 think human origins involve some kind of divine intervention—either God created humans according to The Book of Genesis, or merely guided a process of evolution. But it’s nevertheless noteworthy that 40 percent embrace the first of these explanations since such attitudes have political and cultural consequences. For example, communities have been arguing for decades about which explanation of human origins should be offered in school textbooks and curricula.

Soon we could hear it debated bit time, by people who want to run the country – people like Mike Huckabee, Sarah Palin, and other presidential wannabes. So, the question for this week is: What are the chances that the country will someday accept a true radical as its leader? I’m not talking about a leftist, of course, but rather someone who thinks science has a liberal bias and the Bible is a history book? Can it happen here?

This is Maverick Media’s Rebel News Round Up,* broadcast live at approximately 11:30 a.m. Friday on WOMM (105.9-FM/LP – The Radiator) in Burlington.

This Week’s Ten Big stories: Endangered shellfish, death of a detainee, Tea Party developments, creationist nation, New Orleans demographics and Big Brother in Chicago, an immigration video game, Burlington vs. Lockheed, a Great Moment in political payback history, and the rumor of the week.

Live Stream: http://www.theradiator.org/drupal/webcam.html

NATIONAL SCENE

ANOTHER FISH BITES THE DUST

Here’s another addition to the list of creatures in jeopardy – shellfish. According to the Nature Conservancy, which has completed the first-ever comprehensive review of the state of the world's shellfish, the prognosis is basically awful. That’s a technical term.

Globally, about 85 percent of the world's oyster reefs have vanished. In other words, they’re functionally extinct. The main factors in the decline are – surprise! – destructive fishing practices, coastal over-development, and the effects of upstream activities like altered river flows, dams, poorly managed agriculture, and poor water quality.

Oysters are natural water filters and improve water quality. They are also natural coastal buffers, helping to protect shorelines and keep coastal wetlands intact. Basically, they protect coastal communities from storm surges and sea-level rise. So, that’s one more point for climate change.

DETAINED TO DEATH

Another casualty last week was Guantanamo detainee Awal Gul, a 48-year-old Afghan who died on Tuesday of an apparent heart attack. Gul was a father of 18 children and had been kept in a cage by the US for more than 9 years. In late 2001 he was captured in Afghanistan and brought to Gitmo. But he was never officially accused of a crime.

The US claimed he was a Taliban commander, but Gul insisted that he quit the Taliban a year before the 9/11 attack. As his lawyer put it, "he was disgusted by the Taliban's growing penchant for corruption and abuse." His death means that we’ll never know.

So, just to be clear, the US government’s detention policy is that it can impose a life sentence without bothering to prove that the person accused actually did anything wrong.

A TEA PARTY SURPRISE

Here is a strange development. More than two dozen Republicans, some of them new members with Tea Party credentials, joined Democrats in opposing extension of parts of the Patriot Act. A measure to extend counterterrorism-based surveillance provisions of the Act failed in the House when the Republicans bucked their party to oppose the measure.

Three key provisions of the law are set to expire on Feb. 28 unless Congress reauthorizes them. One says the FBI can continue using roving wiretaps on surveillance targets; another allows the government to access “tangible items" like library records as part of surveillance; and the third, known as a "lone wolf" provision, allows surveillance of people who aren’t connected to an identified terrorist group.

“The Patriot Act represents the undermining of civil liberties," says Dennis Kucinich, one of the few Congressmen who consistently speaks out and keeps his eye on this issue. But the Republican House establishment says that he’s wrong and blame Democrats for denying “their own administration's request for key weapons in the war on terror." With a little help from the Tea Party.

HERE COME DA PAULS

The big Tea Party news this week is that Ron Paul may be on the verge of announcing another presidential run. What’s the evidence – aside from wishful thinking? The Texas Congressman will give a speech in Iowa at an event called “presidential lecture series” that features likely Oval Office candidates.

Jesse Benton, advisor to Paul’s Campaign for Liberty organization, confirmed that he is seriously considering another run. Given the likelihood that Sarah Palin will put her assault rifle in the race, it’s important to note that a new Rasmussen poll gives Paul a better chance of defeating Obama than the Mama Grizzly. Palin trails Obama by 11 percent in current approval ratings. Paul is only 9 points behind the President.

The conventional wisdom is that Obama’s second term is virtually guaranteed if the Republicans go with Palin. Of course, that kind of wisdom sometimes proves to be closer to an old wives tale – due respect to “old wives.”

Still, an even bigger surprise is possible. Ron Paul could end up running against his own son, Rand. Last week the freshman Senator from Kentucky dropped hints that he too might make a run for the White House, according to the Wall Street Journal. He admitted such a decision would be premature, yet also told ABC News that he would step up if nominated. He put it this way: “Come back and ask me in a few months.”

Given Rand’s aspirations and his father’s chance of beating Obama, maybe the Republican dream ticket for 2012 is a father/son combination. Very Ayn Rand. Personally, I still prefer a Sanders-Paul independent alliance to a Ron / Rand combo. Nevertheless, here’s a possible slogan for a Paul-Paul slate:

America needs some R & R.

A TALE OF TWO CITIES

What changes a place more – public fears or man-made disasters? Let’s consider the cases of two cities, New Orleans and Chicago.

Since hurricane Katrina overpowered the levees of New Orleans and caused such extensive flooding that almost half the city’s residents had to flee, the population has dropped by almost 30 percent. In 2000 there were 485,000 people living there. Census figures released last week say that now there are no more than 343,000.

Before Katrina, New Orleans was an overwhelmingly black city. African Americans made up 67 percent of the population. Today there are 118,000 fewer black residents. Meanwhile, the white population has crept up to 30 percent. There has been a rise in the Hispanic presence, mostly due to a major influx of workers needed for reconstruction.

Almost 60,000 fewer children live in the city, a drop of about 44 percent. In the past New Orleans was proud of its vibrant youth culture. But the disaster has apparently turned the city both older and whiter.

Chicago also used to be a pretty wild and crazy place. Less so now that cameras watch people wherever they go. Last Monday the ACLU chapter in Illinois reported that the city has 10,000 cameras in public places. They’re operated by the police, schools, the public transit system and businesses linked to Chicago’s 911 Center. ACLU wants the city to stop adding more cameras and, perhaps more to point, stop zooming in on people, tracking their movements, or using facial recognition technology without probable cause.

Mayor Richard Daley calls surveillance a cost-effective way to help police fight crime. “We’re not spying on anyone or identifying anyone, or racially profiling anyone,” he claims. “We’re not.” Really. But he also says that it’s impractical to prove probable cause before zooming in. The nightmare scenario he sees involves a judge being awakened at two in the morning. “Judge, we have probable cause,” says the cop. “The person is walking down 22nd Street. By the time we get there,” Daley imagines, “the person’s already at Halsted Street.” Scary.

If you look around almost anywhere in Chicago, you’ll probably spot a surveillance camera: red light cameras, security surveillance cameras, police “blue light” pod cameras. The blue-light cameras have been strategically placed in high-crime areas since 2003. Police say the system works. But the public is divided. Some residents agree with the cops and don’t think privacy is being invaded if you know the camera is there. Others see it as a violation of their rights, or say criminals and gangs have simply moved from major streets with cameras to side streets without them.

It’s the most extensive and integrated camera network of any US city, according to former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. Civil libertarians consider it step toward Big Brother. “Chicago’s camera network invades the freedom to be anonymous in public places, a key aspect of the fundamental American right to be left alone,” says the ACLU report. “Each of us then will wonder whether the government is watching and recording us when we walk into a psychiatrist’s office, a reproductive health care center, a political meeting, a theater performance, or a bookstore.”

On the other hand, the cameras have played a role in several high-profile cases. In 2007 footage from a city bus camera helped persuade a suspected gang member to plead guilty to shooting a 16-year-old high school student. Cameras also helped police determine that the 2009 death of a school board president was a suicide.

So, concerns about crime have turned Chicago into a surveillance city-state, while unfortunate events have robbed New Orleans of its cultural edge. It’s hard to imagine how the latter can recapture its Mojo – aside from incentives for artists to move there. But Chicago could just stop installing the cameras.

GAME WITH A MESSAGE

Who says video games can’t have a social conscience? Take the game being developed that has users drive a truck full of immigrants through the desert. The object is to prevent them from being tossed out along the way.

It’s called "Smuggle Truck: Operation Immigration," and is targeted for release in March. In the game players navigate through what appears to be the US-Mexican border. As their truck deals with cliffs, mountains and dead animals, immigrants may fall off the truck's bed. Your scores depends on the number of immigrants you help cross the border.

Alex Schwartz says the idea for the game arose from the frustration some friends of his faced while trying to immigrate. "We felt like this issue was kind of taboo for games and popular media," he says. "So we wanted to build something…about this struggle that we could put into our work and our passion, which is making games."

The message, he claims, is that it’s so tough to emigrate legally that it's almost easier to smuggle yourself over the border despite the dangers. But immigrant advocates aren’t impressed. Eva Millona, director of the Massachusetts Immigrants & Refugee Advocacy Coalition, says the game is in poor taste and trivializes the risks immigrants face under a broken immigration system.
"Last year, 170 human beings died crossing the border," Millona said in statement. "It's disgraceful that anyone would try to make money out of this tragedy by making light of it in a game."

Patricia Montes, executive director of Centro Presente, a Somerville, Mass.-based Latino immigrant advocacy group, adds that people who are trying to emigrate into the US don’t think they are part of a game. "They do it because they are desperate."

The developers claim they aren’t trying to offend immigrants and their advocates. In fact, they went out of their way to make sure the game's characters weren't stereotypical. How? "For example, one of the immigrants is a nerdy looking guy with a pocket protector," Schwartz explained.

The game is currently being tested around Boston.

TOMORROW:

PART TWO – Lockheed, Vermont and the Rumor of the Week

* This is an edited transcript and does not include extemporaneous comments and last minute changes or additions.

The Path of Invention

Part 32 of Prisoners of the Real

In Sufism, Dionysus is described as a process of "deep understanding" or direct perception. In Zen, it is called kensho – to enter inside. And the I Ching, whose first hexagram refers to Apollonian power and energy, calls it K'un – the Receptive.

K'un, the second hexagram, is a series of broken lines representing the dark, primal power of yin, related both to devotion and the Earth. It is a perfect complement to the Creative, representing nature in contrast to spirit, earth in contrast to heaven, and the female in contrast to the male. Within the individual, it points toward the need for co-existence between the spiritual world and the world of the senses.

With the help of Dionysus, humanity can liberate itself from manipulative structures and transform the arrogant dragon into a receptive spirit: plurality can become unity, the gradual building of trust and love between all beings, with individual entities acknowledged as temporary forms filled with a single mind-energy. Planning can be matched by designing, sequence can be mated with synchronicity. In short, the isolated parts of the social body can be re-united as interdependent elements, equipotential within the whole.

This Dionysian force is a universal, collective and dynamic instinct within all human beings, the single substance within every system. It expresses itself through patterns of instinctual behavior, archetypes or motifs of the psyche pre-existent in the collective unconscious. Eternal repetition has engraved these archetypes into humanity's psychic constitution, not as images with content but, at least initially, as forms without content that represent the possibility of a certain kind of perception and action. The potential can be released through dreams and active imagination; although both have valuable uses in organizations, the latter can be more easily applied to social and work life.

Deliberate concentration can produce a group of fantasies – chance ideas, as yet unrealized possibilities. They can be considered through reflection, searched for their associations and material contexts. The result has been called inspiration and innovation. For Maslow it was primary creativity, for Noam Chomsky an "instinct for freedom," and Emerson called it transcendentalism. Whatever the name, it is the door of perception opening.

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The Dionysian collective has weathered a chilling winter of rationalism. Violated in the seventeenth century. dismembered by skeptics in the Age of Reason, its essence was given a ritual burial as rationalized humanity sacrificed itself to the clockwork deity it had constructed. But Dionysus is about to return, and arrogant dragons will relearn the meaning of annihilation. Historical circumstances, environmental consequences and instinctual will have combined as humanity gazes over the edge of history at a 2000 year cycle that began with Pythagoras, and is ending with the dictatorship of structures and the fetishism of the "real."

Throughout this cycle, and particularly for the last four hundred years, our guardians of order have been rational managers who have turned further outward and upward. The One has become a digit, objectified and classified by purveyors of data. Scientists have built a routinized world through a logical sequence, a progression that has simultaneously destroyed intuition and myth for the greater glory of reason.

In reaching to command and shape natural forces, other living beings and humanity, these managers have smothered their instincts in a machine-made blanket of facts. Total systemic predictability has been an imaginary carrot dangled from the calibrated stick of science. As a result, tools have been used to shape human beings in an image that appeared to Renaissance philosophers, astronomers, mathematicians, and certainty-bound mechanics. In the 20th century, the reflex doctrine of controlled and controlling humanity became the central prophecy of our age.

But as the I Ching suggests, the current standstill will not last. "First standstill," predicts the oracle, "then good fortune." Rational leaders have made necessity the commanding father of spontaneous invention. But human beings who discover within themselves the potential of Dionysus can turn the inverted pyramid back upon its base. In doing so, they can find wisdom and creative intellect, using Earth as the foundation for understanding higher things. They can make invention the tolerant mother of order and necessity, and through their intuitive methods create a web of Dionysian collectives that will regenerate the world.

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Dionysian leaders use artistic methods to invent structures of reality. Although they acknowledge that both scientific and artistic processes have worth, they de-emphasize logical reasoning and deduction and focus on metaphorical thinking. Their interest is not definition but discovery.

Metaphor is a ceaseless movement of association – of ideas, experiences and tensions. It swings in two directions as one object is related to another, one phenomenon, experience, behavior, or personality. Pairs define one another and emerge mutually. Reality is related to unreality and becomes partially abstract. Unreality – the inexpressible – becomes more tangible. Through their fusion the two create a new reality with an evolved nature.

Metaphorical method relies upon both sense experience and spontaneous creation. The first, observation by the senses, is a traditional scientific tool. When combined with abstract thought it leads to scientific theory. Used in concert with reflection – that is, purposeful concentration as a vehicle of spontaneity – it instead produces artistic discovery.

Dionysian beings use metaphor for creative activity rather than abstract reasoning, suspending their routines as they deal with the "real world." They remain receptive to the subject of group action, and to the various members of their group. Though they may be leaders, they don’t consider themselves "professionals" or executives within a hierarchy. They act instead as integrated group members whose specific contribution is their ability to create images of whole systems, and to initiate change while maintaining a harmony of meaning between their groups and the environment.

The intuitive approach places the leader within the subject. She "sees" it, coincides with its unique aspects. She remains mobile within a shifting organizational framework, using her skill to provide others with images, expressions to which they can respond. Another crucial aspect is the maintenance of ethical sensitivity. Dionysian leaders are value-conscious adhesive bonds within their groups. Others may monitor output on a timely basis, but the primary concern of the Dionysian leader is input.

In Dionysian collectives structure emerges gradually as a by-product of activity. History combines with the sum of individual perceptions to shape the future of the group. The leader is a generalist. Others may move toward specialization as they increase their awareness of interpersonal relations and the meshing of individual and group purposes. The leader assists them in shaping and reshaping their group meaning, and varying their individual experiences. Although leaders assume "operational" tasks along with everyone else, their central assignment is the continual posing of questions that promote spontaneity and change. Rather than relying on analysis – the orderly sequencing of thoughts – they use association – the relationship between ideas.

Taken together, these approaches make the leadership role a force away from centralization. Large systems are broken into more functional units, each one operationally autonomous yet sensitive to the infinitely varying purposes of other groups. It is at the level of purpose that Dionysian collectives relate, and their leaders open the gates for the transfer for energy.

The assumption that unifies these entities is that belief regulates structure. Dionysian leaders expand the limits of belief and restrict the limits of resulting structures.

Next: The Turning Point

To read other chapters, go to Prisoners of the Real: An Odyssey

Dionysus & Apollo

Part 31 of Prisoners of the Real

The worship of Dionysus predates the Greek version of the myth and grew out of an ancient belief in the spirit of nature and fertility, often expressed in celebratory rites. It was only a matter of time before the Greeks recognized the cult. For them, Dionysus was the God of Wine, a constantly changing energy that oscillated between benefaction and destruction. His cup was life-giving and could heal any illness. His influence quickened courage and banished fear. Worshippers soared as they realized through Dionysus their innate ability to transcend their own limits. Working within and around human beings, he could transform them into gods and goddesses.

As Edith Hamilton described it, "The momentary sense of exultant power wine-drinking can give was only a sign to show men that they had within them more than they knew."

Dionysus has also been identified with the Indian figure Shiva, the Egyptian myth of the dead and resurrected god Osiris, as well as various rites of the killed and resurrected divine king. In The White Goddess, Robert Graves describes the figure of the lame king in Levantine, Cretan, Greek, Celtic and Germanic legend. Dionysus is said to have had a bull-foot. Campbell relates these symbols to the moon, the celestial counterpart of the sacrificed and resurrected king. The moon is lame on one side, then on the other. One side of the tree of life is beautiful, the other in decay. The moon is also the heavenly cup of liquor drunk by the gods.

In Jewish and Chinese legends of the deluge, the hero becomes lame. Noah is injured by a lion (a solar beast). He and China's Great Yu survive, ending the old and bringing on the new. The deluge itself is described in several ways – as mathematical inevitability, culmination of a cosmic cycle, monstrous catastrophe brought on by a freely willing god, or local geographical event marked by neither guilt nor mathematics. In any case, it is a hero legend whose central theme is not the deluge but the virtue of the hero who responds in harmony with the order of nature.

One of the most arresting of the Greek gods, as well as one of the two gods of earth, Dionysus eventually achieved the status of a major divinity. His admission to Delphi indicated the full acceptance of his worship as part of the state religion, often expressed in dramatic festivals. More than a mere merrymaker who freed people momentarily through wine, however, Dionysus represented the spirit of human liberation through inspiration.

Countless poems were composed for this expression of the divine idea. Through the power of Dionysus human beings were said to act gloriously, even divinely. He was a symbol of revelry, inspiration, destruction, and also afflicted suffering. According to the Greeks, Dionysus died with the coming of the cold, torn to pieces by elemental forces. But this death was merely a prologue to resurrection, since Dionysus also embodies the idea of life beyond material existence – the basis of belief in immortality.

In sum, the Greeks realized that instincts couldn't be denied. Therefore, they embraced and elevated as a god a force that personifies basic human instincts and desires. They were also well aware, of course, that the dangers of denial were paralleled by the dangers of excess. As a result, Dionysus reflected both the potential for inspired creation and frenzied destruction. Unfortunately, the inheritors of Greek culture lost sight of the liberatory implications and, much like the vengeful Hera, embarked on a campaign of persecution.

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Apollo and Dionysus are primal twins buried within the human psyche, yet for almost two thousand years we have worshipped Apollo and devalued the god of inspiration. Master musician and archer, Apollo is also known as a healer and god of light. No darkness exists, for the deity or his followers, as they seek the truth. Known as the son god, his second name – Phoebus – means "brilliant" or "shining."

The origins of Apollo, like Dionysus, stretch back further than the Greeks; in this case, to Indo-European migrations and ancient tales of fear and vengeance. To the Greeks, however, he was simply the son of Zeus and Leto, another victim of Hera's spite. Driven from country to country in search of sanctuary, Leto eventually settled on Delos, the island on whose northern slopes Apollo is said to have been born. A favored child, he was fed on nectar and ambrosia, reaching manhood in four days as a result.

Though courageous and skilled, Apollo was also hasty. Seeking to kill the serpent named Python, for example, he tracked it to the shrine of Mother Earth at Delphi, and struck it down in the very spot where the oracle spoke. Earth, demanding atonement for the defiling of her sacred place, forced Zeus to send his son away for ritual purification.

And despite Apollo's gifts, including the power of prophecy, he wasn't always kind. To Greek herdsman, for example, he was a fearful, "wolfish" presence that had to be placated, a god who could either protect them from wolves or, if he was offended, give tangible shape to their fears.

Here is another link between myths and men, with more lessons about the complex nature of human will. The light-giver, who can heal and purify, can also be quite pitiless and cruel. Just as the excesses of Dionysus have been accentuated, the cruel and primitive side of Apollo has been ignored.

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Dionysus is the desire to burst through the reality bubble that surrounds us, to experience a general sense of affirmation, to touch the unknown. It's the spirit of magic, potential scattered through time, matter becoming spirit, the ideal that cuts through the skin of the real world. Apollo is Dionysus is ordered form, spirit becoming matter, the actuality of space, the practical application of Dionysus when this unlimited complexity is captured.

The Pythagorean synthesis fused formless substance with harmonious form, incorporating the evolutionary movement from impulse and sensitivity to rational order. But the goal of the process was spiritual, personal and subjective – to grasp the One through the power of intellect. In the two millenia since the great triangle was conceived, however, humanity has used and abused intellect primarily to gain mastery over knowledge. Ultimately, the triangle was inverted: wisdom and creative intellect were sacrificed in order to concentrate on classifying truth. We lost sight of the One by endlessly subdividing it into the many.

The harvest of our rational, Apollonian choice, and the concomitant denial of intuition, has been a painful and deadly discontinuity and alienation between entities. The world is perceived as atoms, particles, and individuals, bound to one another only by the laws of cause and effect. Rationalized humanity has assumed that aggression and territoriality are inherent. In this bright, cold world surrendered freedom has been promoted as the only way to avoid war and shield the world system from chaos – widely accepted as the "state of nature."

Next: The Path of Invention

To read other chapters, go to Prisoners of the Real: An Odyssey

The Afterlife & the Roots of Theosophy

Most religions say that the soul goes somewhere after death. But solid evidence is tough to find, and despite some credible research, the results have been inconclusive so far.

My own research began many years ago in Vermont, as I looked for answers to the mystery surrounding a family of 19^th Century mediums and the people who were attracted to their “ghost shop.” In the end, I wrote Spirits of Desire, a novel based on events surrounding the initial meeting of Helena Blavatsky and Henry Olcott, founders of the Theosophy movement. This four-part essay discusses various theories about ghosts and the afterlife, and offers several excerpts from the book.

Out of This World

Attack of the “Electric Eel”

Helena Blavatsky’s Astral Solution

HPB & The Chittenden Mysteries

To purchase a copy of the book or find out more, post a comment to this website.

HPB & The Chittenden Mysteries

Part Four of Out of This World: Death, Ghosts, and the Roots of Theosophy

In 1874, Helena Blavatsky followed Henry Olcott to Chittenden, a small Vermont town, to see the “manifestations” of William Eddy, an alleged medium. Their resulting alliance led directly to the launching of the US Theosophy movement, an impressive synthesis of Buddhism, occultism, and Western philosophy that became enormously influential in subsequent decades.

A century after they met, I began to weigh the evidence, and wrote a series of accounts for Vermont and national publications. To further explore the possibilities, I wrote Spirits of Desire, a novel about the spiritualist craze of that bygone era and the trail that led Blavatsky, Olcott and many others into a world of séances, elemental forces, astral projection, and past lives.

Here is a final scene from the book, picking up just moments after Helena and Henry meet:

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A good start, she decided. Yet she also had to wonder: what exactly had begun? Her teachers had sent her from Cairo to Paris and then to America. And now to Henry and Vermont. Why? He and the spiritualists were lost in a fog. Even the way they talked about all of it was wrong. They spoke of "materializations" when spirits of the dead don't take "material" form. They talked about spirit and soul as if there was no difference between the immaterial, divine principle and that vital breath of life shared with humans by every animal.

Spirit materializations! The proper description was spiritless materialism. Still, she knew that Henry was the key. At least he was searching for real answers – natural laws rather than gross superstitions.

At his request, she outlined her background: granddaughter of princes and generals, Kourland family of the Hahn-Hahns, birth in Ekaterinoslav, father a Captain, mother a writer, plus a family line that stretched back to the Crusades. She explained how, according to legend, the von Hahn name had been taken by a knight when the crowing of a hahn, or cock, awoke him just in time to prevent an ambush in the Holy Land. She described her youth, spent in St. Petersburg, Odessa and Saratov, but added that her real life had begun only when she left home for Egypt, India and Tibet.

Had he seen the dancing dervishes, she asked, or the serpent charmers of Damascus and Benares? Did he know that fakirs could tame animals with their eyes? During her wandering years she had witnessed these wonders and many more.

In Bengal, for example, she had seen an adept create a photograph of the local landscape on a dish just by staring at it. His full-color copy of nature had lasted for several days before fading away.

"How did he do it?"

"With a powerful will, I expect. Marvelous, no? Like what you've seen here."

"But you make it sound easy."

"It can be -- for those of who know how. Some people, I think, develop mental abilities that the rest of us ignore. Basically, it's a question of attitude."

"That's too simple."

"It isn't simple at all."

"And you know about these things?"

"I've seen enough to know there is a great difference between being sensitive and having real power. Let us say that a group of fakirs gathers around a lake full of alligators. I've actually seen something like this. The monsters are harmless as kittens. Why? Because the holy men can communicate with them – in fact, they can subdue the beasts. But if a foreigner, someone who is insensitive, comes within a few paces, those alligators will likely get an early dinner. What's the difference? I say it's the foreigner's attitude."

She was trying to convey the basics – awareness and regulation of the life-principle. Although Henry suspected that mediums were no more than vehicles of some greater power, he didn't yet understand the essential difference between being passive and controlling the process, the active mediation that separated the levitation of a primitive sensitive from the miracles of a sorcerer or Jesus Christ. No, he knew nothing about spiritual evolution or the astral light. This was going to take time. But at least now she had his attention.

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During visits to Chittenden in the late 1970s, I contacted two women who knew William Eddy and his brother Horatio in later years. Agnes Gould, at 96 the oldest Chittenden resident at the time, told stories suggesting that what might have begun as a sincere pursuit descended into fakery.

“If they’d kept honor among themselves, they would have been the richest people in the world,” she said. But, “then they got jealous of each other and began telling lies about each other.” After the séances of William Eddy ended, she told me, one of his sisters, Mary Eddy Huntoon, capitalized on the family’s fame with performances that were far less convincing.

Another local resident, 80-year-old Mabel Potter, was undecided. There might have been some tricks, she said, “but I don’t know. I think a lot of it was genuine, because they’d been all over that house to find out about cupboards or closets that they could use to be doing something tricky.” Although Potter moved into Horatio Eddy’s house in the 1920s, she didn’t see any ghosts. But she knew others who did. One account involved a sewing machine in the house that started up unassisted in the middle of the night.

Potter also described William Eddy in his 90s, working alone in his garden, a tall, solidly-built man who still sported a full black beard. He spent most of his life alone, living an interior existence, never marrying, and declining to indulge in the theatrical spiritualism evidently practiced by his brother and sister.

Will he be back? I asked Agnes. Although she did believe some people can see into the future, she replied, “I don’t think anybody can bring a person back to this earth. Nobody but God.” When I pressed, she added, “And who’d want to come back?”

It remains a good question, along with several others that have yet to be definitively resolved. Are spirits of the dead real? Is material existence a one shot deal? Are all such unexplained phenomena merely the result of suggestion, wish fulfillment, and clever manipulation? Or was Blavatsky on the right track?

Even today my personal quest isn’t over, in part because I still haven’t been able to explain the “journey” I mentioned at the start of this essay. It happened in October 1974, precisely a century after Blavatsky and Olcott met in Vermont.

One evening, while I was napping with my partner, she felt my body grow uncommonly cold and couldn’t wake me up. As far as I knew, however, I wasn’t lying there. I was at the other end of the house, reading one of Blavatsky’s books.

It wasn’t the usual dream state. I felt completely present, as if it was just a normal experience in daily life — that is, until something pulled at me, and I felt myself zooming up and backward. Suddenly, I was back on the bed, being violently shaken by my panicked partner. Afterward, she told me that she feared I was dead.

Was it a vivid fantasy? Or was I taking a brief astral stroll, somehow drawn to Blavatsky and her ideas? I still can’t say for sure. But I’ve decided to keep asking questions. And, in the meantime, I choose to believe that not everything in life — or afterward — can be neatly explained.

On November 8 from 1-4 p.m., I will discuss Spirits of Desire at The Sacred Bean in Prescott, Arizona. To purchase a copy of the book or find out more, post a comment to this website.

Previous parts:

Out of This World

Attack of the “Electric Eel”

Helena Blavatsky’s Astral Solution