The Good is Real

 The Answer

The answer is simple, the solution is impossible.  So it would seem as humanity tries to advance its morality.  

I’ve studied this issue for decades.  I have a PhD specializing in ethics, and I am paid to teach ethics at a public university.  Here are two key points.

 

(1)  Ethics is a technology 

Here are definitions of "technology" from three dictionaries to clarify this point:

* The specific methods, materials, and devices used to solve practical problems (American Heritage).

* The application of knowledge for practical ends. (Random House)

*The total knowledge and skills available to any human society for industry, art, science, etc.  (Collins)

This means that ethics, like any technology, can improve and evolve, much as in other fields, such as transportation or production.

  

(2) Goodness (or The Good) is real

This point is founded in science and is based on two simple steps.

(a) The first is that humans are generally the same (Human Sameness)

For instance, the Human Genome Project shows humans everywhere have a shared blueprint.  

This teams with the study of psychology, which claims:  we have the same basic needs and wants.  These include the need for food and sleep, and the wants of friendship and to avoid loneliness and many kinds of pain.

(b)  Second, a fair, equal, worldwide ethic can be based on the above human sameness.  The bedrock formulation of this ethic is the Golden Rule:  Do to others as you would have them do to you.

Note that the Golden Rule appears in many religions, if not all of them.  All religions can be avenues to seek The Good.

So What?

So this:  We can get closer to The Good by advancing our ethics tech.  The invention of human rights was such an advance, an elaboration of the Golden Rule. 

We can keep going.  Animal ethics.  Earth ethics.  Psychology and ethics,  In fact, all this is happening.  We live in an amazing time.  We stand, today, in the early 21st century, at a crossroads.

Critical Point 

We need to advance our ethics tech along with other advancing tech; otherwise, humanity will destroy or enslave itself.  Better ethics is necessary to manage more power.  Power and ethics are linked.

Three Examples 

Without better ethics, WWIII is coming and with it, nuclear annihilation.

Without better ethics, we will create cheap, powerful AI armies (such as flying drone arsenals) that can hunt, track and wipe out whole populations of civilians.

Without better ethics, we will create AI that can herd, surveil and punish whole countries, creating totalitarian states with no freedom of speech or thought (yes, monitoring devices will be put directly in the brain). 

Obviously a lot more examples are possible.  A genocidal virus.  Or a molecular nanobot that destroys the micro-organisms in soils, or the planktons that produce air.

One More Time 

The Good is real.  This is based on science.  Verifiable, empirical knowledge.  I am going to repeat this and try to make it sink in:

The Good is real.

The Good is real.

The Good is real.

This also means Evil is real. 

If we don’t evolve our ethics tech, fear will reign.  If fear reigns, dictators will dominate cult-like hordes.  Imagine god-weapons in the hands of supreme-leader narcissists, who have bottomless holes for hearts--weapons that allow them not only to kill, but also to put devices inside the human brain.

 (And, yes, the cult-like followers will readily accept devices inside the brain to prove their loyalty).

In Summary 

We’ve made progress toward The Good.  I’ll give just one example, but is is huge.  Women can vote.

Think about it.  We CAN approach The Good.  It is doable.  This isn’t religion, this is science. 

Here is another example.  Gay marriage was recently made legal in the USA.

This is an extraordinary time.  Don’t give up.

===================================================

Poem: Pine Needles & Tree

 

Pine Needles & Tree

 

firecrackers in constellations,

quiet yet always popping,

mobile that always explodes.

 

emerald sparks 

plummet plummet plummet 

descending into streamers 

streaming in the aggregate--

and yet suspended in upside-down puffs!

how they burst to feather a winged pyramid:

a ruffled coniferous heavenward bird,

see how it journeys, glisten-swarmed,

solar and celebratory,

uplifted by gusts.

================================

7/11/24... edits

Poem: Icy Window

 

Icy Window

long of tooth and pale steel

it stalks warm morsels,

water the jugular, 

clear blood slightly bled.

 

how it dances, square of mouth,

smutched ghost,

frosted of grimace,

crystalline, translucent

 

breath.

========================

Regarding the Poems

 Thank you for reading the poems!

The poems are often not in the best of shape when I post them.  They go up because they get more editing that way.

All of the last ten poems I posted were edited after posting.

When someone reads an older poem, I can sometimes see the history.  I then go back and check it again.  Of course, it's too late for whoever read it, if I make a change, which I often do.

Some poems will never be ‘good’, due simply to my lack of ability. 

I am glad, though, that some readers find a bit of impact.

Fly Well In The Dark,

 OWL

owlwholaughs@gmail.com

Poem: Log Turtle Pond Dusk

 

Log Turtle Pond Dusk

 

shadow smooth,

mossy-lime shapes,

inconstant as frills

in a play of breeze,

and yet

 

a knuckle on a log,

a pond-shell oval,

reclines so meek 

above the darkling water,

almost fetal,

this turtle of the serene eve,

tucked into a serenade 

of lulls and swells--

of stars and Venus 

and the revelries of croakers.

============================

Poem: December Field

 

December Field

 

a juggle of sticks in a muddle of grass,

the field a whorled circus 

of basketry, ice, and all the old loves:

 

dregs of sepals 

posing as ants under spits of snow,

 

and the flaxen cross-stitches,

each a splurged drama of glacé feasts.

 

wormwood rouge, far too noisy

sports on the nosegays 

of rose thorns, web orts, and beetle crusts,

 

all of it, everywhere, 

tickled by a thistle.

=======================

7/13/24

Poem: Ants In The Dirt

 

Ants In The Dirt

 

before time began,

they slaved, just the same,

to build castles with a mortar

of dull, dutiful eyes.

the same busy, chitinous flame

which burned away giants.

the same foaming petty toil

that guzzled the hubris of the Gods

and left none.

 

the Flood came and went,

and huge fists of Stone from the void.

and yet the ants, just as now,

adapted without question.

 

even today,

in the nature of their feasts,

they branch through the blood

of extinct histories,

 

plying their stupid, invincible power.

 

there is no dust without ants,

and no ants without dust.

they tred on the corpses we have been

 and will be.

===========================

Poem: Muddy Field

 

Muddy Field

 

it’s been long since mammoths

sank to gouge this slurpy fold,

or the mud wolfed down a pterodactyl.

 

it harbors hints of those creatures

stashed among many other memorabilia:

a zoo Noah’s Ark never attained.

 

someday the mud will eat humans

and their flagrant vehicles too.

all those pockmarks from rubber soles,

and crosshatches of truck tread,

 

gone,

the whole kit and caboodle,

down into the mucky, incoherent maze.

 

and then, stoic yet prophetic, 

the mud, that palimpsest undramatic,

will smile without smiling

under damselflies over rust.

=============================

7/13/24 eds

sole + soul

Poem: Fatale

 

Fatale

 

god built beauty to harbor evil.

it was the Big Why.

 

even love

lurched to the cruel parodies of an erratic Clown.

 

there were two Nails.

they loomed and crucified the way of all things:

 

serenity and cataclysm.

and the Earth, that forgiving

abundant magnificent executioner

 

waited.

==================================

11/30/23 ... slight mods for flow and consonance

Poems: Weeds

 

Weeds

 

if you hug a flower

and get cornered by the petals,

some of them will speak of heaven,

others of absurd ruckus,

or even a lawnmower's blade. 

 

the various florets

flirt with primeval mandalas:

archeo-operas whose pollinic dramas 

prop the world with their sexual feats.

 

deeper still,

the spores unveil savvy moods, 

seductive in their trans-kingdom relations. 

secret eggs of never-seen insects

mutter sub rosa, cloistered by december.

the protocols jump about, trangress, activate!

they haggle with beehives,

banter under parleys of  knotholes,

all of it so agog, 

colors stalking and rooting hither and thither,

while birth and death just complain.

==================

We all have things to be grateful for--But...

 

There should be a day for all of us to give thanks for what we have.  But it shouldn’t be linked to the myth of the ‘happy, joyous’ get-together between the Wampanoag and the Pilgrims in 1621.  There was a feast, but the Indians weren’t invited.  Adult male Indians showed up when they heard gunfire, ready for war.  The Wampanoag had lost two-thirds of their people from disease in The Great Dying.  And so on ... 

 

Even less should Thanksgiving be tied to ‘happy, joyous’ unity between Indigenous People and European and American settlers.  This is a tale of treachery, genocide, slavery and cultural annihilation.

 

Here is some audio:

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/post-reports/the-myth-of-thanksgiving/

 

Here is a newspaper article with interviews:

 

https://bangordailynews.com/2021/11/25/news/new-england/tribes-see-no-reason-to-celebrate-on-thanksgiving/

 

Thanksgiving, as it is, continues to gaslight the reality of what happened -- and who we are.

 

 

===================

Poem: Face

 Face

 

plastic silk 

caters to docile daily games,

 

related to leather yet less dead, 

preface to rigor-mortis,

 

volatile and pert of reflex,

mostly a smile,

and yet 

when dreams intrude,

cheeks pillow to mask

 

the starved pleading.

==============

Poem: Ab Ovo

 

Ab Ovo

 

ooze sloshes soil 

sex mixers mixing

swizzles of ropey strands

snippets of jump ropes 

skip skip skip 

pleaching plasmid protohounds

algal fungal dogfight freak outs

methane collapse 

boom 

jellyfish

boom 

trilobites

offshoots 

and offshoots

of trilobites

branch branch branch

polyps minnows dinos sharks

hydras of assorted hackle 

branch branch branch 

boom

mammals

branch branch branch 

boom

humans

uppity 

hungry kind wise sad happy cruel

sex sex sex sex

fear fear fear fear

fearful fearsome tools 

tech tools machine tools

males high females low 

laughter song art

god god god male male male

war slaves love 

god god christ christ 

female = sinful 

gay =evil

sex sex sex evil evil 

gay = evil

female = sinful

heaven devil judgement war

war war war

impale crucify 

drawn and quartered 

guillotine 

guns industrial

guns

sweatshops cotton rum slaves  

cheat cheat cheat 

war war war

guns guns guns

despots dictators genocide

male male male 

women = trophy fascist baby-maker

thousands millions billions

trillions of computer bytes 

decillions of quadrillions 

more more more

guns guns guns  

greed greed greed

uproot expand exploit

cars guns drones 

nukes nukes nukes

robots 

AI lovers

smiling robots 

a nanite in every quark 

quantum = love

AI killers

hit return 

boom 

======================

8/12/24 ... edits ... very hard poem to work into consonance... 

Poem: Grey Sky

 

Grey Sky

 

no tells in the old face 

of this tufted, eroded scholar 

waiting waiting waiting

for the prick of a dream to decide.

 

does it couch jubilant rain, vacuous mettle,

 or the terse dissonance 

of a lost windsong's sob?

all?  none?

 

a solar signet, dim in the folds 

of the amorphous envelope--

what what what why why why!--

maybe a shy star, 

urgent of brilliant seethe to spread?

 

 who knows … these …

 

semi-frozen cheeks 

of meditative monotony 

wait perhaps for nothing, no thought,

pure of hover, no aim or care 

whether spendlor erupts 

from a soft-knitted, grey-silked chrysalis.

===============================

7/15/24

Fight For A New Better Freedom

 

As the American people and their leaders navigate this dangerous period of crisis, interregnum and paradigm shift, they will need to resist seductive illusions and refuse easy answers offered by hucksters who assure them there is an easy way out. To defeat and survive the rising fascist tide, there is only one solution: Accept that the old world is gone, and fight to create a better one.

                                                 Chauncey DeVega

 

https://www.salon.com/2021/10/18/fascism-or-freedom-america-is-stuck-in-an-ugly-and-in-between/

Poem: Jawbone On The Beach

 

Jawbone On The Beach

 

askance on a cracked whelk,

spiky molars that leer,

and a little white cuspid gleam 

of scythes.

 

plucked from a skeleton

as sure as wind drops fruit,

now an aimless bit of barracuda

on a wet-gray slab.

 

a beachcomber  

will find a backscratcher,

or a poet might mistake it

for a fanged moon.

 

perhaps it will rise again,

haggard as a hawk wing,

ecstatic in the palm of a child

or spirit-dancer.

==============================

Poem: Graveyard

 

Graveyard

 

i slink into an ignorable place,

where all-White names

cling to history on buoys of gray stone.

such poor choices for lifting hearts,

gnawed by lichen, tottering and heavy,

barely able to sneer

from eroded, chiselled pores.

 

why is an extinct passenger pigeon 

perched over a 153-year-old child?

no breeze to soothe as i kneel 

and peer at the final figment

of someone whose son had impregnated

my great grandmother’s aunt.

 

after a tussle with manners 

i both laugh and cry

at these slabs of sanctimony

which pontificate from the tongue of a chisel.

i leap to run, larkful in my swoops,

until the marble hovels and stern crosses give way

to balsam steeples.   

==================================

7/20/24 edits ... I struggle onward  ... till I die, and get graved myself, or just burned

11/29/23 ... lots  of edits, hopefully improved this poor poem

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/01/180111084953.htm

The passenger pigeon wasn't in trouble prior to Europeans arrival in North America. Nothing suggests that the species was struggling in any way.

Perhaps this isn't that surprising. In the 19th century passenger pigeons were so numerous that there were contests to shoot as many of them as possible during a certain period of time. In one competition, the winner had shot 30 000 birds.

Call Trumpism What It Is.

From A History of the World in the Twentieth Century, by J.A.S Grenville: 

 [Pre-WWII] fascism was a movement designed to secure the support of the masses for a leader without the intermediary of a democratically elected parliament.  It was a substitute for democracy, giving the masses the illusion of power without the reality.  Thus, though violently anti-communist, fascism appeared to support the existing social and economic hierarchy of society and so appealed to the right.  Fascism made a virtue of destroying the powers of parties and divisions in the state.  It stood for 'strength through unity' at the expense of civil liberties.  The cult of the leader was fostered by the leader above all and his principal lieutenants.  Fascism was a chauvinist male-oriented movement assigning women to the role of child-bearing and raising a family.  It was stridently nationalist.  The leader, with virtually unlimited powers, stood at the apex of a party, a private army and a bureaucracy.  Violence against opponents cowed possible opposition.  The fascist army and bureaucracy of course ensured that tens of thousands would have a vested interest in preserving the fascist state.  Here loyalty to the movement, not social standing, provided an avenue to advancement to the unscrupulous and the ambitious.  (ch.18, p.152)

Why can't we stop calling the Republicans "conservative" and call them what they really are, authoritarians?  Why must the Democrats be so cowardly? 

http://owlwholaughs.blogspot.com/2020/09/stop-calling-republicans-conservative.html

==========

 

Poem: Lucky Second

 

Lucky Second

 

the clear of the mind

is the still of the room

is the quiet of angels

looking down at a blue 

much bigger than anything before,

so many aspects,

too many to approach with words,

the effort itself a trap,

all attempts moot,

the first the last,

and yet passion rushes in 

amid sheep and bones,

to jump ghosts of ink 

onto a purity of paper.

 

and so there they are

words, words, words, 

falling off pinnacles never reached,

tarred-and-feathered with flourishes,

fresh only for a lucky second 

in the magical glissade of time.

 

words, words, words, 

fascinations and misgivings,

promises and desperate sins, 

ideals and brazen naked tears

which wallow 

on the hot harsh sheep-baahed, bone-strewn ground,

summarized

 as if crawling on a sideways ladder,

a ladder that could be ceaseless piano keys

whose music is symbol, mask, pride,

a flailing, frothing fate to drown 

in the inability to get it right. 

================================

7/20/24 eds

Regarding the Poems

Thank you for reading the poems!

The poems are often not in the best of shape when I post them.  They go up because they get more editing that way.

Recently, "Poppies" has been a lot of trouble.  I don't know if it's fixed.

When someone reads an older poem, I can sometimes see the history.  I then go back and check it again.  Of course, it's too late for whoever clicked it, if I make a change, which I often do.

Some poems will never be ‘good’, due simply to my lack of ability. 

I am glad, though, that some readers find a bit of impact.

Fly Well In The Dark,

 OWL

owlwholaughs@gmail.com

==========

Poem: Homeless and Penniless

 

Homeless and Penniless

 

words.  they are Diogenes' lantern

looking for one honest ear.

they are fugitive:  grief-weakened fragments of

of a dismantled hearth

strewn across hungry days,

lost in uncertain quest.

 

one sentence could take months,

only to get thieved by a cave swallow.

twisted into a long, knotted nest

of mud-and-twig under an overpass.

 

a single word can be  

a murmurous, mellifluous sitar of touch

which nestles for a mere moment 

to strum a lover's nape.

 

but!

--to sail on skis of contrails,

above birds-of-paradise that nod to kiss in breeze,

if that might be what it takes

for a drunk to look up from a jail cell of drinks ... 

and yet no no no 

all that means nothing.

the soul scrabbles after unchained moments,

unsullied newborn joys,

instantaneous togethery-nesses.

too low to be noticed.  and yet so high

above the truth of the fall.

=====================

10/14/24

7/20/24

This is another poem where I really don't know what I am talking about

Poem: A History of Rain

History of Rain

 

the sky is dying

in ditches and puddles,

leavening the streets

with emotions recycled from our crimes.

drainpipes moan like didgeridoos,

vibrating with the same water

that fell on mammoths, stegosaurs,

and before that, the howl

of youthful volcanoes.

 

when water first fell

it played phoenix without fire,

a rainforest of phoenixes every day--

then came the humans and their faces

and the collisions with tears.

 

there’s been no escape, since then,

from the happy-sad, stressed, vain cheeks,

and the gutters below their fitful melodramas.

torrents have become histrionic.

storms a soap opera rife with gods.

rain rages, wails or chortles now.

no innocent praise,

no rising up with the dignity of fresh angels.  

no celebration

in the vibrato of puddles anymore,

only little theaters-in-the-round,

microcosms of the lonely.

=======================

Poem: Poppy

 

Poppy

 

species

come and go without a tomb,

tracking cordilleras

which shrink into puny moraines.

 

supernovas paint millennia of sky,

and yet bullets from outer space,

meteoric in their brief blazing bright,

never silence the planet’s breath.

 

and a single poppy,

 

eager orange-yellow globe,

eye of molten dinosaurs,

it opens sometimes, for a moment, 

to guzzle down millions of gone years--

 

years frozen for the ages and gone,

even though they burn from a friction of eons

for the poppy.

 

millions of years, yes,

compressed into a brilliant fresh moment of sight.

and then they simply explode, so fast,

into a bloom.

================================

7/18/24

Poem: Not So Hidden

 

Not So Hidden

 

the dawn turns slowly away,

puzzled as a curse

by what lurks in its flaws:

 

a paradox

which ants and worms and even highest birds

and playful children 

never see:

 

a vast beauty 

whose eternal flame fascinates even as it brightens-- 

and yet awakens harm.

 

comets 

strum starry harps and lyres with their plumes,

and yet the sweet night too falters, 

 

swinging its sidereal crown,

silver candelabra in hand,

past so many scarred ghosts.

 

like that, just so,  

above those down below them

broken on the unforgiving earth,

the precious day and the treasured night 

move on.

===============================

Poem: Wealthy

 

Wealthy

 

blue marries green,

a consecration of rebirth,

shoots rise to raindrops,

one perch meets another,

a land so lush and petalled:

blossoms not coins,

gold without vaults, 

easygoing as breeze,

life beyond pavement.

==============================

Poem: House Life

 House Life

in detergent, dishwater, cups and plates,

or when i make lemonade,

gremlins bubble up,

 

too many to appease,

neglected and miffed.  they are

the resonance of my dormant cello.

 

i hide

when they peep from my apron,

or frolic in the travertine shine

of the kitchen countertop.

 

gremlins, yes, invisible 

but gnawing and cloying,

the same honey lathered on every smile,

like plunging my tongue into lard.

==========================

7/19/24 ... mucho more changes. .. this is a projective poem, based on what I've listened to, read, movies, etc.  I don't know if it's ethical for me to take this perspective, but I didn't think about that when I wrote it.  Maybe it's okay, because, say, novels are, all the time, having to create and behaviorize characters of various genders, ages, orientations, nationalities, etc.   Maybe it isn't okay, maybe it's like a White writer lamenting from the perspective of a Black character ... which also is questionable ... ugh ... confused

10/29/23 ... I tried to make this poem a little more engaging, changing a couple phrases.

Inspired by The Feminine Mystique

Poem: Happy Couple

 

Happy Couple

 

devilish of smile,

we laugh with no change of tone

from straight-lipped frowns.

 

we hold hands,

warm from hibernation,

to exit each other’s icicle spiderwebs.

 

guilt and guile

wax to-and-fro

in the comings and goings

of relatives and friends.

 

you caramelize what i am,

while i sugarcoat your moments.

no despair or rapture

in our peccadillo kitsch.

agile as geminis, 

we share a face across quadrilles 

of ongoing astrological flanks. 

 

pain, it comes round.

we entertain it 

and each other all the while,

not looking too close,

but saying hello, once again,

every once in a while.

===================================

7/19/24

Republicans are not stupid: they are ruthlessly logical

 ==

NOTE:  if you like this post, you might like this one as well:

The Ultimate Test

==

Someday, let us hope, history will look back at this time objectively.   When it does, it shall conclude that the GOP has abandoned truth in major ways, with devastating consequences.  And yet, they have not done this out of ignorance.

 

Caricature, lampoon or otherwise deride them, the Republicans are using a highly effective rational strategy to gain and maintain power.  The strategy involves the creation of a base of followers so committed that they are completely loyal, regardless of the truth.

 

The GOP project is all about gaslighting.  It claims to be good and righteous, while labeling its opponents as evil.  Despite the rhetoric, it intends to destroy democracy.  It champions White heteronormative patriarchal supremacy.  It rewards blind obedience and punishes decency, empathy and ethics.  It replaces human rights with might-makes-right. 

 

This project requires immense deceit, part of which is denying that there is any deceit.  It holds up the Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen.  It is, at the deepest level, dedicated to hiding what it is.  Hence, the GOP path, in general, has become the Maximum Lie.

 

This is evil.  But it isn’t stupid.   Calling the GOP stupid and ignorant, in fact, reveals the liberal side’s own ignorance and vulnerability.

 

Again, Donald Trump is often called stupid.  But he is no more stupid than a cunning crime boss.  He currently leads a movement that has forever changed America.  It may gain complete control of all three branches of government.  Given the goal, the strategy has been wildly successful and is completely logical.

 

Trump may already have reached the point where his sheer power completes his metamorphosis from the greatest con man of our times to the most powerful leader, someone who could in the near future, be discussed as widely and reverentially as, say, Napoleon.

 

If that conclusion seems absurd to you, or repels you, my response is this: Wake up.  The Republicans are not foolish.  An organized, impassioned zealous minority, united behind a charismatic authority, can defeat and control a disorganized and internally divided majority.  This is a simple fact, demonstrated over and over through time.

 

Fear and hate can--and have--defeated science and unpleasant major truths.  An example of such a truth is that the covid vaccine reduces death.  That is obvious.  But it doesn’t matter.   It won’t stop a populist movement with momentum on its side, and a magnetic leader who can herd a sizeable minority of citizens into cult-like fawning.

 

Death, economic ruin, the decline of the American Empire, these accompany the fall of democracy.  None of that matters, if your goal is a less vibrant, less decent, less competent country under your thrall, a country whose primary goal, above all else, is to protect and preserve the power of its leader. 

 

Why would intelligent human beings throw away freedom for this?  Fear, first of all.  But also because their own fortune, as they define it, is tied to their leader.  A charismatic takeover works for those who can ride the coattails of the nascent autocrat.  They get more money, more attention, more ego-pampering. 

 

The psychology of this is intricate, and varies from follower to follower.  Anne Applebaum brings this out in her chilling, meticulous piece on collaborators in The Atlantic [1].  The bottom line is this:  conscience will not stop people from knuckling under.  And yes, some will eagerly abandon ethics for power.

 

Note that many Republicans might not even consciously know the path they are following--even though it is blatant in their actions.  If you want to get Biblical:  The tree is known by its fruit.

 

Denial is useful for those who have chosen evil.  It removes the shackle of guilt in the rush to destroy equality and erect a throne.  Total belief in a false worldview has advantages for the plotters of a coup.  For instance, if you adamantly claim you are not doing what you are actually doing--with convincing body language and delivery--it can stymie and slow the opposition, while assisting in the recruitment of more followers. 

 

If you think denial cannot partner with effective goal-seeking, then you are not doing justice to the complexity of the human mind.   Is this rational?  It is within a framework of seizing power.  The logic of the Maximum Lie is efficacious for usurpation.

 

The price of a GOP takeover is absolutely devastating.  Equality, empathy, freedom of the press, indeed, freedom to express, all gone--and so much more.  Worse of all, an all-powerful narcissism invites war; and in the nuclear age, war is global doom. 

 

The best defense is to stop calling Republicans stupid or ignorant.  Accept that they are fearless in their realpolitik.  Be honest.  Call them authoritarians, not conservatives.  Stop pretending that the threat isn’t real.

 

Remind yourself, too, that ethics, empathy and compassion are wonderful things.  We need them as torches to light the way as we stumble into the future

[1]   https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/07/trumps-collaborators/612250/

===========================

Ethics Review: Sketches of Five Netflix Shows: Marshall, Birth of the Dragon, Paradise Hills, No One Gets Out Alive, and Midnight Mass

 

SPOILER ALERT ON ALL SHOWS

There are a lot of movies/series that I’d like to ethically review.  The focus is the deeper cultural messages they implant.  However, I just don’t have time.  I am trying to finish up my novel and send it out before 2022.  I also need my poetry for spiritual survival.  The catharsis keeps me sane and connected to my spirit guides. 

 

Given lack of time, I am reduced to sketches.  Here are five of them.  Four movies and a series recently featured on Netflix.   The only one I really liked was Midnight Mass (see 5). 

SPOILER ALERT ON ALL SHOWS

 

(1) Marshall (2017)

Marshall is a fictional account of the early legal battles and brave brilliance of Thurgood Marshall.  It does a great job showing why he is deservedly considered a true hero and leader in the fight against racism.  It advances the rights of Black people, especially men, and to a lesser degree Jewish people, and maybe White women.

The movie has a significant ethical flaw.  It embraces sexist myths about rape.  Namely, that if a victim doesn’t yell or fight or use any opportunity to flee or call the police, then it saddles them with the legitimate suspicion that they weren’t really raped, or that it was all their own fault.

In the movie, the defense team, which includes Marshall, argues that the woman on the stand wasn’t really raped because she had opportunities to scream to a police officer, and also to use the phone to call the police. 

Hence, the defense argues, because the woman didn’t speak up, she is lying.  This has been a standard generic argument, used to protect rapists and sexual abusers, probably forever.

As Alanis Morrissette said, “Women don’t wait.  Our culture doesn’t listen.”

It is a common psychological response to freeze up during threat or violence.  The victim simply can’t move or make decisions, out of fear, shock, and other complex emotions and factors. 

Freezing up doesn’t mean the victim should feel guilty, or in any way deserves blame.  Nor does it mean they (female or male) were not raped, the conclusion drawn by Marshall's defense team in the movie.

In a dramatic scene, the lawyer working with Marshall is gagged by him in front of the jury.  He does this because the women on the witness stand says she was gagged.  He then lets out a huge scream, one easily heard throughout the courtroom.

This super-loud scream is meant to shame the woman on the stand, and to prove that she couldn’t have been raped.  Why?  Because she was in the back seat of a car, when a police officer pulled over the alleged perpetrator.

First, to repeat, yet again:  no one is to blame for freezing up when assaulted or threatened.  Fight, flight and freeze are all common responses. 

Second, note that women are taught to be silent, and not complain or make a fuss, as part of a traditional sexist culture. 

Third, leaving the above aside, research show there are good evolutionary reasons to freeze up in dangerous situations.  It seems to be built into us as a survival mechanism. 

In the past, if you tried to run from or fight a pack of wolves, or a nearby lion, chances are high you would die.  If you remain still, though, the predator might not notice you, or might think twice.

In the movie, if the woman screamed out, the driver could have overpowered and killed the police officer who stopped the car.  It was a rural deserted road, late at night, and the driver was alleged to have a knife.  A knife is actually better than a gun in hand-to-hand combat, especially if the officer is surprised by the adrenaline-hyped attacker lunging out of the car.

A better tribute to Thurgood Marshall would not have emphasized the power of sexist myths to impress a jury.  Yes, in the movie, the woman wasn't actually raped.  But that doesn't mean you should attempt to sell Marshall's prowess by spotlighting the defense's use of such myths.  Culturally, these myths protect rapists and thereby encourage rape and sexual assault.

In effect, the producers make a statement against racism by hugging sexism. 

#TributeFail

 

(2) Birth of the Dragon (2017)

 

This action & adventure movie about Bruce Lee’s early life is amazingly sexist.  It boils down to a simple formula.  Kung fu fighters are all male; and the best kung fu fighter is also the wisest spiritual leader on the planet, and other males should adopt their approach to gain wisdom and rule. 

In short, the more people you can beat up, the better you are in all ways.

Women, so this worldview goes, can’t do any of this, and so they are natural followers.  There are zero empowering roles for women in the movie.  There are only two female actors of note in the whole thing.  One is the evil antagonist, the stereotype of the wicked whore, who runs a sex trafficking and slavery operation.  The other is the passive, all-good angel, who is also the romantic interest of a secondary male character (yes, he is going to save her).

As with many sexist movies, the few women are either cookie-cutter whores, goddesses, or mother-types, who support males that have the power and adventure.

The two greatest kung fu fighters in the movie are Bruce Lee and Wong Jack Man.  Each is in effect a god at beating up other men .  Many scenes are shown of gatherings where these awesome men demonstrate their physical superiority, and hence their right to lead and demand fealty.  For most of the movie, Bruce Lee acts with the arrogant, taunting machismo of a bully, a bully who says he loves capitalism and power.

Making the egregious ethical message worse, neither of these great enlightened masters cares about ending the slave-traffic.  Their spiritual enlightenment, derived from their ability to kill with their hands, doesn’t concern itself with the lowly fate of imprisoned women. 

At the end of the show, almost as an afterthought, Bruce Lee does end the slave trade in Chinatown.  But it never was his primary goal, and he does it by offering the Madame, and the men who control her, lots and lots of money.

Movies like this send a sad, primitive message to their intended target audience of young men.  They promote a macho ideal, one that has led civilization down the path of war for twelve thousand years.  If male chest-thumping continues to be our masculine norm, we are a doomed species. 

It is happening now.  Huge-ego men are rising up as leaders around the world (Trump, Modi, Xi, Duterte, Orvan, Erdogan, Jon-un  … ).  As has happened before, for thousands of years, the saber-rattling of these sorts of males will lead to war.  The war will, at some point, expand to become a World War, which today means nuclear annihilation.

Despite the very real implications, the trajectory of real doom, our entertainment industry continues to promote and make money off selling poisonous masculine norms to young men.

 

 

(3) Paradise Hills (2019)

This is a movie about rich teenage girls who are sent away by their parents for therapy.  The heroine finds out that the therapy involves a Stepford Wives-like transformation, one that creates conformist obedient servants who happily obey their powerful families and future husbands.

The movie succeeds in making a strong statement.   Women and girls in every society on the planet face control techniques, similar to those in the movie, from birth.  When that tactic fails, sheer violence is the ultimate arbiter.  Paradise Hills taps into that, and sends a message of rebellion against the norm.

Despite the effective slam of oppressive techniques, the big focus is on ‘first world problems’ faced by the middle and upper class--though not entirely.

The worse part of the movie is that, though the protagonist escapes, she never actually challenges the system.   As with Birth of the Dragon, ending slavery and mind control isn’t the goal of the heroine.  She doesn’t bring down Paradise Hills (though she kills its abominable administrator), and we can presume she lets it continue to destroy the minds of innocent girls who are sent there.

All in all, the movie makes a good statement about how women are expected to knuckle under and accept social stereotypes and masks, with nary a squeak of complaint.

 

(4)  No One Gets Out Alive (2021)

If you can look below the brutal misogynist plot, which invokes the bloody BTK treatment of dozens of women and girls (the true number is never revealed), there is a trenchant allegory here, one that is so painful because it damns how we live today in the real world.

The protagonist is a young undocumented immigrant woman.  Although she is a good person, she is met with cruelty, false kindness, and backstabbery at every turn.  Her only true ally is a relative who cannot save her from a horrible fate.   

White American men, benefitting from their privilege, are at the forefront of belittling, abusing and deceiving her (but they are not alone).  Money is used to coerce. At other times, simple brute force becomes a very physical bludgeon.  

This movie is so brutal and violent, focusing on predation of young women, that I couldn’t watch it all.  I read the summary on Netflix. 

I don’t see how it is entertainment, except for callous people who are numb to the obvious allegory and indictment.

Truth is, in our society today, undocumented immigrants, especially women, are treated violently and viciously in great disproportion.  It is also true that, in parts of Mexico, especially around the maquiladoras, murders of young women take place in large numbers with relative impunity.

This movie might succeed, through its shock power, as a way to generate empathy.  It paints a dismal, depressing picture of what an undocumented woman might face, coming to the USA.  It portrays White privilege in total, honest ugliness.

 I do have some doubts that the producers of No One Gets Out Alive even noticed the ethical potential of this gruesome story.  It has the ability to make us think.   However, the slaughter could also desensitize viewers, rather than open minds to greater empathy.

There is no ‘moral of the story’ built into the script.  All that the audience gets is:  the world sucks for immigrants, too bad, and if you’re female without the protection of a man, expect to be beaten down, one way or the other.

Again, it is disgusting that this movie can be marketed as “entertainment.”  This isn't entertainment, it is an exposé.  Of course, we lap this stuff up, and that only makes us look worse.

 

(5) Midnight Mass

Fresh from watching this, I think this is one of the best Netflix series I’ve ever seen.  It succeeds in demonstrating how evil can assume the role of good, and how it can convince a lot of people that they are righteous, even while they perpetrate great horror. 

In the series, the majority of the island dwellers are seduced and deceived.  How?  Through well-spoken rhetorical statements, and psychological manipulations, by powerful personalities.  And yet that wouldn’t be possible, except for the people’s own biases, vanities, and self-deceits.

This movie contains one of the greatest villain portrayals I have ever seen.  Not because she is mighty like a Maleficent, but because she is led by her prejudices to twist everything into a conscience-breaker of convincing lies.  She speaks so well, so seamlessly, without ever questioning herself, that her silver tongue swiftly recruits and dominates the weak.  Never once does she question her own motives.  The actor excels in this dark role.

Even at the end, when everything is ruin and blood, the islanders don’t face their seduction by darkness.  The progression of their delusion is realistic.  There’s no magic spell or ancient evil relic that renders mind control.  The debauchery proceeds through nothing more than believable psychological process.

Miraculous events do occur, ones without logical explanation, and there is a monster lurking beneath it all.  However, this creature relies on a certain zealous follower, who insanely believes he is doing good while he proselytizes, recruits and controls the others for his secret master.  On its own, the monster has many vulnerabilities and weaknesses.  It cannot even speak.

This tale realistically shows how the masses can be misled by a charismatic personality, in this case a male, backed by a codependent yet sinisterly competent female worshipper.  The people of the island sacrifice everything, even the lives of their own family members--and they still don’t get it, even when they themselves burn. 

Midnight Mass, perhaps more than any series I’ve seen, calls out how vulnerable we are to evil.  And yes, evil can become so manifest in our daily lives.  Consider fascism.  When fascism rises, those opposed to it are good by default, if only because they embrace some modicum of reason, fairness, and respect for life, while rejecting a cult mentality.

Sans actual monster, the transformation in Midnight Mass can happen in the United States, or in any country in the world.  It is hard for me to believe that Trumpism didn’t somehow influence the producers (apparently it didn't, given the timeline on wiki).

Excellent acting.  Fantastic writing by Mike Flanagan and others.

 

 

 

=========================

 

 

Poem: Refugees

 

Refugees

 

in the lost gardens,

petals fluttered to weave rosaries.

no one dared gaze on the fretful stars,

those pigments of bone.

 

they trekked

among bricks that lacked a hearth,

and boiled the bark of broken trees to chew.

chokeberry dyed their tongues.

 

tired legs slugged it out 

with the misshappen ground,

not so heavy yet as tank treads.

uneasy shoes sidled when they came upon a pit, 

those lucky, tangled corpses

immune to dysentery.

 

no rest, anywhere, for the thousands of eyes 

no longer ripe with tears.  too drained.

why rest unless commanded by a final sun? 

why scavenge for uselss dreams 

under the scythe of the moon?

 

with nothing left but stains

of tears, hope, blood and salt,

all passion lost, gone to dead relatives and homes,

the refugees stumbled upon a fence, 

and beheld a realm of green 

where war had no name.  

 

the well-fed ones on the other side

smiled at the refugees' scarlike mouths. 

they offered a welcome of wealthy words,

one that made less and less sense,

as they fastened more and more locks

on the beautiful gates.

================================

Poem: Mdfk

 

Mdfk

 

the <<<bong>>> of the clock had eternity on its tongue,

god in the tones of its chimes.

still, it was my headache that reigned omnipotent.

black holes in the temples of duty and inspiration.

black holes that sucked on light to throb.

 

 

there would be no bypass

of the freudian duress that gorged on sound.

ixnay on the anodynes, 

the aceta-ibu-mino-prophetic-fen.

when a murdered ghost saddles a host

to claim all ears, force its fury,

and possess an otherwise static mouth,

 

it was like this.

 

no exit

from the Snuffleupagus

and what it represented from a congested childhood.

the betrayals still hard to believe,

never wanted to be thought of again

and again and again,

let alone to dominate every sensation

and block the doors.

=======================================

Poem: Reflection In Cola

 

Reflection in Cola

 

white hair, effervesce of tar,

blue eyes gone black, unwandering,

when nose pokes nose,

ribbing a liquid mirror with each breath.

 

a man in a brown moon,

bubbles for craters, he cannot hide.

his dimples burst upward 

round an airbrushed smile of curves and glass.

 

and his head, whaaaaaa?

far more eggish than realized.

absurd with wrinkles

per tap of fingertip.

 

you peppy fool!

 

the pedestal of your importance

shrinks as you sip yourself away,

smaller and smaller,

mutual in a blank  stare.

 

and are you truly so bemused?

realllllly?

that your ego could fixate for so long

on someone as thin as a surface?

============

7/21/24 ... 

Original version (significantly different) published in Octavo.

Poem: Storm Through Glass

 

Storm Through Glass

 

a dizzy inertia of rain

accosts the window with its inkless blips.

a rorschach patina-menagerie.

what glossy thudding heads.

 

they shriek silent, but not quiet.

it's the gales 

who thrash and paint all the nonsense splatter:

 

the trickle-twisted horns, whisked whiskers,

and storm-coopered hooves.

a mutable zoo, far too grotesque;

 yet generous, still, to blur the visible;

 

for if these ideas resolved full,

my nightmares would mar

the tempestuous pane.

====================

Poem: Proof

 

Proof

 

shadows crept with little aplomb

anemic under a filmy light bulb;

the bulb a starved winter sunset,

dimmer and dimmer

less yellow and succulent.

never there.

 

but it was the rat nest of books,

nestled in dogears,

that feasted on an old man's tired hands

to devour his paralyzed,

insensate scholarship.

as proof, real mice

throbbed in the walls,

eerie in their omen of sibilance.

 

below half-dead, hung eyes

a tome of hope lay open

--vivisected, mostly slain--

yet no cure for the old man's tortured quest,

no Quod Erat Demonstrandum.

 

the sad only conclusion, then, 

being a certain kind of god.

a god who had designed a futile math,

an impregnable tower,

all of human knowledge 

merely the architrave.

 

to climb above would be to slide,

to become sunset’s smallest last shadow--

forever to stretch, thinner, ceaseless,

not gone, but nevertheless

never there.

 

 

=================================

Poem: New Physics

 

New Physics

 

a person, they say

is in fact a universe

with as many neurons

as there are galaxies.

and no one really

can put a value on any of it,

because meaning depends

on what is thought.

death, they say, resolves omega,

a solution to all one's quests;

and the light cast off

is more than equal

to the original big bang.

in fact, outside of time,

before you take shape

or move or hope,

all possibles manifest. 

so when you go out

or come in

through that blinding door,

there is, on the obverse,

so they say, a mirror

of your own making,

one that bends to infinity,

such is their claim, anyway,

no matter where you tend 

to walk.

 =================