Saturday, December 25, 2021

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.



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

Friday, December 24, 2021

Poem: Pine Needles & Tree

 

Pine Needles & Tree

 

always popping, 

quiet firecrackers in constellations.

emerald mobile that always explodes.

 

sparks 

plummet plummet plummet without descent,

green streamers suspended in aggregate--


upside-down bursting puffs! 


they feather to wing a pyramid,

ruffled coniferous skyward bird,


see how it journeys!

swarmed by sun,

soaring celebratory,

uplifted by gusts.





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

Wednesday, December 22, 2021

Poem: Icy Window

 

Icy Window

 

intransigence,

pale of steel, long of tooth,

it stalks warm morsels,

water the jugular,

paralyzed and bled.

 

how it dances,

square of mouth,

smutched ghost,

frosted in grimace,

crystalline, translucent

 

breath.



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

Sunday, December 19, 2021

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

Tuesday, December 14, 2021

Poem: Log Turtle Pond Dusk

 

Log Turtle Pond Dusk

 

shadow smooth sepia,

a silence of shape,

inconstant as frills

in a breezy parade,

 

a log peeps a knuckle,

turtle-shell oval,

above the darkling caress,

almost fetal

 

meek of consciousness,

this peace that greets evening

to accept

its stridulant blanket.






========

Thursday, December 9, 2021

Poem: December Field

 

December Field

 

stragglers in a mouth of strangled grass.


the field itself a giant maw 

of basketwork, ice, and all the old loves.

 

dregs of sepals

suffer spots of wan snow posing as ants.

 

among the flaxen glacé cross-stitches,

a little cosmos wears grim cheeks--

 

a wormwood rouge of nosegays, orts, rose hips,

limp spiderwebs and beetle crusts,

 

all of them, at once, whipped by a thistle.




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

Monday, December 6, 2021

Poem: Ants In The Dirt

 

Ants In The Dirt

 

before time began,

they slaved, just the same,

to build castles with the mortar

in dull, dutiful eyes.


the same busy, chitinous flame--

 

it 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 voids.

and yet the ants, just as now,

adapted without question.

 

you can see it, even today,

in the nature of their feasts,

as they branch through the blood

of extinct histories. 

 

such stupid power--

 

there is no dust without it,

and no ants without dust.

they mock the corpses we have been

 and will be.



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

Wednesday, December 1, 2021

Poem: Muddy Field

 

Muddy Field

 

it’s been long since mammoths

sank to gouge these slurpy folds,

or the mud wolfed down a pterodactyl.

 

still, it harbors hints of these creatures,

stashed among other memorabilia,

a zoo Noah’s Ark never attained.

 

someday it will eat humans

and their flagrant vehicles too--

all those pockmarks of sole,

and crosshatches of truck tread--

 

the whole kit and caboodle

of mucky incoherent maze.

 

and then, stoic yet prophetic,

the palimpsest undramatic

will smile without smiling

under damselflies over rust.




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







sole + soul

Monday, November 29, 2021

Poem: Fatale

 

Fatale

 

god had built beauty to harbor evil--

that was the Big Why.

 

even love

had to lurch to the cruel parody of an erratic Clown.

 

there were two nails

that constructed and crucified the way of all things:

 

serenity and cataclysm.

and the Earth,


such a forgiving

abundant magnificent executioner

 

waited.



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













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

Friday, November 26, 2021

Poems: Weeds

 

Weeds

 

when you hug a flower

and get cornered by the petals

some of them speak of heaven,

others of fussy ruckus,

or even lawnmower blades. 

 

in the florets,

seizures of mandalas;

prototypes for archaic feathers;

pollinic atoms that prop the world

with their sexual feats.

 

deeper still,

spores become complex.

botany develops moods.

secret eggs of never-seen insects

mutter like old men bitten by december.

 

protocols start to jump around.

they haggle with beehives,

banter with knotholes.

all agog, the stalks root and leap,

while birth and death just complain.





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

Thursday, November 25, 2021

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.

 

 

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

Monday, November 22, 2021

Poem: Face

 Face

 

plastic silk,

how it caters to docile daily games,

 

a relative of leather

yet less dead, a rigor-mortis preface

 

with a volatile, pert smile reflex,

and yet

 

the battle is lost

when dreams intrude,

 

such candid pain,

till cheeks pillow to mask

 

the starved pleading.






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






Friday, November 19, 2021

Poem: Devolve

 

Devolve

 

ooze cloyed, soil sloshed,

germ to rex, sex mixers mixing,

swizzled chromosomes, dopey chaos,

hag-ridden gusts, ballets of flakes,

pegasus then fiend, see-thru seizures,

snippets of spliced jump ropes,

pleached plasmid protohounds,

algal dogfights, fungal freak outs,

emerald offshoots, trees varicose,

 

polyps, trilobites, monsters, sharks,

hydras of fanged furry blood

branch branch branch branch

branch branch branch branch

hackles far too aroused, uppity,

kind wise sad happy cruel,

sex sex sex sex

fear fear fear fear

fear to craft fearsome tools,

laughter, song, impalement, war,

god = love, slavery,

heaven, crucifixion, hell, war,

drawn and quartered,

 

slavery, sweatshops,

wipe out whole peoples,

suppress women, slay difference,

deceive deceive deceive,

war war war

despots, dictators, fascists,

avarice makes billions,

trillions, quadrillions, more,

exploit, extinct, consume,

cars, guns, drones, bots,

orgasms in algorithms,

orgasms in modified gene pools,

computerized molecules,

quantum = love,

deathless robot weapons,

boom.

 




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

Wednesday, November 17, 2021

Poem: Grey Sky

 

Grey Sky

 

tufted and eroded,

no tells in the old face of this long neutral sleeper

waiting waiting waiting

for the prick of a dream to decide.

 

such lofty mist,

it couches passion or tripe,

jubilant rain

or the terse dissonance of long-lost windsong sobbed.

 

what is that solar signet

dim on an envelope of ancient grey and

what what what why why why?

maybe shy stars within?

a poem urgent to be read?

 

 who knows … these …

 

frozen billows of endless ivory 

meditate meditate meditate--

is that what they do?

wait for thought to erupt, pure of hover?

gods from a soft-knitted, grey-silked chrysalis?




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

Sunday, November 14, 2021

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/

Wednesday, November 10, 2021

Poem: Jawbone On The Beach

 

Jawbone On The Beach

 

it emanates brute,

askance atop a cracked whelk,

with thistle-mean molars that leer,

and the cuspid gleam of white scythes.

 

force stole it from a skeleton

as easily as wind snaps a branch off a tree,

now a bit of aimless barracuda

on wet-sand gray.

 

maybe a beachcomber  

will need a backscratcher,

or an artist might mistake it

for a fanged eighth moon--

 

or perhaps it will rise up again,

haggard as a raptor wing,

ecstatic in the palm of a dancer.




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

Sunday, November 7, 2021

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 their eroded, chiselled pores.

 

why is an extinct passenger pigeon 

perched over a child 153 years old?

no breeze to soothe as i kneel at the next stone,

and peer at the final figment

of someone whose son had impregnated

my great grandmother’s aunt.

 

after a tussle with manners, 

i laugh at all these heavy pimples of sanctimony,

things that only pretended 

to hoard truth in their fleshless throat.

i leap to run, larkful in my swoops,

until the runty hovels and stern crosses give way

to balsam steeples.   





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





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.

Thursday, November 4, 2021

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

==========

 

Tuesday, November 2, 2021

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 bigger blue than anything ever before.

too many aspects to approach with words.

the first should be the last,

and yet it struggles with a deep apprehension

of its layered failure.

 

the effort itself a trap.

all attempts moot.

and yet passion rushes in, anyway,

appalled by sheep and stones,

to jump ghosts of ink onto a purity of paper.

 

of course, they fall.

fall off a pinnacle never reached;

fall like fools tarred-and-feathered with flourishes,

no longer fresh on the magical, moving seat

of a lucky second.

 

misgivings

and fascinations, promises

and desperate sins, and the ideals

that strengthened brazen, naked tears,

they wallow on the hot harsh bone-strewn ground--


summarized--

 

as if crawling on a sideways ladder,

one confused for piano keys.

but the music of the symbols

in the sounds of the lack of concerto

is just words.  mere words.


masks.  conceit.






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

Thursday, October 28, 2021

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



==========

Tuesday, October 26, 2021

Poem: Penniless

 

Penniless

 

words as lanterns

looking for one honest ear.

the product of grief-weakened manners.

incensed quests.

 

just one sentence could take months,

only to get thieved by a cave swallow

nesting its ribbons of song under an overpass.

 

at best,

a murmurous, mellifluous sitar of touch

nestled against a 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 drunks to look up from the jail cell of their drinks--

 

that all means nothing.

and yet the soul scrabbles after such unchained moments,

such unsullied joys,

such unbothered togethery-nesses,

so high above the truth of the fall.




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

Saturday, October 23, 2021

Poem: A History of Rain

History of Rain

 

the sky is dying

in ditches and puddles,

leavening the streets

till they swell 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 young volcanoes.

 

when water first fell

it neatly evaporated,

playing phoenix without fire,

a rainforest of phoenixes every day--

then came the human faces

and collisions with tears.

 

ever since, there’s been no escaping

those sad happy bored stressed mean vain fitful cheeks

and the gutters below their vicious melodrama.

torrents have become histrionic.

storms a modem of the gods.

 

rain rages, wails or chortles now.

there’s no innocent praise,

no rising up with the dignity 

of fresh angels.  no hallelujah

in the vibrato of  puddles,

only microcosms of the theaters 

of the lonely.







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


Wednesday, October 20, 2021

Poem: Poppies

 

Poppies

 

entire species

come and go without a tomb,

tracking cordilleras

that shrink into feeble moraines.

 

supernovas paint millennia of sky,

and yet bullets from outer space

--meteoric in brief bright blaze--

never silence the planet’s breath.

 

And poppies,

Oh the poppies,

 

those eager orange-yellow globes,

eyes of molten dinosaurs,

opened for a moment

to guzzle down millions of missing years--

 

yet frozen in all that,

even as they burn from a friction of eons.

 

millions of years,

yes,

compressed into a brilliant fresh consciousness.

and then it simply explodes--


blooms.






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

Sunday, October 17, 2021

Poem: Not So Hidden

 

Not So Hidden

 

the dawn turns slowly away,

puzzled as a curse

by myths that lurk in its flaws:

 

harsh ironies

that ants and worms and even highest birds--

even playful children--

never have to see,

 

a sort of beauty whose eternal flame

always brightens, even fascinates,

yet awakens harm.

 

plumes of comets

strum the starry harps and lyres;

and yet sweet night falters, too,

 

swings a sidereal countenance

past so many scarred ghosts,

a silvery candelabra in its hand,

 

and moves on.





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

Tuesday, October 12, 2021

Poem: Wealthy

 

Wealthy

 

moonstones

feed themselves to emerald,

a squander without haste.

 

a sacrifice so strong.

for rebirth.  for shoots

that rise upward. 

 

a gift so others might be rich.

losing a perch

to find one again,

 

then high as before,

beholding what was fed,

everything so lush,

 

petalled,

blossoms unlike coins,

free to live.




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

Monday, October 11, 2021

Poem: Mystique

 Mystique


gremlins bubble

in detergent, dishwater, cups and plates,

or when i make lemonade.

 

too many to appease,

each neglected and miffed.

resonance of my dormant cello.

 

i hide

when they peep from my apron,

or frolic in travertine shine.

 

cloying gremlins,

same as honey on everything,

or plunging my tongue into lard.







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






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

Inspired by The Feminine Mystique

Thursday, October 7, 2021

Poem: Happy Couple

 

Happy Couple

 

devilish of smile,

we laugh with no change of tone

from straight-lipped frowns.

 

we hold hands

warm from hibernating

to exit each other’s icicle spiderwebs.

 

guile and guilt

wax to-and-fro

in the comings and goings

of mutual friends.

 

you caramelize what i am,

while i sugarcoat your torment--

no elegy or euphoria

in our sin-on-canvas kitsch.

 

we learn to share the other’s facade,

agile as geminis 

in the quadrille of astrology signs. 

 

pain, it comes round.

 

we entertain it and each other,

not looking too close,

and say hello again

every once in a while.




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

Wednesday, October 6, 2021

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/



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

Sunday, October 3, 2021

Ethical 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 adapt 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 exposĂ©.  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.

 

 


 


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Monday, September 27, 2021

Poem: Refugees

 

Refugees

 

in the gardens,

petals fluttered down to weave rosaries.

no one dared pray on them, or the fretful stars,

those pigments of bone.

 

instead they walked among battered brick,

cities that lacked a hearth.

chokeberry juice dyed their tongues.

they boiled the bark of broken trees to chew.

 

not so heavy as tank treads,

dull legs slugged it out with the ground.

tattered shoes tottered in the deeper mud,

where corpses lolled, immune to dysentery.

 

no rest, nowhere, for eyes ripe with tears.

why lay down unless commanded by a final sun? 

why scavenge for dreams under the scythe

of a doomed, mournful moon?

 

with nothing left but stains

--of tears, hope, blood, and salt--

all their fat gone, lost to dead relatives and homes,

the refugees found the hem of a realm so green

that war lost its name.  so much so 

that the citizens there didn’t recognize it. 

 

these well-fed ones

smiled at desperate scarlike mouths. 

their welcome of wealthy words

shone calm as gold in a mysterious victory,

one that made less and less sense,

when they fastened more and more locks

on the perfect gates.




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

Sunday, September 26, 2021

Poem: Mdfk

 

Mdfk

 

the bong in the clock had eternity on its tongue,

gods in the tones of its chimes.

still, it was the headache that reigned omnipotent.

black holes in the temples of duty and inspiration.

black holes that sucked light to throb.

 

to implode.

 

there would be no bypass

of the duress that gorged on sound.

ixnay on the anodyne of the opioid and wine.

when a murdered ghost saddled a host,

when it claimed all ears,

and forced its fury

to possess an otherwise static mouth--

 

it was like this.

 

no exit.  the Snuffleupagus

and all it represented from a congested childhood:

the betrayals never believed,

never expected to be thought of again,

let alone to dominate every sensation.


the blocked doors.





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

Tuesday, September 21, 2021

Poem: Reflection In Cola

 

Reflection in Cola

 

white hair against effervescent tar.

blue eyes gone black, unwandering,

while nose pokes nose,

ribbing a liquid mirror with each breath.

 

this man in a brown moon,

bubbles for craters, he cannot hide.

dimples burst up

near an airbrushed smile of curves and glass.

 

and that head, whaaaaaa?

far more eggish than realized.

absurd with wrinkles,

per the tap of a fingertip.

 

you peppy fool,

 

the pedestal of your importance

shrinks as you sip yourself away,

smaller and smaller,

mutual in a nothing stare.

 

are you so bemused

realllllly?

that ego could fixate for so long

on someone as thin as a surface?




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




Original version (significantly different) published in Octavo.

Friday, September 17, 2021

Poem: Storm Through Glass

 

Storm Through Glass

 

dizzy inertia of raindrops

rattles the windows with inkless blips.

 

such a rorschach patina-menagerie.

such glossy beaten thudding heads.

 

how they shriek, silent but not quiet

while gales thrash and paint--

 

such nonsense splatter:

 

trickle-twisted horns, whisked whiskers,

storm-coopered hooves,

this mutable zoo, far too grotesque;

 

yet generous, still, to blur the visible.

 

if palettes of water resolved true,

nightmares would mar

tempestuous panes.



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

Tuesday, September 14, 2021

Poem: Proof

 

Proof

 

shadows crept with little aplomb

under the anemia of a filmy bulb;

the bulb a starved winter sunset,

less and less orange succulence.

never there.

 

but it was the rats nest of books,

nestled in dogears,

that feasted on tired hands

to devour their paralyzed,

insensate scholarship.

worse still, the real mice

which throbbed in the walls,

an eerie omen of sibilance.

 

below half-dead, hung eyes

some last tome of hope lay open

--vivisected, slain--

yet no cure for a tortured quest,

no Quod Erat Demonstrandum .

 

the sad only conclusion, then, being god.

god who had designed this futile math,

an impregnable Door,

with human knowledge its mere architrave.

 

to step through would be to slide,

sunset’s smallest last shadow--

forever to stretch, thinner, endless,

not quite gone, but nevertheless

never there.

 

 


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

Sunday, September 12, 2021

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 genesis to omega,

a nova of 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 have movement,

all the possibles manifest. 

so when you go out, or come in,

through that blinding door,

there is, on the other side,

so they say, a mirror

of your own making;

and it bends to infinity,

such is the claim,

where you tend to walk.





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Saturday, September 11, 2021

Regarding the Poems

 Thank you for reading the poems!

Often the poems are not in the best of shape when I put them up.  The reason I post them is that they get more attention from me than if I filed them away somewhere.  

Sometimes poems don’t get modified at all after posting.  Others get edited into decent shape after a few days.  In some cases, it takes a long time to get things even somewhat right.   “Crystal Ball,” “Mosquitoes on a Screen,” and “Written,” for instance, involve months of struggle.

The editing process never really ends.  And, of course, some poems will never be ‘good’, simply due to my lack of ability. 

I am very glad, though, that some people find a bit of impact reading them.

Fly Well In The Dark,

 OWL

owlwholaughs@gmail.com