Ordering Chaos

It doesn’t seem like there is anything else on the menu, lately. Everything is in flux and new and different and not in a good and exciting way.

All of us are struggling with the reality of Covid-19 – and the ways in which we deal with the chaos are as myriad as our personalities and life situations.

I tend to like order.  Not to the extreme of stifling creativity or preventing spontaneity, but, overall, I like to have things organized.

I’m not sure that I’m really truly a control freak or anything. I can go with the flow with the best of them. I’ve been known to drop everything and take chances/switch plans/directions at the drop of a hat – proverbial or otherwise (hats HAVE been left behind on occasion).

Before anyone starts thinking that I’m perhaps protesting too much, let me just say that I am well aware that my Virgo-Nature (as one of my BFFs – and fellow-Virgo – terms this propensity) sometimes gets the best of me. I’m eminently self-aware about that little character trait.

I think it’s why, actually, I tend to gravitate to the mythologies of the Ancient Near East and Egypt. The belief systems that came before and heavily influenced the beliefs and the worldview that would be recorded in the bible – those Testaments Old, New and extra-canonical – were based in the foundational dichotomy of the need for maintenance of order to stave off the constant incursions of chaos in the known world.

The myths – and the societies that developed according to the worldviews contained therein – saw the primeval forces of the universe as sourced in chaos. In Mesopotamia this tradition was found in the stories of Tiamat – Mother-goddess of chaos and origin of the world as we know it. As in the world was created out of her defeated carcass. Still, such was her power that even after Marduk’s victory her influence continued to be felt since we – and the planet we rode in on – were carved out of her physical remains.

We like chaos. Or, at the very least, seem to gravitate toward drama and the exaggerated over-turning of societal norms – those same societal norms that were instituted in things like the Code of Hammurabi, those Ten Commandments, or the more numerous and somewhat onerous Levitical Laws. They all served the same purpose: order vs. chaos

But the laws are all about the maintenance of the balance of the two, not the eradication of chaos. That would mean self-destruction, after all, coming as we did from the body of chaos herself. Our rules are set out to ensure the careful manipulation of behaviours so that order can keep it in check.

If the rules aren’t followed the influence of Tiamat comes creeping back in to mess with the nicely ordered society that the gods – and the kings/priests/leaders who act on behalf of the gods- have created. For our own protection, of course. But also for the greater glory of those who hold the earthly power.

I get this – atavistically, and also because it suits my personality. We need rules – be they rules of morality or practicality. We also need to understand that rules are contextual in nature. They are based on specific needs and sourced in specific times/places and, as such, should be subject to change as our context does so.

Somewhere along the line, the order/chaos dichotomy got changed into one of good/evil. I’d argue that came about under strong influences from Zoroastrianism and its dualism, but that’s a discussion for a different day.

Bottom line? Those things associated with order became the rules that described what is good. Acting outside those rules became all about the evil.

Example? That little story about the Garden of Eden and getting kicked out and that whole, much later, Augustinian nonsense about Original Sin? Yahweh gave them one rule – ‘don’t eat from that tree. The one over there. All others are fair game, but leave that one be.’ And what did they do? They violated the prescribed order/rule and ate from that tree.

It’s called a ‘cautionary tale’ for a reason.

Right from the get-go we were being influenced by that crafty Tiamat (or her minions, who were myriad and took the forms of demons, ill-winds and, sometimes, serpents) to break the rules and let her get a little of her own back.

That’s an image of her up there ^^^.  It’s also the image that appears on my homepage underneath the name of the blog. I believe in facing my fears head-on (I’m really not kidding. One of my cats was named for the embodiment of chaos herself.  was thinking along the lines of ‘naming something robs it of its power’. Didn’t quite work out that way.  My Tiamat was pretty chaotic. I blame myself for the misstep). Please note that she looks like a great big snake, herself.

‘What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun.’

My fave OT dude wrote that in Ecclesiastes (1.9).

Yep. We are nothing if not a lather, rinse, repeat sort of a species. We beg, borrow and often steal the stuff that came before us and apply it – generally willy-nilly – to our own social contexts. Does that really sound like a remotely rational plan?

Despite my deep-seated appreciation of order, the need to examine from whence our conceptualizations of that order might have come is the very thing I’ve been (over-) thinking about of late. For a long time now we have been letting our community leaders tell us what we should be watching/buying/doing and how we should be thinking/voting/spending our spare time without any sort of examination or thought given to the context from which these prescriptions are coming.

Since we aren’t (last I checked), in fact, a Bronze Age culture trying desperately to assert our national identity among hostile ‘foreigners’ (whose land we’ve come to take) and therefore beholden to any notion of having our actions dictated as we are expected to blindly follow someone’s notion of what is ‘best’ for us, we really have to be looking more closely at these things.

We have so much opportunity and access to information that we HAVE TO make our decisions based in this cultural/social context rather than one that had its day more than 2000 years ago, half a world away.

That doesn’t mean that some of the rules – and the lessons contained within the rules and the stories that support them – mightn’t reflect universal truths and maintain some validity. I’m not saying that at all.

But c’mon. Too many of the people who want to make the rules (especially in that country to the south of us) are basing them on interpretations of those ancient documents in complete disregard of their – or our – cultural and historical contexts.

If we take the time to weigh all sides/voices/contexts we can see that we have, in fact, progressed from the city states/nomadic/monarchic civilizations that came so very long before us. We have evolved.

There is a devolution of society that seems to be happening here and there that is beyond distressing in the face of this reality.

We need a paradigm shift. Bigtime. Let’s forget about the whole externalizing/personification of evil/assumption of the existence of absolute good that we’ve inherited from later iterations of the Mesopotamian and Egyptian worldviews. Time to let go of childish things – like devils and demons and primordial gods (although not the cats who bear their names – two of my current feline besties are named for Canaanite deities) and take responsibility for our role in the balancing act that is life in the 21st century.

The maintenance of order is important.  It balances the chaos – of our own natures and of those things IN Nature over which we can exert no control.

And, unlike evil – and the way in which we tend to pass the buck by labeling and externalizing actions/people as such –  chaos will always remain a part of the world and its perpetual motion. We can stop with the evil. It is a purely human construct.

There are things beyond our human control and creation. Yep. There are indeed. The way we react to these incursions of chaos in our lives is completely in our hands.

In citing the historical tradition of leaders who created laws as a function of control, please don’t think that I’m saying that there aren’t leaders who make rules for the preservation of their people then or now.

We are in a period that is completely outside of our usual experience – most of us in the West, anyway. Rules have been put in place in efforts to keep us – as individuals, families and societies – safe and healthy, and to keep us from overwhelming our health care systems. Most of us seem to understand the origin of and continuing emphasis on the need to maintain physical distancing. These conditional rules have an origin and purpose that should be pretty easy to comprehend.

Unfortunately most is not all. There are ongoing murmurings – which are getting louder the longer this goes on – regarding the need to reopen the economy and get everyone back to work and producing and consuming at pre-pandemic levels.

I get the concern. Except that there can be no economy without society – and we are still in the process of ensuring the maintenance of that last part. The narrative of the ‘need’ to get back to working/living as ‘normal’ is being dictated by those who have financial mandates – rather than ones having to do with moral or ethical considerations. As has always been the case – in spite of how far removed we might be from the Bronze Age Near East – the most adamant supporters of movements dedicated to opening it all up right now are from the privileged strata of society, and those they persuade (or pay) to wave their flags of consume consume consume.

Sacrificing those in the most tenuous economic positions is a tactic that is much much older than capitalism, to be sure. It’s at play right now, though and it’s a manoeuvre that the kings and priests of the Ancient Near East would recognize and applaud.

We have the unique opportunity to create right order through all of this. We are recognizing the gaps that could lead to the failure of all of society – something that some of the powers that be seem to be willfully ignoring for the purposes of financial expediency.

Public health care, accessible education, fair wages for those who provide us with our food and safety, support for those who keep us entertained and informed. The struggles of these groups (and many others, of course) are demonstrations of the innate failure of capitalism as an equitable societal model.

The tension between doing what we’re told for our own safety and that of others and being forced back into dangerous situations under threat of not being able to eat, or pay rent, or provide the basics of living, requires a great deal of balancing between the dichotomous actualities of our present-day order and chaos.

Messages about continued vigilance and new statuses quo for the foreseeable future are daunting and, frankly, depressing for those of us (all of us) who want to be back out in our communities, supporting our neighbours and contributing responsibly to the economic health of our shared society. When placed beside the narratives coming from people who seek to gain all while sacrificing nothing themselves through forcing a premature return to previous states of consumerism, the former need to be our ongoing priority.

We have to trust in the people using educated and evidence-based forecasting to set the rules which will keep the chaos in check for us all. Listening to those who want the bucks off the backs of the rest of us will lead to a complete disruption of the order that comes with society.

We have no control over what is happening right now – and that is really really hard for a lot of people. Me, for one (see above, re. Virgo-Nature). We, here, are fortunate (for the most part, there are outliers, to be sure, and don’t get me started on the embodiment/s of chaos in the States) that the rules around vigilance are the ones that are being enforced – and, as hard as it has been (and it’s not getting easier by any stretch of the imagination) are the responsible, human response to the situation at hand. It is not our natural state to live in isolation – we are social beings and the entirety of our societal interactions and institutions are structured based on that reality. But we are also rational, thinking beings – and we are able to weigh the necessities of the current situation against the sometimes-bigger voices who are shouting for their own benefit to the detriment of those of us not part of the 1%.

Those who would rather we rush to open in spite of the subsequent chaos such orders will produce might want to consider the source/s of those directives and ask if they are, really, suggesting such steps for anything other than their own mandates and for their own selfish desires.

Order happens when choices are made – and we are having to make some that are really hard right now. There is much to be weighed and measured in order to strike the best balance possible. We have the unique opportunity right now to make the choices that can reframe our society in ways that lead to more equity, equality and inclusion. The voices of chaos might be louder – and they might be persuasive – but we have the power to ensure that our leadership is listening to the rest of us as we work together to get through this crisis and figure out how we go on living together once we can truly be together again. We can change the menu to one that is more varied and palatable for the entirety of our community.

Mene Mene (especially you, MAGAts)

As I mentioned in my last post, I’m doing my best to catch up on reading and paying attention to things that used to inspire and entertain, both, as I navigate the challenges that have come along with this physical distancing and isolating thing. When I’m at my most optimistic/least anxious, I feel lucky to have the extra time to revisit writings and readings that were the focus of my life for a couple of decades. It’s making me miss the stories and the studies and the research and the people I got to work and interact with, if not the time/place in which I did the studying and research. That period of my life was a mixed bag, to say the least.

Still, the opportunity to reflect – and hopefully refocus so that I can plan some personal next steps once we are on the other side of this – is something for which I am grateful. I am re/learning lessons about prioritization and the value of stuff that I find important – regardless of whether or not others can understand that value.

The focus of my academic life was pretty esoteric. I get that. It’s not something that everyone gets or cares about or views with any degree of import. It wasn’t practical – by any stretch of the imagination. I’ve been asked, more than once, ‘but what can you do with that kind of a degree? What can you actually do?’ And that was from ‘friends’. Once outside of academia I had no illusions that I’d find employment in an area involving my subject matter expertise. I’ve lived with that for a little over ten years now. It doesn’t even bother me. Most of the time.

The societal crisis we’re experiencing right now is making me really examine how much value I place on my current role, and it’s resulting in some pretty deep soul-mining. I can’t stop thinking about the need for the creation of a new normal that we will have to undertake as cities, provinces, countries and as a global community. And I don’t really think that the job I do right now will permit me to contribute to the required paradigm shift in any meaningful way. I can’t overemphasize how much we need to rethink the ways we determine value – starting with all our frontline essential folks – in medicine, home care, food delivery, emergency response, cleaning and sanitation… the list goes on – but not forgetting our creatives.

So, with time on my hands and the inability to sleep, I’m going back to what I know. And what I love and what I value. And we’ll see where that has taken me once the dust settles.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve had something come up in the course of business calls and email back-and-forth that was irrationally irritating (to a ridiculous extreme that is indicative, in part, of the tension of isolation, to be sure), so in the spirit of getting it off my chest so I can stop fixating on it, I’ve decided to address that irritation, here.

People keep saying ‘(they’ve) seen the handwriting on the wall.’ It’s making me nuts.

I get that that’s pedantic to the extreme, but I also feel like it’s illustrative of the ways in which we miss the salient point because we misinterpret or misunderstand its context. The reference comes from one of my most favourite bibical texts – one I’ve written about before. I went back to that post (waaaaaay back to 2013!) and, after cringing at some of the writing, realized that the story is super-relevant to the times through which we are living right now. As are so many of our human stories – regardless of when or where they were written.

The Hebrew Scriptures have a lot of pretty cool stories that contain some really cool characters and memorable lines. I’ve been studying the texts of the OT and NT and the Apocrypha, and Pseudipigrapha, and the literatures of neighbouring countries (Egypt, the Ancient Near East, Greece, Rome, and etc.) for so very long now, it’s tricky trying to single out what (and who) makes my absolute top of the pops of ancient literature.

I have resolved my love-hate relationship with the particular text(s) that served as the basis of my doctoral thesis – and I’m back to hanging out and having fun with my gnostics, in all their ‘heretical’ glory. Man, did those guys know how to spin a tale.

The NT and I remain estranged – there are still some residual hard feelings left over from my Master’s thesis, and, to be honest, I’m even more convinced that Saul of Tarsus and I will never see eye-to-eye on things. The Revelation (no ‘s’ – again with the punctiliousness) has a lot of fun stuff, but it’s being used all over the place lately (those Evangelical nutbars in the US are tiresome with their citations taken out of context), so I’m feeling like the over-exposure and forced interpretations take it out of the running for revisiting right now.

I’ve always been fascinated by the character Daniel. He’s a guy you can really cheer for – and the book about him marks the real, canonical, beginnings of apocalyptic literature in the biblical worldview. I’d rather not get into an argument about whether or not the book belongs with the prophetic books or the writings. Some day, perhaps, I’ll talk a bit about biblical prophecy being not so much – or at all – prophetic but very much about the social commentary of the time in which it was written – and therefore a type of early apocalypticism – but right now I’m grooving with Daniel, who belongs with the writings as a proto-apocalyptic.

Next to my gnostics, I love the apocalyptic- and prophetic-types  best. The genres and stories tend to overlap a fair bit – hardly surprising since they arise out of discontent and disconnection with the society when the texts were written.

When people are pissed with the status quo things often get a little apocalyptic (I talked about this the other week, in the context of our current state of unrest and anxiety). Daniel – and the pseudonymous book about him – was presented as a harbinger of a whole lot of discontent and attempts at change and it gave us one of the most interesting images of the whole bible.

The narrative tells the story of Daniel, who, as a member of the Judean nobility, is serving some time in the service of Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon. He, and three of his pals, refused to succumb to the lures of the food and wine provided by their captors, and maintained the mandates of their heritage and religion, even while in exile. They catch the eye of the king, who declares them to be superior to his own wise men at court and enlists them to his service. Daniel soon gains a reputation for the accuracy of his dream interpretations, and, since Nebuchadnezzar (I love that name. Just typing it makes me happy. Saying it makes me smile) frequently needs his dreams analysed, he eventually appoints Daniel as his Chief Wise Guy.

While Nebuchadnezzar had his good qualities (like his name. I love his name), he did steal the treasures of the Temple of Jerusalem (during the destruction of the city and the beginning of the Exilic Period) and brought them back to Babylon with him. While Neb deals with his demons (7 years of crazy, living like a wild beast and all that) his son Belshazzar (the Book of Daniel is the only source that lists Belshazzar as Neb’s kid – other historical sources list him as the son of Nabonidus – but we can let him be Neb’s son – no harm to the story) acts as co-regent, and then king in his own right.

One night Belshazzar and his sycophant friends throw a big party – and use the sacred vessels plundered from Solomon’s Temple as pint glasses. They make toasts to their gods – mainly inanimate deities – using Yahweh’s own sacred vessels. Those of you who have read the Hebrew Scriptures up to this point in the continuing story have to realize that this is not a good idea.  Yahweh does not (generally) take kindly to his word, his people or his stuff being messed with (Shoah and millennia of antisemitic bullshit notwithstanding).

To the horror of the collected party goers, a mysterious disembodied hand appears and starts writing on the wall.  Still reeling from the strange apparition, neither Belshazzar nor his assembled guests can figure out what the writing says, so he calls for Daniel to come and have a look.  Daniel, the best-of-the-best and Yahweh-favoured Chief Wise Dude, reads the words as Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin. At first inspection they seem to be meaningless references to weights and measures, but Daniel interprets them as the verbs that correspond to the nouns: numbered, weighed, divided.

As such, he explains that god has numbered the days of Belshazzar’s kingdom and decided that they are at an end. The kingdom (and its king) have been weighed and found wanting, so it will be divided between the Medes and the Persians. Like now.  Right now. That very night Belshazzar was killed and Darius the Mede became king.

Generally the story is used (‘the writing on the wall’, ‘the hand writing on the wall’, ‘Mene Mene’) to indicate imminent doom, originating in misbehaviour or inappropriate governance. Those who attended the feast – and shared culpability for the bad politics and decisions – were able to see the hand as it wrote on the wall, yet were totally unable to understand the message that was being imparted. The interpretation had to come from someone who wasn’t in any way responsible for the negative behaviours – or the misuse of the vessels and the sacrosanct ideology behind them. Only Daniel was able to give warning and explain the impending collapse of the Babylonian kingdom by reading the writing on the wall.

Increasingly, these days and with the societies and systems of government that we have created and institutionalized, fewer and fewer people are able to see the imminence of danger as we continue headlong down a path that is becoming less and less equitable and more and more as dictated by those who hold power. That those in power were, ostensibly, chosen by the people (rather than through hereditary ascension, as in the Babylonian example), makes the systemic problems all the more glaring and frustrating.

We are not doing enough to hold our leaders to account while they choose to ignore the disembodied hand and its message entirely.  We need to see both the message and take note of its origin – the existence of the hand itself warrants attention.

Before COVID, claims about improvements to the economy (while myriad citizens remain in situations of un/underemployment and the middle class continues shrinking while the divide between the haves and the have nots become more pronounced), to the housing market (as home ownership is increasingly an inaccessible pipe dream in most major Canadian cities), and the short-sighted politics that reflect immediate self-interest rather than long-term nationwide benefits were standard fare for politicians of all stripes.

These things, as serious as they are, only scratch the surface of the current crises we are facing. The entirety of our economic systems will have to undergo revision – as will the way we view essential work and workers. We, in Canada, are fortunate in our leadership. Responses while not perfect, have helped us to come to the right side of the curve more quickly than projected.

The situation in the US is inexplicable – except when you look at hi/story and its many examples of clownish rulers who demand only those things that benefit and enrich them and their intimates directly. That there are those who support them without seeing any direct advantage has to do with lack of education, critical thinking and awareness of hi/story. They barely understand the message – and never even acknowledge the messenger.

As I say over and over and over again, our myths – and their interpretations – have a whole lot of wisdom to offer, if we bother to take the time and pay attention to what those who came before us had to say. Especially since we keep on making the same sorts of mistakes, driven by greed and one-upmanship and the ever-increasing need to hear ourselves speak (or yell) over the voices that might be offering an alternative (and better, more equitable) perspective.

In February 1964, as a response to the assassination of JFK a few months previously, a young lad named Paul Simon wrote a song. The Sound(s) of Silence (the original title was plural) shares an enduring sense of futility and awareness of the dangers of silence – the problems that arise when people fail to effectively listen to and speak out about the cancers growing around us.

As we continue to bow to our own neon (or orange) gods, perhaps we need to take time to listen to this song a little more closely. It might help us to see the hand and decipher the message it is continually writing on the walls that surround us.

And the sign flashed out its warning, in the words that it was forming

And the sign said, ‘the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls’

And whispered in the sounds of silence.

Mene Mene. Take heed, while we have ample time on our hands to be considering the past and planning next directions. The hand is getting pretty emphatic with its messages. Our governments are being weighed and the days of many of them are numbered – if we can look past our own interests and understand that the divide is what is causing our most significant systemic problems. We might have more time than did Belshazzar, but not much. This current crisis is highlighting the fact that we need to look for solutions to all of the sources of our societal discontent once we are released to do so. The signs are all there.

Bread and Circuses Pt. 2 or Finnegan Begin Again

5 weeks in and this staying home stuff is getting challenging. I have nothing to complain about, really. Lots of space in the house, tiny little green space out back (and the hope of some sun and warmth tomorrow), cats, food, music, books… more than enough to keep on keeping on as things remain dire in the outside world.

I’ve had to turn off the tv for the most part. I can’t take the broadcast news – the constant sound-bite-and-click-seeking asinine questions from (many) reporters following every press conference and the increasing dramatic dialoguing from some of our elected leaders is wearying – and I’m already exhausted. Don’t even get me started on the abrogation of responsibility of much of the media in the US – failing to hold the mass murderer-in-charge to any level of responsibility.

(I realize that last paragraph makes me seem anti-journalist. I’m not. Really, I’m not. Almost became one, myself. And I could list many who are doing a great job weeding through the bullshit and constant changes of the past month and a bit – some close friends among them. But too many are nothing more than ‘content creators’ looking for ‘gotcha’ moments, when they aren’t intentionally selling an anti-science narrative and I’m just done with that level of bullshit. Done.)

I can’t watch the updated statistics anymore, or hear about those still refusing to do the right thing and put aside their personal wants for the benefit of us all – and especially for the safety of those who have no choice but to be out there making sure we come through this thing.

I’ve made the conscious decision to avoid getting caught up in any of the myriad streaming services and the shows on offer. I’m spending way too much time sitting in front of a screen – what with the working from home and trying to catch up on some writing projects – as it is. So if it’s on, it’s in the background (now that Schitt’s Creek has run its course). I’m hearing second-hand accounts of some interesting-sounding programming – coming to us from the creators we are all relying on to entertain and distract and comfort us in our current circumstances.

But there’s some weird-ass stuff out in the ether as well, and, like all those people who flocked to Florida’s foolishly (unintentional alliteration there, but I’m keeping it anyway) reopened beaches today, it’s causing me to question some aspects of our shared humanity and alleged capacity for rational and civilized thought.

I admit that I’ve been hoping that this crisis will prove to be a wake-up call – shining lights on inequity and inanity, both, and showing us that need the one and should disdain the other. I was really looking forward to a new world order that consigned reality tv stars to the trash heap of irrelevance where they have always belonged. All of them – even if they are, somehow, Leader of the (formerly) Free World.

Given the inexplicable popularity of a show about the revolting abuse of big cats (the most apt description I head likened watching it to licking a subway pole), I’m significantly less certain about the positive strides we might be making in deciding what is worthwhile and what is detritus without which we are better off.

This dispiriting realization called to mind a post I wrote in 2015 about the Juvenalian concept of bread and circuses. Back then we were in the lead-up to a federal election, and the behaviours of the people running for office and those who fell on one side of the electorate equation in particular, were spouting a whole lot of nonsense and generally pissing me off. Juvenal used ‘bread and circuses’ to denounce what he saw as the self-involved nature of the ‘common people’ and their willful ignorance regarding wider concerns and matters pertaining to things like civic duty. Not one to pull punches, was Juvenal.

Master of satire that he was, he employed the metonym to describe the unwillingness of 2nd century CE Romans to understand, or even acknowledge, their history and the need for their political involvement in order to ensure the health and well-being of the system. He said, essentially, that the people have abdicated their duties, in favour of sitting on their butts hoping that they will be handed bread and invited to circuses – state-provided food and entertainment.

Were the people culpable for their anomie and disengagement? You betcha. But the fact of the matter is that even wayway back in Ancient Rome (one of the cornerstones of the democratic/republican – using both terms in their original senses – systems that we hold in such vaunted esteem), leaders opted to give the people what the people thought they wanted as a means of garnering support. The federal Cons were doing a whole lot of that in the summer of 2015. Sure, the election that happened the following year to the south of us would make their attempts at propagandizing and displacement and outright lying seem, well, juvenile in comparison.

But.

Plus ça change. I recycled bits of that earlier post, here, because it is resonating with me really strongly right now. And I’m all about the connections.

The satisfaction of shallow desires – for free refreshments and hollow entertainment – remains the biggest tool in the kits of contemporary politicians. And the owners of media conglomerates. And heads of national and multi-national corporations. That buffoon in the States has made a career – and managed to win the Presidency – based on these principles, such as they are.

Bread and circuses generate support that is not based in silly things like exemplary service or concern for the good of society in its entirety, and serve to distract us and take our attention away from what is really going on. Large corporations and banks and politicians and religious institutions and media groups – anyone, really, who has been given power under the social structures that these groups have contributed to building – continue to throw shadows to disguise their underlying intent of self-promotion and the furtherance of personal agendas.

Of course, all these ‘leaders’, public and corporate alike, will claim that the distractions are well-intended and meant to protect us and our best interests. Certainly, right now, we need all the entertainment and distraction we can get. It is keeping us inside and safe. But there is so much that is better out there than that trailer park trash fire that is making the rounds.

In my favourite book by my favourite Canadian author, one of the primary characters, a military leader and soldier (among other things) entertains two small children in his care by casting shadow hand puppets on a wall. The show is meant to divert the children’s attention from the assassins that have been sent to their house to kill them – and to cover up the sounds as the men under his command dispatch the ‘bad men’ and keep them safe.

As in Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, the shadows on the wall are meant to distract from the reality of circumstances. In the situation in Guy Gavriel Kay’s The Lions of Al-Rassan, the attempt is well-intentioned – they were protecting children from political machinations, after all – but ultimately doomed to failure. Though young, one of the children understood the puppet show for what it was – and asks, at its end, if the bad men have gone.

We are not children – and yet we seem to be more than willing to let our leaders distract us with shadows on the wall, with bread and with circuses, rather than to pay close attention to the irrevocable damage that they’re doing and attempt to free ourselves from the cave of superficial perception.

The light of the fire that is the source of the shadows may be hard, and uncomfortable, to look at, but we need to stop shying away from those things that are ‘hard’. We have to accept our responsibility, as citizens who participate in the structuring and furtherance of our societies, to weather the discomfort of escaping the cave and the pain of the initial exposure to the sun and its light, in order to clearly see it in all its truth – and to take that truth back to those who remain entranced by the shadows on the wall. They will resist – Plato had that much right (and how little has changed) – since the journey is full of challenges and inconveniences and we have become intellectually lazy-beyond-belief. But we still have to try. Once we are freed from our actual ‘caves’ we need to work on getting the hell out of the figurative ones.

In the background as I write this the local sports channel is showing Game 5 of the 2015 ALDS (seems to be a 2015 sort of a night). For those who might not remember (if you’re not from Toronto) it’s the game with the craziest 53-minute 7th inning in the history of the sport. A game that lives in the hearts and minds of every fan Jays fan. The game that featured the bat flip heard ’round the world – and solidified my abject hatred of Texas’ 2nd baseman (I really hate that Odor asshole). Our Canadian catcher-man was behind the plate, and that weird dude (he was our weird dude, though) who would go on to be MVP that year was on third. Out in right field was the guy who hit the run (and flipped the bat) that took us to the next level – and who had kept baseball a thing through too many years of mediocrity in Toronto, and in centre was a fielder who was well on his way to earning his cape. Our DH DH’d and tied the game in the sixth – running the parrot around those bases. And then that 7th…

When it was happening in real time, I was a bag of nerves and tension. Sudden death for the Jays in their first post-season in a thousand or so years (felt that way, anyway) was a Big Deal. Watching it tonight is a different type of distraction – it’s nostalgia and comfort and excitement and remembrances of a great group of guys whoo held the city captive for a season (or two). It is real entertainment seeing it now – not the potential end of a run that brought this town together for a time – a warm memory made more poignant as we are all forced to be separate right now (I’m choosing to ignore the shameful 18+ minutes during which people threw stuff on the field. I maintain that they weren’t real fans. Probably not really Torontonians. They certainly don’t know how to behave). I know the good guys are going to win. I need that sort of thing right now. We all do.

Other than spending time with my boys of summer in repeats, I’m spending a lot of time listening to music – and watching some of my favourite artists sing and talk to other favourite artists from their living rooms – and reading. The value of creators and what they bring to our lives has never been more apparent to me than it is now. Those same creators are paying a heavy toll – as tv shows can’t be produced, theatre and music cannot be performed live, visual artists can’t have showings of their art, craftspeople of all kinds are unable to share their work, writers can’t support new releases by touring and doing book shows and signings. We need to support the ones providing the talent – not the conglomerates that benefit from their gifts. They need to be supported to the extent of the support they provide to us at the least especially now when we are desperate for their creations.

I wrote about calliopes right around the same time I was thinking about old Romans and their take on society. Interestingly, that post remains one of my most frequently read (people searching for the Boss and ending up with me). Calliopes – with their associations with the liminality that has always been a feature of the carnival and sideshow – can draw us to things better left unvisited. Stray tunes, carried on the wind – or drawn from memory – can be harbingers of a great deal of trouble. Figuring out which song is safe to follow can be dangerous business. The value of distinguishing the art from the purposefully-designed chaff is something we all need to keep in mind as we look for distraction to fill all this time we have to hand.

‘I had a vision tonight that the world was ending’

It’s a weekend for stories – in particular ones that have, historically, shaped beliefs and ideologies and provided guides for living life. Of necessity, the sharing of those stories has a different form right now as the rituals that accompany them have to be amended for our safety and the safety of all of those out there dealing directly with this virus on behalf of us all.

We lost a great storyteller this week, so my thoughts have been straying in the direction of how and why we create the tales that keep us entertained and provide us with models for living this life – or help to point us in the direction of things that we can do to make it all better.

I’m listening to one of my fave contemporary storytellers right now. @thebrianfallon’s album was released two weeks ago, and since he can’t get out to present it to us in person, he’s been streaming from home and sharing his thoughts and stories on all the social media. He’s overcoming the strangeness of playing to an empty room so that we can participate in some check-in time and share feelings about the physical distancing that will be our collective situation for the foreseeable future. It’s a lovely indicator of the ways in which we can maintain our connectedness in this time of enforced disconnection.

John Prine was a master of the story song. He created characters and embodied and expressed their individual voices when he told us about their lives. Brian’s songs are likewise relatable – and hit hard and close to home because we can see ourselves in some element of the slices of life he presents in his lyrics. There is an optimism and comfort even in the mundanity and loss and the day-to-day struggles presented in the songs that may not have direct equation in everyone’s life, but which share the commonality of being human and the joys and pain that accompany that condition. I don’t think I’m alone in my feeling that stories like this need airing more than ever at this point in time.

For those who might need a reminder (or who might not have known), I deal in apocalypses. Most of my adult life has been about reading them, and interpreting them, and putting them into appropriate historical, geographic and cultural contexts. I’ve been writing one of my own for the past couple of years, as a matter of fact. As far as literary genres go, the apocalypse ranks among my personal faves and takes up an inordinate amount of my head space.

That’s creating some issues for me right now. This global pandemic we, as humanity, are enduring as part of our shared experience is more than disconcerting in its scope and uncertain outcomes, so thinking about the end of days… that’s a bit of a slippery slope if I want to keep myself from depths of despair and the inactivity that accompanies that condition.

Since I can’t let go of the apocalyptic thinking, I’m going back to my primary sources and thinking about what we can learn from it – as pattern of thought that arose from the need to cope with circumstances that are less than ideal (to massively understate the severity of the here-and-now. It’s a rhetorical device I’m using as way of keeping panic at bay).

Apocalypticism, as a literary genre and as an ideology,  is a reflection of societal discontent and disconnect – something called anomie, if you want to get all sociological about it. The stories that come out of this discontent – often presented as dreams or visions of future events and an undoing or redoing of the world – are creative revelations about what will happen if things continue along a particular trajectory of wrongness.

The Wikipedia insists upon a religious connection – and yes, most apocalyptic envisioning accompanies a particular mythology – incorporating its motifs of good vs. evil (angels, demons etc.) and all the various players in the dramas that make up the foundations of belief systems around the world.

In more contemporary times, the players in the end of days dramas are just as external as angels and demons – aliens, AI run amok, zombies and the like – and still set one group – ‘us’ – against another – ‘them’.

Apocalyptic ideation is a way of coping the world that is an inherent part of Western interpretations of experience.

Intrinsically – if not always consciously – we are conditioned to think about ‘next things’. We are told that in order to get this job, or to earn that reward, or make it through a global pandemic, there are certain steps that need to be taken.

As human as this inclination may be, it’s symptomatic of the fact that we slip into the habit of striving exclusively for the future and neglecting to acknowledge the moment in which we are, right now, living. This creates a certain tension that leads to a great deal of personal discomfort, if I’m honest with myself.

Historically and sociologically, apocalyptic thinking develops as a response to the perceived disparity between expectations and societal realities. When we are unhappy in our current situations, we project a better scenario at a future date.

In historical literary and religious traditions, the better scenario generally comes after a cataclysmic and status changing event of some kind that trashes the social or cultural system that is causing the disconnect between expectations and reality. The new reality is posited to be one of justice – as perceived by the person who is unhappy with the current status quo. Religious apocalypses promise salvation as the aftermath of the period of trial and unhappiness.

We still think in these terms in our secular environments, even if all religious underpinnings are removed. We are the product of millennia of this approach to dealing with societal realties – and it has become part of our inherited way of approaching our world and managing our existential discontent.

For all that I love the myths that have been created in accordance with this particular worldview (some of the best stories are apocalyptic in nature (go reread that one about The hand, writing on the wall, if you doubt me) from a philosophical and personal perspective, it can be a problematic construct. Apocalypticism, by its very nature, negates the life we are living now, in favour of the life that might come along at some point in the future.

It can be a very useful coping mechanism – when things are stressful and deadlines need to be met, or when we are told to hunker down and remain isolated for an indeterminate amount of time. It’s a well-used and generally effective management technique – we’ll get through this period of uncertainty and then things will quiet down and get back to normal.

We’re all experiencing this kind of anxiety now. We are conditioned, on some levels, to think that we need, sometimes, to suffer in the moment so that the next things will be better.

Those who fully accept this paradigm may be handling all this better than I am right now. I tend to want to appreciate and be thankful for those things that are of the moment – so the future-striving as central tenet is distasteful to me. Simply enduring the right now with the hope of something better coming along seems both wasteful and somewhat lazy.

Time may be a construct, but as we’re seeing all too frequently right now, it isn’t endless and we don’t have much of a say as to when ours will come to an end.

I need to reach a happy medium between the acknowledgement that whenever we come out the other side of this pretty much everything is going to be different and using the time confined to the house to some purpose and level of productivity. Sitting and doing nothing but waiting for this to be over is not going to be sustainable for me or for my health.

One of my favourite bands has a song that’s all about visions of the literal end of the world that strikes some of that balance. Spending whatever hours might be left in conscious awareness of the minutes passing, with gratitude for what we have. I love listening to this song as the sun sets over the Big Lake on that rock at the Cottage on the Bay.

I had a vision tonight that the world was ending
Yeah the sky was falling and time was bending
We spent our last night in the moonlight
Baby it’s so bright we’ll be up all night
I got a helluva view for the end of the world
I’ve got a bottle of booze and a beautiful girl
If I’m a’­goin to die I’m gonna go in style

What if the world dies with the sunrise?
Baby it’s all right we’ll be up all night
What if we’re unmade when the stars fade?
Keep me going ’til the night turns into the day

 

Until the Night Turns is one of the connected story songs on Lord Huron’s Strange Trails album. It’s a loosely-woven series of fairy tale-esque interactions with the other, supernatural, world and its impact on those it touches. It’s my kind of mythology – and in keeping with the direction of my thoughts and the ways in which I’m coping with things right now.

For me, listening to Lord Huron, and to Brian, and John Prine as I mourn his passing, permits a means of reflection and appreciation of the past, a method of coping with the present, and acts as guidance as I engage in some future planning – and hopes as to what might take shape as we re-evaluate what is important as we live in society and in community.

It is clear that things will be very different on the other side of this. Taking lessons on board – about inequity, and struggle, and anachronistic biases and prejudices – as taught by our storytellers can help with the reshaping of the world if we don’t turn away from the evidence of disparities that this crisis is highlighting.

We speak in apocalyptic terms without giving it much thought. One of my Dad’s favourite things to say when I was making mountains out of emotional molehills (i.e., being a drama queen) was ‘it’s not the end of the world.’ Right now it feels like we’re as close as we’d care to come to it being, in fact, the end of days. Instead of dreading the inevitable changes, we need to take this time to build our true apocalyptic vision of what those better days to come will look like.

Whatever stories you are celebrating this weekend – whether of deliverance from destruction, rebirth and salvation, or the return of the fertility of the land that keeps us fed – I hope you do so in safety while maintaining whatever level of connectivity you can.