STAR WARS: Return of the Archetypes. (Morality Strikes Back.)

Original Video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLYUc5t6wag&list=PLghL9V9QTN0hjoroz3Bk-wi9nt2obOqVO

Retort:

I think that both the New Trilogy and the Old Trilogy are equally profound and complex, and frankly your analysis pales before them in complexity. When you mentioned Jung, I got excited, since he is an often misunderstood and marginalized Hero of psychoanalysis. Yet your exposition upon the Shadow is sophomoric, typical of a late adolescent’s fascination with psychology, and I must denounce it so severely only because of its prevalence. I will achieve this by going beyond the Shadow and shining some light upon Jung’s own philosophy, as it was past down through Campbell and Lucas.

It has been, for a long time, contested that Balance to the Force represents some sort of harmonious union of Sith and Jedi. Apologists for the Sith and for the Galactic Empire think of the Sith by analogy to yin and the Jedi by analogy to yang. If these two rival organizations, both fueled by their rivalry like cops and robbers, cannot continue to exist in a state of Absolute Harmony, then perhaps such a Balance, one might contend, can be found internally. In this sense, Jedi and Sith are mere personae (literally: “masks”) worn by individuals who have not yet found equanimity. Yet there are several blaring problems inherent to this analysis.

Primarily, the Sith always tends towards a social order which is far more repressive than the Jedi Order, one which busies itself with settling trade disputes and protecting important politicians. While Sith apologists contend that the Sith are wrongfully “scapegoated” as aggressors, there is nothing in the Sith Cult that forbids acts of aggression, whereas the Jedi tend towards “knowledge and defense, never […] attack” except when circumstances require otherwise.

Joseph Campbell, in an interview with Bill Moyers, lauds the original _Star Wars_ film for its depiction of an authoritarian social order, embodied in a man who has become machine: Lord Vader. Campbell conceives of this as the universal “threat to our lives”. Jung writes in the same Spirit when he promotes Individuation. Jung’s project was, in many ways, a reaction to a culture which was losing its connection to history and myth. In this sense, BOTH _The Empire Strikes Back_ AND _The Last Jedi_ represent the encroaching influence of modernity and disintegration; even _Clerks_ describes the former as a “downer ending”, epitomizing protagonist Dante’s failure to overcome life’s challenges. One thing is certain: no integrated person is so conformist.

Yet this does not absolve us of conformity as such. Read any text by Jung wherein he talks about religion, and you will find that he has no recrimination in using the word “evil” literally. To Jung, the disintegrated ego embodied the “evils of the neurotic state”. The problematic human tendencies embodied in warfare and bigotry, as you demonstrated, presumably OUGHT to be avoided BECAUSE THEY ARE BAD. This means that Luke Skywalker’s renunciation of the Jedi, his attempts to contact the Force as a nonpartisan hermit, is a failure, both philosophically and psychoanalytically.

What this stage represents is nihilism. If there is nothing good nor bad, but thinking makes it so, why bother to seek Balance? Why not kill younglings? Burn down a Library? Force-choke your own Significant Other? Luke’s ambivalence allows for all of these things to happen. He has become what Buddhists call the “pratyeka-Buddha”; having encountered the Force directly, he withdraws from the affairs of the World. Yet this does nothing to help others to experience the same, privileged Zen Bliss. Luke becomes the Dude, his once-meaningful Life reduced to drinking milk and listening to tunes. Campbell usually attaches this to another important and forgotten archetype: the Woman as Temptress. In traditional Hero stories, preceding the recent wave of feminism, women often lured male heroes away from the path of the warrior and towards a state of passivity. This is in itself a subversion of the Archetype of the Sword, which represents Discretion: Right versus Wrong. (Hence some of the _Star Wars_ swords glow red so that you know which is which.)

In the same manner as myth is traditional, so is morality. Lucas says, in another interview with Bill Moyers, that his intent is to “pass down the meat and potatoes of [his] society”. _Star Wars_ was never supposed to be postmodern fiction, but rather contemporary science fantasy. Bill Moyers praises it for resolving our ambiguities, while Campbell commends his pupil for going beyond the mere “morality play” and delving deep into Matters of Heart.

These depths cannot be accessed without a lightsaber. To repress the urge to fight for one’s own values is a far more dangerous form of Shadow Repression than is scapegoating, since it is only this impulse that contends with evils and exposes them for what they are. In the same way, honesty exposes more than the duplicitous manipulation of Palpatine.

In _The Secret of the Golden Flower_ , Jung makes it clear that his is NOT a philosophy of condoning evil. He describes healing as a “religious problem”, and as such it IS morally imperative. It follows logically, however paradoxically, as befits Jung and Eastern philosophy, that simply “accepting” evil tendencies is insufficient. Somehow, they must be turned towards Higher Purposes. This Kylo Ren does NOT do, since he gives in to his own power drives. At times, Jung writes, the repression of Shadow Content is necessary, though this requires superhuman effort, the likes of which only heroes can pull off.

_The Last Jedi_ remains demoralizing because it is a deconstruction, and as such it is pretentious, yet all deconstruction tends towards reconstruction, inevitably. Of COURSE, Luke returns to Samsara in order to deliver all beings. Of COURSE, the Sith’s plot is not representative of the True Force, but rather it is the result of the egocentric misappropriation of psychic power. Though Jung filled many a thick tome with dense theory, he writes that it takes the greatest art to be simple. At the end of the day, the same Hero Myths work because they are archetypes.

Here is my interpretation:

The Sith represents the neurotic ego. They use the Force towards personal, passionate ends, and this corrupts the Natural Order. Though the Universe remains balanced on the whole, chaos pervades many of its subsystems, which are the setting of our story.

The Jedi, conversely, represent the disciplined and selfless use of power. Though many of them battle inner daemons, they are not usually considered “Masters”, though they might be permitted, notoriously, to join the Council. Yoda is the epitome of enlightenment because he has no blaring ulterior motives. He is simply a mouthpiece for the Force, hence he is powerful.

In this sense, the Jedi’s project is no different from Campbell’s project or Jung’s project. The goal is not to deconstruct everything; that’s just the conscious ego rationalizing away what the Heart discerns. The goal is not to level with evil, for by so doing one only empowers the Empire.

By the end of the film, enough has happened for our New Rei of Hope to realize these truths internally, though perhaps not yet consciously. It HAS to remain ambiguous; _Star Wars_ always communicated covertly. Some viewers may side with Ren, but his rebellion is only part of the story.

The Iceberg metaphor you use best describes not Jung’s psychology but Freud’s. Freud thought of life in terms of the pursuit of pleasure, and he regarded the Id as emblematic of essential animal drives. To Freud, neurosis was the repression of these drives. Yet the Shadow is more subtle than that. If one lives out one’s own immoral side, then the Shadow becomes directed at Good People, and this is doubly evil, since in this case the scapegoat is innocent, and innocence itself is the target. (Again: as in _Parasite_ .)

Yet if to be “Good” is no different than to be Balanced, how is this healthy? Clearly: the goal is to USE the Shadow to SERVE the Ego’s Journey into the Undiscovered Self and the Collective Unconscious, just as Gollum guides Frodo into Mount Doom. Pledging allegiance to a Satanist collective of Imperialists does no good; withdrawing onto an Island also does no good. The answer is to pick the right side, and that is the side which defends freedom and responsibility. How can we know which side is which? Well, gee. All I can say is: “You will know. When you are calm, at peace.” THEN: you can fight.

[({Dm.A.A.||R.G.)}]

Reaffirmations for Summer 2020: Idealism and Distress.

You know: when you talk about Idealism, you’re talking about just how great and awesome Life would be if only everyone did just a little more. A little here, a little there. To be a little bit more open, or a little bit more kind. To work a little harder, so that those who have to pick up lots of slack enjoy a life that’s easier by far than what they would have had to do instead. Usually, the Idealists are the sorts of people who WOULD do all these things, and they often have to push themselves so much each day to make things work for those around them. Since the Idealists often excel in these qualities, it is predictable that those who fall behind might grow envious of them, and if those shortcomings might be rationalized and recast as virtues, the Idealist might even be portrayed as intrusive. Yet one conceit which is entirely beyond justification is the accusation of self-interest. It may be true that such a change as the Idealist envisions would be of inestimable relief to one’s Self, which stands to benefit by a far greater margin than those who disadvantage themselves ever so slightly. Yet the simple fact that their disadvantage is so minor and the Idealist’s advantage is so great is precisely what renders the transformation Just, for such a set of affairs may only come to pass when, up until this time, the Idealist has had to shoulder an unreasonable burden on behalf of the average person.

[({Dm.A.A.)}]

The Damsel in Distress is one of the oldest archetypes for a reason, since she represents the birth of the boy’s moral development. She presents him with a challenge: given power over a helpless embodiment of femininity, one doubling as sex object and mother figure, he has the choice whether to inflict harm or healing. While boys who grow up on hero myths might easily inherit a feeling of entitlement to those whom they rescue, the deal works, since the rescue is executed and the greater evil assuaged by the Hero, however self-interested the intent.

The simple act of choosing heroism over exploitation is an exercise in self-restraint, courage, and conviction, all invariably heroic qualities, not because they cannot be corrupted towards ill ends, but rather because higher goals cannot be attained without them, and these higher goals are not mere pretensions but rather expressions of the longings of the most piteous and helpless victims.

The Damsel in Distress is not disgraced by her powerlessness, since most often it is the fate of those possessing a more mysterious power: that of vulnerability and innocence. The Damsel in Distress redeems the Hero’s cumbersome and heavy-handed masculinity, but only by being totally vulnerable to him, grotesque though this predicament might appear, and rightfully so, for it was produced by the exploitative means of her villainous captor. The very distinction between the role of captor and liberator, by one’s own choice, establishes the boy as a man, superior in dignity.

At that point, though, the challenge falls to the maiden, for she undergoes the same sort of transformation. If she feels no debt of gratitude towards him, or, feeling it, she acts against it, she has remained a girl, a child of the Universe, entitled to her own innocence but not much else. Her rescuer is like a Father Figure to her, whose love must be unconditional by default, so that she owes him nothing in return, and if he should argue otherwise, he becomes a tyrannical abuser, no better than her ogrish captors.

In this context, it is no surprise if she should seek the company of her fellow girls, who coddle her and assure her that, since she was innocent to begin with, she owes her savior nothing, for he was simply preserving the Natural Order of Things, and, if his intent were self-interested, then she ought to be commended for deceiving him towards beneficent means, and the test of his character will ultimately lie in his absence of personal passion, regardless of whether such a feeling of entitlement would precede or follow the Heroic Act. 

Yet clearly such a matriarchal conceit does not live up to the ideals of any Goddess of Justice, for it forces all men to renounce their own bodies completely in service to weak women, feeble and restrained not only of body but of Heart and Mind, the latter by their own Nature and Volition, disincentivizing many men and producing not only more villains but, among women, a greater tolerance for villainous, barbaric “men” without “creepy” ulterior agendas.

It should be obvious, however, that such agendas represent not so much a hidden evil but a biological longing for moral order, one which redeems the human body as a Source of Moral Authority. The woman who rewards her Saviour with Love becomes akin to a Goddess in her own right, whereas the other remains a temptress and a child. Just as the boy who takes advantage of the Damsel fails a test of Manhood, the girl who does not honour his sacrifice fails to mature into a Woman. Their reciprocity is dependent upon the trust the boy places in the girl by setting her free, as well as the respect she shows for his hopes for the two of them.

In Actual Life, these sorts of relationships govern all good business, for while we all must fend for ourselves we are tasked with doing so by noble means, noble means which, since they are essential, cannot be separated from practical life by being sublimated as ascetic martyrdom. In business, we all want something, but we must be willing to risk loss in order to empower our associates, that they might reciprocate. 

This risk is no more an invitation to say “No” than the bondage of the Damsel in Distress is a form of consent. Disappointments in business are not the results of lofty expectations but of treacheries; the lofty expectation is, in fact, the End in and of Itself, the Goal without the pursuit of which nothing good gets done. 

When I throw the ball to you, you do not call me arrogant for expecting you to catch it, and though I part with it willingly, it is not with the expectation that you might do with it whatever you will, but rather that you will serve the team as I intended for you to. So it is in Love, and this is but one function of the Hero’s encounter with the Damsel in Distress. These stories are not merely the sublimation of perverse heterosexual fantasies; they are tests in refinement for deep-seated and inextricable biological impulses. Maturity for the Man lies in the boy’s ability to set the girl free; maturity for the Woman lies in her ability to reward him. All else is simply conjecture; the moment that we begin to deconstruct the intent of the Hero,

“… the native hue of resolution

Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought;

And enterprises of great pith and moment,

With this regard, their currents turn awry,

And lose the name of action.”

The Good Life always comes at a price.

[({Dm.A.A.)}]

LAYOUT: Parasite and Ressentiment. (ENVY v. TREACHERY, TREACHERY via ENVY:)

Parasite: what’s it about?

-        Poor Korean Family: what are they like?

-        Affluent Family: what they are like.

-        Methods employed by Kims.

-        Park Family Situation.

-        Attempts at justification.

o  By Ms. Kim.

o  By Audience.

o  By Postmodern Philosophy.

o  Reasons:

§  History:

·     Morality Plays, their history.

o  Enlightenment Era.

o  Mozart’s Don Giovanni.

o  Disney’s Aladdin.

§  Characterization based upon charm and good will.

·     All “Good” characters: comely appearance.

§  Lack of sympathy for Jasmine. (Resultant of the Sultan.)

§  Aspirations to attain.

·     Heart matters more.

·     Ambitions backfire.

·     Character triumphs via “Character”.

§  Difficulty in marketing Morality to Adults.

·     They retain the prejudices of youth.

·     They lose faith in the values they inherited.

o  Nietzsche: Genealogy of Morals.

o  Foucault’s influence upon Ideology.

§  Outcome: (Synthesis.)

·     A play that inspires sympathy for poor people while surrendering moral discernment.

·     Result: extreme alienation from compassion for the Rich.

-        Reasons the Kims were Wrong.

o  Betraying fellow Workers, Friends, and their Hosts.

o  Lying, cheating, and stealing.

§  The Parks are robbed of a chance to defend their own honour. Hence Ms. Kim’s claims remain prejudicial and unsubstantiated.

o  Violence as a first resort.

o  Envy as motive.

-        Reconstructing Morality: Alasdair MacIntyre.

o  Impersonal Nature of Ethics. (Kierkegaard, etc.)

o  Sympathy as a weak emotion and appeal.

§  Even Nietzsche regards pity as a power attitude.

§  Nietzsche’s concept of Ressentiment.

§  Nietzsche’s denunciation of Judgements upon the Soul.

·     Judging by Class: “it’s easy for them to be Good.”

o  Judgement by Soul.

o  Analogy: the Joker.

·     Judging by Character: “they ARE Good, especially TO US.”

o  Judgement by Action.

o  Unprejudicial.

"It is a fundamental truth of human nature that man is incapable of remaining permanently on the heights, of continuing to admire anything. Human nature needs variety. Even in the most enthusiastic ages people have always liked to joke enviously about their superiors. That is perfectly in order and is entirely justifiable so long as after having laughed at the great they can once more look upon them with admiration; otherwise the game is not worth the candle. In that way ressentiment finds an outlet even in an enthusiastic age. And as long as an age, even though less enthusiastic, has the strength to give ressentiment its proper character and has made up its mind what its expression signifies, ressentiment has its own, though dangerous importance. …. the more reflection gets the upper hand and thus makes people indolent, the more dangerous ressentiment becomes, because it no longer has sufficient character to make it conscious of its significance. Bereft of that character reflection is a cowardly and vacillating, and according to circumstances interprets the same thing in a variety of way. It tries to treat it as a joke, and if that fails, to regard it as an insult, and when that fails, to dismiss it as nothing at all; or else it will treat the thing as a witticism, and if that fails then say that it was meant as a moral satire deserving attention, and if that does not succeed, add that it was not worth bothering about. …. ressentiment becomes the constituent principle of want of character, which from utter wretchedness tries to sneak itself a position, all the time safeguarding itself by conceding that it is less than nothing. The ressentiment which results from want of character can never understand that eminent distinction really is distinction. Neither does it understand itself by recognizing distinction negatively (as in the case of ostracism) but wants to drag it down, wants to belittle it so that it really ceases to be distinguished. And ressentiment not only defends itself against all existing forms of distinction but against that which is still to come. …. The ressentiment which is establishing itself is the process of leveling, and while a passionate age storms ahead setting up new things and tearing down old, raising and demolishing as it goes, a reflective and passionless age does exactly the contrary; it hinders and stifles all action; it levels. Leveling is a silent, mathematical, and abstract occupation which shuns upheavals. In a burst of momentary enthusiasm people might, in their despondency, even long for a misfortune in order to feel the powers of life, but the apathy which follows is no more helped by a disturbance than an engineer leveling a piece of land. At its most violent a rebellion is like a volcanic eruption and drowns every other sound. At its maximum the leveling process is a deathly silence in which one can hear one’s own heart beat, a silence which nothing can pierce, in which everything is engulfed, powerless to resist. One man can be at the head a rebellion, but no one can be at the head of the leveling process alone, for in that case he would be leader and would thus escape being leveled. Each individual within his own little circle can co-operate in the leveling, but it is an abstract power, and the leveling process is the victory of abstraction over the individual. The leveling process in modern times, corresponds, in reflection, to fate in antiquity. ... It must be obvious to everyone that the profound significance of the leveling process lies in the fact that it means the predominance of the category ‘generation’ over the category ‘individuality’."

S. Kierkegaard.

Criticism of Nietzsche:

-        By eliminating Morality, he actually made the process of Ressentiment that much more deadly, all the while eliminating the necessity for reflection.

-        Kierkegaard’s Advantages:

o  Maintains Morality.

o  Maintains Reflection.

o  Resists Leveling.

-        Proto-Fascism: allows individuals to feel powerful in acts of parasitic manipulation. Individuals conspire against their benefactors, pretending towards power which is not Strength of Character, ensuring their self-destruction.

In Summary:

if my one failure was trusting you, do you not confess that you are untrustworthy? If, by trusting you, I made available for you the possibility of treachery, was I not employing my own power to social uses? How can you claim to have been the powerful one? If my one error was an error of accommodation, were you not the one requiring accommodation? Why should I compromise the value of teamwork on behalf of a charlatan?

RESPONSES:

“Ressentiment is a reassignment of the pain that accompanies a sense of one's own inferiority/failure onto an external scapegoat. The ego creates the illusion of an enemy, a cause that can be "blamed" for one's own inferiority/failure. Thus, one was thwarted not by a failure in oneself, but rather by an external "evil."”

The people afflicted with envy become external enemies, objectively. There is only ever reason to resist when there is an external evil to be overcome; all else is vanity.

“The ego creates an enemy in order to insulate itself from culpability.”

There is no culpability without an external Morality.

There are no true “failures” except for failures of Character. Outside of Moral Systems, individuals hardly have any ground to judge success apart from “failure”, and all attempts to attain one by avoidance of the other are contingent upon that sort of narcissistic self-commodification which was established to be weakness of both will AND character.

[({Dm.A.A.)}]

LAW:

It is no mystery when an act of police brutality is documented that the People experience a collective sense of righteous indignation. Objectively, three Ideals are subverted in such an instance: Life, Peace, and Order. While the valuation of each of these Ideals is restricted to the domain of philosophers, there can be no doubt that when a man dies at the hands of Law Enforcement, without Due Process, by inherently violent means, his Life has been cut short, and the violent miscarriage of justice upsets both Peace and Order. The question of his RIGHT to Life, Peace, and Order remains nebulous, in the sense that philosophers often joke about the meme of Inherent Rights, but this theoretical problem does not present a SOCIAL problem, since human beings are known for fabricating that which Nature does not provide; in the absence of any Natural Law that protects Individuals, human beings invent Laws of their own. These Laws remain, in our contemporary Day and Age, the only convention which is at once ubiquitous and readily understood.

While, clinically, most people tend to score low in terms of Moral Reasoning, most people, if asked to define the Law, would probably express considerable faith in the Institution, at least in terms of Spirit. What is or is not “legal”, while it is not always synonymous with what is or is not Right, remains a matter of common principle and understanding, often regarded as the best FORMAL approximation we have for such abstract concepts such as Justice and Freedom. It is because legislators, litigators, enforcers, and civilians agree to the social contract that at least the PURSUIT of an objective, transcendent Morality is possible. In the absence of any unifying Church, Political Party, or Syndicate that holds itself accountable to the Public in the manner that Law does, striving for the absence of bias, secular, contemporary Society relies upon Law for all questions of Authority which would otherwise be impossible to answer without appearing pretentious and partisan.

Presupposing that the simplest explanation is the most credible, so long as it is confined to the objective, we may dismiss the ominous factor of “race” from the equation. If one asks why more “white Americans” are not interviewed regarding their experiences with “racism”, it is not uncommon to suggest that they do not “go through it”, implying a subjective phenomenon without scientific basis, devoid of value. Having established this as a projection, it becomes imperative to regard acts of violence reported by the Mass Media as isolated incidents. One reason for this lies in the fact that Law not only empowers individuals by preserving their Rights, (which might not exist outside of Law, except as fantasies,) but that it holds individuals accountable for their own actions. As such, we do not require conjecture about the MOTIVATIONS driving any act of police brutality, which can be classified as street violence far more credibly than it may be classified as “Law Enforcement”. People die from violence every day; what sets police brutality apart lies in that we hold agents of enforcement to a Higher Standard. This remains, of course, an INDIVIDUAL Standard. To suggest that any one act of brutality is NOT the product of a [wo]man’s moral shortcomings but rather of some sort of conspiracy is not only absurd but demoralizing, since such a conspiracy would thereby become indistinguishable from Law Itself.

Since folkways, mores, and social conventions are often inane and ridiculous, peer pressure is a force reserved for perpetual adolescents. Civilians are just as likely to judge moral behaviour by hairstyle as by ideological conviction. Only the Legal System enables members of opposing groups to mediate conflicts. Hence any isolated incident of police brutality can never be symptomatic of an illicit conspiracy, since that conspiracy would have, by its very nature, to be the only truly objective standard by which we judge things to be either illicit or legitimate. “That’s messed up” doesn’t cut it, for it is nothing more than the expression of emotion. It is also absurd, since we know that Law is so ubiquitous that its agencies of enforcement are divided into autonomous precincts that only partially answer to any Federal Authority.

It is therefore important not ONLY to see the irony in acts of protest which in themselves become Violent, Disorderly, and Deadly, subverting the same Ideals which the initial tragedy threatened. It is just as important to regard these acts, too, as isolated incidents, for we must have Hope in that the average person, outside of the heat of the moment, would admit that such acts of protest are ALSO, equally and unequivocally, failures of enforcement and Miscarriages of Justice.

[({R.G.)}]

The IRONY of ANARCHY:

It’s always ironic when, in the aftermath of a publicized act of police brutality, some people find license to publicize their own gripes about law enforcement. Not only does this trivialize the tragedy, but it also engenders an even more dangerous prejudice than whatever it was that produced the brutality, unless of course we presume that all forms of brutality sprout from the same primeval Source.

There is of course a peculiar place that a lynching holds in the hearts and minds of ordinary people. All forms of street violence are disturbing, not only because they are threatening, but because they are insulting to Humanity. French Philosopher Gilles Deleuze described something known as the “shame in being human” we experience when we see people behaving with excessive harshness, as though we internalized their own guilt for them, by association within the species. In instances such as these, we witness a side of Human Nature which we do not customarily expect. What we see often incites rage within us, but only to the same extent that we are ourselves prone to it; Jungian Psychology refers to this as “Shadow Projection”; outside of this irrational rage we are confined to shock and indignation.

One sees a young man getting beaten up outside a Cleveland hotel in broad daylight as bystanders cheer his assailant on. Do they know what he did to deserve this? Or do they presume that he “had it coming”, much as women often presume that men who are single are single “for a reason”, thereby perpetuating those men’s condition? When one witnesses behaviour such as this, though it is not always tantamount to a child getting murdered by gangs, it reveals what could be called the “Natural” state of Humanity, as opposed to its purportedly Civilized State.

Lynchings are especially disturbing not because they are acts of murder, but because they are carried out by a mob, operating outside of Legal Due Process. Even if the victim is condemned by Law to Death, we expect Law to do more for him. What is offended is not only the Pride in Being Human; it is the expectation that Law will redeem us. When one witnesses an abuse of police power, the tragedy is only secondarily the loss of Human Life; people die on the streets every day, and their deaths are celebrated, often publically, by their assailants. This is Reality.

What sets acts of Police Brutality apart is in that they are errors of Enforcement. Intuitively, perhaps instinctively, we recognize the Law as one of our forms of Saving Grace. We EXPECT for Law to protect us from not only one another but ourselves, for we know that, without it, the State of Nature would prevail, and those who retained the luxury of civilized thought would swiftly fall prey to unimaginable acts of predation by the planet’s Leading Carnivore: Man. It is for this reason that we hold Agents of Enforcement to a Higher Standard; they represent all civilized interests.

When we witness an act of Police Brutality, it says nothing about the Police. What we are witnessing is thoroughly typical HUMAN Behaviour, carried out without the bounds of Due Process, but using the full force of Law Enforcement in its service. In the wake of such a tragedy, the only sensible recourse is to unify in SUPPORT of the Law and those who continue to enforce it with conscientiousness and dexterity. It is only by doing so that we preserve Individual Rights, which are, after all, social constructs, and it is only by doing so that we preserve Individual Accountability, thereby resisting the primal temptation to so identify with a group that these prejudicial reactions are likely to recur. It is therefore ironic that, in the aftermath of a publicized act of police brutality, and in the wake of a tragedy which is most properly called a Miscarriage of Justice, there are some of those among us who would think to supplant the Law Itself, as though the failure of People to live up to our own Civilized Standards were the product of Civilization and NOT intrinsic to Nature. No serious anarchist is without a gun and a vendetta.

[({R.G.)}]

BOOKS: (a Melancholy Reminiscence.)

I have been depressed recently, and it’s not just owing to the migraines, though the migraines tell the story as do scars; they’re a metonymy for the entire body of the problem. They started when I wrote my first game. Ordinarily, I would have first committed my thoughts to paper; my first attempt at a novel was inscribed on napkins. The game did well, but I didn’t; I had to surrender several commitments to my acquired ailment of the brain. I agonized over my publication and its legacy. It was well-written, which no one contested. It was not “fun”, but novels do not need to be fun.

Ten years ago, during the Christmas Holidays, my girlfriend at the time, now my only ex, and I visited the home of our Humanities teachers, Mr. and Mrs. Rowan. The house was packed, to the extent that I was bewildered and at a loss for what to do, surrounded by so many of my colleagues and their associates. Most of the instance was a blur, but I recall the conversation with Mr. Rowan. It was about Doctor Englund. He said, “she believes that the World revolves around books. And I don’t.” He laughed.

I asked my girlfriend, not yet my ex (so: shortly thereafter) what he might have meant by that. She replied that one needs “experience”. Ten years have yet to prove her right, but we are not together anymore, so the meaning of her theory remains anecdotal.

This concept of the World Revolving About Books stuck with me. In college, I struggled with the seeming Duality between the Lunar World, one which revolved about Literature, governed by Moral Laws, and the Solar World, one which somehow prospered by the will of the People, however naïve or misinformed they might have been.

Most recently, I’ve had to ground myself in Reality. The Quarantine compelled me to stay home, so I withdrew from the company of my fellows, many of whom withdrew from me. I started reading again. Many of my books have been lost, stolen, or vandalized over the years, owing to a stream of false friends, but I kept my Bookstore Membership, and, besides that, I had grown accustomed to using the Internet. When I read about a Game Jam advertising an opportunity to adapt a book to a game, I decided it was time to read Either/Or by Soren Kierkegaard.

It did not take me long time to comprehend Kierkegaard’s “genius”, nor why MacIntyre referred to him as such. Kierkegaard, like so many other philosophers I’d read before him, (though they wrote long after he did) was a Real Person, a breath of fresh air in a swamp of confusion. Every sentence imbibed my imagination with a captivating brilliance, building upon previous claims musically, interweaving novel concepts into a contingent and self-contained whole which nonetheless felt timeless. Not for the first time in my Life, a simple Book answered questions that I had struggled previously to even articulate. Not for the first time in my Life, a Philosopher did more for me than all the people I had met within the decade, altogether, as well as those I knew before.

Returning to Social Life, even through the window of the Online Forum, grew difficult and alienating. I witnessed what Kierkegaard in a later text would call “leveling”: the process by which Individuality was robbed of all Authority and reduced to Equality. The Internet spoke to me as if one voice, and it was a voice combining conviction with confusion. Most of my fellows in these Game Jams were frankly illiterate; the sorts of spelling and usage errors they were making were only typical of native English speakers. One guy did end up reading a novel I recommended for him, (Ubik by Philip K. Dick) but he was not a native English speaker. (Most probably: Italian.) People who wrote code were bamboozled by my simple prose. I had acquired the Promethean Flame of innovation once more, yet it was apparently blinding. I became Midas; all I touched turned to Gold, so I could not avail myself of it. Ideas flowed from me as if from a well-spring, but I could not convey them, not for a lack of facility, but for an excess of it. My only companion was in Kierkegaard. And that was when the migraines began again.

There is a scene in a recent film called Good Will Hunting. Within the film, the protagonist recites his favourite authors to a psychotherapist, citing those authors as his “friends”. The psychotherapist contends that the protagonist cannot have a conversation with them. Yet not even six years ago the actor who portrayed that psychotherapist dropped dead of his own accord. I can’t have a conversation with HIM, either. And most of the lines he improvised for that film are ominous in retrospect.

Exhausted from the chaos that my computer screen is heir to, I talked my Mother into watching me play a video game today. It’s a recent remake of an old favourite: Ratchet and Clank. The story is a perversion of the original, but the mechanics are good. The gameplay is narrated by the buffoonish superantihero Captain Qwark, an ingenious literary invention when encountered in the original publication, reduced now to a clichéd parody of himself. I might have laughed, three years ago, to hear him refer to the “Hero” as “they”. Instinctively, I correct the misappropriation of the plural pronoun in my head, each time I hear it. At least one thing I could cling to as a Universal Constant was grammar, always. Yet, this time, something like a shadow came over me. I did not recall his calling Ratchet a “they” before. Who were “they”? Had “they” changed things? Was this the “they” that Dick wrote about? The Elite who sought to control the World by manipulating the Language in Orwellian Fashion, with Huxley’s Consent of the Ruled, robbing us of History?

Clearly, migraines are not my only problem.

[({Dm.A.A.||R.G.)}]