After After Virtue: an Unflinching Critique of MacIntyre.

After After Virtue: an Unflinching Critique of MacIntyre. 

(Written upon Completing my Second Reading of After Virtue, though not the Nineteenth Chapter, for Obvious Reasons.)

MacIntyre’s crystallized perfection cracks under the hammers and sickles of those Marxist apologists and Nietzschean dreamers whom MacIntyre so translucently despises, but the bulk of the crumbling deconstruction of After Virtue is performed by MacIntyre himself, once his devotion to his dreams of public accountability and his eager resistance to any sort of Nietzschean or Sartrean detachment from Public Life compel him to “defend” his work with a far duller instrument than he employed for its construction: a useful tool repurposed into a weak weapon.

Hardly, if even, three years following the publication of the First Edition in the United States MacIntyre caved into publishing an ominous Nineteenth Chapter wherein, for the first time over the course of his comedic history of moral thought, the playwright himself appears onstage as a caricature, breaking the fourth wall of historicity in order to address the hecklers in his audience. He hardly breaches the top of the third page of this addendum without reducing himself to a stock character at the turn of the leaf: “Morality which is no particular society’s morality is to be found nowhere,” quoth the Learned Scot of Notre Dame, continuing to cite some of his most iconic examples as one-liners: “There was the-morality-of-fourth-century-Athens, there were the-moralities-of-thirteenth-century-Western-Europe, there are numerous such moralities, but where ever was or is morality as such?”

Yet even in writing that previous sentence I am forced to confront the fact that MacIntyre is no longer a Scot, nor has he been one for about half a century, and while the shelter of American Academia might allow this “something of an intellectual nomad” (quite probably his own words) to escape the evils of ethnic profiling, his own ethical aims do not, though they DO allow him the privilege of “doing as the Romans do” within the safe confines of an Institution that is every bit as much a product of liberal Individualism as is Nietzsche, if not far more so.

MacIntyre’s central sin is a contradiction which Aristotle would most probably have laughed at. On the one hand, MacIntyre claims that morality is entirely topical, particular to groups and times, devoid of that universality which thinkers as diverse as Kant and Kierkegaard equated it with, and to be recognized within the context of a plurality. On the other hand, (perhaps not the shaking hand) MacIntyre rejects pluralism, especially with regards to Individuals as Rational Beings.

Yet how does a “nomad” manage to avoid becoming an Ubermensch? Clearly, the chief advantage to leading a nomadic lifestyle within the “fallen” modern world is in that one needs NOT simply to adapt to whatever culture one finds one’s self within, thereby sacrificing that romanticized “continuity of narrative” which comprises After Virtue’s most beautifully crafted chapter, but rather one can avail one’s self of a variety of perspectives and use Reason to decide among them which path to take. Constancy is not lost but gained in such a postmodern wilderness, though the temptation towards inconstancy remains, more tempting than ever before, though more threatening and fearful to the wary and experienced. In offering us the long-lost boon of moral objectivity, how does MacIntyre justify his own subjective biases, biases which by his own definitions MUST be intrinsic to his lifestyle as a transatlantic immigrant? (Perhaps I should note that, in this respect, I feel for him, but only as a character foil.) How does a seasoned nomad “settle down” into the mandala-shaped enclosure of the modern Academic city-state?

Apparently, it is by seeking to subvert the cornucopia of admittedly irreconcilable cultures (“admittedly” by the author’s own admission) and subcultures of the Present Age to the authoritarian rule of one Greek alpha male, severing all ties with competing intellectual traditions, (Camus is mentioned only once in After Virtue, as an unflattering example, and he does NOT appear within the Index of the Third Edition, twenty-six years later; Deleuze, Derrida, and Foucault do not appear at all.) and casually commenting, with boyish naiveté, that it is not virtue but bureaucracy which inspires despotism.

Yet who is better suited to contend with bureaucracy: Nietzsche or MacIntyre? One defines himself entirely by his role as does a chivalrous knight; the other uses medieval writs for wastepaper. Camus achieves more by “charm”, Jung more by “intuition”, and Kierkegaard more by sweeping generalizations than does the bookish, cozy Alasdair MacIntyre, at least with respect to not only appealing to the moral conscience but empowering it in persons. Deleuze, even in rejecting personhood as more than a product of multiplicities, is far more thorough in his investigation of cultures, mythology, and the effects of both upon the internal psyche (thanks in large part, we might presume, to his co-author Felix Guattari) than the Scottish-American historian who idealizes most the Greek and Scandinavian myths, (pity that he and Nietzsche never met to drink to that; intellectual history might have turned out differently) so sequestering himself to those cultures which were directly touched by Aristotelian meddling (at times: an Alexandrian Conquest tantamount at least to Manifest Destiny, though MacIntyre seems to prefer the former to the latter, having tried the fruits of both) that his prologue still lists “Chinese and Japanese” as though it were “also” an alien category to be distinguished from “English, Danish, Polish, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian, and Turkish”.

Is such myopia not OBVIOUSLY the consequence of a pluralism which rejects all universal claims? Is the infantile idolatry of Aristotle via Jesus not TRANSPARENTLY a reaction to one’s own temperamental insecurities? When the natural conformist, sworn enemy of the Nietzschean Superman, can no longer feel safe leading a nomadic lifestyle, for his home is devoid of patriotism and continuity, what better course of action for him remains but to take up refuge in an academic convent, ally himself with Catholicism out of utility, (especially to appear “consistent” to his students, thereby preserving status and security,) to preach Aristotle to a world tired of it, awaiting the return of the Saviour whom academia will recognize? If Nietzsche cannot be credited for anything else, is it not for arming Jung with the language with which to expose such neuroses?

Who among us has not sinned in this way? Men look to powerful figures like Aristotle or privileged princes like Christ to save them when they find themselves in new and hostile territory. Failing to adapt, we seek to adapt our environment to ourselves; failing to adapt our environment, we seek someone else to adapt it FOR us. One needn’t even consider Nietzsche’s primary project: the rejection of Socrates, without whom Aristotle would have amounted to little. The last line of After Virtue even seeks to place the author in the position of a cleric working towards the recognition of this Saviour; tired of waiting for Godot, the embodiment of hope whose “absence says more than his presence” (as does the wandering Taoist sage whom Watts loved and who surely inspired Nietzsche’s Ubermensch) MacIntyre resolves himself to waiting for St. Benedict. Yet apparently St. Benedict is already among us, and it is MacIntyre himself!! Yet this is just humble enough to stop short of Nietzschean narcissism, for MacIntyre is not herein analogous to Christ; that is Aristotle.

[({Dm.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.)}]

PARAS!TE: FULL REV!EW.

THE ETHOS:

In the eighteenth century, during the European Enlightenment, morality plays took a turn in favour of revolutionary views, the likes of which Marx and his followers adopted to varying degrees of success and atrocious failure in the centuries that followed. Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni is a prime example of this subversive trend; the librettist who wrote those ingenious lyrics which Mozart set to music later moved to the United States. Retelling the tale of Don Juan, the four-hour epic depicts an ignoble nobleman who terrorizes peasants who are extremely civilized. (Of course, our own Slavoj Zizek might take issue with the term “civilized”, but in so doing he represents part of the problem I describe.) Admittedly, most of what Don Giovanni does throughout those four hours might even pass for admirable achievement in our present day, but only because so many men are either self-absorbed or easily pushed over. His only sins that stand the scrutiny of time are rape and murder, though one must keep in mind that, according to the old morality, the former would be hardly worse than the remainder of his lechery, since personal consent was less important, even during the Enlightenment, than conformism to standards, and even the most radical Enlightenment thinker wouldn’t have dared to suggest that chastity, as a social imperative, was simply the product of envy.

By illustrating the poor in a noble light and the noble in a poor light, the greatest dramatists of the Enlightenment managed to draw a sharp distinction between social hierarchy and moral hierarchy. Nobility was not a quality either exclusive to nor guaranteed within the Nobles, even if it was in fact the Noble Class which had produced it as a standard. So long as you could romanticize peasants as behaving like chivalrous princes, contending with a lecherous rich man, you could not only expose the corruption which wealth is heir to but also you could begin to Universalize Nobility as a standard transcending social station. The Cardinal Virtues are not simply behaviours which the Priesthood adopts because the Church can afford to sponsor them; they are archetypes that live within the very Heart of Human Nature, planted there by God, available to any thinking man. Rafael, the Angel of Forgiveness, is no different in quintessence from Guanyin, the Bodhisattva of Compassion, of whom the Dalai Lama is the avatar. Goodness and Evil transcend cultural boundaries, and they are untethered by the mortal norms of class.

This flame was not so easily extinguished by modernity as we might suspect. While Breaking Bad might have set the stage for shows like Ozark, wherein every character is deplorable, its artistic achievement was twofold: that it not only presented a sympathetic villain, but it established such a stark contrast between his villainous fate and his heroic beginnings that viewers could not help but to end up blaming the same man they were rooting for. This was precisely Vince Gilligan’s goal: to teach viewers that “actions have consequences”. His genius was in creating villains so engaging that there was no sympathy left by the end; we had already expended it.

Even more successful artistically to this end, if not commercially, is the prequel Better Call Saul. As Jimmy McGill transforms into Saul Goodman, his stoic counterpart Mike becomes a hitman. The central themes are usually conveyed by Mike himself, who doubles as a Wise Old Man and as a Gatekeeper, eventually becoming a tragic hero. One of Mike’s earliest monologues, addressed to an upstart criminal named Pryce, (an I.T. specialist who decides to sell stolen pharmaceuticals for a profit,) is upon the difference between a “criminal” and a “bad guy”. “You took something that wasn’t yours, and you sold it for a profit, which now makes you a criminal. Good one? Bad one? That’s up to you.” Mike recognizes that our moral standing in Life is independent of our legal standing. It follows logically that it is also independent of our economic standing, especially if economics can be reduced to social standing in an institution such as the Law. Mike repeatedly refuses money, even when his family’s in dire straits, when he believes that he has not earned it. This sets him apart from Ignacio Varga, who can sympathize with Mike’s robbery of a drug lord’s trucks, but not with the vendetta which motivated it. Nacho Varga doesn’t have the sorts of responsibilities which Mike has, since Mike acts also as a provider for his widowed daughter-in-law and his granddaughter, whereas Nacho’s father has always planned for Nacho to inherit a thoroughly decent family business. Mike simply retains his devotion to the Spirit of the Law, even after having quit his post as a cop in an extremely corrupt precinct. Ignacio, who has chosen to defy his father’s wishes by allying himself with the Cartel, ends up fending for life, enabling a string of murders and injuries in his wake. When he receives a blood transfusion from one of a pair of iconic Cartel twins, it represents both the duality of his nature and his transformation into a drug lord.

THE PATHOS:

By far, the evilest villain in the film Parasite turns out to have been the patriarch of the parasitic family. Not only does he do nothing to stop his family from committing the original con, acting as far less than the stoic source of moral fortitude and equanimity which his initial character foil, Mr. Park, exhibits, but his profound envy for this gentleman sparks a neurosis which, over a very short time, escalates into the most senseless act of murder. It is by no mistake that the two men wear the feathers of Native Americans at the climax of the film, for what they represent is that rage which, either robbed of civilizing grace or having never seen it, lashes out with infantile destruction at the alien world of wealth and sophistication. What the patriarch of the parasitic family represents is self-entitlement, expressed as the raw will to destroy that which it desires. Mr. Kim wants to live Mr. Park’s life; he even goes so far as to covet the wife. Yet it is his negligence, his heavy-handed arrogance, one alien to seasoned criminals, (the likes of which we see in Breaking Bad, for instance, or even Death Note,) that dooms his family, for when they have the perfect opportunity to plan their grand ascension to the plane of wealth instead they waste it, pilfering the secrets of their hosts, intoxicating themselves in a manner only native to the unaristocratic. They know neither the reserve to leave the door unanswered when the old housekeeper comes to knock, nor do they feel the shame and the disgust which would in such a matter warrant sympathy for her and her husband. It is because they fail to answer for their sins against the family, creeping about within the dark, that Kim bears witness to the act of love between Park and his blushing wife. Park and his wife are also envious, their act of love modeled after some fantasy of rundown life, but it’s a fantasy that has been planted by the daughter of the Kims, and they do nothing but to act it out in what they falsely think is privacy. The Parks are kind enough to hide their civilized disgust when they discover panties in the back of their own car, and it is nothing short of this that lands the parasitic patriarch his gig at the expense of someone younger and more qualified, if not yet “needy”, so to speak. Yet how can this Mr. Kim deplore them for what they should say in privacy? It is offense to which he only walks by his own secret path, rather than a directed insult. What he hates is not what his host DOES, but rather what the host PERCEIVES, and in that rests the seeds of a psychosis, for the narcissist, refusing to perceive his own foul stench, hates most the thought that others turn their noses up at it behind his back. It is for this reason that Mr. Kim winds up living down in the crawlspace, in the place of the same maniac who nearly killed his son and stabbed the hosts nearly to death. It seems that all is lost during the struggle between the recluse and the Kims’ son, but as it turns out it’s the early victim who will live to tell the tale. At that moment when the ritual of decency is interrupted by an act of madness, Mr. Park behaves the most responsibly, lifting the car keys from beneath the carcass of the man who nearly killed his wife and child. There is no question at this moment that Park is the Better Man, but as the stench of his assailant fills his nostrils Mr. Kim is so reminded of this stark superiority between them that he is possessed, as if by Cain, to kill the father right before the wife. Kim’s wife and son survive, but at that moment the Parks’ lives are over, where before there had been yet a feeble hope at dignity and even healing. Let us not forget that all of this went on without the Park’s say-so or knowledge; they had no idea, thinking themselves kind. Their one sin was living that one life which all the others wanted; their one error was permitting others even partial access to this life. A rational man would rejoice, knowing that at least someone kindly had been able to enjoy what he was yet to know. Yet madness works in other ways. Kim’s lust for “simple” Mrs. Park is clear when he first holds her hand, and hearing Mr. Park fondle her breast and all the while denounce his stink engenders jealousy the likes of which not even I can fathom. A True Man would sooner have confessed to all his sins in that one moment than to let the ruse go on. But the coward had no recourse but to crawl back into poverty, a circumstance that would arouse our pity but not our solidarity, for in that moment it was chosen by the victim. Kim had the capacity for murder then, but he had not the plan to do so, leaving it up to his son’s device. The women in the family, by this point, came to recognize the lodgers underground as equals, where before their senseless rivalry for ample resources had doomed them nearly to exposure. Yet the lies the daughter wove came back to haunt them, for just as the ladies of the family were ready to thus offer up their peace, the lady of the Parks came carrying a cake which had been baked not just to celebrate the birthday of her son but to help him to cope with trauma, a trauma fabricated by the Kims. It’s in this moment that their son tries to murder the lodgers, all for wanting what he had, just as his father kills their host for having only what they wanted. Hence the madman becomes the latter foil for Kim.

THE LOGOS:

One of the peculiar qualities of the Park family which is typical of underdeveloped characters (in developed countries) is just how little we truly know about them. This fact renders it impossible to blame them without making irrational inferences from outside the text, which would be a major faux pas in the Post-Derridean contemporary world. For instance, we cannot call them “capitalists” in the Marxist sense any more so than we might call Andy Bernard’s ancestors “slave owners”; though neoliberal Oscar Martinez would love to be able to prove Nellie’s inflated claims to be factual, Bernard is accurate in describing his ancestors as “moral middlemen”: conscientious, hardworking participants in a corrupt Social Order which, by a Kantian estimation, required them to conform in spite of personal reservations and subjective doubts. As far as we are aware, the Host Family in Parasite is most likely tantamount to this, only because most people in their estimated income bracket (presuming upon the quality of their luxuries) are in the same position: they are not business owners, so they are not capitalists in the Marxist sense. If they were brought up in a “bubble”, they surpass in dignity those nouveau riche who have had to “work to get there”. While it is charming and sadly endearing to hear people from the ghetto share their dreams of wealth and power (and one often does, as I have, having spent a lot of time in urban sectors and encountered many locals,) one recalls that, were they better educated, they would not speak so proudly of their entrepreneurial dreams and realities. By the most economically left-leaning, liberal definition available, the one supplied by the notorious Karl Marx, those who manage to move up the social ladder by their will and work alone are in fact MORE corrupt than those who are born into “privilege”, since such upward mobility requires them to make a PROFIT, which Marx systematically proves to be directly proportional to and, in fact, synonymous with, exploitation, selling out their fellows in the process. This process of “selling out” is precisely what the Kim family demonstrates. Conversely, the Park family exhibits behaviours which are far more emblematic of another archetype, that of the Child: Innocence. While their patriarch exhibits the stoic condescension of his station, his actual choices, though they always portend unrelenting cosmic retribution, are invariably advantageous to the Kims, whom he grows to trust as much as his childlike wife does. The Parks, though they retain internal feelings of disgust, never allow these personal biases to skew their public behaviour, extending an attitude of trusting compassion even to their hired help, except for when they are MISLED, calculatedly, to make cancellations. While this ideal is one to which we might feel rightfully entitled, it’s not a frequent fact, so we ought to be grateful to the Parks, for they exhibit all these graces willingly and willfully. To the same extent as it is “easy” for them to be good, it is just as easy for them to be evil, and their choices therefore act as the definitive arbiter in the revelation of their character. If the Kim family finds within the depths of that character a private contempt, it is only because the Kims have betrayed the trust of the Parks by creeping into their private, innermost lives. When government entities in countries purported to be Leftist behave in this manner, Snowden supporters worldwide profess that the government betrayed both the People and its own Ideals for them.

If Parasite is a metaphor, then who are we to read it just one way? Are the Kims not, in fact, more akin to the capitalists in the works of Marx than the Parks are? Foremost anti-capitalist Slavoj Zizek holds a similar interpretation of subtext in The Sound of Music, insisting that the more subtle viewer will notice extremely proto-Fascist tendencies in the villagers who serve as that film’s protagonists, whereas the Germans they defy are tantamount to a Nazi’s conception of the Jewish Elite. If we can systematically demonstrate that the Kims exhibit the violent, sociopathic, and exploitative tendencies of a nineteenth-century Industrialist, then how can we continue to sympathize with them, as liberals?

Hidden Leeches: So, Who Were the Parasites?

Of course, here the director himself offers a counterintuitive interpretation of his own work, by suggesting that the Parks were Parasites as WELL. Of course, such an observation could never absolve either party of its crimes, for crimes are often crimes not just against an “exploited party” but also against an Overlying Law; if anything, being equated with the Parks in dignity gives Mr. Kim far less excuse for envy, unless he cares nothing for dignity itself. Yet such a degree of sophistication in moral calculation is probably lost already upon any class of people that calls the Parks “parasites”.

The most narcissistic delusion is that of Godhood, and since a God can deny his own delusions from a position of Divine Authority, any man who believes himself to be a God is the most hopeless case in this regard. What is the significance of Divinity? A Deity is like a genie without the shackles; he or she can will anything into existence, at least enough so as to satisfy his or her own needs. It is only in Buddhism that the Gods are considered unhappy in direct proportion to their power, and that is only because Buddhism rejects power.

A self-made man is a God Incarnate: an entity who fashions, by his or her own volition alone, the entirety of his or her own conditions. It does not take a Freud or Jung to see this grandiosity for what it is. Yet, somehow, when we see people relying upon other people, we treat them as though they were less than human, as though human beings were Gods and Goddesses. While cooking and driving are hardly metaphysical powers, (I, myself, possess at least one of them) it’s not a mark of shame to hire a private cook or a driver. This is because human beings are communal creatures; as Alasdair MacIntyre said, (and as I quote, quite shamelessly, for I agree with him*:) we are “dependent, rational animals”. The Parks are not exploiting the Kims by providing them with a source of income in exchange for a service. While the most cursory reading of Marx would call this “exchange-value” into question, the seemingly generous NATURE of the Parks, already exposed by their willful and “easy” goodness, leaves it up to them to decide how MUCH to pay the Kims, and it leaves it up to us to infer that it’s probably a “fair amount”, hardly synonymous with exploitation.

*Not only do I quote him because I agree with him; I am also unashamed in doing so, because I agree with him that there is nothing to be ashamed of herein.

Post-Shamanic Human Beings form societies based upon the division of specialized labour, and while this division lends itself to hierarchical structures it also makes possible a state of interdependence wherein ethics and commerce, working hand in hand, ensure both the production and the distribution of resources which possess Marx’s “use-value”. Yet the lingering credibility of Marx, especially in the current Zeitgeist, is not in his depth of research into the statistics of the prior centuries, an academic rigour the likes of which we do not find in millennials. It’s rather in the shocking accounts of factory conditions that Marx sets his morality play, in terms so plain and detached that they prefigure the ominous stylings of Realism and Modernist Theatre. At first blush, the Kim family’s living circumstances seem most reminiscent of these stark conditions. Yet no tragedy is complete without a villain and a tragic hero. In the case of the Kims, they are both, because of their choices.

Since ethics remain ethics irrespective of personal conditions, and as we have demonstrated that the most liberally sound people are those who do not change social class, wherever they may be situated, it would be daft to agree with Mrs. Kim’s drunken assertion that the Park family’s kindness is inauthentic because it comes easily as a function of privileged wealth. Our only warrant would lie in an even baser presumption: that people only do good things to feel good, and only when it requires neither effort nor sacrifice. When you see how instinctive depravity is for the Kims, it’s unsurprising.

The Sins of Kim:

We know very little about the Parks, but we know almost all there is to know about the Kims. The son betrays his best friend in the first half hour of the film, if I am not mistaken, seducing a young girl whose death he eventually brings about, thinking only of his own alienation. This same son, an adolescent boy scarcely older than Yagami Light, takes it upon himself to murder a man far less fortunate than he, who in turn attempts to kill his “Gods” upstairs. The Kim family’s matriarch shows no recrimination in getting members of their fellow working class fired to make room for narcissistic dreams of upward mobility. Where is that sense of Marxist Solidarity in the Sub-basement, when for the first time the Kims have to confront the impact of their enterprise upon an even lower class? Are these the sorts of people to presume that wealth is heir to malice? If so, it’s clearly the poor characters who are living in a bubble, unaware of even themselves, for it would take just one look in the mirror (provided by the character foil of the Squatters) to see that, in this Universe, wealth is not inversely proportional to loyalty and kindness, but directly so. The poor people are the most murderous, the wealthy are the most generous, and if this were not so, we wouldn’t need to stoop to the childish claim that it’s “easy for them to be good”. Yes: it WOULD be easy, except that the Kims, simply by CONTENDING this, make no attempt to BE good, sealing by this excuse the fates of all involved. Their power is neither that of privilege nor labour, but of duplicity and ruthlessness. While it seems tautological at first to use their claims against them, since it was precisely that same claim about privileged morality that I sought to disprove, a simple accounting of willful immorality ought to expose that claim for what it is: a pragmatic LIE, one believed by the liar, as all narcissistic fantasies are. It’s iconic, therefore, that the one member of the Kim family who dies, rightfully, is the daughter, for of all of them this counterfeiter is the most blatant con artist, without whom none of the criminal enterprise would have worked. If you can be fooled into sympathizing with her family, you are among the naïve.

The Park Family is the only family which lives a Good Life, both morally and financially. Yet hundreds of years of progressive theater and Leftist economics prove that this is not always the case. Often, rich people suck, and poor people rock. Yet what you find in the Parks is a consummation devoutly to be wished. Critics who grow queasy at the sight of a Westerner interpreting Korean economics and reinterpreting Modern Korean Art would do well to recount the North Koreans who protest Modern Art; dissent can be manufactured under authoritarian regimes. While we DESERVE artistic license, Nature does not entitle us to it. By the same token, while Nature does not entitle everyone to the Good Life, financially, we all DESERVE it, insofar as we are willing to work towards it MORALLY. The Parks do not exploit anyone to get ahead, so they are not capitalists. Yet they use their wealth in a thoroughly moral fashion, suggesting, with dramatic irony, that it would be wasted upon their hired help, though they themselves never seem to believe this, even inviting their employees to their son’s birthday party. The Parks cannot be expected to give it all up to charity and to join a protest in the streets, and this is precisely BECAUSE they live in South Korea, whose closest neighbor to the North would gobble up a Leftist uprising in a jiffy. (Probably taking a full accounting of resistors to the fight, ensuring that their families would be cursed for future generations.) As a Moldovan citizen born in Moscow in 1991, believe me when I say that I am NOT just your typical white American in holding this position. The complacency of the Kims is only natural, and, in Asian fashion, they elevate Nature to an Art. If you still believe that they should be Marxists instead, consider how much sympathy the poorest of the poor characters – the Squatters – have for North Korean propaganda.

IN SUMMARY:

Bong Joon-ho’s submagnum opus Parasite is not a film about “class” any more so than the O.J. Simpson trial was about a red-handed glove. (Of course, that trial was hardly about “race” either, by the same token.) Parasite is a film about parasitism, envy, sociopathy, madness, and the murder of innocents for socioeconomic, ideological reasons. The truest tragedy is that the men who wrote and created the film don’t even seem to recognize what they have done. Mr. Kim bewails his own sin and resolves himself to his retribution. The lingering sympathy that conventional viewers apparently feel for him is symptomatic of a far more devious sociopathy.

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

L!FE:

If a Human Life is an inalienable value, and if this value is the basis for an ethic that preserves a Human Life, and if this ethic is to have any practical application whatsoever, resulting in the preservation of a Human Life, then all agents of action must be held to this standard. It becomes fruitless to speak of the “integrity of the individual will” once one begins to conceive of a situation wherein an Individual becomes aware of the danger posed to that Life but willfully abstains from its salvation. The same principle that is binding upon the man who discovers the danger and feels compelled by the entire force of dignity to redress it is therefore binding upon all other men, including those that left to their own devices would be unwilling, because to refuse such a service is to disadvantage not only the life in danger but all so the well-being of the conscientious actor who aspires to save such a Life. Because both Life and the means for preserving Life are inalienable values, these two individuals, as representatives of these two values, the respective ends and means, are of a superior value to any man’s will that is deviant from this binding ethic. It follows that ethics of any import must be Universal rather than relative to the actor. This is most noteworthy in situations wherein a Life is put in danger or remains in danger because it is taken out of the supervision of a conscientious man and put into the hands of an unconscientious agent with ulterior motives. Because it is human to demand justice in this situation, and because it is practical to do so, because all ethics strive towards a teleological goal, such as the preservation of Human Life, and because only the lesser part of human nature which does not serve this teleological goal can stand in opposition to it, the transgressor is all ways bound, whether by force of his own conscience or by force of external will, to act as a redresser for the grievances of all afflicted parties. Hence the critique that “being forced to do the right thing” is perverse becomes absolutely and unequivocally null and void, and upon recognition of this fact force is permissible, by extension, in silencing the question entirely, for it is of a lesser value than Human Life and all so stands in direct and parasitic opposition to it. Most human beings, furthermore, would gladly submit to Authority if they are convinced that the Authority is working towards the Common Good, whereas they grow dismissive of all pretenders to authority when those same agents falsely accuse them of seeking the depravity of self-interest. Exploitation can only be felt when one is falsely accused of working for one’s self rather than for the Greater Good, for only then is one forced into isolation and marginalized. Most people would sooner elect to be threatened by force to do the Right Thing than threatened by force to do the Wrong Thing, simply because the possibility of defying authority is only tempting if the “authority” in question is corrupt. It makes sense to defy a tyrant that tells you to kill your best friend, but it makes no sense to defy an authority that forces you to feed and house him, only because you would do so anyway and, in the authority’s position, you would do the same thing as the authority has done to you. There is nothing in the Human Soul that would die just to kill someone else; survival itself becomes absurd under such circumstances, and Human Life would have no meaning because it would itself have no value. Only SOME human beings would survive, left to fabricate artificial meanings instead of performing the only Intrinsic Human Duty: to preserve the lives of One Another, for by so doing the Individual transcends the illusion of his own isolation and vindicates his own existence by extension. There is no self-interest in this vindication, because it is simply consistent with the Absolute principle that that Individual upholds. This principle cannot be called arbitrary, simply because it is literally given by Nature and precedes all rational thought. Not only is it true that I think, therefore I am. It is all so true that I AM, therefore I think. Hence all values stem from Life Itself, and as such the negation of all values do so as well. Even if Death is regarded as a part of Life, to that same extent its contemplation must serve the will of the Whole of Life; hence Death cannot be cited as the source of Life’s negation, and professors of Death are still bound by Life to be agents of Life. Only the Death of the Ego can be conceived by the Rational Mind, because beyond the threshold of Death the Rational Mind cannot reach. And it is only the half-life of the ego that pretends that these facts are not so and that keeps the will in a state of perversion, to the detriment of All Beings.

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

A GOODE MAN:

They all ways try to turn this into a morality play, sooner or later. The pretense is that had I simply stopped caring about my own being, directing my focus outwards, living for others, altruistically, then I would find a love and solidarity I’d never hitherto imagined. And the cycle then begins again. I find a company that I respect more than I can respect myself. I do not let it frighten me into submission; I simply fall in love with the idea that all its tenets are worthy ideals, even if I might laugh at just how great the margin is by which my fellows fall short of it. I begin to walk on eggshells, priding myself in my patience, following the rules with decorated awkwardness. When we first finished the New Hire Orientation (four hours of sensitivity training, basically) I all most forgot her name. She stood right there, beside me, waiting for the order, and it was not that I spaced on her name but rather I did not dare even to THINK it, lest the Boss heard me. And I reported to him promptly, submerging any suspicion. When I saw her outside again, I had to shake all suspicions about me. I had all so to rationalize, to myself, my own reserve earlier at the Back of the House. I had to believe she saw me, wanted just as desperately to say Hello as I did, but held her tongue for the same reason that she would prize me for holding my own. I went with the flow, letting them assign me to another table. I continued to do this, admiring her from afar each time, making my way about her friends. It all ways had to be this way. I all most had her table a few times. But just as I learned how to find my way around the Front of the House the consequences came. I’d hidden my tracks too well. One of her coworkers took less than kindly to my casual flirtation. The bramble that I used to hide as I approached the Grand Tree became my snare. So I only ever had her serve me once: when she brought me that glass of wine. I heard, in a timid child’s voice, “here is your Murphy, Good Sir.” It was only later that I discovered this to mean “here is your Murphy Goode, Sir.” Murphy Goode was the name of the wine. She was being exceedingly formal. It’s not impossible that she rushed in and out of that encounter owing more to recoil than to reticence. She might have not been shy at all, but rather I repelled her.

It all ways happens this way. I think that I’ve found Solidarity and Virtue. I believe at first that this is only a means to an end. Then just as pragmatism peaks I find myself a sudden martyr. I did not expect the late hours, the injury, both physical and psychological, nor the verbal abuse. It simply happened. So I ran with it, telling myself all the while that this is what a man MUST do for his Family. I never had any real extended family. I thought this must be what it feels like. I was one of the Clan, for lack of a better term.

It all ways follows this formula: you start with altruism, then you fall in love. At least, that’s how the cynics see it. What starts out as service to Others takes on an ulterior motive. Your craving for a taken woman colours everything that you perceive and do. It all becomes a Show for Her, a seemingly self-sacrificing venture that has a single, hidden goal for personal gain. Citing my virginity would not help; it would only serve to prove my desperation and thus set the old example for new critics to follow: the superstition that I am unlovable and would do everyone a service if I stopped trying to change that fact or to feign ignorance of it.

But that is not the whole of it. That’s just a symptom of abuse. Falsely accused of loving someone I was merely flirting with, no one even knowing that the flirtation (though not the person) was simply a means to an end, I internalized again the old notion that I’m forbidden to love. If I cannot love this decoy, a mere temptress to my eye, what can make me worthy of the Goddess?

But that is not the true formula. The true formula is thus: that you start with self-interest, fed up from having your kindness taken advantage of, time and time again. Then you fall in love, and She informs All That You Do. Inspired by her unassailable kindness, her unequivocal beauty and her indominable Spirit, you find a new Role Model. The patience with which you train yourself to wait for her (especially: to wait on you) becomes the pace at which you work. Your work becomes a form of karma yoga: a Service to Shiva. Every motion is imbibed with a tenderness you cultivate that she might one day feel your touch to be a home. And everyone, no matter how rotten, becomes your family so long as they speak well of her.

Can that be called a crime?

Whatever the formula, the outcome is the same. Whether they know the True Identity of your New Muse or not, your love is suspect, since your fellows celebrate self-love so much that any unrequited love is not perceived to be love at all. A narcissist can’t love a woman who will not return his love, so any one that loves him he pretends to love, regardless of his hollow heart, to spite the men who love her, even if they’re friends of his, and to dishonor love and friendship all in one he does nothing to save her from the self-destruction that loving a narcissist is heir to. This, too, seems to be an immutable pattern.

So here I am again: found guilty of self-interested love, falsely accused, for I am not a narcissist, and mine was not self-love but rather love that did not alter when it alteration found. What was that alteration? you might ask. I learned she had a boyfriend. It did not change how I felt at all, except that now I must remind myself that this same “man” laughed at her when she got a hook stuck in her sensitive skin. A gentle man would have removed that hook gently. And I think on her pale skin, which turned red at the slightest fluctuation of temperature. I think of how I asked about it and she spoke of its sensitivity, and I replied, “that’s Good.”

I wish she saw me to be Good as well. But I may never know whether she meant to make a pun on Murphy Goode or not. I’ll never know whether she saw the pattern in the whiteboards in the kitchen: how they all had something to say by allusion to HER, if anyone took the time to unriddle them.

You want gossipers to do their research. At least: you want to BELIEVE they do.

So now I have again to start anew, to feign forgetfulness of my lost love, to write it off as selfishness on my own part, for having had the NERVE to contest a “sacred pact” between her and her loving beau.

But I know that such high-minded thinking is too lofty for this place.

I know that he is probably an alcoholic and a narcissist. I know that she is probably too Murphy Goode for him herself.

And I know that I won’t fall out of love with her. I know that were she not too good for him she would not be with him.

And most importantly: I know now that she’s not too Goode for me.

That’s why I will continue on my path, knowing the true nature of the cycle:

You give all you can for a Love the likes of which men have so forgotten that they mock it. The weak of heart try to use the words of goodness and accountability against you. Laughing inwardly, you take your leave with a broken heart, but one that still bleeds love and sympathy and mercy, gushing adoration episodically.

You all ways were too Murphy Goode for them. May you not be remembered as a whiner, but rather a fine wine.

Dm.A.A.

SETTLEMENT:

Once there was an Island with four colonies upon it. Two were ruled by monarchs; two were ruled by democracies. One of the monarchs was wise whereas the other was a tyrant. So it came to pass that all the members of the wiser kingdom prospered while the slaves of tyranny despaired. And the two remaining colonies simply bore witness.

At first, the two democracies were one. Whenever someone complained, someone said: “We should be more like the Wise Kingdom!!” And then an other intervened, retorting: “At least we are not so bad as the Cruel Tyranny!!”

Finally a vote was cast to divide the democracies. So it came to pass that everyone who wanted to emulate the Wise Monarch wound up in one colony, whereas the rest ended up in an other.

Over time, the latter of the two colonies had managed to become so horrific that even the Tyrant loved to tour it and to laugh, and the subjects of the Tyranny were invited to visit and to feel grateful for their own lot in life.

Meanwhile, the emulators of the Wise Kingdom prospered, seeing such heights that made the Monarchy pale before the democratic colony, so much so that the Wise Monarch found it wise to forbid the subjects of the Kingdom to gain access to the democratic colony, lest they revolt against the Monarchy in envy.

So it came to pass that one day the democratic colonies met again, and they both commended one an other for having reached the limit that they’d used as an example.

Dm.A.A.

VOTAT!ON:

One day, a group of chimpanzees assembled on an Island and decided to form a Democracy. The wisest of the tribe said: “as our first legislation, we should take into consideration the fact that no one likes to feel inferior, and as such a unanimous vote will protect all of our kind from this poor fate, and by so doing we shall impress outsiders with our civility, humanity, and the efficacy of Our System.” But then a second chimpanzee spoke, for he was strongest of will, and he said: “most apes want to feel superior, so let’s do that instead!!” And most of the apes cheered, except for the first to speak. And the first ape rebutted: “You fool!! No man can feel superior without having at least implied that another is inferior.” But then the vote was cast and it proved that most of the chimpanzees preferred to feel superior to a situation wherein all of them were equal. And it was established that the System of Democracy worked.

Dm.A.A.

Data Structures and Systems Theory: a Short Memoir.

Josh is a good young man. His autism does not define him except insofar as it is both a blessing and a curse to him. A graduate from the University of California at Irvine, as well as an aspiring cartoonist with an ingenious imagination, he has trouble shaking surprise from others when they learn the identity of his alma mater. When he took Professor Stegman’s Data Structures class at Palomar College, he probably did not expect to make many friends. Ordinarily, he tends towards shyness and reports recurrent social rejection by his peers. Nonetheless, an exceptionally creative mind such as his, all ready having accomplished much academically, did not either expect that he would be facing expulsion under false auspices. Yet this was precisely what happened, as I bore personal witness to, towards the end of the Spring semester of 2018. Josh, having failed once more to make friends in class that might lend him a helping hand, referred instead to his own research, via the Internet, in finishing one of five or six laboratory assignments that would each determine nine per cent of his grade. Unfortunately, he was not alone. Several other students who shared the class with him, UNBEKNOWNST TO JOSH HIMSELF, had the same idea, so they all ended up referring to the same source. I know not whether or not these students were likewise charged with plagiarism. Professor Stegman refused to tell Josh who they were. This is puzzling, because it puts Josh in a situation where, were he guilty, he would all ready have known their identities from conspiracy with them. Conversely, if he is innocent, then he will have no knowledge of their identities, and as such he will have no means of proving his innocence to his instructor. The only sensible reason for Professor Stegman’s privacy is, therefore, that Stegman believes that Josh might prove his own guilt definitively by referring to their identities, which ostensibly only a guilty, uninformed Josh might have had access to. This creates a sort of schizophrenic double-bind; if Josh should happen to discover their identities, he will prove himself guilty, but if he fails to do so, he is guilty by default. Not only has the principle of “innocent until proven guilty” been reversed; he cannot even prove his own innocence, nor shake the guilty verdict by any means whatsoever!!

I decided to investigate this Data Structures class for myself. As per usual, employment obligations have set me behind drastically, and I found myself, enflamed by morbid curiosity, reviewing the lengthy Syllabus for the course. Enclosed within the text file is this chilling paragraph:

“Although you are allowed to help other students, you are never under any obligation to do so. If you feel uncomfortable answering a student’s question for any reason, please do not attempt to answer the question. Instead, suggest that the student see the instructor.”

In the absence of an available instructor of sound mind, a number of students referred to an other monarch, one that had served them to excess previously: the Internet. Of course, Stegman’s philosophy (read “dogma”) of helpfulness in the academic environment and project is the very summary of Ignorance, whether by a Buddhist standard or one from the West. There is obviously a moral obligation for all of us to share the knowledge that we’ve acquired if it was never intended exclusively for us. Furthermore, discomfort in the abject sense does not assuage this matter, but it aggravates it. The principal substitute for ethical behavior is of course emotivism, the tendency to simply “inform” one’s decisions by affect alone.

Stegman’s philosophy reminded me of my most recent visit to the Open Lab. I was disappointed not only by the absence of my favourite tutors but by the presence of a congested crowd. Plenty of young, ambitious students were working on their various codes. Some of them were even in my class, and I had good reason to believe that they were working on the same Lab Assignment that I am about to fail right now. (Most probably regardless of whether or not I keep writing this desperate plaint.) A great deal of them were working in teams. The most bizarre aspect of the situation was this, however: that not one of the people that I even tried to speak with who were part of these teams showed any sign of willingness to talk to me. They dismissed me based on prejudice, an observation I can state for a fact because of the simply fact that I had no prejudice in approaching them. It may be true that the female programmers I tried to speak with I came to first, since they reminded me of my favourite tutor Rachel, whose intuitive sensitivity to others’ styles of learning and needs to learn made her extremely popular as a teacher. That notwithstanding, I was open and direct in both my questions and my declarations. Yet the program would not run; they were not having it. So instead I got help from my only friend in that Data Structures class: Michael Hermes, a brilliant, level-headed whiz-kid who had Asperger’s Syndrome. Why do I feel the need to point that last part out? Put plainly: it’s ironic that under the monarchy of ablism and rugged individualism the one helping hand that I could grasp came from the Disabled Class. So to speak, of course.

I explained to Michael’s Nurse Celia that I was distracted by the crowd and hence found concentration difficult to muster. She understood; she is empathic. When everyone in the classroom forms an exclusive clique, all of their conversations serve the obverse of a social purpose for the Outsider. Interestingly enough, it was this same tendency that helped me to understand the Java programming language, if only insofar as I could comprehend how private and public classes interact. Michael’s smiled at the analogy, which was really a connection I made between Data Structures and that ancient Medieval Principle of Systems Theory. Michael said rolled with the metaphor, comparing private classes to introverts and public classes to extraverts. I reversed the analogy, insisting upon an irony I’d observed time and time again: that extraverted people tend to be more private because they define themselves so much by the exclusive groups that they’re a part of. Michael smiled in tacit agreement. An introvert would be able to read his silence as concession, though I still remember the shock of hearing my old Debate Professor comparing this simple observation, the very essence of any kind of love, Platonic onwards, between human beings, to assault. To this day, I am haunted by the fear that others have of silent consent, only because it means that extraverted thinking has become so monarchical that it has robbed life of Life.

The Fisher believes in Contemporary Systems Theory, at least insofar as she will praise Malcolm Gladwell for his observations. Whilst I have enough Debater left in me to tear the Outliers to shreds, I rest assured that all is well, for she is not apparently fanatical of temperament. It’s ironic: the same philosophy that suggests that we would all get by with a little help from our friends is what makes it so difficult to make friends. I found a friend in Michael, as I had in Josh, because we were all clinical loners who did not possess the SKILL to discriminate between people who were so kind as to reach out to us, whether to help or for help, and most often both. Conversely, I’ve found all too many ladder-climbing chimpanzees who want to keep to their own academic tribes and to perpetuate the In-Group/Out-Group conflict. It is quite redundant, though I rest assured they won’t get far. It hurts me to observe them from this height, however, not just out of pity for their lowly ways, but all so out of bitter recollections of the times they shook me down. Nobody likes a lofty outlier. Not even Malcolm Gladwell.

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

A Relatable Monologue:

What ails you, my old friend?

The ills of a Time and Place

Of which I am perhaps the only healthy resident.

What Hell have you returned from?

One beyond imagining or description.

Challenge me to fathom it, my friend.

Not only was I disadvantaged by a fellow human being,

Something I’d not considered yet to have been possible of fate,

But it was done so without warrant,

Deliberately, in conspiracy against me,

By those whom I’d trusted most to value my integrity

And not as a means towards some private ends,

But part and parcel with my Heart,

Whose longings were pruned and watered by those same critics,

I believing them to have done so out of consideration for my Virtue,

And with only those private ends to try to justify it.

No such evil had I known before,

The only superior of which I’ve known since

Has been this: that I am somehow blamed

For the sins of others against me

When it was my virtue and my own pursuit of it

Alongside those I trusted virtuously,

(For they’d fed me lies about my character)

That produced this fate in tandem with their

Shameful and depraving vice.

Dm.A.A.

Imperial Girth:

Imperialism was not a mistake. Civilization was not a mistake. When you visit these ghettos now and see how people “live”, you feel the sin seep into you as though you were a sponge. What sort of person would elect to live this way? What cruelty the Inquisition had devised or that the missionaries had imported was not natural in fending off the much greater disease of disloyalty, of competition, and of meaninglessness? One must laugh at their attempts to stand for human rights when there is absolutely nothing of a recognizably “human” character about them. The further I delve down that rabbit hole the more I feel myself consumed in some sort of Kafkaesque Machine that uses my appetites to feed its own, but without all the dignity and teleology of righteous work. I do not hate women; they hate me. So: I’m a skinny kid. So what? Have I not read enough? Have I written too little? Have I spoken the wrong truths, or swayed the wrong ears with my tongue? Am I barred from sex when others have indulged in it to such excess as I had not considered possible? Must I never again be happy in my love, watching the ones that I loved die? How was it madness that drove Chester Bennington to suicide? How was it manic depression that brought me on the wings of angels to my former lover’s door that night, a box of poems in my hands? This is insane; it’s all around me. So I bought a membership with a gymnasium today. So what? Why did God place that salesman right before me, only minutes before I was leaving? Wasn’t working out mere play for children who could only think upon their own improvement, knowing little that they’d never have the chance to use brute force in Our Society? How are we to give that dignity up to the savages who mate with cavemen and who kill each other in our streets, but only for survival, not for the same God that they try to tattoo into those wretched biceps? Was it not they that had invented slavery, just so that they could become stronger slaves, and thus enslave us? Was race not their own invention? What God answers their prayers, if they pray for death to all their enemies?

What of the lunatics who sit in hotel rooms and murder country music fans? What ever did set them apart from all the “heroes” who do murder to God-loving people on God’s soil, under orders from some worldly tyrant? Would our ancestors not have led a Crusade just to have PREVENTED that? At least they had a PURPOSE OVERLYING THEIR CRUSADE; they did not need to kill themselves out of shame when they could die for a Cause.

On the way home I felt so ashamed. It crept in through every pore. I had the opportunity to change a Heart, but I used that Heart for my own personal motives. Only because some witch lied to me that women would expect it of me, as though all of them were narcissistic sociopaths who would read my mind, or thought so.

Who will burn the witches now?? What right did she have to abandon me? I had done nothing wrong by ANY estimation, even her own, and yet she held me ACCOUNTABLE to standards that had been INVISIBLE TO ME. My only solace now rests in her ghost, who haunts me daily and reminds me I’m not mad, but right, as always. I’m a Pisces, and this is still our Age of Pisces. No person would choose one’s own good over someone else’s; one would sooner smash one’s self upon those same crooked stones that always looked so tempting to me at Palomar College. Surely they always were more comforting than the crooked eyes and views of my “fellows” within this Godless generation. And forget the mysticism; look at the sheer COMMON SENSE: that a man is betrayed by his best friend just for a woman, and the woman would ALLOW for it. Now that same woman lies dead, but the traitor lives on, and I’m tempted to believe that it was not the traitor’s fault, and neither did our ancestors need to train all the rival tribes in common Unity before a single God. But by Whose Authority then would we grant those tribal animals rights? How am I made to be a villain, when I’ve always been the Hero, following within the Hero’s footsteps since I was a child?? How can a lady say then to a gentleman that though she harms him, she does no harm to herself? Would not the thought of hurting someone ELSE take precedence in mind over the thought of hurting one’s self?? By what sick authority am I expected to believe I lost her from an EXCESS of self-sacrifice, and from deficiency in self-improvement? Since when did the holy task of self-transcendence, that one great longing of the Human Soul to shed the body, and an end towards which she sought a devious shortcut, take a backseat to self-actualization? How were we convinced that these standards had to drop so far, and that we could recover from the fall? Even a modern moral utterance, no greater in age than fifty years, somehow now seems archaic and beautiful, and I’ve only BEGUN to scratch the surface of our forefathers’ wisdom!! How am *I* crazy when all the wisdom of the Past is unified against the Totalitarian Individualism of the Present? Where are the youth now marching in the streets, protesting Pride and begging for Salvation, for to give one’s self entirely is the lone lust that fills a young man’s heart?? My only solace is in that this Spirit that I feel is hers, for she still lives inside of me, and I’m assured she’s all ways with me, waiting just beyond the Veil, encouraging me that I finish my Good Work on Earth before I meet with her.

How is THAT crazy?? She is dead, and you mean to tell me I would DESERVE this fate, or otherwise that if I must play God then it that had betrayed us both would not deserve Far Worse!!

The more money I make, the more I spend, the more I’m forced to just “improve” myself, for all the Decent Paths are blocked to me, the more I feel sin coursing through my veins. Where are the Great Men now, who will teach women how to choose, and who will vanquish those men that would lead them astray?? How am I to recover when the SICKNESS IS IN ME?? Of course I WANT the worldly goods and bodily longings, but WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO WANT?? I know what is RIGHT, but that matters little if I cannot save all beings. THEY MUST BE CONVERTED. Why do they not flock to ME, as I have flocked so many times to other gurus, BEGGING for the Truth?? Who ARE these people? Are they people? Life has stopped for them, but they survive. There is no Soul inside those bodies, but they keep on going, just like zombies, feeding on Our Resources, contradicting Our Truths and Our Traditions, and “living” to tell the tale!!

I ought to shoot them all dead. After all: how else is one to handle a Zombie Apocalypse??

Only my lingering faith in Peace – that Great Ideal that all this sensibility emanates from – stays my hand. I know that no matter what happens I will see Alanna in the Next Life. I just don’t know if she will allow me to thus make love to an other. If she requires Absolute Sacrifice, I cannot refuse her. And such is my plight.

She would not want me to corrupt myself as she had been corrupted. But thankfully I can use their strength against them. By becoming muscular, I will intimidate more miscreants who live in fear and in controlled stupidity.

I have only to beat away the flies that are attracted to this arbitrary honey.

What have I done wrong? Nothing. I barely even fended for my own survival. I’ve been strong; neither my virtue nor my intellect dithered for long. I’ve done right, and it seems I stand alone in dignity now, proud of my fortitude and integrity. I’m second only to a God.

There is nothing that I can do now to improve myself, for nothing would reverse the progress made all ready and the insight offered in the darkness by that careful, lifelong cultivation.

I am Perfect. As was she. All else is trash.

I’m not even happy. Though if some Spirit should lift my Heart, I’ll know that I’ve deserved it.

Was it not always so? Was that not the entire dream of Civilization? Any man would sooner throw himself to wild dogs than to imagine living a parasitic existence, perpetually at the expense of some Other that was supposed to have been his primary charge and priority. How am I to live with the sins of my brother that’s betrayed me, except in the warm conviction that he bled to death long ago, dying of the wounds of an unholy war??

Who would have imagined it? How could it have been done? I woke from every thought of it as from a horrific nightmare. How did it find me? I knew not that it had been possible: a man betraying his best friend, a woman choosing the traitor over her lover, and both blaming the victim who would have never done the likes of either. It had referenced a tragedy of five years prior, though not five years have past since I met Alanna and it had fled her care. It followed what it took to have been my example even though it claimed to have been hurt by that same error, and it saw my pain at any rate if it had eyes to see it. It was not my friend when I loved Alexandra, for it was not present in the aftermath of that same loss; it only had contributed to it, for when we gave it to the love of Alexandra’s sister it so wasted that same love that that same sister poisoned Alexandra’s ears against all worldly love in general, until her faith returned within my absence. Only four months past, and still the words that had been meant for me she spoke out to the distance, and the treacherous knave, who saw my agony at having come to her and to her mother as though to my grave, who knew the heavy heart with which I bore such a burden and the passion with which I had vindicated sin, thought then to BLAME me that a mere third of a year could not snuff that same passion OUT!!

It got exactly what it wanted. And Alanna’s dead.

But now I have this new Gym Membership.

Wherever it is still alive, it will have reason doubly to watch its back.

Dm.A.A.