The Ghost of Crises Past

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November 2, 2023

At the moment things seem pretty hopeless.

In Russia Putin lectures the world on political morality while he terrorizes his neighbour. Again and again, bluntly and by innuendo, he threatens the use of nuclear weapons, in what is perhaps the most heinous moral crime of the century.

In the Middle East Hamas slaughters young people at an outdoor concert, provoking Israel to take six and a half eyes for an eye.

In the United States people like Marjorie Taylor Greene are allowed to walk the streets without a straight-jacket, and are voted into the halls of Congress.

In the Orient China threatens Taiwan, bullies its neighbours in the South China Sea, and eyes India in the frozen wastelands of Ladakh.

In Iran the mullahs have beaten the thought of revolution from the heads of its women.

In other parts of the world, deep, deep problems remain in Haiti, Congo, Somalia, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Yemen, Burkina Faso, Syria, and Southern Sudan.

Fukiyama’s notion that liberal democracy has triumphed is as difficult as ever to imagine.

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This afternoon I tried to see it all from a poetic distance, as if an outsize sonnet might lend some meaning to the grimness of the historical moment:

The gods have given up on Earth,
having found fields more fair
in the far-off galaxies of sugared light,
in realms that know nothing of despair.
On occasion, a god strays from his endless mirth
to find an echo of our strangest world down here —
a world of Mirages, where Storm Shadows took flight,
and Leopards and Raptors once deafened the ear.
Faced with the remnants of such a brutal scene,
the god recoils, but wonders if there’s something to gain
by remembering the battles that once flooded the plain,
and also the old ideals — of heroes and bodhisattvas,
redeemers, yogis, diplomats, and mahatmas
who tried to unite the nations and bring Heaven again
to the ice-capped world of Earth that might have been.

But then after I wrote this, I thought, All of this may seem grim, yet perhaps it’s always been this way (except of course for global warming and nuclear weapons…). Back in 1819, Shelley wrote one of the most damning sonnets ever, and yet he managed to end it on an upbeat note:

An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king,
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn – mud from a muddy spring,
Rulers who neither see, nor feel, nor know,
But leech-like to their fainting country cling,
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a blow,
A people starved and stabbed in the untilled field,
An army, which liberticide and prey
Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield,
Golden and sanguine laws which tempt and slay,
Religion Christless, Godless – a book sealed,
A Senate – Time's worst statute unrepealed,
Are graves, from which a glorious Phantom may
Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day.

We can get so shaken by the brutalities of the day, that we become blind to the phantoms of hope that burst into the air with the Javelins and Storm Shadows that keep the Russians at bay. We can forget to focus on the Adam Kinzingers of the Republican Party who are trying to put Trump’s feet to the fire, on the diplomats who are trying to cool down the heat in the Middle East, or on the NGOs and borderless doctors who are trying to alleviate the pain of war, famine, and disease. Yet it’s hard to retain a critical perspective, to make out the glorious phantoms that might some day rise from our tempestuous day.

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The 1980s

Looking back 200 years at Shelley’s poem makes me think about how times haven’t changed that much during my own lifetime.

Forty years ago (in the esarly 80s) I was living at home while finishing a B.A. and completing an M.A. at The University of Calgary. I spent a great deal of time reading Shakespeare and other writers, but also following politics — for instance, I always read the Manchester Guardian and watched The McNeil-Lehrer Report. Here I am, glued to the television in our den:

Looking back at the poems I wrote then makes me think of my feelings today. I was too young to experience the Cuban Crisis of 1962, so for me the Cold War in the early 1980s was a slow burn, never getting as consistently hot as it was in 1962 — or as it’s been recently since Russia invaded Ukraine. Still, the feeling of nuclear dread is much the same.

I remember one morning staring at an enormous blue map of the world on my bedroom wall. I was struck by how gracefully the Aleutian Islands curved toward Asia, yet how abruptly they were divided.

🇷🇺☢︎🇺🇸

Lines on the Map (1982)

On one side I see the Russian Islands of the Commander

and behind them the Kamchatka Peninsula,

with its snowy spine and icy peaks of Mordor.

On the other side I see Attu Island. The Aleutians, with its long Captain Crook of an arm, seems to bridge the gap between days.

For one mad moment I think I see a connected chain, uniting the continents. But then I realize my logic is circular and spatial, like the curvature of the Earth. Unlike politics.

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Looking down at the vastness of the Pacific, I’m mesmerized by the light blue swirls on the map. I see time zones stretch from left to right, and think of the dawn that rises with each second. Yet who can feel this?

I see paddy fields green in the alluvial plain, and camel-brown mountains caked with icy peaks.

My eyes follow the contour of the continents, and slip between ranges. I slide down the tail of the Andes into the ice-cold water of Tierra del Fuego. I trek through the Desert of the Taklamakan, feeling the sand between my toes, hot and dry. 

Still standing, yet lingering, not wanting breakfast, I stare at the deep pools of blue. I know they aren’t really light blue. They’re navy blue, almost black.

I think of the Buddhist nirvana, the final ‘snuffing out,’ and I wonder if this will mean the powder of exploded poisons, or the chill silence of the fission of neutrons.

I wonder if some day New York and Moscow will stand like metal skeletons, basking in the lifeless heat of stars. And when?

Standing, lingering, not wanting breakfast, I think of Buddha and of the world this morning, with the blinds drawn, with the beauty of the blue oceans and the birds lightly chirping beyond the glowing sill.

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Chaos Everywhere

In the bumbling chaos of change, few strides are made toward lasting perfection. Men of wisdom have long since known that the total output of knowledge is not proportional to Truth. 

So the slut Illusion continues to spell and bind the senses, and the Kremlin continues to publish its lies, while Reagan makes deals on the side. And all the while Hollywood reigns supremely ridiculous over the hobgoblins of meaning and the dancing hucksters of change.

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Next: 🥕 The Carrot

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