The Underground

Half a century before the Russians mustered enough rebellion to  depose the Czar, a deep current of discontent had begun oozing up from somewhere deep down in those thawing Russian steppes.
Since that era, we have come to call what that discontent represents: The Underground.
Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevksy caught and early wind of it. In his 1864 novel, Notes from the Underground, Dostoevsky identified and fictionalized an uncomfortable alienation that (he noticed) was mounting up among certain attentive and sensitive citizens of that restive country.
This alienation has, since then, become a characteristic of modern life.

In our day and time, Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson points out that Dostoevsky and other writers (most notably Friedrich Nietzsche) detected this early alienation and wrote extensively about it.
There was, you see,  a deep, dark void in the European soul.
It was there. . . deep down in there, somewhere in the metamorphizing life of the 1800's . . .  a sense that something was missing . . . something important, something—it must be something— essential.
Where some spiritual or soulful entity had, through many ages, carried European civilization along a certain path of cultural development, now there was nothing.
“Nihilism” is a word that was brought in to identify that void.

In our day and time, Jordan Peterson explains the development of nihilism—how it is related to the lapse  the Church, which had formerly evolved as a religious matrix around which the framework of European civilization and culture had manifested across almost two millennia of time.
Dr. Peterson attributes the identifying of this nihilism primarily to those two 19th-century writers, Dostoevsky and Nietzsche. In his lectures, Dr. Peterson often mentions that these two prescient thinkers predicted—or one could almost say “prophecied”—the horrible carnage of our 20th-century wars.  Our two modernized hyper-mechanized destructive wars broke out as modern men desperately strove—through futile attempts at communist and fascist totalitarianism—to establish a meaningful State, or Society.
Instead of—let’s just say— the Church. Comprenez-vous?

Denizens of “the Underground” are those misplaced souls who have searched elsewhere—apart from the Society or Culture at large—for their own meaning or identity.  Even further than that, they will likely work collectively with other fellow travelers, striving for some collective opus that enables us—if not now, in the future— to live and thrive together.
When I was a young man, I composed a song about some of these deep urges toward meaning and liberty.
   Underground Railroad Rides Again

I have empathy for the Undergrounders of this world, although some of them have, from time to time, carried their discontents too far, beyond the rightful constraints of decently civilized life. The Weather Underground of the 1960's, for instance,  crossed that line of acceptable protest when they began making home-bombs,  one of which enabled one Undergrounder to blow up himself and his whole dam NYC apartment building, in spring of 1970.
But hey! Life goes on, in spite of all the abuse and injustices people pile on one another. In spite of all our myriad societal dysfunctions. The world persists in its predictable revolutions, whether you approve the changes or not.  Nations change. Seasons come and go. Our winters of discontent always as mellow out as . . .

a new wind, a fair breeze, and this year's equinox a day early!
Now in 2020 A.D., about midday on this first spring day, 19  March, I was strolling along our local greenway, here in our little town of the Blue Ridge, observing obligatory social distancing protocols mandated by the COVID-19. When my walk began, the weather was dreary, misty and chilly. But as I neared the turnaround point of my 3-mile path, the sun was peeping out from behind the clouds, the air turned amazingly warm and dry, and suddenly! spring has sprung!
'T'was then I encountered an Underground of different sort:



This springtime sprung-up version of the Underground has been popping up with alarming regularity for a very long time. . . far longer than we homo sapiens have been struggling to find meaningful identity in our civilizations.
As I beheld these silly-pilly little dirt mounds, I disclosed the discovery to myself . . .  (as they say on the video spy dramas) what we have here is mole!

King of Soul

Jesus quotes often overlooked, here reconsidered:

He said:
~ " Isn't it written in the scriptures that 'my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples?' But you are making it a robbers's den."
Consider this: What if we applied his admonition to the world, generally, not just the "house of God" or religious institutions?

~ " The Spirit of the Lord is upon me . . . to set free those who are oppressed."
Think about it: Are you oppressed? If so, in what way? Or, are you, perhaps, an oppressor?

~ " The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but do not know where it comes from and where it is going; so is everyone who is born of the Spirit."
Contemplate: Do you know who, or what, is this Spirit? Or are you clueless? Is the answer just, for you, "blowin' in the wind?"

~ " To the person who overcomes . . . I will give a white stone, and a new name written on the stone which no one knows but the one who receives it."
Meditate: Would you want a new identity, or are content with the one you've got now?

Chechen up on my Caucasian identity Crisis

Ever since we implemented civil rights legislation many and many a year ago, I have had to check a little race box on any kind of application or information form that I'm submitting to some .gov, .org, or even .com entity that wants to know about who I am, and why I am applying for their this/that/orthe/other. The little box typically asks me to identify my race. A person of my pale pigmentation is expected to check the box called Caucasian.

And I'm like, whaddup widdat?

What have I to do with thee, oh mountains of Caucasus?

If I chech the Causasian ethnicity, does that identify me as some wild-eyed cave-dweller from the far side of those mountains that the tectonic earth had long ago so carelessly slung up between Black Sea and Prince Caspian?

Surely not! I beg to differ.

On the other hand, if I am being so contentious about such a small box-chechin' matter, maybe I am a little bit of a Chech.

That is to say: a rebel.

Them doggone Chechens!--can't do a thing with 'em, as they say in Moscow.

I suppose that in Russia, when the good citizens of that country fill out forms, they are likewise expected to chech little ethnicity boxes, so the bureaucrats in the Kremlin or wherever can know what little categories to place the people in, very much like here in the land of the free and home of the brave, aka Washington SMSA.

Now when I say Chech, I'm not talking about Czechs. Them Czechs are great, especially like, Vaclev Havel. But I must also point out that they too, have a history of not taking any sh-t from the Russians, just like those upstart startups in Boston wouldn't tolerate any taxation without representation from wiggy ole King George III, back in the day, the revolutionary day, when the Patriots decided to have a Tea Party.

But that was then, and this is now. We're all Russians now! Dosvidanya. Reminds me of some old Beatles nonsense, where Georgia's always on my mind.

Glass Chimera

Musings on Natural Capital

Have you noticed this truth about life? We live in a hostile world.

From our studies of history, and from our common experience, we discover a truth that is quite unwelcome: we live constantly and seemingly forever in enmity with each other and with the earth.

In ancient times, homo sapiens encountered natural enemies that had evolved in the planetary ecosystem. Poisonous snakes slithered beneath our feet, requiring us to look down, even as predatory carnivores stalked us from above. Furthermore, even if such an environment were not perilous enough to keep the hair on the back of our necks regularly raised with alarm, we encountered craftier dangers from our fellow humans. Something about the species itself seems to have encoded enmity among men.

Some men/women managed to band together in tribes or bands in order to collectively resist the numerous threats presented by existence on this earth. By collaborating, people could gather more life-sustaining resources, producing a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Also by working in community, folks could more effectively overcome those beastly enemies lurking in the jungle, and those tribal ones in the next valley.

Your worldview may be defined by a revelation of Edenic origins, or maybe it is constructed around a principle of biologic evolution. I do not consider those two philosophies as necessarily contradictory. What some folks call irrationality, and some folks call heresy, I may call cognitive dissonance. Life is full of contradictions, and I can’t comprehend them all, so I’m willing to listen to what you have to say, even if I don’t agree with it.

Nevertheless, there has to be some basis of agreement, n’est ce pas? Otherwise we have no foundation for civilization itself. Folks have to agree on something, otherwise the tiger creeps from behind while we are trying to decide what to do, and he’ll pounce on us before we can say strategy—or if not the tiger, the lion or the dragon.

Or the tsunami, or the hurricane, or the toxic oilspill, or the toxic assets. Danger is all over the damned place. No way around it, no matter how much we civilize ourselves.

I suspect that in former times, people did a lot more acting than they did thinking, and that’s how they managed to get so much work done.

Or is it the other way around?

Oh, but I digress toward indeterminable speculations on the origins of our species, and the descent of man to whatever this is that we have on planet earth today. What I really want to write about is this phrase I heard a couple days ago: natural capital.

Our post-industrial revelation, or deduction--whatever you want to call it-- brings us to a juncture where we discover the absolute necessity of conserving the earth itself . (Call me a conservative if you like; I don’t care.) Even as we gathered its produce in the earliest times in order to sustain life and initiate civilization, we were being conservationists. Now, the global challenge of modern existence requires to get off our financial assets and start considering the earth itself as our most valuable capital--flora and fauna and elements and all of it.

The continuance of civilization itself will require conservancy (to use an appropriately contemporary word) and stewardship (the biblical word).

Can we rise to the task?

Yes, we can, if the North Koreans don’t nuke us to death, or the Iranians don’t jihad us to death, or the Israelis don’t irk us to death, or the Chinese don’t pollute us to death, or the Russians don’t vodka us to death, or Hugo doesn’t talk us to death, or rolling stone doesn’t amoralize us to death or tv doesn’t opiate us to death or the Americans don’t drone us to death.

Yes, we can!

Yes, I have my hand up. And I’d just like to say, Nuala, that the beginnings of civilization originate, parabolically speaking, in families—Adam, Eve, etc., when he looked at her and said woohoo! and nine months later out slithered little Cain. Later on Abel popped out, and there you have all in one family what you need to know about the origins of human bondage.

Oh there was a poisonous snake involved too.

Human experience has always been that way, always will. Many may say that concepts or ideologies of ethnic identity, nationhood, or the hope of world peace (it takes a village, you know) can supplant the family urge. But our DNA is strong and stubborn and built solidly upon the double helix of family procreation, and I like it that way.