I sat on the bus yesterday, on my way home after enjoying The Prestige. “Are you watching closely?” is the core question at the heart of this tale of obsession, misdirection and layers of lies piled over truths. The two magicians count on people’s willingness to suspend disbelief to pursue their craft. They count on each other’s obsessions to play out their plots pursued for the sake of rivalry and revenge.
The willingness of people to be deceived while having their worship of shallow beliefs has been much on my mind lately. Convince us, and we’ll go along, as long as you spin a good performance. We’re in our current mess because a scary number of Americans seem to actually believe that God is an American, the His general is doing the Lord’s work slaughtering countless numbers of human beings, and it’s better if we don’t see what results God’s general’s decisions have produced.
Too many of us don’t want to know how the illusions played out before us are done. Like our shallow religious beliefs, enough of us have turned away from the trickery and lies underlying our politics, content that we can do little more than sit in the seats and clap or boo, depending on how we think the trick played out. Too many of us unhappy with current trends hope for a knight in shining armor to ride in and save the day. Give us a new performer, we beg, rather than get up and question what is being played out before us.
In an interview over at Book Slut, Neil Gaiman observes:
Given that we’re living in a universe in which religions and mythologies and semi-imaginary things, depending on where you’re standing, the level of imaginariness…. There are definitely people who look at the entirety of what’s going on the world today as a couple of people fighting over whose imaginary friend likes them better. And then you’ve got people who say, “No, no, this isn’t an imaginary friend, he’s actually the real thing. But that guy over there, he’s an imaginary friend.” And it’s huge and it’s responsible for an enormous amount of worry and difficulty and it’s why I’m not allowed to travel with eight ounces of shampoo. I’m allowed four ounces. I’m going to have to pour away half of my shampoo before I can put it in my quart bag and put it in my carryon. Which is really bizarre.
And that’s because of people arguing over things that many people regard as imaginary. Chiefly, gods, religions, and national boundaries, which are absolutely imaginary. They’re completely notional. They don’t tend to exist. As soon as you pull back half a mile and look down at the Earth there are no national boundaries. There aren’t even any national boundaries when you get down and walk around. They’re just imaginary lines we draw on maps.
Many use their imaginations to convince themselves to believe that what the Pope or the President or Pat Robertson says, that nice words like “peace”, “freedom” actually represent some REAL things that would make the world a nicer place. Don’t look too closely, don’t ask too many questions … it’ll ruin the magic. We want to take their words at face value, that their explanations of the scary dangers lurking out in the dark, just out of range of the light cast by the shadows of our shared flame, are reliable and that they will protect us.
After all, we’re consumed by our obsessions as a people. We keep insisting that there is an American Dream, even though most of us can see that it’s been dying for a long time. We like our piles of stuff, even though keeping it all cheap and “affordable” with our shrinking incomes depends on enslaved and forced labor. More, better, bigger … oh, and FAIR, even though by “fair” we actually seem to mean that those who have keep and anybody else desperately wanting a chance must be kept from threatening that status quo.
We’ve been here before, and many of us cling to the idea that the pendulum of politics will swing back, but how far, how bad, must the current system become before more people realize that the illusion being played out for us by the kleptocracy has gone too far?
As I made my way home, there was an interesting interview on Weekend All Things Considered with Esther Schor, poet and professor of English at Princeton University, who wrote a biography about Emma Lazarus, a poet and activist most remembered for the poem The New Colossus inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty. She fought many of the same attitudes and imprecations that many of us oppose now, and was especially active fighting for the rights of immigrants and the poor. The poem that leapt out at me was Progress and Poverty:
Progress and Poverty
(After reading Mr. Henry George’s book.)
Oh splendid age when Science lights her lamp
At the brief lightning’s momentarty flame.
Fixing it steadfast as a star, man’s name
Upon the very brow of heaven to stamp,
Launched on a ship whose iron-cuirassed sides
Mock storm and wave. Humanity sails free;
Gayly upon a vast untraveled sea,
O’er pathless wastes, to ports undreamed she rides.
Richer than Cleopatra’s barge of gold,
This vessel, manned by demi-gods, with freight
Of priceless marvels. But where yawns the hold
In that deep, reeking hell, what slaves be they
Who feed the ravenous monster, pant and sweat,
Nor know if overhead reign night and day?
If fairness or peace or justice ACTUALLY mattered to us, why are those words still so applicable to this country today, 125 years after it was published?
Too many of us don’t want to confront the truth of Lazarus’ words, far too many of us we prefer the pretty lies, waved before our eyes like fluttering doves by pandering politicians and dissembling clergymen. We clap at the empty illusions they represent, happy for the warmth they make us feel inside, reassuring us that our obsessive belief in American exceptionalism is still justified, and that the damage we do to others and ourselves is justified because we are “good”, God’s favorites.
There will always be mysteries just outside the light, boundaries to what we as flawed and mortal human beings can know. Once, not that long ago, many believed that by finding common ground through conversation, diplomacy, art and the fostering of scientific exploration, that we could make sense of the world. Many believed that upholding shared taxonomies and speaking across the cultural divide with the language of mathematics … these were the ways we could bring more of the universe to light, make it more understandable and less scary. This country built on scientific progress and the technologies it produced has sadly turned its back on those beliefs. PR firms flacking for industries try to undermine the process, screaming JUNK SCIENCE to obfuscate and undermine carefully developed, peer reviewed work. A population given to simplistic explanations and raised in a dying educational system throw their hands up, settling for superstition and lies because they’re easier to understand. Better to retreat to the old campfires than find new lighted paths to broaden our understanding.
As the movie made clear, obsession and blindness will lead only to self-destruction. Other empires, other peoples have stumbled down this road before. Is this really the way we want to go out, blinded by our own delusions and clapping at the arrival of our own destruction?