Taking a Breather

Wafers-

I'd like to switch subjects for a moment, and take a breather from our discussion of the events going down in the Middle East, which has left most of us, I'm guessing, pretty depressed. The following essay is something I wrote a few months ago. I sent a memo about it to American and British journals, and (here's a shocker) got no reply. So I'm going to post it here. Meanwhile, my Mexican editor is going to translate it into Spanish; I'm guessing some journal in Mexico City will pick it up. But here's the original version, in any case; hope you all enjoy it.

The Never-Ending Conflict: Tribalism Versus Rationalism in Human History

"[O]pposing forces routinely coexist in biological systems."—Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score

A number of years ago I wrote an essay called “Tribal Consciousness and Enlightenment Tradition.”(1) In this essay, I was following the thesis proposed by Neal Stephenson in his novel Snow Crash, which is in turn based on the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins’ concept of the meme: “an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture.” Less charitably, we might describe the process of diffusion as a kind of viral infection, or perhaps as brainwashing. It is essentially a blind process, an unthinking one—a tribal consciousness, as it were, which could also be compared to a trance, or medieval possession. In tribal consciousness, what counts for truth are not facts or data or any type of objective evidence, but blood, kinship relations, affinity groups, and community. McCarthyism is a good example of this (as is communism, of course), brilliantly illustrated by Arthur Miller in his play The Crucible. When the US Government sent the Rosenbergs to their deaths, for example (1951), the outcome of this trial was preordained; evidence was the least of the prosecution’s concerns. Cold War America was the “tribe” that had to be protected at all costs, and the trial was basically a sham as a result. In my own view, and that of a number of other historians (e.g., William Appleman Williams, Denna Fleming, Walter LeFeber), the Cold War could be seen as a trance that possessed the United States for decades, and it did incalculable damage to America in the process.

Stephenson’s focus, however, is not Cold War America but the mythological consciousness of the ancient world, which was tribal and pagan. There were, he says, various attempts to break out of the trance of magic/sacrifice/sun worship and so on; the most successful of these was Israelite monotheism—a counter-virus, he calls it. Judaism, he goes on, was the first rational religion, but eventually it hardened into legalism and Pharisaism—ritual without content—to be challenged by Christ. (“What comes out of your mouth is more important than what goes into it.”) Through the efforts of Paul, this eventually became the next meme, until it was in turn challenged by Martin Luther many centuries later. Centuries after that, Protestantism was rejected by New Age spirituality, which spits up Oprah and Chopra, leaders of the latest trance, who are blindly adored by millions. And so on. This is a cycle that writers such as John Gray (Black Mass) and Eric Hoffer (The True Believer) have described in exhausting detail.(2)

Mimetic thinking, of course, is the rule rather than the exception. It, not critical thinking, is the norm for the human race. Yet things shifted in a radical direction during 800-200 B.C., what has been called the “Axial Age.” This concept was the brainchild of the German psychiatrist and philosopher Karl Jaspers, who pointed out that during the centuries just noted, a number of sages arose, more or less simultaneously and independently of one another, espousing an entirely new way of thinking. This was what has been called second-order thinking: in other words, thinking about thinking (reflection, analysis). As opposed to tribal trance, in which people are immersed in their thoughts, and in whatever surrounds them, axial thinking consists of distance, perspective, and objective evaluation. Thus Socrates proclaims that the unexamined life is not worth living, and urges Athenian youth to question conventional beliefs; the Buddha formulates the practice of meditation, in which one part of the mind (the “Watcher”) observes the random thoughts that come and go when you just close your eyes, sit still, and concentrate on your breath; the Hebrew Prophets inveigh against the polytheism of the Canaanites in favor of the one and only God, Yahweh, who issues directives from on high; and Confucius promulgates societal rules and moral values—directives for living the good life. The world, Jaspers concluded, was permanently altered as a result.(3)

The result I am referring to is what I call the never-ending conflict. In recent years, the most famous illustration of this is the movie The Matrix (1999), although it was prefigured by Ira Levin in his novel This Perfect Day (1970). (Recall also Huxley’s Brave New World, in which almost the entire population is zonked out on “soma.”) The plot is that you have a society caught up in a trance, except for one individual (“Neo”), along with several others, who manage to see through the trance—i.e., achieve second-order thinking—and as a result, escape from that society.

The Matrix was lionized; it grossed over $460 billion at the box office during its first year. Why would that be? My guess is that there are many individuals in various countries who see their fellow-citizens as sheep, mechanically and unquestioningly going along with the dominant ideology (consumerism, for example), and doing whatever the government tells them to do. Or simply what everyone else is doing. They find this alienating, even repugnant, and so a movie based on the theme of escape from “sheepdom” is inevitably going to attract them. The fact is that rational thinking, when first encountered, comes as something of a shock. It is irresistible, even overwhelming, and once you are exposed to it you cannot easily forget it, and return to a state of “innocence.” Arthur Koestler gave the classic description of this type of awakening that happened to him when he came across Marxism as a critique of capitalist society: light, he wrote, seemed to pour across my skull; everything suddenly fell into place. All was clear now; everything made sense. Of course, years later he realized that Marxism was just another form of tribalism, after which, with the same intensity, he fell into the tribalism of anti-Marxism. Toward the end of his life, he declared that the curse of humanity was “devotion”—addiction to causes, i.e., memes.(4)

The metaphor of light is no accident. In Book VII of The Republic, Plato describes most people as living in shadows, in a cave, confusing the shadows on the wall with reality. Only a few manage to break through, to discover that the shadows are images thrown on the wall of the cave by a light coming from behind. These few then emerge from the cave into the light, get accustomed to it, and start to explore it. In so doing, they rise up the “noetic line” of awakening, until they attain the status of “philosopher-kings.” And awakening lies at the core of axiality: you see the light—critical reasoning—and leave tribal consciousness behind.

As it turns out, not quite. The problem (one of them, anyway) is that things are not that clear-cut. It seems that there is a dialectical relationship between tribal consciousness and rationality. They need each other, they define each other, and this is why the conflict is never-ending. Neither side is willing, or really, able, to give up its hold on the human mind. There are layers of meaning here; it’s not all black and white. In order to get a more accurate picture, we need to consider the following:

1.Critiques of Jaspers, and the concept of an Axial Age 2.The evolution of mind, as delineated by sociologist Robert Bellah and psychologist Merlin Donald 3.The dialectical relationship between tribalism and axiality

Critiques of Jaspers and the concept of an Axial Age are quite extensive, and often fairly insightful. The question we shall have to ask ourselves is whether, after the dust settles, the concept has any validity, and if so, to what extent.(5) To begin with, both the philosopher Charles Taylor and the Egyptologist Jan Assmann fault the theory for its apparent assumption that there is a universal history, a single trajectory for mankind to follow: one Truth, one Mankind. In other words, it assumes that there is a single path, running from tradition to modernity, with the latter regarded as superior. According to this theory, during the period 800-200 B.C. the human race broke through to this Truth (second-order thinking); but, says Jaspers, it didn’t really “take” in a major or conclusive way. Rather, the tendency was to chronically lapse back into pre-axiality. It's as though the West, with its particular (and narrow) definition of progress, is waiting for everyone else to “grow up” (the easterners Buddha and Confucius notwithstanding). In contrast to this assumption, Taylor argues that there are a variety of fundamentally different civilizational patterns of development, while Assmann adds that different civilizations have different turning points in their history. All of this generates a much more complex, and nonlinear, picture. Assmann concedes that there certainly is such a thing as axiality, but argues that there wasn’t an Axial Age as such.

In addition, the larger point Assmann is making is that the notion of an Axial Age is part of the theory of modernization, which is typically blind to the cultural achievements of stabilization and continuity. In that framework, he says, tradition and cultural memory are devalued; they appear merely as factors of regression or even stagnation—a very biased way of reading history.

Another problem with the theory: it is too rigid. Various civilizations exhibit degrees of axiality, and in fact elements of axiality can be shown to predate 800 B.C. Thus we have, for example, the Code of Hammurabi (an anthology of legal situations) in Mesopotamia by the eighteenth century B.C. And Mesopotamia accomplished quite a lot in the fields of political organization, statecraft, literature, astronomy, mathematics, and even historiography; and this is but one example. (The case of Akhenaten, the fourteenth-century Egyptian pharaoh, is obviously another one, as he attempted to shift Egyptian religion from polytheism to monotheism.) As Assmann says, it’s not all or nothing. Jaspers was a bit blind to the axiality that existed in nonaxial civilizations, and which existed prior to the first millennium B.C.(6)

I want to return to this discussion in a moment, but first let me say a few words about point #2, the critique of Professors Bellah and Donald. To me, this gets down to the nitty-gritty of it all. As far as the evolution of the brain, and cognitive development, goes, there is, Donald says, a kind of “layering phenomenon” of successive evolutionary stages, whereby the human race went from the Mimetic to the Mythic to the Theoretic. These three stages are categories of memory representation, and—the crucial point—they don’t replace each other. Rather, they just accumulate. Mimesis consists of imitation and repetition, and is the basis of crafts, dance, music, and tool use. This capacity is hard-wired into the brain; it goes back 4 million years. The Mythic phase is also hard-wired, although it goes back only 300,000 or 400,000 years, and it consists of speech and storytelling; narrative, in a word. It includes stories of origin, legends, allegories, and so on. And finally, with Theoretic culture, which eventually included axiality, we get writing systems, symbolic representation, analysis and reflection. In terms of evolution, this phase is not hard-wired. It is relatively recent, and has a cultural basis rather than a biological one. As a result—as Jaspers said—its hold on us is a bit iffy, rather tenuous.(7)

The crucial point here is that the modern mind is a mixture of all three of these modes, or capacities; there was really no “replacement” of one mode of consciousness by another. For we still dance, and sing, and we still tell stories, generate myths and narratives—in fact, we do both all the time. And if our mythologies are not religious, then they are secular (modern ideologies). True, analytic thinking can do things that the other two modes can’t, but these latter two “domains,” says Donald, are nevertheless

"extremely subtle and powerful ways of thinking. They cannot be matched by analytic thought for intuitive speed, complexity, and shrewdness. They will continue to be crucially important in the future, because they reside in innate capacities without which human beings could not function."

(Elsewhere I have referred to this mode of consciousness as “ontological knowing”—from the Greek word ontos, being—as distinct from intellectual knowing.)

Robert Bellah drives this point home with great clarity and incisiveness when he writes that narrative

"is more than [just] literature; it is the way we understand our lives. If literature merely supplied entertainment, then it wouldn’t be as important as it is. Great literature speaks to the deepest level of our humanity; it helps us better understand who we are. Narrative is not only the way we understand our personal and collective identities; it is the source of our ethics, our politics and our religion. It…isn’t irrational—it can be criticized by rational argument—but it can’t be derived from reason alone. Mythic (narrative) culture is not a subset of theoretic culture, nor will it ever be. It is older than theoretic culture and remains to this day an indispensable way of relating to the world." [Italics mine]

So much for Western notions of “progress,” which are narrow, limited, and superficial. The axial way of thinking, of knowing the world, is indispensable for the functioning of modern societies, but it is only a way of knowing the world; and although we cannot live without it, it may not be the most profound.

To return to our earlier discussion (point #1), we need to note that there is a class bias involved in the emergence of axiality. Donald’s Theoretic mode, second-order thinking, is mostly the province or territory of an intellectual elite—the Op-Ed crowd at the New York Times, for example. Today and yesterday, the majority of the population, worldwide, lives in the Mythic mode—Plato’s shadows. The average person is not a philosopher, and for him or her, what is right in front of them is what’s real. Nations vary, of course, but in the United States, it’s a good bet that more than 90 percent of the population would not be able to say what a metaphor is. Jaspers was right; for the most part, axiality never really “took,” at least not for the greater part of humanity. As I’ll indicate below, this has serious repercussions for our present situation.

Turning to point #3, I would argue that although tribalism and rationalism are two distinct ways of being, they are nevertheless entwined in a dialectical relationship. As already noted, they define each other, and this dialectic has never really gone away, as the biblical scholar Arvin Kapelrud points out (Baal was the Canaanite god of fertility and storms):

"[T]he relationship between Yahweh and Baal was a matter of central importance; and if we do not take account of this we get a distorted picture of the history of Israel’s religion. Although in the end Yahweh triumphed over His opponent, we ought, nevertheless, not to underestimate Baal’s importance. The conflict between Yahweh and Baal was more than an incidental historical episode. It was a conflict between [two] principles and interpretations of life which in other forms is still being waged today."(8) [Italics mine]

It would seem to be an eternal psychological dynamic. Applying the concept of axiality to contemporary American politics, for example, what do we find? The current violent divide in the United States, politically speaking, strikes me as being ultimately rooted in the archaic conflict between tribalism and rationalism. Millions adore an intellect-hater and fact-denier like Donald Trump, whose followers have no use for critical analysis and who are steeped in a tribal, Trumpian mythology. The “bubbas” who wear MAGA hats despise the New York Times, and what it stands for—the pointy-headed intellectuals who look down on them (“a basket of deplorables,” per Hillary Clinton). There is ominous talk of civil war, with 25 percent of the population endorsing violence against the government, as was evident on 6 January 2021, when a mob of Trumpites stormed the Capitol Building in Washington DC, in the tribal and misguided belief that Joe Biden stole the election from Trump.

A related example: If you know how to look at them, the presidential debates of 2016 are a perfect illustration of this conflict. Hillary Clinton was depending on fact and evidence to win the debate, and as a result came off as scripted and boring. Her opponent hadn’t bothered to prepare for the event; his weapons were mimesis (body language) and tribal mythology (invented scenarios, rhetoric, dramatic emotional expressions, and so on). At one point he even referred to Hillary as “nasty.” The result? He pretty much wiped the floor with her. As Merlin Donald tells us, this mode “cannot be matched by analytic thought for intuitive speed, complexity, and shrewdness.”

In any case, those on the axial side of this conflict are for the most part capable of critical analysis, but a rather large percentage of them have gone off the rails, channeled it into a strange place of “woke” ideology, where the focus of attention is on political correctness—an abuse of critical thinking, in my view, and a movement that has created its own form of tribalism. But the point being made here is that the axial issue is, it seems to me, a potentially fruitful way of framing the heated political conflict that is currently engulfing the American body politic. My guess is that this mode of analysis can be applied to other countries as well, such as Brazil, or Israel. The struggles going on in the US and these nations can, I believe, be seen as having their origins in the fundamental conflict between a tribal way of life and consciousness and an axial one; and the conflict, which is existential, would seem to be never-ending. With Trump, tribalism may eventually triumph in America; but the rational opposition to him will not simply go away. Many Israelis regard the Palestinians as a variety of savages, “human animals,” as the Israeli Defense Minister put it (October 2023), whereas the Palestinians view someone like Benjamin Netanyahu, with his desire to destroy Gaza, as a monster, a war criminal. It should not surprise us that there is no resolution in sight. As for Brazil, consider the contrast between Bolsonaro and Lula, and what each of them stands for. This mode of analysis may seem far-fetched; personally, I’m guessing that it contains more than a kernel of truth. At the very least, it seems to me to be heuristically valuable.(9)

Truth be told, the issue of an Axial Age never got resolved. Everyone agrees that axiality exists in a psychological or mental sense, and that we can investigate the degree of it in various societies, on a comparative basis. But did it exist historically? Was Jaspers right about there being a specific Axial Age that can be identified with the period 800-200 B.C.? On that score, opinion remains divided. There are eminent historians on both sides of the argument. Personally, I agree with the critiques discussed above, regarding modernization bias, class bias, and the problem of ignoring the vibrancy of other capacities of the human mind. But at the end of the day, I think Jaspers got it pretty much right: this period was a turning point in the evolution of human consciousness, and the sages he identifies as agents of the change were sui generis. Of course, they were not acting alone; I am not proposing a heroic version of history, and it’s a good bet that they were the products of deep-seated changes going on in Greece, India, China, and the Levant. But they may, perhaps, be likened to Hegel’s “world historical individuals,” who changed their societies because they epitomized changes that were already underway. It is rather amazing that this occurred across the board, in the absence of practically any cross-cultural influence. Once again, we might draw on Hegel for the notion of a weltgeist, sweeping across the globe in the space of a few centuries, and seemingly coming out of nowhere. Whatever the cause, this much is certain: the human race hasn’t been the same ever since.

©Morris Berman, 2023

Notes
1.“Tribal Consciousness and Enlightenment Tradition,” in A Question of Values (Charleston SC: CreateSpace, 2010).
2.See also another essay of mine, “The Hula Hoop Theory of History,” CounterPunch, 11 January 2013.
3.Karl Jaspers, The Origin and Goal of History (London: Routledge, 1953; orig. German edition 1949).
4.Morris Berman, Eminent Post-Victorians (Independently published, 2022), pp. 67-79. See also Raymond Aron, The Opium of the Intellectuals (London: Routledge, 1957; orig. French ed. 1955).
5.In the discussion that follows I am borrowing liberally from Appendix III of my book Neurotic Beauty (Healdsburg CA: Water Street Press, 2019).
6.For additional critiques see Daniel Hoyer and Jenny Reddish, Seshat History of the Axial Age (Chaplin CT: Beresta Books, 2019); Ken Baskin and Dmitri Bodarenko, The Axial Ages of World History: Lessons for the 21st Century (ISCE Publishing, 2014); Iain Provan, Convenient Myths: The Axial Age, Dark Green Religion, and the World that Never Was (Waco TX: Baylor University Press, 2013); and Antony Black, “The ‘Axial Period’: What Was It and What Does It Signify?,” published online by Cambridge University Press, 15 February 2008. Regarding the Code of Hammurabi: according to two scholars of Canaanite (Ugaritic) literature, the adjudication of legal cases, particularly those involving widows and orphans, “was the ordinary task of elders and rulers in ancient Near Eastern societies.” This goes back to ca. 3,000 B.C., i.e., 1,200 years before the Mesopotamian Code. See Michael Coogan and Mark Smith, eds. and trans., Stories from Ancient Canaan (2d. ed.; Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2012), pp. 27-28.
7.This section and what follows are also taken from Appendix III of Neurotic Beauty.
8.Arvid S. Kapelrud, The Ras Shamra Discoveries and the Old Testament, trans. G.W. Anderson (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963), pp. 55-56. Kapelrud’s assertion that we are talking about two distinct principles and interpretations of life is one that is supported by a number of scholars of axiality, notably S.N. Eisenstadt in his edited volume, The Origins and Diversity of Axial Age Civilisations (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986). These scholars refer to the shift as “the transcendentalist breakthrough.” Eisenstadt defines it (according to Alan Strathern) as the “erection of two sharply distinguished orders of reality and modes of behaviour,” which he (Strathern) regards as “a powerful way of lending coherence to the apparently disparate ancient philosophies.” See Alan Strathern, “Karen Armstrong’s Axial Age: Origins and Ethics,” The Heythrop Journal, vol. 50 no. 2 (February 2009), pp. 293-99.
9.I am not the first historian to suggest this kind of long-range influence. The biblical scholar Baruch Halpern makes a somewhat similar argument in his book From Gods to God: The Dynamics of Iron Age Cosmologies (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009). Halpern accepts Jaspers’ thesis about an Axial Age, including (unfortunately) the Western bias and modernization theory criticized by Jan Assmann, above. But leaving that aside, Halpern argues for a similarity between the axial shift that took place in ancient Israel (which gave birth to monotheism), and the cultural and intellectual shifts that took place across Europe during 1500-1800; which is to say, the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. But not just a similarity; rather, some type of connection, or influence. This is not a causal connection rippling down through the centuries, but only an argument that there is a psychological or mental pattern here that gets repeated; what Kapelrud is saying, in effect. In such a framework, I don’t feel that this is far-fetched, although Nathan MacDonald, in a lengthy review of Halpern’s book, does, and he offers a plausible critique. Clearly, the jury is out on all of this. See Nathan MacDonald, “Making the Past Present,” Journal of Hebrew Scriptures, vol. 11 (2011).

The Great Charade

In an interview she gave in 1980, the eminent British writer Doris Lessing said the following: "I can't remember any time in my life where I wasn't sitting looking at the grown-up scene and thinking, this must be some great charade they've all agreed to play." On an intuitive level, I had a similar perception about my childhood environment when I was about 8 or 9, and subsequent events have only served to reinforce that perception. It's one reason why I have been attracted to Lessing's novels, some of which reiterate this theme--in particular, Briefing for a Descent into Hell, which I occasionally assigned to my classes when I was teaching at various universities.

"The Great Charade" is a theme that goes by other names, in particular "The Emperor's New Clothes," a story by the Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen (it has been translated into more than 100 languages); or "Orwellian Newspeak"; or "The World Turned Upside Down," the title of a book by the British historian Christopher Hill. A more accurate title might be "Reality Turned Upside Down," for that is what we see in the MSM and their interpretation of daily events. I frequently read the 'news' and say to myself, Has everyone gone completely nuts? Like Jack Kennedy with the Russian missiles in Cuba in 1962, Vladimir Putin saw that he had to safeguard his country's borders against America and NATO, which finally necessitated invading the Ukraine. This obvious fact is recognized by only a tiny handful of astute political analysts (Mearsheimer, Ritter, Pilger, Sachs...); the rest of the world is appalled at Putin as some latter-day Hitler, ignoring what the Russian foreign minister correctly described as a proxy war against Russia, in which the Ukraine is nothing more than fodder. Self-righteous Americans, deluded up to their eyeballs, jump up and down and wave the Ukrainian flag, while American universities actually think it makes perfect sense to cancel courses in Doestoevsky(!!).

A similar charade pervades the coverage of, and reaction to, Hamas' uprising against Israel. Most of the 'analysis' of causes is plainly stupid: it was caused by a failure of Israeli intelligence. Wha?? Much to my amazement, only the NYT seems to have gotten it right: this 'intelligence' thesis is a load of crap, and the real cause goes back to 1948, when the Jews drove 700,000 Palestinians off their land. (I reproduce excerpts from the Times article in the previous post.) Meanwhile, the whole world is outraged at the Hamas uprising, when they too would be retaliating if something similar had happened to them. Excepting Palestinian commentators, the NYT emerges as the sole voice of sanity amidst--once again--a great charade.

One great danger posed by Donald Trump--and I agree that it is a danger--is that of falsifying reality, in Orwellian style; a charade, turning black into white, up into down, and so on. The raw empirical truth is that Trump lost the 2020 election, pure and simple. But if Mr. Trump wins the election of 2024 and ascends to the White House, that complete falsehood will become The New Truth. My question is: How is that different from making Russia the culprit in the Ukraine war, or making Hamas the culprit in their attack on Israel? All of it--Trump, the Ukraine, Israel--is reality turned upside down: a charade, as Doris Lessing said, that grown-ups have all agreed to play. Some grown-ups, is all I can think to say.

-mb

A Revolutionary Act

It was George Orwell who said it: "During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act."

There can be no doubt that we are living during a time of universal deceit. America, among others, is soaking in it. The Trumpite claim that Biden stole the 2020 election is an obvious example of this; his demagoguery is classically Orwellian. The phony proxy war against Russia via the Ukraine, the "reportage" of the NYT and others that is little more than propaganda--another Orwellian pile of crap. The fomenting of war for "democracy": you have to be brain damaged to believe such nonsense.

What can one blog do? We aren't on the radar screen of intellectual debate, and never will be. Even leading critics of America, of both its domestic and foreign policy, are ignored by the MSM and shunted off to YouTube, at best. But it is still worthwhile, for those few of us who see that the emperor has no clothes, to point it out. This is the hard rock at the bottom of all the bullshit, all the gaslighting.

Truth, like virtue, is its own reward.

-mb

The Deepest Truth

For many years now, I have been fascinated by the life and work of Remedios Varo (1908-63), a Spanish Surrealist artist who died in Mexico City at the age of 54, after having lived there for 22 years. I just read, for the third time, the superb biography of her by Janet Kaplan, which reproduces a good many of her canvases:

Remedios Varo: Unexpected Journeys: Kaplan, Janet A.: 9780789206275: Amazon.com: Books

I have in mind paintings such as (in English translation) Toward the Tower, The Escape, Rupture, and To Be Reborn, but my all-time favorite is Breaking the Vicious Circle:

Museum Art Reproductions | Breaking the vicious circle by Remedios Varo (1865-1911, Spain) | WahooArt.com

The vicious circle is the script or narrative that consciously or (mostly) unconsciously governs our lives, as I described it in my book Healing:

Healing: The Defining Root of Our Existence: Berman, Morris: 9798393548681: Amazon.com: Books

I could have easily used this painting for the front cover. For me, Varo exemplifies a life of authenticity, and a rejection of a life of conformity. This theme occurs in many of her paintings, but is most dramatically presented in Breaking the Vicious Circle. Varo was searching for the deepest truth, in her own life and in life in general. She calls to mind a quote from Virginia Nicholson’s book, Among the Bohemians, which I cite in Healing (she was a niece of Virginia Woolf):

Among the Bohemians: Experiments in Living 1900-1939: Nicholson, Virginia: 9780060548469: Amazon.com: Books

"There are people in the world who will not make compromises with life. Their faces are turned like sunflowers towards the source of light, and even when battered and broken they refuse to give in to old age, sorrow, loss, defeat."

I believe the deepest truth is what I have called the Healing Vector, the force within us that is pushing toward the light. It is the motive force of life, sometimes referred to as “entelechy.” The deepest truth is to live in Reality. I’ve struggled to make this my path, as best as I have been able; it is a lonely road, since most people—certainly, most Americans—are not interested in it. America is living in illusion, which is why it is dying. And most Americans are living in illusion, which is why so many of them are angry and depressed. My guess is that it won’t end well for them, and it certainly won’t end well for the US. (Just look around.)

Let me conclude by alerting you all to the current exhibition of Varo’s work going on at the Art Institute of Chicago:

Remedios Varo: Science Fictions | The Art Institute of Chicago (artic.edu)

Really wish I could go. Those of you Wafers who do go, please report back, let us have your reactions.

Arriba!

-mb

Our Common Humanity

The following text is from a Canaanite (Ugaritic) tablet, early third millennium B.C. It was from the Canaanite people that the Jewish people eventually emerged. The Canaanites were polytheistic; the Israelites, centuries later, were monotheistic (worshipping Yahweh). The speaker here is Baal, the Canaanite god of fertility, and storms. He is addressing another deity.

"I have a word to tell you, a message to recount to you: the word of the tree and the whisper of the stone, the murmur of the heavens to the earth, of the seas to the stars. I understand the lightning that the heavens do not know, the word that people do not know, and earth's masses cannot understand. Come, and I will reveal it."

Ugaritic is very close to Hebrew. Many of the Psalms are direct translations of Ugaritic poetry into the Hebrew language.

The Soul of Russia

Wafers-

My book on Russia, hardcopy edition, just got listed on Amazon, and should be available for sale sometime within the next two weeks. The (cheaper) paperback edition will be listed soon after that, or so they tell me.

https://www.amazon.com/Soul-Russia-Morris-Berman/dp/1648373623/

Enjoy, my friends. This book took a while, but was a true labor of love.

mb