Killing Desire?

Scene from Assassin's Creed, Unity. 

On Christmas Eve, I was wrapping presents (probably my least favorite activity in a life full of far too many unpleasant activities) and I was watching the classic film It's a Wonderful Life. In one scene, George, as a boy, is talking to Mary (his future wife) across the counter in Mr. Gower's drug store. George is telling Mary about all of the places he is going to see when he gets old enough, and he pulls out a copy of National Geographic Magazine so he can show her some pictures. I know how he felt. Do my kids feel the same?

I remember (I grew up in the 70s and 80s) seeing a picture that fired my imagination. I remember watching nature programs on old, grainy and square TVs and wishing I could visit jungles and deserts. I remember seeing places in movies -- whether shot on-location or whether they were studio recreations -- and feeling a pull of curiosity.

Once, I worked with a principal who told the faculty: "You have to remember. This is no longer the one-room schoolhouse. We, as teachers, are no-longer able to dazzle our students with stories of far-away lands. Teachers are no-longer 'the sages on the stage'."

Her point was that, with modern technology, the kids have seen more in their early years than we could have have dreamt of seeing. They live in a world that offers so much virtual experience that, I fear, it might really be blunting their cravings for reality. We don't impress them by pulling back the curtains on the wonders of the world. (Well...we literature teachers kind of do... We just have to make kids understand that we are.)

Both of my sons have walked through very realistic depictions of medieval villages; both of them have fought in historical wars. They have wandered the streets of Paris and London and New York City while wearing their pajamas. They have sailed pirate ships and flown planes.

Of course, none of this is as good as the real thing. [Or, is it? Consider the idea that the people who created the Notre Dame cathedral for Assassin's Creed might be consulted in the reconstruction of the cathedral.] But, it is pretty darned good. I've seen depictions of water in video games that make me swear I can smell salt. And, now, we have VR gaming with 360 degree headsets...

Still, VR is not as good, let's face it. But is it blunting our kids' desire to get to the places they no longer have to dream about? -- the places they can now see while wide-awake?

A year ago, I discovered that a large system of wooded trails exists in the town I grew up in. (It is quite well-hidden.) All my life, I had no idea it was there. I found it online, believe it or not, listed as the best trail walk in New Jersey. I think that a video of my face as I walked into it the first time might have been embarrassing. I think I was doing what they call "beaming." Every corner turned; every trail found made me a little goofy with the joy of discovery. With every step, I cannot help thinking that it must have been a meeting place for the Lenni Lenape Indians -- it's a huge hill from which one can see Philadelphia in the distance, almost twenty miles away.

I think it may be the result of a young life of wishing I could really experience things I saw in pictures and films. Unlike my boys, I never got to walk through haunted medieval forests until later in life... With our desire to make better and better experiences in education and gaming, are we extinguishing dreams?

Consider this: teen pregnancy is down. One possible cause, according to some, is "sexting." If the next-best-thing can quell that desire, what can it do to the urge to explore our world?

"Love's not Time's fool..."

Sometimes, I want to save the world. Sometimes, I want to tell it to go to hell.

I suppose this is pretty common.

Just when I most want to tell it to go to hell, I wind up reading a great book or I hear a piece of music that reveals someone's beautiful soul, and I gain some hope again. The world becomes a little more worth saving.

Put modern clohes on them and this
is a someone's profile pic. Real. 

I realize, though, that the hope I gain from art, literature and music comes from something that is above the treeline of the daily events on the mountain of life; above the politics, the wars, the race conflicts...the mess. The beacon of the arts pulls me away from the mundane world, not toward it.

I guess it is a natural thing for humans to look toward the place either above life or after life. Every culture has had its "Underworld" or its "Heaven" or its places of transcendence, like "Tao" and "Zen." Is this an incurable need for escape or is this a compass lock on that which is our highest and best state?

Sandburg said that "someday, they will give a war and nobody will come." Is this similar -- this walking away from the archetypes that the common thinker (and I mean "common" both literally and a critically) accepts as simply part of human interaction? For Sandburg to be right, it would be necessary for everyone to say, "Wait -- kill other people for an idea or a religion of a political goal? That's ridiculous."

It is ridiculous, but,still, we don't stop.

The other day, a guy cut across traffic while I was making a left  through a line of cars who were stopped at a light and who were letting me through. He nearly rammed me. We were going into the same store. When we got to the door, he backed away from me, as if I were going to punch him for what he did. I had been angry, but there was a complete disconnect from any desire to hurt or even chastise the guy. Palms toward me in supplication, he stood stock still, waiting for me to let slip the dogs of war. "We're both okay, right?" I said. And I held the door for him.

The world; the movies; the stories; the precedents all say men are supposed to punch those who wrong them -- I mean, they always say punching is bad, but they encourage it as a sign of strength and manliness, anyway, don't they?  But I choose not to be part of that world. I choose to transcend violence.

To keep us anchored down and in line, the common thinker calls politics, work and "the daily grind" the "real" world. But what's more real than love and music? No one built them with stone or conjured them out of a think-tank or ratified them at a board meeting. They are at the heart of human nature and have been since the beginning of humanity.

The chains of guilt still have a hold on me. I admit it. Should they, though? Is it up to me to stop people from being racist or to stop them from spitting on the values that I hold? Why should my life be a sword fight against breaking waves? If I walk away from "the war," and you follow me, and someone follows you, etc., what then?

What's real and what's fake? What's more real, "Congress" or the first time your lips were pressed against another's in a passionate kiss? What's more real, a good, firm handshake or four-thousand "likes" on Facebook? What's more real, election debates or the sincere pretending games of children? What's more real, the legacy of a great statesman, or this:

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no; it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests, and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
   If this be error and upon me proved,
   I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

                                         (Shakespeare, Sonnet 116)

No Touching

Our feet never touch the ground. (This is not a poetic wonder, but a literal truth.)

We went from levers that move things, to that wheels attach to things that they turn, to buttons that start mechanical actions that make it so we don't have to move, to virtual buttons that we can't even feel when we "push" them (even though they are programmed to make a patronizing little "click" sound), to projections on a desktop.

We never hold a letter in our hands; we rarely weild a pencil; we read books made up of light, on little plastic devices.

We can't trust photographs anymore.

Even our own lives, appearences and actions are chopped into bits and laid out on the social media buffet in ways that make them seem more interesting.

When everything becomes virtual, what will be left to hold onto?

Each other? No -- we're not allowed to touch each other anymore. Teachers can't hug their weeping little students; a kind-hearted and harmless adult can't hold the hand of a little lost child to bring him or her to the amusement park office, all for fear of misunderstanding because of the perverse actions of a few. We're not allowed to touch each other anymore without express permission, no matter how generic the contact. (Even a pat on the shoulder along with a "good job" ot the wrong person could land us in court.)

No. No touching.

Reality in a Holographic World

Love. Touch. Sight. Sound. Scent. Taste. Pain. All of these are filtered through both the conscious and unconscious mind and they all manifest themselves in an individual's own interpretation, for him or herself. That interpretation is that person's reality. That reality is not something whose validity can be argued against, because it is what has taken root in the individual's mind through the routes of taste, touch, sounds, sight and scent.

I'm not talking about the ideas surrounding the feelings, I am talking about the feelings themselves. My love is mine and yours is yours and they are different, though they are both true. My pain might not be pain to you, but, to me, it is what it is. That is real.

For that reason, I think reality only exists inside of us or between us, when we experience each other through the senses above.

The rest? Unreality. What Holden Caufield would call "phony." What drove his creator into a shack and into a jumpsuit. All of the things we label as "real life" from money to government are nothing but constructs. They are not real, in the cosmic sense, though the impact of their phoniness can be felt in many real ways. This is what drives those who can sense true reality insane; or, at least, to the fringes.

The old fellows were right: transcendence is the only path to reality. We need to live for ourselves without hurting others and to seek reality and be conscious of our impact on the reality of others. Reality exists in our thoughts and it extends no farther than our nose, ears, tongue, eyes and fingertips.

The rest is holographic.

Everyday Absurdity

A woman is walking through her living room. She picks up a discarded T-shirt, rumples her kid's hair and steps into the kitchen to sit next to her husband who is reading the paper and drinking coffee in the morning sunshine. All the while, she is talking to us, through the TV screen, about her health insurance. We have just followed her through her house, even though we were never really there.

A commercial, of course.

Is this not one of the most ridiculous premises in the history of mankind? -- this common format for television commercials? This woman makes no reaction, whatsoever, to...what? The fact that there is a TV crew in her house, in the middle of the morning routine? Or, is there some sci-fi concept at work -- a portal for talking to the world's population; a population she just happens to know is interested in hearing about her health insurance issues and triumphs?

Completely comfortable, the husband grins wryly at his wife and goes back to his newspaper. He is unperturbed. Nothing strange about universal communication portals and/or film crews in his kitchen and/or following his wife around.

What Nobody Wants You to Know About Everything

Take this literally, along with an afternoon nap. And don't call me when you wake up.

Wastes of time:

Crashing Awake

Last night, coughing, I popped up in the dark; I remember sitting on the edge of the bed for a second -- or standing, I can't remember -- then, in an instant, I slammed to the ground, feeling distinctly like my head was being thumped, front and back, with wood -- or as if it were bouncing around in a box.

My eyes opened; I was on the floor next to my bed, hands and knees, and a memory was fading and undulating like a boat-wake behind me: a memory of falling, but more of crashing. That part -- the crashing part-- still hasn't faded: my body slamming to the wood floor; no attempt made to stop myself; just a flat, dead fall to the floor and hitting a few things on there way down.

I knelt there in the dark, literally shaking my head, trying to come around.

Where the Maps End

When the wind blows and when the raindrops turn into icy bullets, I need something to convince me that walking through it all is worth the effort. Sure -- it would be easy to shelter under shingled roofs or to disappear into a cave and to wait out the squalls. But there has to be something to keep me walking, out in the rains, shoulders rounded, collar up, glancing from under a wind-bent hat brim, and tromping toward the bravely flickering light.

Do you now what that light is, for me? Reality. Not everyone else's reality, though. I'm talking about actual reality, not the sedative constructs that are poured into our throats from the moment of our first newborn cry.

I rest well and deeply at night, after the wet and windy trek back to my door, because I know these things:

The Real/Un-Real World Wide Web

I will begin by saying I know nothing about economics, especially on a global scale. Apparently, this ignorance contributes to my slack-jawed, head-shaking amazement upon finding out that chaos theory applies to naked Frenchmen; for, it seems, just as a butterfly flapping its wings on a teensy hill in, say, Iowa, can, in an eventual and non-linear sense, cause a hurricane, it seems that a naked Frenchman chasing a maid through a hotel and (allegedly) sodomizing her could lead to a global financial snafu.

In case you haven't heard, I am referring to the case of IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn. As you might have guessed, I am not going to dig into the news, because in the rare cases I mention "what's going on" I tend to use it as a springboard for considering our human situation, in general. This case will be no different.