I can’t help it. Anger courses through my veins. A lot of things make me angry. But I suspect that anger is part of this limited being that I am.
So many things are going wrong. People often blather on about sanctimonious agendas without knowing what is truly at stake. They judge rather than listen. And as much as I want to point my finger, I know I can’t. If I turned to accusatory judgment, I would only fall into those pitfalls.
The mystery of communication requires that the parties enter in a spirit of openness. Spirit is a word that has taken such a brutal beating. From St. Paul to Hegel, spirit has come to connote something far different from its basic meaning – namely, harmony. Hegel ossifies harmony into a static and ultimate unity, an end to history. The notion of harmony is lost on a modern, and largely commodity based, society. For liberal society, harmony can only be attained in the private realm, for it is in private where the individual has control.
Harmony, as Taoist and Confucian philosophy has taught us, is far from stasis, far from an atemporal utopia. Harmony requires the continual cultivation of relationships between people. Without the right action of people, Confucius said, heaven would fall. People don’t speak about ancestors, lest they appear non-progressive or archaic in their thought. Some people – this is not a generalization at all – cannot think about anything outside of their wardrobes, cars, women/men, and various objects of enjoyment. Others cannot conceive of politics apart from left and right; democrat and republican; my rights versus your repression; righteousness and evil. Most do not want to think at all. Thinking causes wrinkles, didn’t you know?
I cannot claim dominion over truth, because, in all honesty, truth cannot be the exclusive domain of me, you, any individual, any groups of individuals, any confederation of groups, or any planet of confederations. The Truth – the one spelt with the big T – is the most lethal weapon known to man. The Truth alienates. The Truth divides. The Truth needs conquest to reify It, and violence to proliferate. The Truth does not set you free. It enslaves absolutely. Science is held to be Truth, and that is false. Morality is held to be Truth, and it is corrupt. The Man who holds himself to be Truth; it is he who is most false and corrupt. The diminution of human thought is aligned to this constant need for facts, for evidence, for indisputable proof to squelch the opposition, to destroy difference, and to control the ‘discourse’.
Oh, so many will say, “I cannot feed my children with mere talk. I need a man of action, of decisiveness to lead.” But there is the problem. We look to the heroic figure to lead, but fail to realize that heroes are sheep too.
Here I stand; I got TV to watch, movies to rent, parties to crash, people to fuck. Alas, it is a crisis of meaning. Is there meaning to be found amidst the constant clamour of the rat race, with the cacophony of car horns, ring tones, subwoofers, and the tumultuous pretence, suffused with catch-phrases and clichés, that masquerades as conversation? Modern man can’t get over himself to give a shit. But this is not new. Many people have been shouting about this till blue in the face, impoverished, marginalized, and ultimately ridiculed for being so unruly and miserably "unsuccessful" and "unaccomplished".
We are not talking about the Ghandis, the Martin Luther Kings, the Rosa Parks, or the Nelson Mandelas of the world. They have holidays named after them; movies, miniseries, a whole litany of third-rate heliographies and hallmark cards with their faces plastered on them. These figures are part of a for-profit lexicon. Much money can be made off the hero, only so much off of the criminal. Just ask OJ. Anger courses through my veins, and I still don’t know why.
