(Not A Government Publication)
- Yes.
- Do you like him?
- Do you?
- No.
- I don't either.
- Why not? Because of the dour tone to his speeches? Because he's Christian and you're not?
- Judaism came out of the time of a new idea: rest in beauty and rules of action must share attention and importance. Overindulgence in either is limited by the need to return to the other.
- The world is going to hell, we've got to try to do something about it, but we're not to forget that the world's not serious, nothing to get too upset about, it's not real, only the world we see when we rest is. 'The future masters of technology will have to be light-hearted and intelligent.' You hold against him that he's not Jewish and not a Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher. Anything else?
- Have you seen his latest speech about how the president's supporters are a cult?
- Yes. You say much the same.
- No. I don't.
- But you're always going on about ritual, losing one's sense of insecurity in imagining a winning battle against the enemy and strength restored.
- Let's make some distinctions. Ritual can be personal, like coffee in the morning. Ritual can be a group practice, of a few people, or the millions of a nation, as indeed the president's so-called rallies are an example of. Ritual can be also political but not group practice.
- How if a polity is always a group?
- Do you agree there is something off about calling the president's supporters a cult?
- Yes. I imagine a cult like a herd of beasts, each directing the other, communicating fear and anger. No individuality.
- And you think of Americans, even the president's supporters, as lovers of individuality.
- Yes.
- So if they are performing a ritual, and it is not by communicating their fear and anger to each other, how are they doing it?
- How are they?
- Like with coffee drinking, by communicating the message to themselves of insecurity recovered from.
- If they're recovering all the time why do they need the president?
- They see relations to others in terms of rights, which are demands on others to leave them alone: don't attack, rob, imprison, silence, etc. Somehow, their rights are under attack: the mechanism is obscure, but not the outcome, lives that are daily worsening.
- The president's supporters don't form a cult communicating in a panic fear and anger to each other, but are drawn to the president by his providing clarity, a script to a ritual which will end the attacks on their rights.
- The president's supporters, feeling attacked, try to defend themselves with pornography and violence, identifying with the actors in entertainments or acted out in their own lives; the president promises he is going to end the provocation and recover for them their security. Accompanying each time they fend off an attack now is the reassurance that soon this will all be over. Like the recurring stimulant of coffee drinking, the attack and needed defense is an irritation, but reassuring in its reliably expected arrival.
- The group of the president's supporter is the very opposite of a mass, a herd, a crowd. Each in the group is thinking his rights are under attack: he doesn't see the group. For him others exist if at all as threats to his rights, not to be taken cues or direction from. Passion for the president's supporters is expressed not in loss of themselves, as in the crowd, but in self-protection.
- Strange. Rights seem to be something possessed by the individual, but instead are demands on others. They are not a property or possession of the individual. Because of this, when they are threatened, the response is not individual, but passionate, open to resolution in leaders arriving with a script to ritual. Rights lead to ritual. If we're to avoid political ritual, should we then not talk about rights? How should we talk?
- About what makes for a good life and what doesn't. You recall I told you about the old woman with with big hat and long coat* - these days she spending all night sitting outside Starbucks - who outright claimed only impersonal matters were fit subjects of conversation, anything else was an invasion of privacy?
- Yes. You say much the same.
- No. I don't.
- But you're always going on about ritual, losing one's sense of insecurity in imagining a winning battle against the enemy and strength restored.
- Let's make some distinctions. Ritual can be personal, like coffee in the morning. Ritual can be a group practice, of a few people, or the millions of a nation, as indeed the president's so-called rallies are an example of. Ritual can be also political but not group practice.
- How if a polity is always a group?
- Do you agree there is something off about calling the president's supporters a cult?
- Yes. I imagine a cult like a herd of beasts, each directing the other, communicating fear and anger. No individuality.
- And you think of Americans, even the president's supporters, as lovers of individuality.
- Yes.
- So if they are performing a ritual, and it is not by communicating their fear and anger to each other, how are they doing it?
- How are they?
- Like with coffee drinking, by communicating the message to themselves of insecurity recovered from.
- If they're recovering all the time why do they need the president?
- They see relations to others in terms of rights, which are demands on others to leave them alone: don't attack, rob, imprison, silence, etc. Somehow, their rights are under attack: the mechanism is obscure, but not the outcome, lives that are daily worsening.
- The president's supporters don't form a cult communicating in a panic fear and anger to each other, but are drawn to the president by his providing clarity, a script to a ritual which will end the attacks on their rights.
- The president's supporters, feeling attacked, try to defend themselves with pornography and violence, identifying with the actors in entertainments or acted out in their own lives; the president promises he is going to end the provocation and recover for them their security. Accompanying each time they fend off an attack now is the reassurance that soon this will all be over. Like the recurring stimulant of coffee drinking, the attack and needed defense is an irritation, but reassuring in its reliably expected arrival.
- The group of the president's supporter is the very opposite of a mass, a herd, a crowd. Each in the group is thinking his rights are under attack: he doesn't see the group. For him others exist if at all as threats to his rights, not to be taken cues or direction from. Passion for the president's supporters is expressed not in loss of themselves, as in the crowd, but in self-protection.
- Strange. Rights seem to be something possessed by the individual, but instead are demands on others. They are not a property or possession of the individual. Because of this, when they are threatened, the response is not individual, but passionate, open to resolution in leaders arriving with a script to ritual. Rights lead to ritual. If we're to avoid political ritual, should we then not talk about rights? How should we talk?
- About what makes for a good life and what doesn't. You recall I told you about the old woman with with big hat and long coat* - these days she spending all night sitting outside Starbucks - who outright claimed only impersonal matters were fit subjects of conversation, anything else was an invasion of privacy?
- How could I forget? She's still on the street? Are you saying that the people like her you meet are defenders of their rights, waiting for the dictator to arrive, rather than seekers after good life? What's happening with the others? Anyone new? If you are correct, they'll all be supporters of the president.
- They are, almost without exception. There's the hunchback, every night from nine to closing at Whole Foods' cafe, always dressed in the same outfit: over-size white T-shirt, 'Panavision' written on the back, an image of the company's camera on front, blue jeans, and white sneakers, the same every day but always neat and clean. He carries around a leather binder overflowing with loose-leaf papers which over time become frayed and are replaced by others.
- Is he writing?
- No one's ever seen him open the folder. He reads on his phone while he eats, the same every night: a bag of tortilla chips. Time after time he gets up from his table and goes to the salad bar to get free samples. But before each new foray he rinses his fingers with the flow from the water dispenser, then holding out his hands theatrically shaking them dry, droplets flying everywhere. Sometimes afterwards he falls asleep at the table.
- Probably has no place to sleep. Is he deliberately being irritating?
- When a pretty girl comes in he'll get up and start a conversation, adjusting his bent body so his face is inches away from her, often driving her to pack up in a hurry and go.
- Like the hat-coat woman sleeping outside Starbucks who claims she has a home she's still paying for but is too bored when there to go back to: in place of making a life good on personal terms he is making a life out being a permanent public spectacle and provocation. Is this true also of the Turkish green-card lottery winner who goes around to conferences and lectures for the free food, taking home as much as he can get away with, boasting he keeps his stomach full on less than ten dollars a month?
- Is he writing?
- No one's ever seen him open the folder. He reads on his phone while he eats, the same every night: a bag of tortilla chips. Time after time he gets up from his table and goes to the salad bar to get free samples. But before each new foray he rinses his fingers with the flow from the water dispenser, then holding out his hands theatrically shaking them dry, droplets flying everywhere. Sometimes afterwards he falls asleep at the table.
- Probably has no place to sleep. Is he deliberately being irritating?
- When a pretty girl comes in he'll get up and start a conversation, adjusting his bent body so his face is inches away from her, often driving her to pack up in a hurry and go.
- Like the hat-coat woman sleeping outside Starbucks who claims she has a home she's still paying for but is too bored when there to go back to: in place of making a life good on personal terms he is making a life out being a permanent public spectacle and provocation. Is this true also of the Turkish green-card lottery winner who goes around to conferences and lectures for the free food, taking home as much as he can get away with, boasting he keeps his stomach full on less than ten dollars a month?
- Yes. And true too for the full-time bike messenger and 'hustler' (He once, in allergy season, after a full ten minutes of bargaining sold me for $1.75 the pill I was dying for) who's slept outside the same church for 17 years and writes on the internet about himself, his sleeping rough, scavenging, his health problems. Their attention is on their aggrieved condition, rights denied, and the provocations they make of themselves fighting back.
- And now their savior has arrived.
Further Reading:
Believe It Or Not
Character Circus
___________________
* See The Forest & The Trees
- And now their savior has arrived.
Further Reading:
Believe It Or Not
Character Circus
___________________
* See The Forest & The Trees
