(WHERE IS THE GUN? was initially posted on Facebook, December 8, 2012. http://goo.gl/qVMQI )
There’s no shame in admitting that people may be right in their opinion that “nobody gives a shit”.
It would be ridiculous to pretend otherwise, especially when those people constitute an overwhelming majority. The ‘nobody’ is supposedly everybody in that majority, a nonperson in a self-inflicted dystopia, similar to that in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, arguably one of
a handful of definitive novels of the last 100 years, and for good reason.
Given these numbing times it seems equally ridiculous to resurrect the words of Ibsen or Miller, through the character of Dr. Stockmann, but it’s when they're needed most:
``I am in revolt against the age-old lie that the majority is always right! I tell you now that the majority is always wrong . . . Was the majority right when they stood by while Jesus was crucified? Was the majority right when they refused to believe that the earth moved around the sun and let Galileo be driven to his knees like a dog? It takes 50 years for the majority to be right. The majority is never right until it does right.``
Today’s majority fervently believes it is right. Just as it did in Ibsen’s time, in Giordano Bruno’s, Machiavelli’s, Galileo’s, Seneca’s, and Socrates’. But it’s a bigger majority and connected to the world, a portion of it, and to its members more than at any other time in human history. The town hall meeting in An Enemy of The People is now being played out on Facebook.
The majority has found the perfect medication (Facebook) for perfecting the nonperson, and paying for it like never before. How much of this was by design, or simply what happens to humans when worshiping golden calves, will be known long after we’re gone.
As 99-year old author William Krehm said to me (a couple of days ago), essentially repeating what he has said many times before in books and essays: he’s absolutely horrified at the state of the world, at the economic, political and social decline since WWII, and the “shattering waste of valuable human capital that is currently being perpetrated”.
In his 2010 essay, Industries Squandering Society's Human Capital to Revive Their Profits, he stated: “And as for the universities – they should be reminded that the very name of their institution implies interdependence of all science and learning. Not only our history, but the ideas evolved during the Depression of the 1930s that kept banks out of stock market gambling, should be dusted off and introduced to their economic faculties. And the latter in turn must be guaranteed the freedom of speaking their full mind. Refusing to allow them to do so is further destructive handling of society's human capital.”
By the way, Krehm and Orwell were friends and fought side by side in the Spanish Civil War (not many people living today can say the same.)
If Krehm repeats his narrative like a CD on replay it’s because he has witnessed the world first hand and written about it since the 1930s, and people are not listening to a tune that can only stop when people do listen and take action.
When Krehm was shopping for a lawyer qualified to understand the complexity of the Bank of Canada claim, who would dare take the case on and argue it in court, only one name came up. Rocco Galati.
Khrem is a man who does his research.
His reminder to the universities also applies to all those working in theatre, film and television: they are not merely professionals but people sprouting from a seed from a particular soil, a culture, a way of life and thinking.
One sign of our present-day devolution is that we don’t need one policeman (or soldier) for every four citizens pointing a gun to their heads or shooting randomly into an unarmed crowd to silence it as with the bloody Boston massacre of 1770 (that ultimately backfired and triggered the thirteen American colonies to fight for – and secure - their freedom and independence). Boston reacted and changed the course of history.
Today, here, there is no cop or soldier pointing a gun at us, even with the G20 mess in Toronto. The gun is in our hand. And pointed to our own head, as Nick Mancuso reiterated last night after the screening of Letter One.
Today the prisoner is also the jailor. We’re merely perfecting the world Orwell depicted in his novel while convincing ourselves that we’ve successfully averted that fate.
An engraving by a modern-day Paul Revere capturing the decline and death of human capital would not spread the way it did in 1770 and have no effect whatsoever if it did. Facebook is way more powerful and potentially more effective than Postmaster General Benjamin Franklin’s men on horseback speeding up the delivery of mail, cutting it by half, and extending the post office’s organ and tentacles. But in reality Facebook is not as powerful or effective that way, unless you live in “Tunisia”. Here, Facebook is often the gun or medication we keep in our own medicine cabinet.
Nobody should ever be condemned for stating that the Internet is for whining and bitching, and not for organizing or action. But to pretend that the statement does not reflect a political opinion designed to affect a specific political action is not only naïve but reflects a desire to see the human as a quadruped.
Any statement on Facebook is political and an attempt to organize, to inform, to sensitize, to promote, or reflects a call to action of some kind.
Orwell said it best in his book Why I Write: “The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.”
For those who believe that Facebook (or Internet) is not strictly for whining and bitching, and I know there are some, please voice your opinion on the Letters ON Facebook.
As much as I appreciate the people who email me in support of Letter One, and value their heartfelt and reasoned opinion, I encourage them to share publicly what they’ve stated privately.
That was the whole point behind the Letters. Open and public debate.
Otherwise you leave Facebook to those who sincerely believe that aspiring to an IQ of an early human form is something to brag about, that possessing a 12-word dictionary is a tool for discussion and debate, and prove it constantly through what they post.
I know there’s always the very real risk of being ridiculed or bullied on Facebook. The social media forum has in many ways become the modern-day coliseum, where people (even in pajamas and at all hours of the day) take great pleasure watching other people take turns playing lion and victim. The fear is legitimate. But silence or whispering (in agreement or even in opposition) doesn’t address the fear, but multiplies it.
As for thugs:
My father used to say that men are endowed with two heads but should operate with the one above the neck and not the one below the belt.
Some men have been endowed with two of the same. And do an excellent job of doing to themselves what only a few mammals with incredible flexibility and skill are capable of.
Given these numbing times it seems equally ridiculous to resurrect the words of Ibsen or Miller, through the character of Dr. Stockmann, but it’s when they're needed most:
``I am in revolt against the age-old lie that the majority is always right! I tell you now that the majority is always wrong . . . Was the majority right when they stood by while Jesus was crucified? Was the majority right when they refused to believe that the earth moved around the sun and let Galileo be driven to his knees like a dog? It takes 50 years for the majority to be right. The majority is never right until it does right.``
Today’s majority fervently believes it is right. Just as it did in Ibsen’s time, in Giordano Bruno’s, Machiavelli’s, Galileo’s, Seneca’s, and Socrates’. But it’s a bigger majority and connected to the world, a portion of it, and to its members more than at any other time in human history. The town hall meeting in An Enemy of The People is now being played out on Facebook.
The majority has found the perfect medication (Facebook) for perfecting the nonperson, and paying for it like never before. How much of this was by design, or simply what happens to humans when worshiping golden calves, will be known long after we’re gone.
As 99-year old author William Krehm said to me (a couple of days ago), essentially repeating what he has said many times before in books and essays: he’s absolutely horrified at the state of the world, at the economic, political and social decline since WWII, and the “shattering waste of valuable human capital that is currently being perpetrated”.
In his 2010 essay, Industries Squandering Society's Human Capital to Revive Their Profits, he stated: “And as for the universities – they should be reminded that the very name of their institution implies interdependence of all science and learning. Not only our history, but the ideas evolved during the Depression of the 1930s that kept banks out of stock market gambling, should be dusted off and introduced to their economic faculties. And the latter in turn must be guaranteed the freedom of speaking their full mind. Refusing to allow them to do so is further destructive handling of society's human capital.”
By the way, Krehm and Orwell were friends and fought side by side in the Spanish Civil War (not many people living today can say the same.)
If Krehm repeats his narrative like a CD on replay it’s because he has witnessed the world first hand and written about it since the 1930s, and people are not listening to a tune that can only stop when people do listen and take action.
When Krehm was shopping for a lawyer qualified to understand the complexity of the Bank of Canada claim, who would dare take the case on and argue it in court, only one name came up. Rocco Galati.
Khrem is a man who does his research.
His reminder to the universities also applies to all those working in theatre, film and television: they are not merely professionals but people sprouting from a seed from a particular soil, a culture, a way of life and thinking.
One sign of our present-day devolution is that we don’t need one policeman (or soldier) for every four citizens pointing a gun to their heads or shooting randomly into an unarmed crowd to silence it as with the bloody Boston massacre of 1770 (that ultimately backfired and triggered the thirteen American colonies to fight for – and secure - their freedom and independence). Boston reacted and changed the course of history.
Today, here, there is no cop or soldier pointing a gun at us, even with the G20 mess in Toronto. The gun is in our hand. And pointed to our own head, as Nick Mancuso reiterated last night after the screening of Letter One.
Today the prisoner is also the jailor. We’re merely perfecting the world Orwell depicted in his novel while convincing ourselves that we’ve successfully averted that fate.
An engraving by a modern-day Paul Revere capturing the decline and death of human capital would not spread the way it did in 1770 and have no effect whatsoever if it did. Facebook is way more powerful and potentially more effective than Postmaster General Benjamin Franklin’s men on horseback speeding up the delivery of mail, cutting it by half, and extending the post office’s organ and tentacles. But in reality Facebook is not as powerful or effective that way, unless you live in “Tunisia”. Here, Facebook is often the gun or medication we keep in our own medicine cabinet.
Nobody should ever be condemned for stating that the Internet is for whining and bitching, and not for organizing or action. But to pretend that the statement does not reflect a political opinion designed to affect a specific political action is not only naïve but reflects a desire to see the human as a quadruped.
Any statement on Facebook is political and an attempt to organize, to inform, to sensitize, to promote, or reflects a call to action of some kind.
Orwell said it best in his book Why I Write: “The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.”
For those who believe that Facebook (or Internet) is not strictly for whining and bitching, and I know there are some, please voice your opinion on the Letters ON Facebook.
As much as I appreciate the people who email me in support of Letter One, and value their heartfelt and reasoned opinion, I encourage them to share publicly what they’ve stated privately.
That was the whole point behind the Letters. Open and public debate.
Otherwise you leave Facebook to those who sincerely believe that aspiring to an IQ of an early human form is something to brag about, that possessing a 12-word dictionary is a tool for discussion and debate, and prove it constantly through what they post.
I know there’s always the very real risk of being ridiculed or bullied on Facebook. The social media forum has in many ways become the modern-day coliseum, where people (even in pajamas and at all hours of the day) take great pleasure watching other people take turns playing lion and victim. The fear is legitimate. But silence or whispering (in agreement or even in opposition) doesn’t address the fear, but multiplies it.
As for thugs:
My father used to say that men are endowed with two heads but should operate with the one above the neck and not the one below the belt.
Some men have been endowed with two of the same. And do an excellent job of doing to themselves what only a few mammals with incredible flexibility and skill are capable of.
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