March 25, 2010 at 4:39 P.M. I was shocked to discover hacker-inserted "errors" in this essay. I think I got all of them. Is anyone law-abiding in New Jersey's government? Pamela ("Paula") Dow, I do not envy you.
September 16, 2009 at 12:15 P.M. "Errors" were inserted, again, in this essay. I have now corrected them.
Bold script and italics are available again -- for a while. If only I were able to use images I would be a much happier man. MSN groups has closed. The Internet may "close" at any time. I will continue to write for as long as possible.
I. Two Tickets for "Invasion" and a Discount on the "Super-Combo" with Twizzlers.
This latest remake of a classic sci-fi movie, based on Jack Finney's 1950s novel, Invasion of the Body Snatchers is smart and scary enough. Yes, I read that book. I've seen all earlier versions of this movie. There are lots of ideas in this work -- as indeed, there were plenty of ideas in the original film. The heroic physician in the original movie is, of course, a man -- Kevin McCarthy, brother of the great Mary McCarthy, with a standard-issue beautiful girlfriend from the fifties in a padded bra and sweater: "Oh, Miles ... What will we do?"
Those were the good old days. During the entire original movie this beautiful woman ran and fought the aliens in high heels and without getting her make-up or hairstyle messed up. That is a neat trick. Women in the fifties were amazing at keeping it all together without appearing to do much. Sci-fi and horror are genres where American writers are allowed to explore ideas, including heavy philosophical ideas. (An "error" was inserted in this sentence since my last review of this essay.)
Among my favorite writers in these pop genres are: Richard Matheson, Robert Bloch, Steven King, William Gibson, Connie Willis. Ms. Kidman's starring role in the philosophically sophisticated Stepford Wives (Ira Levin's novel inspired it) suggests that she likes both ideas and scary movies. So do I. Let me spare you the suspense, this is a good movie and potentially the movie to see if you want to get lucky on your second or third date with that special gal this summer. The man writing these words purchased the videotape of The Mummy, mostly so I can hear Rachel Weisz say: " ... Bembridge scholars believe ..." The mummy is still alive!
Invasion is several movies in one: First, you've got your basic date movie, inviting you to get all "He-Man" on her and protect your damsel in make-believe-distress (women are good at that "rescue me" stuff); second, there's a political text placed on screen with subtle messages about utopias and a defense of imperfect liberal democracies against the alternatives; third, there is a feminist text (what else is new these days), suggesting that men older than twelve are not to be trusted. Luckily, I fall into the trustworthy category -- psychologically, if not chronologically. Fourth, there is a cinematic exploration of psychological theory illustrated and dramatized by what is unfolding on screen.
The viewer is invited to read the film-narrative in various ways, depending on which of the different psychologists invoked by the script one wishes to follow: Freud, Jung (Kidman's character is a Jungian-feminist, Dr. June Singer meets Doris Day in a push-up bra), Adler, Lacan, Laing or Foucault. There is also a metaphysical and epistemological problematic placed on screen concerning "other minds," alterity puzzles, solipsistic dilemmas straight out of Gilbert Ryle to David Chalmers, even a theological question or two. A novel to read this summer is My Zombie Valentine.
You can just go on the cinematic roller coaster ride or you can get all heavy afterwards. It's up to you. I will say something about the major thematic areas and performances by leading actors: Daniel Craig (without a padded bra) is the love interest. Jeremy Northam is the sinister "ex-husband." Women love movies with sinister "ex-husbands." Kidman is very good; the men are adequate; and the child actor is great. I will discuss the plot without giving away too much; then I discuss the psychological theories alluded to in the dialogue (the attack on the fantasy of medicating our troubles away in America is right on the money); next, the psychological possibilities of the text are explored. Are we sharing a collective dream state or psychosis in Bush's America? The dangers associated with loss of authenticity are also explored. See the classic dystopian novel, Yevgeny Zamyatin's We (New York: Avon, 1972).
This leads to political issues concerning conformity and security versus freedom, which are now so timely. From Nietzsche we move to Alfred Adler on "power-struggles" and the threat of terrorists among us. The film ponders the dangers of utopia from Plato to Thomas More, then Marx, also the metaphysics of zombies and subjects, together with our epistemological worries. There are collective psychotic episodes, perhaps, afflicting entire societies. Nazi Germany and others come to mind. I will not take the obvious cheap shot at the Bush Administration. No need.
Jonathan Little's recent massive novel The Kindly Ones, has been poorly reviewed in America because the general fund of cultural knowledge -- even among ostensibly educated Americans -- has diminished substantially. Based on what I have read, in addition to the Greeks, one will need quite a few other sources to do justice to that text: Goethe, Nietzsche, Mann, Huysman, Gide, Michelet, Summers, Shakespeare, as well as numerous psychiatrists and psychologists -- especially, Freud, Jung, Adler and Foucault.
The novel by Mr. Little seems to explore the Western concept of evil from the Greek daimon, to witchcraft and demonology in Christian thought, to slavery and other forms of dehumanization in which Jews featured prominently. Indeed, some of the events in the novel might have been lifted from accounts of the practices of witches. Many witches and demonic worshippers were actually women "guilty" of providing midwife services and being Jewish.
What does Nicole Kidman's character really know in this movie? What do you really know in the absence of confirmation? What is confirmation without meaningful "others"? What happens to ethics or selfhood in a solipsistic nightmare? Kidman's character shoots "people" without too much remorse, why? What happens to identity under extreme stress? What is the significance of the scene in which Nicole Kidman shows a zombie-pod-person "cop" her identification? Doesn't every other pod person also have an i.d.? Don't you have one? The flip side of "adjustment" is "alienation"? Pick your poison. See Richard Schacht, Alienation (New York: Anchor-Doubleday, 1971), pp. 123-153 ("Erich Fromm and Karen Horney").
If asked: "Who are you?" Do you need to check your driver's license to answer that question? Who or what is a "person" in this movie? What is it that makes you who you are? Your driver's license? How does Nicole Kidman know who isn't a person? What is "social autism"? What are the aliens missing? Is the missing ingredient of personhood what was absent from that guy or gal on your last date who discussed electrical circuits for hours? Maybe it was the guy who chatted about philosophy and movies, gulp! I hope not. If an original person meets his or her identical pod-person double, how would you decide which one is the "real" person? Both? Are the guards and torturers in Abu Ghraib "pod-people"? It would be better if they were not human beings. Unfortunately, such torturers are all-too recognizably human.
Ask that special woman in your life whether you may examine her identification. Tell her you're concerned about alien invaders and wish to inspect her body, very carefully, for alien spors. It is my duty to offer this full service to any attractive woman attending this film. Now that the femi-Nazis are upset, we can begin with a famous Nietzsche quote:
"The most universal sign of the modern age: man has lost dignity in his own eyes to an incredible extent. For a long time the center and tragic hero of existence in general; then at least intent on proving himself closely related to the decisive and essentially valuable side of existence -- like all metaphysicians who wish to cling to the dignity of man, with their faith that moral values are cardinal values. Those who have abandoned God cling that much more firmly to the faith in morality."
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, Bk. I: sec. 18 (New York: Vintage, 1968), p. 16.
Notice that Nietzsche does not consider that morality and God may be words pointing to the same human experience. And most important:
"... we approach the age of the Last Man. No shepherd and one herd! Everybody wants the same, everybody is the same, whoever feels different gets voluntarily into a madhouse. ..."
The Portable Nietzsche (1954), p. 130.
Are these cinematic pod-people the beings Nietzsche described as: "Men without chests"? Have they finally arrived? Do they shop at K-Mart? Do they live in Ridgewood, New Jersey? Francis Fukuyama makes use of this text in a crucial chapter of his excellent (if uneven and mistaken) book, The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992), pp. 287-313. The following section was highlighted when I first read these pages years ago. Let us begin with a helpful insight ...
"... from the correct psychological observation that successful action in life proceeds from a sense of self worth, and if people are deprived of it, this belief in their worthlessness will become a self-fulfilling prophecy."
Imagine, a psychologist or torturer who is the epitome of evil, capable of inducing such feelings of worthlessness in persons for a small fee. I know such people. How are you doing in Clifton, Diana Lisa Riccioli? Paramus?
"Its startling premise, one that is both Kantian and Christian (even if its promoters are unaware of their own intellectual roots), is that everybody is a human being -- and not to be swallowed up in the collectivity -- and therefore possesses a certain dignity. Kant, in the Christian tradition, would have said that all human beings are equally able to decide whether to live by the moral law or not." (p. 302.)
To be deprived of that autonomy, even for "your own good" or for the sake of so-called contentment, adjustment, social goals or some such thing is an unmitigated evil. It is the psychobabble nightmare captured on screen in this movie. Hegel and the young Marx add a notion of voluntary community and social good to the ideal state, without the loss of autonomy or basic humanistic values in civil society. Jefferson and Rousseau might be mentioned also as defenders of communitarian values for free subjects.
This communitarianism is different from the totalitarian states created in the twentieth century by Fascists and State Communists (the latter often misreading the later Marx), where autonomy becomes a category of guilt. Totalitarianism is satirized in this movie which hints at where we are heading in a time and place when all higher emotions, cultivation of feelings through fine art and romance, are denigrated and trivialized as worthless or elitist. "Adjust!" Dr. Phil says, while urging you to join a gym.
The love angle is reduced to secondary status in this latest version of the movie (big mistake) in order to ensure the feminist heroine's compliance with politically correct panaceas. Not necessary, folks. We know she's independent. Let Ms. Kidman get her grove on with Mr. Craig. She'll even take less money if you throw in a love scene or two. Mr. Craig feels the same way. The audience wants these people to care about each other and to struggle together.
America recognizes and balances these competing values by providing for freedom with equality under a government (until recently) of limited powers. Even psychobabblers who wish to make you "happy," "good," or "well-adjusted" used to be required to comply with due process protections, never acting secretly or in violation of privacy and other fundamental rights. New Jersey, of course, has been turned over to the pod-people for years. They tried to give it back, but we said "nothing doing." It's all yours. No wonder they try to destroy my writings. How's it going "David"? Are you still the "Jewish Mengele" Terry Tuchin?
"Security" is a word that excuses many sins, for would-be totalitarians, but they should wonder how secure we ought to be from those who wish to make us secure? Hitler made the trains run on time, there was very little crime, few terrorist incidents disturbed the peace in Nazi Germany. Few of us think of 1930s Germany as paradise on earth.
II. What's the story?
Nicole Kidman is a shrink (significantly, we see a paperback of Jung's treatise on analytical psychology as the movie opens), a single mom with a boy whose "contagious" charm nearly steals the movie. Males are acceptable until age twelve in feminist utopias -- thereafter, they are used for sex and discarded, as indeed males are used and discarded by Manhattan women and many insects.
Ms. Kidman's receptionist is African-American attesting to our heroine's social conscience and hipness. Patients are mostly women complaining of men. The thoughtless males are nearly all overweight in this movie. Something for gentlemen to ponder before joining a gym and refusing to adjust. Women love rebels. Bad boys, rough guys -- especially if they are extremely wealthy. In fact, extremely wealthy men are generally quite popular with women, even when they are slightly pudgy or nerdy.
Kidman's ex-husband, Jeremy Northam, is a government functionary in the "lying and crime comitting business" -- a typical New Jersey lawyer, in other words, stationed in D.C. -- who is sent to a site where a shuttle-like aircraft crashed on returning to earth. He is contaminated by an alien life-force that takes over organisms, like cells forming a single entity, depriving persons of subjectivity and all passion. This is something America is attempting to achieve with the television program, "America's Next Super-Model." (Yes, H.G. Wells' "War of the Worlds" and the Orson Wells' radio phenomenon are hinted at and emulated in this movie.)
Persons quickly become robotic or zombie-like, vomitting into drinks or the skin of others to contaminate them, absorbing them into the great unity. AIDS anxiety mingles with fear of terrorists. Daniel Craig is a doctor who accepts a kind of sample of the alien tissue and turns it over to his friend in a lab. Another African-American is seen, briefly, proving that film-makers know such people exist and are sometimes even scientists in America. This is more than can be said for Latinos in this movie.
Kidman's ex- is contaminated and insists on seeing their son. Audiences know the danger the boy is in. Not only may he be taken-over by the pod-people, but he could be lured into going to law school. I shudder with undiluted horror at such a terrible prospect for any child. Law schools are where normal Americans are turned into servants of the evil aliens and pod-people. This is especially likely for anyone who attends Yale Law School and specializes in corporate taxation or entertainment law.
Illness as metaphor serves to hint at the dangers of totalitarianism. Whatever ideological justification is offered for the loss of conscience or autonomy in a crowd worshipping power, the result can only be evil. Nazism, Stalinism are obvious examples of the political plague of our times. Devil worship, Mr. Little, as a political analogy? Albert Camus is one source for this horror. Also, the link between human autonomy and genuine intellectual or cultural achievement -- a necessary entanglement of genius and the risk of evil -- is made clear.
Anthony Burgess explores this idea (can we control crime without becoming criminals?) in many of his novels, especially A Clockwork Orange. Fear of terrorism may serve to demand the loss of self with equally horrible results -- results like what I have experienced in the form of censorship, insults, denigration and other kinds of permanent harm. This essay has been vandalized so many times that I no longer know how often I have been forced to make the same corrections to the indifference of the authorities sworn to protect my Constitutional rights. This is what America has become -- either a contradiction or a lie.
Paranoia and deep psychosis or just reality sets in as Kidman's character begins to see zombies everywhere. ("Behaviorism is Evil" and "Psychological Torture in the American Legal System.")
One of the most deeply harmful psychological experiences is betrayal. Treachery at the hands of close friends or relatives is the trademark of totalitarianism characterizing the worst excesses of McCarthyism. Family-members and friends informing against one another, pressured to corrupt and betray personal relationships are made complicit in evil. Worse, is the secret mutual informing within professions and academia during the Communist witch hunts -- even today in some terrible places -- that contaminates the life-prospects for everyone within those communities.
When no one can be trusted, all relationships are suspect. All identity-conferring and -confirming relationships are shattered, so the psyche is shattered. All ethical foundations are destroyed. Read Hegel on Stillichkeit. Great stress is added to the mix, attacks on self-esteem (ex-husbands are good at that). Professional destruction at Kidman's office completes the ingredients of psychological assassination through stress and strain. It helps in the destruction of a human psyche for the victim to feel outrage at injustice, especially towards others, coupled with powerlessness thanks to corrupt or ineffective institutions.
At a dinner party, stand-ins for Freud (Russian diplomat) and Jung-Klein-Lacan-Foucault (Kidman) argue over the human capacity for violence and civilization. ("Errors" have been inserted once more in this essay and corrected, again, by me.) Freud argues that civilization is a thin-veneer over animal evil; Kidman expresses reservations from a feminist perspective, echoing her guru Carl Jung:
"Civilized life today demands concentrated, directed conscious functioning, and this entails the risk of a considerable dissociation from the unconscious. The further we are able to remove ourselves from the unconscious through directed functioning, the more readily a proverbial counterposition can build up in the unconscious, and when this breaks out it may have [VERY] disagreeable consequences." Abu Ghraib? 9/11? Iraq? West Bank? Gaza?
The Portable Carl Jung (New York: Penguin, 1971), p. 276. ("The Wanderer and His Shadow.")
That's why it is good to go to movies! Notice the excellent introduction to Jung's writings by Joseph Campbell at pp. vi-xxxii, which I have read several times lately. Notice also that Jung's unconscious, personal and collective, is very different from Freud's idea of the id. Both German thinkers are rooted in German idealistic and other traditions of thought, including Romanticism. Any person lacking all knowledge of this philosophical literature will not be able to appreciate the richness in the insights of either Freud or Jung, or most of the classical psychological thinkers for that matter. Whatever else they were, Freud and Jung were contributors to Western philosophy.
It is important to remember that both Freud and Jung were great admirers of the poetry of Friedrich Holderlin, for example, Hegel's classmate and early friend. (I would write more on this issue, but I'd only provide hackers and New Jersey's legal whores with opportunities for more destruction of my text.) My favorite of the philosophically-adept Freudians is Jonathan Lear, who (sensibly) returns Freud to his philosophical sources -- not only the Greeks, also Schopenhauer and the Sturm und Drag poets. ("'The Reader': A Movie Review.")
In desperation, civilization vanishes and so does morality, we are told, but is this true? I doubt it. Kidman's shrink is willing to die for her child and refuses to shoot Mr. Craig above the knee, especially avoiding the groin area, which she clearly cherishes. Freud again. Something survives even the greatest trauma, some essential dignity and autonomy, capacity for love, that refuses absorption into a passifying false collectivity as opposed to true community, which must always be chosen. The pod-people have no freedom and morality is non-existent. True, everything is peaceful, but it is the peace of the grave because individuality is gone even if there is plenty of adjustment.
Anything is better than this death-in-life, unwilling absorption into inauthenticity in the New Jersey-like shopping mall horror of sameness offered by the aliens. Absolute loss of affect among mall-dwellers is to be avoided at all costs, even if such a loss results in material "success" or acceptance. Ms. Kidman cannot "go along to get along." Hence, she must fight for herself and her child, also for her lover, to remain free and human. This very fighting is what all torturers seek to destroy. The human capacity to struggle for life (love) is the essence of humanity. Total adjustment is death for some of us. Nearly all of the zombies bear a suspicious resemblance to Stuart Rabner. Patrick Swayze, shortly before succumbing to a fatal illness, said that "winning in life is not giving up." I agree. ("Friedrich Nietzsche on Self-Realization.")
These thoughts are nicely summed up by Jose Ortega y Gasset -- a philosopher much admired by Sartre, who anticipated many themes in French thought. Ortega is "one of those Latinos" who, I was assured, "can not be smart enough to be a philosopher" -- "... a Spanish existentialist who, unlike Sartre, was also a cultural and political conservative: 'the stone is given its existence: it need not fight for what it is ... Man has to make his own existence at every single moment.' ('Man the technician') The image of a 'fight' is never very far from the existentialist mind ... "
Roger Scruton, Modern Philosophy (New York: Penguin, 1994), p. 309 and Jose Ortega y Gasset, What is Philosophy? (New York: W.W. Norton, 1960), pp. 34-35.
The viewer is invited to come to his or her own conclusions. Was this all a dream? A psychotic episode? A kind of metanoia for the Kidman character through a Jungian mythic landscape. Is the movie warning of the loss of authenticity in a failed marriage and anxiety about forthcoming feminist independence on the part of non-zombie-like women? Too much empirical evidence suggests otherwise: Mr. Craig's final appearance at breakfast indicates that there are some things a feminist gal-pal will not give up. I know what it's like to want and miss someone important in your life. I can relate to Ms. Kidman's adventure. Real marriage is always a success. So is every passionate and loving relationship in our lives -- there will be very few people that really matter for any of us. Equally essential is commitment to shared struggle on behalf of those we love and the community in which we live. Marriage. Conversation. I will never stop loving those few people who matter in my life.
One more "error" inserted by the Trenton "pod-persons" and corrected.
III. Journey Into the Subconscious.
An offstage presence in this movie is R.D. Laing, whose cautions concerning the dangerous loss of spiritual life, anomie, falsehood and doubts about normality are more timely today than ever before:
"Laing argued, in effect, that the violence we do to ourselves -- or that is done to us -- in the process of normalization is reflected, among other things, in the loss of the numinous as a dimension of normal human experience. Interpersonal and collective violence is but one more symptom of the same underlying malaise. Much as he lamented the loss of the numinous, however, Laing was not advocating a return to a repressive, theocratic society, nor to a religious creed based on a dogmatic interpretation of scripture. In fact, like Jung, Laing was apt to disparage religious belief AS A POOR AND INAUTHENTIC SUBSTITUTE FOR RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE." (emphasis added)
Daniel Burston, The Crucible of Experience: R.D. Laing and the Crisis of Psychotherapy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000), pp. 107-108. See the pulp classic Herbert D. Castle, The Reassembled Man (Conn.: Fawcett, 1964). (Another "error" inserted and corrected.)
All of us are in danger of becoming pod-persons through the loss or abandonment of authenticity in exchange for worldly success. It is the Eichman condition that we must fear more than death. In all genuine spiritual experiences or mystical insights and in passionate love-making (which is both religious experience and illumination), we retain selfhood and humanity. We forget the erotic component in mystical experience and devotion. A sexual act between any two adults can be a form of prayer. L. William Countryman, Love Human and Divine (Harrisbourg: Morehouse, 2005), p. 24; and Robert A. Johnson's, We: Understanding the Psychology of Romantic Love (New York: Harper & Row, 1982), pp. 119-187 ("How Tristan Found Iseult of the White Hands and How Love and Death Were Finally Mixed").
There are forces in contemporary America seeking to deprive us of such experiences for the sake of making us more controllable, with fully predictable responses to advertising and politics, conditioned and molded "for our own good" from childhood into docile subjects, "slaves of power." (Michel Foucault)
Some persons will refuse all conditioning -- even at the cost of death -- in order to hold on to basic freedoms, accepting exquisite pain as the cost of the passion made possible only by freedom. According to Sigmund Freud:
"Another technique for fending off suffering is the employment of the displacements of libido which our mental apparatus permits of and through which its function gains so much in flexibility."
Freud's assumptions concerning "suffering" and its role in human life are bizarre at times, as is Freud's constant equating of the psyche with an "apparatus." Why does Freud avoid an examination of mystical reflections on the nature and meaning of suffering, the "blessedness of affliction"? I doubt that Freud understood, say, someone like St. John of the Cross. Carl Jung realizes the importance of this religious literature finding meaning in suffering, insisting that Freud displayed a strange blindness in this matter. I agree with Jung. Back to Freud:
"The task here is that of shifting the intellectual aims in such a way that they cannot come up against frustration from the external world."
Imagine anyone calling him- or herself a "therapist" deliberately inducing frustrations -- like criminal destruction or alteration of written work -- and what Freud would think of such a person. Think of a human monster capable of deliberate destruction of coping mechanisms that allow persons to recover from trauma and learn from suffering because he or she finds the torments of victims "interesting." Worse is someone delighting in destroying life-saving relationships and causing people pain in order to "learn from them." (See "What is it like to be tortured?" and "Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture.")
March 25, 2010 at 4:27 P.M. Numerous "errors" were inserted in essays, including this one today. Many of them previously corrected. I will try to correct all inserted "errors," again. Telephone call from 415-438-5195 at 4:21 P.M., more "errors" and such calls are expected. ("What is it like to be tortured?" and "Roberto Unger's Revolutionary Legal Theory.")
One of the most chilling depictions of evil in literature is the portrait of a seemingly mild, polite, psychoanalyst orchestrating the destruction of several lives with Iago-like delight ("men should be what they seem ...") in Patrick McGrath's Asylum (New York: Vintage Books, 1997). I am told that the film starring the lovely, sadly departed Natasha Richardson, is a bravura performance by Ian McKellen. Attacks on my writings have been especially intense this week. For the "Whatever" generation, I suggest reading and viewing Neil Labute's The Shape of Things. (Adam: "Jesus, next youre going to tell me the handkerchief with the strawberries on it is missing.")
"In this sublimation the instinct lends its assistance. [Notice Freud's undefended assumptions concerning the anti-social nature of instincts.] One gains the most if one can sufficiently heighten the yield of pleasure from the sources of physical and intellectual work. When that is so, fate can do little against one."
Civilization and Its Discontents (New York & London: W.W. Norton, 1961), p. 29.
Here is Carl Jung's rejoinder. I promise to cut down on quotes after this:
"Modern man has lost all the metaphysical certainties of his medieval brother, and set up in their place the idea of material security, general welfare and humanitarianism. But anyone who has still managed to preserve these ideals unshaken must have been injected with a more than ordinary dose of optimism. Even security has gone by the board, for modern man has begun to see that every step forward in material progress steadily increases the threat of a still more stupendous catastrophe. The imagination shrinks in terror from such a picture. What are we to think when the great cities today are perfecting defense measures against gas attacks, and even practise them in dress rehearsals? It can only mean that these attacks have already been planned and provided for ... Let man but accumulate sufficient engines of destruction" -- or psychological torture techniques? -- "and the devil within him will soon be unable to resist putting them to their fated use."
Here is Jung's famous point about loss of self in groups, crowds, by way of a metaphor hinting at the dangers resulting from "adjusting" to society at the cost of one's spiritual resources:
"It is well known that fire-arms go off if only enough of them are together."
The Portable Jung, p. 465.
I suggest that you bear these thoughts in mind when reading Mr. Little's novel. If you wish to see the infinite human capacity for evil, all you have to do is to license and make anonymous the infliction of pain on helpless others. Most people you know will eagerly volunteeer to destroy the lives of their neighbors and derive pleasure from doing so. Take another look at the Nietzsche quote I offered in opening this essay. This entire nightmare might have been Campbell's "hero's journey" leading to a return to the day world of satisfactory creative work, a happy relationship, smiling child and meaning. Such a realization, however, requires that one missing person at the breakfast table and, naturally, the final destruction of the evil aliens or their return to New Jersey where they will not be noticed.
IV. Why the U.S. Constitution is (or was?) Great.
Mr. Craig's character summarizes the utopian ambition that has haunted the Western political imagination since antiquity. From Plato to Marx, the dream of an "organic" political community with a single mission and identity ("as one") has caused wars and suffering, even as it has generated great art and much emancipatory zeal that has led to useful reforms. You are welcome to point to whatever society you wish to demonize. For Miami's Cubanoids, that will be Castro's carceral society. No doubt, for others, we are the political nightmare. We are the carceral society. You decide. Some of the idealism of all utopians is part of America's experiment in self-government. U.S. utopianism is tempered by a mountain of salt when it comes to the moral possibilities of human nature. See generally, Karl Popper, The Open Society and its Enemies, 2 Volumes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966).
Jefferson, Madison, Jay, all of the framers read enormous amounts by today's standards. However, they were also lawyers and merchants immersed in worldly affairs, not cloistered academics. They were well aware of politics and the messy business of governance in what is laughingly called "the real world" -- that is, Philadelphia. Lawyers were defined by Marcus Tulius Cicero, my favorite of the great Romans who had a wonderful legal mind, "as philosophers in the marketplace."
Standing in the forum in Rome -- where all the great trials of the Republic were heard -- as the sun was setting and whispering Cicero's denunciations of Marc Anthony is something that I will never forget. I was a young lawyer then, actually believing in something called, "Law." I thought that Americans enjoyed freedom of speech. Who knew? Any more letters that New Jersey officials wish to remove from these copyright-protected essays? Any more attacks on other essays today? "Errors" to be inserted once more?
Access to my e-mails is still blocked. Utopianism is difficult to sustain in markets, or cities, where self-interest and shrewd calculation are the order of the day. Few lawyers are starry-eyed idealists. Some may be practical or cynical idealists with a hard-won sense of the tragic, together with a healthy skepticism about ideology and yet still hopeful about making things better. Read the novels of Scott Turow. I knew a judge who liked to say: "Let us grant your application and see what tomorrow will bring." Meaning, we can always revise any order. Sua sponte, Stuart?
There is a danger in America that, under exigent circumstances, we will be tempted to abandon hard won and carefully preserved protections of individual rights that are vital to personal dignity. A "War Against Terrorism" is always in danger of becoming a war that makes us terrorists. Without that inviolable dignity, the individual becomes a pod-person. Even in a highly secure and insulated community, where all immigrants are expelled and all of us are monitored 24 hours a day, subject to secret questioning under hypnosis, urine samples taken, blood monitored, to guard against terrorists and all dangers to our "utopia," we will neither be absolutely secure nor without a yearning for freedom. We will only become slaves. I am sure that "therapeutic rape" will not make us safer. Perhaps electronic monitoring devices inserted into the rectum of every American will make Mr. Cheney feel safer? This would be a good time to insert more "errors."
Government cannot "fix" people's opinions or determine their values when they have committed no crimes. Government must never act secretly on people's lives. Take a good luck at the photo of New Jersey Chief Justice Stuart Rabner and ask yourself whether you would like to be that guy, even for one day, or to spend a few hours chatting with him about changes in the tax laws. I bet Stuart is quite a ladies' man. I would not be surprised if Stuart Rabner was taken over by the aliens years ago, but no one noticed -- including Stuart. A calculator and pocket protector will make a lovely gift for the holidays, as far as Stuart Rabner is concerned.
Revisions to this essay were lost as a result of hackers' destructive efforts moments ago. This essay and my access to the Internet today have been interfered with by hackers from New Jersey's governmental sewers. Such things are part of my daily writing experience. I wonder whether we can chat with Stuart about that someday. For now, like Stuart, we must "demur."
Even if we are told with whom and when love is allowed, human nature will result in conflict. Evil will rear its ugly head in the form of the controllers of this utopia. Absolute security is not possible, as I say, but dictatorship sure is. These days oppressors wear white coats or blue suits in America. However, oppressors is what they are. All that's missing is the swastikas. In New Jersey, they even have the swastikas -- obtained with Stuart Rabner's assistance, no doubt, for a small fee. What have you become, Stuart? "Successful?" (A number of swastikas were cut into a field near Trenton, not far from the state Supreme Court's chambers.)
Nobody can tell you who to love or what to believe or say, nor whether you are "allowed" to say something. The American Constitution recognizes these facts and sets in place a political-conceptual structure for grownups. Citizens should make their own moral and spiritual decisions, expressing themselves freely. Government exists for your benefit and not (what a shocking idea!) for the benefit of those who govern. New Jersey has yet to hear of this. ("Wadda-ya talkin about? Geez! You must be one of dem Commies!")
Fundamental rights may not be violated for "your own good" since this is to deprive you of your humanity. You cannot be forced to join the pod-persons. All psychobabblers are pod-persons. I wonder how they "feel" about that? Perhaps they have difficulties "relating"? Adjust, Terry Tuchin.
Every American is free and equal to every other member of society before the law. This includes the president of the country or the head of product development at IBM. In practice, these principles are often breached or violated, sometimes for years and with impunity. I have heard New Jersey lawyers and judges laugh at such statements. However, this is the worldly ideal and political commitment of American society: Every person has natural rights to fundamental dignity, freedom and equality; government is your servant, not vice versa; law constrains power to protect you; courts must never act surreptitiously. Judges and courtrooms are there for you, you don't live and work for judges' benefit. The U.S. Constitution -- like "community policing" -- works everywhere, provided that people are willing to fight for it, every day. I will not surrender my freedom. I am not a slave. I am not a laboratory animal. I consent to nothing emanating from New Jersey government.
Here are some questions for Iraquis and all others: How much do you want to be free? How badly do you want a society where equality is not purchased at the cost of living in a concentration camp? Do you wish to live in fear of government? Or would you prefer to have government officials worry about pleasing you? This is a question not only for Americans, but for Brits, Cubans, Chinese, Russians and everybody else. Thomas Jefferson chose the latter option. Freedom with equal dignity. Me too. No wonder these thoughts are considered "subversive" and "unethical" in New Jersey. Is the NSA reading my blogs?
Cuba? Miami? No bosses. No men on white horses. Freedom with equality. If you want to understand America, the Constitution is the place to start. Americans are not going to give up their freedoms without a fight. The danger is that today's loss of autonomy or threats to freedom may be so subtle and invisible that people may not see them or will confuse loss of freedom with an impossible "security." There ain't no such security. After a hundred days in office, it is already clear that America's first African-American president is on his way to being one of our great leaders because he has understood these principles at a visceral level. President Obama is a man centered in his history and political as well as Constitutional tradition. This is greatness: "We will not abandon our principles because of expediency." (Barak Obama.)
Now let us hold Mr. Obama to that promise. Any more cybercrime today? ("'For America to Lead Again': A Speech for President Barak Obama.")
We must fight terrorism abroad without succumbing to terrorism in our own hearts. The Bill of Rights is always needed and must be fought for, on a daily basis -- as many are doing right now -- not only in Iraq, but as journalists criticizing the war. That's another reason why I correct these "errors" dozens of times, no matter how much it hurts me. However painful and frustrating it may be to persist in this struggle, opening my wounds each morning, I will continue to do so. Our rights must not be abandoned in some government clerk's office in triplicate copies. Right, Anne Milgram? Political correctness, Patriot Acts, anything that involves loss of these freedoms is to be rejected or you can kiss your humanity goodbye. We are not "objects" to be conditioned or acted upon. We will not be slaves in exchange for a judgeship or cash in envelopes in New Jersey.
I still find this view of Constitutional government for a FREE PEOPLE compelling and true. We want no strong men or women ruling over us in the United States of America. Whoever made this movie agrees. You don't torture people. You don't suppress or destroy the expressions of others. Those who wish to call me "naive" or "childish" are welcome to do so. I sometimes believe that I am naive about America's promise, which has become only a distant and increasingly unreal hope for many people. I am unwilling to give up my love for the American Constitution and the tradition of interpretation of that document. There is no better charter of government anywhere. Why have we been so willing to throw it away? Mr. Cheney, history will not be kind to you. The "dark side" is not where we should ever go.
I will pass on another planned discussion of consciousness issues. This review is too long already. A fine and idea-filled script adds to the "pleasures of this text." (Derrida.) Pacing is just right for summer attention spans. A little more passion from the leads wouldn't hurt. Any adventure where human love is celebrated will have that much more power for audiences in a time when romance is desired by men and women, but outlawed by the Femi-Nazi thought police as suspiciously "masculine" or traditional behavior. Love for a child is acceptable to the femi-Nazis, but anything that compromises a woman's commitment to the cause of liberation from all things masculine (or the very idea of men) is to be fought against. This idiocy in life -- especially in summer movies! -- only makes people unhappy. If she plays her cards right, my companion on a movie date may always get lucky at the end of the evening -- or even in the theater. ("Is he being ironic, again?")
We desire and need each other -- as lovers -- men and women, equally, or any two adults. Everything follows from this reality. To deny it is madness. We don't need Freud to know that much. An Oscar nomination for the boy actor in this movie -- no, not Mr. Craig -- would be appropriate. "The name is Bond, James Bond" -- Mr. Craig is alleged to have said to the young woman working as an assistant during the shooting of this film. Evidently, it worked. It always does. I have practiced, for hours, my James Bond look and accent, based on Sean Connery's interpretation: "Miss Moneypenny, I presume?" A review of "images of masculinity" in the James Bond films is forthcoming. See Invasion.
