Tuesday, April 13, 2010

The Border

The Border

a line drawn in blood
splits the gathered earth
it legislates the steps of men
to sabotage the inner heart
they carve the paradigm from us verse them
but the stateless yet stately pine-tree
set herself on either side
where she digs defiant roots

And in her shade is I

i’m finally lost and utterly found
jealous of the mother bird
she soars above my head
free but never careless
yet caring only for the worm
bread of life to her nesting children
her simple song without rebellious dissonance
the melody of love

So, what if I

….little old I!

Set my feet in that high country?

what if I gathered the lumber of my own life?
what if I dug the earth
laid a foundation of truth?
by sweat I stacked the logs
of a future I called hope?
and in the forest’s solitude
reaching for heaven, drew down love?

you’d call me outlaw and a fool
for I’m drawn out and beyond
ear tuned to the whispers
of a God you haven't tamed

but with a building of nations
and a crushing of lies
you’ve a million sure ways
to forget you’re a mist
that the sparkling stream
o, praise the maker’s hand
has been crossing the border
before there ever was Man

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

The Right-Wing Loner

I've spoken on this blog about my political perspective as a means to channel rage and resentment onto something concrete, the hatred of government as a justification for hate and the means to experience the satisfying release of truly resenting something and having it be known that I resent it. Perhaps there is another side of this manifestation in my politics stemming from my own emotional bagge. Maybe the particular style of my political persuasion can be traced back to my lifelong sense of isolation.

And I hate doing this, you know. I don't really wish to reduce all my political points of view to merely that which can all ultimately be traced back to the emotional fallout of some particular emotional experience. For one, I think it makes me look irrational. And I don't think I would be being fair to myself if I suggested that I am primarily irrational. Even for certain political views I have partially moved past I can still defend them with rational arguments. I never came to a conclusion lightly and every view I ever adopted was only adopted once I knew precisely how I would defend it. In the area of specifics I have relied on an intellectual rigorousness that I have only had the time for thanks to a little bit of solitude but there was always something in my disposition and experience that paved for me an inevitable path down the political right rather than the political left.

There's some confusion on what the meaning of "right" and "left" as regards the political spectrum actually means and I think there's a lot of misinformation in the way the terms right and left are used. For example, words like "religious", "pro-war" and "pro-life" are words people associate with those on the political "right." Whereas, words such as "non-religious", "anti-war" and "feminist" are words that are associated with the political "left." This is misleading since the truth is that if the meaning of the political right and left as they were once understood were applied the same way in the common buzz-speak of today then we would see there was nothing contradictory or novel about the notion of an "anti-war right-winger" (myself) or a "pro-war left-winger." (Obama anyone?) The fact is that there is nothing intrinsically right or left wing in any of the terms I just mentioned if right and left are to be properly understood. Granted, there is a tendency towards the non-religious within genuinely left-wing thinking as can be seen in the left-wingness of Karl Marx, for instance, but I don't at all consider it to be a necessary contradiction if a devoted follower of Christ happens to be a card-carrying communist. It should be obvious to see how the notion of a classless society would be attractive to an individual that takes seriously Christ's teachings about the "least of these", the love of money or the lesson of he who is first being last in the Kingdom of God and he who is last being the first. By the same token, there is something inherently non-religious about a certain shade of right-wingness which I will touch on in a moment.

Without going deeper into political theory than I am equipped I simply want to briefly describe what I have concluded is the most basic nature of the right/left tension as I understand it. There are plenty of fundamentally well-meaning schools of thought that can be placed rather easily on either side of the spectrum, each of them has as its stated end the attainment of equality, fairness and the ability of humanity to reach its maximum potential. As far as I can see, where the two sides of the spectrum consistently differ is in their view of the place of the individual human being towards that end. I think it is fair to say that the left end of the political spectrum is one that encompasses perspectives which promote the idea of the individual as a member of a collective or community. On the left there is a common thread woven through of the idea that the happiness and overall well-being of the individual and the community as a whole is best served by the individual's sacrifice of his own self-interest for the good of common society. On the right end of the spectrum you find the same ends sought after with an irreconcilably different modus operandi for the individual. Over there you find ideas rooted in the conviction that the individual should reign supreme, answering to no collective. The assertion is that a society of unhampered individuals, free to chart their own course as they see fit and subservient to the supposed needs of no collective would produce maximum happiness and well-being for the individual and for the whole society of autonomous free-men. Anarcho-Capatalism or "Individualist Anarchism" as I recently saw it termed in my reading is probably the most thouroughly fringe manifestation of these right-wing ideas. They hold that the lack of any form of coercion in society and the absence of any man's sense of or actual entitlement to another man's property or freedom would inevitably result in men, as much as is possible, living harmoniously together. I would have very recently described myself as a believer in that particular point of view, now I merely find myself with more acceptance for that political idea than any other but far from a disciple. So, I suppose it's somewhat ironic that I was driven down the right-wing rabbit hole by my partially concious desire to escape the very thing in my life that in present day buzz-speak is seen as being held sacred by the "right-wingers":

The Family.

Perhaps when the most preeminent thinkers of the left killed God they shattered the very foundation upon which the morality that held the family unit together had been based for centuries. The vision of one whole society, a nation family perhaps, united in the pursuit of a particular common good was maybe the natural replacement of the emptiness that would result from the individual's loss of a deeply meaningul and morally binding obligation to his biological family. I am only mentally toying with these connections, though.

Whatever the case may be, from what I can see in the midst of a culture that has rapidly dimmed in its enthusiasm for the spiritual and moral importance of the family unit, a child that comes of age in a broken home is not naturally given to notions of sacrifice to the common good, so a "national family" would probably not be an adequate answer to the dilemma anyway. You can speak all you want about the government becoming increasingly socialistic, I won't even argue with you, but the truth is there is a strong individualistic streak running through the social fabric of the culture and it only seems to become more prevalent with each passing generation. I attribute this in part to the decline of the family and a loss for the appreciation of its peculiar demands for self-sacrifice and servanthood. How can anyone learn to be selfless when the model of their parent's broken relationship, presented to them at their most impressionable age, is one of selfishness, abandonment and conditionality? One or both wasn't happy so they split. You gotta look out for number one, right? Noone deserves to be unappy. So democratic! So fair! So reasonable!

So Empty.

Being the type of person that tends to analyze and compartmentalize concepts merely for the outrageous cognitive fun of it, it was never a possibility that I would ever adopt any particular political posture without a pretty firm understanding of what it basically stood for. There are too many self-described commies and anarchists out there driven merely by the need to see themselves as subversive and controversial, with talking points that don't ever move beyond the phrase "I'm against...like....the corporations an' stuff." I'm not one of those guys.

After trying on a few different half-baked ideologies during my young adult years I crossed the event horizon of the right-wing black hole when I seriously began to consider the general principles of libertarianism. I couldn't have described my feelings so aptly at the time but there was something in it that was deeply gratifying to me emotionally. Libertarianism has in it a very virulent and insistent strain of individualism that can basically be summed up in the phrase; "Who are you? And on what basis do you presume a claim on me? Leave me the HELL alone." Imagine those words coming from the mouth of a hermit living in the woods, standing on his porch and yelling out to a couple of IRS auditers while cokcking a shotgun and you can catch the basic spirit of libertarianism.

And here we have the connection:

If your family has failed you, being in itself the first community one is exposed to, how could you ever have faith in the broader social community? If your upbringing was chaotic, how could you ever have faith in the masses to do anything but entropy always into chaos? If your childhood is colored by the breaking of a covenant, how could you ever trust the high-flown promises of a politician?

In the absence of a sacrificial love for me to rely on throughout some of the hardest things I've gone through in my life it seems tyrannical and absurd that any government or social collective would ever ask for any kind of sacrifice from me. Why should I? What are you to me and what have you ever done for me? Leave me alone, it's all I ask. This outlook satisfies me. It tells me I'm independent and need noone but myself. In fact, it says to me, I'm better off without all those fools.

Yet something is missing....


TO BE CONTINUED