Letter from Slim Wolfe
Modern life – January 2003 – Colorado Central Magazine
Editors:
You know you’re in trouble when your leaders roll out “eye-rack” on their tongues, as if it were some personal pronoun.
Looking back on the great milestones of western social engineering, all five of them, I’m wishing for another one, soon, while there’s still a bit of breathing room. Step outside the present for a moment and take in the overview.
First milestone, counting the fertile crescent as zero, (but not ground zero we hope), would be Athenian democracy. Sailing in uncharted waters, the gentry attempt to control destiny by the ballot, and a judicial system. Second milestone, year zero, some Judean crackpot tries to get neighbor to love neighbor. Soon he’s put to death like Socrates before him, but like Socrates, the message took root here and there.
Next milestones, the Magna Carta and American revolution are more or less attempts to recover the lost progress since Athenian times, still mainly instigated by and favoring the landed classes, though by 1776 we’re getting hints of more to come.
Last milestones, France and Russia are in revolutions, giving more serious thought to getting rid of the class system.
By the year 2000, America may have made the greatest strides in that direction, but oligarchy still controls everything that matters, and as in Athens, we live beyond our productive means, exacting tribute from subject nations by arms or by monetary gerrymandering, so in that sense we’re still straining to reach the love-thy-neighbor milestones.
And judging by the at-least 30% who voted for Bush and the large number who think we can fix our floundering speculator-economy by nuking eye-rack, those seeds of reason planted by Socrates are doing rather poorly.
Whew. That was a heck of a long march, to wind up right back at before mile one, 2500 years ago.
What’s next? The green revolution, which is mandatory, seems to have been floundering on the wake of the Orwellian technocratic revolution for a couple of decades, but history tells us that some revolutions lose the first round and have to make a comeback.
Meanwhile I guess we should be thankful to the information revolution. Any kid regardless of class can punch in the codes and get that disembodied education, even learn to say, eye-rack, and nu-cu-lar. Make me your drug-war-czar, and my first bust will be the juvenile disembodied-education cartel, Sesame Street, Bugs Bunny, Space Invaders: I pledge allegiance to my tube teat.
Noteworthy is that the love-thy-neighbor crackpot faction seems to be making one of the loudest noises against the military madness. In between the milestones, in periods of darkness, sometimes they have seemed to wallow in wickedness but at other times they have been a refuge and a repository for reason where no other could be found.
So perhaps I should reconsider some of my dim view of religion. Some very fine people have been raised up in that quarter. I doubt if I’ll be won over to the sin-and-salvation program, but at least I’ll appreciate the long-term value of a breeding ground for crackpots from Judea to the Abolitionists to Daniel Berrigan and Gandhi and whoever is preaching against the war- is-peace song-and-dance routine we’re hearing again this year.
So merry Crackpot, folks, ’tis the season. Here’s to Orwell the Oracle. And here’s to being in denial, that while leading the race for human advancement, we fumbled for our charge cards and dropped the torch, and we’re looking a whole lot like barbarians.
Slim Wolfe
Villa Grove