Falling Down (1993)
Joel Schumacher

Falling Down was released during a crossroads for America. A new President had been sworn in to help save us from a recession (sound familiar?), but the movie was filmed prior to the 1992 election. The last remnants of Reagan-era politics lingered while the country faced an uncertain future. Just beginning were the days of reality television, acceptance of AIDS, and home computing. These facts highlight the age of the film, but the background themes are surprisingly relevant when considering America’s current military operations (Iraq) and economic plight (recession).

This timeframe is therefore appropriate for protagonist and aging defense engineer, William “D-Fens” Foster. We first see D-Fens (so nicknamed after his vanity license plate) in gridlocked LA traffic. The camera alternates between D-Fens’ facial expressions and his viewpoint – bumper stickers of Jesus telling us, “He Died For Our Sins”, symbolizing moral righteousness; a black child leaning out of a school bus with an American flag, symbolizing hypocrisy; and finally a fly inside his car which refuses to be swatted; that itching lack of fulfillment.

We learn bits and pieces about D-Fens during the journey. Schumacher interlaces scenes of Detective Prendergast, who ends up chasing D-Fens on his last day on the job (clichés abound in this film). We learn through these scenes that D-Fens is unemployed, divorced with no custody of his child, and is emotionless around his mother, with whom he now lives. The more we learn about D-Fens, we realize Schumacher doesn’t offer an everyman - D-Fens is a tragic character, and it’s obvious he’s ready to snap. D-Fens evolves from a sympathetic everyman to near-lunatic, and the movie follows those steps superbly as each encounter of his becomes more violent.

After simply walking away from standstill traffic during the opening scene, a fellow commuter yells, “Where do you think you’re going??” Everyone else owns stresses in their lives, but instead of walking away from the grind and figuring out how to make a better future, they accusingly jeer as he says he’s “going home”. He’s clearly not allowed to remove himself from an uncomfortable situation; he must follow the crowd. Everyone he meets from this point becomes an enemy; that jeering commuter telling him to get back in line. D-Fens lives in a cruel world which has no concern for thinking ahead; a crowd which believes in herding themselves to work every day because everyone else is doing it too. Breaking away from this gridlock, D-Fens takes the symbolic path less traveled, and we know right away he’s in for a struggle. The context of the movie, an unhealthy economy and uncertain leadership, highlights these ideas well.

The ante is upped each time an enemy arises. This can be seen clearly in D-Fens’ trade-up in weaponry, as if he’s in a video game – trading the bat from a scuffle for a knife in the next scene; upgrading the knife to a sack of guns after another encounter, and eventually walking through Los Angeles using a rocket launcher. He has become his own defense outfit, armed to the teeth with no one to answer to – a microcosm of America at this critical juncture: many weapons, headed toward a destination where he’s no longer welcome, and having passed the point of no return in pursuit of an undefined goal. Schumacher succeeds in capturing an uncertain America coming out of the Cold War with nothing to show for its supposed victory and no clear direction.

This point of no return comes when he crosses paths with neo-Nazi surplus store owner, Nick. Nick hides D-Fens from a police officer and locks the door when she leaves, choosing to buddy up to D-Fens and offering a rocket launcher and some Nazi memorabilia in support of what he mistakenly believes is D-Fens’ cause. Things don’t go well when D-Fens simply wants to leave without accepting Nick’s gifts; a struggle ensues, and D-Fens silences Nick and murders him. His appearance changes appropriately thereafter, with nondescript military gear and a bag full of guns replacing his white dress shirt and tie.

Though the character development is choppy in this film, Schumacher does a good job of painting D-Fens as over the edge. He becomes dark and consumed with rage, where before, he appeared mainly to be fighting back, if escalating arguments he didn’t start to unnecessary extremes. Prendergast catches up to him for a final confrontation which shows a moment of clarity on the part of D-Fens, tired of fighting and acquiescing to his fate.

The film is a good idea – gritty and realist, no glitz or glamour. The characters and extras all wear plain clothing; city workers act as we would expect when one holds an oversized stop sign to D-Fens’ chest telling him to go around a construction site. We see a deeply flawed and disturbed D-Fens evolving as an unlikely bully – some of the people he meets along the way may have deserved a little bullying, but when an old man is left dead on the golf course due to heart attack as a mocking D-Fens towers over him, there’s nothing left for the audience to gain, and the rest of the movie collapses into the predictable. As humorous as Schumacher makes these scenes and as easy as it is to cheer him on at times, the mission he’s on early in the film seems to be to alert the every day consumer to minor annoyances, but then asking us to look deeper after we see the flaws beneath his character. In this sense, the film is ultimately inconsistent, with differing views on what Schumacher intended, but provides valuable insight into America in the early 1990s.

Falling Down, by Joel Schumacher

The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in An Age of Diminishing Expectations
by Christopher Lasch
Norton, New York, 1979 (250 pgs)

Whenever you find your society in a muddle, it makes sense to look back to what the last generation was warning about. You can plot that data point, then go back to the previous generation, and so forth, until you have a curve. Christopher Lasch in "The Culture of Narcissism" demonstrates where we are on this curve, and leaves it to us to connect the dots, which suits his audience.

America -- or maybe we should say the industrialized world -- fragments into several streams of reality. People act on what they know and become defined by it, so each stratum of reality separates itself by a different worldview informed by different sources. At the broadest level, there's the big newsmagazines and cable news; then there are armchair thinkers; then academics and paid intellectualls; and finally, insiders to the political, economic or social infrastructure.

Lasch aims his book solidly at the armchair thinkers, who come from the middle class and professions and seek to find a narrative of their time above all else. They want to know where they are in history, how to define themselves to fit their status, and finally, some practical knowledge for dodging the coming pitfalls. Lasch hits them with a simple theorem of complex implications: our culture has become narcissistic, and as a result, lowers its standards.

Unlike most books that critique our current society, The Culture of Narcissism does not find an external enemy to demonize. Instead, it hammers home time and again that the enemy is us, or more precisely, attitudes we have adopted that create a situation in which narcissism is not only rewarded, but expected. From the root of this narcissism, Lasch traces two cycles -- the introversion of the individual, and the consequent lowering of quality of our infrastructure.

While much of Lasch's thesis separates the new narcissist from the older model, the "competitive individualist," he later expounds upon the limits of individualism and its tendency to lead toward narcissism. For all conservatives and libertarians and anarchists who think natural selection/social Darwinism and a free market would solve human problems, competitive individualism seems like a boon from the gods -- but he addresses the limitations of that later in the book.

Like many analytical books, The Culture of Narcissism moves around nodal points in which it either introduces or summarizes concepts, and then follows them with exposition that is both supporting data and a discussion of the raw archetype as it shows up in different disciplines. First, a definition of the modern narcissist:

The narcissist differs also, in the tenuous quality of his selfhood, from an earlier type of American individualist, the 'American Adam' analyzed by R.W.B. Lewish, Quention Anderson, Michael Rogin, and by nineteenth-century observers like Tocqueville. The contemporary narcissist bears a superificial resemblance, in his self-absorption and delusions of granduer, to the 'imperial self' so often celebrated in nineteenth-century American literature. The American Adam, like his descendants today, sought to free himself from the past and to establish what Emerson called 'an original relation to the universe.'

{ snip }

The contemporary American may have failed, like his predecessors, to establish any sort of common life, but the integrating tendencies of modern industrial society have at the same time undermined his 'isolation.' Having surrendered most of his technical skills to the corporation, he can no longer provide for his material needs. As the family loses not only its productive functions but many of its reproductive functions as well, men and women no longer manage even to raise their children without the help of certified experts. The atrophy of older traditions of self-help has eroded everyday competence, in one area after another, and has made the individual dependent on the state, the corporation, and other bureaucracies.

Narcissism represents the psychological dimension of this dependence. Notwithstanding his occasional illusions of omnipotence, the narcissist depends on other to validate his self-esteem. He cannot live without an admiring audience, His apparent freedom from family ties and institutional constraints does not free him to stand alone or to glory in his individuality. On the contrary, it contributes to his insecurity, which he can overcome only by seeing his 'grandiose self' relfected in teh attentions of others, or by attaching himself tot those who radiate celebrity, power and charisma. For the narcissist, the world is a mirror, whereas the rugged individualist saw it as an empty wilderness to be shaped to his own design. (excerpted from pages 8 to 10)

From this kernel of an idea, Lasch unites all of the modern dysfunctions not in the bureaucracies (government, media, academia) that guide our lives, but in the attitudes we take toward life that create this bureaucratic mindset, which then produces bureaucracies that produce even more of that mindset. This is where his book breaks with both the revolutionary mindset of the left, which looks for oppression, and the "freedom" and patriotism rhetoric of the right: he looks into the design assumptions that create our social infrastructure.

"Narcissism appears realistically to represent the best way of coping with the tensions and anxieties of modern life, and the prevailing social conditions therefore tend to bring out narcissistic traits that are present, in varying degrees, in everyone. These conditions have also transformed the family, which in turn shapes the underlying structure of personality. A society that fears it has no future is not likely to give much attention to the needs of the next generation, and the ever-present sense of historical discontinuity -- the blight of our society -- falls with particularly devastating effect ont he family." (50)

As the book progresses, Lasch branches into every area of society to show this common pattern. An attitude of me-first, he postulates, creates an inner void that must be filled with external affirmation, which in turn makes the individual dependent on these external affirmers. This produces the modern narcissism that is both self-affirming and self-denying, and the institutions that fill the void are the bureaucracies that our inner narcissist wants to revolt against.

One of his most promising chapters concerns the effects of narcissism on education and our expectations of our students. As almost two-thirds of the book is this kind of technical analysis, but in different areas, threads emerge and Lasch ties them together with witty, insightful section titles that sometimes create spontaneous, painful laughter. One example is how, in a proto-Unabomber analysis, the author picks apart the influence of technology.

"One way to deny our dependence on nature (on mothers) is to invent technologies designed to make ourselves masters of nature. Technology, when it is conceived in this way, embodies an attitude toward nature diametrically oppoed to the exploratory attitude, as Klein calls it. It expresses a collective revolt against the limitations of the human condition. It appeals to the residual belief that we can bend the world to our desires, harness nature to our own purposes, and achieve a state of complete self-sufficiency. This Faustian view of technology has been a powerful force in Western history, reaching its climax in the Industrial Revolution, with its remarkable gains in productivity, and in the even more remarkable advances promised by the postindustrial information explosion." (244)

While this manifests itself in several nodal points, it does not constitute a replacement thesis; unlike later writers, Lasch places the psychology of individualism and externalization before either technology or bureaucracy. He also deals vicious blows to both sides of the political equation for ignoring these somewhat obvious social trends. The left gets excoriated for encouraging the neurosis of individuals in order to make them revolutionaries:

The left has too often served as a refuge from the terrors of the inner life. Another ex-radical, Paul Zweig, has said that he became a communist in the late fifties because communism 'released him...from the failed rooms and broken vases of a merely private life.' As long as political movements exercise a fatal attraction for those who seek to drown the sense of personal failure in collective action -- as if collective action somehow precluded rigorous attention to the quality of personal life -- political movements will have little to say about the personal dimensions of social crisis. (15)

The right, on the other hand, get battered for relying on invisible hand mechanisms to fix a society that instead needs strong leadership. What is significant about this is that Lasch shows us there are no solutions where we can put our brains on autopilot and trust in some overriding principle, because we must instead face common sense. Without a cultural consensus to right our wayward attitudes, we are falling prey to the consequences of those attitudes and looking for external saviors to inward problems.

Studies of progressivism and the New Deal have shown that government regulation of business often arose in response to the demands of businessmen themselves. Regulatory agencies draw most of their personnel from business. Neither the regulatory nor the welfare policies of the state rest on 'an implacalabe hatred of private business and free enterprise,' as Mises claims. On the contrary, regulations controls competition and stabilizes the market, while the welfare system socializes the 'human costs' of capitalist production -- rising unemployment, inadequate wage scales, inadequate insurance against sickness and old age -- and helps to forestall more radical solutions. (234)

Wise enough to cite sources that use terms like "atomizing individualism," (9) Lasch is writing in the grey area between psychology, history and politics, and while his book touches on all of these, his real expertise is in a sociology based in philosophical analysis of the justifications people use to construct narratives in their lives. He sounds a warning midway through the book that shows the scope of what he envisions the effect of narcissism to be:

The effective loss of cultural traditions on such a scale makes talk of a new Dark Age far from frivolous. Yet this loss coincides with an information glut, with the recovery of the past by specialists, and with an unprecedented explosion of knowledge -- none of which, however, impinges on everday experience or shapes popular culture. (151)

As he sees it, at the same moment we begin to need the external to bolster our internal lack of self-esteem, the external is flooding us with abstract data that either concerns distant events or personal events, but never makes the connection between them. As a result, the same loss of narrative that creates narcissism is growing in strength as events get more disassociated because we measure our society in individuals at singular moments, and not in ongoing patterns.

While Lasch comes to us from the left, but has converted to mostly right-wing views because of a frustration with ineffective methods and psychology on the left, this book is not a political hit job; it is a psychological unveiling of the modern mentality and as such, an answer from the common sense philosophers to postmodernism. Where postmodernism bemoans our lack of narrative, Lasch unites viewpoints as diverse as Pynchon and Houllebecq to show us the cause and effects of that condition, and how history has unleashed it through mostly leftist revolutions.

Like all really profound books, this one continues to sell because although it describes a particular time period in a historical cycle -- the life cycle of civilizations from birth to decadence to death -- it also puts a finger on an eternal struggle within humanity, both as individuals and groups, to gather up enough bravery to face our world as an equal and so to squash the inner void that would otherwise make us narcissists, both rebelling against and addicted to the social reality created by a society of other judging, token-making simians.

Gomorra (2008)
Matteo Garrone

Roberto Saviano stirred up worldwide debate when he released his book "Gomorra," a controversial up-front documentary of the infamous Camorra mafia in Italy. Currently under death threat from criminal organizations, Saviano hides from a phenomenon most of us have only seen sketched out in movies such as "Goodfellas" and "The Godfather," where the mafia is softly glorified as classy, humorous and exciting. However, Garrone's latest movie based upon Saviano's book delivers a different picture of the Neapolitan mob as a gruesome, merciless and threatening force in Italian society.

The story of the movie is really a collection of individual lives: a poor tailor who one day decides to work for two competing companies on the black market; two young boys who seek to overthrow the local region and steal power away from the mafia; a money-man who collects cash for gangster leaders; a boy whose life dream is to become a man by joining the Camorra, and finally a young man who begins working with a waste management company, soon realizing the job is not so "green" after all. Unlike many movies with this kind of narrative structure, the lives of the characters never converge. The idea is instead to approach the Camorra from many different perspectives, in order to demonstrate to the viewer the various ways in which individuals may get involved with such a group, and more importantly why they choose to do so.

The answer to that question is horribly bleak: Almost every character in the movie lives next door to the mafia and, whether they like it or not, cannot escape from becoming a part of the mob world. The Camorra in Italy operates like a gentle virus, offering protection and help to people in an area where the government has lost control over crime and corruption, at the same time giving young boys in the suburbs hope and identity as members of an important and powerful group. Not until people are part of the Camorra world do they realize they're in trouble, but only after it's already too late to go back. Many of the characters in the movie face a gruesome destiny. But there is no small print or reassuring voice explaining that it's all fiction and everything's going to be all right. On the contrary, the message of the movie seems to be: Every choice you make is a different road to hell.

Garrone follows the neo-realist school of cinematography, placing Gomorra next to "City of God" and "Tropa de Elite," except that it lacks a single-person perspective to give it a fictional and dramatic dimension. Also unlike his peers, Garrone dispenses with an introductory presentation of the topic. Without any background information or clear narrative logic, the perspective jumps from individual to individual in a chaotic, cinematographic prose. Although this “outsider's” perspective makes it more difficult to identify with the characters, it also makes the line between reality and drama impossible to discern, often catching the viewer off-guard. The gritty aesthetic style marked by playful camera movement, realistic environments, the presence of locals as actors, and fast-paced, graphic camera shots, makes this a dramatic documentary; too real to be merely fiction.

What makes this movie even more unsettling is that Garrone suspends his judgment of both the Camorra and the reaction – or lack thereof – of Italian society to the situation. The voice of desperation, fear and confusion is embedded within the destiny of each character; the form and the content melt into a solid, self-evident reality. This amorality is part of what makes Gomorra so compelling. Yet it also impedes some of Gomorra's ability to function as a documentary, as it prevents the movie from communicating anything outside of what's happening directly on the screen. And maybe that's the point--like in "Tropa de Elite," judgment happens only behind the eyes of the beholder. We cannot call it horror until we've seen it with our own eyes. This is a realistic response: the Camorra is neither good nor evil--it exists within the boundaries of our familiar, safe society; its domain is where our public institutions are impotent. People who get drawn into mafia business live in a world that we like to think we left behind decades ago.

In Gomorra, Matteo Garrone resurrects that world to prove to us that it still exists, and will remain alive and well as long as we continue providing the incentives that nurture it. Forget the shiny, classy appeal that Goodfellas and other productions delivered by Hollywood to keep us entertained; this is for real. If the presentation of the story isn't convincing enough, both Garrone and Saviano have made living examples of themselves by risking their lives to tell the truth to the world. At the moment, Saviano is in Sweden, being escorted by state police on his way to hold a conference with Salman Rushdie about his book, and why he's wanted dead by people he's never even met. Truth is always embraced with stuffy ears and, in some cases, with violence. Garrone leaves us with nothing but scars and bad memories, but his intent is compassionate: to free us from our sins by forcing us to look at last upon the dark side of the modern reality for which we are responsible.

Gomorra, by Matteo Garrone

First Blood
David Morrell

I've always been fascinated by the character of Rambo, especially in the first movie of the trilogy: Resented for doing his duty in war, he refuses to be treated like a criminal and unleashes a new war at home to confront the moral hypocrisy of the American public. When I read the original novel by David Morrell, I discovered a deeper dimension to the story; one that Hollywood, in typical fashion, overlooked in favor of a more transparent “hooray for the underdog” theme. In the novel, the action is more up front and brutal, and the psychological dimension makes it altogether more compelling than the movie.

The narrative frame of the story is easy to recognize for those who have seen the movie: Rambo enters a small town and stops by a gas station, trying to get a lift. Police officer Teasle offers a ride, but makes sure Rambo understands he's not welcome. After leaving him by the end of the town road, Rambo keeps coming back, refusing to be pushed around yet again, until Teasle arrests him. But all hell breaks loose inside the police station and Rambo escapes in his birthday suit, and rides into the mountains on a motorbike. A search begins, headed by Teasle, his friend Orval and his dogs, and a team of police officers. The hunt for Rambo turns into a full-scale war with the US military and Colonel Sam Trautman, whose men once trained Rambo.

First of all, let's get this straight: this is a genuine, unashamed thriller. As such, the main focus of the narrative is on action--and "First Blood" doesn't fail to deliver in this department. The style, as may be expected, is simple and doesn't really communicate on a poetic level. Even for prose, it's very direct and rarely lingers on any thought or scene not connected to the practical events that carry the action forward. Yet even for its lack of subtlety, I simply couldn't stop reading it once I'd started. The pace is intense, the action is more gruesome than the movie dared portray, and there's a strong sense of atmosphere about every scene.

What makes this novel a good read, though, is not only the thrill. Morrell has added a psychological dimension to the story, which reveals itself most strongly in the monologues of Teasle and Rambo. Although these monologues add surprisingly little depth to the storyline, they reveal motivations and symbolism, which expand the narrative beyond the borders of the big screen. The psychological conflict between Teasle and Rambo cleverly symbolizes the philosophical division of American society over the Vietnam War: It's hard not to sympathize with Rambo, the patriotic soldier who has come home only to be greeted with disrespect and resentment. As a man who's clearly been pushed over the edge, his character unfolds as a voice for the lost and disenchanted youth. Teasle, on the other hand, is the symbol of the establishment, painted also as a character we slowly come to understand on his own terms. The tragic result of the lack of a social consensus within the American public, the symbolic war between these two types spurs readers to reconsider their notions of duty, loyalty, and human decency.

Although it's famous first for its cultural status as a classic action story, underneath the surface layer of "First Blood" dwells a lake of despair and confusion over the loss of unity in America. It could just as well have been written five years ago, and may even be more relevant today than it was in 1992.

First Blood, by David Morrell

Once a Warrior King is one of those books that makes you re-evaluate how you view the world. Ostensibly about warfare, it seems to me that it's equal parts practical knowledge and a philosophical -- or some would say spiritual -- assessment of what is important in life, from someone who daily faced both the possibility of losing his own life and the necessity of taking the lives of others. When I first read this book as a teenager, I was blown away by its honesty and wisdom. When I re-read it for this interview, I was again -- doubly so. As it turns out, David Donovan the man who answers email and writes interviews is a gentle fellow, but he is a student of life and so like all students of life he is adamant about lessons learned. We are fortunate that he answered our questions, and honored that he allowed us to ask them. See our review of Once a Warrior King and then wander on over to David Donovan's web site to learn more about this insightful author.

One of the most fascinating things about Once a Warrior King for me is the clear separation between a world devoted to safety like our daily experience of society, and a place where at any moment any thing can be booby-trapped or an ambush. Do we suffer in society from this lack of awareness of how fragile life is?

I don't know if suffer is the right word. We are, in general, blissfully unaware of how fragile life is. A relatively small proportion of our population lives in an environment where life is taken so early and so arbitrairily as in war; further, because of the American way of medicine and the end of life, we do not generally encounter death in non-medical formats; so, yes, we are unaware of much. It is a suffering in the sense that lives suffer when they are absent information that could make those lives richer or more meaningful. If we were intimately aware of the fragility of life, would we be more willing to help others to preserve it? Would we be more willing to look better after ourselves to preserve our own lives? Would it affect our opinions on issues ranging from rational speed limits to universal health care? I think it might.

On the other hand, the idea of life's fragility as gathered from life in a combat zone can, indeed, be a suffering. In combat, whether in the jungles of Vietnam, the deserts of Iraq, or the mountains of Afghanistan, one learns to see threat at every corner, or at least to be constantly prepared to see threat. That large tree down the trail and that rise in the jungle floor, does it hide an ambush? Where will I immediately go, what will I instantly do should firing start? Every step brings a fresh decision because the geometry of the potential ambush has changed. Does that freshly-turned earth up ahead indicate a freshly-laid mine--an IED in the current parlance--and does that abandoned brick building nearby hide an ambush? What will I do,where will I automatically lay down a base of fire should an ambush be sprung against me? And, by the way, is that building really abandoned? Is there a child inside, an innocent of any kind? Who will live today and who will die? Will the death delivered be by my hand or the hand of others? Those are the questions of one who understands the fragility of life in combat. It becomes a suffering when those same questions persist once the soldier has returned home. I'll give you an example.

In many large buildings, the corridors are long and are opened into by many doors. Each doorway typically offers a small recess in an otherwise straight wall. Along any corridor there are also a number of intersecting corridors. For years after I returned from Vietnam, I would say twenty years, anyway, I kept the feeling that I had to be prepared for an ambush at any time. Where could an attack come from? From around the corner of that intersecting corridor up ahead? If someone did leap out and start shooting, where would I go? What would I do? How far was it to the next doorway where I might be able to get out of the corridor or at least take what advantage of the door's recess in the wall? Would it be quicker to leap for the closest doorway in front of me or jump backward to the doorway I had just passed?

This kind of program was constantly running in the back of my mind and it did not let up whether in a building's corridor or a city street. No rooftop went unexamined. A quick check by eye would do, but the program was always running. It was a macro, the counter-ambush drill. It works the same whether on a jungle trail or a city street, but I can tell you it is wearing and you are relieved when you realize one day that you are no longer doing it. Then you become worried that you are no longer doing it! Life is fragile and you do not want yours to be broken. Not even now.

How did you pick your pseudonym, and why did you choose to use one?

There were several reasons. First, I wrote OWK over many years after I returned from Vietnam. As I neared finishing the book's first draft, I had already produced a large number of scientific publications (articles and reviews in science publications, chapters in scientific books, etc. ) under my own name. I wanted to keep my writing for general audiences separate from the scientific writing and I wanted to keep the writing career (I hoped there would be one) separate from the scientific career; thus, a psuedonym seemed the way to go.

Using a psuedonym helped with another problem in that by that putting on the persona of David Donovan, I was better able to tell some of the more difficult stories. It was easier to be introspective and fully truthful about my sometimes faulty dealing with the difficulties and graininess of war if I was reporting on the struggles of David Donovan than if I was telling about Terry Turner. Was that coward's way out or just a handy psychological tool? I don't know. I'll leave that to others.

Finally, I said some less-than-extolling things about a number of icons from the war. If there was going to be controversy about anything I had written, I did not want to involve my family in it. I had no burning need to be personally recognized, so once again, David Donovan filled the bill. I have recently retired from UVA so I can devote more time to writing and now have a website which highlights OWK and a forthcoming book. It includes a brief real-life biography.

One of the internal struggles portrayed in characters in the book is the desire to do good, but using methods some might consider evil, which becomes less paradoxical when one sees the effects of not using those "evil" means to prevent what most would agree are far greater evils. Do you see this paradox troubling people in civilian life as well?

Yes. This is the calculus of the greater good: we do something we all admit is bad in order to achieve a greater good. The variables are how good, how bad, and in whose eyes? In the military I might perceive a threat and want to save the lives of the men serving under me. To save them I am certain I must question a prisoner with more rigor than allowed by the Geneva rules I have been trained to obey. I may be alone and in circumstances where I think no one will know. Will I do it? You're damned right. Why? Because saving my men is second only in importance to the accomplishment of my mission. That is conventional military dogma with which no one I know disagrees.

Saving my men is almost the highest of high values. Some say it is the highest of high values. How can I not risk an enemy in an effort to save my men? If I break the law and question the prisoner a little more strongly than the civilian, read that, unthreatened, public might like, how about questioning him a lot too strongly? We rather quickly need to know the difference between discomfort and torture. Do I know the difference? Am I sure? Are you sure? Torture is like pornography, hard to describe, but I know it when I see it. Waterboarding is torture. Yelling threats is not. Hot-wiring a prisoner to a battery is torture, solitary confinement is not. Firing a weapon near the prisoner's head while yelling threats to do worse? Not torture? Yes? No? I guarantee you, it depends on your perspective.

In the civilian world, some account might fudge a number to make the company's stocks look better than they are. It's just a number and thousands of people's lives will be better if their investments keep paying off, no? A little evil for a greater good. How bad's the bad and how good's the good? In another case the accountant might need to fudge several numbers. How bad's the bad and how good's the good? That accountant is on the road to Enron, Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac. The wink, the fudge, the turn-the-other-way might work just fine a thousand times, but the violation of ethical rules for a supposed greater good cannot be accepted as just a part of doing business. In war, violation of the rules of conduct, whether it is in the treatment of POW's or in other aspects of warfare, has always "worked" under certain circumstances, but should that mean the violations are okay? No! They illustrate that the temptation is to do the expedient thing, sometimes just the intuitive thing, rather than the ethical, legal, moral thing.

We should chose the latter and we should emphasize it in our schooling, whether military, business, or other areas of personal and corporate conduct. We should enforce the rules, as well, but we should not be so naive as to think violations will not happen. We should not be surprised that they happen with true "greater good" intentions; but when discovered, violations should not be unremarked upon and violators of the rules should be punished. Why? Because ethical violations unpunished when detected only encourage further violations. One day you've got unseemly harassment of a single prisoner, the next day you've got Abu Ghraib. One day you've got a falsely elevated stock, the next day, Enron. Do I expect perfection? No. I expect perpetrators to be very, very hesitant because they know the law and know it will be enforced.

Referring to question three: do you separate intent/goal from method, in that a goal can be good and methods "evil," and how does that influence your view of good and evil?

In truth, yes. It is popular to say, "the ends justifies the means," with appropriate frowns and head wagging, but in our heart of hearts most people who know that each of us has had to achieve what we think of as good ends by resorting to what we also think of as not-good means.

If the good end is achieved then all is well and no one looks back. When the good end is not achieved, however, and the ill means comes to light, that is when all bets are off. We come again to the issue, how much good result are we buying for how much evil means. For most people, we hope, there is a close limit on how much bad they will use to achieve a good end. It is the people with deep limits on evil means that we are afraid of! And then there is the hypothetical case of the undeniably gigantic good that is to be gained by an intense evil.

Let's say there is a life-saving good to be gained by millions of people that can be had only by my unquestionable torture of a another person. The torture is illegal, but let's stipulate that I truly believe that the other person will give up his information only under torture. Should I attempt to save millions of people by violating my qualms and the law against torture? How much good for how much bad? Personally, I would proceed to try to save the millions fully knowing I will be violating the law. What I have to be prepared for is the sacrifice to be made by me should I be brought before the law. If that is to be a sacrifice of myself, so be it.

A soldier is asked to give his life in defense of our millions. That potential for sacrifice has more avenues than we like to think of. In this way, it seems, good and evil exist in relative terms. A bad thing can be a good thing relative to an even worse thing. True, but as a society, as a part of what we like to call civilization, we need foundations that presume a basis of knowable good, some hard line drawn in the sand. That is the law, the rules of society. We have to assume that they establish the good until proven otherwise. In that way, the good is not relative, it is absolute.

You often speak of more effective ways of waging warfare, and contrast to it the corruption, incompetence, and disinterest that did characterize many aspects of the war. If you were to command an army yourself, how would you channel your forces into more effective methods?

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by the contrast between effective ways of waging war and corruption, incompetence, etc. Clearly, effective war waging happens best in the absence of corruption, incompetence, public disinterest, etc.

Unfortunately, there will always be corruption and incompetence, especially around a war and especially in countries where official obliquity has been a part of public culture for centuries. I suppose I should answer the question by saying that how I would wage war would depend on the nature of the war I am presented with. Russian tanks rolling over the Elbe? Islamic firebrands terrorizing a countryside? I don't mean to dodge the question, but it's difficult to be definitive. Here are some principles:

1. Deal quickly and harshly with enemy combatants. This means having a sufficient force with sufficient logistical support to do the job. This is war. You must be feared.
2. Put a very heavy emphasis on immediate aid and assistance to the civilian population. We tend to think freedom is great. People surrounded by war think security is great. In life, freedom is nice, security is necessary. Provide it from day one.
3. Have a good assessment of what the cultural expectations of the population, of the "street" are. We have often tended to listen to the aspirations of Westernized elites in various countries never stopping to ask ourselves what the more traditional society expects of us or expects of their lives, in general. Do we share the same goals? Do we want the same things?

   Will our country be pleased with the result of our sacrifice in treasure and blood once the guns go quiet? I have told friends I think the war in Iraq is a mistake because I believe that within five years of our leaving the country, whenever that is, the country will be back to being headed by a strongman that will be harshly suppressing one group or another. We are not going to like the outcome, no matter what. It has nothing to do with our military success. It has to do with Iraqi cultural habits, particularly their political cultural habits.

   We have a constitutional democracy we arrived at after a thousand years of philosophical, religious, and political development in Europe. We can't just drop that in a cultural context that is entirely different and expect it prosper. We should be supporting democratic developments in countries that want it, not forcing it in a country that could care less. I guess that's a digression. Sorry.

4. Limit the American soldier's footprint in the country where the war is being waged, especially if that country is very culturally different. This is not in conflict with rule 1 which says, basically, strike hard and fast with sufficient numbers. That implies a big footprint, no? Yes, but as soon as possible keep Americans out of the hair of the locals. It only causes conflict and irritation that when scratched at by the enemy can quickly turn to hatred. That's why in an insurgency situation we should expect the indigenous forces to do the heavy lifting. If they won't fight for themselves, they cannot expect us to do their fighting for them, at least not for long.
5. Don't go in a war without some semblance of an exit strategy. Presuming to know the situations that might develop after a war starts is silly, of course, but that's why a large component of the Pentagon is all about contingency planning. What if this, what if that? At least do the best you can to have exposed our leaders to a wide variety of possible outcomes and have a potential exit strategy for each case.
6. Have an intelligence system directed not only at the enemy, but within your own ranks. I don't mean a system of spies. I mean cultivate a ethic of telling truth to power. In most organizations and especially in the military a "can-do" attitude is important. A subordinate, whether general or private, wants to impress his superior with how well he has performed or is performing his mission. Everyone picks up on the importance of putting up a good front for whoever an evaluator might be. The temptation to emphasize the good and minimize the bad is seldom resisted. When this occurs at several levels before arriving at the desk of the principal decider, a total misreading of events can occur. This is an especially serious threat in the complex and fluid environment of war.

Once a Warrior King offers some examples of people behaving unsensibly. What do you think motivates people to behave in such ways? Do these motivations carry over into civilian life as well?

People behave in ways that appear unsensible or anti-sensible because of inadequate information, fear of the outcome if they do not take the action they are taking, selfishness, greed, lust, and all the other ill motivations that harass us all. Unsensible acts in war have the potential to be more harsh or have large consequences because it is, in fact, war. The movement of a finger squeezes a trigger or lets loose a Hellfire missile. People die.

I don't know if those motivations carry over to civilian life or those motivations carry over from civilian life. Fear, lust, greed, ignorance, etc. predate war, and surely are active in civilian life. If a person has used them in war to gain advantage, it seems likely they will do it again once they are back in civilian life.

It seems as if you use air conditioning, plentiful food and comfortable living rooms as a metaphor for people who are detached from reality. Several times the book mentions how the average American seemed to want the war to "go away." Do people ever want to face war? What else do you think they evade? Does this carry over into philosophical/spiritual areas as well?

A minority of the world's population, largely in the U. S. and Europe, enjoy plentiful food and an abundance of creature comforts. It would be unnatural for us not to like the easy availability of food and the comfort afforded by cars, good roads to drive them on, air conditioning, televisions, good health care, etc.; but our good fortune too often makes us detached from that other world, the larger world, where food is more scarce and creature comforts are absent.

For most of us, our range of experience does not allow us to appreciate or really understand the hungers and yearnings of those in countries where the vast majority of people are the have-nots. We are physically and emotionally detached; thus, when a war arises from one group's threat to another or one group's suffering under the heel's of another we would prefer that that war simply go away, especially when that war threatens our own calm and good fortune. This is completely natural. No sane person wants a war. Still, when war occurs to us, either because it is brought to us or we initiate it, one hopes onoy after due process has decided that war is the only solution, we can no longer afford detachment.

If a country remains detached from the struggles and cruelties of the war it is engaged in, it can never understand the enterprise. The country can be led astray, it can accept the morphine of not caring and find itself in a worse pickle than the one in which it started. I agree with the current sentiment voiced by others that our military is at war but our country is not. There is no general sense of sacrifice and there appears to be little interest in individual discovery of the facts of life in countries where the root causes of conflict have to do with centuries of religious and political machinations.

We, a western society, have little understanding, I mean deep, in the belly understanding of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We are detached physically, emotionally, and culturally. We have put our soldiers in harm's way while we carry on our usual lives. That detachment, that lack of fundamental interest is frustrating to the soldier but a salve to the politicians who sent him (or her).

Does this sort of thing cross over to other areas of life? Yes, I believe so. We sometimes decide to deal with a problem by simply ignoring it. If we don't acknowledge it maybe it will go away. Every political, philosophical, or religious position is like a coin with two sides. For every yin there's a yang--that sort of thing. Zealots, political, religious, or otherwise, simply ignore the other side of the coin. They don't consider the alternative view, don't think it even worthy of discussion. This allows them a certainty the thoughtful envy but know they cannot share.

You write expressively about the difference between information as measured and reality as it is from the point of contact. One of the most evocative parables is that of the HFES/TFES system, which required soldiers in the field to fill out surveys to be processed by computers back in Saigon, and how little of reality it captured -- most powerfully, that right before Tet 99% of the country was considered free of the enemy. Our science and computers use threshold to determine whether a "maybe" is a yes (1) or no (0) -- how has this affected our society, and our ability to think? Do you see this in your students?

Information is a valuable tool. It has to be recorded, accumulated, and stored in order to be analyzed and become useful in making decisions. Current, which is to say, quickly accessible, information is most valuable. I don't need this morning's information processed next month, I need it this afternoon! As our capacity to accumulate data has expanded, our ability to store and analyze it has also expanded.

We can now better predict the weather, when an aircraft part will wear out, or how a drug will affect some detail of body function. Apparently, the vast amounts of information accumulated, stored, and analyzed by financial firms and the government cannot predict a stock market collapse, however. Why? Because "maybe" in human affairs is more than the sum of "yes" and "no." Gray is more nuanced than the sum of black and white. The computer is not influenced by greed, lust, or an appreciation of beauty. It has no motion toward altruism, either. All those are human traits and effect the first thing in the process: the gathering of data. We won't even get into the analysis of it!

Does all this affect our society and its ability to think? Affect our society? Yes. We have become a litigious society. This has caused every private and public institution to be concerned about making decisions based on quantitative data. Having the "right" kind of data can help with a defense in court; therefore, the main drive of the institution becomes to have the acceptable numbers. Other criteria might be useful in deciding what student to accept for admission, what treatment to prescribe for a patient, or how much pollutant can be allowed in the water, but quantitative data reigns supreme.

Don't get me wrong, I like quantitative data; but I also recognize that human judgement involves qualitative elements, as well. In some aspects of our present society, these elements are being undervalued.

Does our use of computer analysis affect our ability to think? In some ways, I suppose so. Certainly, if we start thinking only in quantitative terms we lose an important part of what it means to think. Much of what makes us human, self-awareness, imagination, reflection, requires the qualitative as well as the quantitative side of our judgement.

Do I see effects in students? Yes, but only in a particular way. For the last several decades all students going on to higher education in this country, whether to college, professional schools, or graduate schools, are admitted largely based on their ability to do well on short-answer tests. Mark A, B, C, or D with a #2 pencil and move on to the next question. No ability to express a complex thought is called upon. Quick recall of a fact or facts is the premium trait being rewarded, rarely is an independent processing of those facts asked for.

As a result, it has become harder for our students to be talented in putting complex thoughts on the written page or, to be modern, on the computer screen. I would prefer to see a better amalgamation of the quantitative and qualitative talents in our students.

On a similar topic, you write about how television misrepresents the war in its effort to dramatize and simplify situations. Is there a way to fix that? How did you encounter "television reality" when you came back to the United States?

I don't know of a way to fix it. The fact is that news gatherers, especially for television news, look for the striking, even better, the shocking to report. Death and destruction is more newsworthy than clinic building and infrastructure repair. If a news organization began reporting on all the good things a military unit does, they would be charged with bias. In a free society where there is no censorship to speak of and very little news management by the military, that's just the way it is.

Because news gatherers are the way they are, I think having all kinds of reporters crawling all over the place as in Vietnam is a mistake. I think their eyes should be there, but I think having them "embedded" with military units is the best way to do it. The truth is, news reporters are interested in their careers and want as much air time or column space as they can get. If their allegiance is only to themselves, the reporting they are given the freedom to do will be biased toward what is good for themselves. If they are embedded in a unit, the reporting they are still given the same freedom to do will perhaps have the more selfish impulse tamped down by their having a connection with something other than themselves.

When I came back from Vietnam I felt, as did many, that the reporting was incomplete. Public support for our efforts was diminished by the public's seeing only the shocking and the angrifying. I'm not saying that should not have been reported, just that much else requiring effort, hope, and expenditure of blood and treasure went unremarked. Would it have changed things if the reporting had been more complete? I doubt it, but then there is no control experiment.

The same frustrations are heard today by those in Iraq and Afghanistan. Too much about boom and bang, too little about schools built and aid distributed. In this kind of war, I can't see how to make a change that would satisfy the American impulse to freedom of the press.

Early in the book, you write that each time you got ready to fire on an enemy, "a curtain dropped over my emotions." In a society where advertising plays on our emotions, political speeches play with our emotions, and we collaborate with others through compassion and other emotions, this sort of discipline and goal-oriented mentality seems far away. How were you able to achieve this? Does it remind you of the Buddhist practice of the Hoa Hao troops with whom you worked?

I don't know how I achieved "the curtain;" it was just a necessity, so I did it. While it is a perhaps severe example of self-separation from events, it is the same thing as when a surgeon operates to save a victim. He or she must remain calm and detached, not get caught up in the emotion of the event. They must place themselves in an emotionally remote position. In the desperate killing of others or the desperate saving of others, there is too much emotional baggage to be carried for long. Self-separation is a necessity.

It is interesting to bring up Buddhist practice in this context, for that matter the meditative practice of any religion, including Christianity. In those cases, the person separating himself from events looks inward, as I understand it, in a meditative process. He or she is pulling back from action on the outside world. A person with a gun who is dropping the curtain before he kills is about to act on the outside world and is isolating himself from that action. I think the two things are very different.

"Our guys read the newspapers. They resent being sent over here to die for nothing." More than anything else, Vietnam was the first really televised war. Are citizens able to appreciate why a war might be just? Or will they simply oppose all war, because war (like life) has many horrible aspects? When they do oppose wars, will they forever alienate soldiers as they did your fellow soldiers?

I think citizens can appreciate why a war might be just so long as the cause is sharp and stark. Pearl Harbor. The World Trade towers. Where the need for war is difficult to comprehend is when the war arrives due to reasons two or three times removed from direct effect on the country. We went to Vietnam because it was a proxy for our otherwise "cold" war with the Soviets and China. The rationale was hard to sustain as time went on and on with little consistent progress. Finally, someone realized that the South Vietnamese were never going to stand on their own, so we said, "enough already."

We went to Afghanistan as a result of 9/11. There has been little or no complaint about that. We went to Iraq under more dubious circumstances and there has been more and more complaint as the war has gone on and on. Americans see little if any affect of such a war on themselves or their aspirations, so most are now saying, enough already. I believe any war not the result of sharp and certain evidence of national harm will eventually, perhaps shortly, see opposition. That sharp and certain evidence of national harm might have to be an actual attack like Pearl Harbor or 9/11 before opposition will be quieted, especially for a long, enduring war.

I think those who oppose a particular war will always to some degree alienate the soldiers fighting it, even if on the surface the soldier understands that opposition. War is a visceral, life-changing thing. It is hard to always understand that those who oppose the war do not oppose you and the goals you are striving for. On the other hand, I do not think most soldiers are forever alienated. At least there is not a through-and-through alienation. They come to understand, if they did not understand already, that opposition to the war was opposition to policy, not opposition to them. Most learn to adjust.

Throughout this book, there is a recurring theme of disorientation. Culture shock, confused physical location in the jungle, inclarity of mission, and personal disorientation after exhaustion, disease, explosions. Is this a metaphor you use for the war, or the time period in human history?

I don't think I intentionally used it as a metaphor, but it certainly could stand as one. As we move so rapidly from what was the past to what is the present to what will be the future, there is a kind of culture shock, an indecision or lostness that shades more and more of what we do.

We spoke earlier about data gathering and decision by computer. One of the problems with the facility for gathering information and even analyzing it is the limited human capacity for really dealing with massive amounts of data in a meaningful way. A cell has over 30,000 genes. Fifteen thousand of those may change expression in a particular situation or disease state and each of those may change differently depending on other external factors. How does an individual scientist deal with that much information? We used to study and still do study one gene at a time. How do we even think about 15,000 in a useful way?

A military commander one hundred years ago might have a dozen pieces of information to deal with before making critical decisions. Those might have been processed from a hundred other data points. Today's commander has hundreds of peices of information that have been processed from thousands of others. How can we have faith in the verity of the end recommendation? Yet, a decision must be made!

To the unprepared, information shock, a kind of culture shock, can be a block to progress. Our education system needs to prepare our young people for that information shock. We need to develop strategies of how to deal with it. I'm not talking about making everyone a super statistician, I'm talking about teaching them how to deal with a world that is changing ever more rapidly. As the landscape changes underneath us, we need to know how to keep our footing and our heads at the same time.

One of the more intense moments in your book is when you write, "We have lost the cultural memory of what it means to live without soap." Does this contribute to our disassociation, as a culture, with what is necessary for the hardships of warfare, and so to getting past those hardships to do what is right?

This goes to that detachment we spoke of earlier. Most of us live in a privileged time and place. We have no idea what it means to have no soap; therefore, we don't think that simply supplying soap might alleviate as much problem as building a hospital! The hospital looks great and might even be great, but perhaps the country has no infrastructure to maintain it. Who will repair the elevator, provide pure water, staff the clinics, keep the electricity going, etc. etc.?

I have seen schools and hospital built in Vietnam by Americans or in Congo by the Belgians that were soon empty hulks because they could not be maintained. Soap, maybe even a promotion of soap manufacture would have continued to work wonders. When we go to war, we and the military largely think of things that go bang. While that is a necessity, there also needs to be an enduring appreciation of what the host country--or the invaded country--really needs.

If we are seen as helping provide security and helping provide help for daily living, we win friends. You would like your friends to outnumber your enemies. One way is to kill most of the enemy. That is hard to do that without a lot of collateral damage, which always hurts our cause. Another way, I would hope to be used with the first, is to make more friends than enemies. In doing that, we should not overlook the soap.

In The Great Gatsby, the narrator -- after seeing the amorality and venality of the East -- wants the world to be "in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever." You talk about this kind of moral attention when you use phrases like "fighting the Terror" and "holding the lamp beside the golden door," referring to the lucky few who have that moral attention and do not elect to change the channel, go back inside the air conditioning, and get that second helping of meat and potatoes. In many ways, this is the most controversial part of your novel, in which you're saying that although war is hell, there may be a worse kind of hell when people don't care at all. Was this what initially motivated you to join the military, or was it something you learned from your time in Vietnam? How has this changed your character and outlook on the world in peacetime, as a leader of youth (a professor)?

I think I joined the military out of a cultural sense of obligation. I'm a southerner and back in the day, our lives were filled with the sound of the drum. It was the tradition. When its your time, you go. I wasn't being philosophical, I was simple-mindedly doing what I believed to be my duty. If the doing of it and the telling of it comes across as some sort of moral preachyness, that is not my intent. I suppose any perception of "preachy" may be as much a result of the position of the reader as of the writer.

I started thinking about these things as I stewed in Vietnam, over the lack of soap would be one good example. I did not codify it in any way until I began writing about it, a process that took years. I suppose it changed my life forever. It colors my opinion about the likely outcome in Iraq, about our relations with other countries, in general, and about the acumen of our political leaders. I must say, it colors my attitude favorably about the military. They still do their best under difficult circumstances, circumstances that our civilian leadership continues to put them in.

Why do our youth still go into uniform? Not because they are all fans of the idea that democracy can be planted on rocky ground. Not because they want to die on foreign soil. Certainly, some do it because it is just a job, but most, I believe, do it with an eye toward their fellow countrymen, with an attitude of service toward the greater whole. They have to believe in us, you know. They have to believe in the direction we give them through our elected leaders. A serious question we have to ask about ourselves and our actions is, do we deserve it?

In the introduction, you state that you are avoiding subjects that are "well worn and lead to endless debate and disagreement, achieving nothing." In an election year, this refreshing attitude seems very practical; do you think there will ever be a resolution to these issues? If not, how does a nation continue when its people are so fundamentally divided over history, goals, and so on?

I do not believe that issues like, what should have been our involvement in Vietnam or why did we start a war in Iraq, will come to complete resolution. A continuing debate over such things is predictable in a free society. A few still sputter about the Civil War, some about the Spanish-American war! Even WWI and WWII are debated about how we got in, when we got in, and why we got in. Debates go on and I believe they are healthy. Full and complete discussion about the past should help us in the future, though that hope has often failed, I grant you. Certainly, many of the lessons learned in Vietnam were forgotten when it came to Iraq.

Unfortunately, what keeps a free society intact is not peace, calm, and happy lives. In times of reduced stress, we feel no threat. It's easy for everyone to be a free and independent thinker, even an expresser of wild and crazy ideas! Some of those ideas can lead to a lessening of our common bonds, can diffuse the energy of our forward progress as a society. Instead, what becomes valued is our forming into smaller groups, either by race, religion, political thought, whatever. It is a principal of physics that without energy input, everything goes to its lowest energy state and ultimately to chaos.

With no energy input into simple, unifying themes, we dissipate into that lower energy state of factionalism. How does a unified nation continue? Sadly, so far as I can see (no expert, here), it is the cataclysm that saves us. Pearl Harbor, 9/11, tsunamies, other mega-disasters draw us together into a common bond and for a common effort. How to put energy into achieving unity without requiring a calamity is an important question for all of us going forward. The considerations to be made in that effort likely touch on every hot-button issue of our time and will be a daunting task.

Once a Warrior King, by David Donovan
David Donovan Books

Heart of Darkness
Joseph Conrad

This dark adventure has confused many and enlightened a few. Historically still controversial, it remains a classic piece of Western literature, probing into the feral depths of human nature and the process of how civilizations decay. Conceived as a late 19th century frame narrative, the main story describes the journey of the Englishman Charlie Marlow into the Congo River delta, working for a Belgian trading company. Arriving at his destination, Marlow experiences the chaotic environment in which African slaves follow the laws of their greedy exploitators. Before he has time to get used to the circumstances, he's suddenly sent on a secret mission up the river to bring back a certain man named Kurtz, who is supposed to have gone out of control.

Much of the remaining story centers around Marlow's journey into the heart of Africa, in search of the mystical man he's supposed to retrieve. Facing violence and hate from the black natives, Marlow slowly gets to experience a different side of what it means to be a colonialist in a place where you're not wanted. When he finally arrives at his destination, the meeting with Kurtz changes his life completely. The strange man, worshipped by the natives as a god, has left aside the hunt for ivory and replaced it with a will to gain power. His dark impulses and tribal rites both scare and seduce Marlow, until he's no longer certain of his mission in Africa anymore.

There are two parallel stories in this book, making it an unusually esoteric read. The obvious story is a critical recollection of the British colonial history in Africa during the 19th century, describing the filthy greed and exploitation in a region where natives were enslaved to serve a growing empire. Although Conrad doesn't explicitly take an anti-colonialist viewpoint, his analysis of the human behavior during these conditions lead us into the heart of the story. The search for ivory is a lifestyle of materialism, motivating an empire whose impulse is to expand to satisfy its own internal neurosis. The parallel to the West today, in particular American imperialism in the East, couldn't be more striking.

Kurtz is the alienated colonialist whose interests are not to be found in material exploitation. He regards the ivory as worthless. Instead he pursues raw power and dedicates his time to explore the dark aspects of human nature. He's both a product of a decaying empire and an outcast from civilization. His goal is to transcend his environment, and himself, to challenge the pity colonialists who want him to conform to the decay around him. Kurtz is dangerous because he is both an honest reflection of the exploitation of the region, and someone who dares to break free from the materialism and alarm his brethren: civilization has become its own disease.

Although there are countless other aspects to the story, what we learn from Conrad's brilliantly conceived work of art, is that the defining character of a civilization is its ideals, values and goals, not its raw power domination. Brute force alone, as in mindless imperialism, is slow suicide. The heart of darkness found in a civilization that fails to see any problems in enslaving a world region for ivory, parallels that of the uncivilized human soul, thus suggesting what is civilized on the surface may be animalistic on the inside. Are we still free, prosperous and morally superior creatures in the face of the horrors we create abroad? Can we heal our wounds by attacking other beasts? Or are we just lonely, desperate souls, clinging to an empire about to fall under its own weight?

He cried in a whisper at some image, at some vision—he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath—"The horror! The horror!"

Heart of Darkness, by Joseph Conrad

The Picture of Dorian Gray
Oscar Wilde

There can be many varying reasons for selling one's soul to the devil. Fame, power, love; a distraction of this world can rapidly consume the entirety of one's concentration until the distraction becomes that person's very "reality". It is fascinating to observe how the good in this world can be overlooked or neglected due to the singularity of one's concentration on what is, ultimately, the "bad".

The Picture of Dorian Gray is a story that captures such a concept and places it in the context of late nineteenth century London. Basil Hallward is a painter, one of amateur talents, but a painter that receives an inspiration that some like to call divine. A particularly new acquaintance of his, a Mr. Dorian Gray, seems to put all art into perspective for the aspiring artist. The result is a perfectly splendid picture of the beautiful Dorian Gray, who sits for Hallward in the epitome of innocence.

There is a friend of Hallward's, who goes by the name of Lord Henry Wotton. Harry, as his friends call him, is something of an enigma to the familial circles of English aristocracy; Dorian most aptly entitles him "Prince Paradox" much later in the novel. Gray is immediately captivated by the charisma of Lord Wotton, whom he met while Hallward is painting his portrait. Following the completion of the painting, Dorian becomes melancholic, having just learned the wonders of his youth and beauty from Prince Paradox; indeed, upon gazing into his own picture, Dorian Gray is already missing his youthful splendour. In his newfound narcissism, Dorian makes a foolhardy wish: that the painting grows old and ugly while he should retain his exceptional beauty.

There is a liberal utilization of symbolization in this controversial book, and most particularly so in Henry Wotton and his meeting with Dorian Gray. Harry, who becomes Dorian's closest friend, represents a kind of hedonism that is vastly different from the sociality of their familiars, and yet also apart from the vulgar tastes of the uneducated.

In the words of Dorian Gray:

"Yes: there was to be, as Lord Henry prophesied, a new Hedonism that was to recreate life, and to save it from the harsh, uncomely Puritanism that was making its own curious revival. It was to have its service of the intellect, certainly; yet, it was never to accept any theory or system that would involve the sacrifice of any mode of passionate experience. His aim, indeed, was to be experience itself, and not the fruits of experience, sweet or bitter as they might be. Of the asceticism that deadens the sense, as of the vulgar profligacy that dulls them, it was to know nothing. But it was to teach man to concentrate himself upon the moments of a life that is itself but a moment."

Before Dorian Gray met Lord Henry Wotton, he recognized things as they were. Following that momentous exchange, Dorian Gray recognized only shadows. Art, to the corrupted youth, was not just a reflection of life and love, but reality itself. Passion is the first and final goal of his new worldview, and it ultimately destroys the child within.

Basil Hallward symbolizes the simplicity, the good, and the rare in modern London: his friend Henry calls him "dull", as all great artists are. Hallward, in a clever instance of foreboding, did not want Lord Henry to even meet Dorian: "Dorian Gray has a simple and beautiful nature… Don't spoil him." The good in life seems to become less relevant, less necessary as life goes on, as the individual experiences more, until the good doesn't seem to exist… at all.

A key idea in the Picture of Dorian Gray is, I think, the fall of innocence to the pleasures of this novel Hedonism that plays the antagonism of this story. Though Dorian may indeed retain his outer beauty, startling the perceptions of everyone near him, the soul within becomes unrecognizable to a simple eye, to any eye removed of darkness. In the writing of this, his only novel, Oscar Wilde manages to take hold of several key ideas and succeeds in putting them on a magnificent, provocative display. The central themes, art, love and novelty, are the fine threads that boldly form the grandeur of the patterned Idea. As this is the ultimate goal in every work of art, I would claim that The Picture of Dorian Gray is an accomplished story on every level.

The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde

Works
Sir Thomas Malory

Almost everyone knows about King Arthur to some extent, but most people are only aware of the name, maybe the stories of Launcelot's and Guinevere's love affair, and perhaps Mordred's betrayal and the destruction of mythical England. There are, however, more knights, examples including the hilarious Sir Dinadan and the pitiful yet noble and endearing Sir Palomides. There have been multiple retellings of the Arthurian myths, but the most complete collection to come from the actual British Isles would be the works of Sir Thomas Malory, collected by Eugéne Vinaver under the simple title Works and organized into 8 distinct, yet ultimately connected romances.

The collection really begins with King Arthur's most famous action: pulling the sword out of the stone, and with it claiming the right to rule England. His ambition sweeps farther than most people remember, though, because in the second book he expands his rule to the Roman Empire and defeats the Emperor Lucius, essentially becoming emperor of Europe himself. A grand collection of knightly adventures follows; Launcelot du Lake, Sir Gareth, and Tristram de Lyones each have an entire book dedicated to them, which are all full of many other adventuring knights who sire bastards, kidnap (and return) noblewomen, and a few unfortunates get to suffer, in the words of Malory himself, "evyl eese upon the braynne-panne." After the Grail Quest, however, the Arthurian Kingdom becomes more and more unstable, eventually destroying itself Ragnarok-style when Arthur and his son Mordred kill each other in battle, and the few surviving knights, realizing that their world cannot be saved, accept their fate, join Monasteries or go off to die in Crusades.

This book is a treasure of Anglo-Saxon mythology, but that does not mean that everyone should read every section of the book. Although some may be intrigued with the idea of Arthur conquering the Roman Empire, that story may prove too longwinded and tedious; the reader may skip it without losing too much understanding of the Arthurian World. However, the book of Tristram de Lyones and the story of the Holy Grail (or the Sankgreal) are must-read material; the reader experiences knightly adventure after adventure, and then witnesses the turning point of the Arthurian Kingdom, where the best knight of the world (Galahad) is revealed, achieves the Grail, and then dies in all the glory of the transcendent. Between those two books, we have the best combination of priestly asceticism and knightly valor; symbolic profundity and just plain fun in-your-face sword-fights, presented in delicious Malory-style Middle English.

For those willing to dive into the book, expect unbelievable, over-the-top presentation of Middle English. While in most copies a glossary is supplied, the occasional French and rare German word may prove a hindrance to anyone looking for something to read at breakfast. Do not try to read this book at anything but a leisurely pace; because of the episodic plot structure that characterizes Arthurian legends, anyone reading this book for fun can take a week-long break and renew reading later with increased vigor. The prose borders on the poetic, yet is succinct and understandable in ways that modern poems can never be.

The knights, fortunately, are simultaneously believable characters and representations of spiritual and moral archetypes. The very fact that Malory makes not only Launcelot, but Palomides, Sir Bors, and Dinaden likeable and relatable while still being able to illustrate a point speaks very highly of his abilities. Characters have flaws, weak moments, and unearthly triumphs; sometimes only to be brought crashing back to earth in a disappointment that readers can't help but sympathize with. Almost every character, not "just" Launcelot and Gawain, get rounded out and while that may occasionally lead to their fifteen minutes of glory, it may just as well lead to tragedy in death or infamy.

The fact that this was written in Medieval England may lead some to think that this is a book meant purely for academics. While it is true that this collection has academic value (there is no shortage of scholarly journals and book offering different interpretations and readings of the Works), to pigeonhole it in this way would be ignoring the enjoyment value of reading about knights beating each other. At the same time, to dismiss it as a glorified action novel would be ignoring the message books like "The Tales of the Sankgreal" are trying to say. Yet, at 600 pages, there's probably simply too much for the reader to focus his attention on everything. In the end, the reader must simply find two or three aspects of the book s/he really enjoys, and focus his entire concentration on that. This way, the book will resonate with the reader soundly and for that reason will become a much more enjoyable read.

Works, by Sir Thomas Malory

The Revolution - A Manifesto
Ron Paul

Republican conservative Ron Paul stirred the political arena when he candidated for presidency during the 2008 U.S. election. His stance on a variety of issues differ radically from the platform of his party members: bring the troops immediately back home from Iraq and elsewhere in the world, abolish the Federal Reserve, reinstate the Constitution, cut down on taxes and social welfare, dethrone the corporate tyrants, and let the free market replace government-controlled economics. During his candidacy, despite the conservative message and the unbelievable resistance met in the public media and from his party members, Ron Paul managed to attract a large audience of loyal followers among all political groups, and scored records in fundraising against wealthy opponents. "The Revolution - A Manifesto" is his political legacy and official manifesto to the world.

Paul begins by describing the recent elections in America as a charade, attacking its two-party system and the illusion of political choices presented to the American people. This clearly separates him from both parties and thus he takes the stance of an independent that is trying to reform the system from within. His goal is evident: to reinstate the Constitution through political and economical libertarianism. Paul moves on to define his political stance on foreign policy, where he distances himself from the kind of corporate globalism that has defined modern American politics since it left the Constitutional advices of not engaging in interventionism. Paul's conservative stance appears especially radical today, when America has the vision of maintaining a worldwide empire. Paul attacks the world police ideal and wants to cease all interventionism, especially in troubled areas such as Iraq, and open up diplomatic relationships with countries like Iran. In doing this, he hopes America will improve its international reputation and avoid plunging itself into another world war while withering away in debt.

The platform for all of Paul's basic values stems from the Constitution and its policies critical of governmental interference with State laws and individual liberty. He defends a typical libertarian stance, but rooted in the tradition of Constitutional rights and freedoms, which marks a difference from the modern liberal movement. Ron Paul believes in the creativity, independence and freedom of the individual, and attempts to fuse this worldview with a radical conservative perspective on main governmental problems to reduce the bureaucracy, credit booms, foreign wars and Orwellian methods of central governmental and corporate powers. By doing this he circumvents both the Democratic and Republican paradigms, while working to restore what he believes is the traditional platform of the Republican party: less government, no intervention.

Paul spends a great deal of the book clarifying his stance on economic issues, especially how the Federal Reserve system works, basic economic and personal freedom, and the vision of a free market, unregulated by the governmental body. His philosophy is also here a libertarian common-sense approach: by strengthening civil society and private alternatives to the main governmental institutions for education, welfare and environmental policies, Paul hopes to both secure personal freedom and lower taxes and spending to improve the economy. He explicitly deals with the banking system of America and describes the way in which the Fed deliberately inflates the value of the dollar, proposing America to return to the gold standard. His finale summarizes a philosophy and national "revolution" that seriously challenges the status quo of the political and economical elite in America, seeking to end the parasitic mechanisms in society by removing the system policies that allow them to prosper and gain dominance over the lives of ordinary working and middle class people.

"The Revolution - A Manifesto" is a strike right in the heart of the modern globalist politics, and a brave defence of a stable, local, free life for healthy middle class people in America. Despite giving up the presidency this year, Ron Paul clearly demonstrates that he is not going to back down anytime soon for the system he seeks to change. His platform policies can therefore rightfully be called a "revolution," in the sense that this is a true, honest attempt in trying to reform the complete fabric of a society, but doing so without any bloodshed or alienation from the general public. Ron Paul, through his intellectual honesty and intelligent message, has managed to distil the traditional Constitutional past of America into a modern libertarian uproar, and his ideas are gradually spreading out asymmetrically to third positionist candidates who realize his character and greatness. And so, despite the pressure from global super powers and the illusions of the democratic elections, one man signifies hope, courage and intelligence in an age where these things are lost as social values. An inspirational, clear sighted read for anyone remotely interested in the past, present and future of American politics.

The Revolution - A Manifesto, by Ron Paul

World Made by Hand
by James Howard Kunstler

Apocalyptic scenarios are an incredibly easy and thus popular palette for fiction. The blank slate that gives free reign for plot and setting development is one compelling reason. A more telling one is that if you treat the world as inevitable failure, all kinds will sign on assuming that you have solved their problems of inaction or underconfidence for them through escapist fantasy.

Without background on the novel, it could be argued that World Made by Hand shares superficial elements of this approach. The unstated but omnipresent basis for the book is author James Howard Kunstler's so-called (and very possible) "Long Emergency," his conception of the death spiral that will occur as cheap energy disappears and the systems it props up falter, the effects of anthropogenic global warming broaden, and geopolitical and financial instability, exacerbated by the first two problems, come to a hilt. Central government, industrial agriculture, complex infrastructure, entertainment, and technology -- the sum total of our modern lives -- all sputter and fail as a result.

The simple folks of a sleepy Upstate New York town, once affluent bankers, lawyers and real estate agents from throughout the region but again peasants, have been thrust back into the technological equivalent of the early 19th century through just such a scenario. We've no idea when the change occurred, but the still-rotting suburban waste at the town fringe and techno-remnants of our familiar age are everywhere, often having been stripped for scrap or left abandoned for lack of want. Many have lost loved ones to famine, terrorism or disease; those who have survived have to count themselves lucky to be in a place where the anarchic racial violence raging elsewhere is generally non-existent. For the good of the story, however, the extent of the death fantasy in the novel ends there despite the dire warning it carries. Also despite the theme the approach is decidedly light-going. Main character Robert, who once worked with computers but now finds himself farming most of his backyard, is accidental party to foul play and quickly sees his roles shocking him out of the relative comfort of his meager and lonely existence.

This simple-going plot says a lot about the world in which it develops. Nothing here suggests widespread neuroses or self-obsessions beyond the fading memories of the change that occurred and tragedies brought with it. Necessity has pushed these luxurious concerns aside, just as it has erased "feminism," empty teenage rebellion, and other signs of more decadent and energy-intense times. What may have been spent on these or in pursuing entertainment in the past has reverted to the cultivating of forgotten skills, cooperation and socialization with neighbors to complete useful and important tasks and, in general, effort for all of it in proper ratio to the rewards received. We are allowed to consider two ends of this collectivist spectrum, including through the religion that rides into town in the form of a darkly comedic and semi-mystical cult leader and his kin, and their presence, though the cause of some annoyance, ultimately spurns the drive of the townsfolk to overcome their self-pitying lull and remake their station; we are thus witness to the true, inner triumphs of people instead of their unresolved confusions or self-serving mental passions.

Unlike some apocalypses, this one promises no ascent to a boundless paradise as that is precisely what is being left behind. Much like them, though, we have been damned by sin, in this case the sin of our collective and short-sighted failure to maintain ourselves as a purpose-driven people in the face of overwhelmingly abundant energy and easy solutions. If there is any hint of schandenfreude to be found in this book's portrayal of this, it is far overshadowed by the author's clear hope for a world where earnest effort, community, heroism and love have all regained their proper standing atop the collapsed ruins of the ephemeral individual kingdoms we have erected.

World Made by Hand, by James Howard Kunstler

Journey to the End of the Night
by Louis-Ferdinand Céline

The beginning of the 20th century marks a critical time in the history of Europe. As countries like Germany, France and Great Britain fuelled their industrial and colonial growth as dominant imperial powers in the world, Europe eventually found itself at internal conflict over the resources and power available. When the First World War broke out in 1914, the West rapidly changed from a positivist and progressive civilization, to a sinister and absurd battlefield, devoid of the grand humanist values previously espoused. In the center was the cruelty and horror no one thought humanity would be capable of. The art of the time, during and after the World War, naturally came to reflect this apocalyptic zeitgeist, revealing a dark, feral unconscious wide-awake in the minds of soldiers, businessmen and political leaders. Louis-Ferdinand Céline was one of the artists in Europe who responded to the madness around him, and Journey to the End of the Night attempts to illustrate what he experienced and felt during this period.

The novel is a half-fictional, half-biographic work, starting out in an increasingly nervous France, where the main character Bardamu lives. Living a quiet university life, indifferent to the world around him, Bardamu one day sits at a café with his friend Arthur, joking about and demeaning the every day life in France, when the two gentlemen suddenly hear the sound of a military parade outside. Bardamu, excited and stoked from the lively conversation, decides to join the parade in an attempt to mock its pretentiousness. The absurdity of the situation appears when Bardamu finds himself caught in the event, not able to escape. The next thing he knows, he's standing at the frontline of war, crouching under gunfire from angry Germans. Suddenly Bardamu is at the very center of a World War.

Bardamu experiences the horrors of war and simultaneously spits out his angry, violent misanthropy against a humanity gone mad and a world completely incomprehensible. Reality melts together with the confused and dark psyche of the soldier, alienated from the patriotic slogans and the voices of pain and death. Bardamu eventually manages to escape the intense battle and stumbles across Robinson, a character he will meet time and time again throughout his journey. Together they find mutual agreement on avoiding a patriotic but safe death. After they split up in opposite directions, Bardamu is incarcerated at a French hospital for war soldiers, where he finds himself switching between avoiding the death punishment for deserting his war duties, and maintaining a sexual romance with a lady in town.

The relationship between the two lovers eventually reveals itself to be just as hollow as the outside world, and Bardamu leaves his romance like he once left the battlefield: always running away from falsehood and danger. As soon as he can, Bardamu leaves France on a boat to the colonial parts of Africa. During this trip, he is yet again faced with hate and violence from the people around him. Nothing makes sense anymore; people either stab each other as a product of feral emotional reactions, or praise each other's social image for the sake of keeping the war circus alive. By participating in the false community of patriots, Bardamu's cowardliness saves his life once again, leaving him stranded in a hot, corrupt and violent French colonial area in West Africa. Through a transportation firm, he is immediately sent off to a remote part in the middle of nowhere, previously operated by his alter-ego friend Robinson, where bloodsucking mosquitoes, parasitic natives and a confusing environment almost manage to block out his will to survive.

After having escaped the darkness, hypocrisy and exploitation of colonial Africa, Bardamu makes a trip over to New York. No rest in peace is to be found here either; the industrial and commercial landscape of modern America disgusts him. He continues to live a bohemian, deviant, perverse life, set in the erotic cinemas, fancy hotels, cheap whorehouses and industrial factories. Through his lifestyle, he eventually meets a character that for the first time distinguishes itself from the plague of loud machines and hollow people, by showing an honest and compassionate understanding for him as a person. But the love to a prostitute, the lending of money from an old and bitter lover, and the third meeting with the strange Robinson, lead Bardamu back to France and the city of Rancy. It is in France that the journey ends, culminating in Bardamu's successive insight into the heart of madness. The war is over, but for the decaying West, the conflict of overcoming its own disease has yet begun.

Céline, together with Marcel Proust and André Gide, played a key role in the renaissance of the French novel, and Journey to the End of the Night is seen as one of the masterpieces in 20th century literature. Céline's language is characterized by the subjectivist, perverse, foul, violently intense and introspective bursts of prose. He broke from all linguistic traditions at the time by giving voice to the French spoken language and dissolved the barriers between the mind of the individual and the collective mind of the world. Bardamu's monologues fluctuate between internal conjectures and metaphoric descriptions of the outside world, which mirrors the soul of a barren Western landscape. It's often very humorous and emotionally engaging, but never without the dark edge of absurdity, that without it, people like Sartre wouldn't later have become famous. It's a challenging read to dwell into the mind of Céline's cowardly self-centered and indifferent protagonist Bardamu and his neurotic acquaintances. Still, without necessarily sympathizing with Bardamu, we slowly come to recognize that his social discourse and deviant worldview are the sick products of a declining civilization.

Beyond the violent misanthropy and the bohemian hedonism lies what the title suggests is the goal of the journey: the endless, unexplored night. There we seek peace and strength to go on living in a world that's declared war on itself for the sake of profit and lost dreams. This book, written in 1932, is maybe more current today than ever before. With the Cold War tendencies seen in the conflict between growing super powers in the East and the declining Anglo-American empire in the West, Journey to the End of the Night is a peace ritual; a psychological rebirth which strives to survive the lies and the hypocrisy distilled in the social world. It throws us mercilessly back unto the battlefield by asserting that great values and the will to live life passionately are gone. The gateway to reconstruct and pile together whatever's left of the human soul and the society in which it is confined, is to stare the cruel and the absurd straight in the face and dare to continue the journey for the sake of being present. Hopelessly disturbing but at the same time compassionately relieving, this is a fresh blow of societal and cultural analysis at the height of French modernistic literature. You'd be lost without reading it.

Journey to the End of the Night, by Louis-Ferdinand Céline

Once a Warrior King
by David Donovan

When I was a teenager curious about the world, I found this book, and it entirely changed my outlook on politics. It is a memoir that describes the experience of a soldier who not only confronted the enemy at close quarters, but had an insight into the infrastructure of the war effort and how it was designed. His analysis of the war in this book, which is more about the theory of war and the psychology of winning, showed me how repeated failures come about: through repeated failures of method, which relate to failures of intent.

Donovan, a graduate of the Special Warfare School which taught how to fight and survive in a jungle environment, served in a slightly unusual capacity as the head of a Mobile Advisory Team, which were elite American soldiers who organized Vietnamese soldiers and fought with them in battle. He was closer to the lawless zones as a result and spent his time near the small village of Tram Chim, protecting it and interfacing with the people. Where others had more backup, he had almost none, and had to survive as an integrated part of the people and landscape of Viet Nam.

What strikes me most about this book is how Donovan illustrates that decency and common sense are inextricably tied, and points out that if you want to win a war, you must have an objective and not disintegrate into chaotic or selfish behavior, which he saw in surplus within the military. His morality like that of most people of wisdom -- and this book brims with wisdom, if we have no other word for it -- is strict in its goals, but not reactionary and silly; it is like a hand reaching for an object in darkness, a feedback loop of feeling a situation out and finding an appropriate response.

The book furnishes us a view of the Viet Cong that rarely makes it in full form into the media, which is as an organization of corrupt outlaws who terrorized villages with murder, booby traps and collection of tributes -- more like a Mafia than a fighting force. Equally strongly portrayed are the corrupt aspects of Vietnamese self-government, and the illusory perceptions of an American government distant from the war, a military command trying to govern by wire from air-conditioned offices, and an American public which would rather turn the channel.

As a protagonist, Donovan believes in the fight against communism as a subset of the fight against unworkable and illusory systems and people. He detests the cruel, stupid and pointless as much as the artfully designed destruction of politicians, and recognizes communism as an illusion created to pander to the morally corrupt. However, he never lets himself become the voice of propaganda. He stands between the combatants looking for sanity, one that is based in a fundamental respect for the Vietnamese people and the good Americans he knew, and critical of the illusion on all sides.

For thoughtful people, the only real moral question is "How do I do good, when I must sometimes do evil things to fight evil?" Donovan reveals his ambivalence about killing early in the book, but is alert enough to face it stoically with a kind of zen nihilism that shows he has no illusions about the place any of us individuals serve in the much larger world. He is focused on the goal and much of this book is a meditation on how to find sanity in goals, and how to eliminate the squabbling neurosis that afflicts America now as well as then. This is not political rhetoric, or even religious, but common sense insight into human psychology, and it's one reason this book is such a memorable read.

Any person wanting to study the Viet Nam conflict will benefit from the illustration of tactics on the ground, intelligently linked to revelations of the mentality behind those who fought the war. Donovan ties together mentation with action and results, spinning his yarn through anecdotes interrupted by critical thinking about the American war effort and its effect on its soldiers. While this book does not have the dramatic flair that many, like James Webb, have inserted in theirs, it remains vital to those who have read it for its honesty and perception.

Once a Warrior King, by David Donovan

David Donovan now has a web site here where you can buy this book.

Empire
by Orson Scott Card

When many people were bloviating about how George W. Bush represented the darkest threat to America in recent history, Orson Scott Card found himself worrying about how the demographic popularity of that thought itself represented a darker threat. In his view, the real story of the Bush presidency was how America had become polarized between a mostly urban, coastal, professional Left and a mostly rural, central, working-class Right. Even more, he saw how cynical media masters and other popularity manipulators were leveraging this dissent to their own benefit.

From that thought came Empires, which melds Tom Clancy and Michael Crichton/Robin Cook-style scientifically informed paranoia to give us a vision of a new American revolution. In it, a terrorist assault on the United States is used as a pretext for what appears to be a straightforward political situation. However, once the dust settles, it becomes clear that all is not well, and nothing is as it seems, in a country that has suddenly had to face how radically divided it is.

While Card's patriotism and American-style conservatism can be overstated in this book, I don't like other reviewers think it is too dogmatic in what he shows us in the story: he remains a faithful author, showing us how things would go down given the precepts he established. However, whenever given a chance to editorialize he does, in part trying to convince us that he's not taking a Right/Left stance, but that this division arose from the left.

I enjoyed this book. It's a heck of a read, with bready text that passes quickly without much artistry but describes with clarity situations that are artfully arranged. In other words, like most science fiction, you aren't reading it for the similes, but for the characters and logical developments in situations no one seems to expect. Action occurs in the undertones of those who worship dynamic change but are somewhat indifferent to its methods.

Characters are not "deep" in the pseudo-literary sense that's popular now, but are clear archetypes recognizable from life, with simple but honest motivations. Descending into this world is easy and immediately one is caught in the theatre of people who are trying to do the right thing in a world where confusion reigns. While the maze of deceit will not be a shocker to anyone who has read enough ancient history, it makes itself irresistible through a contemporary setting and an overt grappling with the divisions we normally try to ignore.

Some will find the heavy political undertones too much for light reading but here they are more plainly revealed than in Clancy or Crichton or Cook. The real story, as always, is a struggle for survival in a time when we must predict complex interactions of social and psychological forces to know what each action will create, and through that knowledge pick the right one. This fast-paced thriller will delight anyone who likes a good story of struggle by good people.

Empire by Orson Scott Card

The City of Gold and Lead
by John Christopher

Literature for young adults is divided between those who try to impart useful knowledge about life ahead and those who, having found life's byways ran more into stagnation than thoroughfares, want to project their neurotic sense of fear onto children. This book, despite being of the former sense, plays with the latter by addressing adult paranoia in a metaphorical form, much like cult movie They Live: what if our society was taken over by aliens who attacked our minds and not our technology?

In the contemporary or future setting of the book, the narrator and protagonist Will is a thirteen-year-old boy in a pre-technological land ruled by giant mechanical tripods. These outer space critters allow humans to conduct their affairs so long as every adult is "capped," or implanted with a mechanical brain control device, at age 14. As part two of a trilogy, The City of Gold and Lead describes the infiltration of an alien city on earth by Will and two cohorts. In the previous book, Will and his cousin Henry had observed how capping reduced creativity and made people automatons, and so had rebelled, destroying a tripod and heading to the French alps where they were free from oversight.

Now part of a revolutionary group, Will returns with a false cap to disguise himself amongst the oblivious and compete in Olympic-style games whose victors go to serve the "Masters," or organic creatures that pilot the tripods, in their city of a gold barrier and high internal gravity, completing the image of the title. His mission is to infiltrate and learn as much as he can about the aliens, and then if possible, escape. We don't do spoilers in this review, so you'll have to RTFB to learn more.

As someone who ponders how to tell his own children about growing up in this world of uncertain leadership and future, I'm grateful for this book, which presents in gentle metaphor the necessity of tackling the adult condition outside of its ostensible function. Adults do get capped around age 14, when they start worrying about careers and how others see them; both are linked by the function of pluralist systems, where the most votes or buys make successes, since there is no real goal to life other than serving ourselves because we share few values in common.

Numerous metaphorical details throughout the book are convincing. First, the capped are docile, but aggressive toward each other in their pursuit of wealth. Second, technology is a liberator in the right hands, and slavery in the wrong. Third, the honest and holistic viewpoint of childhood, which values creativity and loving life more than material, is praised for what it teaches and also shown to lack wisdom, which is gained by characters through struggle. Finally, the book shows us several interesting characters who have become aware that things are not as they seem, and rebelled by living apart from the capped herd.

While most books for children and young adults try to sugarcoat reality, in this book a sense of menace and fear pervades every page. That emotion roughly corresponds to what most children 11-14 are feeling about the world they're about to enter. Unlike books that try to show us happy thoughts, and have us take them at face value, this book shows us a world lost in its own minds, and how to overcome that situation and prepare for eventually defeating it.

By not presenting another illusion to help us through a bigger illusion, it introduces helpful knowledge; by telling us of victories and defeats, it shows us how we can escape what will drag others down. In doing so, it escapes the trap of psychology, which takes symbols and society at the same face value, and gives young adults in the grip of justifiable social paranoia and outlet and a nurturing, exciting, sustaining game plan. I'll be stuffing stockings with this subversive and fun masterpiece of young adult literature this Christmas.

The White Mountains Trilogy:
The White Mountains (1967)
The City of Gold and Lead (1967)
The Pool of Fire (1968)

Movies are for the most part modern entertainment without any long-term, meaningful value. They brainwash and control us subtly by integrating commercials, ads and political messages with shallow plots that, thanks to their moral simplicity, anyone can understand and relate to. But not all movies are junk. Here's a list of 10 movies that all criticize modern society, uphold traditional values and carry some artistic merits.


A Clockwork Orange (1971)

Alex de Large is a violent outcast from society, raping and killing with his criminal friends for the sake of experiencing violence. One day the government starts up a project to counter the growing criminality, by trying to alter the individual's perception of violence and impose an association with self-suffering. But the plans to reform human nature don't work out quite as expected...

A brilliantly conceived satire, this early critique of attempts to regulate our natural behaviour by turning us into pacifist robots, exploits our fear of brutality and death to point out that while growing violence in our society is a scary trend, there is no way we can or should remove violence altogether. Humorously depicted is a corrupt, pretentious system, unable to cope with the effects of the problems it has created itself.

Apocalypse Now (Redux) (1979)

Francis Ford Coppola's masterwork is a movie loosely based upon Joseph Conrad's novel The Heart of Darkness. The story takes place during the Vietnam War where Captain Benjamin L. Willard is called in on a secret mission to eliminate renegade Colonel Walter E. Kurtz. Stories claim that Kurtz has set up his own army within the jungle and become a god for the natives. What has happened to Kurtz and why does the US military want him dead?

Apocalypse Now is a poetic, allegoric journey into the heart of the Western civilization, struggling to understand its downfall and desperately calling for armageddon to sweep its spreading corruption away. It gives a deeper understanding of the worldwide effects of materialism and how this relates to modern day colonialism. Nihilistic but also full of human idealism, this movie encapsulates a hell on earth and the choice of worshipping this as an experience.

Blade Runner (1982)

Set in Los Angeles 2019, policeman Rick Deckard stalks the technological jungle of the 21st century in the search for humanoids known as 'replicants.' His investigations lead him closer to the truth behind the company that produces the half-man/half-robots and their ultimate purpose, but also force him to reconsider what is "human" and "artificial."

A given sci-fi classic, this movie from '82 has still a load of points to make about both our current and future society in the West. The story reflects an America bought up by global corporations that have turned the country into a mechanical melting pot of consumers without cultural or existential identity. Blade Runner ultimately challenges our view of what it means to be a human being and contextualizes this insight in a political-historical context of thought.

Cannibal Holocaust (1980)

Before copycats like The Blair Witch Project started to make big bucks on experimenting with documentary-style shootings, Ruggero Deodato shocked the world with his controversial Cannibal Holocaust. The story is about a missing documentary film crew who disappears in the wild jungles of South America to explore the culture of cannibal tribes. A New York anthropologist finds undeveloped material from their shootings in the area and travels back to the city, viewing the film in detail. What he finds is shocking and unbelievable...

Ruggero Deodato was long ahead of his time, both concerning cinematography and the criticism of the modern Western civilization and its ignorant understanding of traditional foreign culture. Not for the faint of heart, this movie portrays an inversion of what is commonly perceived as "civilized" and "primitive," asking us the question: who is really the barbarian in our time?

Conan The Barbarian (1982)

Arnold Schwarzenegger plays Conan, a young boy seeing his family and entire tribe being mercilessly killed by a conquering religious cult. Conan survives as a slave but manages to break free and sets out to take revenge upon the people who killed his tribe. Together with friends he finds on his way, motivated by the belief in the power of the steel, Conan turns into a spiritual and physical war machine to fulfil his destiny.

Disregarding the undeniable cheese factor of this movie, Conan The Barbarian is a classic sword & sorcery experience that defends the traditional European Pagan values against the false spiritual cult of Christianity. The Nietzschean will to power is contrasted against a dogmatic belief in an external world that supposedly controls our reality, leading to war and destruction. Heroic, powerful.

High Plains Drifter (1973)

Clint Eastwood, "the man of all men," appears in this Wild Western movie as a stranger from the hills, riding into the quiet town of Lago to get something to drink. Hassled by some local citizens, his stay becomes delayed by rapes and shootings. In the mean time the town is preparing for the return of three bandits, desperately wondering how to defend itself. Who is the stranger and can he be of help?

Like many other movies in this genre, High Plains Drifter is a traditional defense of the local organic community and its foundational basis of cultural consensus. Clever and well executed, Mr. Eastwood has here directed a masterpiece in Western cinema that still today will remain the best of examples on why our modern society has become a violent, unsafe and ruthless place to live.

Repo Man (1984)

An underground cult from the early eighties, Repo Man is the chaotic story of young Otto Maddox. After finding out that his parents have donated his college fund to a TV priest and his girlfriend has dumped him, Otto decides to leave his old life behind and become a repo man. Caught in a world of UFO conspiracies and dangerous missions, a lifestyle of intense experiences become the motivation to stay alive in a society of governmental corruption, youth criminality and lack of hope for the future.

There are a number of reasons to why this movie is important. It correctly reflected the disintegration of America at the time and esoterically tried to inspire the punk generation who didn't know where to go or what to believe in. Director Alex Cox is still able to communicate the answer to today's teenagers through this futuristic fantasy: we must live for the experience itself -- life is only as meaningful as we make it.

Taxi Driver (1976)

Travis Bickle is a Vietnam War veteran, working as night time taxi driver in a city he's come to loath and hate. Filth, degeneracy, violence and corruption fill the streets. Travis becomes increasingly fatalistic about the situation as he comes in contact with a teenage prostitute, trying to help her live a better life, while the politicians in power rather sweep the problems under the carpet and continue their corrupt businesses. For Travis, who's already mentally unstable, it all becomes enough and he sets out to wage war on modern society and its handlers.

There's a reason to why many people appreciate this movie and it's possibly because we identify with Travis. Seeing society dissolve from within, we desperately cling on to whatever sign of life that can be saved. Although overtly bleak and despairing, Taxi Driver is an uncomfortable but beautiful journey without any happy ending. It leaves us with a void that in effect reflects our meaningless, hollow existence.

The Seventh Seal (1957)

Crusader Antonius Block and his squire Jöns return home to find their country struck by the Black Plague. Antonius meets Death and is told that his time is up but he challenges Death on a game of chess to postpone life and seek answers to the purpose behind God and existence. As people are dying in masses and praying for salvation, Antonius and his friends struggle to understand the suffering of mankind. Can religion save us from death?

Ingmar Bergman's answer is a cold but realistic No. When we try to escape death, we ironically begin to worship it. God becomes the pale realization that all life must end. Christianity is here exposed as a mass religion of hypocrisy and moral fear of suffering, leading to a belief in an afterlife that will "save" us from reality. The Seventh Seal is one of the brilliant masterpieces in modern cinema, hauntingly captivating to this day.

The Wicker Man (1973)

Sergeant Howie investigates the disappearance of a missing girl on a remote Scottish island. Although the locals claim she's never lived there, strange Pagan rituals echo a society that's disconnected from the modern world and adopted a mystical, self-sacrificial worldview. The more the police sergeant is looking into the mystery, the more he understands that a murder has been committed on the island.

The Wicker Man is another cult classic that's been fairly popular, despite the different versions that have been released throughout the years. Both a theological debate around the moral impotence of Christianity and a uniquely executed musical, this movie is a charming, erotic and mesmerizing experience that explores the worship of our natural world as a counter revolution to the modern civilization and its moral belief in the absolute value of the individual.