That's not to say that I'm perfect--nowhere near. I still delude myself and others in minor ways. I have trouble getting out of old habits, and I think, at some base level, it is in our nature, as human beings, to lie about things. When I catch myself telling some untruth, I usually reflect on it later to figure out why I said that I missed my train when, in fact, I just stayed for another pint because the conversation was good.
Now that I'm a parent, it seems like these issues have more weight. My own delusions will, invariably, be passed on to my kid in some form or another. And I'm surprised at how many people plan to lie to their kids for all kinds of reasons. Without calling too many people out on their issues, I'll just boil it down to this--this one important question that seems to come around, even in the middle of July:
Will you tell your kid about Santa Claus?
Christmas, as you may know, is a thorn in my side. I grew up with Christmas trees, presents, egg nog, sweaters, over the river and through the woods to grandmother's house we go, and, of course, Santa Claus. Santa was one of many mystical characters in my world, including the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny (who I always knew was a crock of shit), rock trolls, and the invisible rats that lived in my ears. Santa fulfilled a role--he brought presents that I knew my parents couldn't otherwise afford. He was the magical grandparent who deposited extra stuff on my bedroom floor before I got the pittance of obligatory gifts from my actual relatives. Santa kept me from bugging my parents for gifts throughout the year, because I had something to look forward to at the end. I even allowed the Santa myth to persist after I found my parents wrapping presents one night, when I was about 6, because I just wanted the magic to be there.
But now, as an adult, I've chosen to shed as many of those old superstitions and beliefs as possible, so I can see the world in the clearest light. I don't attribute kindness to miracles or suffering to demons. There are no angels or monsters left in my world, only the great span of humanity and nature, which provides enough drama for hundreds of Netflix originals. I still enjoy movies and games that touch on the fantastic, but that's why... they're games and fantasies. They're an escape. I like to escape reality into worlds where my own concerns can melt away and other concerns can take over. A world where everyone is basically like they are here, but there are vampires living in Louisiana? Sure. It works on some level. I like it. But when it comes to reality, I don't want my decision making process to be clouded by the possibility that an angel or a leprechaun might cross my path just when I need to cross it. I can't sit and wait for something to save me from the world. I have to do that myself.
There are arguments that such fantasies are good for children--their little brains can't comprehend all the weirdness and harshness of the world, so it's best to give some expedient answers like, "God made it that way," or "unicorns." But I'm not sure I have that power. I don't want my kid to distrust the things I say when they discover that, in fact, the rocks by the side of the road with the green shit dripping out of them are not rock troll eggs. I want my kid to have a colorful and interesting life. I want him to see magic and strangeness in the world, but I don't want him to count on it, or rely on it, or believe that it is reality. I want him to have a good separation between fantasy and reality. Two truths.
When I hear about bizarre problems or tragedies in the world, I actually turn on that fantastic part of my brain when I need it. I call it "the third rail." One one track, I have my perceptions of reality. On the second track is objective reality, or at least consensual reality that usually includes facts or perspectives that I'm not privy to. And the third track, the third rail, is the electric one that is full of strangeness and magic. There Be Dragons! A gas explosion that wipes out a neighborhood (and a graveyard!), probably vampires warring against each other. Thousands of blackbirds dropping out of the sky for no reason? Demonic sacrifices. Commercials for a new kind of energy drink? Definitely a conspiracy that proves Madison Avenue is a front for aliens who are raising us for food. And then I go back to reality, figure out if I have to call someone to see if they're okay, maybe check stock prices.
Loads of people are unable to turn off the third rail, and those people are conspiracy theorists and nutjobs. Those of us who can distinguish between fantasy and reality, but are fully aware of the possibilities that the third rail presents... that's where we get the most interesting people. One of the people who I think fits that category is the artist and activist Molly Crabapple. She's a painter and illustrator, burlesque madame, writer, and cultural critic. She was a kind of visual poet laureate for Occupy Wall Street and has been the loudest voice in my social stream (other than my friend Justin) regarding the latest government abuses of privacy, power, and Bradley Manning. When I look at her, I wonder why does she have such passion for defending someone like Bradley Manning? Manning is just some naive, conflicted kid who fell into the exact wrong profession, made some bad choices, and now is being crucified for it. Even if his punishment is minimal--15 or 20 years in prison, it's a nasty thing to suffer when you're his age. He's a baby. Why does Molly care so much? She's just an artist, a queen of weirdos and fringe elements that haunts lower Manhattan in vintage leather and lace. What the fuck is her problem?
And then I twitch, blink and look up, and realize that I've been ignoring the third rail. I've been eating the reality that I see and assuming it's the thing and not much else. I rationalize and justify a lot of things in the world and don't get angry about it, because the possible broader consequences (aliens, dragons, the end of the world) aren't in my vision. Molly's world cuts very close to the ideas of secret government conspiracies and hell and death, but she doesn't seem consumed by it. Instead, she kind of simmers with anger and disgust and disbelief, not quite sure why the world is acting so strangely. Why, she seems to ask, do we put our faith in our leaders, when they are so obviously full of shit? She wrote a great piece on the Bradley Manning verdict for the Guardian yesterday.
So my problem with honesty comes from dishonesty. I hate that so many forces in the world act dishonestly, actively misleading people to follow some agenda. A friend posted an article about the hypocrisy of some FOX news faceporter, who stated in the article that journalists' first obligation is to seek the truth, and the only way you can find truth is if you're Christian. Nevermind the religious statement, the first clause kills me. Journalism is supposed to be about truth, right? I'm not so sure. Going back thousands of years, almost all news reporting has been about someone's perspective or agenda of some kind or another. I mean, the BBC basically caused the Falkland Islands war, right? And didn't Horace Greely cajole and push the US into the Spanish American war? Who even remembers that? Anyway, journalism's great ideal seems to be something that is hung up next to news desks all over the world, and then the editors turn around and drink infants' blood with their fat, rich friends and make sure that black people all look like criminals on the front page.
And now, I'm looking at the world and seeing all this shit and wondering why I've been so quiet about it. Certainly, working for the government gives me a specific perspective, and being financially comfortable helps. Now that I have a kid, clearly I have different priorities than angry blog rants (or do I? can I finish this rant between the kid's feeding times?), and I just don't have the time or energy to go marching in the streets, but I found myself back where I was about ten years ago, when I decided to take a run at law school. I was sitting around at a bar with my old man and some of the local drunks, and George W. Bush flew into an aircraft carrier, claiming "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED." W was so full of shit then and you could see by his expression that even he knew it. One of the barflies said, "Man, that is bullshit. I can't believe they get away with this kind of bullshit! Someone should do something about that." I smirked and said, "Why don't you do something about it, rather than sit around and complain in some bar?" And then I thought, "Why don't I do something about it?" I thought long and hard and figured that if I wanted to change the world, I needed to know how it worked. Law is the rulebook for society, so I need to know law. And if I want to change the government, I need to get inside, so I can affect it directly. So here I am.
In the last five years, I can't say I've done a lot to change the government. I've managed to make some minor changes in my office in New York to streamline our processes and make sure that we're following the law, and I found that it is impressively hard to change things. I think that's what happened to our president. When Obama was elected the first time, we all believed that he would change the goddamned world. And then Guantanamo Bay stayed open. Congress stymied him at every turn. Political realities and selfishness won out over the ideals. Then we argued about health care and never really went back. Then Bradley Manning leaked a video of soldiers laughing as they shot up a few reporters and innocent civilians, and you wonder why no one knew about it. I could see it back then. I think, one day, after the inauguration, Obama sat down with those guys who really run the government in a room with no windows and he learned all of the shit that only the President knows. And it sucked. It sucked hard. He had to immediately come to terms with the fact that the world, the objective reality, is so fucked up that even the swell of idealism and support he rode in on wouldn't even scratch it. There's a big, evil world out there that our government is trying to protect the American people against, and they have to do some truly horrible shit to achieve that. So, faced with the reality of it, Obama caved a little. Then a lot. It became easier to just maintain the system and keep the evil at bay than to try to break open the system and shine some light on it. If the American people really knew that our soldiers were laughing about driving over corpses with a tank, would they support our troops quite as much? Holy shit, I doubt it.
So the government apparently has the same fear that I do, about Santa Claus. If the American people find out the truth, will they trust the government a little less? Isn't it better to keep things secret, maybe spin the truth a certain way so that people don't worry so much? Maybe I should let my kid think there's a Santa Claus out there so he doesn't worry about my relative earning power? Maybe the objective love of God that people are taught to feel is there so they can carry on in life even after their parents, their spouses, and children all let them down. Maybe I'm a rotten bastard for telling people they just have to toughen up and see the world more clearly, and that praying won't cause a bag of money to fall in your lap. Maybe those delusions are good for us. So far, I haven't really bought it.
A week or so ago, I was sitting on the couch, playing Civilization V on my laptop while Wolf rested on my chest after he had a big meal. While he was sitting there, I reached the level in my game where my civilization developed the atomic bomb. It was nearing the end of the game and I just needed to conquer one or two of my neighbors, one of which was the city-state of Brussels. In a round or two, I built a shitload of atom bombs, and I bombed the shit out of Brussels. In the game, the only thing you really see is a massive orange mushroom cloud appear over your target city, and then the land around it is orange and black and ruined. Also, the civilian population of the target city is reduced. When I was done, I felt a little uneasy. I was at the point in the game where I could have marched my guys in, smash Brussels's army, and take over the city without much difficulty. The bomb wasn't necessary. Why did I do that? Was I bored? Impatient? Was it right for me, after conquering most of the world with my conventional army, to just bomb the shit out of innocent civilians? I turned off the game, put my kid to bed, and thought about it.
Yes, it's just a computer game. The little digital people aren't real. No more real than a video poker card or an alien that I liquefy in Mass Effect. But the game is set in a universe that is not far removed from our own Earth and the rules that we follow here are mostly tracked there. The game teaches you to use diplomacy and science to win, not just force of arms. And yes, you can win the game by just killing and conquering all of your enemies, but that's an equal challenge to founding the United Nations and getting all the other societies to like you enough, or to institute a bunch of progressive social policies. I think that my playing style reflects in some way my real-life decision making, or it should. So was it OK for me to nuke civilians? No, I don't think it was. I reloaded the game from a point before the nuclear holocaust and finished it a different way. I kept my bombs, but I didn't use them. That seemed smarter.
I think, when my kid is old enough, I will teach him that it is wrong to nuke fake civilizations. Everyone should be trying to find better ways to solve their problems than using a hammer, or a bomb. There are always ways to get around a problem or to reach a goal that don't require that you sacrifice your ethics and ideals. Obama could have stayed the course and actually aimed for more transparency. People like Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden wouldn't have to exist if our leaders were more forthcoming, and insisted that our military and our police and our other officials acted in a better way for a greater purpose. I don't think we necessarily have to get our hands dirty to have a safe and successful American dream. I think that we could do better.
PS: I started another Civilization V game and won it with SCIENCE. I did have to take out one of my neighbors, a belligerent, expansionist, double-dealing king of Siam, but after that, it was all peaceful. I'm not sure if I should have let Napoleon conquer the rest of the known world, because he was kind of a shit, but at least I managed to avoid killing folks after that initial round of fighting off bullies.
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