What Rough Beast | Poem for July 19, 2017

The average man is a conformist. S/he consents to doubts and tragedies like sheep standing in rain. To some extent this is a fact. I looked up at the sky this morning and asked myself, how in the hell did we get here? This country has learned its lessons well, through tough educational/unfortunate incidents, has advanced historically into greatness. Some would argue this. So, here we sit in backyards, cooking hot dogs and drinking beer, while the strange pontificator cuts the legs off humanity, off climate. I have placed too much significance on goals and expectations, on individual systems, whether organizational, structural or interpersonal. There is a feeling of insecurity moving in on rainclouds. Perhaps this is totally my doing, I accept my choices because I become them. Substance evolves over time through trial and error. The realm of power and fear today is multiplying. Administrations are like families that rule by fear, they have a way of interlocking the common expectations at the dinner table. Was I a willing participant? What do others expect? This leads me to a pertinent statement by Ralph Waldo Emerson, “My life is not an apology, but a life. It is for itself and not a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than it should be glittering and unsteady.” I have toiled through some of the recent confusion in this country however; I can withstand personal review after many years of belonging. Some things never change. The Jester has a smiling face and room full of applause. This is by political authorization. The Jester gets a pass, a free card to act out, but isn’t the king supposed to be the observer of the tricks instead of doing the tricks? The ignorant business of conformity attempts to whip us sooner than later. Take note, that the following individuals were generally misunderstood at some point in their lives: Pythagoras, Socrates, Jesus, Luther, Copernicus, Newton, Diogenes and Galileo. To be great is to be misjudged? We pass for what we are. Perhaps the balance of power is only found in nature, as with conformity it really explains nothing. One day, we too will be faced with measure, other than a chronological mirror. As with the wolf pack, it knows when to drop one behind. It is a messy decision but the leader makes the call and the others follow. Obviously, certain individuals in our system today are pushing their own type of meritocracy. More immediately, Nietzsche believed that as children, we conform merely from impotence and fear. Almighty God looks back at the maze of orthodoxy that skulked in so tenderly on little rat feet, it is necessary to instinctively disassemble the emotional machinery of the truth. Thomas Merton once said, “The function of diversion is simply to anesthetize the individual as individual, and plunge him/her into the warm apathetic stupor of a collectivity which, like himself, wishes to remain amused.” I find current events enlightening, a disorder that is all too common. Things change. Perhaps it is within the essence of absurdity that the answers will be branded; however the circus resumes. Colin Wilson said, “In America, through pressure of conformity, there is freedom of choice, but nothing to choose from.” When one is in power one has a commanding ability to make authoritarian decisions. I don’t believe anyone has an issue today with strong leadership. Although, making an example out of others is a clear sign of the times. Perhaps it is an effort to provide mechanical control, set the ship on automatic pilot and let the rest kowtow through anxiety. There are two sides to the coin that Machiavelli flipped many years ago. It is better to be feared than to be loved he said, in an effort to keep the peasants in check. But aren’t fear and danger swimming together? The Prince is sitting on the President’s desk.