When the Unspeakable Becomes the Norm

When the unspeakable becomes the norm there’s a curious and unexpected result. It gets increasingly difficult to speak out. Now, that in itself doesn’t sound surprising. There is the obvious chilling effect of potential consequences. We expect authoritarians to oppress. What is surprising and if anything even more chilling is that there is less and less room for us to explore, share, our true concerns…, with anyone.

I remember reading about the way dark humor about Hitler and his regime was tremendously popular in Germany during the Thousand…, er, Twelve Year Reich. A similar thing during the time of Stalin and his successors in the old Soviet Union. There’s a lot of that these days here and around the world aimed at the current outbreak. This kind of thing turns into an “Ice Breaker,” replacing small talk about the weather, for instance. Actually, the weather has become part of the new unspeakable. Along with Covid and…, well, most of the things that are out there; just beyond the spectacle of cruelty and oppression; fostered by this movement to cancel reality and replace it with a raw fantasy of Power.

As someone who grew up in a situation where nothing real or important could ever be talked about; where any attempt to pull aside the curtains was met with what I considered normal; but now see as wildly disproportionate anger and vehement repression. I quickly learned to keep my true feelings and thoughts to myself. It’s a survival mechanism that works in the moment; but when it becomes a deeply ingrained habit it does immense damage to one’s ability, not only to express one’s self; but to even be able to think or feel at all.

It is tremendously difficult for me to broach difficult topics even with those I feel close to and have every reason to trust. It’s even hard to formulate what I recognize to be behind and beneath the dread and unease that’s never far from the surface these days.

The painting I’ve been using as a header for my posts recently, replacing the Hominid Skull drawing I had been using; but feel is a bit too on-the-nose. Out Loud is a celebration of the vivacity of being able to speak out. A quality I’ve always admired in others. Even when I might cringe at the imagined results of being outspoken.

It is hard for me to distinguish my personal reluctance from what appears to be a mood in the Zeitgeist. Another example of the way the internal and the external are inseparable.

Still; if what passes for public conversation on social media is any guide; and the sense I get from what others volunteer in my own conversations; there does not appear to be much appetite or acceptance for anything beyond sharing atrocity stories and hating on some flavor of other.

The revelation that so many people; even the ones who consider themselves “progressive,” or “open-minded,” are trapped in some form of fascism or another; has been chilling and alienating. It’s not surprising to seek some form of solidarity, even if it is expressed and broadcast in the most simplistic and knee-jerk fashion. We’re all like the “anxious comic,” looking for an “in” with world-weary comedy-club denizens by making some inane declaration about how bad things are in the hopes of getting a bit of sympathy. We’re also; if we care to look at all; surrounded by the appeals of those in truly drastic circumstances reaching out in any way available to them to plead as a last resort for the “kindness of strangers.”

When I was a kid in the Fifties and early Sixties I never saw a beggar or panhandler here in the US. My first experiences of this were during my family’s visits to Portugal. At that time the country was deep into its fifty-plus years of fascist dictatorship and reeling under the combined remnants of a fading empire and the drain of its people to emigration to feed the new empire flexing its muscles over here. There were plenty of beggars. The kind of thing we’re seeing here now. People with a variety of lifelong impediments, injuries, amputations, blindness, and decrepitude lining sidewalks, sitting or laying on the curb with a depth of resignation that was, if anything, more horrifying than their disability. I was shown by the actions of my parents and other “responsible adults” how to deal with this. And, for the most part that meant keeping one’s eyes level and looking over their plight. This would be punctuated by moments of performative pathos, when a coin might be pulled form a purse and tossed in their direction.

Any more demanding call for attention, as from one of the many roving Romany women; a young child perched with aplomb on one hip; who would approach assertively and un-apolegetically “demand” a coin. They would be met with righteous indignation. A lesson in the necessity that those below, “Need to know to keep their place.”

It was easy to see all of this as “the human condition.” Something that being “American” automatically raised one above. The fact that this kind of disparity has been common throughout history used as an excuse to resign one’s self to believing it was immutable.

There is another way to look at it. As we see our society fall into the same kind of morass. It has become harder to refuse to see that this kind of violence, seemingly so remote at the height of empire, will eventually come home to roost. Generations, at this point going back thousands of years, accepting inhumanity as the “human condition,” has bred universal destruction. Futile efforts to hold one’s “head above water” in these circumstances: whether through upping the violence and siding with the most oppressive tendencies; or by closing our selves off more and more in passive denial; can only deepen the collapse and assure us of a more violent fall.

We are all under tremendous stress. We are not “OK.” No one is “doing well.” Both phrases I find myself using on a daily basis anyway!

There is; for those of us still fortunate in some way to have so far avoided the worst; reason, reasons, to feel blessed. To find; as surprising as it may seem; that our personal conditions and circumstances are stable. Even improving in some ways. Having grown up close to people who were not able to survive difficulties that I managed to tolerate; but they were unable to survive intact. I have a long experience with “survivor’s guilt.” As with any psychological difficulty we need to navigate between the expectation that we should be defending our victim-hood or just outright denying the problem. This is just another example of the way our internal conditions and the external manifestations of similar injuries ripple through and constrain the way a society or culture is able to respond in the wider sphere.

Amassing grievances, no matter how well justified, will invariably lead to a spiral descent into the willful destruction of our own humanity. Denying difficulty and pushing through no matter what; while this might seem like a way to avoid the other trap; is just another route to the same result.

At the conjunction of my personal abilities and disabilities has been a certain visceral response to habit. In my experience habits have almost always felt like the “bad” kind. It’s only now, in learning an instrument and with great difficulty, that I’m becoming aware of what might be beneficial habits. For me, decades before finding Krishnamurti’s “conditioning,” I saw habit as a slippery-slope into what I used to call “stereotypical behavior.” The kind of thing that leads us into refusing to see and interact with what-is and instead, forcing our selves to maintain habitual reactions and act as though everything is fine when it is most clearly not.

I don’t see this as an “ability.” If it had not been for some deep disabilities that have made it impossible for me to willfully follow a script I would never have been in a position to be forced to attune to this dynamic. I can’t imagine what it must be like to have the kind of working memory and recall and retention of procedures that so many others have and then to be forced into a late realization that this has been a prison binding them into a reactionary relationship with what-is. The flip side of this is my own late realization that being aware of this trap, or any trap, does not insulate us from the dangers. There is a narrow passage through all this; but it does not keep one safe from misery. The best we can do is avoid compounding suffering by mistaking that our discomfort was something that could be avoided. Pain and misery exist. They have been compounded by the reactions of those trapped in suffering, making things worse by lashing out in anger and hatred. The best we can do is to resist these urges and to; with as much gentleness and kindness as we can muster; insist that it does not have to be this way.

We are not OK. It won’t be fine. After a lifetime of noticing things others preferred to ignore there is no satisfaction in being proven “right.” It’s even worse than that. Any expectation that there might come a more general appreciation of our difficulties and the need for compassion and understanding; and that this would bring about some “positive change;” has been equally misplaced. “Coping” will take us right over the edge of one or all of the cliffs we are rushing towards. Nemesis has only one recourse, tragedy. Reality will assert itself with or without our “consent.”

What are we left with?

I’ve long recognized that from within anyone’s subjectivity mortality and extinction are ultimately indistinguishable. We are all like Louis XV in this regard, “Apré mois? Le Deluge!” Being a good Nazi lets one forget that there is a rather important…, an enormity of difference, between mortality and extinction. We defend our selves from the horrors of doubt by inflicting horror and destruction all around us, ignoring that this must ultimately rebound onto us.

The other side of mortality is that to live, to be alive, is to have to keep coming back to the seemingly mutually exclusive recognitions that there is no certainty other than the certainty of death. That only by riding the edge of this paradox can we live and contribute to life, as opposed to merely existing and accelerating destruction.

We come together when we are able to set aside “coping” and acknowledge our mortality, our broken nature. Many balk at admitting that we are broken. It’s a bit late to make that kind of a demand! If we were anything but broken we would not be here! Attempting to blame it on “The Human Condition” is an excuse. Claiming “Original Sin,” or any attempt to build brokenness into life itself is part of the Big Lie. The binary mirror to exceptionalism.

When we come together in humility and a shared need we won’t “Save the World!” We just might find Joy. We just might find ways to lessen misery, to eliminate the resistance to recognizing that suffering is a self-inflicted wound that attempts to push the pain onto others and cannot but rebound onto us all. We just might counter some of the enormous debt our complicity in all the ongoing horrors has brought us to.

Recognizing that we have different capacities, different visions, and different blind-spots; we are at least turning our attention to something other than progressing towards catastrophe. Not as a denial of Enormity; but in a way that puts energy into other, life-affirming potential trajectories.

What I’m left with; I must confess; is a deep foreboding and that it has become harder than ever to attempt an inquiry. There is a sickening sense that monstrosity appears to suck the air out of our lungs. Makes it so hard, in face of so much…; I can only call it stupidity; so much celebrated stupidity. And, remember that stupidity is neither a lack of ability or information. It is a willful choice to shut out anything that challenges belief.

Extreme Narcissism is and acts like a Black Hole, sucking everything within its reach into its ravenous and ultimately un-satisfiable core. It appears to have reached an Apotheosis with certain “leaders;” but it is not that limited unfortunately. There is no way for binary thinking, “A war on the baddies!” to clear us of this affliction.

As USians, our entire culture; from the very start and in every instance of what has been “celebrated as our history;” from Manifest Destiny to The American Dream, has been deeply Narcissistic. As “Civilized People,” our entire history has also been mired in, shaped by, and led to maximize Narcissistic patterns. Every story one of conquest and subjugation based on a willful misinterpretation of what has been called predation. Turning each unit of society into either a social predator or its potential prey.

My deepest instinct, from as far back as I can remember has been to pause when recognizing that the current situation is untenable. Every story insists on carrying on, on forging ahead, on pushing through. While this has many benefits on many levels it does nothing for us in the state of extremis we find ourselves in. I would say the state of extremis we have been in for my entire life and much much longer than that. These stories have driven us to this point and every one of them has been dominated by Ego and has led to the supremacy of Narcissism.

As it becomes harder and harder to formulate and convey an articulate reflection of coherence what I’m left with is this drive to remind us of the value of pausing.

Nothing new, or substantially different, can come of pushing ahead; whether out of a desire to “return to normalcy” in any of the forms this idiocy can take. Or, a desire to sweep away the most obvious, the most pressing, the most destructive horrors surrounding us. Every available pattern of thought we might latch onto to fulfill our desires has been and cannot be extricated from the way we got here.

There are levels of futility and limits to what we can accept in the moment. None of this is to say that we cannot or should not react when confronted with unspeakable acts. What comes out of an interaction within a moment can be an opportunity to create something new and outside of our trap. It may, at least, help someone survive another day. What I am suggesting is that we neither limit our expectations of what we may do in extreme circumstances because we have internalized any belief; nor that we should repress our aversions to horrors being committed in our names and eventually to be turned against everyone.

Moments of decisive action do not dominate anyone’s time. Believing that we must be busy pushing agendas of any kind is a delusion. A form of self-aggrandizement. Most of our time is taken up by dredging up the past and imagining some fantasy of a future. This is the time when we need to pause these habitual reactions and both recognize how deep and broad the roots of our Enormity spread and recognize that none of our habitual reactions are useful. We need to feel the immensity of the void that has seemingly opened up beneath our feet as a result of what has become revealed to us and to find the peace inside somehow to begin to recognize whatever might arise creatively from this break in the pattern.

Life has always been a creative act. The Universe is creation and creation powers it. Our long excursion down this path of violent and dominating Narcissism has led us so far from any understanding of what it is to be part of ongoing creation. It has set us on this path of all-consuming destruction. It has left us ill-equipped to face its own consequences. Coherence, a “solid ground beneath our feet,” is both a necessity and, at present, an impossible expectation. We need it and this need pushes us into a state of urgency. Our refusal to accept tragedy as a part of life; especially when every effort by so many for so long has been an attempt to insist the fantasy trumps reality; has left us ill-equipped to face this moment.

Pause. Even when there doesn’t seem to be any floor to the horrors. There is so much to digest. So many old habits to abandon.

Such a task feels paradoxical. Our habits keep insisting that change can be willed. “If we have bad habits, well? Let’s break them!”

It doesn’t work that way. It’s like attempting meditation for the first, twenty? A hundred times? We are confronted with the limits of Will and we keep insisting we can Will ourselves out of it.

We cannot.