The State Explored Through Art

First let us begin with an artistic critique of the state and the left/right political division.  This video is a critique leveled by the band Laibach and their artist collective.  Though it may appear fascist, it must be analyzed beyond the immediate aesthetics of its presentation.  The lyrics, for instance, are not those of a fascist dictator, but rather those of the communist revolutionary Josip Broz Tito.  They exalt the supposed virtues of the state while claiming its authority is derived from the people.  This juxtaposition of fascist imagery and communist rhetoric has the effect breaking down the divisions of left and right, leaving the viewer faced with pure violent force: the will of the state. 

To represent society within the state as the division between left and right is to institutionalize division and violence. Not only are the two sides divided against each other, but they are also divided against themselves: the left is pulled two ways by its stance as socially libertarian and economically authoritarian, while the right is pulled two ways by its stance as socially authoritarian and economically libertarian.  Society is thus doubly fragmented by its left-right division as well as its libertarian-authoritarian division.  In the end this fragmentation produces a paradigm that is both socially and economically authoritarian: this institutionalization of conflict demands more state control, more violence simply to keep things together.


This is exactly what the state does.  The state uses violence to keep the situation (the nation), that it creates and oversees, together.  It does this by representing the people of the nation to themselves.  In this way, the state is the people, but only insofar as it is the people separated from themselves.


To divide the conflict within the state into left and right parties is therefore to institutionalize the need for the state.  The left/right division -unlike the authoritarian/libertarian division- does not pertain to the nature of the state per say, but rather to the specific expressions of its adherent's individuality.  By siding with a side in the left/right division, the individual ignores the nature of the state leaving the state with the task of expressing the nature of leftness or rightness (since it is within the state that the conflict between left and right is embodied).  The state is thus left to its own devices: first encroaching on society in a "left" way (pushing through regulations on industry, instituting social welfare programs etc.) and then it encroaches on society in a "right" way (taking away personal liberties, pushing through legislation that benefits big business interests etc.).  The more the sate encroaches, the more the divisions within the state become meaningless up to the point where we have a system like we have today: a system where both parties stand for the same principles and the same policies.

It is time that we as Americans do away with this left/right divide (or at the very least, relegate it to the realm of social interaction and personal feeling) and adress the real problem: the state itself...

Dreams of Liberty (The State)                      

Feel the force of the broken ones

Blindly lashing at the branches

Afraid to strike the root and see

The end to their negative solidarity

Streets seethe under daylight’s pressure:

The negative solidarity movement marches forth.

But I remember as I stand here watching on,

That they say the night is always darkest before the dawn.

In fear the masses converge

Under banners devoid of vision,

Understanding,

And love.

No light of freedom glints in eyes

That look for solutions from above:

“The state will cure the sickness

of self-centeredness,

Greed,

And lust.

It will bring the order to our lives

Our cities,

Our nation,

Our trust.”

But the state can protect us only

From the violence we cause each other

Its touch never brings the love we crave

From every man as our brother.

It cements its rule with force’s power

That in love’s absence, projects a veneer

Of a nation’s people bound together

Though, in fact, they’re bound by fear

The state’s hand touches where we’ve succumbed

To the blind hatred that keeps us enchained

To our selfishness that preys on others

And acts on lies we’ve entertained.

The state lets us live with the folly

Of not looking our fellow man in the eyes

And knowing his pain, troubles and joy

While living with him every day of our lives.

I dream one day we’ll realize the truth

That our nation was not of fiat born

But birthed by freedom’s present light

From which the state has had us torn.

I dream one day we’ll see the truth

That love and freedom must lead the fight

Against state slavery and its chains

But ’till then we march:

Left, right,

Left, right,

Left, right.

Finally, I would like to point out that I am adding a new tag called "ideology in prose" which I will use to tag any post where i lay out a piece of my worldview in prose (as opposed to visual art, music or poetry).

Forever Means Right now

This kind of music is uncharacteristic of what I usually post.  I would urge you to listen to the lyrics

Forever Means Right Now

You want to know me

I want to know you

Space and time seem to flow on

But our eyes stand still against the tide.

You can feel our eyes locked together.

Through these eyes stare into me.

Can you see what I am trying to say?

Will we share this moment forever?

But sometimes these eyes slip away

Past mortal, living time

to the immensity of the eternal:

The instant of a feeling

that takes centuries to explain.

The instant of a moment

That takes a lifetime to understand

This proximity to reality produces

Euphoria so powerful it must be a dream,

But then I look into your eyes again.

Does this light still linger

In the longing glance you find here?

Donations

I want to keep my work free and available for public use, therefore I have set up a button for donations on the right hand column of this blog.  The donations will be used to support my spartan lifestyle.  The remainder will be used in the propaganda effort (self-publishing, propaganda dissemination etc.) or be saved as precious metals until such a time as they can support the former cause. 

If this is your first time reading this blog, I would suggest you begin by reading some of my poetry on nature, spirituality and identity.

Negative Solidarity Movement

 This is a quick poem inspired by my interactions with the Occupy Wall St movement (an interesting conversation I had yesterday inspired me to finish it).  For the most part they seem like good, well-intentioned, mostly liberal people who, when confronted by the current situation are afraid of what it might say about the politics that they've been pursuing for so long.  Rather than admit the obvious (the corruption of government as an institution, the need for a decentralized society built on organic community, the fatal contradiction of the leftist worldview that believes one can have personal liberty while the government delivers you your prosperity on a platter), they stand paralyzed in the face of reality saying things like "no one knows what will happen next", "no one knows what to do about this problem" etc. 


I hope all my OWS brothers and sisters who read this realize (and here, I speak from my deepest of personal experiences) that the first part of accepting reality and your place in it is admitting you are wrong.  I have been through this process.  It was hard living in an ideological limbo where I paid attention to so many things I was unable to form an opinion on, but admitting that my previous conceptions (I was, you could say, a generic statist) that set my course of action were wrong started me on the woodland path that I am still walking today.  Your former self will fall to ashes but you will rise a phoenix from the fires of change.

Negative Solidarity Movement

The crowd

Of decaying walls

Whose roof that united them

In common interest,

Belief,

Prosperity,

Has collapsed into the ground

Leaving them stranded:

Searching for someone to blame

As they crumble in the rain.

Out of isolation come the walls

To stand in city streets

Chanting slogans,

Holding placards,

Walking alone

Though with each other.

Between them

All bonds lie broken:

Each one stands

In contradiction with the crowd,

But walks with it

In self-righteous anger

That divides them even as it unites.

This movement stands afraid

To question

To answer

To find

An answer to their anger

For fear of what it might unbind…

God Touches A Stone

-->

The world must become your church, life must become your ministry and humanity must become your congregation.

Before I begin, let me say that I am entirely indifferent to matters of religion.  At worst, religion binds the individual to a community defined by dogma, structure, zealotry and the illusory identification with "the community of the faithful".  At best, religion is merely a means to an end -and it is this end (identification with God, existence, the One etc.) as means that I am concerned with.  Because of this, I do not discriminate among the different faiths -including atheism-, but instead, I examine the personal spirituality of the individual.  Religion provides a language and a structure in which to express this spirituality but ultimately, spirituality is an individual's personal expression of how they relate to the divine/Self.  One can participate with all one's efforts and energy in religion but have no spirituality -that is, no relation to the divine.  Likewise, one can have no religion but be the most spiritual person in the world.  To the society of his day, Jesus Christ appeared as the latter person.  The son-of-man broke with the religious traditions of his day to such an extent that he appeared a dangerous heretic to all that heard him but did not understand.  Jesus did not identify as an individual (he was/is Christ: he identified with/as God) but this did not mean that he wasn't afraid to stand out (in his society) as an individual: he spoke truth in an age and a society of lies.  For this reason he was crucified.

Now more than ever, the righteous must not be afraid to stand out as individuals.  Now more than ever, we find ourselves in a society of lies: the lie of the selfish consumer, the lie of false prosperity provided by the Federal Reserve, the lie of the false sense of power brought about by endless global war, the lie of the greatness of the wealthy and of celebrities, the lie of a society of atomized individuals.  Like Jesus Christ before us -who refused to identify as born of the corrupt Roman/Jewish world around him, but rather identified himself as the one born of God (of truth, Identity, One etc.)- the time has now come for the faithful to forge a new society, and with it, a new identity by which the corrupt society of our time might know us.
If I had to circumscribe myself as an individual (something I am loathed to do) I would do so by identifying as a libertarian (neither right nor left, capitalist nor socialist).  Ultimately this identification as libertarian is more of a belief in the abandonment of one's own individuality -and thus the liberation of Self (God, Identity, One etc.)- than it is an identification of oneself as a lone individual.

The first step in moving towards this new society consists not of making war on our "enemies" nor silencing those who disagree with us (for these are the tactics of the followers of lies) but rather, personal spiritual purification.  This consists not only of changing our lifestyle (involving ourselves more in the community and world around us, providing ourselves and our neighbors with more of the things we need to live, having a personal connection with the earth as well as with the sustenance the earth provides etc.) but also in changing that with which we identify:

When we fixate on "our" past and future, we bring "ourselves" away from the creator as we are drawn to the worldliness of creation.  God is the creator (God is Identity/One).  Though creation arises and passes away, the creator stands eternal -indifferent to the flux and flow of creation such that only God is capable of all creation and all creation exists only through its active revelation by the creator.  All that is revealed is (in) God.   Revelation/creation is ongoing.  Sin is identifying as created.  Jesus' ministry was founded in order to guide humanity away from identifying as created/worldly and towards identifying with/as the creator.  Identity is God. Identification with Identity takes place as (in) God.

God Touches A Stone (Christ Revealed)

Suddenly,

A loving smile radiated from his lips

Whose truth they understood more than his words:

“take,

eat;

this is my body”

Peter took the bread.

Peter put it to his lips.

Peter did not understand.

Puzzled stares

Dart towards each other

Finding no answers in their search.

The moment’s silence

Draws

Out.

(Though they felt his light,

they understood not his words.

But he could feel it in their eyes…)

His hands lifted the clay cup from the wood table.

“drink from it,

all of you”

Peter stepped forward.

Peter drank from the cup,

Peter felt the warmth radiate from his center,

And yet he did not understand

Still fettered in the shackles of his worldly birth

He watched

Puzzled

As the others put it to their lips.

The wine

Presented no sign to those expecting:

The simple drink from the rough cup

Sat humbly in the shepherd’s hand;

Worldly to those who did not yet know Him.

“This is my blood”

But no blood flowed from his veins.

No cut violated his body

And no bitter taste of salt and iron lingered in their mouths.

But suddenly Peter understood

As his thoughts brushed against God’s perfection.

Breaking free from the world’s tethers,

To accept his present, divine birth:

Given by Himself.

Given by Christ’s revelation:

He revealed himself in the cup,

In the wine,

In the faces of his followers,

In the dirt floor and thatched ceiling,

In the eyes:

For the first time

He shared the eyes of his beloved teacher

Who cast his gaze into the depths of his own.

Behind the eyes of the son of man

He saw the infinite identity of his father’s smile

That bore itself on the son’s complexion

Who lived there in his father’s words

As they were given to him by his faith

That kept him in the moment of his father’s unfolding creation.

Peter did not know what it was to be lost

Until God found him in his blind questioning

And struck all ego from his mind

And blessed his tongue with these words:

“This is... Me
This is Truth

This is God

This 
is 
Christ”

Interstitial Selves/Headcrack

The content of this poem is probably not appropriate for this blog but I'm going to post it anyway.  To some extent, however, i think it is a fitting counterpoint to my poem We Know Each Other.  Parts of Interstitial Selves also remind me of the aspects of the city that I describe in Displacement, though the narrator in former poem has certainly been infected by the movement of the city much more than the narrator in the latter poem.

Interstitial Selves

Inside the café

I look out on to the small portion of the city grid that unfolds before my eyes:

Beyond the softness of my translucent reflection on the window pane

Towards the sea of black coats, umbrellas and moving shapes that grace the landscape.

Another person,

Another life:

Another unread novel rotting on the shelf

Passed over by all who would read it;

Passed by on the city street.

Can you feel the rain between us

As you move on

Pretending not to see the face that stares past my prints

Shining off the window after these longing fingers pull away?

I have seen it in your face when you look down or straight ahead

And pass by the others in your bubble as if living in your own dream:

Merely a distant gaze,

You face the throng,

Face desire

Face the unconscious need that drives the surrounding movement forward

Towards the discovery of its own emptiness that renews its search and its longing.

You do not share this longing:

Dwelling in this space between the others

Content to be carried along by the forces beyond your control

How I wish your calmness would infect the world around you

So as to part this ocean of desirous chaos

That I might walk to you

Look you in the eyes

And smile…

Experiment III/Kontext

I am living in the city now.  The city is a disease upon the earth and a self-inflicted wound on mankind.  It dampens the senses and isolates us more and more in direct proportion to the extent to which it pulls us together.  I'm honestly surprised that I could even bring myself to finish this poem.  I'm afraid that it will be the last enlightened piece of literature that I produce for some time.  On the drawing board I have poems about isolation in the city, the state, the first communion at the last supper, and finally a poem about people who cannot stand to be in silence with others.  My inspired moments are far and in between but I will do what i can to change that and make the most of it when it does happen...

Experiment III

I give this poem to you.

I wanted to tell you what I am, what you are.

Though time and space seem to separate us,

I tell you:

We are together now.

It is Ourself that I’m trying to impress on you:

The now in which the words pass by

Contains our voice speaking these thoughts;

The future as it becomes the past.

We are this future,

Which consciousness faithfully reflects

As it leaves our unthought Self

To dance in the firmament of the mind.

This future is the One

That holds the present and the past

As it reveals itself as everything

When we glimpse its shadow.

So drop this poem from your hands

And drop these thoughts from your mind

So that the reader might take the time

To free itself of words and listen…

 God I can't stop listening to good Russian electronic music!