A DIFFERENT LUCIDITY

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

MANKIND THE EXPERIMENT

Mankind the Experiment
Believed itself complete
And walked cocky down the streets of the earth
Walked cocky down the street
Its destiny to meet
The alchemist’s formula it had in its right hand
Raised in its right hand, smiling so calm
Smiling inspired, so sure of itself
Smiling on and on
The alchemist’s formula, once sought in dark mysteries
Was seen in the world in clear vision
“Let us stop this superstitious spinning of concepts
“And get on with industry’s mission
“In each earthly substance hides some good human use
“We need only research its application
“The hereditary nobles who have pretended to know
“The true story, need no supplication
“Away with these bluffers of fate and God’s will
“We awoke with the truth
“And soon their power will all give way
“As their subjects all witness our proof”

Soon the new logic transformed into deeds
Slowly the world did move
Slowly the alchemist spell took its hold
Its “improve and improve and improve”
Method spawned its creations, until even poverty
Poverty, that “natural lot” of man
The struggle with which had consumed most man’s energies
Retreated at the enlightened’s hand
The days started going better for many
Than in ages of kings, and bad law as command
Until a new type emerged in this now brightened land
And said, “I am he, the completed man
“Because of the things I understand
“I stand at the summit of creation’s plan
“All life up to now was a crude reaching toward me
“The conscious intender, and the world will agree
“I will recast, as I’ve already begun
“This long-erring world, as the right that I’ve won
“My success is unquestioned, and what problems remain
“Will give way to my method, till we finally attain
“Good unto all, every future world nation”
And a self-sure worldview grew from this inspiration

Mankind the Experiment
Believed itself complete
And walked cocky down the streets of the earth
Walked cocky down the street
Its bright future to meet
And the picture of progress filled its mind
“The further the progress, the better mankind
“And one day, every struggle will cease
“One day, all the world will know peace
“One day, we’ll end ignorance and oppression
“One day, every person will gain their concession
“With needs met, greed will vanish, and compulsion, and suspicion
“All praise to England for its magnanimous vision!”

And the optimism of the truth revealed
Caused pity for the ages during which it was concealed
All understandings by minds early and late
Compared to the new truths, were held to lack weight
“The jagged primal human, thrusting into existence
“Must have its wounds balmed, and give up its resistance
“When the human elite becomes established and master”
But, as success pulled us forward, behind pushed disaster
Millions unto billions, the human race ran
And we keep reinventing, as fast as we can
The improvements no longer blessings pure, but required
The new man kept running by the condition he sired
“We have gambled our all, and we must have success
“Else it will be a far worse state into which we regress”
So now, hope was ahead, but, too, fear if we fail
And truths outside the modern, unreliable and pale

In the age when we first learned how old and how various
Were the ways of the tribes of man
We, the discoverers, held that our method of inquiry
So late and developed, put us past any mere clan
And, however the ways of savages and pagans
Newly learned, could make an appeal on one’s mind
We held fast in bracing fascination
Without doubting they must lose, at last, to our kind
And, as the future belonged to all
Yet, that all, we must convert
With various cultural flavors, of course
But no core difference to which to revert
For the powers we had let loose in the world
Required that the whole world be controlled
So that no corner could turn our ways against us
And cause the purity of our thrust to fold
And, even the corners where life was still primal
Were not let to escape from the game
Catalogued, studied, forced into concourse
And assured they could not stay the same
And the primal in each of us, which echoes those tribes
Newly shown as time-tested, was, too, rendered lame
By general discredit under the light of progress
In the same way, at the same time, our notice of them came

So come the day, once full success is won
Primal struggles and keenings will have their course run
Primal vibrance is not achieved without tragedy
Tribes vulnerable to nature, death trading with majesty
“Why abide pain when we can set the world right?
“Why gamble the soul on the spirits of the night?
“Struggle is pain, so let’s vanquish the beast
“And put to good ends all the energy released”
And what could be wrong with the goal they are speaking?
Is success, and not failure, what we all are seeking?
Which of us would choose to remain unfulfilled?
Which of us wants hope for the good life chilled?
But- is the good life really the offered gift?
Is the night not with us no matter how high we lift?
And, perhaps, its darkness not as blinding as they tell?
Are we not fit for the night as well?

But the day is claiming our minds and our world
The night itself eclipsed, its language out-hurled
On the surface of the planet, we extend our control
As a race, but becoming more mind than soul
We win greatly, but edit our original goal
To what sounds sensible to modern intent
Feeling strangely hemmed in regarding what we invent
For ourselves, out of all the good news that they’ve sent

In the night that we never quite experience
Primal struggles carry on
And seep to our vision in the soul of a building
Seep to our ears hidden in a song
The mind, in good will, cossets them for a moment
And in a secret core identity, stores
A true gem from the duties assigned in this life
Amidst the dross that that core deeply ignores
After long enough, can a final break come between
What we are in this life, and what we are?
We’ve stretched the two points to strange alienation
Until one feels strain, if one can feel it this far
Yet from near caves, round the fire, near the forests
Self to self, time notwithstanding
We can feel what it would mean, were it true
That we still obey primal demanding
And are here on a task, born in the soul's night
To win some knowledge for our own kind
That we need for a breakthrough to some deeper ability
That will include, when we're through, wisdom we left behind

But if the new is demanding we deny the old
And seems yet set to win
And we fear, in horror, the loss of unknown depths
Only knowing that the new seems too thin
Told so by some hunger inside of us
Lost in the desert of this age
Then a struggle, perhaps, it is, my friend
The wider story of our age
For the drums are still beating, below mechanical din
Touching goals we once chose to suspend
And the day the drums stop speaking to our souls
We’ll betray what we sought to extend

BEYOND ROMAN WALLS

He chopped downs Thor’s sacred oak
There was no consequence
That is, no spirits nor demigods
Punished his horrendous offense
Though he should have been smited at the very desire
His flesh ripped at the first blow of his blade
He instead full humiliated our notions of gods
Showed our religion to be a charade

His principals thought by this act to remake us
In the image of the lamb
With his sadism loosed toward the core of our vision
Himself not humble, but the charge of the ram
They failed to cloak that their desire to rule
Hid behind “being holy and just”
They intended to lead us as a flock of the meek
Lowliness, they pressed only on us
Blazing against the sins of Babylon and old Rome
In which we had no claim
With the first religion of subtraction we’d known
They sought to render us powerless and tame
The gentle lamb was given to sanction the axe
Against those who felt no worship of Him
Though the lamb’s vision was given as motherly tender
The vessel still was Rome’s law, arrogant and grim

And while southerly tribes had admired Rome
And of its glories, wanted their share
The rude northern lands scoffed at Rome’s late religion
Until its long war stripped the northern world bare
Tribes were banned from conquering on the field
Their core of self-direction given no claim
Their own urge to rule was allowed no scope
Unless it, too, was pressed in His name

And so, the same mask, and the same contradiction
As captured Rome, captured our race
And our talent for battle not overpowered by love
But given outlet against the next pagan place
May heaven yet preserve our barbarian strength
If only honesty can be retained
Or else, carefully preserve us from it
If compelled to a falsified aim
There is no helping where the story’s progressed
Nor how many lies we’ve been told
Nor the fact we must work them out, best as we can
Back from the heat to the cold
We’ve become what we never were, analyzers
Since broken from our original lore
The whole issue of “truth” raised by Rome’s religion
Has hit us to the core

The claims of the victors, to which we submitted
Still sit ill with the claims that we feel
The struggles are too personal, too inside our souls
To simply listen to the priest, and kneel
We must ever think out how to understand
That their claims may add up together
Not depending on mercy, but on getting it right
Being serious, not being clever
But the claims of the victors, from the head of the axe
The passage of time can unglue
By the destruction of beliefs with which we were assaulted
The breakers can be broken, too

Yet if only disproving remains in the end
Our souls can wind up yet the worse
The felling of the oak, and the strong old ways
Was only the start of the curse
First, we cleared away the false spinnings of Rome
Their corruptions of Christ’s words, and gained
Belief greater than theirs in the original cause
When the early Christian sense of things remained
These may not have been our original ways
But those no longer worked a resistance
And we regained our sense of the sacred, in shadow
As reward to our questioning persistence

But, lo!, the questions were loosed north and south
No ground was any longer stable
And the wars that our break with Rome engendered
Showed no leanings of God, nor were able
To dispel the impression that demons were in glee
At the bedlam loosed by our stand for the good
We were misled by vehemence to throes of heroism
We learned how poorly we understood
The lies involved in the “coming of the day”
Wanting so deeply out of our suspension
That we believed our new breakthroughs and were ready to march
And fulfill on Earth our holy comprehension

And after, disillusion proved our new lamp for truth
What we thought we knew, and didn’t, had come plain
No more can we care for a case overwrought
What is true, only time can explain
Now, let the event-paused soul flow out
To the forest, rising vapor among trees
Rest the analysis, ease the inner spring
Cool-warm from the far North Sea breeze
The texture of the soul in its in-between state
Is something that believers can’t rehearse
Listen to non-human voices, muted, pressing, shifting
More credible than harmonious verse
Sustain the strange discomfort for as long as you can listen
It’s a tortured tale to which you’ll return
And horribly long, too long and twisted on itself
We’ve paid much for what we’ve had to learn

When the thunder sounds beyond Roman walls
The Roman mind will feel the challenge to its foundations
You can put the Latin cloak upon the Gothic man
But you cannot make his children your creations
And if he should learn the ways of civilized intellect
Yet, he will seek the truth among the clamor
The blade may be strong enough to fell Thor’s ancient oak
But its creators felt the rage of Thor’s own hammer

SONG FROM A DREAM

Slowing down our longings
Reining in our hearts
Sometimes my senses don't reach me
I don't believe my part
Too many human failings
I never feel are mine
Try hard to convince me
They own me as their kind
My great and noble spirit
As I cast it in my mind
Is year by year more compromised
I start living life half-blind
Living in calculations
Living just passing through
Disconnected in my soul
From the things I think I must do

I believe I'm conscious
I perceive the world
I look forward to knowing why
Are there answers in the world?

I believe I'm conscious
I live in the world
I find heart during one long try
Not really knowing why

I believe in people
Other than myself
Sometimes I think I find them
Sometimes I hope I help

I believe I'm conscious
I must be real, too
I choose not to make much of it
Till this latest tale is through

AGAINST THE THIRST

Don’t buy into their apocalypse
Their desire for a shattering climax
The world will endure, despite their vision
Ripped by each side's hellish attacks
Don’t let their self-convinced voices
Become the script for your mind
The day a televised score of abhorrent deeds
Invite another score of the same kind

Don’t buy into their apocalypse
Their version of divine will
That calls men to judgment for ages of injustice
And sanctions cruelties blinder still
Don’t let their call to Armageddon
Mask their thirst, saying, “His will, not mine”
They want their history of belief vindicated
They’ve held out long for the wrath divine

Don’t buy into their apocalypse
Don’t clear the road for their journey
Don’t help the rage they hold against unbelievers
Time out in an ultimate fury
Don’t let those convinced that the fire is ordained
Decide where our future should lead
Don’t be coerced by their showdown minds
Don’t help them make the rivers bleed

WE ARE THE ANCIENTS

We experience time as it pushes us forward
And when our moment comes, we may regard
Our own time as an era of latecomers
Or ourselves as mankind’s own vanguard
We may give honor to great ones who have gone before us
People whose wisdom we strive to grasp
Or, in pride, give birth to a stronger innovation
Which, yet, a later era may surpass

In the leading edge of the present
We regard as settled only what has gone on before
We observe limits, or try to press beyond them
We build strength to either exercise or store
And the present sun beats on our present skin
We perform some work, the pattern yet unseeing
Not in our own eyes guided by the calls of the mysteries
As psyche reaches through us to higher being

The passing time will give strange sanctity
To our acts, even the flaws within our ways
Unexpected now, as, with wavering faith, we crash to incompletion
But time’s own child ends affixed in time’s own wider gaze
For that which is done, continues to be fruitful
And the blooms of millennia past still exert will
And everything that precedes the self-possession of the psyche
Will remain in psyche, and add to psyche’s skill

Even as we spill forward, we are the ancients
Our steps sound down the ages as our own lives spin
The future will understand us as root precursors
The time of our full presence lets our meaning begin
And the time will come when we are regarded with honor
Just as if we'd foreseen clearly about it all
Our part in the spell, which we seem to be improvising
Will be seen to have been the ancients' intended call 

THE LANGUAGE OF THE CONQUERORS

The sun spoke to the hills.  The blessings of the morning came anew.  This earth, in a favored place, was free to catch the sun in its most reciprocal character.  For a long time, nothing had changed in the relations between the sun and the earth.
   And yet, inside the houses in their clusters, the storytelling race no longer spoke or sang of these relations.  Instead, it was the story of the world of cities that each picked up in the morning, of cold relations and injustices, and of the struggle for power in their own lives.  Askew ambitions had been seeded in the young, and each year, were reseeded or transplanted in the mature, who were now caught in a false web of debt, cast by social contracts with false premises.  From the praise of potential, the optimistic were lured; by the threat of a harder path, the rest.  The drawing of ambition, or the wisdom of wariness, was keeping human calculation within the human world.
   The sun still spoke to the hills, always returning, stretching long to midday and long toward setting.  As the sun cast itself, animals everywhere did what their instincts told them to do.  But the animals were within that day much more than the storytelling race.  For, when the animals paused in their doings, the day was there to flood in.  The storytelling race, however, had constructed its own day, into which the daily story of the land they lived in came only at odd times, when it could intrude.  Yet, these intrusions could sometimes spark a feeling of the old ways of understanding.  Call it memory.  Or, call it a capacity for widening.
   Once, the storytelling race had known the language of the elements, and the human heart beat outward into its surroundings.  But cities, nations, and empires became a power that would not be turned back.  There is not a one of us who did not come from peoples who knew the rhythms and speakings of the land, and who could hear the wider language of the non-human day, and who gave gratitude for being in that world, no matter the difficulties.  But now, our reckonings push that world out, and we think and speak in the language of the conquerors, emulating the ways of those ambitious and inflexible people who first subdued and corralled us, and broke us from our original ways and understandings.  We think and speak in the language of the conquerors, wanting for ourselves what they want for themselves, trying to see as they see, trying to practice the mentality that let them gain power over our lives, the mentality against which the ways of our ancestors proved unequal.  Perhaps we try to preserve some worthiness, and seek power for good ends without wanting to copy the imperial thirst for power.  Perhaps we seek to achieve a noble triumph.  Perhaps we want power simply to no longer be harassed by daily antagonisms, simply to live without fighting.  We have an instinct telling us that, by learning the ways of the conquerors, we can gain, or regain, the control of our lives within this world of cities and nations, or at least a greater security within our lives.  But this instinct also tells us truly that the ways of the conquerors will only allow these things for the few. And a different instinct tells us that the good things of the world are many and normal and can be widely shared- but this is not the language of the conquerors.  This is a language of heart, a language so basic to us that it survives the destruction of our ancient cultures.  It is a language that the imperial world must constantly rebend to its own terms, to what it has to offer; the potential of the heart is constantly subversive, even when all the old ways are crushed and maligned.  For, some things that are basic to being human can never be given their just place in the language of the conquerors.  However incoherent any newborn language of rebellion may be, there is always the prospect that it will say something that shows up a hollowness in the language of the conquerors, something in the human heart that it must treat falsely. 

A MOMENT OF REFLECTION

William awoke around 10 a.m.  It was summer vacation.  He might have thought about sleeping more, to have another light dream, though he didn’t really need to.

He liked having his own room.  It gave him independence of mind.  Yes, he had to like his culture for that.  Its individualism, and its favorable economics, allowed him this space.  If not for both, he might share a room with his parents and a larger number of siblings, and not have much chance to sort out his own thoughts.  He understood all this from his schooling, and from acquaintance with students from poorer areas.

Yet, he considered, while he should feel gratitude for this respect of his culture for personal space, he didn’t feel it.  Despite William’s claim on his own time, there was always some anxiety forcing the pace.  Summer would end, schooling would resume, and adults who should know better would expect him to read, act and think like a social scientist, like a political philosopher, like a person who was cracking the world.

William was not cracking the world, and the only way to act like he was, was to treat as true the words of those who were already respected as having done so.  He had learned enough to know this was wrong, that is, the wrong way to seek the truth.  The teachers knew this, too, and that was why they asked for evidence of independent thought.  If he agreed with the experts, it would only take a couple of clever sentences here and there.  If he disagreed, God!, they expected his argument to approach the tightness of the person against whom he disagreed, a person who had probably thought out their- "his or her"- position for twenty or more mature years.  With his age group not even in the foothills of college, they were expected to generate a meaningful critique of Everest!

Of course, “expect” was too strong a word.  Though the teachers succeeded in intellectualizing the approach to life for at least some of the young- and he questioned the benefit even in that- the teachers knew that the students would be overwhelmed by most of what was being told to them. Perhaps they wouldn't grasp it. Even if they did, the best they could do is cut their teeth on it.

William did grasp most of it, he supposed.  His friends considered him an intellectual.  Maybe in the beginning, he was actually trying to be one.  But he was the one who saw most quickly how unreasonable it was to treat high schools students to the same thought as college majors, and expect they would rise to the sophistication.  To his friends, William seemed a type “cut out for” college.  For himself, if it weren’t for disappointing his parents, he wouldn’t go at all.  This endless preparation gave him too much scope for anxiety.  The summer’s anxiety was the school year; the school year’s anxiety was preparation for college; college’s anxiety was placement in the world of work.  At each step, he was expected to know what he wanted, like a man born with a mission.  But he was not; and, if he were, he doubted that the mission would be answered by any of the “career fields” that the system was trying to channel him into. He seriously wanted to short-circuit the whole deal, to make his way without playing the game.

He could resist, but, of course, he couldn’t stay a teenager, sheltered from the world at his parent’s home.  He had to grow into an independent person; he owed it to his family to stay only the natural term at home.  And he had worked on becoming mature.  William had spent years making himself less self-centered, more considerate, more honest, a good listener, and he certainly hoped to become someone who could make a worthwhile contribution.  So, maturity had meant something positive to him, had exerted a real draw on him.  But along with that drawing came an image of a life worth living, a life that didn’t feel like a prison.  There had to be a way to use growth for freedom.

But, when he spoke out his “impractical” thoughts to adults, he started to get fed back the “realism” of “the way the world works.”  He met too many different types of resignation, in people either disgusted, grinning grimly, or burning-out and recalculating. The acquiescence adults showed to the rough pressures of the world, and of the lives that result from them, made him think less highly of aiming to become “mature.”  William felt that he already knew more sensitivity and love toward others than he would if he let himself become that sort of adult.  The more he thought about the way that what was fairest in the human soul was not accommodated, but rather, was constantly ground out by modern life, the more he thought he understood the youth revolt of the sixties. Then, sometimes, he thought the revolt was too multifaceted for him to ever understand, no less duplicate.

That morning, before leaving his room, William wrote in his journal: “When you’re young, they sell you on ideals.  They tell you that if you can dream it, you can become it.  When you become an adult, when you come into your full powers as a human being, they say ‘just kidding,’ and throw the cold water.  And you buy it.  Hell, you were only pumped up anyway; you never were so sure you were that dynamite.  That’s the fallacy of maturity.  Just as you start to come into your own powers, you let the cynical side of the world convince you that you cannot win with the ideals that the world taught you.  You drop your sword at the very time your arm approaches the strength to wield it.  A mature person ought to be a force to be reckoned with.  A mature person ought to be a full and potent person.  If that is not maturity, if maturity is only cynical wisdom, and knowing artfully how to toe the line, then the mature person is a self-betrayal.  So, where does the soul win?  The free teenager lacks the skill and effectiveness.  The mature person lacks the understanding of freedom.”

Which was funny.  William understood that as an adolescent, he was unfree.  He had to consider the claims of his parents, the school system, and the extra restrictions of the law upon minors.  But, in important ways, becoming an adult would deepen his unfreedom.  And yet, he felt it had to be, that some kind of brainwashing was involved.  He wanted to take up the sword against that sort of brainwashed maturity.  William wondered if the world would force him to bow to it anyway.  But, he told himself, that at least at that moment, he understood that there was something very, very wrong in this way of seeing life, and in the culture that taught it.

EVEN UNDER OUR FEET- 1

The tribe brought its young men into the open country.  The condition was silence, the resting of words.  The new things seen were seen only, not translated.  Not speaking, the young men practiced their vision.

It was dry country, where the rock itself spoke, unclothed by the grasses in which animals rejoice and find refuge.  Instead, a mineral taste suffused the air and the thoughts of all.

The spirits of the Earth, in the sparse, dry land, no longer appeared clothed in maternal reassurance, but seemed simultaneous doers and instructors, not very different from humans.

The way of the Earth wants humans rising to the sky, but starts by planting them where it needs them to be.  The tribe and the clan accept bringing the young to fullness as the charge they owe to the spirits that began it all.

Each tribesman rises in the sight of the spirits until death measures his peak.  At each stage, he is boosted by the tribe’s ancient way.  Gratitude becomes a need to him.  A tribesman’s will soon overflows into making sure the stamp and the wisdom of his tribe will continue.

So the bare earth and the wordlessness join in a young man’s perception with the rightness that the tribesmen feel when they silently pose their attitudes to the dry and hard land, bringing both one step higher when they bring the young man into mankind.

Honor is simple, a keeping to your ways, once you have been shown the secrets of your kind.  It is a pleasure to fulfill, and the rightest thing to praise; it is the center in which soul and mind unite.

If the way of honor should lead to early death for one who has received the stamp of the tribe, it is good fortune, and quickness of reward.  To rise so high, fulfilling so soon your full note in your tribe’s story, is no loss or disadvantage.

For, we are all generated by the Earth’s specific passion, which created us because it always had us to create.  In her maternal aspect, she keeps us always in her protection, immortal in reciprocal loyalty.

Yet, without contradiction, the Earth lets harsh things happen, and its creatures even impose harsh things on themselves. Without some severity, some things can never be known. Among the things that the Earth preserves and allows replay, there are truths hidden from the comfortable.

They stuck the young men’s arms with cactus thorns, about the length of a finger section; the pain came first, the panic of blood second.  The young men knew not to cry.  Nor was chanting allowed for controlling the energies; contemplation of the injury and the blood was the passage.

Some years earlier, as boys, the same was done to them with thorns from bushes close to the home camp.  The boys cried, the tribe granting that it was proper to ones so young.  But they were told that, as young men, when they were initiated in the dry land, they would be expected to not cry.

They came to the top of a mountain.  Beyond the white dust blowing below them, they could see the grasslands in which they hunted.  They saw both truths at once.  No hunger was any longer possible.

Their tautness of spirit could find no further object.  The tribesmen led the young men back down.  The young men had developed a taste for climax, and, in seeking to build up to it again, had the mark of the manhood of the tribe.

The return across the dry lands to home, at each stage, allowed a small lowering in tautness, a small return in acceptance of the Earth’s maternal nourishing.  Finally, green and brown clothed the rock again.  The young men came back to the home camp.

The young men, despite exhaustion, were still expected to stand erect and be alertly laconic.  Before, girls and boys could tease them that any such behavior was just pretense.  Now, the whole tribe was expected to accept them as men.

That night, the chief spoke to the young men in the company of all the tribesmen.  “Now you know what you’ve always known.  The world has been your soul’s intimate companion since before you were given the gift of sight.  Now, you’ve learned to begin to see what you knew you would long ago.

“We were always here with the land, and are now given flesh and heart.  Your childhood is over, and the Earth will now look for you to conduct yourself in dignity.  There is freedom in your life, but your life is not a game.  Honor and respect the spirits you encounter, whether they bode well or ill.

“You will bleed out into the world, and the world will bleed into you.  There will be moments when you realize the wideness and depth of the world.  But, even in moments that seem less than full, moments when you seem to merely transit from the last nourishment to the next, respect the spirits in what you touch and see.

“For the strange wholeness of the world may leave our experience, and leave us to a lower place.  But the truth of the world, its blood and heart and character and speaking, is around us always, above us, even under our feet.  The ground we walk touches the soles of our feel as we pass, and speaks to us its own meaning about the whole and ourselves. 

“You will find strong revelations, which are completely astounding, yet then fall completely into place.  You will find belonging, and your own amazed disbelief at finding belonging, in our part of the world and its saga.  Learn, and keep learning.  Fresh awareness will come to you; kindly bring what you can to all of us.”

EVEN UNDER OUR FEET- 2

The cities brought their young men and women into large concrete cells, where adults instructed twenty to forty young at a time.  The condition was acceptance of indoctrination, the programming of words and attitudes.  Interpretations were secured at the same time that the facts they applied to were given.  Not speaking, the young separated their conclusions from their senses.

It was enclosed, angular space, where adults cast symbols on walls, and living things' movements were barred entrance.  Instead, young minds were trained on ideas, and thinking itself was codified over the course of years. 

The spirits of the Earth, in this segmented colony, had space neither to move nor instruct, and so, sat in brooding and sedentary malevolence, no longer radiating maternal reassurance.  Unable to render their strange blessings, the spirits instead pressed down upon the project that so numbed feeling and connection.

Ambition wants humans rising to the sky, but the story starts by planting them where they happen to fall.  The nation and the state accept bringing the young into fitness for the civilization they live in, as the charge they owe for the security and development of their kind.

Each citizen rises until the time that their work has greatest potency, then declines with their waning abilities until their death.  At each stage, society does not give them a place, but rather, each is expected to figure out for themselves how to make their way in their own society.  Security becomes a need to them.  A citizen’s will is directed to securing their living within their own society, and toward giving, if at all, only once they are no longer preoccupied by their own security.

So the concrete walls and verbal programming join in a young person’s perception with the anxieties and harriedness that the adult workers evince when they silently pose their attitudes to the institutional maze of their civilization, bringing both to the common pursuit of personal success when the adults let the young join their world of work.

Honor is simple, a keeping to your ways, once you have been shown the secrets of your kind.  But, as to the deeper vision behind the ways of the cities, at no time did the revelation actually come to the young, but only reasonings and advice toward success.

If the way of ambition should lead to early success for one who has received the stamp of their civilization, it is good fortune, and quickness of reward.  To rise so high, fulfilling so soon the best expectations of your society, is held to be no sacrifice, but rather, the key to getting anything else you could reasonably want.

For, we are all generated by the legacy of survival of the fittest, and fitness is proven by winning.  The Earth, which spawned us, requires our management, and we need now to breed people who manage the best, the most smoothly, with the greatest windfall.  We need them, and those who can best execute their plans.

Yet, without contradiction, our management causes problems for the Earth, unanticipated in our reach toward success.  Without some challenges, our best capacities would never be known.  Among the things we endanger and must rescue in our reach toward control, are things we only then learn had existence or value.

The adults never initiated the young, but “graduated” them, or not, setting them loose as tutored barbarians to hunt the best kill their skills and cunning would let them.  The young knew that they were allowed to complain, that it made no spiritual difference, for their sufferings were not designed for a spiritual purpose.  Action, not contemplation, was required; energies were wasted if spent on thinking about a setup that could not be changed.

Some years earlier, the young were presented the idea of “graduation,” as if it were to be an initiation.  The young aspired, wishing to arrive at their full learning.  But it eventually became clear that, firstly, the initiation was spurious, as there was no revelation involved, but only an acknowledgment that they had mastered facts.  And, secondly, that the “graduation” was only the first of a series of “graduations,” as the completion of the work started the process all over, and yet again, for each stage of “promotion.”

The young came to the peak of their education.  Beyond the academic treatment lay the modern world, energetic and unequal, hopeful and cynical, dealing wealth and poverty in strange tumult.  They saw that only by substantial intellect could the modern world be held in coherent view, and yet, that that coherence lay as much in the shadow cast by thinking than in the intellect itself.  Untroubled affirmations were no longer possible.

Their tautness of spirit could find no further object.  The adults led the young to the world of work.  The young had had their minds raised to appreciate difficult points, but found that their learning was overmuch for what would really be asked of them.  The young had developed a taste for work that actually made full use of their mental abilities, and, in the frustration of seeking it, bore the mark of adults of modern civilization.

The return from the institutions to home allowed a small lowering of the tautness, a small return to restorative energies within the private hold of each.  Finally, each could touch a world made of things they had chosen to care about.  The young were given their reward out of the product of the society.

The young, despite exhaustion, were still expected to respond to the enticements to desire the goods and services of their society.  Before, when need did not drive their preferences, the goods they bought were emblems in a game.  Now, with needs pressing on them in full force, the game was united with the real social competitiveness inescapable in the choice of products, and the psychological or actual advantages present in possessing those products.

Every day and night, the society repeated the messages to the weakly committed, in the company of those already persuaded:  “Your hope of advantage lies in the new.  That which has already been done and known is of past value.  Only what is done at the frontier is of current value.  If you want to be known as being on top of things, show your association with us, and together we will challenge the value of what has been.

“We are the natural product of our nation, born into modern times to demonstrate modern human abilities.  Your childhood is over, and we will look to you to waste little actual effort on outlandish ideas.  There is a dance of ideals in our minds, but those ideals must be moderated by realism.  Keep in mind what you can achieve as an individual, both as your inspiration and your proper realm of calculation.

“You will meld into our world, and our world will give you definition.  There will be moments in your participation when you realize the extent of what our enterprises achieve.  But, even in moments of greater drudgery, moments when you seem to merely to be doing small, temporary things, respect the greatness of the civilization we are producing.

“For the obvious victories of our ways may retreat from our appreciation, and the projects by which we achieve them strand us in their impersonal flux.  But the truth of our remaking of the world, our dominance and design, is around us always, above us, even under our feet.  The ground on which we walk is remade to concrete, and guides our steps as we pass, and speaks to us its own meaning about the commanding nature of mankind.

“You will find new revelations, which are completely astounding, and which make you keep rethinking the pathways of the future.  You will find belonging, and your own artistry of belonging, in our part of the world and its saga.  Learn, and keep learning.  Fresh awareness will come to you; use it to your advantage, and keep the wheel of our civilization turning.”

 SHIFTING LOYALTIES

"I, Steward Marshall, emerge from the citadel, braced by my education, braced by my graduation. Learning both classical and liberal has invigorated my mind, has made me a master of the Western arts. As if I had large wings, as if I were an eagle, I stand before the open land, the real land, and breathe. Although I am well groomed to compete in the capital, I feel the grander mission is to take what I am, and leave."

Was there a new oxygen in this expanding world? What compelled such men to tackle the beyond? Perhaps staying in their homeland would have drowned their inspirations. Thousands left the schooling of the West and of their nations.

Global empires were dawning, and needed talented men. The wonder at their motives could not be exhaustive. In Lisbon , Madrid , Paris and Amsterdam- and certainly in London- these men were called to appear, as if by supernatural decree. When they did appear, however inexplicably, the royal courts saw them as Providence 's answer to the needs of the kingdom.

"My liege, Steward Marshall, of the loyal line of Marshalls , on account of the loyalty of that house rewarded by your Grace to rigorous higher learning, has achieved splendidly therein, and now seeks in gratitude a chance to secure your royal interests in far-flung foreign lands, where our glory is only beginning to blossom."

The elite believed this, and was not wrong. What the elite also understood about Steward's type of man, was spoken only as a secondary matter: There were men in the kingdom who felt cramped by the homeland, who needed a more robust life, who were drawn to the exotic because they felt equal to its challenge. These were men who were sharp in their learning, but who were eager to trade real forces for their conceptualized ones, in order to feel truly engaged. In an age in which power was sensed in commerce, these were men of a deeper commerce, who were willing to trade with themselves, and accept the experience of the unfamiliar and untamed in return.

"Noble Steward Marshall, I charge thee to expand our holy kingdom unto unenlightened peoples, furthering our sway, observing them carefully and with prudent respect, ensuring by good relations no loss of foothold to our rivals. Enforce the royal will when it needs to be enforced, at best by show of strength. But, above all, maintain our superiority of intelligence, and let our more dogmatic and less perceptive competitors suffer for their own folly. As your forefathers have, regulate the conduct of our own. Toward others, answer harm for harm. But seek to generate wealth and well-being, for it is that talent by which we will win allies over."

This posed no contradiction in Steward's mind. He was enthused by the newly expansive powers of the culture of his time. He knew too that the new intelligence was destined for power. He thirsted to bring the way graciously to those who would otherwise be overpowered by it.

That the West was brewing a new breakthrough for Mankind was clear to Steward. The willingness to question and experiment, the "Renaissance," had led Europe to discover all the lands of the world, and a greater power within that world. Nor did Steward's type of man shrink from generating new questions as things carried forward. Steward, being skilled in the new philosophy, knew to consult his senses, to be brave in his thought, and to guide his thinking according to the evidence.

"How simple it all is, once you rise above superstition. You take what is, you extract the goal, you subtract out of its process whatever doesn't actually help that goal. You take a productive activity, displace the old masters, rationalize the system, and, viola! New wealth emerges. I came wanting to give of my talents. Whenever I do, I produce new wealth. Yes, I am proud. Given enough ages of this way, I could even credit Utopia. But, failing that, I see an ever-improving future, until, perhaps, we reach a plateau where things are as good as human possibility will allow."

But, as we've said, Steward knew to consult his senses. He knew he participated in oppression- only, he had taken over that oppression from the old elites in the lands he'd entered. His goals towards the colonized peoples were humane. But, the economic robustness of the kingdom was his main priority. He could conceive a greater humaneness once imperial competition was over, and a world-unit of sorts was established. Yet, the current state of affairs did unsettle him, at times.

During this time, Steward's firstborn, Dexter, came into his boyhood. Dexter's mother, Angelica, had proven his father's strongest attraction back to an element unique to his own kind. Angelica was fair and high-minded, and kept things arranged brightly and orderly. She was willing to follow Steward into the challenge of the more febrile lands, in order to stand with him in their days of greatest strength, and project into the world the goodness and decency that their country stood for. Dexter admired his father, and was in love with his mother.

Dexter spent his first ten years close to three tropical port cities. His foreign caretakers loved "little Master Marshall" in a free and natural way, which, of course, they couldn't do with the Marshalls proper. Angelica spent those years pleasantly, knowing that, with children coming into the marriage, they were now destined to return home.

Back in the home country, Dexter was more widely trained in the Western arts and ways of thinking. And he soon came to see that his father and mother represented the better, most broad-minded part of that tradition. There were coarser, more small-minded currents in his home society. And, while Dexter believed in his father's world project, he failed to identify with the politics that made it possible, and the tradition of thought by which the governing class sought to justify those politics.

Partly, this was to Dexter's cost, for he did not feel drawn to the Western humanities, which he suspected of being slippery and hypocritical. And, because of this, he sacrificed some of his father's depth of thought. But, Dexter lived with his father, and gained some sense of his vision. Importantly, Steward was having similar troubles in reconciling things after returning home.

"Father?"

"Yes, son."

"Why do our countrymen feel so superior to the Africans and the Indians?"

"Well, son, partly because we were able to conquer and rule them."

"But not because of their type."

"Yes, well, son, when you belong to something, you belong to its victories and defeats as well."

"Father, is it possible that I am not a patriot?"

Steward breathed, and exhaled. "Son, when you faithfully perform a service for your country, lesser men lose the right to question where your heart lies."

"Some of these do not consider themselves lesser men."

"When I find myself in that situation, I say 'I have done this, and this, and this for my country. What have you done?'"

"But, father, I've done nothing as yet."

"Ah, but you will, you will. In the meantime, remember that you are of a class that is not required to wear its heart on its sleeve."

"I will. But, father, I have further concerns."

"Yes?"

"Conquering these people: Was it right?"

"Yes, son, it was right, because it was how we declared ourselves and our potency to the world. And, if we had not done it by our model, Iberia would have done it by its. But, keeping them conquered, no. No, I do think, the more we administer their states, the more wrong-headed and illiberal we will be about it. Politically, we need to conduct an honorable retreat, wherever doing so will not loose chaos."

"Father, is this type of thought treason?"

"It is in the best interest of the country. No, it is not treason."

"If I suggest such things, I am accused of not putting our country above all others."

"Well, son, what a country stands for should be even more important than the country itself."

"But I am accused of loving other peoples better than my own."

"Do you?"

"Yes."

"Then you are needed, Dexter. A country that loves itself above all else is in constant danger of stepping carelessly in the world. You need not love the country to serve it, nor share in its blindnesses to be loyal to it. You are irreversibly of this country, Dexter; you need not pervert your own understanding to be doubly so. Many would love to define what it means to be of this country, that you must be a patriot, an imperialist, a democrat, an elitist; they would love to define you out if you don't fit, if you have not come to the same conclusions that they have. But they don't have that power, and neither do you. Try to think your most disloyal thought, Dexter, and your thought will still bear the stamp of the West and of the culture that bred you. What is important is that you recognize the honesty of your thought, whether or not that thought troubles you."

"Yes, father, but how do I handle myself?"

"Evince your intent to serve. Cast a glance of disdain upon those who try to dig further. Let them tell by that glance that you regard their understanding as crude, and that you would not trust them with the true interests of our kind."


Dexter thereafter spent years at the citadel, for such was the rite of passage, and he developed at least a love for cartography. But he was impatient to return home and be groomed in his father's business, which was involved in the import of coffee, cocoa, and tea. And in this way, what the crown had sent out, was now being brought back in: the talents of those who had touched the overseas. Thus, back at one remove, the nation continued to reap from its investment in the House of Marshall, which maintained the lines of world commerce.

When Dexter grew mature and versed enough to run the family business, Steward Marshall retired. Over the years, the elder Marshall had found time to write his remembrances of the cultures he had touched, and of the reflections they now caused him. Now, he would have time to flesh them out more fully. In exquisite detail, and helped by a developing talent for sketches, Steward generated volumes of remembrances and researches concerning the peoples in the lands between the tropics.

Dexter, in the predawn of decolonialization, secured his business relations with plantations and the emerging political authorities in the coming new nations. Dexter's own history of sympathy for self-rule abroad helped him gain the trust of those nations' reemerging elites. Everyone involved was interested in continuing the wealth flowing after the power changed hands.


In these years, Dexter's own firstborn, Ernest, took his first steps in the Marshall household. As Ernest grew, he understood, first from television, then from school, that he lived in a wealthy but troubled world. But he never could seem to understand what the root of the trouble was. At first, he thought it was injustice in the way the wealth was- or wasn't- shared. Then, he thought it was too many people with too many weapons. Then, he thought it was something that his own culture had set afoul in the world, either in its greed, arrogation, or ignorance. And then, sometimes, he thought the problem lay with television itself.

Ernest's understanding of the outside world was fully mediated. His sense of emergency about the world came through television. As he studied, the mediation was increasingly through the printed word, and the world's problems seemed fixed and fundamental rather than episodical and capable of being "passed through."

Like his grandfather and father, Ernest had respect for other cultures. Unlike them, his fundamental understanding was not won through contact with these cultures. His fundamental understanding was not a consideration of tastes, smells, sights, and manners of conduct and repose. It was, instead, a set of analytical facts, rooted in the inescapable conclusion that his culture had wronged the other cultures of the world, and now, was having hell to pay. It came to the point that Ernest would credit almost any claim against his own culture and its history.

"Grandfather," said Ernest one day, "I don't really understand. Why did we go the these people, who were living perfectly well without us, and try to reorder their affairs?"

"Ernest, there were three reasons. One was that the crown felt the superiority of our religion, and truly felt charged to save the souls of those who had not heard of the blood of Christ and the way of salvation. The resistance of these peoples to salvation only heightened our determination, and our conviction of their ignorance. Secondly, we wanted to deprive our rivals of the chance to secure the power in those lands instead of us, which assuredly would have happened. And, thirdly, we really believed that our ways represented a highly developed level of humanity and well-being, unequaled in the rest of the profane world."

"Did you ever wonder, grandfather, if any of those cultures was superior to our own?"

" Superior ? Never. But worth preserving as they stood? Yes, entirely. You can read it in my books."

"You never come out and state it."

"I don't need to, Ernest, I don't need to."

"Somebody needed to."

"It wouldn't have made any difference."

"So, grandfather, why do you write now?"

"It will not do to let knowledge be lost."

And Ernest wondered "Knowledge? What good will knowledge be, when we have let the things themselves die?" But, out of respect, he did not say this to his grandfather. Instead, he sadly accepted the unasked question as one more token of his separation and alienation from the culture that had brought him forth. He feared that was the path he would have to walk. He felt it was untenable, but also, impossible to escape.