The danger of words can be easily illustrated in today's headlines filled with stories of civil wars and other conflicts which stemmed from different ideals. One war, the Cold War, lasted about 45 years, ending with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. During those years propaganda and rhetoric came from both sides, leading to prosecutions and suspicions. One of the most famous examples was the trial of the Hollywood Ten by Congress which threatened the fundamental rights protected by the Constitution.

After World War Two, several Republican (and some conservative democratic) Congress members determined Communism was a threat to national security. The "Second Red Scare" began with accusations of Communists in the Department of State and gradually encompassed educators, two presidents of the United States, the military and Hollywood. The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA) was formed in 1947 to look into "subversive influences on American life" but it became best known for Joseph McCarthy and his persecution of some of the most famous stars in Hollywood.

"The rights you have are the rights given to you by Committee. We will determine what rights you have and what rights you have not got." (Representative J. Parnell Thomas during a House Un-American Activities Committee hearing.)

In the above quotation, Thomas displayed a very large false map in believing the committee was above the Constitution, which was the true determination of rights to American citizens. In addition the Committee trampled over some of the basic rights guaranteed by the Constitution such as the right to free speech, the right to assemble and the right to take the fifth. Instead they were used against the people called to the hearing. Refusal to denounce or name other communists was considered an admission of guilt. Those labeled "unfriendly" or uncooperative were blacklisted and served time in jail for contempt of congress. The conclusion drawn by the committee was a vivid illustration of linguistic errors.

One "friendly" witness admitted there was no communist influence in Hollywood. "Ronald Reagan, elected SAG President in March of 1947, stressed that "99% of us are pretty well aware of what is going on, and I think we have done a pretty good job in our business of keeping those people's activities curtailed. I do not believe the Communists have ever at any time been able to use the motion picture screen as a sounding board for their philosophy or ideology."" (qtd. in Ceplair, Larry. Sag and the Motion Picture Blacklist. http://www.sag.com/blacklist.html.)

The first Amendment gives us the right to free speech and right to assemble. HCUA disallowed this defense on the belief Communism "advocates the overthrow of the Government of the United States by force, or by any illegal or unconstitutional method." (qtd. in Mills, Michael. HUAC and Censorship Changes. http://www.moderntimes.com/palace/huac.htm) The truth of this is subjective on which doctrine of Communism one believes in. Thus HCUA was also guilty of the Cow1 is not Cow 2 syndrome in not differentiating between Communists and forming a delusional world of all communists were advocates to the overthrow of America. Though only ten were ultimately convicted (for contempt) in the Hollywood hearings, the inferences and judgements by society and  the media caused hundreds to lose their jobs despite not being convicted of any crime.

Thankfully, someone finally said something. Joseph N. Welch, chief attorney for the Army said: "Until this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you no sense of decency?" Congress realized McCarthy had gone too far and was censored in 1954 for "conduct contrary to Senatorial traditions" and the committee lost much of its power before its abolishment in 1975. (qtd. In Davis, Kenneth C. Don't Know Much About History (1990) New York, NY: Avon Books. p. 328 & Ewald, William Bragg, Jr. Who Killed Joe McCarthy? (1984) New York, NY: Simon and Schuster. p. 378.)

The danger of words is at its worst when the person or organization has some credibility and power. The HCUA had legitimacy under the guise of the government protecting the US from perceived corruptible influences of Communism. The ultimate legacy of the hearings is to point to the dangers of submitting to prejudgements without having all the facts on the table.

© 1999-2002 Lianne Wong
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One of the easiest things to do is to vilify things or use people as scapegoats. Television is a common target.  It has been labeled as a propagator of  evil - blamed for our culture of violence, the dumbing down of American children and the breakdown of the family. But there is little talk about the underlying causes of such issues, such as the lack of funding for education or the availability of guns in America. Television like many things can have a positive, neutral or negative effect. Robert M. Pirsig tends to see television's influence as one of the causes of loneliness. In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, he writes about the dangers of technology and how it isolates people. He lumps television with other modern conveniences on page 322:  "Technology is blamed for a lot of this loneliness, since the loneliness is certainly associated with the newer technological devices - TV, jets, freeways and so on - but I hope it's been made plain that the real evil isn't the objects of technology but the tendency of technology to isolate people into lonely attitudes of objectivity."

In my experience television does not isolate people, instead it brings people together for entertainment and discussion, like the fireplace or radio of yesteryear. My friends and I gather for our favorite shows that range from Beverly Hills 90210 to last year's Denver Broncos' Super Bowl - debating the choices our favorite characters made or the poor calls by the referees. The more fact driven shows such as Dateline, The Newshour with Jim Lehrer and the various news channels have generated heated debates on a range of political and social issues. In fact television unlike other technological and scientific inventions, tends not  "to isolate people into lonely attitudes of objectivity." Shows like The Twilight Zone, The X-Files & The Simpsons explore and challenges attitudes objectively and by questioning the facts that lay in front of people. Instead of taking things at their word, programs such as The X-Files, question what is the truth - the tagline shown during the credits is "Trust No One."

Pirsig also blames loneliness on the "large psychic distances" between people in large cities, yet I feel more isolated in a small town such as Fort Collins than I do when I am in an urban environment (I even feel more connected to the rushing people I saw at the O'Hare Airport in ‘95 than here in Colorado.) The isolation I experience at times is only tempered by watching that box of moving pictures and sound. Television works as a stabilizing force for me, a constant that helps me put my world in perspective. In watching television, one is exposed to a wider view of the world, unincumbered by barriers of time and money. In a space of an hour or two, one can visit Iran on CNN's Perspectives or see someone's view of the future, like in one of the many incarnations of the Star Trek series.

Pirsig also stated, people "seem to go through huge portions of their lives without much consciousness of what's immediately around them. The media has convinced them that what's in front of them is unimportant. And that's why they're lonely." I feel the opposite about media, people are naturally self-involved and would be unaware of the rest of the world if there was no media. Even in the twenty-first century, many people are still unaware of the conflicts around the globe. Becoming unaware of the rest of the world in near-sighted especially with the international melding of the world. Conflicts may no longer affect the United States directly, but as we learned in the two World Wars, how it can quickly change. Large conflicts a world away may appear to have little relevance to individual lives, but the underlying causes are often quite simple. People only become more conscience of social, political or emotional issues when they are exposed to them. Living in a small town or in large urban areas tends to isolate people's ideas unless they take the initiative to educate themselves and realize there is so much more in the world than the area one lives in. We are all part of a larger fabric of life and understanding this point would end a lot of the loneliness Pirsig describes.

Perhaps my views run contrary to Pirsig because he comes from a generation before the technological revolution. Writing during the 1970s when the people of the United States were disillusioned and their trust in institutions was at an all time low may have contributed to Pirsig's view of the world and his distrust for technology. As technology becomes more involved in our lives, we cannot just pull away from it for fear of the distance it may cause. Instead of dreading technology, it should be used to bridge physical and emotional distances. People lamented the end of the printed word as modern news distributions such as the internet were developed, yet the number of books and newspapers have blossomed in the face of technology. People are writing more thanks to e-mail and discussions are not restricted by where one is. Maybe a more correct phrase is "Loneliness is state of mind."

© 1999-2002 Lianne Wong
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Sigmund Freud in Civilization and Its Discontents wrote: ". . . men are not gentle creatures.  . . . they are, on the contrary, creatures whose instinctual endowments is . . . to satisfy their aggressiveness on him, exploit his capacity for work without compensation, to use him sexually without his consent, to seize his possessions, to humiliate him, to cause him pain, to torture and to kill him" (68,69). In the novella Heart of Darkness, Conrad examines the hidden ruthlessness found in man through the eyes of Charlie Marlow and Mr. Kurtz. The final words of the mysterious Kurtz were "The horror, the horror." The question that we attempt to answer is: can man pull away from the edge of darkness/evilness once he crosses the line?

In Conrad's novella, we don't receive a concrete answer and it is left to the reader to decide what he believes is the answer. There are however clues in Marlow's narrative which point toward an inclination by Kurtz to reform and the horror of not being able to. "Mr. Kurtz lacked restraint in the gratification of his various lusts, that there was something wanting in him" (95). Marlow also describes the atmosphere that caused the brutal aspects in Kurtz as something supernatural. It leads one to believe it was something Kurtz could not control. "I tried to break the spell - the heavy, mute spell of the wilderness-that seem to draw him to its pitiless breast by the awakening of forgotten and brutal instincts, by the memory of gratified and monstrous passions" (107).

Kurtz's final words: "The horror, the horror" can be interpreted as a number of things such as the horror of losing his life.  "I saw the inconceivable mystery of a soul that knew no restraint, no faith, and no fear, yet struggling blindly with itself" (108). We can presume Marlow is speaking of the conflict Frued describes as the "struggle between Eros and Death . . . the struggle for life of the human species (82). However, as the story continues, Marlow attests Kurtz had reached a decision on his actions: "He had summed up - he had judged . . .  This was the expression of some sort of belief; it had conviction, it had a vibrating note of revolt in its whisper, it had the appalling face of a glimpsed truth - the strange commingling of desire and hate" (113) for what he had done. Perhaps he meant the "horror" of his conduct or it had a deeper meaning: he could not conciliate what he had done.

This is further investigated in Apocalypse Now (1979 Paramount) Francis Ford Coppola's Vietnam War adaptation of Conrad's novella. General Corman explaining to Major Willard (Martin Sheen) the progression to inhumanity: "In this war, things get confused out there, power, ideals, the old morality, and practical military necessity." [. . .] "Because there's a conflict in every human heart between the rational and the irrational, between the good and the evil. The good does not always triumph. Sometimes the dark side overcomes what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature. Therein, man has got a breaking point. You and I have. Walter Kurtz has reached his. And very obviously, he has gone insane"  (http://www.filmsite.org/apoc.html).

Sigmund Freud supports this assertion through his ideas of guilt and conscience are the forces we have that suppresses the inherent aggressiveness and our self destructive natures, "Civilization, therefore, obtains mastery over the individual's dangerous desire for aggression by weakening and disarming it and by setting up an agency [a conscience] within him to watch over it" (84).

Unlike the book, Kurtz seems to reach an epiphany and begins to worry about what his son will think of the killing he committed. He realized there was no redemption for him,  ". . . the hostility . . . opposes this programme of civilization" (Frued, 82). He couldn't reconcile what he had done and return home to civilization.

"The fear of this critical agency (a fear which is at the bottom of the whole relationship), the need for punishment, is an instinctual manifestation on the part of the ego" (Frued, 100) directs Kurtz to permit Willard to carry out his mission to assassinate him. "Everybody wanted me to do it, him most of all. I felt like he was up there, waiting for me to take the pain away. He just wanted to go out like a soldier, standing up, not like some poor, wasted, rag-assed renegade. Even the jungle wanted him dead, and that's who he really took his orders from anyway" (http://www.filmsite.org/apoc.html).

Sigmund Frued believes the conscience battles with the will to live and the will to destroy. Conrad and Apocalypse Now illustrated the struggle over madness and sanity, though with slightly different resolutions. They appear to agree whether through intervention via laws, inner exploration or through unknown forces - the human spirit works to keep our aggressive nature in check through the existance of a conscience which prevents us from walking over the edge of darkness and toward our primitive urges for destruction.

As we fully enter the twenty-first century, we find ourselves at a new beginning. We all have hopes of peace and happiness, yet underneath the surface are ongoing conflicts which mar an otherwise calm surface. Ian McEwan's Black Dogs, explores this dichotomy by examining the differences in two generations, one who has lived through one of the worst conflicts our planet has survived - World War Two and another generation, a product of the newfound peace, seeing the end of Communism as the Berlin Wall falls in 1989.

June and Bernard represent the generation from the War era, idealistic and ready to change the world until a trauma strikes June to turn her away from advocating social change. They also represent two sides of the same coin: the classic and romantic thinker explored in Pirsig's Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Their reaction to the horrors of World War Two split as Bernard, the Classical thinker, deals with the existence of evil in a different way than June. He believed with a little reason and "a set of ideas, and bloody good ones too!" (McEwan, 148), one can overcome this urge to create evil and create a better world. June, the romantic thinker, on the other hand believes in the existence of a higher being and looking within herself for the answers. June's outlook is drastically changed by the attack of two black dogs, remnants of the war. Her ‘Black Dogs' continued to haunt her until she died and from her memoirs, they extended to Jeremy.

Jeremy and his generation were either disillusioned by the world or saw nothing to believe in. "What my friends were pursuing seemed to me the very antithesis of freedom, a masochistic lunge at downward social mobility" (McEwan, xvii). Jeremy, a product of a broken and dysfunctional home, "I had no attachments, I believed in nothing" (McEwan, xxii) reflected the worldwide struggles of a generation growing up in the wake of scandals (Watergate), lost wars (Korea & Vietnam War) and turmoils.

However, the true story in Black Dogs, is the underlying anger, hate and evil that permeanates under the surface of humanity. "The evil I'm talking about lives in us all. It takes hold in an individual, in private lives, within a family, and then it's children who suffer most. And then, when the conditions are right, in different countries, at different times, a terrible cruelty, a viciousness against life erupts, and everyone is surprised by the death of hatred within himself. Then it sinks back and waits. It's something in our hearts" (McEwan, 147).

McEwan illustrates his point by using the fall of the Berlin War (Nov. 9, 1989) as a major portion of his book. The Wall, the representative of communism, is torn apart as the Soviet Union collapses. It should be a time of joy and unity, but a lone man waving the hammer and sickle, brings out the hate and anger in everyday people in Berlin. A group of Neo Nazis joins the fray and when Bernard tries to reason with them, but becomes a target of their anger.

Differing generations of philosophers have noted this existence of evil including Sigmund Freud, in Civilization and Its Discontents he wrote: ". . . men are not gentle creatures.  . . . they are, on the contrary, creatures whose instinctual endowments is . . . to satisfy their aggressiveness on him, exploit his capacity for work without compensation, to use him sexually without his consent, to seize his possessions, to humiliate him, to cause him pain, to torture and to kill him" (68,69).

This is further investigated in Apocalypse Now (1979, Paramount) Francis Ford Coppola's Vietnam War adaptation of Conrad's novella, Heart of Darkness. General Corman explaining to Major Willard (Martin Sheen) the progression to inhumanity: "In this war, things get confused out there, power, ideals, the old morality, and practical military necessity." [. . .] "Because there's a conflict in every human heart between the rational and the irrational, between the good and the evil. The good does not always triumph. Sometimes the dark side overcomes what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature. Therein, man has got a breaking point. You and I have. Walter Kurtz has reached his. And very obviously, he has gone insane"  (http://www.filmsite.org/apoc.html).

McEwan doesn't answer the question of how humanity can disable our capacity for evil. Whether belief in science or God or nothing can prevent another holocaust is unknown as Jeremy said "It's not the business of science to prove or disprove the existence of God, and it's not the business of the spirit to measure the world" (McEwan, 97). Perhaps the simplest answer is what Jeremy discovered: "Love, to borrow Sylvia Plath's phrase, set me going. I came to life for good, or rather, life came to me . . ." (McEwan, xxii) and the  "belief in the possibility of love transforming and redeeming a life" (McEwan, xxiv).

© 1999-2002 Lianne Wong