Cultural Collateral
We're changing in so many ways.
My intent this first month was to lay out the basics, to provide some sense of what you need to be able to see and to travel safely. You are reading this because you're curious, you want to get started. If you're wise you also … the concern you feel for the world, for the condition of our country … you're starting to look over your shoulder while reading this.
As well you should. This has been personal for me, for thirteen long years, in ways I hope none of you ever have to experience. But as I mentioned in Reading: Required & Recommended, I don't think we're getting through unscathed.
So maybe it's time to set aside laptops and phones and basic mechanics and talk about reality, or what's left of it.
Attention Conservation Notice:
I write more or less factually on this Substack. When sufficiently provoked, as I was so many years ago, I do things like Conspiracy Brokers. After three years of prep work I asked an important question in June: Shall We Play A Game? I seldom encounter anyone I can talk to about these things in a purposeful fashion without endless fractal digression. I think one of those rare birds just alighted on a perch next to mine. So what is contained herein is food for thought, for all of you, as well as for my fine feathered friend, things to consider that might help you see the way forward more clearly. Or at least to see it through the same sort of lenses I use.
Foundations:
I saw The Messenger in the theater when it came out in 1999. This was a “seed crystal”, it set off two years of reading about the evolution of western society. That pursuit came to an end with the 911 attack, which I wrote about in Spilled Milk, and my wife's descent into madness, which I have never previously openly mentioned. I focus not on her, but on the behavior of religious fanatics, at a personal, professional, and political level. They made a bad situation so much worse for my children, me, and if they haven’t already done the same for you, it won’t be long now.
The printing press was invented in 1440. Bibles were plentiful in the late 18th century. If our founding fathers had meant for this country to be based on Christianity, they'd have simply included a copy with the Constitution. They did not, that’s no mistake, and the proof is contemporaneous, simple, and on display in the 11th Article of the 1796 Treaty of Tripoli.
Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion; as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen (Muslims); and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan (Mohammedan) nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.
This was ratified by the entire U.S. Senate without any debate. Christian Nationalist revisionism ignores this historical fact, because it's not amenable to their conspiracy theories.
World War 0 – the War of Spanish Succession, between 1701-1715, the last of Europe's three centuries of religious wars, was near enough that some of those who wrote the Declaration of Independence knew those who fought in it. Perhaps the separation of church and state was so that the former would not ruin the latter, or maybe it's the other way around. That was debated during our nation's formative years, but there would have been no talk of a merger of government and religion, not after we paid in blood to eliminate the notion of the divine right of kings in our lands.
Observations:
If we were a Christian society, which sort would we be? Catholic? Protestant? They're poisonous enough when in opposition, but there are three far worse heretical schisms today.
Christian Nationalists heretics, who are rooted religious extremism and white nationalism.
Prosperity Gospel heretics, who believe they can MAKE god give them goodies by praying often enough and hard enough.
Qanon, a cult that holds a thinly disguised reboot of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as a key tenet of their believes.
The unifying hate speech trope for all of them is maximum commerical use. Their material success is thwarted by the other. Their dualism (us/them, good/evil) and dehumanization of the other provides the permission to massacre in the name of god.
Discarding Preconceptions:
If you set aside preconceptions and look at influences on society today, what do you see?
Asatru is a neo-pagan prison religion rooted in Norse mythology and it was well established before the turn of the century. The Lord of the Rings is a story of British yeomanry wandering around a North mythology. The only overt Christian reference in the Marvel Cinematic Universe comes when Black Widow describes the Asgardians as “basically gods”, and Captain America says “There’s only one god, ma’am, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t dress like that”. The MCU had a Civil War and they’ve also got a Ragnarok.
The Matrix has some Christian tropes that slipped in, but if you look at the source material, what do you find? Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles, which is full of magic and mysticism and a heroic cross dressing shaman named Lord Fanny. The hollowed out book Neo uses to store the illcit software he sells to the visitors the include the girl with the white rabbit tattoo? It’s Jean Baudrillard’s Simulacra and Simultation, a Marxist influenced postmodern philosophical work, that also heavily influenced that movie.
And I’m a good bit too old to have internalized what’s going on with anime, but that’s rooted in Japanese culture, not any of the triumvirate of Christian heresies I mentioned earlier.
There’s an older, whiter, arguably crazier portion of our society that thinks that whites can be elevated above all the rest, or separated in the Pacific northwest, or worse they truly believe the unifying voice (Trump) when it says that there will be a national rejuvenation (Make American Great Again) … but there might need to be some violence first.
Neil Gaiman’s American Gods is a story of forgotten, dying gods, cast as a Coming to America story, immediately recognizable by all immigrants. The old gods face an existential threat in the form of the new gods – Media, The Internet, and Globalism. The leader of the old gods? Mr. Wednesday. I’ll let him speak for himself.
Not seeing a lot of stylized fish bumper stickers in that, eh? Now go look at the news, and tell me if you can see Ostara of the Dawn’s handiwork in places like Libya and the U.S. Northeast.
Expanding Horizons:
I refer to well known units of culture when trying to convey things to others. It’s amazingly helpful when I encounter someone who’s already a fan of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and I’m trying to instill some ability to hunt for compromise. There is a Band of Brothers episode where Colonel Sink dresses down the newly promoted Major Winters for his impulse to return to the front lines. I’ve been catching that lecture with increasing frequency over the last ten years.
I offered some books and papers in Reading: Required & Recommended. What follows here is some brain food, if you’re so inclined.
I’m currently watching The Lost Room, a six episode scavenger hunt for artifacts from an inflection point, the day where the room vanished and a hundred powerful objects that were in the room are scattered to the winds. The series doesn’t use the word that Vernor Vinge coined for this – godshatter.
My fine feathered friend and I have become closer, we’re at the point of picking material for binge watching. I brought up Carnivàle, two and a half seasons of supernatural conflict, an alternate history that precedes the Trinity test at Almagordo, where science put an end to magic.
The next season of The Peripheral is imminent. I read all three of William Gibson’s trilogies before reading the The Peripheral and Agency, the first two books of his fourth trilogy. The series isn’t faithful to the book,it’s one of those rare achievements that diverges, stands alone, and enriches the reading. The Jackpot is a fundamental concept. This event is hinted at in the final book of the Blue Ant trilogy, and it seems to be something to do with quantum cryptography and time travel. The series redefines it as a series of disasters akin to what we’re facing now, and then some sort of technological advance.
A paper copy of Bruce Sterling’s Distraction has sat on my shelf for nearly three years. I’ve read it at least three times since it came out. It was engaging, then well nigh prophetical in both a societal and personal sense for me, and I have … delayed revisiting it. Because what I remember from it just keeps coming true.
I also revisited The Invisibles comic this year and I started into The Filth, which Morrison counts as his finest work. It does seem to be as good as The Invisibles, but dramatically darker, and I wasn’t in any condition to read about a man with a mundane life and a dying cat getting pulled back into secret missions in an alternate reality.
Conclusion:
I haven’t said much about the time I spent reading Jane McGonigal and other work on alternate reality games starting back in 2011, when I was first introduced to The Invisibles. You can see some glimmers of that in Conspiracy Brokers and Shall We Play A Game? The latter is obviously a trailhead, or a starting point for … something. I’ve not shared what it is and I don’t know that I ever will. It can’t be about me, I spent three years doing background research in an area where I have Zero History. If it’s any good it’ll take off of its own accord, gain a following, and I’ll be able to just watch as others discover aspects of it I never imagined.
And if you’re going to rise above the rest, you’ll have to identify the areas where you see in a spectrum others do not, and start figuring out how to enhance that. Reading and watching the work of others are a couple of things I enjoy that lead me in new directions, and I think that’s true for many people.
You needed a break anyway, so go and make it an interesting, thought provoking one ...