Good Morning Babylon: 1984 Part II

Reader be warned: This post will not brighten your day. In fact, I hope it shakes you up. If your heart has escaped becoming altogether calloused, it might even bring you to tears. I am weeping a little on and off as I type.

What follows might convince you that I am crazy if you hadn’t come to that conclusion already. I’m comfortable with that. It’s a little lonely but I’m fairly certain that I’d rather be crazy my way than most people’s definition of sane. (As my mother says, “You wouldn’t worry so much about what people thought of you if you realized how seldom they did.” That’s one way to stay humble, for sure.) This isn’t about me, except that I really need to get it out of my system in a way that I pray will be constructive for somebody.

All week (more than usual) I have been raw with knowledge of the precarious state of the world and sick with grief over my feeling of helpless complicity in an ugly, violent, senseless system that seems to be spiraling out of control. Broken. And breaking more every day. There is healing also, in big and small ways (both are significant and should be remembered and celebrated, for therein lies hope), but I am deeply afraid that the momentum is in the wrong direction. Without the victorious words ‘It is finished!’ and the promise of a new heavens and a new earth, I’m not sure how I would make it through the day. We know how the story ends. (Or continues?) Still, God help us all.

Agrarian ethicist poet prophet Wendell Berry in his book Standing By Words coined the term ‘tyrranese’ to identify the empty or twisted language by which those in power disguise reality to promote their interests and enlist the blindly trusting support of average people. Civic indoctrination. The first thing they teach us is that there is free speech and no propaganda here. Pretty much everything else after that is propaganda.

'Where I come from, we believe all sorts of things that aren’t true. We call it history.’ . . . There are precious few-at-ease with moral ambigu-it-ies . . . so . . . we . . . act . . . as . . . though . . . they . . .don’t . . .ex . . . ist.
– Wicked, the musical

Elsewhere in the aforementioned book, Berry calls language “the opportunity and limit of thought.” We can think (and therefore do and be) only as much as that for which we have words. Our ideas shape our words shape our actions shape our worldviews shape our very selves. If we hold a thought for very long and want to do anything about it, we must build a way to express it out of existing idea-symbols or invent a new term. (If we don’t, we lose it, or it becomes confused with categories we already have.)

And then, because we are relational creatures whether we like it our not, we must somehow introduce the word or phrase to others so that it can be used. Meaning is of little efficacy when not shared. This gets tricky when certain words contain multiple meanings, or different shades of meaning for different people, or come to mean contradictory things (or nothing at all). Labels are a convenient way of replacing thought with soundbyte, of blurring perception with misguided preconceived notions and lies. Naming is an act of power, and it can be creative and healing or cause distortion and even annihilation. (What if God had kept the Word to Godself? What if God had never spoken at all? But here we are – God spoke, and it WAS. God said it was good and that we are to love. Those are the marching orders. Who are we, silly creatures, to think we need to understand why?)

Since writing an essay on the power of language for a class on the thought of Wendell Berry, I have been coming up with interpretations of ‘tyrranese’ terms used by politicians, economists, advertisers, and other manufacturers and peddlers of what passes for ‘the real world’, which is not someplace I want to live. I am doing my level (if hesitant, struggling, conflicted, confused, and frequently discouraged and sidetracked) best to relocate to the Kingdom of God. Who’s with me?

Ladies and gentlemen, here you have it. The Matrix decoded. Some of these definitions are new for this blog, but most are compiled from earlier essays, journals entries, and e-mails. The wording is mine; the ideas are assimilated from all manner of sources. I don’t expect you to enjoy, but please read on. Emerge disturbed and disillusioned, stouter and softer of heart, and angry enough about the right things to love fiercely, live boldy, and wage extravagant peace on the mess we backward human creatures have made of creation.

“resource” – Something that can be used up and thrown away because there will always be more where that came from.
“away” – Anywhere but my own backyard; a place where things can be ‘thrown’.
“human resource” – Unit of labor; sentient component of The Economy. For connotations of ‘resource’, see above. Often synonymous with ‘consumer’ and ‘taxpayer’.
“health industry” – Purveyor of goods and services that keep sick people alive and comfortable; healthy people are a threat to health industry job security and profit margins.
FDA – Falsehood and Disinformation Authority (If a substance needs the FDA’s approval, chances are it’s not good for you.)
USDA – Unjust Subsidy Distribution Agency
“economic growth” – Wealthy people (yes, middle class, this includes us) buying more things they don’t need with more money that doesn’t exist (a.k.a. credit). Causes ‘development’.
“development” – Installing structures that enable people with money to take land and other resources away from the local population; economic and environmental rape of already impoverished regions; conversion of other people’s means of sustenance into money and garbage by those who already have too much of both.
“trickle-down economics” – What happens from Wall Street to the middle class after the Invisible Hand has sucked up stolen time and resources from the less fortunate (and cleverly hidden) majority at the bottom.
“globalization” – Hegemony privatized; colonial exploitation without the messy business of directly running local governments.
“free market” – A system in which no one gets in the way of the people with the most money doing whatever they want.
“democracy” – Government that cooperates with the free market economy, defending corporate interests against those of their own people. (Venezuela, naturally, does not qualify).
“collateral damage” – State-sponsored genocide; elimination of people who are not significant to or get in the way of ‘peace’, ‘democracy’, and ‘economic growth’.
“war on terror” – State-sanctioned violence against people suspected of non-state-sanctioned violence and thousands of those people’s neighbors. When we have killed all of the desperate angry people who hate us, we will have peace. (And besides, the weapons industry creates jobs and grows the economy no matter who does the killing and dying.)
“peace” – Enough political stability to allow the industrial economy to proceed undisturbed.

Parting exhortations from some wise Nordic folk, the first courtesy a 1,000 year old runestone and the second a favorite saying of my hockey-obsessed buddy Henrik.

Remember to forget trivialities.
Remember to learn what counts.
Remember to love when you should.
Remember to live while you can.

Come on, now. Let go of the sideboards and get in the game!