Ralph Melcher's Open Salon Blog

Signals to Noise

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 23:04:56 -0400

I just got this email from some obscure person working for an international drug cartel selling pain -killers and drugs for erectile dysfunction. I don't know this person but apparently I've managed to get on some marketing list and a some robotic attack machinery has broken through my SPAM filters.

Still, I thought this was a worthy attempt at literature:

When your dear people suffer you are ready to do anything to rid them off the torture. But unfortunately quite often we simply cannot do anything that would help. I m 52 and I work as a fireman. I have two grown up children - my elder son Jim is 29 and my daughter Alison is nearly 20. They are everything to me that s why I starve to spend all my free time with them. Jim and I are fond of mountains and rock climbing. Every summer we go in the mountains for a week or so. Last summer we went for a week and a half in June. We have been in the mountains for 5 days already and have gone far away from the town when by some horrible occasion Jim fell off in a deepish gorge. I was paralyzed, I saw him lying on the bottom of the gorge groaning. Then I regained my self-control and managed to climb down into the gorge. Jim felt terribly, from time to time he lost his consciousness. It seemed as if he got his hip and his spine broken. I would not be able to get him into the town by myself. He was trembling with pain; it was unbearable to watch your child suffering. When I called emergency line they told me that they would try to find us as soon as it was possible but until that time I had to stop Jim s pain as his heart could not possibly stand it. I started pottering in our knapsacks and fortunately I found out that my wife had put some pain-killer into my knapsack before our departure. It was Tramadol, I have never heard about it, and I was not sure whether it was powerful enough to help Jim, but I had no choice. I gave him two pills. Gradually he stopped groaning and fell asleep as I thought. They found us 3 hours later. In the hospital they told me that Jim s spine was not broken but it was damaged greatly and every breath hurt him enormously. They also said that if it were not for the pain-killer my son wouldn t be still alive. Do I have to say anything else about my gratitude towards this medicine and my wife?
This is followed by a web link that I'm not inclined to follow and won't pass on here. It probably connects to a server based in India or the Ukraine where they smuggle and ship millions of orders worldwide. We are merely the end of the chain.

Nor will I pass on the name of the author. Who knows if the author still lives, or ever lived, or where he/she lives? Perhaps the author is himself a construction of the machine. Or maybe its the transcript of a conversation once held and long since fading away.

Still there is gratitude, for both the medicine and the wife.

I Aim To Misbehave

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 19:04:31 -0400

All of my friends know that I'm a dedicated fan and proselytizer of the Firefly television series produced by Joss Whedon in 2002 and canned summarily by Fox Television before it was given a chance to gain an audience. True to the spirit and very premise of the show, after cancellation it emerged through word of mouth and a widespread underground movement to become one of the most popular dvd collections ever. Universal Studios then acquired the rights to produce the movie Serenity in 2005, concluding the arc of the story and initiating Mr. Whedon to big screen directing. Nowadays the one season series runs almost continually in syndication on cable.

This story is reminiscent of the first Star Trek series, which was also cancelled (if somewhat less rudely) by clueless executives in the sixties, going on to become one of the most successful movie franchises ever. Ironically, Firefly offers sort of an anti-Star Trek narrative, where the corporate establishment that the Federation glorifies has now become bad guys and the heroes are essentially anarchists and criminals. Likely this is symptomatic of a collective loss of faith in the promise of unending technological progress and the corporate American Dream. Personally I hope that it indicates a resistance to the virtual assimilation and homogenization of the social commons by the Borglike marketing spheres of vast networked entities like Facebookistan and Twitter.

The quote, "I aim to misbehave", is one of the key lines spoken by pirate captain Malcolm Reynolds before he leads the forces of the the Alliance into a deadly trap to expose the secret that allows them to maintain absolute control. It expresses the spirit of contrariness and rebellion better than almost any phrase I can recall spoken in the movies. I've decided therefore to establish a personal commemorative to honor any movie or television show that embodies the subversive spirit so well portrayed in Firefly.

To this end, the first award goes to The Hunger Games, a film by director Gary Ross (Pleasantvulle, Seabiscuit). In a recent interview on Elvis Mitchell's show, The Treatment, Mr. Ross speaks about his interest in exploring societies where a select few exercise disproportionate power without consensus (the 99 and the 1 percent) and how single acts of morality can cause the tenuous fibers of that culture to unravel.

I saw the movie the other day, not without some apprehension. Judging by the number of cover stories on the magazine racks of my local grocery store, it was the most hyped movie since Avatar, and it appeared to be geared toward a younger audience that flocks to movies like Harry Potter and the Twilight series of vampire melodramas. Not only was I more than pleased with the movie itself, I was gratified that such intelligent storytelling is going over big with an up and coming generation.

The Hunger Games worked for me on many levels. The story is a finally crafted arc where a young and very believable heroine named Katniss Everdeen (embodied with strength and intelligence by Jennifer Lawrence) grows beyond her narrow focus on survival to discover the boundaries of her own ethics and morality. She lifts it proudly in the face of a brutal spectacle in which she risks everything. Supporting the lead performance by a fine group of young actors are veterans like Stanley Tucci, Woody Harrelson (particularly good as a game survivor and mentor) and Donald Sutherland.

Although the movie is set in a high tech future the special effects are largely understated and never come to dominate the performances. Most of the narrative takes place in the woods of an Appalachian wilderness (it was filmed in and around Ashville, North Carolina) reminiscent of the Michael Mann film of The Last of the Mohicans. Unlike many sci-fi epics, The Hunger Games keeps its focus tightly with the point of view of particular characters. Through mostly close-in footage we witness the world narrowly through the eyes of Katniss and thus are taken along on her very personal journey. Outside and against the point of view of Katniss' we see the spectacle from the standpoint of those who work the machinery. In a single notable exception that breaks us out of this closed circle we get a short glimpse of people rising up in response to an act of courage and honor to express rage and quickly repressed rebellion. The scene is effective and memorable as it exposes the thinly fraying threads of brutal control that an act of individual courage can potentially unravel.

The spectacle itself is portrayed as a cross between a television show like Survivor and a modern broadcast version of the gladiatorial arena. By juxtaposing the brutality spawned by the Roman Empire with the presentation techniques of contemporary television (only the costumes and hairdos would seem out of place) we see the dark side of how modern media becomes the primary vehicle for social control. This is the reality of network television.

At the end of the movie we are left with an acute awareness that beneath a very thin veneer of temporary media satiation large forces have been triggered by an act of moral courage. The story is only beginning. Although I've never read the books, I can't wait for the sequel.

Oversight

Thu, 1 Mar 2012 23:03:06 -0500

A friend of mine today asked me what I thought of Thrive, a propaganda documentary currently making the rounds on the New Age circuit. I thought I'd already sent out a review weeks ago, just after I saw it in January. Lo! I poked through my Arclist archive and could find no trace. It turns out I posted the piece on my Blog but either hadn't sent it out as a mailing or for some reason deleted it from the archive. Perhaps I didn't want to offend any true believers in my audience. Whatever the reason, here I want to correct the oversight,

You can read my review here, under the title, Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

In the past several weeks I've been much too distracted by circumstances to find the energy to write much of anything although I watched the Oscars last week and, amazingly, found that I'd actually seen the majority of nominees. My own personal picks for best movies of the year, in descending order: My Week With Marilyn (more on this in a future piece), Contagion and Melancholia, with The Tree of Life (certainly the most ambitious) as a close runner-up. My own reviews of these are here and here. I measure them according to the enduring effect of their message and imagery.

So, here is a little review of the past few weeks.

________________________________________________________________________

"Whenever two or more are gathered in my name it turns into a mob of power junkies."

Who is it that said this? Was it Jesus or the Buddha? I don't know, maybe Jesus. He always seemed a little more self absorbed, probably because of the "God" thing. Maybe he could see from first hand experience, being personally tempted in the wilderness and all, what all of this would likely come to. Buddha, frankly, couldn't give a crap. He was more of a take it or leave it kind of guy, not trying to overturn some major religion or empire or anything, maybe a little more adaptable. His line was a throwaway: Suffer or not, it's up to you.

Still, we have numberless generations passing the torch and along the way adding a little of this and a little of that, just to make the thing more palatable at a given place and time. Of course, there's the irresistible urge always to skim a little authority off the top by adding robes and ceremonies and grades of enlightenment and lots of lists of things to do. Nothing wrong with it, as without somebody being the 'designated driver' so to speak, whatever might trickle down from mouth to mouth gets quickly and hopelessly distorted and the core of anyone's teaching is lost in all the haze.

I've been caught up myself in sorting out some haze these past few weeks. I won't go into details here, but let me tell you, the lessons learned when one is involved with other people are both priceless and nerve wracking. I've been in corporations and communes, political organizations and spiritual communities, and I swear to the almighty (whom I don't believe in) that the same games get played in every one. Somebody's gotta be right and somebody's gotta be wrong, and whoever fancies themselves closer to the 'source'; that being whatever brings the group together, ideology, vision, a teacher or leader, money, ends up being the one who calls the shots. The more effective the organization, the more power it draws to itself, and the more baroque and underhanded the social games and power plays.

We forget that we got involved for relatively simple, even primal reasons. We wanted to feel that we weren't alone in the world. We wanted to meet somebody else who saw things in some way we could relate to, or maybe we just wanted to get laid. We thought that being involved would give us a sense of purpose that would connect us with the rest of humanity in this big empty universe. So we knocked on the door and hoped somebody would show us the way in.

Trouble is, once we get inside the door we get confused all around the issue of what it means to be 'inside' as opposed to being 'outside.' Suddenly the universe looks like Dante's Inferno, with circles inside of circles, and everyone wishes they could get to the one in the middle where there aren't anymore barriers to cross.

Chogyam Trungpa called this 'Spiritual Materialism.' Instead of simply wanting to be happy, we become goal oriented and our happiness is dependent on some arbitrary definition of 'success.' When we finally achieve the goal we find that another beckons. The road is endless where happiness is defined by circumstance and the actual experience of happiness recedes like the edge of an ever-expanding universe.

Speaking of Trungpa, in the middle of my own dramas I saw Crazy Wisdom, the documentary of his life. Certainly one of the great teachers and transmitters of the Buddha's message to the West, Trungpa and his followers provide an excellent study in all I've mulled over in the previous paragraphs. Was he also a drunk and a sexual libertine, taking advantage of his devotees in a manner that personally made me cringe? Am I just being obtuse and refusing to see the lessons in all of these actions of a master?

As my own Zen teacher, who learned it from Roshi Bernie Glassman, who got it from The Dude, likes to say, "That's just, like, your opinion, man."

So I will here let it all go. I simply don't presume to know the answers in all of this complexity. Still, I will look for fellowship with others amid all of our common craziness. I pray only that in the midst of it I can attain compassion. Maybe then I will find myself brushing against happiness.

Biology

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 19:01:13 -0500

Notwithstanding Chris Matthew's comments this week referring to Republicans who believe in Creationism as "Troglodytes" (a view with which I share some sympathy) the arguments waged between biologists about the true nature of evolutionary processes are vastly more intriguing (and relevant) than the abstract arguments between science and religion. In some ways the disputes between biologists resemble the friction between religious factions, but in more important ways they represent the very manner in which science progresses toward new conclusions, which then lead to new discoveries and new arguments, ad infinitum.

One of the most important arguments being waged is between the selfish gene theories of neo-Darwinists like Richard Dawkins and theories of symbiogenesis pioneered by Lynn Margulis and James Lovelock. It is important because it challenges scientists to think beyond the conventional linear boundaries of simple cause and effect and to embrace much wider possibilities of complex systems involving interactions on a multitude of levels where cause and effect become so enmeshed as to be indistinguishable. This view requires that our approach to knowledge comes against traditional boundaries between disciplines and thus it has met resistance from those who hold those boundaries sacred.

A recent essay discussing the life and work of Lynn Margulis appears in the Lindisfarne Cafe section of The Wild Rivers Review. An eminent biologist and wife of the late Carl Sagan, her theories and experiments into the mysteries of life's origins challenge the conventional views of natural selection. She died on November 22, 2011.

From the essay:

Lean Forward, Stand Back:

The Worldview of Lynn Margulis (Scientist)

by Andre Khalil

Many neo-Darwinist concerns circled nervously around words like “Gaia” and “cooperation” (which Margulis did not like to use). They were, perhaps rightly, concerned that these terms were ripe for religious appropriation. But Margulis herself was outspoken against such mishandling of her research.

Some new-agers love to grasp symbiosis as signifying “altruism” between organisms. But it’s much more complex than that—there is something “in it” for every symbiont, just as a state beneficial in some way arises out of each symbiosis. Terms like “altruism” had no scientific value, because they are too single-minded to describe the phenomenon.

New age thinkers also use Gaia as a blanket term. They’ve appropriated it to mean that the Earth is a living organism. Or they refer to Gaia as a “goddess.” This turns Gaia into a sort of Stepford planet by containing its complexity in a simple and inadequate metaphor. This no more grasps reality than “selfishness” does our genes.

Margulis expressed her solution to the error once by saying, “Gaia is not merely an organism.”

The Earth is beyond stale conception. It is more magnificent and active than we can imagine. Gaia is object and process. Gaia houses volcanos and every book, every word on volcanos ever written, and at the same time is those volcanos. It is where our greatest loves live, and where every human heartbeat has ever rhythmically pulsed. In this new understanding, that something can pulse with life and yet be beyond our concepts of living, those concepts begin to change.

If Gaia is conscious, it possesses a consciousness of a different magnitude, probably of a different order all together.

Richard Dawkins and his pre-cursors like John Maynard Smith, as well as other neo-Darwinist thinkers, could not and cannot understand this lesson: this complexity is impossible to incorporate in a linear and reductive understanding.

Part of their failure lies in a misunderstood version of cause and effect that plagues science. At a certain level of complexity, somewhere just above a billiard ball clanking into a another billiard ball, cause and effect begins to change its shape. This change may be real—that is, it may actually shift in its laws and patterns in nature—or it may be imagined. In other words, it may demand a different sort of thinking. Effectively it doesn’t matter, since we need to contend with the shift in our thinking. To encompass complex systems with our thinking, we must imagine a model that is less like “cause-effect” more like “being-manifestation.” That is, multiple layers and numerous agents of forces unconsciously conspire together, and their conspiring is so intermingled, that it is simultaneously cause and effect, and thus beyond both. For example, the being, or process of Gaia manifests itself as an unstable, constantly correcting level of oceanic salinity. One cannot be said to cause the other, since the oceanic salinity interacts so deeply with the beings and environs from which it arises. Symbiosis and biological forms demand the same sort of thought.

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Sites of interest:

http://arclist.org/

http://deskript.com/

http://www.openculture.com/

http://open.salon.com/blog/ralph_melcher/recent

http://arclist-ralphmelcher.blogspot.com/

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Two Movies

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 23:01:50 -0500

Two exceptional movies framed the past year for me.

The Tree of Life begins as a seed of light and then expands to the whole territory of existence. Through the memories of ordinary life juxtaposed with glimpses of the primal forces of creation we are given a view of a universe spawned in raptures of what may be called love.

Melancholia is no less of a masterpiece, but its subject is the utter finality of death.

Tree of Life is actually the first movie by Terence Malick that I totally enjoyed and appreciated. As ambitious as any film can be, it's also so unconventional in structure that to many it has been either overwhelming or inaccessible. The only film I can think of that embraces so wide a vision is Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. And yet, while that movie approaches the big ideas from a rather cerebral standpoint and spends most of its time outside of the earth, Malick's singular achievement is to uncover the secrets of the soul through the device of memory and the lens of an ordinary life.

We watch a life unfold from infancy to adulthood in a little town in Texas and we are also witness to the initial explosion of creation leading to the evolution of life on our planet. Malick's theme is the continuity between the extremes of our mundane existance and of the greater evolution within which our lives unfold. Only a director who is equally at home with the grandest vision and the minute particulars of memory could pull this off.

On one hand this is certainly one of the best portraits of growing up that I've ever seen. I could feel the textures and almost sense the smells and touch of my own childhood, growing up in the fifties. The intimacy and the struggles of family life, and particularly the relationship between a father and a son are revealed in such finely selected detail that what we witness reveals universal themes of love and struggle contained in singular circumstance. Brad Pitt's portrayal of the father is truly exceptional as is the performance of the young Hunter McCracken as the son and Jessica Chastain as both mother and as the embodiment of grace.

Somehow, woven through the family drama, in a manner that is miraculously seamless, we witness in breathtaking segments the big bang, the evolution of stars, the emergence of life and the birth of the world we are familiar with. I can't describe how or why this works, but it's a feat that only a master of film and a true spiritual visionary could achieve without for a moment falling into the maudlin and sentimental.

At center the movie carries an essentially Christian message, but one that is both universal and transcendent. When we contemplate the last few images of skyscrapers and the Golden Gate bridge, we are seeing them through the eyes of a man who has taken the full lesson of life, that all that we are and all that we build are the products ultimately of the love that has been passed on to us.

Melancholia, by Lars von Trier, is about the denial of love and of life and the profound emptiness at the core of our suffering. Von Trier is a controversial director whose films have earned both the highest recognition and vitriolic condemnation. His actresses have won acclaim while he has been accused of misogyny for the usually harsh treatment of their characters in his films. His movies are not always easy to watch or gentle on our sensibilities, but he is an absolute master at constructing images that transcend the content of his narratives. Like one of his mentors, the Russian director Andrey Tarkovsky, he approaches film as a painter or sculptor in time, building for us in a precise accumulation of impressions a total picture that leaves us usually stunned and breathless.

About five years ago a very good friend of mine ended her life by jumping into the Rio Grande Gorge. I've often tried to imagine what went through her mind as she drove her ramshackle car with a broken window 40 miles up through the canyons toward Taos under the cold and overcast April sky, arriving at the bridge in the dark of evening. She walked to one of the exposed platforms that overlook the river, 600 feet down. You can't see the river once the sun goes down, so what you are looking into is a vast pool of darkness with the distant sound of the rapids sifting between the canyon walls. What was she feeling as she removed her coat and her shoes, climbed the railing and jumped? Was it sudden fear or the exhilaration of flight, or just a numbing descent into oblivion?

I believe that the motives we imagine for suicide are full of misconceptions. Sometimes we think that a person who commits suicide is trying to leave here for a better place or was seeking some sort of transcendent experience. We may think that it's an act of violence or revenge enacted toward we the survivors. Finally I've come to accept that for some people this life means nothing but constant pain, and death for them is not about transcendence or revenge, but only a blessed end to it all.

In Melancholia a world ten times the size of our own collides with the earth. We see it twice. During the overture we view the spectacle from outer space, as one enormous globe embraces and devours the other. Then we watch a woman's life unravel in her total collapse into depression. We then see her slowly revive with the revelation of the end and finally in a welcome embrace of death. Then, once more we witness the collision of worlds, this time from the perspective of those whose lives are ended in its vast and sudden conflagration.

These are timely images in a year when visions of strange planets and worlds colliding echo in the consciousness of many who expect the revelation of dire prophecies. But von Trier isn't talking about prophecies. He is addressing the condition of both longing and avoidance as we face each other and our individual mortality. The character Justine, played by Kirsten Dunst, is a woman who tries to find meaning in the enveloping ritual of an elaborately staged wedding celebration. When confronted by the contradictory undercurrents and self deceptions of family, friends and associates, she fails completely in her efforts to conform, and what results is the almost complete collapse of her world. What remains is her relationship with Claire, her sister and caretaker, Claire's husband, and their young son. The final drama plays out on a huge estate separated from anyone else in the world. Overshadowing every relationship is the approach and impending arrival of the mysterious planet, which is in the end, death itself.

What we witness is that in the face of death all of our illusions and rituals unravel and we can no longer hide from our fears. We are unmasked. The scientist must set aside rationality and embrace the unknown. Those who have everything under control see that control is ultimately an illusion. To those who welcome death with open arms, and perhaps for the children who are too innocent to have constructed a body of fear there is the possibility of calm acceptance or even embrace.

In the final image in the film, the two sisters and the child sit under a tent made of branches while the beautiful and awesome planet fills the horizon before it obliterates everything. This singular and powerful image is one that I will carry with me for a long time. For me it conveys a certain acceptance. To my surprise I found in this film a kind of understanding and a kind of peace.

These are the two movies, out of all that I saw in 2011 that stand out as special achievements. On the surface they appear to be contradictory in their themes, but as both strive to address universal questions of life and death they are not as far apart as they seem. Perhaps, as my own awareness vibrates between the poles of light and dark, life and death, love and despair, I find it quite natural to embrace both visions.