Poor Little Truth

This sentence comes from Bill Moyers Journal, September 12, 2008:

"We live inside a media hurricane, an unrelenting force of attacks and counterattacks hatched in partisan quarters and hurled into cyberspace with such velocity the poor little truth is blown away like signposts on the gulf coast."

One hardly knows where to turn anymore, with all the information being hurled at us from every direction. Where is the eye of this hurricane? And maybe the "poor little truth" really didn't get blown away after all but is somehow still swirling about in the storm of it all. Political agendas are, after all, political agendas. They are by nature at odds with each other; one pushes, one pulls, both polarize each other. It's just the way it is and cannot be "understood" any more than war itself can be understood.

Likewise, James Hillman might want to understand war, but this might just be wishful thinking in the way the SHAM* gurus wish for their Heart's Desire, or whatnot. And a "leap into myth" (as Hillman suggests) sure as hell isn't going to provide any sane answers. He expects his book, A Terrible Love of War, to pull us out of the predicament of accepting the unfortunate belief that war can neither be explained nor understood. Maybe it just is and that is the reality we need to accept: war exists and people are in love with it because of the excitement, the danger, the way it makes us feel alive, as if we are striving for something.

Is it winning we actually want, or ar we just in this for the ride? Can't we just enjoy the journey without thought to the destination, which might not even really matter in the long run? Attachment to an imagined destination can not only ruin a perfectly good journey, it can also lead to depression, create present chaos, and most of all distract us terribly from the present moment. Now. The culmination of what, at times, can seem like the miraculous.

How do we remember all this stuff? How to spell, form words and sentences, punctuation, what to say, how to say it, and all those other things (including pen and paper, not to mention all electronic forms of communication) that make writing and getting it "out there" to be read possible. No, it's not a stretch of the imagination to refer to the whole process as miraculous. Who are we, mere mortals, to fail to appreciate something we did not create: life. As artists, we "make" things, but our powers are quite limited, even if the things we do make are rightly incredible.

Bill Moyers' perspective on the political atmosphere is, as always, insightful. I wonder about his thoughts surrounding Broken, though. His son and namesake wrote a chilling account of "addiction and redemption" in which he, Bill, played a major role. William Cope Moyers dedicates that book to both of his parents, "who have made the journey with me every step of the way," he writes. Addicts are at war, too. William found himself holed up in a crack house in October 1994 with a sharp, commanding voice outside the door summoning him, "the white guy." He was terrified, he said, and rushed around warning the other "crack heads" to be still and quiet. I can just imagine that scene, feel the terror, and wonder how different his experience was from that of combat soldiers.

Hillman himself is at war with various people, who he attacks in his book. He is brutal with Susan Sontag, for example. Is it simply because he wants her to be wrong, or does he have a real bone to pick with her. She says we "can't understand, can't imagine" the dreadfulness of war, how terrifying it is, how normal it becomes. And yet he took her words and built a book around them, a kind of monument to terror. He explains and describes "a terrible love of war," but does he truly come to understand it? If he has to get in another author's face with accusations that "she is wrong" and what she says "is unacceptable," then what is he showing us with his very actions? And what I am doing now is no different. The need to confront is a reality of war, too. He goes on later to talk about how all of nature joins the war: "The earth's resistance to war, its inhabitants -- rats and bugs and leeches -- at war with the warriors."

No, it's not about the booty of war, either, which the Celts threw into the water "to propitate the gods," to appease them and perhaps ask forgiveness for what they had done. That's just speculation, knowing what I know about human nature. Throwing their war trophies into a lake to propitate some imaginary gods might have been a sacrificial love offering, or something else. Here is one meaning of the word appease, "to attempt to pacify (an enemy) by granting concessions, often at the expense of principle." But would a warrior look at "the gods" as an enemy? Hillman's Jungian influence is especially evident here: "Below the events are the ancestors drawing new history into old patterns." That sentence itself, like this one, is part of an old (ancient) pattern. The collective unconscious, still churning away after all this time.

Just what is the connection between forgiveness and war, between betrayal and love?

Your comments are welcome and appreciated.

*SHAM, as defined by Steve Salerno: Self-Help and Actualization Movement