"The Damned Human Race"

Hey Folks,

Every now and then I stop and consider the human race.

Mark Twain called us the "damned human race." H.L. Mencken said that no one ever went broke underestimating our intelligence. There's a joke about the earth being the insane asylum of the universe. Yep, that's us.

As a member in good standing of the asylum, I've resisted "adjustment," preferring to attempt a cure. Not an easy undertaking.

In my pursuit of sanity I have come to a couple fundamental observations. One is that the light is either on or it is off - it isn't both at the same time.

Now that might not seem very profound, but consider this from Nineteen Eighty-Four:

"The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. ... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies—all this is indispensably necessary. Even in using the word doublethink it is necessary to exercise doublethink. For by using the word one admits that one is tampering with reality; by a fresh act of doublethink one erases this knowledge; and so on indefinitely, with the lie always one leap ahead of the truth."

"Doublethink," while false to its core, is very comforting - in other words, it is a big help in our "adjusting" even while it removes us further from reality.

I believe I was told in freshman philosophy 101 that as long ago as Aristotle it was determined that something could not "be" and "not be" at the same time. So, our "damned," "stupid," "insane" retreat from reality is not the result of ignorance of the facts, but rather results from the denial of the facts. That denial is getting worse every day.

Most people, even right-wing nut-cases, understand this if the notion is presented in some historical context that presents no obvious challenge to contemporary "reality."

Few would object to criticism of numerous examples of doublethink connected to the Salem witch hysteria. For example, most would recognize the "denial" involved in the instance where a jury finds the defendant innocent, but "reconsiders" at the ininsistence of the judge when a mob outside the courthouse objects. Few would support the subsequent condemnation and hanging of the accused.

Unfortunately, the human race seems unable to practice the same, simple mental exexercise in contemporary matters. For example, we, the well-adjusted inmates of Bedlam, accepted each of Bush's sequential excuses for the war, keeping "the lie always one leap ahead of the truth." And we repeat this soothing therapy every day and in a myriad of ways. Moreover, the calming lies we tell one another are endlessly echoed and amplified by the media, itself caught up in self-help "adjustment."

Twain and Mencken were right if you ask me, and the joke has sense as well as humor.

Fortunately, another one of my fundamental observations offers some hope in the face of this depressing situation.

In my experience, when things get bad enough, the center will no longer hold and the universe of lies are flung from their orbits into a fittingly destructive vacuum,thus freeing us from our self-imposed hypnosis long enough to give it all another try.

That time might not be so very far away.

- Uke Man