Human Nature - How we are adapted for Communism

It is time that we faced reality and understand what is at the root of the psychological and spiritual alienation we face amid the fast-paced and ruthlessly competitive environment of the modern capitalist society.  In the 1960s, the scientist Desmond Morris described how the “human animal” built for life as a hunter-gatherer, has imprisoned himself in the gilded cage of the modern city where intimacy is fleeting and where no one knows his name.  Recently the famed geneticist Spencer Wells described how much more “natural” it felt living amongst the Hadza hunter-gatherers of Tanzania compared with the “crazy” life he was used to back in urban America.  David Suzuki has described how, in the face of impending catastrophes like global warming, humanity’s only salvation would be to re-capture our ancestors’ ability to live in harmony with nature in sustainable communities.  Many other scientists have said similar things but have failed to draw the obvious conclusions: the fact that for more than 90% of humanity’s 150,000 year history, human beings effectively lived in self-sustaining nomadic and semi-nomadic groups according to communism’s founding principle: from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.  Suzuki and other scientists are implicitly arguing the same thing Marx did: that our only hope for a better future lies in bringing the virtues of our distant past into the modern age.

So Many Poets...

So many poets spend so much time talking, rapping, writing about openness, love, the primal need to be as one with the world, with nature, and with other people.  They light up the room and their audience’s hearts with glowing phrases urging them to embrace life in all its diverse aspects.  To those who stop and listen they appear as lost messiahs for a species that has lost its way and wanders in dark places.

But so many poets are so vulnerable.  So when the slightest discomfort comes to them and when fear races through their mind and anxiety thunders through their bloodstream the lessons they impart to the world evaporate all too easily – blown away on a wind that is not blowing.  Fine words are replaced with walls and loving words with hatred as they crucify the transgressor who has dared to trespass in their eminent domain.

They do not know what it is like to live their dreams – so they hurt each other: Pain replacing pleasure and wisdom sinking into the sands of time like a weary shipwreck survivor.  And all I can ask is why? But that’s not the hardest part.

The hardest part is that I DO know.  You see when you responded to my affection with an “emphatic piss off” I was wounded and if I had been 18 at the time it would have taken all my willpower to stop me from falling to the floor crying – how could someone be so cruel? But 26 year olds better understand the tragedy of having the face every day with a marketable facade, face every stranger or ex-lover with deadly suspicion, and the need to pre-emptively hurt others to avoid being taken advantage of – in short, we know what society demands from us.

So I was wounded, a cut opened in the scar tissue around my heart and I bled but it was the words of a far better poet than me that saved me then: “I wish I could tell him that I love him”, “Gotta make love, and remake love...reincarnate love”, “That’s what love’s like...that’s what it was...what it is...what it will be...that’s what love’s like.” And the passion of those lines, the blood from my wounds and the defiance of my spirit poured forth into three words, your hostile message countered by that deepest yet simplest phrase: “I love you.”

They Say Perspective is Everything...

They say perspective is everything.  To her I was just one of many.  To me she was as radiant as the sun standing out in a crowd: a woman who held me in her arms and told me that she loved me.  Too many men are afraid to express just what that means to them: what it feels to be so close to another human being, another heart, another mind, another soul, flesh caressing flesh and bone caressing bone.  Two living creatures in the highest state of togetherness, where all clichés collapse and where no words exist to cloud our minds as the senses bask in primal overflow.

But they say perspective is everything and what to me felt like the most Holy Communion with that most secret and powerful mysteries of the human spirit, you saw as a tidal wave of sin and corruption, revelling in this island of debauchery we had made together: our own half-acre of hell that was in reality nothing more than two people exploring the deeper roots of harmony.  What’s so sinful about a force of nature?

They say perspective is everything but one thing was true: for all our differing perspectives, like your fantasies demanded, I wanted to stay in that bed with you for three whole days until we were so on fire that we would rise together like a pair of phoenixes – purified by the flames of our pyre until our corruption was reduced to ashes.  And during that time I would show you the true meaning of endurance until our mortal frames could take no more and we would collapse into the burning embrace of the inferno we had made.

If only I could have shown you what it is like to burn.  Maybe then your perspective would have changed.  Maybe then you would still be here tonight.

Expanding Circles

My whole life I have been spinning in circles: Confined by the orbits of confidence and the downward spirals of fear, shaped by the seasonal cycles of expansion and contraction as I face a world that sometimes appears to be spawned from nightmares.

The circle always starts small, from the warm wet comfort of the womb to the fenced in kindergarten playground I was afraid to leave in case those “big kids” were hungry that day.  It echoes from the mind of a frightened kid who longed to be knight in shining armour so no bully would ever mess with him again to the 23 year old man who had trouble making that first scared step through the door of an airplane.

From grade school to high school to university; from the family to humanity, this world is often terrifying.  For who can tell what lies ahead, through the next set of doors or around that next corner? It could be love or hate, a mentor or a bully, a true friend or a liar, a beautiful relationship or a broken heart.  It’s hard, because you never know what to expect when you walk down that next street or into that next room.  What will you find? Pain? Joy? Something so unforgettable that it leaves a permanent blessing or scar? Or something so dull and boring that you want to tear your hair out and scream for mercy?

What choice do we have really? We either keep risking, keep reaching out, expanding, caring, loving, sharing, striving, dreaming, becoming...or we collapse in on ourselves, contracting into a hard shell, fortress walls we hide behind, shielding ourselves from a hostile world – a hostage who has built his own prison from the four walls of fear.  And I would be lying if I said that this world doesn’t scare me, but nothing compares with the terror I feel thinking about these dungeons of the mind.  I keep going because there is no love behind a castle wall, and there is only freedom in an expanding circle.

Bowling for Humans

You know it’s probably my fault...I’ve just never learned how to love.  And what am I doing here, sitting among people I seem to talk with endlessly but have never really met? I wonder if we’ll ever meet.  And really, how many people have I actually “met”? How many people have I really and truly “met” in the course of my life? How many people could I actually relate to as something more than a bag of bones, a face, a name, and a relatively short and meaningless conversation about...well, I don’t really remember, it was a long time ago.

Out There

Are you out there? Can you hear me? Are you alone? Insecure amid the anxieties that besiege your frightened mind or are you secure in the knowledge that this new gaggle of acquaintances will shield you from the pain...at least for awhile.  You see I know what you’ve been exposed to day and in and day out since your childhood spent as a poor girl in a rich man’s house and I know how it cycles through your mind, again, and again, and again, making you want to scream for mercy or drown your liver in a poison tide.  Because it doesn’t matter whether you have that flock of hangers-on hanging off you or not, you’re alone and even behind a mask you can’t hide from it.

Circles within Circles

I remember kissing you at 90km per hour; though it felt like we were travelling at the speed of light.  Spinning round and round in circles like the world spins upon its axis and with the universe warping around us to the point where all reality disintegrates and one can only wait to be sub-atomically undone.  Yes, I remember waiting.  Waiting with a sinking feeling in my stomach for the centrifugal force to take hold of me and pitch me to the grim death that must surely come to those reckless enough to ride unsafe machinery at the behest of their crazy girlfriend.

But then I look at you: my sole constant amid the maddening blur of trees, grass, carnival rides and flashing neon lights against the night sky.  And you smile, holding close in my fear: daring me to go one step further, with you, as we journey together to the edge of sanity.  I remember the reassuring grip of your hand and I don’t want to let go – I don’t want to become so hard that I can no longer feel your touch through my armour which the universe is now stripping off and flinging in all directions like some volatile cosmic tornado that threatens to undo time itself.

I need you.  And even as the whirlpool claims me and the typhoon rages through my veins, coursing through a mind and a soul that is fighting for its life, my eyes are fixed on you – watching you and our love spinning round and round, circles within circles, spirals, ellipses, neutron stars, and unknown galaxies lit by the atomic fires of giant quasars – billion year-old light recycled and reborn, aging, and reborn, over and over – and I will know that there is order even in the depths of chaos.

I never wanted to let go.  You see this might seem to be one big cosmic joke but really, this crazy world is like that carnival ride and every day I find myself spinning in the dark toward my fate.  And it’s scary being alone.  I keep staring at the shifting walls of this vortex, tracing patterns amid shadows and trying to see your face.  Searching because I need you: I need your eyes, your smile, your kiss, your hand – to be my constant, the only thing that stays still amid the flux of reality.  Something real.  I will look at you, and not be afraid.

Obama and Public Healthcare: The Man Who Could Have Been

It’s not easy being Barack Obama these days: too many high hopes, too much opposition, too many complaints from the “professional left” (as his press secretary put it), too many problems with the economy, too many problems with healthcare, too many problems with Afghanistan and Wiki-leaks, too many Tea-Party rallies, too much pressure from Corporate America and Wall Street, too many Rush Limbaugh wannabes, too much debt, too many issues with the BP oil spill, too many issues with Israel and Palestine, too many issues with Lebanon and the Russians, too many issues with Iran, people saying he’s too progressive or not progressive enough, Republicans circling him like vultures, just TOO MUCH STUFF! So not surprisingly I’ve heard people say how much they just would not like to be “in Obama’s shoes”, it would just be too much of a hassle, they say.  I disagree, for I know exactly what I would have done.
  
Take healthcare reform for instance.  If Obama had been truly progressive and truly serious about securing affordable healthcare for all, he would have done the following as soon as he was elected: he would have addressed the American people, pointed his finger squarely at the Republican hacks and “Blue Dog” Democrat stooges and said, “People, you want affordable healthcare and these privileged, wealthy, Mayo-Clinic-visiting elites stand in the way this basic aspiration.  I campaigned on change, but I need your help to make it happen.  I invite you to come into the streets and show these Senators and Congressmen how you feel – healthcare is your right.  If you want it, come out and claim it!” Millions would have turned out, the Senate would have been forced to back down and national single-payer public healthcare would have become a reality in America.

Inspiration

Born anew, the phoenix rises like words from your trembling vocal cords that travel across the great divide, down the dark tunnels of my ears, before your wandering spark ignites the combustible liquids of my consciousness.  Smouldering embers rise into fires that refuse to die and soon the entire field of my vision is ablaze.

Your dancing form, your dancing words, basking in the heat of this inferno you have conjured continue to weave their enchantment.  My mind smarts with the knowledge that words can give life and hold power over life while my senses scream in exaltation of the obvious: inspiration is a lady.

In that moment, in one fiery glance I can see the entire universe unveiled before me.  The primal depths of the

Tao and all its mystery are suddenly illuminated in one blazing caress.  “See how it is all connected,” you whisper in a voice that resembles a volcanic eruption in slow motion.

With a roaring crash and a grinding splitting of rock my Gollum awakes to the tune of your ancient songs and gazes at the volatile vistas you have opened before its wondering eyes.

And just as quickly you are gone, your blazing features etched in my memory as I long for the enfolding splendour of your flaming red wings.  If I was a sculptor I would make a tastefully draped image of you playing a violin and label it “inspiration” in testimony of my affection but instead I am left with a blank page, sitting there before me - taunting my confused mind as it tries in vain to capture your glory.

I can only long for the day when you will smile in my presence again.

Why Anarchists Annoy Me: The Black Bloc and Police Partnership at the G20

While the whole truth about the confusing circumstances that surrounded the police crackdown at the G20 in Toronto on the weekend of June 26/27 will likely never be unravelled without a serious public inquiry, enough evidence has emerged for me to draw my own conclusions. What happened at the G20 was an ambush, a set-up, entrapment, a sophisticated bait and switch operation in which the anarchist elements of the protest were led to do exactly what the police wanted them to do: raise hell and give them justification (and it doesn’t take much when spin-doctors are at work) for a general crackdown on dissent.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5G7aCgXtWg&feature=player_embedded

A High School Student's Perspective on the War on Terror (Circa 2002)

(Just a recently rediscovered piece of work I turned out back in Grade 12, many years ago now).

For the average student, such as myself, locked within the confines of the education system with no hope of escape, it’s often hard to picture what is really going on in that great wide world outside the warm and fuzzy enclosed spaces we call classrooms.

To the average student (or any kid for that matter, student or no) – as in touch with the world as we are (or at least as much as the Internet developers dreamed) – the “War on Terror” proposed by some president sitting in a far away house that just so happens to be white against so fanatical terrorist zealots and their “president” who apparently blew away a couple of sizable office buildings seems almost like a video game (an analogy only someone in this digital age could come up with).

Remember those old Mortal Combat Nintendo games? Those classic pieces of video technology where the winner of the game often didn’t just take the loser’s pride but his entire head and spinal cord as well (in addition to dicing up his body, throwing it into a spike-filled pit, corroding it with acid and all manner of other spectacular means of desecrating the recently deceased)! Well, it only seems fitting – given our digital violence charged psyches – that we see this “War on Terror” as an intriguing (and suitably lethal) Mortal Combat sparring match between “Captain America” and “Angry Arab” with all the pretentious amounts of blood and gore that make it such a good show.

Canada Day False Reassurance

Only days after the mass arrests and beatings that featured in the police crackdown that surrounded the G20 Summit in Toronto, the Queen addresses cheering crowds on Canada Day with a feel-good message that all is well and that Canada is a shining example for the world – exactly what the people want to hear in these uncertain times of war and economic uncertainty and exactly why they still look to an 84 year old woman for semi-divine guidance.

Now the debacle of the G20 can be blamed on a few despicable anarchist morons, the country can go on as normal with its supposedly sacred mission in Afghanistan, its supposedly profitable tar sands showpiece oil industry, its sure to come economic austerity programs, its manipulative Prime Minister, its star hockey team, its down home celebrity singers and figure skaters and its tame gospel of multiculturalism which conveniently ignores the third world living conditions that persist not only on native reserves but in our inner cities and countryside alike – not to mention its ancient draconian anti-sabotage laws from 1939 that can be revived secretly to deal with troublesome dissenters. This was a day of Tim Hortons, monarchy, street hockey, and endless patriotic protestations of innocence by guilty politicians – the inconvenient 2000 protestors who marched in Toronto under heavy police guard were dwarfed by the 100,000 strong mass of flag waving people swarming Parliament Hill.

Too many choose to remain blind and cling to myths rather than face up to harsh realities. Stephen Harper has washed his hands clean of the G20, left any after effects for the Province of Ontario and the City of Toronto to deal with, and taken sweet refuge amid royal pageantry and tradition. The lessons of the past week are telling: There will only be justice in this land, and we will only be a truly “shining example” for the world when 100,000 people throng downtown Toronto to protest against injustice in solidarity with their fellow citizens and a mere 2,000 show up on Parliament Hill to stare at royalty.

One World, Two Humans

From the waves that drew you across the ocean to my gaze across a crowded room, a globalized world drew together two children.  Eyes met: stepping out of time and space and defying gravity itself as the power of the human spirit worked its magic.

Every variable was thrown to the winds as two lips met across a thousand years, across the land and over the seas.

Our embrace would envelop the world and encompass all of life within our enfolding arms.  Our minds and bodies smarted with the realization that the world truly is one and in Gaia’s blood flow its guardians: the woman and the man.  We were becoming.

The 7th Brother

I suppose I am like the 7th Chinese Brother: whom his brothers always tried to keep happy and smiling because his great salt tears could drown whole villages.  All the tears that I had shed for humanity, for this world, for you, by all rights there should be no dry land left.

I have never shed so many tears for one person.  Tonight I felt that I could outcry even the 7th Brother himself: drowning the world in a deluge of my own making.  For a moment even my age old faith in the invincibility of the human spirit slipped and in my horror I said, “Oh God, she’s really going to break – for Christ’s sake stop writing! I don’t want to see this!”

I could picture my tears flooding the streets and sweeping Guelph away: down the Speed River, into the Great Lakes, over Niagara Falls and down the St Lawrence River into the ocean where it would sink like a modern Atlantis beneath the waves.

Call to Arms

I can no longer hide.  I’m at war.  From the moment I came into this world, kicking and screaming like a geological upheaval made breath and skin, I WAS BORN TO STRUGGLE.

Eleven years ago I first heard the call to arms: I was fourteen years old, a boy, too young to fight, but humanity’s need for soldiers was great and my summons was clear.  IN THAT MOMENT I knew my childhood days were done.  My family was no longer my family; my home was no longer my home: I entered into war as a newborn enters the world: My second birth burning my weak and childlike skin, shaping it into something new.  I CHANGED - like steel from the furnace I was shaped, hammered, and sharpened until age-old lies split before me like a chopping block splits under an axe blade.  Innocence withered and died as the scales fell from my dark eyes.

Bad Dreams

All this pain, divided and alone, we stand apart like so many battered monoliths on a featureless plain under threatening stormy skies.  It reminds my tortured brain of a dream that terrified me as a child and haunts my memories to this day.

I would see three prisoners: a man, a woman, and a child – all one family – and each of them in turn would be locked in their cells with walls of concrete and steel sealing them away from their incarcerated loved ones.

I can only remember the look on the man’s face – the deepest expression of pain I have ever witnessed, as though his world was disintegrating around him.  The look of a man trapped in hell, guilty and alone.

I couldn’t see the guards except for their hands as they went to each cell, looked into the faces of their terrified prisoners, and said to each of them two terrifying words “no light”.

What followed was always the same: the guard would reach through the bars and blindfold the prisoner within, plunging each of their rapidly contracting worlds into darkness.  Confined, blinded, and alone.

For two decades I have feared those images.  Images no young boy should rightfully have dreamt.  Already the nature of the society I was entering was coming clear through dark whisperings and the peculiar feeling that something just wasn’t right.

Nightmares always lingered on the very edges of my vision, as if daring me to build a force, a love, defiant enough to free those people.

My fight had just begun.

The Living Citadel

“Troops in desperate straits know no fear. Where there is no escape, they stand firm; when they have entered deep, they persist; when they see no hope, they fight.”
- Sun-Tzu, The Art of War, pp 74

As I stand now my back is pressed against a wall and before me a panorama opens before my eyes: I see soldiers, American, Canadian, British, French, German – all the countries of the NATO alliance backed by Israelis, Ethiopians, Colombians, Mexicans, Filipinos, soldiers and security forces from every continent and behind them all I see their leaders – Bush, Cheney, Olmert, Netanyahu, Karzai, Zardari, Singh, Brown, Sarkozy, McCain, Obama, looking out I think I see even Donald Rumsfeld chuckling away off in a corner.