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.