Story: 6Saturday, 22 July 2017

Caravaggio’s Narcissus

What are all of these art projects I have going on?
I have less a desire to explain them to other people than to myself.
They arise within me and explode outwards into the world.
I not know from whence they come or to where they go.
Only that I am compelled to make them.

But I have a clue as to their meaning.

I felt called to make a Narcissus — a self-portrait. I ended up making over a dozen of them. I draw portraits of my own face, while looking at reflections of myself in shadows, in mirrors, on my windows. What is being said with this?

It is layered with meaning.

What a strange world we live in! Everyone has a camera, so everyone is a photographer. And we have normalized the incessant taking of photos — of our friends, our meals, our landscapes, our whole environment.

And yet we are till not seeing! It is almost as if we take photos when we don’t want to see something. Look at this beautiful sunset. Oh, isn’t it beautiful? *Snap*. Is it beautiful? Beauty is deeply confronting. Look again.

But we do not look again. We move on to the next photo. Indeed, there is nothing that is taboo. We are all gaudy tourists in Florence: Look! It’s the statue of David! *Click*. Move along. Look! It’s the Fountain of Neptune! *Click*. Move along.

But it isn’t just that we take photos of the external world, we turn the camera inwards and have this “selfie” phenomenon. How did this come to pass without more of an outcry? Perhaps we roll our eyes, perhaps we begin to ignore what our “friends” share with us. There is a silent exodus from social media among a disgusted minority. But I’ve been a part of no serious public conversation about what this says about our culture.

There is an almost absurd vanity to it. There is a constant obsession with how one looks, posturing in front of landscapes or objects, wearing different outfits, standing in different poses, making different gestures. Look! It’s me in front of the Duomo — wearing Armani!

And so, amateur that I am, I am struck by my own handiwork. I draw myself. As I draw myself, I see myself drawing myself. I look at the drawing I have made of myself. I am struck. I look at the portrait. And yet it does not at all feel as degenerate as a selfie — why? What is this that my hands have wrought?

Who is that? That is me. I am a dying man. I am given this one breath of life. This is the inscription I have carved in the stone. This is the impression I have left behind. This is what I saw. This is the song I had to sing.

We are a culture that derides narcissism at every opportunity. We have made it a clinical diagnosis. It is part of our vernacular. We use it as a derogatory term, to slander our frenemies. He or she is “so narcissistic!” By that what we mean is that “he or she is not liking my selfies!”, not paying me the attention I require to maintain my vanity.

We have confused narcissism with vanity. Vanity is an empty, arbitrary and uncaring self-absorption. Vanity is not finding anything to live for outside of oneself, and so settling for a superficial appearance of happiness. But that is not narcissism. The only other word I can think of that has been the victim of so unholy a misappropriation is liberalism. To be liberal has come to mean to be socialist, and yet the two are opposites. In the same way, to be narcissist has come to mean to be vain, and yet the two are opposites. This is a sacrilege of language.

I am the last Narcissist. I believe that Narcissism is a forgotten ideal, a lost art, a discarded value. What is Narcissism? Narcissism is a looking at oneself. And to look at oneself requires courage. To truly look at myself requires that I study every angle of my eyebrows, every hair on my head, the twist of my lips, the shape of my jaw. To look into my own eyes and see the pain and memory and exhaustion and energy and love and hope that is there. It is a confrontation with exactly what none of us wants to look at. We are running away from ourselves.

I am running towards myself. It takes a long time to draw. It forces me to focus. It forces me to stare. It forces me to look again. It forces me to translate what I see into form. To incarnate sight and thought. Drawing is seeing, drawing is thinking. Drawing is to see what I fail to see, to see what I fail to draw correctly, to think about why I fail to see it, to think about why I fail to capture it — to think about what is there to be drawn. To see through to its essence. To think why it matters to see it.

What are the selfies really about? They are a gesture of self-disgust, an act of self-loathing, a blatant self-lie. It is the despair of those who lack the courage to be desperate, the tears of those who lack the awareness of their terrible yearning.

Last month, before leaving San Francisco, I visited The Tipsy Pig, a popular bar in the Marina district — at about 10 o’clock in the evening. After a drink or so, my group of friends merged with two other groups — and I met a woman. Her name was Julia, I remember. I approached her because there was something beautiful about her, but she was impervious to my romance. We spoke for two hours straight. And it was the most depressing conversation I have ever had. But it was also one of the most real.

Who is Julia? Julia is the right age, in the right city, at the right time, in the right industry, at the right company, with the right education, with the right looks— as far as I could uncover, there was nothing to be sad about. No remarkable tale of trauma or woe. Indeed, she should be among the happiest people alive. And yet, she is not.

In her eyes I saw cold agony, utter defeat. She was dying and she knew it; indeed she freely admitted it, for it was the subject of our conversation. She had succumbed to a nihilism so dark and so committed, that she refused my sincere attempt to lend her a hand as she hung from the cliff. I fear that she will give up, but it would take courage to fall, to commit suicide — for suicide is the logical conclusion of her beliefs. There is a glimmer of hope in a lingering curiosity — she isn’t sure life is pointless suffering, there is still a child in her that wonders if her certainty is misplaced, although the adult in her rejects any suggestions otherwise, that child may be her salvation. If she is saved, she will have to save herself. It would take even more courage to lift herself up from the abyss, than it would take to let herself fall. Either way, up or down, would require more courage than she has right now. So she just hangs there, in the balance.

At least Julie realizes where she is. As soon as she realized how near the edge she was, she made the fatal mistake of peering over, instead of running away. Once the nausea took her, she lost her balance, and now she hangs there, in suspense.

But do the rest of us have her self-awareness? We are taking selfies at the edge. I would say dancing at the edge, but dancing would require a certain Dionysian vigor, a lewd carousing, a lust for life if not a love for life —but even that is fading.

The great sin of our time is not sinning. There isn’t much we still consider taboo, and what still is taboo, we don’t so much as shrug at. We prosecute without zeal, in the most absent-minded legalism. We gossip like seventh-graders, about small-time drama — there is much ado about nothing.

Nor is our great sin true nihilism or true apathy. Julia had achieved both and I admire her for it. She saw, her eyes were open. What did she see? She saw us and recoiled in horror. She saw herself, and saw that she was one of us. She looked within and looked without, and not finding an answer to the problem, she fell — holding on with that slipping grip of curiosity; waiting for salvation to force itself upon her, for she will most certainly curse her savior even as she is saved. She wants to die for she has seen the curse of life and is bitter against life. Some wounds go so deep that even their healing does not solve the problem — the wound has dug past flesh and bone to penetrate the soul. Only somehow a complete healing, a being reborn of spirit; Only a forgiving of life, an acceptance of what she saw, of pain and suffering, as necessary; Only a falling back in love with life, a re-joining and re-affirmation, a seeing of all that is, and saying of it, “good, good”.

וַיַּרְא אֱלֹהִים אֶת-כָּל-אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה, וְהִנֵּה-טוֹב מְאֹד;
וַיְהִי-עֶרֶב וַיְהִי-בֹקֶר, יוֹם הַשִּׁשִּׁי.

And God saw every thing that He had made, and, behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.

טוב טוב.
tov, tov
good, good.

No, the great sin of our time is not seeing, not thinking, not being. Not being truly happy, nor truly sad. Not being true sinners, nor true saints. Not living. The great sin of our time is living death. We are actively dead. We are content with being dead while there is breath in us. We are content with letting the time pass idly by; nor do we even have the virtue of idleness, as we nervously check our phones.

What are we doing with these phones? We are taking selfies. What is the selfie saying? The selfie is saying I hope I am not dead. I hope this convinces myself that I am alive. Look! I am here at the Eiffel Tower. Isn’t this evidence that I travelled, that I saw what was “good” and “to be seen” in the world, that I lived? Look! Here I am in my lover’s arms. Isn’t this evidence that I loved? Look! Here I am… Here I am! Am I not?

Mirror, mirror, on the wall…
Who is the fairest of them all?

That is the selfie. The selfie is not a looking at one’s self. The selfie is asking the mirror to do the looking. Look at me, for me. Look at what I do not have the courage to look at. Tell me what I do not have the courage to tell myself. Like me for I do not have the courage to like myself. Befriend me for I do not have the courage to befriend myself. Comment on me for I do not have the courage to comment on myself. Message me for I do not have the courage to message myself.

Like me! Friend me! Comment me! Message me!

This is a bubble. This is bubble thinking and bubble behavior. But it will not go away until the education bubble is popped.

What does education have to do with it? Education, in the true sense of the word, is the awakening of a soul — the teaching of learning. Education teaches learning — the teacher models curiosity, models learning, models growth, models thinking and seeing and hearing and doing and questioning, learns faster than the student, learns more from the student than the student learns from the teacher; the teacher creates space, space for curiosity, space for learning and thinking and seeing and hearing and doing.

Heidegger:

Teaching is more difficult than learning.
We know that; but we rarely think about it.
And why is teaching more difficult thank learning?
Not because the teacher must have a larger store of information, and have it always ready.
Teaching is more difficult than learning because what teaching calls for is this: to let learn.

The real teacher, in fact, let’s nothing else be learned than — learning.
His conduct, therefore, often produces the impression that we properly learn nothing from him,
If by “learning” we now suddenly understand merely the procurement of useful information.
The teacher is said to be ahead of his apprentices in this alone,
That he has still far more to learn than they —
He has to learn to let them learn.

The teacher is far less assured of his ground than those who learn are of theirs.
If the relation between the teacher and the taught is genuine, therefore,
There is never a place in it for the authority of the know-it-all
Or the authoritative sway of the official.

None of this actually occurs in our society. Instead we have invented an abomination. A bureaucratic-industrial complex that does not teach, does not let learn, spoils every subject that it touches — and in so doing, has achieved the extraordinary: instead of bringing to life the souls of students, awakening within them their natural desire for life, it kills the desire to learn and the desire to live, and makes them accept the way things are.

When “our best” students become teachers, we become cognoscenti — “those that know a lot, but do not accomplish anything.” That is, those who do not believe in their own beliefs. Those who do not let their ideas indwell them, fill them with inspiration. Those who do not honor the inheritance of civilization. Those who squander the precious gift of life.

“Chill out” is the mantra of our times. There is nothing more frightening to society than a person who is truly alive, who is brimming with life — with the urgency of life; to live before one is dead — to do something with time before it passes.

We know in our hearts that we are noise, so we are looking for signal from others, to validate that we are not noise. We know in our hearts that we are just taking up space, spending time, consuming resources, wasting energy. We are hoping to be told otherwise.

We are noise because we are not making ourselves into individuals, we are permutations on a theme — to be an individual, one must become an individual; being is earned through becoming. To be a signal, one must become a signal — one must stand for something, one must have a message to send into space and time, one must be the spear that is thrown.

To be worthy of form in space and time is to know what to do with resources and energy, not in the sense of being slaves to productivity and efficiency, but in the sense of fully living life to its fullest in every dimension, and settling for nothing less.

All around me are those who have made their peace with their mediocre surroundings. But those surroundings persist because we are satisfied with them.

We know that we are alive but not living. We know that we are dying. We know that we are the living dead. So with our selfies, we are saying: Tell me, I am alive! Except, we do not have the self awareness or the courage to actually say that. We just say Look! I’m in Los Angeles! Look, I’m in Rome!

Literally, as I write this, two girls, friends, are taking selfies of each other; mutually assisted social masturbation. They are drinking iced lattes out of plastic cups with straws, posing with their legs crossed in gaudy clothing, underneath the sign of “Pannikin Coffee & Tea” in Encinitas, CA on the 101.

This is a horror film with no climax. The horror is in the eyes, in the act of living death. Nobody has the courage to scream! Nobody has the courage to SHAKE each other and say TELL ME SOMETHING REAL! Tell me that I AM ALIVE! At least, in that act, we would be honest.

Nobody has the courage to scream.
Heidegger, again:

Learning, then, cannot be brought about by scolding. Even so, a man who teaches must at times grow noisy. In fact, he may have to scream and scream, although the aim is to make his students learn so quiet a thing as thinking.

Nietzsche, most quiet and shiest of men, knew of this necessity. He endured the agony of having to scream.

In a decade when the world at large still knew nothing of world wars, when faith in “progress” was virtually the religion of the civilized peoples and nations, Nietzsche screamed out into the world: “The wasteland grows…”

He thus put the question to his fellowmen and above all to himself: “Must one smash their ears before they will learn to listen with their eyes? Must one clatter like kettledrums and preachers of repentance?”

But riddle upon riddle! What was once the scream “The wasteland grows…”, now threatens to turn into chatter. The threat of this perversion is part of what gives us food for thought. The threat is that perhaps this most thoughtful thought will today, and still more tomorrow, become suddenly no more than a platitude, and as platitude will spread and circulate.

This fashion of talking platitudes is at work in the endless profusion of books describing the state of the world today. They describe what by nature is indescribable, because it lends itself to being thought about only in a thinking that is a kind of appeal, a call — and therefore must at times become a scream.

This is my scream. And I don’t expect anyone to hear it for a long time; perhaps not in my lifetime. This is my scream that we stand before greatness — we stand before David, and we do not pause to consider that which chained Michelangelo to the stone, for two years, to carve a message, to send it forward in time, to be a signal.

Before the Duomo we stand without a moment’s consideration that Brunelleschi was not an architect! Nor did the architects of his time support him. He was a pariah, deemed insane, possessed of a vision of madness. They said it could not be done. They said it would cost too much money. They scoffed and ignored him.

Then someone came along who wanted to get something done. And that person was Cosimo de Medici, a capitalist, a man whose direction was forward, a man who had a vision for the future of Florence — Florence, the beautiful, Florence, the free, Florence, the brave. He backed the project.

How a socialist, Savonarola, possessed the mob with the fervor of religion, to tear down this place. How Cosimo and Brunelleschi ultimately won it back.

This stands before us today. A signal. A symbol. A building from the future. Calling to us to remember Florence — not the Florence of the past, but the Florence of the future from whence it came.

Instead of hearing its call, we take a selfie.

In the same schools in which so-call “teachers” destroy the soul of learning, in these same schools are taught the words of Lincoln. A new birth of freedom… These are other words are turned into platitudes. We cannot hear them. What is being said is corrupted by our corrupted hearts.

Instead we hide behind these politically correct platitudes: everyone is special, everyone is loved, everyone is beautiful, everyone deserves to be happy. These are worse than wrong. They are not even wrong. They are vacuous to a profound degree. They are the whimpering protest of a society incapable of generating a proper philosophy to defend its extreme decay.

Nietzsche then Heidegger:

And thus spoke Zarathustra to the people:
Alas, the time is coming when man will no longer shoot the arrow of his longing beyond man, and the string of his bow will have forgotten how to whir! …

Alas, the time is coming when man will no longer give birth to a star. Alas, the time of the most despicable man is coming, he that is no longer able to despise himself.

Behold, I show you the last man. ‘What is love? What is creation? What is longing? What is a star?’ — thus asks the last man, and he blinks.

The earth has become smaller, and on it hops the last man who makes everything small. His race is as ineradicable as the flea-beetle; the last man lives longest. ‘We have invented happiness’ — say the last men, and they blink.”

With greater clarity than any man before him, Nietzsche saw the necessity of a change in the realm of essential thinking, and with this change the danger that conventional man will adhere with growing obstinacy to the trivial surface of his conventional nature, and acknowledge only the flatness of these flatlands as his proper habitation on earth.

We are the last men that Nietzsche foresaw.

We know that we are not in love. What we call “love” is sex, but it is not even sex. It is a helping of each other to masturbate.

The Queen knows in her heart that she is not fair, that she is not beautiful. That is why she needs constant affirmation from the Mirror. She needs to be told a lie. She needs the world to confirm to her the lie that she tells herself. She cannot just tell it to herself. She must have it told to her. For she is rotting away on the inside, and that ugliness fills her with anxiety.

Tell me I am the fairest in the land!
Like me! Friend me! Comment me! Message me!

I would say “We are the Queen! We are the Witch in Snow White!” but I cannot even pay us that compliment. The Queen had achieved the moral accomplishment of being evil — so violently did she want to hold onto life, she was prepared to take life to extend her own; so passionately did she care about being the best, that she was willing to kill the best. We are not even evil. We are dead. Worse, we are living dead. Worse, we are the living dead who will not acknowledge to ourselves that we are dying. No, not dying! We are not dying, for the span of our days is long. What are we?! This is the horror. We are neither living nor dead nor dying, just alive, sedated, oblivious, drugged, entertaining a lie — while the whirling images of the days pass us by like landscapes from a train

What of the flatness of these flatlands that Heidegger wrote of? Is that not a perfect description of what our society has accomplished?

*Where* are we?
This is Purgatorio.

In Dante’s vision, Purgatory was part of a moral ascent — a necessary stage in a progression away from the tortures of Hell and towards the beauty of Heaven. But in mine, it is the true Hell, the final stage. Inferno is the great deception used to trap souls in Purgatorio forever.

In our ascent from Hell, we have not yet accomplished Heaven; satisfied to rest here in Purgatory forever. It is “not so bad”. There is an absence of war, an absence of famine — there are less and less who suffer from material wants — and this is where we stop.

Who created Purgatory? Hell is Lucifer’s creation. Heaven is God’s creation. But Purgatory is Man’s creation.

This is the masterful deceit. For Hell cannot be the final stop. Lucifer knew that he could not trap us there forever, for it is a prison that we did not make, with tortures we did not invent — so we cannot justly be imprisoned therein. No, the eternal prison is the prison we build for ourselves, the tortures we invent to entertain ourselves.

What do we find in Purgatory? Walls. It is a place of walls, many walls. Walls to separate Man from Heaven. Walls to separate Man from Hell. Walls to separate Man from Man. Walls to separate even lovers.

Who built these walls?
We built them.

Everything in Purgatory is a copy of Hell or of Heaven. Heaven’s light cannot penetrate, because walls have been built. But there is artificial light. Heaven’s love cannot penetrate the walls. But there is artificial love. Heaven’s friendship cannot penetrate. But there is artificial friendship. Heaven’s food and drink cannot penetrate. But there are artificial food and drink.

There is the artificial light of our screens. There is the artificial love of porn, of sex that is not even passionate, of love that doesn’t dare have a real conversation. There is the artificial friendship of selfies and likes and comments and messages. There is the artificial food and drink of yet another hipster restaurant, bar or coffee shop.

Here we are at the anti-climax of Western civilization. At the westernmost West, here in California — where Manifest Destiny ended — what do we find?

Visit the Marina in San Francisco. There you have a neighborhood that one hundred years ago had superior architecture than it has today. In one of the most expensive neighborhoods of one of the most expensive cities on the planet, during its period of greatest prosperity, there are only two buildings in sight that deserve to live. One, The Palace of Fine Arts, is an imitation of classical greatness, as opposed to being an original act of genius. The other, The Golden Gate Bridge — is an eternal form. The rest, the entire Marina, should be bulldozed — for it lacks all soul. New buildings, glorious architecture, should be invented to take their place. One hundred years ago, The Palace Of Fine Arts was one of many pavilions. After the earthquake destroyed them, instead of rebuilding with something even more grand, we built hovels. Lesser sons to greater sires.

Visit Venice Beach in Los Angeles. How many times can the formula of sparkling lights, ivy, psychedelic graffiti, hipster branding and $10 turmeric lattes be re-invented, before the form is exhausted? There is no there there, as Gertrude Stein said. The place fails to live up to its own idea of itself. It is all a facade. It looks comfortable. But it isn’t comfortable. It looks like beautiful people having fun in a beautiful place; but they’re not.

Hipster gentrification is certainly better than the surrounding decay of Los Angeles. Depressed neighborhood after depressed neighborhood. Traffic jam after traffic jam. This is the copy of Hell that exists in Purgatory, and is necessary for Purgatory to exist.

But that is not what is most sad. What is most sad is that the opulent fail in their opulence? I stood before a $150M house in Manhattan Beach, CA —on a mile-long boardwalk of such houses — and it felt undesirable. If I had the capital, I would not buy it for any price. I would leave. This is the copy of heaven that exists in Purgatory, and is necessary for Purgatory to exist.

For purgatory to exist, fake copies of both Hell and Heaven need to be close by, unimposing and undesirable. Why? Because should a real Hell be close by, it would be imposing in its abomination. It would move us into action. We would be roused to defeat it. We would go the other way; reach for the other extreme. And should a real Heaven be close by, it would be imposing in its beauty. Everything would pale in comparison. Nothing else would be desirable. These fake copies are both unimposing enough and undesirable enough to sustain the purgatory we have created for ourselves.

The biggest problem in the world is that billionaires do not spend enough money on themselves. Instead of spending $150M on a house, if they spent $1B on a house, or $10B on a house, or more — it would force something extraordinary to come about. Even if they utterly fail or create something grotesque, it could not fail to be exceptional in its failure and grotesqueness. Anything is preferable to these mansions whose basic architectural premises are either to be copies of classical forms, or copies of vernacular forms — the living pretending to be the dead, giants pretending to be mice; the rich pretending to be modest.

Instead, what do they do? The rich give to charities which perpetuate dependence, maintaining fake copies of hells that are not quite bad; so that they may maintain their fake copy of heaven; so that Purgatory may continue.

So that we might acknowledge the flatness of these flatlands as our proper habitation on earth.

What is the answer to this madness?

Caravaggio’s Narcissus

Caravaggio’s Narcissus is the answer. There are two very different interpretations of Narcissus. Is this the Narcissus who fell in love with himself and thus died? That is Narcissism understood as vanity. Or is this the Narcissus who invented painting — who achieved artistic vision — by gaining the courage to look within? That is Narcissism understood properly as looking at oneself.

“The wasteland grows; woe to him who hides wastelands within!” Nietzsche writes. Whom does he write this of? Heidegger says he writes this of the new man, the renaissance man, the re-born man, the superman, the messiah.

The new men will have the courage to look within. But will enlightenment be a delight? Our society’s conception of enlightenment could be translated as delightenment. Those who say they seek enlightenment truly seek delight — they seek to know in their hearts that all is well, to be happy now and in the future. But this is a false peace, for all is not well — not on earth, which is Purgatory. All may be well in Aeon, in Heaven, in Aeternitas, Eternity — in that quantum state which surely exists after we achieve it in the future— but that is a possibility set before us to achieve in time, in temporalis.

Everything is at stake now. Enlightenment is seeing what is. What is? What is is Hell, Purgatory, Heaven. World War II was a true hell on earth. The Cultural Revolution in China was a true hell on earth. Having survived these ordeals, we do well to avoid their repetition.

But even Mao and Hitler and ISIS are morally superior to us — whom fight for nothing. Language and writing were invented to pass the torch from generation to generation — not just the passing of knowledge, but of purpose and vision. Yet we who have come after, after Lincoln, after Churchill — after all those who have given their lives for the dream of progress and civilization, for the project of the future — what vision do we have?

This responsibility to carry forward an ancient tradition was deeply felt and expressed.

Upon this battle depends the survival of … civilization. Upon it depends our own … life, and the long continuity of our institutions…

The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this Island or lose the war.

If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands.

But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of perverted science.

Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour.”

Thatcher, in dedicating a statue of Churchill’s in Prague, spoke words reminiscent of Lincoln’s: “liberty must never be allowed to perish from the earth, it must forever endure.”

Here we stand at the climax of time, and the pinnacle of all of Western and Eastern civilization, and the best we have to offer is $10 turmeric spiced lattes, decaying neighborhoods and lackluster mansions. This is our tribute to those who came before. Surely we have squandered the peace.

It is the seeing of this — the true recognition of its horror — that is the achievement of enlightenment in our times.

To be enlightened is to see Purgatory and to make war upon it. What kind of war? An intelligent war, for intelligence is what is at stake. Intelligence not in the Cartesian sense, of IQ or compute power, but in Heidegger’s sense — to not hear what is calling us to think. For in Purgatory, it is our brains that are dying. To do is to think, to think is to do — to not do is a symptom of not thinking, and Purgatory is a state of not doing.

Intelligence is learning from history, not repeating the same mistakes, courageously making new ones — but it is more than this. It is learning to learn, learning to think, gaining the courage to learn, to think, and to speak. To shout “The Emperor has no clothes!” To shout “This is not heaven!”

It is seeing that this is Purgatory. It is seeing a vision of Heaven, and heaven on earth — Aeon and Camelot. It is believing in a possible and desirable future, and giving oneself fully to that vision.

To be enlightened, in other words, is to see that the wasteland grows. Woe to him who hides wastelands within. Am I hiding wastelands within or without? I am not hiding these wastelands within. I am exposing wastelands, within and without.

As it is without, so it is within. If Purgatory is what I see on earth, then Purgatory is what I see within. It exists within me. It arises within me. I created it. In order to tear it down, I must tear it down within myself?

This is Alex Kerr, Lost Japan:

The first line of the Analects: ‘To study and at times put your learning into practice, is that not a joy?’ The Confucianist scholar was expected to study the wisdom of the past, and in the process acquire a mysterious ‘virtue’ that would influence all around him. This virtue radiated outwards, and according to ancient teachings, its mere possession was enough to transform the world. That was the logic behind the text I saw the first day I opened a book of Chinese philosophy in the Kanda market: ‘If you wish to rule the state, first pacify your family. If you wish to pacify your family, first discipline yourself. If you wish to discipline yourself, first make right your heart.’

Make right your heart.
To make right your heart, look within.
If I look within, what will I see?

I will see my mortality. I will see that I am dying. I will see that everything is impermanent. I must grab onto it while I can. I cannot merely coast by.

I will see my immortality. I desire a beauty and fullness that is beyond reach; where do I get this from but my immortal soul?

I will see my strength — if I have the courage, I can tear down these walls, I can testify to the wasteland.

I will see my weakness; I will see the weakness holding me back from telling you my weakness. I will see the weakness of shame holding me back from exposing my wastelands within. From confessing in public.

I will see my heart, which is both corrupt and noble.
I will see my Hell, my Purgatory, my Heaven.

I see my reflection in the water. By looking into the water, I see myself. By looking into myself, I see my heart. If I make my heart as clear as the water, then by looking into my heart, I see all things reflected clearly.

Can I see Heaven in my heart? Yes, but not clearly. Heaven will be such a delight that the thought of taking photos of it and posting them to the internet will not even occur to us. Heaven will be cities of the future. Heaven will be relationships that confront what there is to be spoken of — that speak of the experience of life. Heaven will be many things, for it is as-yet-to-be-determined… but the point is, right now, we are not inventing it!

We are instead waiting for things to get incrementally better, but to remain substantially the same. We are in a growing wasteland of Purgatory.

Yesterday evening I found myself in Del Mar, a wealthy coastal town in North County San Diego.

There is a fancy hotel on the town square. I went in, ordered a drink and sat by the pool. A celebrity I recognized arrived with his family. A few other groups lounged nearby. Over the course of a couple hours I observed them passively. Nobody was having fun. Nobody was upset, either. But nobody was having fun. Neither the kids nor the adults. I could overhear the conversations. Nobody was having a real conversations. It was all empty.

I left the hotel to enjoy the sunset. There is a spectacular view to be had from the park above the beach. But as you look for a place to sit, you realize that every bench if facing slightly the wrong direction. In a place with many perfect views, not a single bench fully enjoys the view! It is as if every bench was thirty degrees off, on purpose — so that no bench would be the envy of another.

I left the beach after sunset. I went to find a place to sit, enjoy another drink, and read my book. There is a large plaza with a restaurant and a bar. On the plaza there are beautiful fire pits and chairs. I asked at the bar if I could buy a drink and get the fire pits turned on. They couldn’t sell me a drink because of regulations (drinks had to stay at the bar) and couldn’t turn on the fire pit because it was plaza property—only plaza management could turn it on, and they were nowhere to be found. I asked at the restaurant as well, same thing. As a result, the entire plaza was empty on a Friday night — the best spot in a populous and wealthy town, empty, dark.

Were the people at the bar and restaurant having fun? I spent time observing them. There was the same blank stare in their eyes —glazed over, the grey distance. The same false laughter, the apathetic resignation.

I left the plaza to look for another spot. On the other corner of the town square, there is a wine bar. It is reasonably well designed. But the details are not right. The chairs are uncomfortable. I ordered wine there. I could hardly concentrate on my book. There was music blaring from the speakers. Entirely the wrong music for the setting. It was The Killers. At a wine bar!

To your ears, this may sound like a complaint. This is the epitome of a “first world problem”. Therefore I must feel guilty about complaining.

But I feel no guilt. In the small things, there are big things. In this small thing, there is a story to be told of Purgatory. We have regulated ourselves into a living death. We have relaxed into a comfort that isn’t even comfortable. We are too lazy even to have fun. We are a lobster shell without the lobster inside. We are a theme park — everything looks real, but falls short of expectation.

The problem is not inequality. The problem is not that the rich are enjoying themselves while the poor suffer. The problem is that nobody is not having fun and nobody is having fun — we are neither here nor there. The problem is that there is nothing to complain about and everything is “nice” — but somehow not worth the bother.

That was yesterday. I have now moved from my earlier location at Pannikin to Better Buzz Coffee in downtown Encinitas — yet another hipster coffee shop. Across the street from me, there is a restaurant named Eve that sells vegan food— but it is not fruit stolen from the Tree of Knowledge. There is a boutique named Divinity, but it has nothing divine. There is a store called Caravan, but there is nothing worth crossing the desert for.

Somehow San Diego is the envy of the world. People from all around the world move here to participate in this illusion of happiness. Yet I can’t see what they see. Nor am I sure that they themselves see it. I see them taking selfies. I see them saying, “Aren’t I having fun yet? Haven’t I arrived yet? I live in a beach town! Look! I’m in paradise! Right?”

I check to see if other people will admit to their great unhappiness. They say, “Oh, it is just a matter of perspective. Everything is subjective!” Bah. What a sacrilegious platitude. Subjective or not, do you believe this is the pinnacle of Civilization? This is the end of history? This is the best we can do? This is heaven?

*Where* are we?
This is not heaven.

The selfie is a gesture of self-disgust. It is the same self-loathing that animates our whole society. We hate ourselves, but can’t bear to admit it. San Francisco hates San Francisco. It makes profits, but believes profits to be evil. It wants fancy things, but believes them to be decadent, first-world guilty privileges. It builds the future but clings to the past. It works for tech companies and kicks them out.

We are a civilization that hates Civilization. We feel that we are over-populating the world. We feel that we are polluting the world. We feel that we are creating an unjustly unequal society. We have no love for who we are, for what we are — no destination that is motivating to us.

Listen to this album.

What would this album look like if it was a city?

It would be a city from the future, and it would be beautiful. There would be buildings like Alpine House in Kew Gardens, London. If San Francisco were such a city, The Golden Gate Bridge and Salesforce Tower would be lost as minor features of a dazzling skyline.

Look at the movies we are making. Look at the games we are making. Our imagination has not forgotten the memory of Heaven. We are imagining so many possibilities. We are creating realities that are far more compelling than this one. We are spending all of our time sedated — being entertained by these realities.

There is a mass exodus, as McGonigal says. People are leaving this world to participate in these created worlds. Those who create these worlds are as gods. But those who choose to live in them are the living dead, not true men.

There is no cleaner proof than the mass sedation of society by the entertainment industry. People realize that nothing in Purgatory is truly desirable, so they just stay home, watch Netflix, and die the living death.

Perhaps the next most clean proof is the sedation of society by mobile devices. The screens give us a way to escape. Perhaps the next most clean proof is the sedation of society by our drug problem.

So I quote Thiel: What happened to the future? This is what Peter Thiel was talking about in the last election.

The smartphones that distract us from our surroundings also distract us from the fact that our surroundings are strangely old: only computers and communications have improved dramatically since midcentury.

Today the word technology means information technology. The so-called tech industry builds computers and software. But in the 1960s, technology had a more expansive meaning and meant not just computers, but also airplanes, medicines, fertilizers, materials, space travel — all sorts of things. Technology was advancing on every front and leading to a world of underwater cities, vacations on the moon and energy too cheap to meter.

We’ve all heard America described as a ‘developed country,’ setting it apart from countries that are still developing. This description pretends to be neutral. But I find it far from neutral. Because it suggests that our tradition of making new things is over. When we say we are developed, we’re saying, ‘that’s it.’ That for us, history is over. We are saying that everything there is to do has already been done, and now the only thing left is for others in the world to catch up. And in this view, the 1960s vision of a fantastic and far better future was just a mistake.

I think we should strongly refuse this temptation to assume that our history is over. Of course, if we choose to believe that we’re powerless to do anything that is not familiar, we will be right, but only in a sort of self-fulfilling way. We should not, however, blame nature. It will only be our own fault.

Nor are the problems limited to America. Europe vacillates between slow growth, stagnation and decline. Russia relies on its energy industry, which is being damaged by new American supply. China relies on its manufacturing industry, which is also under threat from American and global supply — its sustained economic growth has masked many problems, both economic, political, social and demographic. India has also grown but also has deep problems. Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America continue to lag behind. Having just read Alex Kerr’s Lost Japan — I am grieved to learn of Japan’s deep economic, cultural and demographic problems, which also seem almost far from being resolved. Who will build the future — where is the innovation going to come from?

Why aren’t we building the future, here in America? The reason we are not building the future is that the future is not alive within us. The future emerges not as a natural economic consequence, or from some static ideology, but from Campbell’s Myth. A myths must motivate us to greatness — from this come the Cathedrals and Pyramids.

The future is not represented by growth in the stock market. As I write, the stock market is at an all-time high. And yet everything I have seen in the last year in California points to a society in fundamental decline. There is nothing to do. There are not that many things to do for fun besides spend money at bars, restaurants and coffee shops. There are not many products that are worth having. There are not that many homes that are worth having. There are not that many vehicles that are worth having.

Amazon is fulfilling the deflationary prophecy of capitalism and technology, which is better, faster, cheaper. This is progress.

But one single company cannot be the economic messiah. Plenty of goods and services are becoming worse, slower, and more expensive. Look at atavistic San Francisco where $20 hamburgers are the norm, and where high income residents put up with cramped, creaking, leaky apartments badly in need of repair. This is the city that is building the future!?

Better, faster, cheaper is not enough. Companies must also invent new things. This is the other economic prophecy that must be fulfilled. Not just better, faster, cheaper. But new!

What is new is allowed to be expensive, because you can’t get it anywhere else. It is what is still artistic and has not yet been commoditized. But how many new, truly new, experiences can you buy these days? There is not much now that was fundamentally unavailable to me in my childhood, other than software.

Philosophy underlies the economy because what is represented in currency and transaction is value, aesthetics. Value is derived from our philosophy, from our myth.

I believe we are living in the greatest bubble of all time, because we are valuing products and services that are not very valuable, and which represent the past, not the future. The companies of the future are investing in bold visions, bold stories of Camelot, bold R&D — and their commitment to that future is absolute. How many such companies are there? How many products are there which capture that sense of the future?

Apple consistently delivers on this. But recently, after losing my Airpods, went to buy new ones. Sorry, you can’t buy them here. Not available. On our website they are backordered for two months. You can get them in 2 days from AT&T. From AT&T! What?

But criticizing Apple is criticizing the best, the standard bearer of greatness. All other companies lag curiously behind. And other companies’ products and services rarely strike us.

Companies which deliver relentlessly better, faster, cheaper; and companies which invent beautiful products and services from the future. Those are the only companies which are not undervalued. The stock market already reflects an extraordinary inequality between tech companies and the rest of the economy; and between ordinary tech companies and the best tech companies. But even this inequality is not extreme enough.

The reality is that very few things which are built, made or delivered would be built, made, or delivered if people had an education — that is, if they had a sense of value. If people had been taught to learn, the economy would look shockingly different. If they could be made to learn overnight, the economy would change as close to overnight as possible.

Or would it? For we are not living in a free country. We are living in a country where people are living in prisons created in their minds. And we are living in a country where everything is illegal until proven otherwise; for everything is regulated. You cannot even sell food without being a licensed restaurant!

Restrictions like these cannot stop those who are free within. The challenge indeed is to imagine what the economy would look like if the people demanded the economy to be different. Nor is demand the limitation.

The limitation, as always, is in supply. Supply creates demand. Supply leads demand. Those who invent supply change the world. Let he who is free within create supply.

Let her gaze into the water, into her own eyes, see there what is demanded, and supply for herself that. Then let her bring that value to others. Is there anything so deeply spiritual and artistic as the economy — an incarnation of value and energy, of philosophy and aesthetics?

Everything in our bureaucratic-industrial complex is about preserving the status quo of Purgatory — we are committed to it. And war must be made upon it. A war not in the dimension of force, but in all other dimensions — and especially in the dimension of belief and story. Bureaucracy, corporatism, socialism — great enemies of mankind.

καὶ τὸ φῶς ἐν τῇ σκοτίᾳ φαίνει,
καὶ ἡ σκοτία αὐτὸ οὐ κατέλαβεν.
For the light shines in the darkness;
And the darkness understands it not.

This is The Waste Land:

He who was living is now dead
We who were living are now dying
With a little patience.

We are living in The Waste Land that T.S. Eliot described after the First World War. Long after the physical wounds had healed, long after the dead had been buried and morned, society was unable to recover from the spiritual wounds of the war. Why was society unable to recover? Society was unable to recover because it lacked a story to tell itself — a new story. The old myths were shattered, they felt, the old beliefs failed them, they thought.

Had the old myths been shattered, had the old beliefs failed them? Or had they simply failed to understand them? Have they betrayed us or have we betrayed them? Have the ideas failed or have we failed the ideas? Has the past failed us, or have we failed to find the futuristic in the ancient? Has the future failed us, or have we failed to see it? Has the light failed us, or have we failed to comprehend it?

To learn more of heaven, learn more of hell. To learn more of the future, learn more of the past. To learn more of everything, learn more of self.

Look within.

What do I find within? I find a wasteland. I find darkness. But in the gathering darkness, a light grows. What is the light?

That light is the story I tell myself of Heaven, of Heaven On Earth. That light is the story I tell myself of myself, of Purgatory and my war on it. That is the light, the saving power, I will use to live, to love and to build.

That saving power is the power to overcome the fear of believing anything, in an age when people believe nothing, and mock all belief. That love is the romantic warrior’s love of beauty, in a peaceful and practical age, where all value has been reduced to transaction.

This age of transaction is also an age of abstraction, and if I am to battle dragons, if I am to be a knight, if I am to be Don Quixote, if I am to make war on Purgatory — then I am required to imagine this war, for I will not be literally fighting, but building.

What will I be building? I will be resuming the Synthetic Intelligence project that began with Aquinas. I will be building the Summa — the organization of all truth.

Day by day, little will change in sight or sound; and the world will go on, much as it has. Year by year, by faith in these things unseen, the world may change. We are called thereupon to hope.

For Julia.

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