My father was a Yiddish literary star, writing short stories, essays, and novels. He lectured in Canada, the U.S., Argentina, Venezuela, the former Soviet Union, and more.  He was a Scholar-in-Residence at Oxford University.  Nobel laureate Eli Wiesel said he was “the novelist of the Warsaw Ghetto,” whose book “Ship of the Hunted” was “…cut from the cloth of truth- of creative truth.”

Yehuda Elberg was a member of the Jewish Underground during the Holocaust.  Captured three times by the Nazis, he saw friends and most of his family brutally murdered.  There is no darker view of the cloth of truth. Yet he retained a keen sense of optimism, and a drive to rebuild his family and his people after the war.

Combine Words

I’ve inherited some of his ability to combine words into a story. Thankfully, my life has been much less eventful than his.  Most of my interesting experiences were by choice, rather than life-or-death situations. Although it was exciting, marching in protest at the Pentagon is not the same as Nazi storm-troopers coming down your street to kill you. Isolating (during Covid) in an apartment with a big-screen TV and high-speed internet is not the same as hiding inside a dark cellar, where making a sound could cost the life of your family.

I want my fiction to be “…cut from the cloth of truth- of creative truth,” like my dad’s.  I want it to be exciting, and get the reader to consider some relevant truth or issue.  For example, as an anthropologist, I learned about transgender shamanism.  It’s nothing like the phenomenon in contemporary popular culture. The transgender shaman in Quantum Cannibals is a complex, conflicted, frightening person, reflecting indigenous shamanism rather than contemporary Western ideology.  Quantum Cannibal’s fictional shaman is an elucidation, rather than a lecture.

The novel The Red Badge of Courage is known for its realistic depictions of the Civil War, even though the author Stephen Crane was born after it ended.  Hans Ruesch never met an Inuk (Eskimo) in his life, but his novel Top of The World is an accurate depiction of traditional Inuit life and culture.  These writers didn’t experience the lives or events they portrayed.  They didn’t have access to Google to do research.  Nonetheless, their fictional portrayals were accurate and their stories moving.

Dangerous Truth

Creative truth can be dangerous when it crosses the floor from literature to journalism. A documentary by a “journalist” won several prestigious American journalism awards. This journalist is a member of a terrorist organization that participated in the mass slaughter in southern Israel on Oct. 7. Worse than that, the terrorists who participated in the kidnap, rape, and butchering of women and infants were honored for photographs of their barbarism.

In snuff porn films, men actually murder the women they have sex with, and sick viewers get off watching what they believe to be the truth. Some question whether the filmed murders happened, whether they emphasized ‘creative’ rather than ‘truth.’ The barbarism that the Hamas photographers documented was a reality. These were snuff films and photos in their worst sense, and it definitely happened. The creativity was in the mental gymnastics that allowed Western media to ignore the savagery in front of their eyes. The ‘cloth of creative truth’ can be used to enlighten or conceal.

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I am pleased to present a guest post by fellow speculative fiction author Lorina Stephens.  Lorina  has worked as editor, freelance journalist for national and regional print media, been a festival organizer, publicist, lectures on many historical topics from textiles to domestic technologies, teaches, and continues to work as a writer and artist.

Her short fiction has appeared in Polar Borealis, On Spec, Strangers Among Us, Postscripts to Darkness, Neo-Opsis, Stories of the Deluge, and Sword & Sorceress X.  You can check out her website or visit her Amazon page.

The last collection of short stories I published was in 2008. It’s an eclectic mix which I entitled And the Angels Sang, named for the lead story. To my delight, it’s met with quite a bit of positive reaction from both readers and reviewers.

In the ensuing years, I’ve crafted a number of other short stories in between operating a publishing house and all the demands of being an administrator in our other business, one which pays the bills. A lot has happened during that time: our son married his life-buddy, three major surgeries, a failed attempt at elder care, renovating this old stone house which was built c1847, and as I write this, into the second year of a global pandemic.

And somewhere in all that still writing, still exploring ideas and what-ifs. I do have to admit a reluctance to writing short fiction. The literary form seems so restrictive to me, perhaps more having to do with the fact I have too much to say and want to make an epic out of everything. But short story writing is good discipline.

Spanning the boundaries

Having said that, I’m giving you 10 short works of fiction in this collection, spanning the boundaries of science fiction, speculative fiction, fantasy, magic realism and absurd fantastica. Apparently, I don’t much like writing in just one genre, either. Creative fences drive me batshit crazy, although I do very much appreciate fences around this sanctuary we are privileged to call home. But there is a theme to this collection, a common thread I think you will find through all the stories. What it is, I will leave up to you to decipher, and thus we will have a silent communication.

I’ve arranged the stories in some loose graduation of dark to light, and again have chosen to use the lead story as the title for the collection. But the title Dreams of the Moon is more, because as a child, and then an adolescent, I firmly believed if I arranged myself just so in the bed, so that when the moon shone in my window, something wonderful would happen. It never did. But I still felt compelled to answer the call of that pale, eerie light.

And then there were all the moonlight walks in the deep of the night which took place well into adulthood. Wonderful moments. Moments I remember with clarity and wonder, whether moonlight so bright on a winter’s night that the trees by the river cast indigo shadows across the snow, or a brace of geese rising up and across that silver face. And as with all things, there is the dark side of the moon: a sleepless night fraught with sorrow and a desperate attempt to rescue someone I dearly loved.

All of these moments influence and underscore what I write. It’s there in these 10 stories. Darkness and light. Wonder and sorrow. The ambiguity, sometimes, of reflected light. Dreams of the Moon.

The ninth story in the collection, Fall Arrest, was the result of the convergence of two quite unrelated occurrences. One was a call for stories around the theme of Alice in Wonderland. The other was frustration with the bureaucracy of the Worker’s Safety Insurance Board. It was kind of like that moment when chocolate hit peanut butter, or salt spilled into caramel. What if Alice ended up being a safety training instructor in Wonderland? What if she had to teach a remedial class on fall arrest training? And what if that class was for one important and specific character seemingly doomed to fall?

Alas, the story never made the cut for the anthology. And it would seem I just never got around to sending it elsewhere because of closed submissions, and life’s demands, and, and, and. So, here it is in my latest collection, in all it’s ridiculous glory.

Well, at the risk of being coy, you’ll have to read the story in order to find out how all of that resolves itself.

Dreams of the Moon is available in trade paperback and ebook, either directly through my website or through your favourite online bookseller wherever you live in the world. It’s also available through elibrary services globally.

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This is the first in a series of posts introducing characters from the novel Quantum Cannibals

Alex is a secondary character in Quantum Cannibals. He’s a renowned poet whose wife tells a friend “Alex likes young men and boys.”  The character was inspired by the pederasty of beat poet and cultural icon Allen Ginsberg. He said:

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked…”

Howl was a brilliant poem, a work of art.  Not so brilliantly, Ginsberg also said

“Prepubescent boys and girls don’t have to be protected from big hairy you and me, they’ll get used to our lovemaking in two days provided the controlling adults will stop making those hysterical noises that make everything sexy sound like rape.”

I recall reading a transcript of his chat with fellow icon William Borroughs where they declared that the younger the child, the better the sex.  A progressive literary magazine in the 1970’s featured a story about a man who pursued sex with prepubescent girls (I won’t use the story’s obscene term).  The journal was progressive, it was cool.  Not perverted.

The issue of sex with children goes back farther.  There is a debate among scholars of ancient Greece and Rome whether sex with kids was considered normal.  “In Athens a man would have been regarded as perverted if he sought a relationship with another person equal to him in age and status.”

Sexy cuties around the world

In Afghanistan, the sexy cuties were found  in the widespread tradition of bacha bazi ‘dancing boys,’ some as young as ten.  Men force these boys (no transitioning counselling) to dress like little girls, then abused them.  Among the Sambia of Papua New Guinea prepubescent boys had sex with adult men.  It was crucial for them to swallow the men’s semen in order to develop into warriors.  I can’t find anything cute about that.

Given the wide history of sex with children, isn’t it just another cultural norm? Doesn’t progressive ideology believe that all cultures are of equal value?

If so, does ancient slavery justify contemporary slavery?  How about mass murder, pillage, cannibalism?  There are plenty of precedents for those throughout history.  Should we remove their contemporary stigmas because someone else did it at some other time?

There is a story in ancient Jewish writings about a rabbi (352-427 CE) who vilified the Biblical King Menashe (reigned 698-642 BCE) for pursuing idolatry.  Menashe appeared to the rabbi in a dream and rationalized, “If you had lived in my day, you’d have picked up the hems of your garment to run after idols!”  Maybe if we’d have lived in those eras, in those places we’d have no problems with slavery or cannibalism…  But we don’t live in those eras.

Is there anything you can’t do for the sake of art (and money)?  Many critics have accused the Netflix series Cuties of sexualizing young girls.  The creators of the show argue that they’re actually combating the sexualization of children by showing kids behaving seductively. Given all the history and culture of sexualizing children, should we really condemn Netflix’s sexy Cuties?

Better we learn from, rather than replicate the misdeeds of the past.  We shouldn’t look for history or art to excuse wrong behavior in the present.  There are poor rationalizations for the making of “Cuties,” but no justification.

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The novel Quantum Cannibals has a large cast of characters, some evil, some saintly.  Most are complex, neither black nor white.  A person can be a good character, but simply confused when facing an impossible situation.  All of the characters in the book are intended to reflect back on our non-fictional world, to say something about how we can respond to both the impossible and the ordinary.

Many of the characters were inspired by real-world people or other fictional characters.  Nonetheless, Quantum Cannibals is a work of fiction.  Names and characters are products of my imagination and are not to be construed as real.

I will write a series of “Good Character” posts, introducing people from the novel: who was their inspiration, and what is their relevance today.  Some of the people (and their inspiration) you will meet are:

• Eric (Eric Cartman, from TV show South Park)
• Alex (poet Allen Ginsberg)
• Simon (the Rabbinic sage and mystic Simon bar Yochai)
• Lillith (Lillith)
• Asenath (Asenath Barzani, a 16^th century religious academy leader in Kurdistan)
• Mustafa (Ottoman general, Siege of Famagusta (Cyprus), 1570-71)

  

• Aua (early 20^th Inuk (Eskimo) shaman)
• Taiku (the Talmudic concept of a question that cannot yet be answered)

Some people say I’m too didactic, always finding a lesson in something.  Others say I’m always making jokes out of everything.  I hope when you read the “Good Character” posts that follow, they inspire you to reflect, and inspire you to laugh.

Oh, yeah, and inspire you to buy and read the novel.

Click here to read the post about Alex/Ginsberg/Cuties, and romanticizing kiddie porn

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The coronavirus pandemic could be something out of a horror movie, perhaps from sci-fi, a thriller… mystery…  existential fiction.  What the world is experiencing with the coronavirus has been well covered in literature and film, dealing with questions of the origin of the plague, and how people, society, the world responds.  The book may focus on the battle for survival or the struggle to remain civilized in the face of a horrific crisis.  Did the plague descend suddenly?  Or was it so gradual that the citizens didn’t realize what was happening until it was too late?

In The Plague, by Albert Camus (published in 1947) there are hints, but the townspeople’s first reaction is not to see the dead rats as a threat.  The story builds slowly; there is no single event which grabs your attention.  The characters are calm, perhaps detached, even boring.  Yet the story grips the reader as he experiences the burgeoning threat.  Nothing is exciting in The Plague, there are no heroes, no villains.  There is just a relentless dreariness.

“Thus week by week the prisoners of the plague put up what fight they could.  Some, like Rambert, even contrived to fancy they were still behaving as free men and had the power of choice.  But actually it would have been truer to say that by this time, mid-August, the plague had swallowed up everything and everyone.”

Fearful Complacency

While good literature can survive without heroes or villains, the media (social or mainstream) cannot.  Donald Trump, Justin Trudeau, Gal Gadot, ‘My Pillow Guy’ (Mike Lindell), World Health Organization, Jews, religion, sin, Singapore, the USA, Israel and China have all been lionized or demonized for their responses to the coronavirus pandemic (I agree with vilifying the latter).  The media have fueled fear, hysteria and hatred in their audiences.  Rather than responding to the pandemic, they rail against whomever they can accuse, be it neighbor or politician, for failing to properly fulfill their responsibilities.

“I only know that one must do what one can to cease being plague-stricken, and that’s the only way in which we can hope for some peace or, failing that, a decent death.”

There have been plagues and pestilence throughout human history, many of them far more severe than the present.  Covid 19 is unprecedented both in how modern, efficient transportation has allowed it to easily spread so far.  It is unprecedented in how modern, efficient communications have allowed rumors, accusations, true and false information to easily spread so far.  It is understandable that governments, regulators, health care system are floundering, making wrong decisions, changing strategies.  Our perfect hindsight allows us to scream at them nonetheless.

We stand in fear and awe, confronting the unknown.  We’re suddenly living a life that in our complacency we could only attribute to fiction.  We can use this as a learning opportunity to appreciate the gift of life, to distinguish between the vital and the trivial.

The book The Plague is a twentieth century classic, which captures the essence of this part of the twenty-first century.  Camus bared the heart of man, devoid of spectacle or suspense. How will we direct our hearts?

“All I maintain is that on this earth there are pestilences and there are victims, and it’s up to us, so far as possible, not to join forces with the pestilences.”

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Much of stereotypical science fiction has courageous heroes traveling into deep space to fend off some kind of alien threat.  In stereotypical fantasy literature, the hero fearlessly battles dragons, demons, or wicked sorcerers.  Given all these brave figures that speculative fiction authors create, should speculative fiction writers be afraid to offend?  More specifically, should they be afraid of antagonizing people, of scaring off a part of their potential market? A colleague recently commented that the words “murderous savages” on the back cover of my novel will repel some readers. He suggested that I delete them. My book though, deals with murderous savages (hence the second word of the title “Quantum Cannibals“).  It’s really the best way to describe them. “Homicidally-gifted sanguineous collectivity”doesn’t do them justice.

Offensive Classics

There is certainly precedent for offending people through literature.  The Merchant of Venice shocked and offended me.  Shylock is the archetype of the unscrupulous,greedy Jew, trying to literally rob the flesh off those he encounters.  How many people, having read Shakespeare, would assume I was unscrupulous and greedy? On the other hand, if Shakespeare had been afraid to offend, would any of his works have any value?

The characters of the American classic Huckleberry Finn have terribly demeaning attitudes towards negros; the word”nigger” is used over two hundred times.  Had the author used the term “black”or “African American” would the reader have been able to get a true sense of the people and atmosphere of the pre-Civil War south?   A school in Pennsylvania pulled the novel from its grade 11 literature program on account of the racist nature of the characters.

Similarly, To Kill a Mockingbird has come under fire for immorality, dealing with rape and racism, and using the word “nigger.”  Nonetheless, the book and the movie educated many Americans about the evils of prejudice and vigilante justice, along with the danger of reflexively believing a woman who accuses someone of rape.  The novel also emphasizes the value of charity and empathy with the mentally challenged.  Nonetheless, sixty years later this book’s depiction of mid twentieth century America offends people.

Wells’ The Time Machine appears initially to be about conflict between an enlightened society and a bunch of savages but resolves itself as a discussion of intense class warfare.  Critics have called the Lord of The Rings “racist,” for among other things, condoning prejudice against Orcs, “a brutish,aggressive, repulsive and generally malevolent species.”  Should Tolkein have explained them better; their broken homes, deprived childhoods, the oppression they suffered at the hands of humans, elves and hobbits?  The very concept that some species, races or people are worse than others is unacceptable to many readers.

A Call to Action!

So what is a writer to do?  Should he be afraid to offend and thus preemptively avoid upset, or should he take the Lenny Bruce approach, saying nigger, nigger, nigger, kike,kike, kike often enough that it stops being offensive?  In one of his comedy monologues Bruce suggested that hotels should describe the breasts of their female patrons to their male guests and advise in which room these horny women could be found.  A person would likely be arrested today for that kind of talk.  It landed Bruce in jail many times during the 1960’s.  If he feared, he did not let him stop him.

Western democratic nations generally don’t arrest novelists because of their fiction. In countries with totalitarian governments a provocative story in which a protagonist acts against social norms could land the author in jail, or worse.  Sci-fi author Philip K. Dick was quite concerned about the scope of totalitarianism:

The greatest menace in the twentieth century is the totalitarian state. It can take many forms: left-wing fascism,psychological movements, religious movements, drug rehabilitation places,powerful people, manipulative people; or it can be in a relationship with someone who is more powerful than you psychologically.

Dick suffered more at the hands of his own personal demons rather than any totalitarian entity.  Nonetheless he’s been castigated as a neo-con libertarian for statements such as these, and some readers turn away from him. Progressives have savagely denounced Orson Scott Card on account of his conservatism.  Readers who love Ender’s Game ask whether they should boycott Card because of his radical conservatism, an outgrowth of his strong Mormon beliefs.  Although there is little in his fiction to disturb people, he is not afraid to offend people by upholding his values.  Should a writer’s politics or values be separated from his writing?

In some cases, the politics are part of the creation.  Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth series features a brutal antagonist in the process of conquering the world in the name of collectivization.  In Faith of the Fallen, Goodkind presents a close-up view of the misery imposed by socialism.  Even though the setting is the equivalent of an alternate-world medieval society, the story provides a sense, an understanding of contemporary life in places like Venezuela or North Korea.  This has made Goodkind and his works an anathema to many progressive readers.

Some have argued that fantasy fiction tends to be conservative because of the setting: usually lands ruled by kings and princes.  Urban, or modern fantasy is growing in popularity, but has far to go to catch up to the medieval approach.

A Writer Should Not be Afraid to Offend

Should a writer be afraid to offend people, afraid of driving away potential readers?  The answer depends on another question: why is he writing?  If he wants to get a message across to readers,whether the evils of socialism, the depredations of capitalism or the hazards of conformity, he can be sure that someone will get ticked off .  Is the offensive material an essential part of the message?  Could Lenny Bruce or Mark Twain have made their points without saying nigger?

Vegan Cannibals

If the story is trying to teach about a real place or population that has repulsive practices, it would be dishonest to whitewash those.  The Aztec  fed on captives and members of their own population.  You can’t depict them as vegan, claiming to present an alternate reality.  When you take away the essence to make something palatable, you are not left with the same thing.  A bland Jalapeno pepper is not a Jalapeno.

If the story is for the sake of entertainment (whether of the writer or the reader), there is a lot more flexibility.  The author isn’t watering down any message.  There is still a matter of accuracy (eg. vegan Aztec), but with the lower goal of entertainment, the risks are reduced.

Yes, I said the “lower goal of entertainment.”  I’m taking a chance that I’m offending you with this.  For me literature is a means of conveying truths about the world, about people and their relations.  On the other hand, if a story is not entertaining, no one will be interested in its truths.

Fear of Cannibals

When I was advised to delete the term”murderous savage” from the cover of Quantum Cannibals, I demurred.  When I was advised to remove the homosexual sex scene near the start of the book, I did so.  I agreed that it was too distracting and concluded that deleting it would not detract from the message I wanted to convey (one of the characters was modeled after the pederast poet Allan Ginsburg).  Though I don’t believe in transgender “rights,” I did not water down the transvestite shaman in Quantum Cannibals.  It (he/she) is based on a truth which has been documented in the records of the American Museum of Natural History and elsewhere.  It was more important for me to convey this truth to my readers than to worry about whom I might offend (including myself).

“Though people differ in color and creed, they all love, quarrel, protect their children, etc., exactly as we do.  The message is clear: we should love them because they are like us.  But that statement has its questioning brother: what if they aren’t like us?”
—Dr. Edmund Carpenter

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She told me Leonard Cohen gave her an unwanted kiss.  I didn’t know what to do.  Should I suggest she go to the officials?  Take her to a therapist?  Well, Leonard was an official, a counselor, so there was no point going that route.  Using all the wisdom my seven-year-old mind could summon up, I did nothing.  The girl, a couple of years older than me, chose the same strategy.  In fact, as Leonard’s fame as a poet blossomed, she was a fan, occasionally citing the token of affection she’d received at summer camp.  Fortunately, Cohen never identified strongly with any political faction, so the innocent kiss was never made into anything more than a harmless peck on the cheek.  It was nothing aggressive, nothing dirty, nothing incorrect.

Aggressive, dirty poetry

Ironic, really, since there WAS very aggressive, dirty, incorrect behavior by a famous poet of the previous generation. Allen Ginsberg, the leading Beat Poet of the fifties and sixties, played a large part in making poetry cool.  “Howl” was mandatory reading in many college literature classes, yet his fans paid no attention to his quirks. These included aggressive pedophilia and his promotion of the North American Man-Boy Love Association.

Leonard Cohen did not promote controversy

Leonard Cohen promoted no political controversy, no perversion.  His 1973 song Story of Isaac criticized the eagerness of the biblical Abraham to sacrifice his son, and by analogy sending men off to war.  It could be considered anti-religious, anti-war.  By contrast, Who By Fire (adapted from the High Holiday prayer service) and Hallelujah are worthy of psalms, or perhaps prayers.  His final album You Want It Darker was made in collaboration with his synagogue’s choir. It again refers to the biblical story of Isaac, this time emphasizing God’s role in preventing the sacrifice of Abraham’s son.  According to his son Adam, Leonard Cohen considered his work a “mandate from God.”

A journalist asks, was Leonard Cohen in the end, a musician or a poet?  I ask, why do you have to categorize him?  He sang (with the encouragement of the folksinger Judy Collins), he wrote novels, and poems, both sacred (piyutim) and secular.  In the end, he blessed us all with a kiss.

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A beautiful demon rapes a human, who enjoys it.  The demon then accuses the human of raping her.

When I composed this scene for my novel Quantum Cannibals (publication date Nov. 2018), I thought it fictional.  In the contemporary non-fictional world (such as it is), the #MeToo movement has brought the demons out from their hiding places.

Personally, I’m glad I’m an old fart, happily married to a beautiful woman.  I’d hate to be on the make today, looking for ladies to sle*p with.  It’s way too complicated.  Despite the long-ago success of the sexual revolution, things today are more testy than they were when Ed Sullivan was afraid to show Elvis’

gyrating hips on Sunday TV.

An approved style of life

Today there’s no stigma attached to pre-marital sex, and adultery is considered by many as an approved style of life.  A girl who sleeps around is no longer considered bad; just as guys are supposed to sleep around, so are women.  In literature, in film, all kinds of sexual behavior is tolerated, even praised.

A problem now is that every consent for nookie carries with it the implied right for the woman to withdraw or deny consent subsequent to the act.  Even if the woman sends you love notes after you’ve been together, it doesn’t mean that she still consents to the sex you already had.  And even if you have done nothing together, you can still be convicted or your reputation ruined, just on the basis of a woman’s accusation.  It can be vague, it can be inconsistent, but the accusation is accepted (unless of course she has the wrong political affiliation).

Go away before I call the police

In olden times it was simple.  “Yes” meant “yes,” “no” meant “try harder” or “get lost.” “Go away before I call the police” meant “no.”  “Maybe some other time” meant “up your game.”  I had some difficulty with the jargon.  When a woman told me “no,” or “go f*ck yourself,” I took it as a definitive rejection.  I can’t tell you how many times women got upset with me because I stopped trying when they said “no.”  I would have had many more notches on my Winchester

if I had relied on the simple jargon of those times.  Then again, if I had always interpreted “no” as “try harder,” I might have ended acting like Bill Cosby.  Better to do without than turn into a sex demon.  Some behavior, whether or not it’s part of the approved style of life, should be rejected.

These days who knows what yes, no, and go f*ck yourself mean.  It’s even worse.  A man might see a gorgeous blonde with a nice rack and want to get to know her.  Then he finds out she identifies as a guy.  Then he finds out she’s gay.  Is she a gay man, or a gay woman?  If the former, it means she wants to be with a guy, so maybe it’s good.  If the latter, it means… well, who the hell knows what it means?  Perhaps she/he/it identifies as a Catholic priest and is celibate or looking for someone way younger than you.

“…between the approved style of life and the assumed structure of reality, there is conceived to be a simple and fundamental congruence such that they complete one another and lend one another meaning.” –Clifford Geertz, anthropologist

Life gets more complicated all the time.  It’s not just advanced technology or an opaque economic system.  The fact is that Western culture is being dismantled and reconstructed, taking a principle from here, a value from there, and duct-taping them into some kind of bizarre structure.  The pieces, beliefs, and doctrines no longer fit each other, and Western society is teetering.  The “approved style of life” and “the assumed structure of reality” are no longer congruent.  Perhaps that’s why so many people look favorably at Islam, with its unequivocal social and sexual roles, where the primary value is to “submit.”  Freedom, which most westerners view as essential to their approved style of life, will vanish into the midden heap of the tolerated structure of reality.

Do we want to lose our freedom? If the answer is no, try harder.

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They did not foresee…  the development of a vast mass communications industry, concerned in the main neither with the true nor the false, but with the unreal, the more or less totally irrelevant

Aldous Huxley

We all like good Theater.  Something terrible happens to an innocent victim (or victims), the good guys scurry around trying to find out how and why the tragedy occurred, use all their resources to make sure the evildoers get punished, and it doesn’t happen again.  The audience comes away feeling that despite mishaps, the world is on the right trajectory, a safe place to be.

Take the theatrical aftermath of the recent bike path terror attack in New York City.  Or the van driving down a pedestrian mall in Barcelona.  Or the bomb outside the Ariana Grande concert in England.  Or any of the countless attacks in recent years, some resulting in some minor injuries, other killing dozens.

In the Theater of Fear, a regular script is followed.  First, thoughts and prayers to the victims.  Then outrage, saying that the victims’ city/nation/civilization won’t be intimidated. Then the investigations, where government and police vow to get to the bottom of things.  The authorities take some action to make sure the same attack can’t be replicated.  Like closing the barn doors after the cows have died.

 In “Brave New World” non-stop distractions of the most fascinating nature are deliberately used as instruments of policy, for the purpose of preventing people from paying too much attention to the realities of the social and political situation.

Aldous Huxley

Soon there’s a football game, or a celebrity does something scandalous and everything is under control (or at least forgotten) till the next act of the Theater of Fear.  Hopefully it will take place far away.  And the whole cycle is repeated.

What do the thoughts and prayers accomplish? They comfort the spectators, those not touched by the tragedy.  The outrage?  It masks people’s feeling of vulnerability.  Investigation?  It gives the population a sense that the terrorists are being dealt with.

Given enough time and resources, the investigators will be able to determine whether the terrorist yelling a fourteen hundred year battle cry was acting on behalf of some religious ideology.  They will probably decide that he was acting on his own, not part of some nefarious plot to take over the world.

It’s all Theater of fear, a diversion.  It doesn’t matter whether a terrorist is part of a tightly controlled organization, or acting on his own.  Sowing havoc doesn’t require great coordination, complex weapons or financing.  We know what the terrorists’ motives are.  We know what population they come from.  We know how to stop them.

But that requires abandoning the theatrics, the grand pronouncements of prayer, outrage and inquiry.  It means doing what we already know has to be done, even though it goes against the grain of what our advanced society is supposed to stand for.  The alternative is to succumb to the forces of evil, that have placed this drama, this horror upon us.  The Theater of Fear is for real.

Only the vigilant can maintain their liberties, and only those who are constantly and intelligently on the spot can hope to govern themselves effectively by democratic procedures. A society, most of whose members spend a great part of their time… somewhere else, in the irrelevant other worlds of sport and soap opera, of mythology and metaphysical fantasy, will find it hard to resist the encroachments of those would manipulate and control it.

Aldous Huxley

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