Sometimes, When I Dare Myself To Read Robinson Jeffers

Photo by Edward Weston, 1929. Click for a better jpeg.

Sometimes, when I dare myself to read Robinson Jeffers, I think, "No no no, what if he's right?" But then I read him again, and think, "No no no, he's right." Either notion appalls me.

Rearmament
by Robinson Jeffers.

These grand and fatal movements toward death: the grandeur of the mass
Makes pity a fool, the tearing pity
For the atoms of the mass, the persons, the victims, makes it seem monstrous
To admire the tragic beauty they build.
It is beautiful as a river flowing or a slowly gathering
Glacier on a high mountain rock-face,
Bound to plow down a forest, or as frost in November,
The gold and flaming death-dance for leaves,
Or a girl in the night of her spent maidenhood, bleeding and kissing.
I would burn my right hand in a slow fire
To change the future... I should do foolishly. The beauty of modern
Man is not in the persons but in the
Disastrous rhythm, the heavy and mobile masses, the dance of the
Dream-led masses down the dark mountain.

-- From
THE SELECTED POETRY OF ROBINSON JEFFERS.
Random House, New York, 1938 (Eighth Printing).

Originally appeared in
SOLSTICE AND OTHER POEMS.
New York: Random House, 1935.

Why Imagine Reality? Reality Is Here.

Imagine a Second World War, in which the Western governments all supported nazi Germany.

On second thought, never mind. Why imagine a state of corruption that exists right now in the daylight?

Apologists For Genocide Make the Same Excuses Over and Over Again

"Remember, kids: Israel has the right to defend itself against doctors, nurses, farmers, teachers, firefighters, reporters, the mutilated, the blinded, the crippled, the starved, and of course, children.

"Especially children. Ever and always, children."

Genocide Kills Meaning

Genocide is not only a crime against humanity, it is a crime against meaning, against human purpose. Genocide negates not only our best values, but kills any hope for the discovery and preservation of new values. Like nuclear war, genocide is the ultimate nihilism, and here we are now, dying within our own minds, dying within our Western culture.

Trapped In A Neoliberal Hell

"Never think. Never feel. Interact only through financial transactions. Value only the commands of the market." These are the implicit messages of neoliberal consumer capitalism.

Yet human beings think and feel. Human beings require values and relationships that go far beyond the transactions of selling and buying. Human beings need human values. Take these away, and societies fall apart.

When people understand this, governments panic. Implicit messages become explicit, and so does punishment. Speak out against environmental destruction, and you will be ridiculed. Speak out against proxy wars, and you will be cancelled. Speak out against genocide, and you are finished.

Yet still, we think, we feel, we live by empathy. We continue to be human, because the alternative is an openly authoritarian hell on Earth.

Life is hard right now, life will get worse, but somehow, we must hang on to being human. We must persevere, because if we lose, we die.