Freedom!

         Jarvis Masters is a Buddhist on death row. He was not a Buddhist prior to incarceration, but rather discovered the practice during his time in prison at San Quentin in California. Meditation and mindfulness practice have helped him navigate his isolation, maintain peace in the face of the continuous aggression and suffering all around him, and deal with the anxiety of court proceedings surrounding the appeals of his conviction. Masters maintains his innocence and a great deal of other people agree with him.

        I came across Masters' story in David Sheff's book The Buddhist on Death Row, which chronicles Masters' life, his imprisonment, and his efforts to gain freedom, paralleling each of these with his jailhouse conversion to and practice of Buddhism. The book maintains an interesting balance of presenting Masters' unflinching work to overcome his past and present trauma through meditation and mindfulness while also giving a clear introduction to Buddhist ideas. Aside from the engaging personal element of the story is the higher philosophical question of the nature of freedom. At one point, Masters remarks that the discipline and insight he has gained through meditation actually make him freer than people "on the outside." As he recounts to those who visit him in prison, "we can free ourselves without ever leaving our cells."

        It's an interesting question: what truly constitutes freedom? In a political climate where a certain segment of the population sees being required to wear a mask as an unacceptable infringement on personal liberty, delving into what it might actually mean to be "free" feels like a worthwhile endeavor. Some behavioral psychologists, evolutionary biologists, and philosophers would contend that this is a nonsense question: no one is ever really free due to the overriding influences of genetics and culture. I don't expect to settle any of that here, but given the transformations people have been known to undergo (Jarvis Masters, for instance) saying we are completely without freewill seems like an overstatement. From that vantage, it might be more interesting to ask what freedom really is, whether it is something primarily internal (being able to control one's own actions or state of mind) or external (having as much choice of action or range of movement as possible).

         When I used to teach a class called "Eastern Thought," we'd start with an ancient text called the Yoga Sutra by a philosopher named Patanjali. Those used to Yoga as primarily an exercise regimen might be surprised to learn that the practice, at least in its original Indian context, is about disciplining the mind first and foremost, and any bodily practices are aimed at reaching the mind through the body. One achieves release (moksha) by elevating the mind to be able to overcome all the mundane physical circumstances it might encounter. Masters' brand of Tibetan Buddhism is similar: freedom is judged by control of one's own reactions and inner state, and any negative outward environmental factors one finds are to be seen as opportunities to cultivate the inward practices.

        Speaking broadly, Western culture (particularly American culture) has by far emphasized an external definition of freedom. (One former student in that Eastern Thought class even remarked, "In the U.S., we're big on choice, not so much on discipline.") By this analysis, regulation and external control are the enemy and the absence of those constrictions equals freedom. Hence, we see rebellions against kings and mask mandates alike.

        From the point of view of those, like Patanjali and Masters, who see freedom as an internal state, external freedom really isn't freedom at all. If freedom is defined by unfettered action and choice and being able to do what I want, then conceivably I am more free if I have ten options to choose from as opposed to two. As befits a capitalist, consumerist society, we then perform our freedom by demanding more and more choices, amassing them like any other commodity. Freedom becomes something to consume and accumulate like an iPhone or a bigger house. The difficulty arises when, like other possessions, attachment ensues. If freedom is a possession to quantify, it can be taken away or reduced by something as simple as reducing my options from ten different iPhones to eight. One lives in constant fear of others regulating their choices, and the greater the number of choices, the greater the fear. The more "freedom" I have, the less free I am. French Existentialist philosopher Jean Paul Sartre thought something like this, even arguing that we are "condemned" by freedom. (And if you haven't watched Monty Python's sketch on Jean Paul Sartre, which touches on freedom, you really should.)

        Is there a way to make these two notions of freedom work together? What if we see the internal freedom of discipline as a prerequisite for the external freedom of choice? It's a bit of a shift in topic (I'm known to make strange linkages at times), but I would argue that's what we see in the famous movie (and one of my favorites) The Shawshank Redemption.

        The main character, Andy Dufresne, has been incarcerated for murders he didn't commit. Though the situation is certainly grim, he develops and maintains an incredible sense of equanimity, for instance helping another prisoner earn a GED and building a prison library, all the way chiseling through his cell wall a few grains at a time. Eventually, he tunnels his way out of the prison and makes his escape. During his time in prison he's developed and defended a robust internal freedom, which prepares him for the external freedom he achieves toward the end of the film. Perhaps partly due to these themes, the film has risen to much greater popularity even than when it debuted in the mid-1990s.

        So, perhaps the dichotomy between these types of freedom is the wrong question after all. Instead, maybe we should be asking if we'd all be more apt to enjoy and make the best use of our external freedom after developing the internal freedom of self-discipline. Jarvis Masters would say yes, and he's spent half a lifetime on the subject.

        That's all for now. Until the next time, take care.

The Politics and Mythology of Godzilla

         When I was four years old, my favorite movie was 1962's King Kong versus Godzilla. (Take a few minutes and watch the ending battle here. If you like watching guys in monster costumes wrestle, you won't be disappointed!) I loved Godzilla and rooted for him to wallop all the beasts he faced, save the world, and smash as many buildings as he could along the way. There was even a green coat I would wear at that age when I wanted to pretend to be the big green guy!

        Those childhood sentiments seem rather far away when placed against the most recent Japanese version of the beast, 2016's Shin Gojira.

        As you can see from the promotional picture here, this is not exactly the cute and cuddly "Godzilla" of my youth. Its imagery is frightful and grotesque at times, while the film itself makes powerful political and moral statements. Far from a new turn for the figure, though, this representation returns it to its roots in the original 1954 Gojira. (A note about language: "Gojira" is the correct Japanese name for the creature. It is a portmanteau of the Japanese words for "ape" and "whale," showing something of the category-breaking quality frequent in monstrous figures. "Godzilla" is an anglicized rendering of the phonetics of "Gojira.") The original black-and-white Gojira was intended as a serious commentary on the atomic bomb and ongoing nuclear testing, particularly by the United States. As if the past history of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had not been enough fodder to inspire a film about a monster brought to life by nuclear weapons, contemporaneous to the film's inception and release, a hydrogen bomb test by the United States (codenamed "Castle Bravo") produced fallout that irradiated a Japanese fishing boat. With these incidents as a backdrop, the film depicts how atomic tests bring to life an ancient beast who wreaks havoc on Japan.

        It is a grim, serious, and effective movie. The monster lays waste to stretches of Japan and is stopped only when another horrific weapon (an "oxygen destroyer") is employed to kill it. Even as the Japanese scientist who developed the oxygen destroyer shows his moral superiority to the United States by choosing to die along with Gojira rather than that risk his invention being misused, those present at the monster's defeat lament the prospect that future nuclear testing will produce even more unfathomable threats.

        2016's Shin Gojira similarly occurs in the wake of a real-life disaster. In 2011, following an earthquake and tsunami, the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan suffered an accident that released an enormous level of radiation into the environment, causing large-scale evacuations.  The Japanese government's handling of the accident and its aftermath was roundly criticized, up to and including accusations of active cover ups of the tragedy's severity.  As the monster comes ashore in this new version, the effects of the Fukushima accident are glaringly obvious: the government is shown as inept, mired in red tape, and primarily concerned with not losing face rather than truly protecting citizens. Perhaps even to a greater extent than the original Gojira, the film also tackles tensions with the United States, showing the Americans as overbearing diplomatically and even perfectly willing to subject Japan to a modern nuclear strike (whether the Japanese agree to it or not) in order to stop the monster. Ultimately, it is the younger, brasher, and more nationalistic elements of the government, in concert with the Japanese military (the "Strategic Defense Force") who emerge as the heroes, defeating the creature and reasserting Japan's might and sovereignty in the face of international overreach.

        Shin Gojira and its 1954 predecessor are also remarkable for the ways in which they draw on ancient mythic themes. In the 2016 film, the beast is called a "god incarnate," as a nod to the divine and dangerous creatures of Shinto mythology. The Strategic Defense Forces assigned to combat Gojira are codenamed "Dragon Slayers," explicitly in honor of the storm god Susanoo, who destroyed the monster serpent Orochi in Shinto mythology. Stories of a storm or thunder deity killing a primordial dragon are frequent in world mythology, particularly in the Indo-European region. Zeus kills Typhon, Thor is locked in struggle with the Midgard Serpent, Perun perpetually battles Veles, Ra pursues Apophis, Marduk slays Tiamat, Indra smashes Vritra, and on and on. It is present in the biblical tradition as well, exemplified by Yahweh fighting Leviathan and the various monsters of Revelation, especially the beast from the sea and the many-headed dragon. Whereas the thunder gods in each instance are meant to represent order and divinity, the dragon from the sea stands for the chaos, darkness, and dissolution that must be conquered.

        Beneath the surface of these philosophical oppositions, though, there are layers and layers of political intentions, as many scholars in Religious Studies will point out. For instance, the Greek story of Zeus' defeat of Typhon (who is the champion of Gaia, Mother Earth) may be a polemic in favor of patriarchy's domination of women. Similarly, Indra was the warrior deity of the Vedic peoples, and Vritra was conceptualized as the various cultures they conquered. Despite many looney interpretations, the beasts of Revelation have the same kind of political origin, as stand-ins for the Roman Empire. In this same way, the original Gojira uses a monster out of the primordial sea to represent a contemporary horror: the atomic bomb. Shin Gojira updates this by adding a critique of the Japanese governmental structure and ratcheting up the anti-American sentiment. The notes may change slightly, but the song remains the same, right?

        Well, yes and no. Myths have a tendency to get away from their authors. Besides the evolving friendliness of the character (its transition from fearsome "Gojira" to the funny "Godzilla") in the 1960-70s, there have been Hollywood interpretations in 1998, 2014, and 2019. One can even speculate that this is the reason why Shin Gojira has that particular title: "Shin" can be translated many ways, including "new" or "true," suggesting a deliberate contrast to the American films. Yet, for better or worse, Godzilla is now a multivalent figure, holding multiple, complicated meanings simultaneously. In a 2019 article for the Atlantic, Peter Bebergal masterfully points to these tensions. This just proves that any mythic figure can mean a lot of different things, whether its to an ancient culture, a Hollywood film studio, or a four-year old in a green coat.

        The topic for next time is still up in the air, as there are a few topics I'm choosing between. At any rate, I'll be back in a week or so. Until then, take care.

The Paradox of Empathy

         Post-apocalyptic settings and societal collapse are commonplace in a lot of science fiction, so it's no surprise I came across that theme in a recent leisure read. The way I cam across the book was a little roundabout, though. One of the faculty I work with is using Octavia Butler's Kindred in a Literature class, which reminded me that I hadn't read the copy of her Patternmaster that I picked up for $0.50 several years ago at a library book sale. Well, try as I might, I couldn't find it, but I did find a copy of Butler's Parable of the Sower, so I dove into that one instead.

        Published in the early 1990s, this is a tense, frightening work about the dystopic future (set in the 2020s!) where an enclave of people try to maintain a community in the face of the breakdown of society all around them. As the country around them descends into barbarism, this community is destroyed by roving gangs and the main character, Lauren Olamina, sets out with a few others to journey to what will hopefully be safer lands to the north. Lauren is a remarkable character for a couple of reasons. First, one of the themes of the book is Lauren's creation of a new religion, "Earthseed," based on the assertion "God is change, and change is God." Throughout the novel, Earthseed slowly but continually spreads, gaining followers. There are multiple discussions of the nature of religion, of what allows a religion to spread and appeal to followers, and so forth that make me wish I could offer a class on "Religions in Literature," where we could compare Earthseed to Vonnegut's "Bokonism" or the various belief systems in Herbert's Dune.

        Lauren is remarkable also for an inherited ability Butler terms "hyperempathy," where she feels all the pain, joy, and other emotions of others to the point where if she is around someone who is injured or worse, she will experience those same emotions or sensations. For most of the novel, it is hard to see this as anything but a liability in a world where, increasingly, one must either kill or be killed.

        Throughout, Parable of the Sower made me think of Cormac McCarthy's The Road, which taps into some of the same themes.

        In an earlier post on that work, I wrote about how it's situation (a dying man tries, vainly it seems, to lead his young son to safety while they travel through the desolate, horror-filled wasteland left after some untold cataclysm has devastate the earth) that represents the ultimate encapsulation of every parent's unexpressed yet underlying nightmare: as much as we want to protect our children from a dangerous world, our efforts will always be insufficient, and one day, inevitably, we will be gone.

        The primary connection between the two books, besides the post-apocalyptic context, is the complicated treatment of empathy, which both works raise almost to the level of paradox. Imagining the feelings of others and being able to connect with fellow humans on an emotional level is indispensable to the operation of society. As both novels point out, though, once the bonds break and society decays, empathy can become a liability. In The Road, the Man tells the Boy that they are keepers of the "fire," the spark of humanity and humaneness in a brutal world. Yet, time and again when the Boy wants to help others, the Man refuses, arguing that they need to hold back their resources or be wary to trust for fear of being attacked. In Parable of the Sower, Lauren uses her ability to forge bonds with fellow travelers, yet it makes her reluctant to make hard decisions and even incapacitates her when violence becomes necessary. In both novels, this is the paradox of empathy: feeling for others is the only thing that will rebuild society, but it is also the greatest impediment to personal survival.

        In an atmosphere of growing polarization, are these novels fiction or are they prophecy? A recent article in Scientific American discusses the increasing "empathy deficit" in the United States. Put simply, people in this country are caring less and less about the plights of others and are no longer willing to entertain how situations are affecting people besides themselves. It seems that, faced with the same paradox of empathy found in The Road and Parable of the Sower, Americans are choosing isolation and individualism. Frightening stuff!

        And yet, going back to those books, against all logic both works end on more or less positive notes. The characters in both those novels seem to have found ways to reconnect with other people and form mini-societies where it looks as if humanity and empathy will be the foundation. In both cases, the creation of those groups comes from pure, raw vulnerability and trust. Whether we have the same mettle in ourselves, outside the pages of the written world, remains to be seen.

        Next time, we'll talk about an enormous, irradiated beast and the political and cultural meanings of his representation. We're going to talk about Godzilla, past and present! Until then, take care.

Coming Home

         I've been thinking about home a lot lately. I don't necessarily mean my home, but rather the very idea of "home" - what it means to seek it, to idealize it, to lose it, even whether it ever can be an actual physical location. On the last point, I suppose my bias shows the most, as I've lived in many different places, including Ohio, Wisconsin (twice), Illinois, and Indiana (twice). In the latter, I suppose the most obvious candidate is the city of Rensselaer, the place I was born and raised, returned to after more than a decade away, then had to leave again a few years ago. Lately, though, perhaps as a function of getting older, watching my sons grow up, and wondering what form their reminisces of "when I was a kid" will take, I've come to see "home" not as a physical place but a state of mind. In that realm, it becomes a kind of myth not about any geographic location, but the revisionism of our individual pasts. 

         It's pretty obvious that this was what author Thomas Wolfe was intimating when he famously said, "You can't go home again." That phrase neatly describes the trap of nostalgia, something I've written about as well. The part that he leaves out is that we are drawn inexorably toward these myths of "home," a place that does not exist and perhaps never did. In the introduction to We Were Eight Years in Power, Ta-Nehisi Coates completes Wolfe's thought, rightly (in my view) portraying the impulse to rediscover an idealized "home" or past in this way:

         "I know now that that hunger is a retreat from the knotty present into myth and that what ultimately awaits those who retreat into fairy tales, who seek refuge in the made pursuit to be made great again, in the image of a greatness that never was, is tragedy" (10).

        As I often do, I turn to myth and literature as exemplars of any phenomenon, and they are replete with paradigms of this. Odysseus spends twenty years trying to return to Ithaca, only to find his home in shambles, overrun by suitors plotting to marry his wife and kill his son. This discovery is only the prelude to a gruesome orgy of bloody violence by which Odysseus satiates his desire for revenge. It is not exactly the epitome of a peaceful homecoming, and perhaps a timeless allegory for all those who come back from war forever altered to find their home similarly changed.

    Frodo Baggins in The Lord of the Rings leaves the Shire rather reluctantly to take part in the quest to destroy the One Ring, and once this is done, returns home with his friends. Yet, the wounds he has suffered -- physical, mental, and spiritual -- torment him and he can never find peace. Achingly, he confides to his closest friend Sam that, "the Shire was saved, but not for me." 

        Most recently, on a whim I read the novel Silas Marner, written by Mary Evans Cross under the pen name George Eliot. The book is predicated on these same themes, as the simple weaver Silas Marner is driven from his home after he is framed for a robbery and his good name is destroyed. Many years later, he resolves to return to that place with his adopted daughter, largely to see if the actual culprits had been caught and the truth had ever come out. It is not to be, however, for in the intervening time all the old landmarks of the town have been replaced or torn down and the people he once knew have either left or died. The place he knew no longer exists. "The old place is swep' away," he tells his daughter, "the old home's gone."

        These are nearly universal human experiences, and at times, they can even be seen as a blessing, if only in the moment. I recall about twenty-five years ago, as I graduated from high school (a place I found mind-numbing and soul-deadening) seeing the genuine distress on the faces of many of my classmates who did not want to leave what to them was a comfortable environment, a home they had enjoyed for four years. In those days of my youth, I was a far less understanding person and on my ride home after graduation I made sure to put my copy of Bob Dylan's MTV Unplugged set into my car's tape player (see, we still had cassettes back in the olden days), cued up to "Like a Rolling Stone," just to hear lyrics like these:

        "Princess on the steeple / And all them pretty people / Drinking and thinking that they got it made / Exchanging all precious gifts and things / But take your diamond rings / You better pawn them, babe. / 'Cause you used to be so amused / At Napoleon in rags and the language that he used / Go to him now, he calls you and you can't refuse / When you ain't got nothing left to lose. / You're invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal. / How does it feel? / To be without a home? / With no direction home, / Like a complete unknown, / Like a rolling stone."

        I recall shouting along with those lyrics, taking shameful joy in the sorrow that I knew others were experiencing in the closing of a chapter and the loss of a home that they had loved, but I had despised. 

        Well, the wheels turned round, the years passed, I got older and I found places that I liked being a whole lot better and had, inevitably, to bid them good-bye. Somewhere along the line I lost that cassette tape but just a few months ago happened to see the CD version at the local library. While listening to "Like a Rolling Stone" again, I remembered the incident from above and I no longer experienced any vengeful emotions, only sadness for how I had lacked all perspective in that moment. Dylan was no longer singing along with me, as I had imagined him doing years ago like some kind of Greek chorus of Furies, but was now serenading me, challenging me to finally come to terms with what it means, and will mean, to all of us, to lose home.

          Once again returning to the world of myth, I am struck by two almost polar opposite stories. First, there is the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden in Genesis, where the loss of the idealized home leads to enduring pain, suffering, and recrimination. Returning to Eden has animated a great deal of Jewish and then Christian thought, particularly apocalyptic speculation. On the other hand, there is the Great Renunciation in Buddhism, where Siddhartha Gautama realizes as a young man that his father's palace, though filled with all imaginable sensual delights, is really a cage he must escape. He flees home of his own accord, realizes awakening, then travels untethered to any "home," geographic or mental. The Genesis narrative seems unhealthy: our personal Edens are gone and seeking after them is an act of obsession. The Buddhist story seems unrealistic: must a person abandon everything to escape, including not just house but also family?

        And on that point, thinking of my sons, I wonder how they will look back on this time when they were young. Some day, when they're my age, will they be struck by pangs of sadness that those days are gone? I want them to look back on it fondly, but not with the escapist fantasy that they long to return to it as their one true home. I think the moral of the story is that once one erects that monument, that idol of the idealized home, it will be like the horizon: forever in sight, but always out of reach.

        Until the next time, take care.