If you've been following the news at all over the past week, you've heard of the massive winter storms circulating across the country, wreaking havoc especially in southern states like Texas, which are not at all acclimated to such events. Having lived in the Midwest my whole life (including several years up in the frozen tundra of Wisconsin), my heart goes out to those suffering through this extreme weather. Some of the stories (of the failure of electrical grids, water systems, and other infrastructures) and the human cost have been absolutely appalling and frightful. With the weather starting to warm up, hopefully those devastated areas will be able to start the recovery process.
The political reaction to this state of affairs has also made the news lately. Texas governor Greg Abbott strangely (and incorrectly) blamed wind turbines for the energy disruptions, Senator Ted Cruz checked out for Cancun, and former Texas governor Rick Perry claimed Texans were happy to go without power because it kept the federal government out of their business. Standing out amongst them all was (now former) Colorado City, Texas mayor Tim Boyd, who railed on Facebook that his fellow citizens asking for help during the power and water outages were "looking for a handout," that "no one owes you are (sic) your family anything," and "only the strong will survive and the weak will parish (sic)."
Taking all of this in, my first reaction (oddly enough) was to think of Robert E. Howard's original pulp tales of Conan the Barbarian.
For those unfamiliar with the character of Conan, he is described in Howard's stories as a mostly amoral mercenary living in the deep, deep past of human history, somewhere between the sinking of Atlantis (which existed in this mythology) and the founding of the earliest civilizations in Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley. Disdainful of human society and rules, Conan lives a mostly nomadic, solitary existence, surviving through his wits and strength by stealing, fighting, and killing his way out of problems. The god of Conan's people, named Crom, is portrayed as utterly indifferent to human affairs, leaving people to fend for themselves. Likewise unfeeling, Conan scoffs at all manner of altruism and social obligation, being much more likely to split a person's skull in half than explain himself.
Here's the connection to current events: Robert E. Howard was himself a Texan and conceived of the character while travelling out in the state's vast and (at least in the 1930s) unsettled areas. Howard imbued Conan with his own Libertarian scorn of what he saw as the stifling, constricting force of civilization: living alone, taking what you needed, and making out your own rules was the way to go. In other words, to Howard being a barbarian was vastly better than the civilized life, hence his idealized character "Conan the Barbarian." (As an interesting aside, Howard maintained a voluminous letter correspondence with fellow pulp writer
H.P. Lovecraft, creator of the famous
Cthulhu mythos, which I've used from time to time in classes on symbols of evil. Lovecraft was of the opposite point of view: civilization needed to be protected from barbarism at all cost.)
Watching the news and having read some Conan tales, it seems to me that Howard's fellow Texans Mayor Boyd, Senator Cruz, and former governor Perry were advocating a very Conan-like, barbaric way of handling this current crisis. Only the strong will survive! (Boyd) We'd rather suffer than than ask for help, because then we can be on our own! (Perry) If you have the means, fend yourself and flee to a tropical climate! (Cruz) It has certainly highlighted a chasm in political philosophy: are we all in this together or are we all on our own? As you come to your own conclusion, maybe ask yourself this question: would you really want to live in a world where you and everyone around you has to act like Conan?
No comments:
Post a Comment