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Memento Mori
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We are a dumbed-down country where few value history or
literature, and most can’t even spell properly in their own
language. |
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| By
Debby Long |
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 “School is shortened, discipline relaxed,
philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling
gradually neglected, finally almost completely ignored. Life is
immediate, the job counts, pleasure lies all about after work.
Why learn anything save pressing buttons, pulling switches,
fitting nuts and bolts?” - Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury, 1953
One of the most perplexing aspects of the rise of this
Republican Party is the enthusiasm with which highly religious
Americans embrace what, in any other era, would be regarded as
apostasy – a willful turning away from God.
Our National Myth - from the cowboy myth to the myth of Manifest
Destiny - defines a distinctly hubristic national ethos colored
with many beloved anti-heroes. We love the devil-may-care Johnny
Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow, and we love Bryan Cranston’s
Walter White in Breaking Bad for the same reason. While America
didn’t invent the anti-hero, the idea of the anti-hero probably
sells more popcorn in America than anywhere else on earth.
Donald Trump is a prime example of the American anti-hero. Many
are appalled by his anti-government transgressions and his
distinctly illegal style of doing business. But the Republican
Party is in love with his unexpurgated contempt for governmental
authority and the civil rights of anyone else. He’s their guy
for a reason: He’s the embodiment of our national mythology. And
Joe Biden isn’t their guy because he’s not either of those
things - even though he is eminently qualified to lead America
away from the edge. He isn’t their guy precisely because he’s a
good guy who follows the rules.
But America also has a Founding Myth, and that myth is deeply
Judeo/Christian. It is not only rooted in Evangelical
Christianity; it is rooted in our founding Judeo/Christian
beliefs, culture, and ethics. It underlies our laws, and its
culture is a shared tradition by both Christians and Jews. Our
national holidays are shared moments where our founding
religions celebrate shared values.
But slowly this founding myth of ours has morphed into something
else, something antithetical to the body of ethics that informed
America’s founding documents. Today, American culture appears to
resemble Ray Bradbury’s prediction of a civilization gone wrong.
We are a dumbed-down country where few value history or
literature, and most can’t even spell properly in their own
language. Bradbury says: “Why learn anything save pressing
buttons, pulling switches, fitting nuts and bolts?” We have
become useful idiots for demagogues like Donald Trump and
Vladimir Putin.
And as our democracy begins to crumble before our eyes, it is
becoming impossible to ignore the fact that much of the
Republican Party’s policies appear to be leading directly toward
apocalyptic outcomes: Climate denialism, fossil fuel
protectionism, and opposition to any gun laws inevitably lead to
existential climate change, a dramatic loss of species
diversity, and a return to a world "red in tooth and claw". What
was once the party devoted to the support of laissez-faire
capitalism is now the party of End Times eschatology. What was
once the party that accepted Jefferson’s Wall of Separation, now
intrinsically promotes “The Last Judgment” and “The Rapture”.
And if the Bible is believed to be inerrant, then Originalism in
the Supreme Court is a logically coherent vantage point from
which to interpret the Constitution of the United States. Within
our pluralism and our tolerance for others, we let slide the
Republican Party’s increasing encroachment on constitutionally
mandated secularism. We ignored its growing racism as it chipped
away at hard fought civil rights legislation. And nobody said a
word as corporations became people, and money took control of
elections. We are looking at the abyss simply because nobody
remembered to fight for democracy.
And while we may end up with laissez-faire capitalism - the
Republican Holy Grail - we could also end up with the Apocalypse
as well, because America’s Republican Party has become a
doomsday cult.
If we’ve learned nothing else in the last 80 years, we have
learned this: The rate of the evolution of humanity’s
technological advances exceeds the ability of modern Homo
sapiens to adapt to them. And this disparity is beginning to
show signs of a red shift that likely cannot be reversed.
Many people think that global climate change means that some
large urban centers will just get flooded or become
uninhabitable, requiring relocation to higher ground - a real
estate problem that can be solved. And many believe that brown
skinned immigrants, purportedly flooding our borders, will
change the genetics of a perfectly snow-white America. Many
still regard African Americans as Ronald Reagan’s mythical
“welfare queens” and not as those who are rapidly enhancing
every aspect of our culture - strivers seeking the prosperity
that has eluded them for so long.
The founding of America’s Judeo/Christian myth makes the
assumption that modern humans are the last word in evolution;
that humanity was a vanity project conceived of by an invisible
creator; and that this entire project will conclude with the
Apocalypse – the extinction of life on earth, entirely.
Only one of those religious myths turns out to be true. One
cannot overstate the irony that the myth of the Apocalypse in
the Abrahamic religions is currently being fully supported in
America by both the Republican Party and Evangelical Christians,
all of whom deny the science of global warming and climate
change. Theirs is a self-fulfilling prophesy of cosmological
proportions. Theirs is an exercise in hubris. And their suicidal
End Times eschatology clearly places modern Homo sapiens exactly
where they belong, as evolutionary biologist, Jared Diamond,
depicted them in his 1991 book entitled: “The Third Chimpanzee:
The Evolution and Future of the Human Animal”.
Humans diverged from chimpanzees about 5 to 7 million years ago
– a blink-of-an-eye in evolutionary time. We are indeed special,
but not because we were personally designed by a
designer-in-chief. We are special because our brains are
special, and that is due to evolution through the process of
natural selection. To deny the fact of evolution is to squander
the power of the very thing that makes humans special.
The differential between our technological advances and our
inability to adapt to them, places life on earth at a crossroad.
Religious dogma is an accelerant that serves to widen this gap
because, not only does it constrain our ability to understand
the factors that drive evolution and, therefore, adapt to change
- but its rigidity is currently foreclosing our ability to
continue to comfortably wakesurf behind the technological
advances that drive our future. We are observing the end of
liberal democracy, and our religious Originalism is serving as a
tragic self-fulfilling prophesy.
When triumphant Roman soldiers returned from battle and arrived
in Rome to receive tribute for their victory, a slave rode
beside the soldier telling him these words: “Memento Mori” –
remember that we die. It was a warning not to fall victim to
hubris.
We are suffering from the tyranny of the minority - from their
arrogance and from their backward hubris. Theirs will be a
triumphal defeat of American democracy, but they will end up
with nothing.
Memento Mori. |
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