Love at a Reasonable Price

[This is taken from our book Diary of an Adamant Seducer. This is the first portion of the chapter. Recently we added a long update, updating Donald Trump’s threat to our shared democracy: Trump & Democracy 2023.]

“Fly hence, deluding Dream! and light as air,
To Agamemnon’s ample tent repair.
Bid him in arms draw forth the embattled train,
Lead all his Grecians to the dusty plain.
Declare, e’en now ’tis given him to destroy
The lofty towers of wide-extended Troy.
For now no more the gods with fate contend,
At Juno’s suit the heavenly factions end.
Destruction hangs o’er yon devoted wall,
And nodding Ilion waits the impending fall.”
…

Now shield with shield, with helmet helmet closed,
To armour armour, lance to lance opposed,
Host against host with shadowy squadrons drew,
The sounding darts in iron tempests flew,
Victors and vanquish’d join’d promiscuous cries,
And shrilling shouts and dying groans arise;
With streaming blood the slippery fields are dyed,
And slaughter’d heroes swell the dreadful tide.

…

“… Patroclus dead, Achilles hates to live.
Let me revenge it on proud Hector’s heart,
Let his last spirit smoke upon my dart;
On these conditions will I breathe: till then,
I blush to walk among the race of men.”

…

Such war the immortals wage; such horrors rend
The world’s vast concave, when the gods contend.
First silver-shafted Phoebus took the plain
Against blue Neptune, monarch of the main.
The god of arms his giant bulk display’d,
Opposed to Pallas, war’s triumphant maid.
Against Latona march’d the son of May.
The quiver’d Dian, sister of the day,
(Her golden arrows sounding at her side,)
Saturnia, majesty of heaven, defied.
With fiery Vulcan last in battle stands
The sacred flood that rolls on golden sands;
Xanthus his name with those of heavenly birth,
But called Scamander by the sons of earth.
While thus the gods in various league engage,
Achilles glow’d with more than mortal rage:
Hector he sought; in search of Hector turn’d
His eyes around, for Hector only burn’d;
And burst like lightning through the ranks, and vow’d
To glut the god of battles with his blood.

….

Where’er he moved, the goddess shone before,
And bathed his brazen lance in hostile gore.
What mortal man Achilles can sustain?
The immortals guard him through the dreadful plain,
And suffer not his dart to fall in vain.
…

Hector beheld his javelin fall in vain,
Nor other lance, nor other hope remain;
He calls Deiphobus, demands a spear—
In vain, for no Deiphobus was there.
All comfortless he stands: then, with a sigh;

“’Tis so — Heaven wills it, and my hour is nigh!
I deem’d Deiphobus had heard my call,
But he secure lies guarded in the wall.
A god deceived me; Pallas, ’twas thy deed,
Death and black fate approach! ’tis I must bleed.
No refuge now, no succor from above,
Great Jove deserts me, and the son of Jove,
Propitious once, and kind! Then welcome fate!
’Tis true I perish, yet I perish great:
Yet in a mighty deed I shall expire,
Let future ages hear it, and admire!”
Fierce, at the word, his weighty sword he drew,

…

So shone the point of great Achilles’ spear.
In his right hand he waves the weapon round,
Eyes the whole man, and meditates the wound;
But the rich mail Patroclus lately wore
Securely cased the warrior’s body o’er.
One space at length he spies, to let in fate,
Where ’twixt the neck and throat the jointed plate
Gave entrance: through that penetrable part
Furious he drove the well-directed dart:
Nor pierced the windpipe yet, nor took the power
Of speech, unhappy! from thy dying hour.

Prone on the field the bleeding warrior lies,
While, thus triumphing, stern Achilles cries:
“At last is Hector stretch’d upon the plain,
Who fear’d no vengeance for Patroclus slain:
Then, prince! you should have fear’d, what now you feel;
Achilles absent was Achilles still:
Yet a short space the great avenger stayed,
Then low in dust thy strength and glory laid.
Peaceful he sleeps, with all our rites adorn’d,
For ever honour’d, and for ever mourn’d:
While cast to all the rage of hostile power,
Thee birds shall mangle, and the gods devour.”

Then Hector, fainting at the approach of death:

“By thy own soul! by those who gave thee breath!
By all the sacred prevalence of prayer;
Ah, leave me not for Grecian dogs to tear!
The common rites of sepulture bestow,
To soothe a father’s and a mother’s woe:
Let their large gifts procure an urn at least,
And Hector’s ashes in his country rest.”

“No, wretch accursed! relentless he replies;

…

Then thus the chief his dying accents drew:
“Thy rage, implacable! too well I knew:
The Furies that relentless breast have steel’d,
And cursed thee with a heart that cannot yield.
Yet think, a day will come, when fate’s decree
And angry gods shall wreak this wrong on thee;
Phoebus and Paris shall avenge my fate,
And stretch thee here before the Scaean gate.”
He ceased. The Fates suppress’d his labouring breath,
And his eyes stiffen’d at the hand of death;
To the dark realm the spirit wings its way,
(The manly body left a load of clay,)
And plaintive glides along the dreary coast,
A naked, wandering, melancholy ghost!

Achilles, musing as he roll’d his eyes
O’er the dead hero, thus unheard, replies:

“Die thou the first! When Jove and heaven ordain,
I follow thee” — He said, and stripp’d the slain.
Then forcing backward from the gaping wound
The reeking javelin, cast it on the ground.

…

These fix’d up high behind the rolling wain,
His graceful head was trail’d along the plain.
Proud on his car the insulting victor stood,
And bore aloft his arms, distilling blood.
He smites the steeds; the rapid chariot flies;
The sudden clouds of circling dust arise.
Now lost is all that formidable air;
The face divine, and long-descending hair,
Purple the ground, and streak the sable sand;
Deform’d, dishonour’d, in his native land,
Given to the rage of an insulting throng,
And, in his parents’ sight, now dragg’d along!

Bartleby, alone upon the sands of fatal Troy. Sitting with sand chafing between buttocks and underwear. Waiting, with the ocean curling to and from his pointed toes. Bartleby, musing. Bartleby, speaking:

“I cannot stop the Evil. The ranging, restless, pointless cruelty. I cannot stop the crime — though I watch it slowly stand, pull shoulders back, stretch arms up and back, yawn and smile tall and sleepy-eyed; watch it, in boxers only, led cheerily by the smell of brewing coffee towards another leather-sofa filtered-water designer-shirts and climatized-air day.”

Bartleby hears the crash and din of a mangy tiny nothing war between a few scattered bundles of short, trim, scarce-bearded youths. Bartleby hears rambling poet roll and lift their meagre bones and empty offerings, hears the rounding rhythms and flowering phrases build from splashing mud puddles a raging foaming world-invading sea of warriors grand and gods involved and implicated, until the windy plains of high-towered wide-extended gods-defended Troy flow red with heroes’ blood and black with bound-Beauty’s sullen, heart-twisting idles.

“On the one flank: An election fairly won and duly closed. Betrayed, belittled, named a lie again and again until a lie’s the truth for minds that would rather lie in lies than stand and know, and also a lie for any who, through choice or circumstance, linger too long too near the lie-machine. And then, on the opposite, simultaneous flank, local laws of local lands perverted to silence those voters who’d voted for the winner of the fair, the clear, the standard, the two-hundred years of internal-peace national election. And how now these two flanks securely — bellies and brows sated on processed foodstuffs and prejudice-stoking pundits — offer pious oh-so-public, oh-so-oil-daubed prayers as they (strolling, ambling almost) close proudly, tragically, strong-for-the-people-y in on hundreds of years of struggling trust.

“An election won perhaps more by luck than the people’s wise intervention. But won nonetheless. An election won perhaps only because the by turns belying and bungling of an unprecedented plague exposed the uselessness of power-for-pridesomepower corruption to a degree and in a brightness that the many could not (though with faces still sternly slanting towards those troughs wherein they swill a rich and gooey well-powdered slop) help but notice. But won nonetheless. An election whose outcome stopped the consolidation of power by an enemy of democracy who had spent a huffy four years chaotically, incompetently and yet somewhat effectively (such are the advantages of the destroyer of order, dignity, and trust!) dismantling checks on his kingship.

“And a people so divided, so absorbed by the lint of their own bellybuttons, a people so tired of each other and their shared destiny.

“But these people that you love to blame. How wrong are they? How much was the would-be king’s initial victory owing to an already creaking-cracking system? These people that I cannot reach. The rabble on all sides of the grist mill that they both turn and fall beneath. These people so varied in their outlooks and their life patterns. These people just people like people have always been.

“What has rotted the system and culture of democracy that used to save them from themselves?

“And the game they win or lose is not just for themselves but for a world that feels their heavy-hulled ship-of-state’s wallows and rolls, a world that will perhaps with melting-flesh and scorched-earth know the rise and fall of this bulky, this steel-and-info, this nuke-and-dollar, this free-and-frolic, this faith-and-fantasy empire.

“It were better that democracy were preserved, calmer heads prevailed, democracy proved herself here in this giant sprawling mixed affair known here and there and far and near as The United States of America; that is to say, as The US; that is to say: where we’ve 300-million found ourselves with yet fingertips in itchy-reach of frayed but not-yet-spent ropes and strings to pull and steady our own destiny and thus to some extent that of this world of interwoven, inter-entangled yearnings.

“But I’ve no answer to this doubling-down of political evil which the US American Republicans now unfurl as their official answer to losing the election that for the good of all humankind they should have lost and which by the grace of who-knows-what?-since-God-has-allowed-arguably-worse-things-to-happen they did indeed lose. For I have no great wisdom. Nor can I even desire great wisdom. The truth is, I want only that succor that a child finds in his mother and a man in his wife. Where should I, self-spun yarn, find that familial respite? In a coffee shop’s playlist, comfy armchair or playful literature? Useless, useless am I in the face of Evil.

Useless am I, sore and o’er-useless against this human, this all-to-human, this salty, this sweaty, this happy-family- and/or friends-and-treasures-first, this ‘they’re-the-worst’, this moonlight dancing and starbright prancing Evil.”

Author: Bartleby Willard
Editor: Amble Whistletown
Copyright: Andrew Watson (I mean, the part from The Iliad was written by Homer and translated by Alexander Pope; and now, after so many layers of mortal witness, rests — as calm and ambitionless as the summer sun — in the public domain)
November 13, 2021

Update Sunday, December 17, 2023:
I have felt sick to my stomach for years and years now.
The take-over of state election oversight by Trump cronies was somewhat thwarted by the midterm election results. But the general drumbeat and marching in step to the destruction of US American democracy grows.

1. “Election Deniers’ Playbook for 2024: The Attempts to Undermine Safe and Secure Elections are Evolving” Brennan Center for Social Justice May 3, 2023 by Lauren Miller and Wendy R. Weiser

“For each tactic, the analysis walks through what happened during the midterm election cycle as well as new trends that have emerged in 2023. Its findings suggest that a number of these tactics will continue to play a significant role in the next election cycle — including conspiracy-driven attacks on election infrastructure, threats to election officials and workers, election police forces and other government-sponsored initiatives to target voter fraud, increasingly brazen measures to restrict access to voting, and disinformation-fueled efforts to undermine election results.”

“In Alabama, Indiana, South Dakota, and Wyoming, election deniers now control statewide offices that oversee elections. In battleground states such as Nevada, they secured victories in local election offices in key jurisdictions, including Nye and Storey counties. And at the congressional level, after the midterms, the House now has at least 180 members who questioned or denied the 2020 election results, while the Senate has 17 such individuals.”
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/election-deniers-playbook-2024

2. “A New Trump Administration Will ‘Come After’ the Media, says Kash Patel” NY Times 12/5/2023 by Jonathon Swan, Maggie Haberman, and Charlie Savage

“A confidant of Donald J. Trump who is likely to serve in a senior national security role in any new Trump administration threatened on Tuesday to target journalists for prosecution if the former president regains the White House.” Patel Interview]

Kash Patel:
“‘We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government but in the media,’ Mr. Patel said. ‘Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections — we’re going to come after you. Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out.’ He added: ‘We’re actually going to use the Constitution to prosecute them for crimes they said we have always been guilty of but never have.'”

Donald Trump:
“‘I say up front, openly, and proudly, that when I WIN the Presidency of the United States, they and others of the LameStream Media will be thoroughly scrutinized for their knowingly dishonest and corrupt coverage of people, things, and events.’ He added: ‘Why should NBC, or any other of the corrupt & dishonest media companies be entitled to use the very valuable Airwaves of the USA, FREE?’”
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/05/us/politics/trump-kash-patel-journalists.html

Per Mitt Romney, Republicans afraid of physical danger if they vote against Trump
[From “Exclusive: Mitt Romney Says Trump is Such a Whack Job” Vanity Fair 10/26/2023
by Brian Stelter
From an interview with recent Trump biographer McKay Coppins:
“One of the biggest revelations to me in my conversations with Romney was just how important the threat of political violence was to the psychology of elected Republicans today,” said Coppins, who recalled Romney telling him “story after story about Republican members of Congress, Republican senators, who at various points wanted to vote for impeachment—vote to convict Trump or vote to impeach Trump—and decided not to, not because they thought he was innocent, but because they were afraid for their family’s safety. They were afraid of what Trump supporters might do to them or to their families.” That “raises a really uncomfortable question,” Coppins said, which is “how long can the American project last if elected officials from one of the major parties are making their political decisions based on fear of physical violence from their constituents?”

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/10/mitt-romney-trump-whack-job

3. ‘Openly Authoritarian Campaign: Trump’s threats of revenge fuel alarm” The Guardian 11/22/2023 by Peter Stone

“To craft a more powerful presidency, Maga loyalists at a number of well-financed conservative thinktanks led by the Heritage Foundation and the Center for Renewing America have produced an almost 1,000-page handbook, dubbed ‘Project 2025’, to help guide a second Trump term – or potentially another GOP administration should Trump not get the nomination.

…

“One ominous plan Project 2025 has been weighing would allow Trump to invoke the 1871 Insurrection Act on his first day in office, greenlighting using military forces against political foes and demonstrators protesting a new term for Trump, according to the Washington Post.

…

“’The plans being developed by members of Trump’s cult to turn the DoJ and FBI into instruments of his revenge should send shivers down the spine of anyone who cares about the rule of law,’ said Michael Bromwich, a former inspector general at the justice department.

“’Trump and rightwing media have planted in fertile soil the seed that the current Department of Justice has been politicized, and the myth has flourished. Their attempts to undermine DoJ and the FBI are among the most destructive campaigns they have conducted.’

“Bromwich’s point was underscored when days after Special Counsel Jack Smith unveiled a four-count criminal indictment of Trump involving his multi-pronged efforts to subvert Biden’s 2020 election victory, Trump posted: ‘If you go after me, I’m coming after you.’”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/nov/22/trump-revenge-game-plan-alarm

4. “Why Republicans are pursuing an unfounded impeachment inquiry into Biden” Vox 12/13/2023 by Li Zhou

“House Republicans voted to launch an inquiry despite no evidence of Biden’s wrongdoing.”
https://www.vox.com/politics/2023/9/13/23871948/biden-impeachment-inquiry-kevin-mccarthy

5. “Americans agree democracy is on the line in 2024, but disagree on who poses the greatest threat” NPR 12/15/2023 by Gary Fields and Linley Sanders

“The AP-NORC poll found that 87% of Democrats and 54% of independents believe a second Trump term would negatively affect U.S. democracy. For Republicans, 82% believe democracy would be weakened by another Biden win, with 56% of independents agreeing.”

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/americans-agree-that-the-future-of-democracy-is-on-the-line-in-the-2024-election-but-disagree-about-who-poses-the-biggest-threat

The lies are winning.
When the lies win, the liars win.
When the liars win, the people lose their say.
When the people lose their say, the lie grows bolder and more violent.

How to stop the evil?
Isn’t it on the way, now,
coming for us all —
Trump’s enemies now, his allies (or perhaps their children) next

Why?
What have we done to deserve
the exultation of crime
the perversion of justice.
?

When is it time to panic?
And when is it too late to panic?
The dead canary was a joke until the miners started tipping over, blue faced and finished.
But then it was too late.
Too late.
Where are we?
How much oxygen is left in this system
In our lungs
Between our noses?

How can my fellow-Americans be so evil?
What is the game they’ve settled into?
And me?
I just wanted a safe little hole to bury my heart into.
Same old sin.

You walk around feeling your insides
Gushing sloshing puking
From side to side
Desperate
For a home to sneak into,
Where the hurt might die,
Where the shame might fade.
And this wandering-collapse you called “looking for love”.

Everybody
Fiddling their thumbs
Resting their heads on their buddy’s belly
Pouring another drink, cheeseburger, or fantasy conundrum

In the
End
We
Did
Or Not
Do
The right thing
when

No, I don’t think so
I don’t like this
I don’t approve
of this

Too much certainty
Too much violence in voice, posture, gesture
Crowds are inherently evil
And their certainty is fundamentally a lie
about life, love, the world, self and other

But what do you do?
It’s not like what’s going on across the seas is fine and dandy
What do you do?
How to actually help?

It made me uneasy, walking behind his flag
I ran around by the green side of the gray library,
but further along on my way towards home the crowd was heard
What would you do?

You shouldn’t get your way by torturing, murdering, and raping
And what war through the streets where terrorists groove is free of the blood of innocents?
But this war, and the blood of their friends and families, is what they’d wanted
And this protest too
Everything plays into the hands of exuberant crime.

What should we do?
Everywhere the evil wins
I don’t think that crowd was shouting and rallying justice
Justice is gentler than that
But justice is so very gentle
that I wonder if it can do anything at all
Justice is so very careful
that I wonder what it can even do at all
Yet only Love is wise, and only wise justice is real justice
And Love is so very gentle, much gentler than chants to drum beats that sound like war drums like cannons like the same old shit dragging bodies through the same old streets

What would help?
This man is just worried and afraid by certainty when he thinks the way forward together is not so very clear at all, and that the only way forward for anyone is the way forward together all of us
This man is nervous and scared
But children are dying
And the hate-fire growing
He’s not helping
He’s just quaking in the beautiful bright surprising winter sunlight

Everything arranged so as to go dreadfully wrong
Their certainty crossed by theirs
How would wisdom steer from this distance?

The rally made me uneasy
for me and you and the space between
The rally made me sad
and hopeless
But maybe it just reminded me
I live in hopeless times
when the stars are aligned against the spirit
and one violence leads to another, while the soul is skipped completely over
But I don’t know that; I don’t know how the stars are arranging themselves; nor how much that arrangement controls what we upright apes effect

There’s no perfection
Let’s start from there
and try again

B Willard
A Whistletown
copyright A Watson

It hurts so much
I don’t know what to do
And now the evil comes for us
And I’ve no defense for you or me

It hurts so much
And my little world
keeps me out of the larger one
While the evil wins to rule us all

It hurts so much
I wish I could tell you about it
I wish you could hear about it, care about it
I wish you existed

It hurts so much
There’s problems bigger than me
But I am flopped over this cruel spear
So what to do?
When you can’t right yourself

please
no more
I don’t want to do it
I don’t like it
It is boring
It is lonely
It is pointless
Let me do something else
Let me out of this
nowhere

is to not do this anymore
and for that to not happen anymore
to somehow let the blood-letting go
let the evil die
to somehow be happy as humans

But the trouble grows
splits and multiplies
morphs and avenges itself
bubbles over and wrecks another hope
distorts another flame
kills another smile

What can we do?
How can we improve?
The clock is ticking.

The Hurt is killing me.
I can’t take it.
It’s too much.
Plus so lonely.
For so long.

You have to harness it.
Turn it into something positive.
I’m sure you can fashion a great wisdom meme out of it.

No, I can’t.
I can’t do anything with it but be torn apart slowly even though I have such a cushy easy peasy life.
I can’t do things. Simple things.
It hurts so much down inside so deep.

You can take the Hurt and turn it inside out and use it as a pattern of Hurt, and then you can figure out how Hurt can be dealt with in a way that grows wisdom.
Because everyone has at least some Hurt.
And it erodes them at least some.
And so everyone is at least somewhat desperate for a way to deal with the Hurt.
It’d be your in — you’re “in” to a wisdom meme.

I don’t think so.
I just want to disappear.
And let everything go on without me.
I don’t want to do anything ever anymore.
I don’t even think I can.
It’s like I can’t do anything except wander along this hamster wheel of work and weekend and work and nothing goes anywhere.

Author: Saied Sacc
Editors: BW/AW
Copyright AMW

Bartleby Willard: We have to save the world and everybody and democracy and stop all the troubles.

Amble Whistletown: With a wisdom meme!

BW: Exactly!

AW: Come on, God, it’ll be fun!

BW: Yeah! What could go wrong!

AW: Answer is: Nothing! The wisdom meme will have wisdom built into it, so the more you understand it the kinder you become, and the less you understand it, the more you seek only to understand it, not to wield it.

BW: Yes! Foolproof!

AW: Which is important, under the circumstances.

BW: I know we can do it.

AW: We’re gonna do it!

BW: Yup.

AW: Mmm hmmm

BW: Just, um, need a little … more wisdom …

AW: Yes. Maybe just wait here a little bit for a few more drops of wisdom to fall onto the project and …

BW: And, yeah, fertilize it. Get things flowing.

AW: Probably happening soon, I’d imagine.

BW: We have to stop the evil, Amble.

AW: I know! We have to. It’s not gonna stop itself.

BW: Well, it will.

AW: Right, once we have the wisdom meme. Evil will peter out.

BW: Fizzle right out.

AW: The details of it are the tricky part.

BW: Yes: How does it work exactly?

AW: An idea simultaneously so delicious and so wholesome — both irresistible and infinitely loving.

BW: A few words. A phrase. A sentence or two.

AW: How hard can it be?

BW: I love you; you love me; we’re a happy family.

AW: That was on a syndicated television program for years, and still we fuss and fight like hyenas.

BW: With the mangy, care-worn hides and yellowed, slime-dripping fangs.

AW: Big angry yellow eyes and uneven loping strides.

BW: You’re right. Why didn’t it work? Why wasn’t it enough to admit on nationally syndicated television that we all love one another and together comprise a happy family? Why wouldn’t that be enough wisdom to start the fire in all our bellies — the fire by, for, and through the Love that chooses everyone?

AW: Something went wrong.

BW: They even ended up canceling the show, I think.

AW: Lasted a while, though.

BW: Yeah, but the wisdom meme is supposed to enlighten us all as individuals and collectively, so that we can build more beautiful systems and together focus on neat, fun collaboration instead of he said she said and it’s mine no it’s mine. It’s not enough to just serve as the motto for a successful and surprisingly long-lasting — so boring! Admittedly, I was never a child when I tried to get through an episode — children’s television program.

AW: And there’s no better wisdom meme than the classic love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and your neighbor as yourself. But I, for just one of countless examples, have affirmed that wisdom meme a bunch of times for years and years, and still I falter, I fail to consistently live in and through and for the Love that chooses everyone.

BW: If you ever even do.

AW: If I ever even do live in and through and for the Love that chooses everyone.

BW: Maybe we need to focus on admitting how beholden we are to systems and circumstances and how others treat us. Maybe we need to focus on finding the right balance between admitting we are both free to choose the better and liable to being jostled about by the people, places, organizations, systems, ideas, and everything else around us.

AW: What are we to do? We need a wisdom meme that works, but we won’t come up with better ones than Barney and Jesus did. And their memes clearly didn’t work. At least, not fast and sure enough.

BW: Although, to be fair: Barney’s wisdom meme has only been out there a few decades.

AW: Jesus’s has had thousands of years to fix everything.

BW: And hasn’t. Has not made us all wise and loving, anchoring us all in the common Good, that we might all better flow joyfully together towards the common good.

AW: What are we missing?

BW: What are we missing?

AW: This is important!

BW: So important!

AW: We can’t fuck this up.

BW: I feel like we are, though.

AW: What are we missing?????

Narrator: You know how nice it is to be able to go to a mall and not get blown up? To have a career and a family and not watch them killed? It’s so nice to not be maimed and squished down and imprisoned. We need to give that to everyone. And to let everyone get to share their opinions about the government without having to go to jail or lose their job or get killed. This stuff. This is the stuff that I’ve been taking for granted, but it’s not a given. We need to make it real for everybody. It was fun. Being a kid in a place that was safe. And you just had to go to school and practice and nobody was trying to kill you or oppress you or anything. It was so nice. How do we stop the evil? How do we all move all together towards the better and away from the worse? How do we actually help? How?

Conversants: BW/AW
Copyright: AM Watson

An Uncle with little to no sense of his audience / ability to read the room addresses his nephew:

I guess you’re aware that for the last decade I’ve been spending quite a bit of time with the fictional characters Bartleby Willard and Amble Whistletown; and that part of what we’ve been up to is saving our own souls (as in: finding a way to live that we can live with), everyone else’s souls (as in: how to make things better for everyone, but no!, actually this time!), and democracy (most specifically our democratic republic, but also democracy in general) with Pure Love, Something Deeperism, and the Wisdom Meme.

Here is a quick summary of these three relentlessly helpful dogmas:

Pure Love is God is Light is the infinite eternal kind joy that creates, sustains, shines through, and ultimately is everything. Any given human love is actually-loving only to the degree it partakes of Pure Love. Pure Love does not push-away or pull-towards, but explodes supportively and joyously through all — gently guiding, accepting, rejoicing in, love-lifting, and salvationating us all.

Pure Love is God is the True Good is What Is.
But What Is is both (1) all particular things running together without any separations (meaning there aren’t really separate things) and (2) the formless perfection that creates, sustains, shines through, and love-lifts all.
Pure Love (at least in sense #2) shines through everything, including each conscious moment. And Pure Love (again, at least in sense #2) alone Knows that and in what way it is True to say, “We are all in this together” (there’s usually a gap between observer and observed, into which any amount of mistake and confusion may seep; but Pure Love is both Knowledge and Reality: no gap, no error).
[I suppose since all runs together, then even in sense #1, there’s no gap between the Truth and the observer of the Truth. However, the ability of our minds to observe all of what we observe must be very limited — since no matter how wise we are, our minds/emotions do not perceive Reality directly, but Reality must be shining through all things, including each conscious moment. (This difficulty needs more work to work-through.)]

Something Deeperism is the notion that one can grow more and more meaningful-to-oneself (more and more able to understand one’s own feelings, thoughts, and actions) by better and better organizing one’s feeling/thinking/acting around Pure Love — a process that involves better and better poetically (not literally, definitively, or 1:1; but still meaningfully) translating Pure Love into feelings, thoughts, and actions.
Pure Love is prior to our ideas and feelings; and confusing our ideas and feelings about Pure Love for Pure Love can actually shift our focus away from Pure Love (because these confusions tempt us to focus more on our own ideas and feelings than on the process of turning towards, syncing up with, and flowing along with Pure Love).
So what we aim for is NOT literal, definitive, or exclusive insight into Pure Love (such daydreams about perfect insight into Reality distract us from the work of meaningfully engaging in Reality). What we aim for is the only possible human wisdom: A self-observing/-critiquing/-adjusting whole-being organization around Pure Love — relating our ideas, feelings, words and deeds poetically to Pure Love (our feeling/thinking/acting imperfectly but still-meaningfully flowing along with, experiencing, and pointing-towards Pure Love — rather than trying to capture the Pure Love (aka: the Truth) literally and/or emotionally).

The Wisdom Meme is a koan so perfect that once you hear it, you are captured and must consider it over and over again, growing wiser and wiser until you explode with life-overflowing — explode with the Love that alone Knows what’s really going on, what’s really best, and what love is really for.
Not only that!
The wisdom meme will also win over everyone else, thereby providing us all with a shared spiritual language (i.e., a language about what actually matters — as opposed to what we just imagine, hypothesize, and/or wish matters), and thus a tool for sharing meaning, and thus a way to better evolve our shared cultures, communities, and governments. The wisdom meme is good for both individuals and groups. It provides salvation for you, me, and democracy.

How does it work?

The meme needs to go in easy and then hook you and call you further and further into a contemplation that leads to wisdom. We’ve long thought that the most important commandment (such a hit in First Century Judaism, and continuing to resonate with people across various faith traditions for the last two millennia) is a good wisdom meme:

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind, and your neighbor as yourself.

This meme sends one both inward ever deeper into the Love shining from your core out, and outward to recognize and move with the Love shining out everyone else’s core.

Many good wisdom memes are built around the Buddhist concept of Śūnyatā, which is usually translated as “emptiness”, “devoidness”, “hollowness”.

From the Suñña Sutta:
It is said that the world is empty, the world is empty, sir. In what respect is it said that the world is empty?” The Buddha replied, “In so far as it is empty of a self or of anything pertaining to a self: Thus it is said, Ānanda, that the world is empty.

Here is an explanation of emptiness from Thanissaro Bhikku:
Emptiness as a quality of dharmas (or doctrines), in the early canons (early Buddhist literature), means simply that one cannot identify them as one’s own self or having anything pertaining to one’s own self … Emptiness as a mental state, in the early canons, means a mode of perception in which one neither adds anything to nor takes anything away from what is present, noting simply, “There is this.” This mode is achieved through a process of intense concentration, coupled with the insight that notes more and more subtle levels of the presence and absence of disturbance.

[All of this was from the Wikipedia entry on Emptiness]

If you think of emptiness as a state of mind, it is when you stop capturing and organizing conscious experience into notions. It makes me think of the Ancient Greek skeptics who suspended all judgement (refused to say anything was true or false) to avoid philosophical error, and were pleasantly surprised to find themselves “free of all disturbances”.

If you think of emptiness as a description of reality, it is in the sense of impermanence and interdependence: everything is changing, and everything is dependent upon everything else, and there are not distinct beginnings and endings: all flows along together, free of separate self-entities. You might say, “all is one”, but Buddhists often balk at that because in that “one” you are perhaps picturing something akin to a giant self-entity (a giant one-thing, which sounds suspiciously not-empty-of-separate-self-entities).

What wisdom meme is the most effective?
One that starts from the Pure Love beyond being and non-being?
Or one that starts from a compassionate (for yourself and everyone) meditation on impermanence and interdependence — a meditation that should lead to an experience beyond being and non-being, and thus to an infinite outpouring of Pure Love?

What wisdom meme is the most irresistible? Like a song you can’t get out of your head, or a joke that you remember throughout the day and laugh at each time, surprised again by its hilarious perfection?

I’ve been interested in this bit from Sinead O’Connor for a while:

U stand tall and you be strong
U have ruthless compassion
For yourself and everyone
Yeah, it’s hard, but it can be done.

It rhymes, and is otherwise catchy.
And it creates a sensory-/emotional-/intellectual-/moral-/spiritual-image of the listener growing in wisdom.
And “ruthless” coupled with “compassion” is a little jarring, which causes one to consider the pairing, and ultimately to enter more fully into the sense of a compassion that refuses to compromise itself, that refuses to sacrifice loving-kindness for anything.
And the line before that call to radical (that is to say: full and real) compassion for self and other conveys the sense of standing up within yourself with all your might; while the line after the call to compassion is the understanding that this path is neither easy nor impossible.

It’s a really good wisdom meme because in a few lyrical lines, it hooks you, compels you to contemplate the path that leads to wisdom, and flanks the contemplation with both the proper stance and the proper understanding of the complexities of the path.

I haven’t been able to come up with a better wisdom meme.

Stand up within yourself and push out from within.
Organize yourself around the Pure Love shining within you and everyone,
Translating that Love into feeling, thinking, and acting.
We’ll never get it exactly right, but we can keep growing in the Love that alone Knows that and in what sense it is True to say, “We are all in this together”.

The above is a little bit like a translation of Sinead’s wisdom meme into the standard language of Something Deeeperism. But it isn’t nearly as good as a wisdom meme. It is luggy and maybe a little confusing.

We love the Pure Love shining through everything
with every bit of our conscious space
And we love ourselves and our neighbors
As equals —
all of us being neither more nor less than the beloved of Love.

The above is a riff on the most important commandment.

We stand up in the Light,
Pause the wrongs, the rights.
Letting Love be All,
That none may fall.

Hmmm. It rhymes. And it connects emptiness to Love. But I am not sure that it calls us to a very fruitful meditation.

The wisdom meme has not yet been found. Otherwise, we’d all be blessedly wise and could together steer this ship gently into safer, more charmingly interesting seas.

I guess it’s just a daydream, or a game, this search for a koan so addictive and fruitful that once you hear it, you cannot resist the great enlightenment and see things as they really are, which can only make you wise (John Stewart line from “Cannons in the Rain”).

Dear God,
Sorry for all the mix-ups.
Please empty us of all our feelings and ideas
So that for a moment we might stand fully in your Light:
An infinite eternal Love prior to being and non-being,
The Love that Knows that and in what way it is True to say,
We are all in this together.

Ah but dear God,
What is going on?

Or what about this:
A.
None of our worldviews make sense to any of us except to the degree they help us to abide by the universal values (aware, clear, honest, accurate, competent, compassionate, kind, joyfully-sharing), and grow active insight into a Reality that is Love.
B.
But such a Reality would be prior to all our ideas and feelings; and so we could relate to It only poetically (pointing-towards It, rather than capturing It literally or definitively).
And demanding doctrinal purity tempts everyone to lie to themselves and others about their own spiritual understandings.
Therefore, let us prioritize the universal values and the freedoms required for each of us to find our own way to Reality = Love and contribute wisely to our communities, governments, and world (freedoms like freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and the ability to share power and responsibility through democratic representation).
C.
There is a minimal dogmatism required to grow and share wisdom; and too much dogmatism encourages us to focus more on the dogmas than on the actual process of growing and sharing wisdom.
That is to say: Let us prioritize the values we all know we must follow (to be meaningful to ourselves) and the freedoms we all know we need to grow and share wisdom; rather than demanding leaders or citizens sign onto specific religious, philosophical, and/or political dogmas.
D.
Let’s relax, admit that we are all in this together, that we all share the universal values, that we all love ourselves and each other, and that we all know we need to prioritize the universal values and representative democracy (tools for growing wisdom and for meaningfully sharing ideas, power, and responsibility).
And then, with fists unclenched and shoulders down, we citizens of democratic republics can together fulfill our shared responsibility of gently nudging our shared government towards the better and away from the worse, while acting most fundamentally as checks on madness and corruption (more madness/corruption is when it is easier for worse ideas, attitudes, and behaviors to get and maintain power and prestige than it is for better ideas, attitudes, and behaviors).

Hmmm

What a strange arc we’ve traced:
We need salvation, but confusing ideas and feelings about salvation for salvation is the root of all evil.
(Even when we don’t call label a desired thing/outcome “salvation”; we deep inside feel that if we could just get this nice thing or for the world to change in this way or etc, then everything would finally be completely OK. And it is this underlying thirst for salvation that drives us on and on, never quite satisfied.)
So, in response to this conundrum, we create a set of ideas for organizing ideas and feelings in such a way as to get as close to “salvation” as possible — including the constant reminder that ideas and feelings about salvation are not the same as salvation.
But then we’re still worried that things are not going well-enough for ourselves and/or for us all together bundled up in our little homes, communities, and nation states.
So then we search desperately for some words that will magically spark ideas and feelings that will lead us all as individuals and together to salvation.
!!

But how to deal with this fundamental difficulty in the human experience:
We are only fully ourselves to the degree we connect the mundane (ideas, feelings, words, deeds, relationships, organizations) to the divine (the Love that alone Knows what’s really what); but imaging our ideas and feelings about what really matters are identical with what really matters is both counterproductive and to some degree (we being but humans) inevitable. How does one deal with this within one’s own self? And then how do we deal with this in groups?

Authors: BW/AW
Editors: AW/BW
Copyright: AM Watson

“She must have some good qualities!”

“Absolutely! She’s just very private with them.”