Question Your Assumptions

It’s hard to have a good argument anymore. People no longer seem to have the time to put thoughts together in an articulate manner. So rushed are we to get as much accomplished as possible, we tend to put our minds on auto pilot. When a button is pushed by someone else’s statement, we go into a pre-programmed mode, unleashing a whole series of assumptions based upon the simplest of statements.

I try to have fun with this tendency. Actually, my first response is to get angry over it, but it wouldn’t do any good. So I tend to post comments on Facebook like: “The fact that the media is overwhelmingly liberal is proof that the free market doesn’t work.” It’s not a statement that anyone can actually agree with, as it seems to offend everyone’s ideology, whatever it may be. It is a paradox, or koan, something to slow down the thought process, make people aware of the assumptions they make and question their validity.

People tend to develop certain ideas early on and never question them. They shape the way we see our lives, determine the paths we follow. That’s not in and of itself a bad thing, but it can limit us. Many people are able to go quite far with limited perception, but where exactly is it taking them? Many people are running a marathon without once stopping to figure out where the finish line is.

And that is exactly the point. It seems rather foolish to follow a path set for oneself as a child without taking the occasional break to reassess the situation. But biases formed early on cause people to do exactly that. They heard something when they were young that made sense to them, and it led them towards a political or religious or whatever viewpoint that defines any argument for them henceforth. It builds around them a world of ideas, with laws every bit as demanding as physical laws. When a certain word like “abortion” or “taxes” is mentioned, it releases a whole lot of associations that may or not apply to the circumstance at hand.

A person’s worldview may be quite accurate, but it never is a substitute for reality: there will always be some discrepancy between the two. When we forget that the ideas we have are merely that, when we forget to question ourselves and our assumptions, we lose the ability to react to unique situations. We become like mollusks, dragging around with us a shell that confines and limits us. We are living beings capable of always growing and progressing, but we run the risk of falling into ruts that determine in which way our living energies are employed.

It is easy enough for the individual to fall into ruts of his own making, but it is easier still for people to fall into ruts designed for them by others. There have always been those who are interested in determining the way you think, and the machinations for propaganda have never been so sophisticated as they are now. Vast sums of money are spent in order to shape the way you cast your vote, even more money spent on assuring that you become a good consumer. It is the rare home that does not have a television or several raising the children, despite the parent’s best intentions. The message, whether it comes from Coke or from Pepsi, is that you need to drink more soft drinks that decay teeth and cause diabetes.

Most of us believe we are not being fooled or manipulated in any way. We all are proud of our individuality, even though we express it in more or less the same way with only minor differentiation. Some of us root for the Broncos and some for the Steelers, but we’re all watching the games, all being implanted with the same commercial messages every few minutes.

Commercial culture is a more dominant mindset than perhaps any the world has ever known. While the church may have ruled the Middle Ages, it did not preach to us in our homes, did not follow us to work. Nor did it employ psychologists to determine which subconscious buttons to push. We are prey to a propaganda machine George Orwell could not have imagined, and yet most of us don’t even realize it’s there, or else believe that we are immune to it. But we are sheep in wolf’s clothing, imagining ourselves to be rugged individualists rather than the pack animals we really are. The great majority of us are not even aware of the subconscious workings that determine our actions, and most of those who are aware are actively employed at making money off of it.

Try this: take your most basic assumptions, and look for a different way of seeing them. Try taking a left the next time you assume you are supposed to turn right. Turn your television to a different channel than the one you are used to, or better yet, turn it off and permit yourself to be alone with your thoughts. If you’re working hard to further your life, make sure the direction you’re heading is the one you’ve chosen, not one that has been chosen for you.

Influences Part 2: Erich Fromm

 

Looking back on the individuals I consider influences, it’s hard to choose someone more influential than Erich Fromm. No writer of fiction was he, but a psychologist who wrote books of social psychology. A brief summary of his works and ideas are in order.

While being at least agnostic and probably an atheist, Fromm appreciated the wisdom which arose from the world’s great religions. He was a scientist who realized that the intellect cannot provide man with the ultimate answers to his existence, that those answers were to be found through direct experience. He explained the story of Adam and Eve and their expulsion from The Garden Of Eden as the human experience of developing an awareness of mortality. Man, having eaten from the tree of knowledge, is now more than an animal and is thus cut off from his animal connection to nature. Permanently exiled from the Garden of Eden, he must find a new relationship to nature, allowing for his intellect and all his human qualities. This is a difficult journey, one which we are often willing to turn from, to return to a simpler state, to regress to our childish nature. But there is no turning back, and attempting to do so makes for an inability to face life on its terms, leading to neuroses and the limiting of our human powers and qualities. Life is a constant state of being born, we are constantly growing and becoming what we are to the utmost of our potentiality.

According to Fromm, Love is the only answer to the human condition of separation, the separation of man from nature as well as the separation of the child from the parent. And as each individual is confronted with the human condition, so too are societies confronting the same issues. Societies are sick or healthy to the degree that they enable the individual to grow both independently and as loving members of the society. Indeed, Fromm would claim that humans who do not learn to become individuals, to become themselves, are incapable of truly loving others. The person who is not developed loves incompletely. He sees the beloved either as he would an all-giving mother or as a possession to be owned. Neither way does he perceive the other as a human being, and so will always be deluded, never feeling comfortable in a relationship.

Fromm, who studied under Freud, describes the individual’s ability to relate to the world around him according to his growth as a person, or maturity level. If a person has not progressed beyond his relationship with his mother (i.e. a helpless child who must be nourished), he feels helpless. If he has not progressed beyond his relationship with his father (i.e. the need to accomplish in order to earn his father’s approval), he is uncaring and unable to relate to his own emotions. In a parallel manner, primitive man worshipped a mother god, one who he could not influence but did not judge him. As civilizations evolved, humanity began to worship a male god, one who set forth rules that, if obeyed, would enable the person to find favor with his deity. But the mature individual is one who does not seek to make of god an image, either male or female. To him, God is the personification of all goodness, one that can be appreciated through direct experience, but never defined by something so small as the human intellect. Thus, the ultimate revelation of religion is a nameless God, as described in the Old Testament. In the Old Testament, it was a sin even to mention the name of God. Similarly, Fromm quotes Lao Tzu, who says, “The Tao that can be named is not the true Tao.”

With these thoughts giving a basic background to the human condition, Fromm then went on to interpret modern societies. He differed from most of those in his field who believed a healthy individual is one who is able to fit in well with the society in which he exists. Fromm believed that fitting into a society that was not healthy or sane was not a satisfactory response for a sane person. And writing as he did in the 1950’s, he found any society that accepted the possibility of nuclear war was not sane.

If anyone is interested in his works, I’d recommend The Art Of Loving as a good entry point, followed by The Sane Society. I found it difficult giving a synopsis of Erich Fromm’s ideas, so infused are my own by them. I do them scant justice in this brief summary.

I usually am greatly humbled in my attempts to further the ideas of people such as Erich Fromm, knowing that intellectually I will never be able to contribute the effort and talent they posessed. But if through my work I can shine some light upon those who have influenced me, perhaps I am doing some good. And in one respect I have something that Erich Fromm did not have—a new era upon which to apply the insights of people much more intelligent and insightful than myself.  His stamp upon my writing is inescapable to anyone familiar with his work. His thoughts apply even more today than they did when they were written, an idea that is disturbing but speaks to his genius.

Paying Attention In A World Of Distractions

Psst. Is there anyone there? I was just wondering if the sight of a block of text would send people running, just wondering if people actually took the time to read anymore, or if exciting visuals are required to capture the attention of people on the internet.

Not that I’m judging anyone. I too feel the lure of distraction. We are surrounded by it these days, and concentration requires the lack of it. But distraction is just that, it is never a good thing. Distraction is the world catching us by our weaknesses, playing on our baser desires for instant gratification because the things that give us deeper rewards require more of us than we are willing to give. Take that last sentence, for example: it was long enough to test one’s limits of attention. Are you still there?

The world turns at a speed undreamed of by past ages, and there is always something to take our mind off anything that is too involved. Indeed, if there is one thing the communication age has achieved, it is the providing of a never ending source of distractions. I worry about this, as I wonder if people are still capable of deeply thought opinions. Not at work, of course, we do what we have to do when it comes to bringing home a paycheck. But if we are never without distractions, are we still capable of and—perhaps more importantly—willing to think long and hard about anything?

I ask this question as a concerned citizen of the world, but I also have personal reasons for asking this. As a writer, I wonder if anyone is still interested in reading nowadays. Perhaps more importantly, is anyone still interested in reading fiction that may cause you to have to think a little bit? Is anybody interested in the deeper problems of human existence, those unanswerable but still fascinating questions that were asked by the likes of Lao Tze and Socrates millennia ago? Again, I am not desiring to judge, I merely would like to know if there is a point to the whole blogging and writing thing. I find myself susceptible to the desire for instant gratification, feel myself drawn to pictures of puppies, but there is still something uniquely gratifying about delving deeply into some subject of interest.

Perhaps it is a matter of too much information. We are given so much that we feel the need to take only the most satisfying of what comes our way, never willing to spend too much time to get to the heart of the matter. Just think, people used to have to get up to turn the channel on a television.

As for me, I must confess that with my introduction to the internet my reading has curtailed somewhat. Of course, there are never clear answers to questions such as these. There are many reasons why this is so: I have a great deal more obligations on my time right now, sandwiched as I am between people both older and younger than me who need my assistance. Also, I seem to be devoting all of my free time to writing nowadays. But I have found writing to give me the same satisfaction that reading always has. I am able to think deeply about issues that are important and cannot easily be understood. I cannot fast forward to the end to see how things turn out, but am forced to experience the journey as it comes. My appreciation seems to be heightened by a more leisurely pace, and I am able to plunge the depths of a few things rather than skim the surface of everything. But what about you? Are you still here? I’d really like to know.

Bits Of Me In The Amazing Morse

I think the art of writing fiction is to pull from genuine emotions and experiences and then write a story around those emotions and experiences. As far as The Amazing Morse stories go, there is a good deal of me in them, but it is so mixed in with pure imagination that the reader could easily confuse the two. So just since I’ve had people confuse one with the other, I thought I’d share a few examples of real life that found their way into my first novel, The Amazing Morse.

I found myself sitting in my little carpeted-walled cubicle at work one day, and it dawned on me that this was it, this was my life. This wasn’t a dress rehearsal, it wasn’t something I was doing for the moment, this was my life! All those childhood dreams of being an astronaut, a baseball player, a writer, none of that was what my life was all about. The panic set in and it set in hard. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had a lot worse jobs, but I always knew they were just something that got me by until my real life began. But I was trapped now with all the responsibilities that being an adult with a family brings. Life is supposed to magical, and here I was with all of the magic drained away, leaving only the sensible and practical.

This was a strong emotion and I wanted to share it. I’m rather proud of the story I built up to go around it, a magician who was not doing what he loved. He had a phobia of contained spaces, and so could not be an escape artist like Houdini, and therefore did not believe in himself enough to pursue his dreams. Dave Morse could have been nothing else but a magician.

In another part of the book, I have Dave recollecting something he’d heard a concert pianist say about performing and relating it to his performing magic on stage. There is a freedom performing an art that one is well practiced in, even when repeating the same trick or piece thousands of times. One feels connected to a flow, similar to what Michael Jordan described as being in “the zone”. The description of playing a piano piece where all the notes are written and yet bringing one’s own emotion and interpretation to it is from my own experience. While certainly no concert pianist, I have had the opportunity to develop a certain amount of technique on the piano. I had one glorious summer of being laid-off and I played my piano at least two hours every day. I got good enough with a fair amount of pieces that I found myself watching my fingers play while not being conscious of moving them. I can feel the same feeling sometimes while writing, when my thoughts fly and my pen or my typing hurry in pursuit. It is a wonderful feeling to have, like finding a beautiful place in nature where one can sit and contemplate and simply be.

There is also an experience that I had which I included in The Amazing Morse. While driving down the road with a friend one day, he noticed a little sign for a psychic, or a fortune teller, or something on that order. My friend, Kevin, and I always seemed to find the unusual when we were together. Intrigued, we talked each other into going in. Stepping inside, I had the most unsettling feeling go right through my body as though a wave went through me and took some part of me along with it. To this day, I can’t explain what that was about, but it has stayed with me. That was the very first kernel of story, around which everything else grew. A visit to an odd looking psychic (she really was rather odd-looking) that seemed to cause a change in someone. The story grew slowly as it gathered both from my life experiences and my imagination. And that is what I have found writing fiction to be, both reality and fantasy. But then again, so is life.

Wednesday Is National Write A Book Review Day

I hereby declare December 18 to be National Write A Book Review Day. If you have read a book in the last month or so that has really connected with you, I encourage you to write a review of it. There are ample places to post it: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Goodreads, etc. I don’t think there’s an author alive that wouldn’t be flattered with a reader thoughtfully sharing opinions of his or her book. Not only that, the vast majority of authors really depend on positive reviews to spur sales.

I’m not asking that you write a glowing review when you really don’t mean it, but a thoughtful one would be nice. Perhaps upon writing a thoughtful review of a book, you may come to realize the care and craft that went into the story someone has worked hard to create, perhaps you might come to appreciate aspects of the story you did not before notice.
 

Again, it is not my place to tell you to refrain from writing a negative review, but at least keep it objective and fair. I recently read a review of a book called The Three Kitties That Saved My Life that said: “I am not a cat lover and so as far as I was concerned the author could have left that part out and that was over half the book.” I really don’t think an author deserves a bad review because the reader doesn’t like cats. And if you don’t like cats, maybe you shouldn’t be reading a book with the word “kitties” in the title. Similarly, I recently got a bad review (the reviewer gave me 1 star but said he would give me minus zero if he could) because he was disappointed that what I had clearly labeled as a “very short story” was not a full length novel. This on a free download.

 

But I digress. Reviews are the bread and butter for a writer. True, writers would like to make some money as well, but if that was their primary concern, they wouldn’t be writers in the first place. Writers write to make an honest connection with others, to let others and themselves know they are not alone in their thoughts and observations. So let your voice be heard this Wednesday and make an author happy in the process.

"I Was Spider Boy" or "Yes, That’s My Severed Head Lying On The Table"

My mother awoke one day to discover that there was a coffin in her basement. Not only was there a coffin in the basement, but a body without a head, two heads without a body, and a giant spider. Technically, it was merely the illusion of a headless body and two bodyless heads, but the coffin was pretty much a coffin.

Explanations are in order. At a young age, my brother Tom had fallen under the spell of Houdini and had set out to follow in his footsteps. What began as a modest collection of small props and magic tricks soon spread its tendrils throughout the basement. In one corner sat a guillotine, in another sat the levitating woman illusion. At the back wall was the cage where he kept his doves. Any self-respecting magician needs some live animals in his act, you see. But when my brother informed our mom that he was picking up a few more illusions, she did not–could not possibly–anticipate what would soon be sharing our home. Our basement officially became a magic room/freakshow.

The equipment he brought home needed an actual living person; a headless body was not very impressive unless it actually moved. Likewise, the head-on-swords only really came alive when the head could speak a few words to the audience. Before Houdini met his wife, his brother acted as his assistant. Since my brother did not at this time have a significant other, I, at the age of 10, was pressed into service and was let into the Brotherhood of Magicians as my brother’s helper. I took props from him when he was done with them, and took care of the doves after he produced them from a flaming pot. I also became the Spider Boy and the Head that sat in a box on a table.

I learned the secret to every magic trick my brother knew. Our debut performance was at my elementary school, performing for the Brownie Troop. This gained me a bit of celebrity status amongst the girls at my school, but the status soon faded when I refused to tell how any of the tricks were done. To this day I have never given away any of the secrets entrusted to me. So don’t ask.

The Sleep of Reason

Here's a very rough go at the beginning of my new book, The Sleep of Reason, the third in The Amazing Morse series. Expect typos. Any feedback would be greatly appreciated:

Two figures stood waiting like cameos in the porch light of a house that was built in another age for another mode of existence. The building had been made for one of Baraboo Wisconsin’s most notable citizens, a man of wealth and prominence. Everyone who walked past this house would surely have known him, at least through reputation. Somewhere, his name is still etched upon plaques that attest to his donations to parklands, school extensions, and stained glass windows of a local church.

But few in the town now have any memory of the man. Even the imposing house in which he lived seems to have become so familiar with age that it was barely noticed, and the current owner was able to live there in relative anonymity. Time had weathered the house, exposing some its imperfections, but for the better part granting its benediction for its ability to endure.

A decorative iron gate surrounded the property edge, which was lined inside with evergreen shrubs that stood ten feet high. The evergreens, neither meticulously trimmed nor altogether abandoned to nature, permitted only glimpses of what lay beyond, and those only to a person brazen enough to make their curiosity obvious. Such a person might have seen the front door open, allowing the visitors entrance.

A door made of timber from virgin forests long vanished opened easily on brass hinges a hundred years old. Those who had crafted these items crafted them with the thought that future generations would see and admire their labor. What they made was made to endure. What they made was made with pride, with a connection to the craftsman whose knowledge had fed theirs. What they made was made with the conviction that it would outlive them and speak well of them. Their spirits would in some way live on in the works they had created, regardless of whose name was etched into the plaque placed upon it.

Dave Morse and Mindy Virgillio entered at the bidding of Doug Slattery, their employer at the magic shop and now, perhaps, a leader in more important matters. The November wind sought to enter as well, but Doug slammed the door quickly, forbidding entrance to the winds of change and gusts of the moment that were always seeking admittance into this sanctuary of abidance.

Passing through an anteroom lit by a chandelier that betrayed a few cobwebs, they entered a large room that was not unlike Dave and Mindy’s living room, though on a grander scale. But while Dave and Mindy’s apartment was of necessity filled with props and equipment they used in their act, this room was large enough to have collector’s items tastefully spread around the room, magic memorabilia that enhanced the décor rather than dominating. Amidst the Victorian furniture which was the only kind that would have belonged in such a house were fine details, proofs to those who would know that Doug was a serious collector and connoisseur of all things magic.

Upon one wall was a large poster of Carter the Great, promoting his vanishing elephant act. Upon another wall was a Houdini poster, advertisement for his famous Milk Can escape. Below the poster, barely noticed between a settee and a large table, sat a smaller milk can. Knowing Doug, Dave knew it must have been one that was used by Houdini’s assistants to fill the larger milk can that Houdini escaped from. (Tom’s comments).

Dave would have liked to lingered longer in the living room to inspect what was there, but Doug led them on towards a large wooden door, which he opened by sliding it into a wall thick enough to easily accommodate it.

Beyond was a room that was evidently used as Doug’s office. Here, things were less orderly, with piles of papers, books, and magazines piled atop props and tables. Large bookshelves built into the walls were stuffed with books, the better part of them as old as the house they inhabited. Such was the cluttered disorder of the room that neither Dave nor Mindy took notice of Johnny, a fellow member of The Beyond Show, seated behind a large desk. It was not until he rose to surrender his seat to its rightful owner that Dave noticed him. The various tattoos that covered Johnny’s face acted as a sort of camouflage, disguising the natural features of his face. “Welcome,” said Johnny, with an unmistakable British accent.

“Please, have a seat,” said Doug. “I’ve taken the liberty of inviting Johnny, as well as Russell, who will be joining us via Skype,” he said, gesturing to a television screen with a man that appeared awkwardly on the screen.

“Nice to meet you,” Dave greeted the man on the TV screen. The man seemed unable to meet Dave’s gaze, even through the distance that technology provided. It seemed that a certain youthfulness clung to the man, although close scrutiny revealed that he might be older than Dave’s twenty-eight years. Perhaps it was his boyish discomfort that made him seem younger than he was.

“Russell is not a part of The Beyond Show,” said Doug, “but he is an important part of what we do. Some day you well may require the unique talents he possesses.”

Doug walked behind a desk that was large enough for planning a military campaign and began to fix himself a drink from a mini-bar, offering the same to the others. Mindy declined, but Dave felt a certain obligation to accept the offer.

“Izzy won’t be with us today,” said Doug, referring to the man who had recently accompanied Dave and Mindy on a journey into the supernatural, accompanied them, they later were told, at the instruction of Doug Slattery. “He’s attending to some…business for me.”

“I suppose some answers are in order,” said Doug, handing Dave a glass that tinkled with ice. “Of course, you must realize that answers are a rather difficult commodity to come by when dealing with matters such as these. And the answers that most approach the actual truth will be the most difficult to comprehend let alone believe. Even more than that, the answers that will best answer your questions are ones that you will be most resistant to. They will be the ones that attack some of your most basic assumptions of life. But what I can provide for you, I will. Please, ask away.”

Dave was unsure of how to go about with his questioning. He was unwilling to aggravate Doug Slattery, and yet he was unwilling to place his trust in a man who seemed to be keeping secrets from them.

“What do you want with us?”

“You have certain abilities. I have need of people that can see things others do not.”

“But how did you find out about that?”

“You have your abilities, Dave, and we have ours. You see things you couldn’t possibly know in your dreams. We, too, have certain capacities. Although in your case, it was a bit of an accident. I had been made aware of the talents of a woman called Jennifer Hodgson, and I sent someone down to learn more about her. From what I’d discovered, her talents seemed quite impressive. So I sent one of my best men in the hopes of recruiting her. Sadly, he never made it back alive.”

Dave shivered at the memory of it. “An older gentleman? Short, thin, bald?”

“You knew Alan?”

“I saw him. In a dream.” Dave couldn’t repress the memory, couldn’t keep the images of the old man’s dismemberment from appearing in his mind’s eye. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“He was a good man,” said Doug. “He had three children and several grandchildren.”

Dave sat silent for a moment, not wanting to disrespect the old man’s sacrifice. But his questions were too important to silence for long.

“And that’s what you want us for? To pick up where he left off? To do your work for you, whatever that is, until we encounter a similar end?”

“If I’d known the danger involved, I never would have sent him. I would have gone myself. But there are unavoidable risks involved with the ability to perceive what others do not. And whether you choose to join with us or not, you will not be able to avoid similar situations.”

“I’d just as soon forget the whole thing, if you don’t mind. Not to sound rude or ungrateful, but I don’t want to see things in my dreams. I want to go to bed knowing that I’ll be able to sleep without nightmares that don’t go away when I wake up. I don’t know what Jennifer Hodgson did, but she gave me that power, and I’d just as soon be rid of it. Any chance you could help me do that?”

“You misunderstand,” said Doug. “But that’s to be expected. You’re still relatively new to this. When I said you see things others don’t I wasn’t talking about your dreams. Your dreams are merely an offshoot of your ability to perceive. Ms. Hodgson was able to share with you her capacity for extra sensory perception precisely because you were already ripe for such a thing. You were already seeing beyond the collected paradigm of the society you lived in, so it was only natural that you were able to make use of powers beyond the collective paradigm.”

“I don’t understand what you’re saying. Furthermore, I don’t think I want to understand what you’re saying.”

“Oh, but you do. You want to see, or you would not see at all and we would not be having this conversation. You have seen past the parameters that have been set for you by the culture you live in, and it has pushed back the limits of what is possible for you. Power follows perception. No one can do something they cannot conceive.”

“But I don’t get—“

“There is a lot you won’t get right now.” The voice came from the television. “It is important that you hear what is being said now. Understanding will come later.”

“What you need to understand now is this: every era, every culture, suffers under the delusion that it, and it alone, has a true understanding of the world around them. They are all of them—to a great extent—wrong. Generally, societies cling to the simplest narrative they can find to explain the world outside and its relationship to it. As long as it works, it doesn’t matter how accurate it is. The problem is that no story adequately explains reality. Eventually, the differences between perception and reality tear apart the perception. Eventually, every society is undone by its inability to correctly grasp life as it truly is. Like a building that eventually crumbles due to some imperfection in its infrastructure, every society collapses by the sheer weight of its own incomplete understanding of itself.

“What you are witnessing now are glimpses of the larger world beyond the smaller dome that encapsulates our current cultural understanding. The cracks in our imperfect little bubble reveal things we cannot even comprehend, things we have sought to protect ourselves from. We have built for ourselves a little arc where we are safe from the storms of a great ocean, but the arc is not capable of protecting us forever.

Sensing Russell had said what he wished to say, Doug continued: “When a certain manner of thought is working for a group, those within it are quite willing to see the world through the parameters of the existing paradigm. Thus a successful paradigm tends towards a sameness of thought, for who can argue with success. In the last century or so our society has achieved unprecedented success. Never in the history of the world has a paradigm led to such advancement of the human race. And success, as it always does, leads to an unwillingness to have a different opinion. Why mess with what is working so well?”

“More than an unwillingness.” It was Johnny’s turn to have a say. “An intolerance for opinions that differ, more like it.”

“At any rate,” said Russell, “the very success of our present civilization has led to its inability to perceive of different ways of looking at things. In past ages, in other cultures, people that perceived reality differently than the rest were persecuted, martyred.”

“And now?” asked Mindy.

“Now? They simply do not exist.”

“Don’t exist?”

“There is no place for alternate views to exist. Who can argue with success?”

“The situation you describe sounds like Soviet Union or Europe under the Catholic Church in the middle ages. But life isn’t like that now. We’re free, at least in our country. I mean, more free than most.”

“You tend to overestimate the role of force in such matters. Or will, for that matter, or even awareness. People assume that since there is no dictator that sits over us that we are all free to be individuals. But we’re not. Maybe we don’t realize it, but we’re not.”

“We’re a bunch of sheeps in wolf’s clothing,” laughed Johnny.

“A century or so ago, all houses were individually designed,” it was Johnny again. It seemed that although they were all speaking from a pooled share of knowledge, that each was interested in coloring it with their own perspective. Johnny, Doug, Russell, they all had their distinct take on the concepts they were putting forth. Dave was curious what Izzy would have added to the conversation had he been present. “Then someone standardized the process so we all came to live in cookie cutter houses. And with modern automation came mass-produced goods. To produce such goods, tasks were broken up into simplistic little blocks so that the people that were put into their roles could be interchangeable. Of course to buy the standardized products made by standardized workers, the system needed standardized buyers. It didn’t do any good to mass-produce an item when you had many people desiring many different things. So you needed to market to the masses, create a common desire for everyone. And since the whole idea was predicated on the idea that mass production called for mass consumption, material goods were sold as the cure for all of our ills. Have a headache? Take an aspirin. Insecure about your manhood? Buy a fancy car.”

“And since manufactured goods were what our paradigm did well,” again, inserting his own perspective, Doug added, “questions of spirituality were of little use. What good were meditation or philosophy when the real problems of the world were halitosis and yellow, dingy teeth?”

“So you’re saying that the industrial revolution created monsters?”

“No, he’s saying that it caused us to forget them…for a time,” this time it was Doug. But only for a time. The cracks are already beginning to show.”

“And what are we supposed to do about it?” asked Dave. “What do you expect from me?”

“Dave,” Doug was in charge once again, “you know what it feels like to be free, to finally release yourself from the cage of safety you created for yourself. You know the fear of the fall as you’ve left behind the safety of your paradigm, prison, home, shell, rut…whatever you want to call it. Imagine an entire society, an entire world, experiencing such a feeling all at once. Imagine a world where all the belief systems break down at once. The dangers are twofold. One, that people will stare into the depths of things their minds aren’t prepared to comprehend and their deepest darkest fears will walk in broad daylight. You two have witnessed this, to a small degree. You have witnessed a group of people summoning powers beyond their ability to control. But this is nothing compared to what large groups of people are capable of.

“The other concern is that you will have the true believers, those who cling to outmoded forms of belief for fear of what lies beyond. Their lack of vision will be just as dangerous. They will close their minds to even the most obvious of truths because they cannot allow their simple beliefs to be challenged. In calmer times, believers are able to admit to ambivalence, but in times such as are to come, the rigidity of their cages are unyielding. But their very beliefs devoid of the spirit of belief will make them victims of malevolent forces. Again, you’ve witnessed such circumstances, though only on the smallest scale. Imagine a nation of true believers.”

Dave cringed at the remembrance of the events on Devil’s Island. If such nightmares could be produced by a mere 100 people, what could a nation do?

“You speak as though this happens with the rise and fall of every society.”

“Yes. And all past ages had an answer for such times of stress: kill. Kill to the best of your ability. Kill until the stress is relieved and new societies are able to build themselves up.”

“But our world cannot accept that answer.” It was Johnny. “In times past, it was horrible enough. Now we have such tools that humanity would not survive such bloodletting.”

“A new world is coming,” it was Doug speaking, “but we must first survive the dissolution of the current one. With the breakdown of all our paradigms, where all our assumptions are tossed aside, we will need to find touchstones independent of logic and even knowledge. In the sleep of reason, we will not be able to have beliefs or even convictions until some sort of framework exists.”

“And what the Hell are we supposed to do about it?” Dave couldn’t begin to fathom the implications of such knowledge, if it were all real.

“We must contain what we can of it, as you and Mindy have already successfully done twice now. We must lessen the shock for society as best we can so that people do not retreat from one another, so that a total breakdown occurs. We must be able to allow people to see what lies beyond their present perceptions in a way that doesn’t cause them to contract. They must be led to open their eyes, to see what is.”

“And why us? Who elected you to do anything about this? What makes you think you’ve got answers?”

“Because we can see, just as you can, in your limited way.”