Swans

Ending or Beginning?

by Milo Clark

November 26, 2001

Toynbee's ponderous volumes of history suggest that some nations consider themselves outside history, above history. Lukacs says that our versions of history are ahistorical and unhistorical. Kaplan notes that Americans see history as something that happens to others until . . . now. Is history about to catch up with Americans? Has history caught up?

Americans callously ignore the many thousands regularly and routinely killed on our highways and byways each year. Americans ignore the millions seriously hurt and maimed by traffic accidents each year. Americans ignore the other thousands and millions dying and suffering from named and nameless horrors inflicted daily on other Americans, on others by Americans . . . until. Until what?

Mander and others decry the influences of media, whatever forms it takes, on individual and group behaviors. Others regularly and routinely decry myriads of menaces endangering . . . others. A recent novel is based in concepts of American Gods, among them Media. Medea?

Yes, Medea from Greek mythology now given form yet again with only a slight change in spelling. The Greek Medea is famed for her command of magic. She is a sorcerer. Jason of Golden Fleece fame was helped in his theft by Medea. They married and had two children. Jason, as is often the case among gods, eventually tired of Medea and desired Creusa.

Medea sent her a beautiful gown, an enchanted gown. When Creusa put on the gown, it burst into flames and consumed her. You will find an expanded version in the play by Euripides. Euripides as symbol is sometimes given form as a most desirable part of feminine anatomy. Seduced by Media, what will the fate of America be? Will we too be consumed in a jealous rage?

Jason ends up wandering in limbo.

Media, as we are seeing all too clearly, if we will look, is now little other than disinformation cloaked as propaganda, laced within narrative. Americans are inundated with information. Buried in data. Blinded by bytes. Megabytes, disappeared under gigabytes which have lost to terabytes now succumbing to petabytes — a mere billion billion bytes accessible in fractions of time captured by quartz crystals. Quartz crystals, ironically, were and are a major tool of magic and sorcery.

In the midst of great plenty, Americans are yet ever more ignorant. We don't understand that we don't understand. We don't know that we don't know.

Gautama Buddha identified that humankind suffers. He identified that the root of suffering is ignorance. In time as conceived by ancient peoples of the East, we are ending, Kaliyuga. Ending, for them, is always seen as a beginning. By falling victims of ourselves, will we be ending or beginning?

Stay tuned.

Milo Clark, a founding member of Swans, had it all: Harvard MBA, big house, three-car garage, top management... Yet, once he had seemingly achieved the famed American dream he felt something was missing somewhere. As any good executive he decided to investigate. Since then, he has become a curmudgeon and, after living in Berkeley, California, where he was growing bamboos, making water gardens, listening to muses, writing, cogitating and pondering, he has moved on to the Big Island in Hawaii where he creates thought forms about sunshine. Milo can be reached at Swans.

Please, DO NOT steal, scavenge or repost this work without the expressed written authorization of Swans, which will seek permission from the author. This material is copyrighted, © Milo G. Clark 2001. All rights reserved.

                                  E-mail this article to someone
       Enter her/his E-mail address: 
                                                Help

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This Week's Internal Links

The New Kind of Education - by Jan Baughman

The Dictatorship of Bullshit - by Stephen Gowans

Democracy? When? - by Stephen Gowans

Back to Crete - by Andreas Toupadakis

Talk About Demons! - by Gilles d'Aymery

Sweeping the Truth Under the DU Rug - by Dr. Vladimir Ajdacic & Dr. Predrag Jaksic

Lie Has Short Legs - by Pedja Zoric

The Potter of Gold - by Alma A. Hromic

A Trip to the Garden - by Andreas Toupadakis

The Making of a Radical (Excerpt) - by Scott Nearing