The Memoir Of A Thoroughly Dull Man - The Irony Of Thinking He Mattered

Daniel was an ordinary man, so ordinary in fact that he never showed up on anyone's radar - a quantum particle that appeared and then disappeared into the void leaving no trace, a quantum bit that maybe existed or maybe didn't, and even if it did it was without definition, place, or time. 

He was recorded in the Lake County vital statistics, born on this day to X and Y, themselves blips on the screen, paid his taxes, had a driver's license and Social Security number; but other than that he was an empty space.  He took up no room, edged no one aside, came and went without notice, was unrecognized even in familiar haunts, and would certainly one day vanish without a trace, a three line mention in the obituary column. 

What possessed this man to write his memoir was a mystery - some epiphany perhaps that he had never mattered to anyone, and it was about time to set the record straight; or intimations of morality, better get something down on paper before one disappeared; or the fanciful idea that what he had experienced actually had salience and interest - but he was determined, and after a few months of struggling over the first chapter, let it be read. 

As one might expect there was nothing whatsoever of interest in what he wrote, not a scintilla of anything that would catch the reader's interest, not one unique notion, not one singular idea, not a trace of insight or particular vision.  It was as thuddingly dull as the man himself. 

The comments he got from those few he asked to read it were kind.  There was no point in spoiling good intentions even though they would lead nowhere. 'Nice job, Daniel...great introduction...can't wait for the next installment...a page-turner' they wrote.  In fact it was hard to imagine how a man even with Daniel's limited abilities could have written twenty-five pages of absolutely nothing.  

Even an eight-year old can come up with a story about lions and bears in the closet, but there was no inkling of anything in Daniel's work. The pavement was nothing but asphalt, trees were just trees lining the road, the sky was never mentioned, the sun incidental. There were no colors, no surprises, no light and shadow, no nothing. 

Life to Daniel, judging from the first few pages of the memoir, was a matter of tire pressure and gear ratios - not as metaphors for life's balance and resistance, but the heart of the matter.  His interest was not even getting from here to there but the mechanisms of going. 

Many people have tried to write their memoirs, nothing surprising or shameful about that.  We all feel the need to say 'I mattered' even if we didn't.  There has to be something enduring, worth saving, worth noting in life.  If not, and it goes seventy years unremarkably and without notice, then it is like being erased like a smudge on a page. 

The life described by Thomas Hobbes - solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short - at least has drama.  Sisyphus pushing the boulder up a hill only to have it eternally roll back down, Hercules and the Sirens of Circe, up by the bootstraps rags to riches stories, victories against all odds, tragedy, courage, lovers gained and lot.  But a life without any definition whatsoever, no distinction, and no memorable moment is worse even than dying miserably. 

So one should have patience with Daniel.  His ambition was laudable even if its result wasn't.  The memoir was his last and only choice to show the world that despite the lack of any distinction, any memorable quotes, any fascinating interludes, his life mattered after all. 

After many rewrites based on comments which had become more insistently critical, Daniel hired an editor.  There was no shame in seeking professional guidance.  The work would be his and the editor would only nip and tuck, trim, and offer suggestions as to tone and direction. 

The editor had worked on many memoirs before.  They all shared a commonality - the voice of the narrator was absent.  The tales of a Vietnam Huey gunner were flat, prosaic, and as uninteresting as an almanac. She tried to get him to write about the sun rising over the mountains above Dalat, the glint of the moon over the Gulf, the cough of the engines as they came to life, the receding jungle landscape below...but he couldn't do it. His mind was focused on how the thing worked. 

The gunner was one of the few Vietnam veterans who loved the war, who loved flying and raining rockets down onto Viet Cong emplacements near the LZ; but the editor could not get him to put any of his joy, his irrepressible delight into words. 

In Daniel's case there was no voice to come through, no sense of delight, joy, or amazement.  After lengthy interviews with him the editor realized that there simply was nothing there, nothing whatsoever.  There was nothing to build on, nothing to edit; so after a number of meetings she told him that other business that she couldn't put off was pressing and she had to resign. 

This did not stop Daniel who kept at it day and night, turning out page after page of unreadable prose.  One might have expected some glimmer of light somewhere - a moment of color, form, or chance - but in page after page Daniel slogged on without the hint of personal reflection.  

That in itself is a story worth telling, said an acquaintance who was aware of Daniel's marathon.  A classic tragedy - a man without depth, insight, understanding, or emotional tenor struggling to show the world that he mattered. 

Daniel never actually gave up, nor said one day 'I can't do this anymore'; but petered out.  Fewer hours of the day writing, then fewer days of the week, then not at all.  It wore him out and rewarded him with nothing.  To a more sensitive, intelligent, reflective man, this might have been cause for depression if not despondency; but because he was so narrow and confined in his thinking, it became just like everything else.  The car in the garage, neatly aligned, polished and ready to go tomorrow. 

It's Easy To Be An Idealist In Wyoming - There Are No Ghettoes There

There are a few black cowboys in Wyoming, all denim, chaps, horsehide, and leather - indistinguishable from their white saddle mates except for skin color.  Generations of living as ranch hands gave them the same bow-legged, rodeo swagger, the same taste in woodfire cooking, and the same ease with the discomfort of days on the range. 

 

There are not enough black people in any one place in Wyoming to call it a community, let alone a ghetto, so most white people take them as they come, one by one, judging them by their saddle sense and roping skills - which is of course the way it should be, never judging a book by its cover.  

The white people of Wyoming only read about the percentages - most murders, rapes, armed robberies, and assaults are committed by black men; prison populations are overwhelmingly black; and inner cities are nexuses of dysfunction.  But all this is too far an away to figure into their lives; and most Wyoming residents cannot believe that such an Eastern hellhole can possibly exist. 

That obliquity is not restricted to race. Wyomingites cannot imagine that the shenanigans of Washington are real either.  It simply cannot be that the country is governed by that lot - pregnant men, transgender teachers, the Squad, buffoons, con artists, and Big Brother - but as impossible as it seems, it is true.  A sinkhole of corruption, moral decay, and greed, fetters, traces, and harnesses on everything that moves, a government not of and by the people, but on their backs. 

Brent Collins was old enough to have seen both Republicans and Democrats in the White House, and although he was a conservative in principle, he was no partisan.  Whether Left or Right, political parties were out to interfere in the lives of ordinary people, take their money, and leave them to the wolves. 

There was something else in the air in Wyoming that made everyone different.  Not only did they feel happily removed from the worst of the indifference and self-assuming political ambition, but they were shameless idealists.  Out here in God's country, one could sense the limitless possibilities of the human spirit.  A peaceful, verdant, compassionate, and giving world was indeed possible. 

Brent lived off the land - he tended his own garden, raised goats and chickens, built his own yurt - and gave back to the community.  He was as free as any man could be, off the grid, unnoticed by the revenuers and truant officers, practicing traditional medicine and trusting to Nature to cure the minor ills of his family. 

He got whatever clothes his wife Alice could not make from Goodwill, traded and bartered with supermarkets for meat and cooking oil, worked spells clearing brush and opening trails for the Park Service, and taught his children the spiritual values of Gaia, Mother Earth, and her bounty. 

He still used the library's computers to access his email which he used only to keep in touch with family members in Coeur d'Alene and Bozeman, but had a fearful concern about the tide of technological change that was sweeping the country - robots, artificial intelligence, and the replacement of a tightly-knit human society with an impersonal, mechanical, cybernetic one without an ethos or moral core. 

Of course everyone from the coasts tagged Brent as an airy-fairy zip-head, a throwback to the Utopian communities of Oneida, Brook Farm, and the German Pietists, a hippy-dippy leftover from the Sixties.  Of course what did they know, so immersed were they in diversity, equity, and inclusivity, and immured within the harsh, irremediable confines of progressivism?  

Yet, for all his confidence and home-grown sense of honor and rectitude, Brent felt like the Amish on the tourist trail, cute, bearded, buggy-riding oddities.  The tourists who came to Wyoming to ride, hike, and ski helicoptered in and out, gave ranchers and cattlemen hardly a second glance, and never even saw the true men of the land like Brent Collins.

 

He did have his moments - like the time his daughter almost died when allopathy, homeopathy, tribal cures, and universal prayer failed and he was forced to take her to the hospital; or when his wife almost died in childbirth, attended by a Hopi woman from the reservation; or when the winter of '16 nearly carried him off - but all in all, he remained faithful.  

If he abandoned ship - he, the model of naturalness and peaceful oneness with the Earth - then how easy it would be for lesser men to jump over the side.  No, he must maintain the course. 

How simple it was for Brent to believe in a better world, so removed as he was from the real one.  Looking out over Eden Valley and the Tetons beyond, this was God's creation as He had intended it, and thanks to the divine intervention, Brent was able to suspend disbelief. 

Not only did Eden Valley exist, but the rest of the world, corrupted, defiled, and dishonored was kept out.  With hope, good will, kindness, and sincerity Eden Valley could become universal - perhaps not its meadows and snow-capped mountains but its spiritual core. 

Idealism is of course a frail thing, borne as it is of naivete, credulous belief, and insularity.  Sooner or later the real world would invade and destroy.  Brent never believed in this eventuality. His belief in the rightness of his ways was impenetrable - absolute goodness was its own defense - and the time would never come when he would have to take up arms. 

Millennialist churches were not uncommon in the West - that something in the air that so inspired Brent in his utopian beliefs was breathed by those who did arm themselves.  After nuclear Armageddon, the members of the Church of the Risen Masters who had for generations prepared to live under the prairie in survivalist warrens, would emerge into a post-apocalyptic world in which they would have to defend themselves in order to assure only their holy repopulation of the world. 

Such nativist spirituality, as deformed as it might seem, had its parallel in other parts of the Americas.  The Mixtec and Zapotecs in ancient Mesoamerica practiced ritual human sacrifice to appease the powerful gods immanent in the natural world around them.  

They formed an alliance with these gods to assure their survival and the eminence of their domain.  They like the members of the Church of the Risen Masters felt themselves anointed, privileged, and special; and if they performed the proper rites and rituals, they would prosper and would be the founders of a new, better world. 

Brent was a lucky man as long as his luck held out.  Already there had been inroads of the civilization he had kept at bay - the hospital visits, the run-ins with truant officers, lawyers from the county with eviction notices for non-payment of property taxes, more frequent reliance on food stamps and public generosity, the raids on his land and the rustling of his animals.  

Yet he held fast.  He had not spent his life building an alternative life style for his family only to see it come down in ruins.  At each reversal he was energized, more committed, and more defiant.  The world simply had to be the way he saw it, and these setbacks were only bumps in the road to a better place.

Middle age cannot sustain idealism as youth can, so when Brent was well into his forties, his tenacious hold on his idealistic vision loosened.  A little give here and there was only to be expected and before long he had joined the mainstream.  He was not unlike his progenitors, the hippies of the Sixties who held on to their idealistic dream until they stooped and stumbled a little but kept their pony tails as the last reminder of earlier, better days. 

Idealism dies more quickly and easier in some than in others, and Brent gave it up reluctantly, but he saw the handwriting on the wall and settled down in his trailer, worked, managed, and to his credit, was never angry. 

Clausewitz, Conflict, And Human Nature - War As A Permanent Feature Of Human Society

Clausewitz said that war is the continuation of diplomacy by other means.  Every empire, nation, kingdom, and regime has kept their armories full, their armies at the ready, and their populations prepared for war, for it has always been an inevitability. 

 

Wars have been a constant since the first human settlements, growing in size and number as technology improved, as geopolitics became more complex, and as the prizes became more valuable. The Trojan War, The Mongol Invasions, the Peloponnesian War, the Hundred Years War, the Greco-Persian War, the Punic Wars, the War of the Roses, and the Taiping Rebellion are just a few.  World War I and World War II were continuations of the trend, and lesser wars - Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, and now Iran - never miss a beat. 

Wars are a permanent feature of human society and will continue ad perpetuam, ad infinitum. In fact there is no better expression of the innate, hardwired, ineluctable forces of human nature than war. Until and unless that violent, aggressive, territorial, and self-interested nature is no more, wars will continue. 

A sequela of this axiom is that peace has only resulted in two ways - first, if one nation, empire, dynasty, or kingdom has complete and utter military and economic control, i.e. Pax Romana; and second, if two nations are equally matched, i.e. the Soviet Union and the United States during the Cold War.  Otherwise conflicts, skirmishes, wars by proxy or by frontal assault will continue unchecked and unabated. 

There is no difference between the playground antics of toddlers - 'That truck mine!' - marital squabbles, municipal disputes, regional conflicts and all-out wars.  They all arise from the same valuation, desire for hegemony, and the willingness to fight for it. 

If violent human conflict is not hardwired as part of a Darwinian imperative, then what is?  Conflicts over territory, power, money, and influence are endemic in individuals, families, clans, tribes, and nations.  Why should anyone ever assume that they will ever disappear? 

History takes no sides - human events have never been moral or immoral, but amoral only, the result of swings and sways of power and influence.  'To the victors go the spoils', and in the give and take of geopolitical conflict the winners established their culture, their language, and their religion until they were the defeated.  Things have a way of sorting themselves out. 

In such an inevitable world, the advice of two preeminent thinkers is pertinent - that of Clausewitz who accepted the inevitability of war, and as such nations should always be prepared to fight; and that of Machiavelli who said war, while inevitable, should be fought only in cases of national self-interest. 

If competing forces are not looked at as evil, immoral, or anti-social but simply extending their national interests, they can be stopped, delayed, or mitigated.  Nations that understand this fundamental motivation will also always be ready for war. 

 

Those who preach world peace, Utopianism, and compassionate progressivism only do a disservice to nations which should be listening only to Clausewitz and Machiavelli.  When Josef Stalin was told that the Pope might contribute his moral authority to discussions concerning post-war Europe, he said, 'How many divisions does the Pope have?' He, Stalin, and his Red Army were the ones who defeated the invading Nazi forces at Stalingrad, not the Pope.  There is no room for moral questions in matters of war. 

Mao Zedong thought no differently. 'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun', he said, always putting national interests, geopolitics, and territorialism first and foremost when it came to national sovereignty. 

It is revisionist historians, especially those educated and raised within the moralistic culture of today, who talk of Stalin and Mao's 'evil'; but they were only following their natural human inclinations.  More brutal than most?  Hardly.  Genghis Khan when he marched from the steppes to conquer the world from Japan to Europe left only mayhem and ruin in his wake.  Millions were slaughtered in his Mongol-Turk conquests.  

 

'Peace in our time' was the infamous statement of Neville Chamberlain whose idealism and political myopia grossly misjudged Adolf Hitler and the Nazi threat; but he has not been alone.  The same idealism and historical blindness have infected generations. 

Vicki Parker was a lifelong advocate for world peace and felt sure that it could be achieved.  If we all just reasoned together, she said, worked out our differences, sat around the table and listened, conflicts could be avoided.  She believed this heart and soul, but there was always that niggling doubt, memories from childhood

Ever since she was a girl she had been aware of the aggressive and territorial nature of animals.  She was awakened in the middle of the night by hissing, screeching cats in the back alley.  In the morning her cat came in bloodied.  Patches of fur had been bitten off, and one day he had only half an ear.

Dogs were no different, and in those days they roamed as freely as cats. Most dogs had only one eye, half a tail, and a scarred snout.  They roamed in packs on Arch Street where most of the Chinese restaurants were, and fought over pieces of lemon chicken or stringy beef gristle. They fought among themselves for dominance, females, and food; and fought enemy packs who tried to invade their territory.

Blue jays are an invasive species, fearless of taking over other smaller birds hunting grounds; but Vicki watched sparrows, starlings, and buntings dive bomb the jays when they entered the yard.  Squirrels chased each other and bit. Fighting fish were best sellers at the pet shop, and if left in the same water for too long they would both be ragged, torn, and dying. Vicki's good friend Filler liked birds and wanted a companion for his cockatiel. His parents bought him a budgie, and despite the difference in size, the budgie beat up on the cockatiel until he had plucked his plume and all his head feathers.

Territorialism, aggression, and brutality were the hallmarks of the animal kingdom. Ant colonies were the most impressive.  The battles between soldier ants of different competing colonies were fought to the death.  There were advance scouts, rear guards, forward phalanxes, and lines of supply.  They used implements, chemical warfare, and the use of overwhelming force.

Everywhere she looked there were pigeons with their throats ripped out, birds nests taken over and occupied by invading interlopers, gnawed squirrels, and swarms of dead ants.

Vicki never got over these childhood images; and even at her  most passionate about World Peace, the images of the insatiably barbaric animal kingdom were as vivid as ever; and the comparison with human societies could not be more appropriate and relevant. Human beings were just as aggressive, territorial, and warlike as ants, baboons, or piranhas. War and hostility were as integral to human society as reproduction.

Yet there was something morally wrong about America's blasting Tehran to smithereens, killing its leaders, destroying its arsenals, military infrastructure, and supply depots.  The sight of fiery explosions, clouds of billowing smoke, and the rain of debris was upsetting, and she tamped down all thoughts of human nature and her earlier convictions that aggression was at the very core of human expression.  

This was untenable.  War was untenable; and so out into the streets she went, down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House where she stood with her sisters defying the President. 

Where does such idealism come from? For one thing it is related to longevity and the expectation of living a long life.  When Tolstoy wrote War and Peace and recreated the Battle of Borodino where Russian and French troops fought a decisive, pitched battle, the life expectancy was only a little over thirty.  One expected to die young so why not go out in a blaze of glory rather than from a foot infected by stepping on a thorn? 

Life was valued differently then and human life was calculated within the same algorithmic context as animal life.  Jack London's 'Law of Club and Fang' or its corollary the law of tooth and claw were life's only permanent axioms, and in an age when death came sooner rather than later, they were embraced.  Why look for peace in a world designed, organized, structured for conflict. 

When Darwin arrived a number of decades later, these assumptions were codified.  Not only was conflict part of life, it was responsible for its evolution.  All the more reason to leave aside the airy nostrums of peace. 

In a world where we expect to live to ninety, of course we become risk averse and look at peace as a means of prolonging our lives; and so Vicki's remonstrances are understandable - vain and senseless given the trajectory of history and the fundamental nature of human activity, but expected. 

She felt good about demanding peace in our time and found no irony in advocating for it. Although the Iranian theocracy was no different from Naziism - the ayatollahs and Hitler had the same inspiration, motivation, and purpose - and the reasons for going to war should be clear enough, Vicki still resisted. 

'This can't be all there is', she said; but of course it was.  However, peace was not irrelevant or impossible. It could happen under either of the two enduring conditions, Pax Romana or the Cold War  but even those required the force of arms.  Nothing comes without a price. 

Idealism is another permanent feature of human life.  There has always been a tendency to ignore reality and believe in something detached from it.  Do this at your peril, is the lesson of course, but that did not deter Vicki who kept up the White House vigil until well after dark.