In a decidedly humorous follow-up that mirrors recent blogs here, Lee Camp [former TRC contributor] absolutely NAILS IT in this web exclusive for Redacted Tonight. This is good to see. Most of my American comrades, even former Occupy supporters simply do not understand where we are at this moment in history, geopolitically. It is both precarious and fascinating. [But mostly precarious.]
We must acknowledge that there is a different 'center' now -- what Buddha called 'the middle way', which [whether Lee knows it or not] he explains beautifully in this chaotic moment in our collective history. I can only say, "Well done, brother."
There is a storm coming. Hold on to yer butts but also hold your ground. In fact, those who can should either be a rock or a lighthouse. Shit is just about to get very real.
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Mike Lofgren, a congressional staff member for 28 years, joins Bill Moyers to talk about what he calls Washington's "Deep State," in which elected and unelected figures collude to protect and serve powerful vested interests. "It is how we had deregulation, financialization of the economy, the Wall Street bust, the erosion or our civil liberties and perpetual war," Lofgren tells Moyers.
Or not at all interesting and possibly shocking to grown people who get feelings hurt so easily, that they simply can't allow free speech to continue [fyi: this means democracy cannot continue]. It has been circling right down the shitter with the Constitution. There are fingers to point about why this has happened but it is certainly no fault of Milo Yiannopolous. In fact, he's a staunch supporter of free speech...like myself. I'm no stranger to sharing ideas and information that make people nervous, I just choose a different delivery.
You don't have to like a damn thing Milo says. You don't have to condone it or agree with it. In a nation we claim is still run by Constitutional law, we're going to have to agree that no one has the right to censor a damn thing, either.
I'll be honest, I'd only heard of Milo peripherally during the last few months or so. Tonight I couldn't avoid him because of continued moral outrage from the left. However, I'm glad I paid attention this time. It brought to light a larger picture and reminded me of the importance and value of free speech. The left, which is eating itself alive right now -- after failing miserably to unify behind a platform that addresses issues that effect all Americans, that still imagines a corporate-owned press is a 'free press', what the left has done has given rise to Milo's larger platform. This is how controversy always works. And this is exactly how Trump became the 'accidental President'.
Loss of rights and liberties didn't happen in a vacuum. The corporate media helped march its consumers right to this place. It is hardly surprising that people on both ends of the political spectrum seem to have lost their minds -- that happens by letting fear run roughshod over common sense under the perpetual 'war on terrorism' now with a shiny surveillance apparatus. Orwell would be proud of this production of his work, if only it weren't on such a large and important stage. This is the neocon/neoliberal, 'lesser of two evils still begets evil' political system we're watching collapse. And if you are not letting go of it -- you are getting dragged by it.
America is now a country where words themselves are losing meaning along with free speech rights that I hold in very high regard as a writer, analyst and a voracious reader. In my opinion [while it's free to share and I'm certain Milo will not get his feelings hurt], he's got an Andrew Dice Clay kind of appeal...with brains instead of the brawn. He's a self-proclaimed provocateur and in this climate he's proven to be quite an enigma. It's no secret he's been completely radioactive to the left but what occurred yesterday made him equally radioactive to the right.
Milo lost his book deal with a corporate publisher and left Brietbart media of his own accord. Why? Over a year ago, he made comments about pedophilia, and to some it sounded like 'normalizing' it. In fact, Milo has come out and apologized for these statements, mentioning he has been a victim of child sexual abuse himself.
People deal with grief and abuse in a variety of ways; dark humor has been one of them for centuries.
Perhaps Sarah Silverman will now bravely explain her jokes that normalized pedophilia? Why was the right the only group outraged when she did this? How many people on the left were outraged when Salon.com engaged in pedapologizing when they gave a pedophile a platform to explain why 'he wasn't a monster.' Why do liberals look the other way or downplay it as conspiracy when anyone at all dares to mention it? Why won't liberals read Podesta emails instead of blaming hackers? Hackers didn't write the emails...
We're always afraid of what we don't know because we don't want to burst our own bubbles. Like the scandals within the Catholic church, it changed perceptions and shook up faith. We're always afraid to leave our comfort zones. When it comes to the shadow side of human nature, we push it far away instead of shining light on it -- lest we see ourselves reflected in the eyes of monsters -- allowing such atrocities to continue, including 17 years of bloodshed and loss of our own liberties 'for a little safety' since 9/11.
Who feels safer now? Frankly, I feel a bit safer knowing people like Milo are still speaking, no matter how much I dislike what he has to say. The left would do well to emulate him and shake things up a little more to attempt better discourse before the fundamentalists put an end to that for good.
I thank Milo for the courage to tell his story, apologize to other victims of abuse and for making time to clarify his statements. Courage is a damn rare thing. I also appreciate his honesty in addressing child sexual abuse. It goes as under-reported as rape, is ignored by politicians, Hollywood and the corporate press unless it serves to blackmail someone. I'm betting more than a few media outlets who have actually tried to 'normalize' pedophilia are now scurrying under the rocks. That's a good thing and also why whistleblowers are a good thing. Hurt feelings of grown folk who choose to wear blinders about the horrors of this world should take a backseat to children abused by predators. [The difference between myself and Milo, might be that I include all warmongering governments in this view. War atrocities are just as under-reported.]
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me: each of us decides whether we'll give someone's words personal power over us. But how much power does PR have when we ignore very real sticks and very real stones harming innocent children. From priests, to casting couches to human trafficking in Haiti, there are millions of children waiting for America to get outraged enough to speak for them...
We interrupt all reality because America's feelings are hurt. Please stand by for a word from their sponsors who tell them how fat, old and unfuckable they are and need to have this car, drink, or pill. Won't someone please think of the poor Americans?
Protect your spirit because you are in the place where spirits get eaten ~ John Trudell
Everyone I know understands the far right has always been xenophobic, racist and sexist -- colonialism is not breaking news. Now we see that Simon & Schuester was [at one point] okay publishing xenophobic, racist and sexist writers. They drew the line at pedophilia. So do major newspapers, and corporate media outlets that keep political pedophiles out of the headlines not to mention anti-war voices since the invasion of Iraq. It hides monsters in plain sight to protect them. Americans often idolize monsters, like mob bosses and drug kingpins. But feminists took time to be outraged over what a corporate publisher allowed and then didn't when it drew a moral line in the sand [which should be applauded] instead of looking at the very line itself?
Some lines people just can't cross. Well, I say fucking hallelujah! America isn't completely spiritually dead! Christ on a crutch, let's start with that little bit of good news and work our way UP from that line, shall we? Perhaps we'll all grow from the experience instead of complaining about how far we've allowed ourselves to fall and point fingers at everyone else instead of in a mirror.
I'd really like to say more about American values than I can about its media. I've found that I cannot because those values are a hollow reflection of what they used to be, even 20 years ago. Americans don't want to admit that they've ceased paying attention to corporate corruption and the moral decay Martin Luther King warned us about. Does that mean I want media banned? Books or voices censored? Of course not. Harry Potter books shouldn't be banned by any religious fundamentalist anymore than the Koran by the same, nor should Milo be censored by the left who claims nearly the same moral superiority with as much fervor.
Both are strikingly similar witch hunts. I cannot imagine raising children in this shit show.
What I have watched this country devolve into [in horror at the media's precision]: two party dualism, us and them. Behaving like corporations on one front and fundamentalists on the other. Without a reasonable middle ground left to tell them apart. When people stop buying either of these bullshit paradigms, then resistance might get somewhere. Resisting does not mean quiet all dissent of everything that doesn't 'fall in line' with the feigned morals of a collapsing status quo that has been stealing from and bombing the hell out of people in other countries for centuries. Oh, we better shut up those voices that make us uncomfortable about what we've allowed ourselves to ignore to maintain our privileges. That gets leveled at both sides. I checked out of this Matrix years ago and have a different and yes, a radically detached perspective. For the planet, not a party.
How many millions of adult children of baby-boomers have turned into carbon copies of dullard parents? I'm glad to burst bubbles, Cleavers. There are a few more to burst that this country is totally unprepared for, and anyone attacking alternative press, writers, voices and first amendment rights does so at their own peril.
There's a reason why rock-n-roll, punk rock and rap music made millions of parents uneasy. Revolution is supposed to be uneasy. Change scares the shit out of comfortable people who think the 'good old days' are over and are resigned to plunk down in front of an idiot box with the same thinking they had 30 years ago. That thinking no longer works.
I'm a mother of a 32 year old daughter who is as cynical as she is genius in her art craft. I never allowed her to believe that this world defines her -- because I refused to teach her what I was indoctrinated to teach, and instead took lessons from my grandparents. I never took away her passion as punishment for not conforming to 'social norms'.
I've found embracing bullshit is just super-duper swell and a-okay with my former 'set' of peers. I set out in search of others. At some point, we have to be our own 'guru' and ditch the notion of saviors. I've been treated as blasphemous for mentioning laws of nature when it includes cheap oil.
Violent delights have violent ends...
My heart breaks every day for the millions of Americans, especially young people, who have been robbed of their homes, use of their degrees because of staggering student debt and loss of human dignity caused by corruption. Stop using the word recession -- it's robbery. So many will never be afforded the luxuries that cheap oil provided when the next round of austerities come. Simple is good. Complex societies are about to go bye-bye, Dorothy. Whites have been a minority since the last consensus -- they just happen to have old money and are now desperately trying to use jumper cables on an American battery they were told had a 'lifetime' warranty -- long after the store has declared bankruptcy.
No technology can save people who think survival hinges on belief -- even the belief that infinite resources are possible on a finite planet. [This is why Native Americans refer to white colonialists as 'fat takers'. Fat is energy.]
What is good, Phædrus, and what is not good—need we ask anyone to tell us these things?
Evidently, we do.
I've not watched Bill Maher in 8 years. He's always been sexist and has engaged in overt Islamophobia even after donating a million dollars to Obomber's campaign. He just wasn't funny anymore, so I decided the good thing to do was turn him off. NOT give him a platform. Easy. No outrage, no stress, no need to destroy a campus, storm a castle or destroy a person's rights.
Turn it off if you don't like it. The public should have been doing the same to Milo if they don't like his views. In social media, you have the option of 'blocking' -- this is within everyone's right -- but by censoring, we actively engage in policing thought, both good and bad. So, then who gets to decide what's good? I certainly hope it isn't corporate media or cable television -- they've screwed our psyches and our culture six ways from Sunday. Unfortunately, mainstream news is one of the worst of offenders. Until the left sees this, they'll march in lockstep with it. Bill Maher doesn't give a shit because his bread is buttered. Jeremy Scahill boycotted appearing on the same night Milo was on Bill's show. That was his right. As it is the right of anyone who doesn't like Milo's speech, Trump's speech, CNN, ABC, Brietbart or Fox News.
What I find most deplorable is insisting on paying to be lied to in a world of free information. There's a quote I've often revisited when doing analysis and becoming energy literate: "A man who doesn't read is no better off than the man who can't." My tough love translation: "A comfortable man who believes he doesn't have to think critically about the world will, in the end, be no better off than his poorest neighbor."
Willful blindness is different than censorship -- it happens on both sides of the two-party spectrum. Black and white becomes as increasingly dull as left and right. An almost 30 year veteran of photography, I've learned to appreciate the need for grey. That brings me to mention the Faurisson affair, [wiki] an academic controversy in the wake of a book by French scholar Robert Faurisson, a Holocaust denier. The scandal largely dealt with the inclusion of an essay by American linguist Noam Chomsky, entitled "Some Elementary Comments on the Rights of Freedom of Expression", as an introduction to Faurisson's book, without Chomsky's knowledge or approval. Responding to a request for comment in a climate of attacks on Faurisson, Chomsky defended Faurisson's right to express and publish his opinions on the grounds that freedom of speech must be extended to all viewpoints, no matter how unpopular or fallacious.
This grey area is important and seems to be a very hard concept to grasp for both American conservatives and liberals. Jumping to conclusions on one side or the other is the 'in thing' -- no research required, just 'feels' -- and those who do research and share the grey are deemed 'fake news'. Especially news that makes us uncomfortable. Shadow work is necessary in life as much as it is in photography to get the whole picture. In a country facing economic decline, the concept of free speech is one we better grasp tightly with both hands or whatever liberties we claim to love aren't going to make it. People over centuries have seen and been through far worse than what we face right now. Find your courage and compassion, not your outrage.
This morning, I watched Milo give a press conference in which he not only defended himself, but the very constitutional right that Chomsky sought to defend that also caused so much controversy for him. There is a vast grey area between these two men. Yet, they share a space on some common ground. We should all be seeking common ground instead of moral high ground.
When you seek to quiet dissent of one -- you consent to quiet the dissent of all. So if you truly believe that 'all lives matter' stop silencing voices who have stories yet to tell. Milo just told his. When will you tell yours? When will you take a platform that isn't a sound byte designed to fit in a stream of 40 characters day in and day out? When will your experience become a teaching moment instead of more echoing across a void?
Another provocateur and one of my favorite authors, Hunter S. Thompson once said, "Freedom is something that dies unless it is used." We're still free to investigate, research, write, speak and offer opinions -- opinions aren't news, but are protected under the first amendment all the same. Unless we've collectively decided that the very freedoms Bush Jr. declared 'our enemies hated us for' should be taken off life support -- I'm sorry to report that the enemy needing diplomacy and thoroughly interviewed, shows up every morning in the mirror.
If words hurt Americans -- maybe it is past time we elevated them above snark, cynicism and outrage into stories that reflect understanding of the human condition on this hurtling hunk of dirt in the solar system. I find them both worthy of protecting. Including the oldest languages...especially now. #MniWiconi
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In loving memory of Michael C. Ruppert and his selfless work, I have decided to share The Lifeboat Hour archived podcasts at TRC in chronological order by air date. There will be little to no commentary from me, but I feel it is important to know where we've been if we're to know where we're headed.
Revelations will come faster as we move forward. Everything that is happening was predicted with startling accuracy in his book, Crossing the Rubicon and in the documentary from 2010, called Collapse. The Lifeboat Hour podcasts began shortly after this documentary's release.
TRC will continue to share these archives twice a week on Friday and Tuesday. Please consider donating to help us keep the refreshments coming.
I'm fully aware of how inflammatory the title of this post is but I have never been one to shy away from controversy. The subject is a hot potato that will literally burn mainstream news outlets, corrupt politicians and the Hollywood elite beyond recognition. [That day will not come too soon for me.] US media will not be bothered to report on any of this, so I have to seek the courageous work and voices of those who have been on the record about this topic, like the indomitable Sibel Edmonds.
Something my readers may not know about me : before I jumped into media analysis, I had taken a short course in computer programming in my 20's. At that time, I was researching how law enforcement profiled serial killers and was fascinated by the investigative work done by both local and national agencies. My specific goal for taking that computer programming course? I had lofty aspirations of working for the FBI to catch online child predators.
Little did I know then that the system I once held in high regard would need to be investigated itself.
After viewing the documentary, Conspiracy of Silence and studying Mike Ruppert's work about the failed 'war on drugs' [hint: it didn't fail the deep state or the for-profit prison complex], I'll no longer stay silent in the face of real evidence. What people need to understand about these complicated and highly illegal activities is that they are related. Where there is and has been drug trafficking in this country [Mike Ruppert more than proved this in his book, Crossing The Rubicon] there is also going to be human and child trafficking.
I have no interest in protecting war criminals and monsters. What we're afraid to look at and name is not just denial, but a brainwashing through moral ambiguity and a celebration of repressive values. Innocent children pay the ultimate price for our willful blindness. I'm 30 years older, wiser and still earnestly refuse to be party to that. You should not allow any of this to be normalized for one more day.
For your consideration: Published on October, 22, 2015: Boiling Frogs Post Roundtable James Corbett talks to Sibel Edmonds, Peter B. Collins and Wayne Madsen about the Hastert scandal and cover up, the history and context of this story, and the remarkable lack of public interest in the case.
In loving memory of Michael C. Ruppert and his selfless work, I have decided to share The Lifeboat Hour archival podcasts at TRC, beginning with this first show. There will be little to no commentary from me, but I feel it is important to know where we've been if we're to know where we're headed.
Startling revelations will come faster as we move forward. Everything that is happening was predicted with startling accuracy in his book, Crossing the Rubicon and in the documentary from 2010, called Collapse. The Lifeboat Hour podcasts began shortly after this documentary's release.
Mike often said before his passing that there is no longer a map for this Rubicon. We've crossed many since 2010 and the recent election is no exception. My hope is that listening to these podcasts again in chronological order, people might begin to understand a) that we were warned many times about our predicament, and b) what to watch for in future as well as how to prepare for it. Not just spiritually but physically. Grounding is imperative for our continued journey on the material plane. We can only change our reality when we face what is -- together.
Mike taught me so much more than media analysis. It is why I study permaculture and deep ecology now. Michael C. Ruppert earned the moniker of hero because he saved my life with his urgent warnings. Unfortunately, no one in my 'monkeysphere' cared to listen to them when I tried to explain this. Perhaps they will listen now.
I'll be sharing these twice a week on Friday and Tuesday, instead of once a week as they aired before. My thanks to Mike, Ali, and everyone who misses Mike's torch. I can only carry it so far without sharing the flicker to took to ignite it. || For all sentient beings ~ Gabrielle
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Obama’s legacy is measured in ashes. From wars of aggression to a police state on steroids, banking bailouts and Obamacare, Obama has been the perfect captain to carry the New World Order football further down the field. But as Americans prepare for a new liner to be placed in their gilded bird cage, today we remember how the Deep State tricked the public in 2008 by giving them what they thought they wanted.
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Once the home of the anti-war movement, under Barack Obama the Left advocated a continuation of war and mass murder by using the political expediency of humanitarian interventionism. In this episode of The Geopolitical report, we unpack how establishment Democrats have continued the wars begun by President George W. Bush and expanded them into Syria and Yemen through illegal proxy wars and an ongoing and intensified drone campaign across the Middle East. Now that Donald Trump is president and the wars continue, the antiwar movement will emerge from the shadows and reveal its hypocritical political coloration.
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Original post from The Oregonian || Update: Rest in power, Ursula || 01/23/2018
Legendary Portland writer Ursula Le Guin is pictured here in her home in this March 2016 photo. (Motoya Nakamura)
February 01, 2017 at 9:30 AM
A recent letter in The Oregonian compares a politician's claim to tell "alternative facts" to the inventions of science fiction. The comparison won't work. We fiction writers make up stuff. Some of it clearly impossible, some of it realistic, but none of it real - all invented, imagined -- and we call it fiction because it isn't fact. We may call some of it "alternative history" or "an alternate universe," but make absolutely no pretense that our fictions are "alternative facts."
Facts aren't all that easy to come by. Honest scientists and journalists, among others, spend a lot of time trying to make sure of them. The test of a fact is that it simply is so - it has no "alternative." The sun rises in the east. To pretend the sun can rise in the west is a fiction, to claim that it does so as fact (or "alternative fact") is a lie.
A lie is a non-fact deliberately told as fact. Lies are told in order to reassure oneself, or to fool, or scare, or manipulate others. Santa Claus is a fiction. He's harmless. Lies are seldom completely harmless, and often very dangerous. In most times, most places, by most people, liars are considered contemptible.
Video Published on Nov 5, 2016 ||Whistleblower Julian Assange has given one of his most incendiary interviews ever in a John Pilger Special, courtesy of Dartmouth Films, in which he summarizes what can be gleaned from the tens of thousands of Clinton emails released by WikiLeaks this year.
[Editor's Note: I know many people are not fond of Assange. He has become a polarizing figure in US media but when analysts can't trust that media we have to look to whistleblowers and often go back over something we may have missed. There's no map for this place.
I go to other cartographers like John Pigler. His reputation is impeccable and he's a journalist I hold in high regard. I share this in the spirit of understanding how we got here, what Wikileaks does and does not do, and the high price that Assange has had to pay for revealing unpleasant truths about elected officials. Keep in mind there are thousands more emails still to be released. Rest assured there will be more revelations. It is essential to be discerning rather than reactive. Information helps us understand how the world IS so we can make conscious decisions about where we're headed. Acting on what isn't true is how propaganda works. That is its purpose. When corporate media can't be trusted, and our newly elected president can't be bothered to brief anyone outside of a 40 character Tweet -- we absolutely need to rely on instincts and use our good sense. Welcome to the adult table. Inconvenient truths will be served. Reassuring lies are out of stock. We should welcome that. ~ G]
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Today is Michael C. Ruppert's birthday. Mike was my mentor for many years after the BP Oil Disaster led me to investigate the topic of energy. As a consequence, I became not only energy literate but this singular education crystallized with great force a spiritual knowing I'd always felt in my bones: the connection to everything and everyone on this planet. Wahe Guru.
Mike's professional dedication, from his work as an LAPD narcotics officer and throughout his career as an investigative journalist, taught me how to become a media analyst and a better writer. I'd always been a good researcher but Mike showed me how to recognize different patterns, pinpoint what data to keep and what to disregard. He called this 'separating the ice cream from the bullshit' -- in this country that has never been a small task. However, that task is getting smaller with the current media or rather, lack of a real one.
To err is human. Mistakes are always made. Mike often made them but always owned them, apologized for his mistakes and retracted, always doing his level best to help his readers learn the value of their own discernment. A teacher, but also a rare man of integrity, honesty, and duty. A good cop with a big heart.
Highly intelligent, Mike also had a wicked sense of humor, loved music and was a musician himself. Before his appearance in the critically-acclaimed documentary, Collapse, I'm sure he would have loved nothing more than to sing and play music and what any of us have ever wished for: to live a happy life and share that happiness with others. But sometimes we have a calling we simply can't ignore. Ultimately, it was Mike's sense of duty that called him to put his country, and all of us, before himself. What he'd come to see couldn't be 'unseen' and he wished desperately to teach others so they might act and ultimately prepare for what he saw coming; what he felt in his bones.
Mike was a seer and a visionary that I was honored to have met and known a short time in this life.
He forever changed mine. After I met him in December of 2012, we exchanged correspondence a few times and he gave me permission to share anything I desired from his publication, Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil. I realized a torch had been handed to me as an analyst and a journalist, an honor I could not have imagined after hearing of his work only two years before. That torch has been heavy and a lot of inner work followed. Since his passing, I often find I know the man better than the analyst. I'm not alone in missing him terribly. His friends are many down the rabbit hole. I am blessed to know some of those dearest to him.
We're all mad here. Alice knew the best people are mad. Remember what the dormouse said?
For better or worse, knowledge has a funny way of changing our lives because it changes us. Any wisdom worth knowing takes sacrifice and the courage to face the truth, which is often unpleasant. That's the inner work. He taught me to be courageous to that end. Even now, the skills I learned through him have synthesized beautifully with my recent studies in Jungian analysis and deep ecology.
Strangely, I remember no teacher before him that had as much impact on me but I have met the most amazing teachers on the path since we met. I'm forever grateful for his work, his integrity and his encouragement. He was a torch bearer, a liminal being in a darkening world. The torch isn't as heavy now. We were all once students seeking mentors, were we not?
And like Daniel Quinn's title character, Ishmael, we should expect more students will be coming. This we can predict with absolute certainty.
In Mike's honor, I ask those who knew him, loved him or followed his work [or even if you haven't] to now muster your courage and lift your torch. Speak out against injustice. Bear witness. Continue diligently to separate ice cream from bullshit. Simply trust your instincts, the brains you were given as well as your big hearts. He asked us each to be our own authority. We must speak with that authority now.
Mike told us that people in bunkers with beans aren't going to make it. He also taught us how to start building lifeboats. Now that many have, who are we to sit in them idly? Are we to laugh and point at the drowning? One thing I remember Mike stating clearly: he refused to utter the words, "I told you so."
Let's try to follow that example with the knowledge he gave to the best of our abilities.
Mike's legacy doesn't have to end with a radio program called The Lifeboat Hour. We can all continue to teach using our own experiences, our stories and, like Mike, be a lighthouse for others in the cruel storm.
Happy Birthday, Ruppert Bear a.k.a. Tracker of Truth || Sat nam, my friend.
Audio excerpts are coming soon!
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h/t to rap group Public Enemy for the title of this post. I was reminded of their album when I viewed this video and have since been listening to a LOT of soul, R&B and funk. America has become comfortably numb and awash in denial. At times, it takes hard-hitting music to wake us from psychic slumber, activating our body to move, dance and come alive. I'm diving deeper into personal studies with a focus on deep ecology to fill my cup. Music makes you fall in love with the world, and when that happens, you want to keep it and your fellow beings from being destroyed.
James Hillman was an American psychologist. He studied at, and then guided studies for, the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich. He founded a movement toward archetypal psychology and retired into private practice, writing and traveling to lecture, until his death at his home in Connecticut.
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Many of the people I work with as a therapist and teacher express alarm, distress, fear, and disbelief over the course of political events that have taken place recently in the United States as well as on the world stage. Often I find myself pulled into these same feelings as I equivocate over what to say, how to say it, and to whom, under what circumstances. What is of interest and concern is how fragmented and ineffective language itself has become. Perhaps ineffective is the wrong word, since often the words of a politician or pundit can have a considerable effect. Words can inflame passions and lead to rancorous venomous exchanges between people. Language itself devolves from conversations about ideas and issues into sarcastic quips and personal insults aimed at maligning and discrediting anyone with a different view. What I’m describing is a crisis in communication. According to the pundits, the post-truth era is upon us, in which terms like “fake news” and “alternative facts” coincide with a spike in sales of George Orwell’s 1984, according to a recent NPR report (January 23rd, 2017). It seems to me, the current breakdown in language and communication provides an opportunity for some psychological curiosity and a chance to remember the sustaining nurturance in our relationship with dreams.
In the ancient world, the mysteries of language and communication were under the power of the god Hermes. Best known as the messenger of the gods with his emblematic winged sandals, helmet, and caduceus, Hermes held a special place in the Greek pantheon as the only figure capable of traveling from the heights of Mount Olympus to the depths of the underworld in Hades. In addition to language and communication, he was also the patron saint of liars, thieves, commerce, and travel, four other areas of timely interest and convergence in 2017. In his relationship to travel, he was also known as the god of the crossroads. As a divine traveler who was acquainted with the complexities of communication between different realms, Hermes was known as a psychopomp, one that leads the souls from the world of the living to their eternal place in the underworld. In this regard, he had a special relationship with dreams.
The Homeric Hymn to Hermes (as cited in March, 1998) describes the god as “wily and charming, a thief, a cattle-rustler, a bringer of dreams, a spy by night, a watcher at the door” (p. 389). In the current stress and strain of a nation undergoing a profound transition in consciousness, awakening to new difficulties, facing challenges that often appear as an ethical call to declare what we stand for, it seems especially important to notice the mythic convergence we find between the images of communication, crossroads, and dreams. James Hillman (1979) gave particular attention to the relationship between dreams and the mythic underworld and to Hermes as the conduit that guides us into those nocturnal departures from the daily world of the living. What we find in dreams provides us with new perspectives, new insights, figures that re-present daytime worries in a different light. Sometimes we rediscover what we truly love or truly value, sometimes we find poison that paradoxically heals. In his brilliant essay, Apollo, Dream, Reality, Hillman (2007) cautions against the impulses of rationalism and literalism to reduce the meaning of the dream into a simple prescription we might employ to somehow better our daytime existence. He says, when we allow the dream to present itself just as it is, in its obscure and often baffling language speaking on its own behalf, then
Night has not yielded to daylight, and understanding now speaks with a darkened tongue: the devious occulted language of analogy, allusion and metaphor. Metaphor, says Vico, “confers sense and emotion on insensate objects,” so that every thing in the dream becomes a “miniature myth” (Vico’s definition of metaphor), full of analogous truths, restoring you, the dreamer to the underlying poetic imagination from which all mental life springs. (p. 332)
This mode of communication at the crossroads between that which is conscious and rational, and that other path which is baffling and obscure, is the privileged landscape of Hermes, the god of the crossroads. In sitting with “the underlying poetic imagination” of our dreams as living entities, perhaps Hermes will offer us some assistance at also learning how to sit with the confounding breakdown of our collective imagination and the modern crisis of communication. Perhaps this new era of post-truth and alternative facts doesn’t make sense precisely because it’s not supposed to make sense. Hermes traffics in ambiguity, trickery, and deception as well as communication.
The alchemists worshipped this same deity by his Roman name, christening him Mercurius Duplex. They understood the necessity of his twofold and twofaced nature. Hermes Pharmakon was another alchemical moniker, indicating his paradoxical powers to administer the poison that brings healing. The alchemical experiment couldn’t succeed without his blessing, although it was understood the god could deceive and confound just as easily as he could show favor on the opus. Stephen Aizenstat has said that when he is about to tend a dream, he routinely invokes Hermes to be with him. This is the type of invocation understood by the alchemists, submitting to the wiles of the divine messenger who can lead us to a place of understanding at the crossroads between the daytime language of reason and the nighttime language of dreams.
What I’m suggesting is not a simple prescription or an easily implemented solution. Rather, I’m suggesting that the underlying roots of the current crisis in communication find their way to a mythic archetypal source, which becomes familiar with the practice of conversing with the images of our dreams. For better or for worse, we are living in a hermetic age, and the way forward will be under the aegis of that charming cattle-rustler, the bringer of dreams, the one looking over us as we stand at the crossroads.
Reference List
Hillman, J. (1979). The dream and the underworld. New York: Harper & Row.
Hillman, J. (2007). Apollo, dream, reality. In Mythic figures (pp. 320-335). Putnam, Conn.: Spring.
March, J. (1998). Cassell’s dictionary of classical mythology. London, UK: Cassell.
