Thomas Paine & the Corporatist State

I went for a bike ride the other day, not a long one, only about 12 miles or so. These rides, or runs, depending on what mood suits me give me time to think. Usually there is no order to my thoughts, only a series of misshappen ramblings leading from one thing to another. I am not privy to the inner workings of the human mind. My knowledge of the human brain and how it works is limited to what any grade schooler might have learned about the triumvirate of Mr. Cerebellum, Mrs. Cerebrum, and Ms. Medulla. Be that as it may, my mind is full of useless knowledge, mostly facts, dates and various other historical jargon that may be fun to know (at least to me) but will get me nowhere in a world obsessed with acquiring material things. Of course, who am I to make judgement. I accumulate things myself. I need only to look at my library to see all the money spent, or perhaps wasted on books over the years. However, before I veer too far off topic with these philosophical musings I now return to the subject at hand. On this particular bike ride, for some reason or other I began thinking about a slim volume that I picked up at a used bookstore in southern California some 20 odd years ago. The slim volume was really a pamphlet called Common Sense and it was written by an Englishman turned american named Thomas Paine back in 1776.

                                     Thomas Paine (1737-1809)

     Thomas Paine was born in Thetford, England in 1737. He was of a humble background, and was a staymaker by trade. A staymaker was a manufacturer of women's clothing. Paine, however, was not suited for this line of work, for he was cut from a different cloth. Early on he developed a thirst for knowledge attending scientific lectures, and reading whatever books he could lay his hands on. Paine emigrated to America in 1774 at a time when the colonies were about to engage in full rebellion against the mother country. He found work at a printer's shop in Philadelphia, and soon engaged his talents in writing seditious articles in favor of the rebellion. Common Sense was published at a time when the members of the Continental Congress were still split on whether or not they should fully sever the umbilical cord with England. After reading Common Sense many of the fence sitters climbed down on the side of the rebellion.

     To me, the most interesting part of Common Sense is when Paine spells out the meaning of what a true democratic state is, along with an explanation of Natural Rights. These days Natural Rights are often ignored or misinterpreted, and the meaning of a true democratic state has seemingly been lost in the intricate web of political parties that are controlled by the corporatist state. To keep the masses in ignorance seems to be the agenda of some as it always has been in the past. Whether this is a conscious effort on the part of some, or merely the natural progression of things is hard to say. I tend to believe that it is a natural progression that has evolved, not from Paine's utopian republic, but from the oligarchy that formed in the United States some years after the separation from Britain. But who am I to say? I am certainly no expert on political matter, nor do I care to be. These are merely observations made by an average bloke. I do not want to sound the least bit didactic, preachy, or arrogant, for in truth I am more interested in what caused this natural progression rather than what can be done about it. The problem is bigness (is this a word?) or largeness (is this a word?) The bigger something is the greater chance that corruption festers.

     In his later life Tom Paine was shunned and cast off from the rest of his old revolutionary cronies. Paine's idea of what america should be was not their idea of what america should be. He died miserable in relative obscurity. So...what would Tom Paine think of his American republic/corporatist oligarchy if he suddenly arose from his preachy tomb 200 years after his death? I don't suppose anyone knows what Paine's response might be. I do, however, know how I would respond. After paying my taxes last year, (federal, state, county, sales etc...etc...) I'll take the crowns 3 pence tax on tea any day of the week!




    

The Voyage of Life

I have always been interested in art. Not the kind of art where the artist lays a canvas on the ground and throws a bucket of paint on it before stepping on it a few times, or making some absurd squiggly(is this a word?) marks on it. The person is then suppose to interpret what it is,or find some meaning to it. I never see anything when I look at this type of art. I only see disorder and confusion and almost feel bad for the paint that was wasted. I guess that I am talking about the Jackson Pollock type of art that seems to be popular these days. Nothing against the people that enjoy this type of art. To each his own. Perhaps I am too ignorant to understand it. I do not know. I confess that I am wholly ignorant of the different periods or classifications of art, though I did take a college class, and did fairly well. That was years ago, and a lot of water has gone over the dam since then.  I enjoy looking at nice landscapes and pastoral scenes. There is a sort of tranquillity to them. About 20 years ago when I was a single man, my twin brother and I drove to the National Gallery of art in Washington D.C. It was here that I first became aware of the work of Thomas Cole.

     Thomas Cole was an English born artist who moved to the United States when he was a young man. He ended up in the Catskill mountains in New York where he painted some of his most famous work. His Voyage of Life was painted around 1842. It is a series of four allegorical paintings that represent the stages of human life. The four stages are childhood, youth, manhood, and old age. In each of the paintings an angel guides the person on a boat down a river. A majestic mountain scene is the background in each of the four paintings.

                                                                              Childhood

                                                                                Youth

                                                                                 Manhood

                                                                                    Old Age

     The painter does an excellent job at delineating the various stages. In Childhood an angel ascends from the darkness of a cave into a world of light. In Youth it is time for the child to be let go. Everything is bright. The youth has his whole life ahead of him, and is seemingly carefree as time is of no consequence to him. The angel stands on the shore and lets the youth go into this world of bliss to find his way, and also his eventual destiny. It is a happy time, but this is only temporal as the youth quickly finds out in the next scene. In Manhood the scene is dark, and the water is turbulent. The man prays for guidance in a world seemingly devoid of pleasure, but full of the travails and challenges that cross our path. Finally, in Old Age the man once again finds peace as the end is near, and the angel is there to guide him in his final days. It is in this final scene that the most provocative image is realized, at least to me. There is a beacon of light poking out through the clouds beckoning the old man. What is this? Is it hope? Or is it a final peace? Is this what our life is lived for? We come into this world in a state of innocence and soon find a specious world where confusion and turmoil mix with the occasional simple pleasure that we find at times. The process moves along with little regard to the life progressing along it's way. In time, all too soon, it ends, and all that is left in the life's wake is the history that it has left behind. Life is all too short, so we may as well make the most of it while we are here. I have passed the first two stages of life, and I guess that I am now about halfway through the third. I can relate to Thomas Cole's allegory of life. I guess most people can. I don't know. I bought a set of Cole's prints on this Washington D.C. trip many years ago. They have never been put in frames, and have been kept in either a drawer or a cardboard box for the past two decades. Every now and then I will stumble into them and stare at them before putting them away and continuing on my own journey down the river.

    
                                                                                      

People of the Abyss

As I previously mentioned in my last post, I am a writer of sorts, but that is not how I pay my debts to society and feed my child. I have a job which sometimes brings me into contact with that portion of humanity that has been cast from that respectable echelon that you and I are currently riding, though sometimes we may be teetering precariously at it's precipice. These people who's lives that occasionally intersect with my own each have a different story to tell. How they ended up at the bottom of the abyss remains a secret with them. It is their own life, and they go about their own mundane existence behind a set of eyes that is different than ours. Perhaps some of these people were born in the abyss, and know nothing else, for it is all that they have experienced in life. Perhaps they have fallen into it from the precipice previously mentioned. Some grievous event in their life that was either self inflicted, or brought on by external circumstances that were beyond their power to control. whatever the case, this element of society is either looked upon with scorn and derision, or pity depending on the persuasion, flavor and attitude of the person who sits in either judgement or reflection.

      Recently, I passed the threshold into one of those forbidden zones where these downtrodden creatures dwell, and where no respectable individual cares to go. I was attentive to my duty, but at the same time aware of my surroundings keeping an ear and an eye on guard against a possible attack. As I was engaged at my work I became aware of a presence lurking in the shadows near me. As it was near dark I adjusted my eyes somewhat and noticed two forms, a man and a woman, and when they had observed that I had detected them and acknowledged their presence with a "hows it going," decided that it was safe to pass into my circle of defense. As I was squatting down engaged in watching a voltmeter I decided that it would be best if I made myself a little less vulnerable to a possible attack so i stood up and received the wretched pair who were approaching me in a way that I did not take as being hostile. In fact, it was a cautious approach, as if they perceived a danger from me.                                                                   

                                                                       Daniel Quilp

     The man was 50ish kind of tall and stooped with a hollow face and worried looking eyes. Overall he projected the image of a person that had seen tough times, had survived, but still regarded the future with trepidation. The woman was one of those individuals that was hard to determine an age. She might have been 30 or 50, it was hard to say. She was razor thin, and I noticed that when she smiled she was missing one of her front teeth. She seemed a little more confident than her companion, and less world weary. She too, it was obvious, had been through the mill of life and had taken the hard road somewhere along the way. The man was pushing an old grocery cart that I assumed was full of their world belongings, or at least his. I noticed an old pair of rubber boots in the cart, similar to ones that a person might use while working in the snow. The rest of the carts contents had been jammed into trash bags. The woman was the first to speak, in fact, the whole time that I was in the presence of these two cast offs of American society the woman did 90% of the talking. The man only occasionally chiming in, usually reafirming something that the woman had said. The woman was a quick talker and  I immediately knew what it was they were looking for. I have seen their kind many times before, however, before I gave them their monetary reward for being homeless I let the woman tell her story, for I felt that it would have been rude to discard them with haste. Why she felt she needed to explain her penurious condition to me I do not know, for I would have given them a few dollars anyway without her much abbreviated and probably somewhat fabricated tale. She spoke in an uneducated, but somewhat forceful southern drawl. When she made a point, or pinned the blame for her current state on some real or imagined villain, her eyes would get real wide, almost ferrell like. From what I could gather, the woman claimed to have been booted from her house by a landlord, whom, after hearing her tale I was almost convinced ranked up there with some of histories and literatures most heinous and despised cutthroats. Indeed, if she were to be believed this man would make Daniel Quilp and Caligula look tame! 

     I wondered where the man fit into this picture. He was obviously not her husband, and without getting too inquisitive, for in truth it mattered not, I came to believe that he was merely an expedient. Perhaps he was some other unfortunate like herself whom she had latched on to for some reason or other, security perhaps. Obviously, he too had a tale to tell, but unlike her, he kept his hidden within the cavity of his mind. The man's worried and moth eaten face merely glared at me as if he knew what I was thinking, and dared me to ask him to relate his story too. However, some things are better left hidden, and I felt that was the case with him. After the woman had related her rather ambiguous and somewhat sketchy tale she hesitated before coming forth with the real reason for their visit with me. After receiving their reward and a "god bless" (as if god has blessed them) they took leave of me and I watched them scurry away down the sidewalk like a pair of hungry rats that have just been fed. 

     It is terrible in this day and age when some people have so much, there are others that have so little. Why is this? I cannot say. It seems to be the nature of things. There have always been rich and there have always been poor. Where there is a winner there has to be a loser, unfortunate as it may seem. There seems to be no remedy to this age old problem. Long after the writer of this post, and those who might read it are relegated to dust there will be people walking this planet in the same condition as the two hungry rats previously mentioned. I have heard some judgemental people make ignorant comments like "go get a job" without first reflecting on what might have been the cause of the unfortunates slide into the abyss. "Not my problem" is what people might say when taken to task for their comment. Ah! but it is your problem! It is humanities problem. Until human nature can evolve to a point where it becomes human nature to "give," the problem will continue to rear it's ugly head.

     Back in the 1990s I read two good books on the wretched conditions of the poor, Jack London's People of the Abyss, and George Orwell's Down and out in Paris and London. Although both books are dated, they are excellent reads for a subject that is timeless and therefore still relevant.

Introduction

Hello fellow bloggers. Normally I have kept a day journal to record my rants. I will continue to do so even if I am the only person that will ever read them. I have been doing this for the better part of two decades now. Sometimes the entries are merely a laconic sentence or two devoted to the days (usually repetitive) activities, and sometimes they are lengthy discourses or observations that I have made that day that I feel are worth recording for posterity or merely for my own amusement at a later date. Usually these longer entries tend to ramble and by the time I get to the end, the subject has changed entirely. Who knows, maybe that is what will happen here.

I have a variety of interests, perhaps too many, which may be the reason that I have never mastered anything. I tend to go whole hog into something for a while before getting bored and venturing into something else. However, I usually return to the subject at a future date, jump into it again and then once again tire of the subject and find something else that interests me. I guess that it is one big circle that I travel, going round and round in an existential existence always attempting to find some Nirvana that doesn't exist. Oh well, I guess that it is better to live in this world than the alternative. Anyway, I will be posting things on here that interest me, and perhaps might interest you...the reader...who might just happen to stumble into my world.

My Library

In case any one is interested, I will relate a few details about myself so that the reader knows a little bit about the person who is writing these posts, not that it makes a difference. First of all I am 43 years old, married, and have an eight year old son. I am a writer, have published a book (not exactly eating up the N.Y. Times bestseller list) and have written some articles for various magazines and newsletters. However, as unfortunate and unfair as it may seem, writing is not how I put food on the table as much as I would like for it to do so. It is merely an outlet for a creative side in me that has been with me for as long as I can remember. I love books. Here is a photo of my library. My favorite subjects are history and astronomy, but I am also interested in the politics of the world, and philosophy. I despise political parties, and will never join one. I do, however, have opinions but most of the time I feel as if I am on the outside looking in. Perhaps it was meant for me to be this way I do not know. Some people jump right in and get involved in things (running for political office, smiling at the camera and feeding their ego.) I guess that is their nature. It is not mine, (though I do have an ego) I am an observer watching from the outside, and probably will be until, like Hamlet said, I shall shuffle off this mortal coil.