Hallowe'en Countdown 2015: Post-Apocalypse Rehab

Image Source: Archillect.

Some readers may have noticed a shift in attitudes, mood and consciousness since the summer. Several people have commented to me that they feel as though this year was split down the middle. The first half was what you thought reality was, and the second half is what reality really is. The evidence is anecdotal, but I explain that common feeling in terms of piling technological change upon global change, until what we experience does a somersault and collapses over upon itself to become something else. It is as though we became addicted in the first fifteen years of the 21st century to eradicating the 20th century. And now, after all the hammer blows, we are finally succeeding.

The 2nd century BCE Temple of Baalshamin in Palmyra blown up by ISIL in July or August 2015. Image Source: Wiki.

Not so fast - the 20th century dies hard. Every attempt to erase its history promises a return of its worst excesses. Holocaust denial, 9/11 denial, this denial, that denial. This summer, ISIS beheaded Palmyra's lead archaeologist and blew up temples in Palmyra's ruins. You can see lists of cultural heritage sites destroyed by ISIS here, here and here. These sites were the pride of 20th century archaeologists and represented the common history of humanity:

• Palmyra (Syria), established 2000 BCE
• Mar Elian Monastery (Syria), founded 5th century AD
• Apamea (Syria), established 300 BCE
• Dura-Europos (Syria), established 200 BCE
• Mari (Syria), established 2900 BCE
• Hatra (Iraq), established 3rd or 2nd century BCE
• Nineveh (Iraq), founded circa 6000 BCE
• Mosul Museums and Libraries, Churches and Monasteries, and Mosques (Iraq)
• Mosque of the Prophet Yunus / Jonah (Iraq)
• Shia Mosques near Kirkuk
• St. George's Monastery, Mosul (Iraq)
• Numerous Christian Churches and sites, mainly of the Chaldean Catholic denomination (Iraq and Syria)
• Hujja Shia Mosque, Diyala (Iraq)
• Nimrud (Iraq), founded 1250 BCE
• Khorsabad (Iraq), established 706 BCE
• Mar Behnam Monastery (Iraq), established 4th century AD
• Imam Dur Mausoleum, Shia shrine (Iraq)

In the midst of this eradication of history, deniers say: 'get informed. You need to know the real truth.' US critics claim that the American administration funded ISIS to topple the Assad régime. Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin has stepped forward to defend what remains of Syria's government. At the UN on 28 September 2015, Putin, KGB-turned-environmentalist-soothsayer, demanded of western leaders: "Do you realize what you've done?" It was a masterful speech, because a lot of it was true, but it was true in a way that played to competing cultures of truth. In late 2014, Putin argued that the Americans engaged in "unprofessional politics," by continuing their Middle East objectives through ISIS proxies. One cannot deny the Americans' dismal half-baked imperialism, implemented through isolationist and exceptionalist navel-gazing, but none of that makes Vladimir Putin the pacifist voice of reason. Nor does it make ISIS into the capitalist mercenaries which Putin claims them to be.

Machinations in international affairs are an odd form of denial, too. However the dominoes fall, no Realpolitik truth about ISIS brings anyone closer to preparing for the hardcore reality ISIS is conceiving, the one in which, following bloodshed across the Levant, they blow up the Egyptian pyramids, assassinate the Pope, and destroy the Vatican in Rome. ISIS plans to take over India by 2020 in an effort to spark a world war. One commenter below a Times of India report did not believe a word of it. Why would ISIS invade India? "They are planning to wash clothes haha."

The new media men. Image Source: Business Insider.

The ISIS reality - in which beheadings are the norm and most of Syria flees the ISIS advance, while ISIS fighters cross the Sinai Peninsula, other ISIS groups close in on Jordan and Lebanon, and the Saudis build a giant anti-ISIS wall along their border with Iraq - brings 20th century lessons back to the table. The question is not where ISIS came from, who funded them, or who can destroy or control them. The question is: what is ISIS? The Islamic State is bigger than the great power politics out of which it grows. ISIS turns the post-apocalypse into a pre-apocalypse. Their colourful armageddon includes a baby cyclops Antichrist and a Jesus who will supposedly resurrect to help them fight Israel, although the story ignores bits of Islamic prophecy they do not like. So - they are not as doctrinaire as all that. ISIS fighters represent something larger than an internal Islamic Sunni revolution. The medium is the message: their mythological doomsday brand is a perfect commodity to go viral in the market of global communications. What is ISIS? The Islamic State's media men are anti-history pioneers, who explore how far they can go, now that history - at least in the virtual realm - is dead. The Islamic State fills the gaps between the state-centric real world and virtual anti-statism.

Technology and the Internet allow any history to be rewritten, erased or disbelieved, and in the resulting environment, anyone can do anything. There are no limits. Pro-ISIS Websites dismiss reports of ISIS atrocities as online fakes. Malleable history initiates a power game around the creation of reality and enables a resurgence of violence. Malleable history awakens the shadow self in human nature.

Hallowe'en Countdown 2015: Post-it Note Enantiodromia

Images Source: tickld and John Kenn.

Danish children's television producer John Kenn Mortensen draws monsters on Post-it notes in his spare time under the alias Don Kenn. Obviously influenced by Edward Gorey, Mortensen's monsters are not Victorian or Edwardian, rather they are situated in the unconscious of the Millennial world, around suicide, child abuse, bullies, nightmares, a vengeful natural environment, ghosts of the past, and dreamlike beasts. Mortensen has a talent for capturing moments of extreme vulnerability and isolation in mundane circumstances, whether that involves nosy neighbours or a hike up a mountain. He also depicts situations in the everyday world where dangerous energy has accumulated. Some of Mortensen's Post-its remind me of Final Destination films, in which scares depend on hair-trigger coincidences, a vase left by a windowsill, a kettle boiling over near a sparking plug, the conversion of potential energy into kinetic energy.

To shed light on the messages behind Mortensen's doodles, consider the great Viennese psychoanalysts from the turn of the last century. Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) argued that most horrors stemmed from repressed sexuality. Alfred Adler (1870-1937) claimed they came from the will to power as an individual violently molded his or her personality. Adler's ideas inspired a typology to classify personalities as 'getters and learners'; 'avoiders' who are overtly successful but never take risks; 'leaders or dominants'; and the 'socially useful.'

Finally, Carl Jung (1875-1961), founder of the school of analytical psychology, believed that monsters emerged from conflicting opposites in our natures, some of which were confined to individual perception, some of which were universally shared. Jung defined these opposites as the conscious and unconscious, and hypothesized that in western culture, consciousness (associated with Freud's Ego) was dominated by thinking and sensory sensation. The remaining two impulses - emotional feelings and intuition - were repressed and driven underground into the western unconscious. In this way, a stark line was drawn in the west between body and heart. Even now, decades after Jung's death, those who bring elements of the psyche into the material world are deemed in the west to be artistic (at best) or insane (at worst). This was not the case, according to Jung, in eastern cultures. He ignored the "modernized east," but his work on traditional eastern religions and texts led him to conclude that the eastern cultures widely accept "psychic reality."

The unconscious - a pool of symbols shared by all cultures - became a paradox in the west. It could be harnessed and applied to creative endeavours and innovation. Or it could be repressed and unleashed to deal with threats. The Jungian western unconscious turned upon itself during the two World Wars; aimed outward, it could prove a hidden reserve of violent ruthlessness to ensure the survival of western societies. Either way, Jungian theory indicated that westerners remain obsessed with exploiting the constructive and destructive power of polarities. They define themselves in terms of inclusion and exclusion, in terms of an inner world and an outer world, ever mindful of the walls between.

Hallowe'en Countdown 2015: The Banality of Evil

Nazi Adolf Eichmann misused Kant's categorical imperative to defend himself at his 1961-1962 trial, stating that his atrocities were for his country's greater good, as legally defined by Hitler. Image Source: Wiki.

Welcome back after a blog break. At present, I am completing several projects, including a work of fiction. I want to thank readers of this blog who generously sent donations to support my attendance at the Bread Loaf Sicily writers' conference in September, as well as regular readers who support my writing here. Bread Loaf confirmed to me the value of the arts in times of transformation; when values change, traditions are overturned, and old political schools collapse, the arts find a new baseline in the chaos. The Italian Renaissance proved that an economy can expanded through renewed cultural vision; and thus the jump from prosperity to even greater prosperity depends upon perspectives enhanced by the arts. Critics have dismissed the arts and humanities as worthless luxuries in the past few years, but practitioners in these fields defeat misery, strife and exploitation by constantly seeking truths in the unknown.

Today, HoTTC starts another Countdown to Hallowe'en, the annual online event in which hundreds of blogs join together to count down the days of the harvest season in the northern hemisphere to mark the spooky end of October. In this fifth year that Histories of Things to Come joins the blogathon, the blog's ghosts and vampires will not always be present in their familiar forms. A ghost today might be a war zone freedom fighter, a political refugee, or a super soldier programme drop-out. A vampire could be a glamorous celebrity. A werewolf might manifest as an ISIS executioner. Most of my 2015 posts as Cryptkeeper - every third day this month - will examine darker sides of the commonplace. These are areas where the mundane drops away into uncertainty and fear. To start, here are some stories about the banality of evil from yesterday and today.

Away from Blog

"Day for Night is a cinematographic technique used by movie makers to shoot a scene in day light and make it appear to be night time." Dog Walkers © (2013) by H. David Stein was taken in bright sunlight. Image Source: H. David Stein.

I will be away from the blog completing other projects until October 1. The blog's Best Posts have been updated, here. See my Late Summer Interlude music selections from 2011, here.

Blue Moon Past: To Reincarnate, To Forgive?

The Omnipresence or Transcendent Reincarnation (2014) by George Grie. Image Source: neosurrealismart.

You cannot move into the future without first dealing with the past. And sometimes, you can only do that once in a blue moon. The glittering technology of the twenty-first century makes the past a persona non grata. It is a full time job to keep track of data in the present while dreaming of the future. There is no time to digest or assimilate past information and sort out how it relates to real life. Keep moving forward! Move into the eternal Now and discard the past as useless commodity, a broken toy. Even if that past was last week's past, get rid of it, dump it in the unsorted junkyard.

A blue moon refers to an extra full moon in the year. Twelve months normally have twelve full moons, but a blue moon (like tonight's) is a thirteenth moon in the calendar. In folklore, these moons are considered rare events which invite reflection, release and wishes. The 'blue' designation comes not from the colour, but from the Old English term 'belewe,' which meant 'blue' or 'to betray,' promising an intercalary or additional month, where there is none. Nevertheless, the appeal of the blue moon's pocket of hidden, extra time persists. Image Source: wallpapersinhq.

In the name of progress, the past is demonized and feared as a repository of unsolved or buried problems, atavism, regressive beliefs and reactionary politics which damage the Self and others. In the 1990s, it was popular for psychiatric patients to undergo therapies in which they suddenly remembered suppressed memories, manifested in the form of taboos such as incest. That anti-historical fashion 'proved' that the past is full of demons which bar our way forward; it is best to deny, erase and purge them so that we may constantly reinvent our identities en route to becoming shinier versions of ourselves.

No matter what future sirens call, you cannot reach them without facing the past. If you don't do the stock-taking and change course where necessary, human psychology has its little ways of transporting you back to the junkyard. The past will come alive again and pull you back on an eternal loop until you learn its lessons. The Hindus, Buddhists and Taoists call that loop Saṃsāra. The Christians call it Hell. The journey on the wheel rises or falls but always returns to square one: time becomes nihlistic, a flat circle. In the eastern tradition, iniquities repeat across many lifetimes. In the Christian view, iniquities repeat through the course of one life. In these belief systems, there are only two ways out of the loop: to reincarnate, or to forgive, in enlightened ways.

Image Source: Barnabas Charleston Ministries.

Summer's Nameless Emotions

Picture of man at night on Wall Street at night time. Photograph by Ashley Gilbertson. Image Source: National Geographic.

A heat wave here inspired today's collection of my best previous summer posts, along with Ashley Gilbertson's photo of Wall Street, above. All of these earlier posts explored summer's sultry, nostalgic or noir atmosphere and together illustrate one of the relationships between the environment and brain function, a cornerstone of cognitive science.

• Love in the New Millennium 6: Summer Solstice Stardust Reveries (21 June 2011)
• Midsummer's Simmering Collective Unconscious (22 June 2011)
• Summers Past, Summers Present (24 June 2011)
• Interlude: Sultry Summer Nights (18 July 2011)
• Heat Waves and Fraying Realities (21 July 2011)
• Welcome Midsummer's Unconscious (20 June 2012)
• Lovecraftian Heat Wave Film Night (6 July 2012)
• Photo of the Day: Lion's Head, Cape Town, South Africa (24 July 2014)

Psychoanalysts have particularly focused on nameless emotions as points at which experience moves past the capacity of language to describe it. See popsci's 2013 list by Pei-Ying Lin of twenty-one emotions for which there are no English words; and below, twenty-three emotions people feel, but cannot explain.

Image Source: Art of Manliness.

Happy Birthday, Emily Bronte

http://chatnoirco.wordpress.com/2012/01/13/psychological-profiles-of-wuthering-heights-characters/
http://marvmelb.blogspot.ca/2013/05/the-gun-alley-murder-part-1.html

Upgrade to Your New Personal Assistant

Image Source: imgur.

Microsoft is offering a free upgrade today to Windows 10 for all owners of Windows 7 and 8.1. Part of the free deal is Cortana, a virtual female personal assistant that collects all your data and sends it back to Microsoft. These are the paw prints of technocratic progress which may see states replaced by corporations, as described in this post.