Shrike 

I'm sitting here, somewhere north of Florence, south of Newport & east of the Pacific..

posted by jeremy on August 29, 2002

I've just seen my first whale ever. A plume of water shooting maybe 15 ft into the air far far out from the beach; Too far for it to have been just rocks. What kind of whale, I wonder & where you headed, big guy?

All of this magnificent & somehow melancholy beauty & all I can really think about is an argument I had at the bar with a friend 48 hours previous.

The Triple Nickel. 4 PM. The day is glorious & the bar is mostly empty. It's just Jeff, Rob & me drinking over-priced beers & playing 50 cent pool. The jukebox is choking out a weird mix of classic rock, reggae & white-boy art-rock.

I'm telling Jeff about an essay I wrote the previous evening. An essay I'd like to think tests the clarity of people's thinking concerning the semantics of race & culture.

It was inspired by my late-night browsing of the zine Fucktooth #22 & the subsequent meltdown I had from overexposure to the words: white, patriarchal, capitalist, collective, radical, mainstream, activism, hegemony, queer, hierarchy, oppression, revolution, supremacist, etc, ad infinitum.

& giving birth, basically, to a goadish, PC-challenged commentary on the amount of energy used by mostly Caucasian activists to find the proper semantics & frames of reference for non-honky races & cultures.... An essay written mostly to humor myself & offend those without a multi-faceted sense of humor & probably an essay that'll never see any form of critical praise....

Jeff isn't amused by this. "I think it's childish for you to attack the people whose side you're obviously on. You're creating divisions in the movement by writing such immature crap."

I consider this. First: That Jeff is the man who helped start that recent development in critical mass, the Return of the Wuss Ride. A separate ride created in reaction to the frustratingly stupid antics of 17 yr-old Âanarchist' kids. An almost understandable but still divisive tactic. Second: I recall the sheer amount of in-fighting, posturing, Machiavellian maneuvering & undeveloped political thought that I've been witness to in nearly every Ârevolutionary' group I've ever encountered & third:

"Jeff, c'mon, man, I'm writing a stupid fucking zine. I don't think I'm going to Âfragment the revolution.'

& there's already so much in-fighting I just want to get in on the fun that's already happening & I'm not on Âtheir' side. I'm not on anybody's side. I'm on my side & plus, I've probably got more in common with Rush Limbaugh than some of these Âpunk-rock' activists. I'm sick to death of fervent people. I'm sick of idealists. A fascist is a fascist. Right or fuckin' left."

Jeff looks at me, takes a swig of his beer & proceeds to tell me, in a well-practiced pedantic tone, that "....idealism. Well, idealism got us the forty hour workweek, the eight hour workday & our civil rights. If it wasn't for idealism you wouldn't be able to write what you're writing. You wouldn't be able to engage in many of the things you now enjoy...."

& here, Jeff is, in a manner, correct but..... but..... but what about the idealism of Christian & Islamic fundamentalist? What about the idealism of a certain National Socialist party that wormed its way into power in Germany back in 1933? What about the idealism of Stalinist communism? What about Pol Pot & his ideal Cambodia? What about Milosevic? Idealism is the driving force of intention but that doesn't mean that all intentions should be pursued. Or something like that...

"... cynicism never achieved anything, Jeremy, idealism did." finishes Jeff & all I can say? " I agree with you on this one, Jeff."

The designation of the word Cynic is almost always used in a derogatory context. I've never understood or agreed with this. I consider the dictionary's definition of Cynic: 1. A member of a sect of ancient Greek philosophers who held virtue to be the only good, & stressed independence from worldly needs and pleasures: They became critical of the rest of society and its material interest. 2. A cynical person. 3. A person who believes that people are motivated in all their actions entirely by selfishness. I can't say that I fall completely in line with definition 1, but except for the ancient Greek virtue part, I fall close enough & I nearly totally agree with definition 3. To me cynicism indicates a culmination of experience. It implies a form of caution, an unwillingness to easily accept things at face value.... & the exact definition of Ideal? 1. A conception embodying perfection. 2. An object which corresponds with such a conception; A perfect model. 3. Something that exists only in the mind. Beau ideal; An imaginary object without fault; A flawless pattern, model, example, or standard. I can only assume idealism to be an extension of naivete or in some cases, a tool of manipulation used by a few to control the many.

I think of the three rules of smart living as given to us by that old bastard, the grumpy but brilliant pulp philosopher, Robert Heinlein:

1) To make up your own mind, always.

2) To think it thru before doing so.

3) To get the facts before thinking.

"...cynicism never achieved anything, Jeremy, idealism did." This triggers something in me. I'm suddenly thinking of what might have never happened if certain humans, certain populations might have been more cynical, less prone to marching behind the visions presented them by a few very idealistic madmen. I'm considering what might be missing from history even now: The non-achievements of the cynics.

I'm looking out over this vast expanse of water, salt, & trace minerals; Of known & unknown biology; Of the eaters & the eaten; Of the hiders & the seekers; Of the sheer desperation & predatory beauty of all of this....

We hope for so much from ourselves. Us, the dominant species of the planet. The most ruthless predators to have ever evolved. The allosaur, the ravening packs of velociraptors, the saber-toothed tiger couldn't have held a spork to our collective potential for devouring other creatures. I look at the patterns of our history, our development as a species & I can only think, we are what we are. Not good, not evil, but simply alive.... We are, biologically speaking, newly sentient. As a whole, we are a confused, quarrelsome, & hungry if industrious species. We are prone to violence & just as prone to benevolence. We evolve & shift but we do not always evolve in the direction the moralist would hope for us. We are an enigma wrapped inside a mystery wrapped inside a trailer with satellite television.

I try to look at the human race with a detached eye. How can we treat each other like this? How can we treat other species like this? Have you ever read of our ancestors, Australopithecus Africanus? Quite possibly the most blood-thirsty apes to have ever run the savannahs of Africa. There has been evidence presented that this species used primitive clubs & spears to kill their prey. As R. Leakey said, "The use of weapons preceded man." I'm looking, also, at all the ferocious tendencies of other species. Some might say that animals kill only for food. Have you hung out with a pussy-cat recently? I've seen cats engage in acts so sadistic that Adolph Eichmann might have shuddered gazing upon them.

& what, o sweet fuck, of the shrike?

Terra: A planetary ecosystem composed largely of predators & prey. A system of energy extraction utilized by nearly one-third of all the creeping creatures that have ever lived. A planet with an incredibly cataclysmic & violent past, present & most likely.... future.

I'm watching a seagull tear the legs off a still-living crab & I'm not hoping for a utopia here. I hoping only that we might discover a few very important rules & implement them: 1) That poisoning, burning, hunting, chopping down, & harvesting the majority of the components of the biosphere to the point of collapse isn't exactly a brilliant idea. 2) That a nuclear war is an even less brilliant idea. 3) That wars between nations are just no fun for anybody & should probably be outlawed, but this is rather idealistic in itself unless we actually empower a supra-national entity to forcefully squelch such conflicts. An entity such as, lets say, the United Nations. 4) & that no one culture should overpower all the others in a manner such as an empire does. This would simply be boring in the long run. Look at America's far-reaching crush of blandness...

Other than that, as the Satanists say, do what thou will.

Jeff & I argue a bit more till I change the subject to something a bit less daunting. After all, the most difficult thing in this world is to change someone's mind when they are convinced of their rightness & when they believe in absolutes. & so, in this very action, I hope I'm making my final quiet point: That the cynics usually have the edge in realizing that their wants & desires have nothing to do with the course of this world, nor should they. The best tools for this existence are a sense of humor, a bit of detachment & a fuck-load of skepticism. Out of these combined should arise pragmatism, but thats another story.

& anyway, would it really make a difference in the six billion year history of this planet if I managed to convert Jeff over to my way of thinking? & do I really want to? The answer to that, my fellow bi-pedal apes, lies between the I & the L of inconsequential.