Walking Away
Long Walk, Short Pier

To be (here) or not to be (here); that is the question, or notion, or thought. [Whatever.] It has crawled inside my consciousness and taken up residence in one of the more prominent corners of my mind. It hunkers there, ready to spring into mishap at the first hint of doubt. It is an ogre with a history; harpies with siren songs of suicidal impediment; a macabre monster of manic mystery. It is doubt. It rots confidence and serene expectation. It reminds the paranoid that someone may, indeed, be out after them. It is the teacher of the today that has terror as headmaster.

Gaining adulthood is supposed to come with certain bargains: a good education is supposed to guarantee social station through gainful employment; the love of a spouse is supposed to lead to marital bliss; children are supposed to be insurance against loneliness traditionally a blessing that is supposed to pay in later years.
Although not guaranteed; Christian Social Orders in the Americas tend to sell these concepts as basic edicts. None of this, of course, is in any way true. There is no surety to any facet of life; beyond the bonds of agreement that binds one person to another (as in contract), or real peace that only comes from within oneself. Even then, the trust that binds, as a practical matter, is cemented by social law, formal and other. The latter may only come from the former, not the other way round.

Einstein proclaimed that, "God does not throw dice with humanity." He was correct because there is no Divine Power that gambles on the fate of Humankind. He was incorrect because life is a crap shoot (mostly). One answer to why God allowed the Attack of September 11, 2001 is that Divine Intervention works only on a spiritual plane, not in our physical reality. Bru-ha-ha regarding Free Will v. Predestination (so tritely presented by so-called religious thinkers) is a philosophic and moral cop-out. There is only the OverSoul, an Emersonian explanation of the universal threads that bind us all, one to the other. It is the "six-times-removed" explanation that handles the Rules of Karma, and Revenge, and Bad Luck. It is the energy that keeps a monarchy on a filthy throne, and sends armies marching in Crusades for stupid reasons. It allows Mugabi to remain in power. It raises Eminem to role of social commentator. Is this plausible explanation of what is going on?

The problem is identity. When a person attaches their actions to an idea that evokes such deeply held belief (as that seen commonly in Muslim society today), the identity of the individual may easily be lost as sacrifice to commonality. The same is true of governments, as seen in the former Soviet Union. On the other extreme, rejection of all social ideals leads only to the chaos of anarchy. The Muddle East has witnessed recent history to both extremes; true anarchy in Lebanon in the 80s, extremist attacks in Egypt in the 90s, and (besides in the Nations of Islam) in Ireland and America (and elsewhere) today.

In the Great Middle (between these extremes) ride many rainbows of social degree; each vying for influence, most dancing between a necessity to survive and some order of moral justice. When a group asks to control the identity of an individual, in order to gain an ideal or political goal, the result is always abortive and fundamentally flawed. However, individual resolve, that springs from an event as horrible as the Attack, may create an anger. That anger may fester a righteousness that denigrates conversation into discussion of a body count tally. Both conditions negate a future for either victor. Both are reasonable reaction to unreasonable circumstance.

Nationalistic jingoism springs of the emotions shocked by such events. Then it seems to lose its direction, except in minority groups with special interests (like revenge). There are other costs to consider, not the least of which is fiscal demands on an economy under severe scrutiny.

First are the interventions already underway throughout the Whirled. This week the War on Drugs discussions in the jungles of South America have broken off, dispite the long ardous tasks undertaken by American military in the region. This mirrored by the length of committment in the Balkans that was to be "one year" begins to formulate some mistrust in the words and deeds of political leadership. Notably different from those years of the Viet Namn War years, the artistic and scolastic communities seem equally as silent to protest truth against the lies given as gospel. And Enron looms.