Et Tu, Bruno

The new film Bruno, along with Antichrist, extends the limits of artistic expression in the latterly commercial form of cinema - albeit arthouse or pseudo-documentary. Listening to a recent radio programme discussing Eliot's common pursuit, a la Leavis, of a moral base for a society, I came to reflect upon precisely the absence of such a ground, today, in Britain, in 2009. These films - hilarious or horrifying as they may be - achieve their effects against a backdrop that is post-humanist, as well as post-Christian. They may almost be even post-atheist, for atheism at least despairs at loss, or celebrates reason's triumph.

Instead, these are films of a generation, digitally modified, that has come to believe in absolutely nothing, for five minutes at a time, and which cares less and less, as reaction and feeling are thinned out - simply, there is too much to do and see to take anything too seriously, even life and death and the full moral struggle those poles represent. I've seen Bruno, and I feel it is a work of comic genius, if only because Sacha Baron Cohen's physical moves are so brilliant and risky. However, his attempt to mock Christians and hicks (basically due to their woeful homophobia) avoids the obvious hypocrisy at the hard core of the film, which is that almost all the jokes are themselves heavily based on gross-out homophobic stereotypes. More scandalously, the jokes at the expense of a human foetus, and the use of babies (in relation to crucifixion and the Holocaust) are beyond tasteless.

As for Von Trier, I won't see this film, because female genital mutilation is not something I particularly condone; nor do I want to see a blood-ejaculation. But others may well want to - and the risk, and challenge, for cinema, is - is it art or entertainment, or the glamour of evil, to show people a) what they desire; or b) what they fear? Film has near-immortal power to present images that can do incalculable good, or evil. Unfortunately, unlike atomic power, which generated a cadre of moral scientists who rebelled against the unleashed force, the art world of cinema has generated very few moral critics to resist and question the force of film. Horror, rescued from mockery by theory, now seeks to celebrate and study the mise-en-abime, and is a welcomed genre, so much so, that the torture-porn genre has entered the French film bloodstream.

European movies are now often either about brutal sexual murder or degradation, or feature harrowing scenes. The body is an apt site for interrogation of the moral - for the body is either the seat of the soul or mind, or it is, to be nihilistic, and to speak the language of the video game, a meat puppet. If the body is only meat, then we live in a world of unlimited pornographic potential, as de Sade anticipated. However, this potential has a limit of its own, for bodies, when used up, are discarded - one can transgress only so far until your meat is pulp. There will need to be a turn towards the limit again. Some control, some moral shaping, within art, lends beauty and even, yes, decency, to life. Art which descends to the level of the braying crowds, or the perverted private peeping booths, is not an art for humankind, but for the inhuman kind.

As a postscript, it should be added this is not a new issue. The Sunday Times Culture section features a story on Rupert Everett's celebration of Lord Byron, who in some ways is the original Antichrist figure. Byron, it is cheerily reported in this article "tried to buy a 12-year-old" child for sexual purposes, at one stage of his long sex-tourism jaunt. I don't wish to spoil the fun - after all, the Byronic hero is part of every aspect of rebel culture from Nirvana to Brando, but this man was a sexual predator. I am not sure that moral relativism should grant this poet total amnesty, since even in his times, it was considered wicked to buy children for sex. This is a troubling area to think through.

On Sunday, I had dinner with a missionary's daughter from Papua New Guinea, who discussed the practices of a tribe who killed and buried their firstborn child under their huts, for protection. Such magical thinking may be anthropologically intriguing, but should it be resisted, even punished? Can moral relativism finally forgive Byron, and send contemporary child-buyers to prison? Culture sends ambiguous, perplexing mixed messages, and poetry is not immune from these temptations, hazards, and responsibilities.

Catholicism For Sinners

The news that the Vatican has accepted Oscar Wilde as a great 19th century thinker means his once-paradoxical title of Saint Oscar may one day be less ironic than all that. Wilde, on his deathbed, had time to complain about the wallpaper, and also raise his hand to accept entrance into The Church, an act alluded to at the end of Brideshead Revisted, that other supremely aesthetic achievement. Wilde saw the great beauty of Catholic ritual - Mass is one of the finest things a person can do, especially someone not talented enough to perform in Rigoletto. I agree with Wilde - sinners and saints do congregate meaningfully in a Church that comprehends the depths and heights of the human condition (the gutter and the stars). Wilde was a subtle extremist, how saw the pathos and passion in love and desire. His stories for children are the most moving in the English language, and utterly Christian. It is a great day for religious complexity when a mind as ambiguous and profoundly shallow, and utterly deep, as Wilde's, can be valued by the Vatican.

No More Unicorns

Richard Dawkins must be pleased with the emerging revelations that Michael Jackson appears to have been a cocktail-drunk drug addict, hopped up on numerous meds to keep the anxiety and despair at bay. After all - that's another myth gone - a genuine hero that people could love. Or maybe, Jackson was tarnished as long ago as 1995, anyway, and had no more to lose. Still, it rankles that Britain's top atheist has set up a summer camp for kids, where - I kid you not - there will be a prize for the best proof of the non-existence of unicorns. No doubt, they will also be taught (incorrectly) that there is no Father Christmas, too.

Now, it may be okay for Dawkins to peddle his sad and empty sophistry to adults, but surely he should resist the urge to hang with the kids, and steal what little wonder and innocence they have left. When adults do that to children, we have a name for it. Now, some may think taking a child's imagination is not a sin, so long as their parents have granted permission, but I wonder - isn't that frail and tentative thing called hope and wonder - that key aspect of being young - too-soon taken from us anyway?

Why encourage the young to kill their dreams, their beasts, their magic and their monsters, before 18? The adult world will tax them, will send them to war, and will subject them to mindless work - the least it can do is leave them alone until then. I have nothing against education, but there's that, then there's indoctrination. Dawkins is increasingly becoming a pest. When will Britain stop believing in him?

Speaker! Speaker!

For anyone interested in parliamentary debate - or democracy - today is truly historic. For the first time in 300 years a Speaker of the House of Commons (UK) has had to step down, basically because of near-total MP disdain. Of course, he is being scapegoated - most of them are, it turns out, greedy and corrupt, or maybe just unethical and inept - but we can't ditch every last rotten bum out, can we? The danger is - who do we replace them with? At a time when Obama is making American democracy seem invigorated by decency, intelligence, energy, culture, and high purpose, the lack of any potential British figure to step forward is a little astonishing. What has become so rotten in this state? And why?

I suspect a cultural rot: the media, and other elites, in business and politics, along with many in the upper class, have connived for years, or rather, simply let things happen with an invisible hand - to allow British culture to degenerate into a medley of celebrity, shagging, uneducation, aimlessness and booze, with some trendy and repulsive Britart and bad pop music tossed in too. Mostly misplaced is the essential decency of the English, and their sense of fairness - or rather, it is there, but paved over by crass and angry TV ("you're fired!") and a lazy atheism bolstered by obesity and indifference.

What needs to happen is that Britain reclaims its sense of purpose, and becomes a leading force for the coming Green Age. We need a new sort of political landscape, one less divisive and no longer about Labour or Tory. Greed is not good. God exists. Poetry, if trusted, might almost save us. In short, we need a 21st century Arnoldian vision.

Easter In England

Christ has risen, but not, it seems, in secular England. A quick look at the terrestrial TV listings for this long holiday weekend reveal no stone has been unturned, to present any even vaguely religious, uplifting, or redemptive shows. Where are any of the great Biblical TV or film epics of old? Or a family musical? Beyond the wasteland of cringingly-secular TV, turn to the pages of The Sunday Times - whose pages make no mention that this is the holiest day of the year for Anglicans and Catholics - hardly a complete minority of readers. Instead, lewd stories of brothels in Nazi-occupied France, and the latest sleaze from the Gordon Brown inner circle (which looks increasingly Nixonian) are paraded before us.

What has happened to England, and, more generally, to the UK? Its churches are half-empty - and so are its poetry readings. I see a connection (Eyewear always does, of course) between the ebbing of the sea of faith, and the decline in an interest in poems. Consider how many of the modern greats wrote religious or spiritual poems: Whitman, Dickinson, Hardy, Eliot, Auden, Prince, Dylan Thomas; even Wallace Stevens explored atheism with a sense of the numinous. There has been a lazy atheism at work in British popular culture since the 1960s that can be roughly linked to the easy hedonism of the rock and roll and comedy ethos. But life is not just a joke, or a three minute song, however perfect. After the sex, and the drugs, there are deeper implications, farther needs. I am not convinced that science, technology, or the entertainment industries have managed to find any magic bullets for that part of the self - call it a soul - which calls out for healing, and to love, often unconditionally.

Poetry, when joined to the sacred, can be empowered - and, indeed, even an honest struggle with faith - as one encounters in Hopkins, or R.S. Thomas - can be thrilling and profound. However, Larkin's surprsing hunger for the serious has been strip-mined by the British media - and blogs now feed this devil's banquet as much as the older formats. Yesterday, my neighbour rang my door at midnight to say to me "Happy Easter! God is dead!" - his idea of an atheist's prank. What a sad statement on the world of today. Eyewear tries to respect a variety of faiths, beliefs, and philosophies, but has little time for pure negativity, of any kind, especially when it seems aimed at merely cheapening the complex and various experiences of the inner life. Poets who deny the possibility of another world, or life, beyond this one, must surely be reducing their visionary range immensely. At any rate, however austere or low the horizon, the thing to do, one hopes, is to try and spot something better, ahead. Peace be with you.

Good Friday

The Good News

Caesar and Christ were not meant to be fused - one rendered to one precisely what the other had no earthly need for, secular power. However, on Palm Sunday, it seems a blessing in the open to hear news that the world's most powerful military leader has announced - even as utopian horizon of action - the idea of a nuclear-free world. Obama may do secular - but unlike Blair, he also seems to do a bit of God, too.

Like A Prayer

For those who want to feel old, consider this: today marks the 20th anniversary of Madonna's Number One Hit, "Like A Prayer" - in the sense that it stayed at #1 until Easter, on 26th March. The album, of the same title, is considered by many to be one of the greatest pop albums of all time, and the song itself - despite or because of its wedding of religiosity and carnality - is sometimes considered Madonna's finest.

Personally, I prefer "Dress You Up". Her claim that "life is a mystery / everyone must stand alone" is at once religious and nihilistic. The cover of the album is, itself, a striking example of this. Madonna is famous for her anti/Christian puns and dress sense - and in some ways matches Donne or Leonard Cohen, in that department. She also favours simile. "Like A Virgin", surely, forms the basis for this later song. Her "down on my knees/ I want to take you there" it should be said was substantially borrowed from "Tainted Love".

Is Madonna ironic? Hard to say - she is very blatant, and obviously a materialist, pragmatist, and capitalist. Her 80s and 90s excesses (this song the bridge) are somewhat unfashionable now. Still, she remains, 20 years on, a superb entertainer (and dubious moralist) - and a user of paradox. In some ways, Madonna is an heir to Wilde - the use of masks, and outrageous statement, and sexual motifs concealed barely by overwrought style. Wilde's "The Decay of Lying" from 1889 - 120 years ago - perhaps tells us what we need to know of Madonna's art: Art never expresses anything but itself .

Motion Unbound

Andrew Motion has been a poet laureate that Eyewear could deal with - in the way that Pound had commerce with Whitman.

Motion has been good - more or less - for poetry in Britain, 1999-2009. His most important work may have been his poetry about bullying, and the Iraq War (related themes), but for most people, the Poetry Archive will seem the lasting monument. I personally regret never having been asked to record for that Archive, but then again, nothing about the poetry establishment in the UK will ever surprise me - I have lived here for over 6 years, and am still treated like an arriviste every day.

Anyway, back to Motion, whose support of my work with Oxfam and those poetry CDs was instrumental. His agreement to read at the first-ever Oxfam event way back in 2004 (five years ago now) meant that Wendy Cope also came onboard, as well as Agbabi and Dark. After that event, all the other great and talented poets were more willing to appear. I think Motion is a very fine, serious poet, and a complex, deeply intelligent, and sensitive man. I also think he is somewhat old-fashioned, but in a flexible and open-eyed way; he tried to more than cope with the rapid changes of our times - and embraced new poetics, and media, more often than not.

This post is occasioned by his article in The Guardian, today, marking his coming retirement. It's refreshingly honest, though perhaps still guarded (more will come later I assume). For one thing, he suggests that Hughes' "great poet" status may be a disservice to the man and work (which is ironic, since no one has done more in these isles to establish Heaney's great poet status than Motion, with, I think similar results there).

Another thing he points out is how negatively journalists, even the top editors, approach poetry, and poems - they are not news, and to be news, they need to be mocked or undermined. I have a similar thought. Recently, after launching The Manhattan Review Young British Poets anthology in London - and the night was a resounding success - a journalist approached me, to say he had wanted to write an article for The Sunday Times about the new generation of young poets, but his editor "didn't like poetry and thought it was dead" so had killed the story.

Too many UK journalists are sour on poetry, and infect the good news with their own toxins. In this way, the lively and burgeoning poetry communities of the UK, in all their variety and passion are daily diminished.

I agree with Motion that poetry, as he writes today, is an essential aspect of being human - or can be. Religion, poetry, myth, dance, music, drawing - all such "primitive" aspects of our imaginative existence tend to be shunted aside in a world devoted to management-speak, consumption and commerce, and science on the march - which is tragic, especially now, at a time when it is becoming evident that industry and science has gifted the world with an unpayable bill, and global warming may - Heaven forbid! - destroy us.

One thing nags at me, though, about Motion's complaint that writing engaged lyric poems about the Royals was taxing (for him, nearly impossible apparently) - it seems hard to fathom. I don't understand it, myself. Obviously, Motion believes poems must be occasioned by organically-sympathetic experiences, in much the same way as Wordsworth. If he followed the more mechanistic line of Larkin, let alone someone more ludic, or artifice-interested, like VF-T, he could well have created fascinating texts about the Royal Family - unmoored from any personal connection, true, but no less poetic in their exploration of language. The connection between spontaneous inspiration and poetic achievement that Motion inscribes in this essay will, in a small way, limit how poetry is understood in Britain - or, rather, reinforce 200-year-old beliefs.

Ash Wednesday

Bring Back The Myth Kitty!

In what must surely be one of his last radiophonic interventions, before retiring soon, the greatest Poet Laureate of the last fifty years (and beyond), Andrew Motion, has been at it again, today on the BBC, arguing for a need to study The Bible, for its "great stories" - in order to appreciate "Western Literature".

This is Descartes before the horse, surely. Western Literature once was designed to help appreciate The Bible. More to the point, as someone who believes that some of The Bible is "true", I must wonder at how much can be gained from merely cherry-picking the exciting bits (and there are a lot).

Turning to a major Holy document to find adventure tales is like recommending Playboy for the articles on Existentialism - they're there, but not really the crux. I think Motion, a self-described atheist, is sensing a truth, though - people coming to university to study "literature" are now, often, culturally illiterate. Reading, itself once the bottom line of studying English, is now secondary to - what? Well, reading for many is boring, and something they don't do.

I am not sure that parachuting Bible studies into such a mob would help much. It might be better to start them on Twain or Hemingway. Nor is it the case that all literature requires The Bible - or even Myth - to be appreciated. Larkin is a case in point. He eschewed most of the infamous "myth-kitty" and managed to generate remarkable poems that - while gesturing sometimes at transcendence - find their horizon in the bleak and present now of particularity, observed through horn-rimmed specs.

Do I want more students to read more of The Bible? Yes, I do. Will that arrest the massive decline in the interest in poetry and literature among the young? I doubt it.

God On The Bus

As a thoughtful opinion piece in The Guardian today observes, there is something just a little arrogant about well-educated middle class (and super-rich celebrity) liberal atheists pooling their resources to place atheist advertisements on the side of London's buses, which tend to be used most often by older, and working class (and often religious) people. The campaign, welcomed by some Christians as provocative, is intended to celebrate the feelgood factor of a universe without a God - and is weakened by the fact that a) the statement is wishy-washy (the famous probably) and b) almost all literature of existential atheism (and deism) since the 1800s has observed that a godless universe, albeit a possibility, is hardly a walk in the park - but instead a terrifying void that demands active, creative human engagement to fill.

The idea that new-look atheism simply commands us to "relax" - like some 80s pop slogan - is unfortunate and unimpressive. Instead, the challenge for atheists, and religionists alike, is surely to become active, in the face of a world of very real, and immediate problems - often the result of enlightenment projects like industrialisation, capitalism, and nationalism, that were encouraged by the turn to reason under British empiricism, that smug outrider of British imperialism.

In this year of Darwin, and his "Big Idea", where are the smaller, more complex ideas humanity needs to cope with environmental and cultural degradation, at the hands of very many very selfish people, all rushing about without much thought for the future? Meanwhile, as this article goes on to remind us, the President-elect is a Christian - and also happens to be one of the only hopes we currently have. Given the symbolic and actual role that buses played in the faith-driven civil rights movement in America, there is something unimaginatively glib, even crass, about advertising atheism on buses in the UK, especially at the moment when Dr. King's dream has come to pass - thanks to a God-believing man.

And To All A Goodnight

What a year. Eyewear, for one, is glad to take some time off with family and friends, sit by the yuletide fire, and listen to some sleigh bells - or some such version available in these isles. It's been a time-wasting pleasure to continue this ephemeral blog, and thanks to you, my readers, it makes sense to keep on keeping on doing it. For now. But not anymore, in 2008. The next few weeks belong to deeper magic, the time-tested recourse to seasonal contemplation, festivity, joy, and celebration, that is Christmas. At the peak of the year, at its darkest moments, in its wintry chill - light and warmth and fellow-feeling is both right and good. Then comes a new year. And that too, brings its needful ceremonies. See you then, and there! To paraphrase Les Murray, I wish you God this holiday season. Or a reasonable facsimile thereof. Love, for a start. And health. Wealth? Bah-humbug! That's proven even more ephemeral, hasn't it?, than blogs.

Poetry and religion

There is something dispiriting - literally - about Nick Laird's latest column in this weekend's Guardian Review (the Review lists Tuesday's Oxfam event in London, by the way, and also features a best of the year book roundup, which might be of interest to readers of Eyewear) - in how he discusses his lost faith - and subsequent attempt to find it in poetry. Faith isn't just lost. Faith is like a radio that needs to be constantly tuned - sometimes, the faintest signals of possibility can be detected, at other times, it is all a fuzz.

When one entirely loses faith, one is in a sense saying something about the human soul: that there isn't one. Otherwise, if one still believed that, then not all would be lost. Nihilism and poetry reached an exquisite dead-end in the darkly fascinating morgues and flesh of Gottfried Benn. Laird, though, seeks to argue that poetry can replace, even supplant religion - not a new thought, surely. Keats thought this. Wallace Stevens exemplified it. And Heaney continues the modern-romantic quest to achieve epiphany in the world, not beyond it. So too, does Ashbery, in abstract indeterminate ways. Most poets these days are atheists, or non-God-types, who place a lot of store in pure poetry, to achieve the lift-off their discarded faith (or religion) can no longer supply.

Poetry, though, is not a sturdy belief system, nor does it supply the constant sources of wisdom, warmth, and illumination, that a religious, or spiritual, belief system can. Poetry, in the occult hands of a Yeats, has immense symbolic resources, and can yield extraordinary instances of illumination (Bloom speaks of such sublime instances in Emerson, or Whitman) - but poetic visions are rarely sustainable coherent systems capable of assisting one through all of life's natural cycles of joy and grief.

Lord knows, poets try. Poetry, however, is a handmaid to religion - as in the work of later Donne, or Hopkins. Poetry finds words for things that may not have words beforehand. But it isn't those things, itself. Beyond language: a mystery. In that mystery, perhaps, a God. I wish Laird well on his journey to map a search, with science and language as his guides. One day, the poet who seeks a new religion may find an old faith waiting for him, where his journey began.

Weird Scenes Inside The Bank Vault

Truly, these are historic, and strange days, indeed. Last night, Presisdent Bush appeared to speak to the "American people" - his microphone slightly muffled - and warned that the markets were no longer working correctly and needed to be fixed by massive government intervention; coming from a right-wing Republican, that's like Seamus Heaney asking Ron Silliman to edit his next poetry collection. Pretty unlikely, dude.

So, back in England, respected Churchmen have decided to take a page from The Cantos, and bee-in-bonnet Ezra, and start suggesting money trading is very dodgy - except, not really from Ezra's perspective at all, but rather, early Auden's. Marx has not been in such an ascendancy since the days of MacSpaunday.

Eyewear has long argued that a fusion of Marxism and Christianity (often known as Liberation Theology) was the best ethical position to adopt in a world of inequality, especially as it grounds Christ's teaching on a horizon of human need. Therefore, I am glad to see Rowan Williams wading in to these waters, at this time. However, established churches, who do use the capitalist system for their own purposes, should not cast the first stone, unless their vestments, as well as investments, are lily white.

The world shall come to Walsingham

Today is the feast-day of Our Lady of Walsingham.

As Robert Lowell wrote, in his great, grandiose, Four Quartets riposte, "The Quaker Graveyward In Nantuckett":

VI

OUR LADY OF WALSINGHAM

There once the penitents took off their shoes
And then walked barefoot the remaining mile;
And the small trees, a stream and hedgerows file
Slowly along the munching English lane,
Like cows to the old shrine, until you lose
Track of your dragging pain.
The stream flows down under the druid tree,
Shiloah's whirlpools gurgle and make glad
The castle of God. Sailor, you were glad
And whistled Sion by that stream. But see:

Our Lady, too small for her canopy,
Sits near the altar. There's no comeliness
At all or charm in that expressionless
Face with its heavy eyelids. As before,
This face, for centuries a memory,
Non est species, neque decor,
Expressionless, expresses God: it goes
Past castled Sion. She knows what God knows,
Not Calvary's Cross nor crib at Bethlehem
Now, and the world shall come to Walsingham.

Science and Religion Collide

The big bang you're hearing is the noise of science and religion colliding, in the UK. The resignation, today, of a respected scientist, who also happens to be a Christian, from an important scientific post, because he suggested that creationism too could be taught in schools, alongside the theory of evolution, is a shame. Dogmatic anything is bad news: whether that be theism, atheism, or Darwinism. Clearly, evolution, a highly-robust theory, is assumed to be true, though unverified - but does not rule out the value of appreciation of alternate views on how the universe and sentient life in it came into being. There are versions of creationism (intelligent design, for instance) that are complex enough to dovetail with science, and surely some aspects of creationism are symbolically, if not philosophically, intriguing - for instance, the idea that nothing comes from nothing, or that, at the start, some being or great force conceived of existence itself. Science should not rule out the possibility of a God - God (separate from how religions may define her) - could co-exist within the natural laws as we so far know them to be. Religion and science work better in tandem, not in glorious isolation, where fanaticism breeds contempt.

The Big Turn On: Not With A Bang

The BBC news (radio 4) had live coverage this morning of the turning on of the variously-named machine that will measure how the universe began. After the muted cheers and handclaps of the scientists (mostly, alas, men), champagne was passed around. It felt like the moon-landing, but somehow in reverse - all the fun was being had in the control room. This subterranean, coiled monster of an experiment may destroy the world, later today, or sometime soon - or instead merely explain how it was created.

In many ways, it recalls Eliot's poetry - the murder and create dichotomy is strong with science. Hopefully, our end will not, though, be in our attempt to find our beginning. It's been said, by the media, who like metaphors they can sleep with, that this is like a "cathedral", and that the search is for a "god particle" - but science, more often than not, peels back the layers where the onion god makes us cry, exposing less, not more.

What will the first things of the world be like? Meanwhile, let me suggest another sort of experiment. Take down and open an anthology of 20th century English-language poetry. Read its massive 1,000 plus pages. Tell me the mind and emotions of men and women are not engineered by souls. The spark of God is in language - poetry already curves us back to the big bang everytime it runs well, widely, true and around.

The Tudors: Watching For Love-Cars

The Tudors is an abomination. Eyewear does not dismiss all televisual eyecandy - seriously immoral, or moral, viewing, both have their offerings to consider. However, amoral TV is the most grievous harm, to body and soul. It drips cynicism like some circus barkers do sweat.

Last night's (on British terrestrial) episode of the Tudors was simply bad karma in two dimensions. It purported to engage with the tragic, moral martyrdom of Saint John Fisher and Saint Thomas More, at the hands of pragmatic Protestant king Henry VIII (here slimmed down to a lithe sexual predator with a nu-metal band member's facial hair) - and their fine splitting of theological and political hairs, regarding conscience, and obediance (church and state matters); while, equally, celebrating the bedroom romping of a king whose finger merely has to crook to conquer young starlets.

This approach may make good TV (after the watershed) - but sits poorly with the solemn, heart-rending bloodshed whacked down upon the heads of good Christian thinkers. It is as if The Sopranos were wedded to a series about the Council of Nicea. I understand the commercial appeal of sex and execution - but surely, it was a cynical edit to follow the beheading of good Cardinal Fisher with Michelangelo's profane holler of "asshole!".

Naked Aggression

Those considering "human nature" or "civilisation" (opposed ideas, if not ideals) might note how paper thin good human behaviour can be. The current war between Russia and Georgia seems to point to the obvious: where international law is concerned, power is the ultimate rule.

Eyewear notes, that, despite our best efforts to concoct uplifting sporting, artistic, and religious events and artifacts to the contrary, most of human action is governed by a desire for control, and a fear of those stronger than us - at least on the world stage. How else to explain the way in which nations of the world are perpetually governed by those content to utilise all force necessary, to compel agreement?

It is a depressing thought, but the 00s are beginning to look a lot like the 30s - a decade of bad economies, and aggressively militaristic leaders the "West" is unable, or unwilling, to take on directly. The current war in the Caucasus may end soon - or it could boil over. Dick Cheney has sounded bellicose, and Georgia is, after all, a key American ally - its borders are a line in the sand. All these leaders, thugs by another name, throwing boulders at each other in paleolithic twilight - one wants to say, when will we grow up? It may not work like that.

Whether genetic, or learned, or somewhere in between, human culture's two-faced visage, Mozart and the death camps, is putting intolerable pressure on the future of human existence: natural resources have become depleted, and nation states aren't getting any less eager to throw their weight around. What wars does the 21st century have to look forward to? Who is going to stop them?

Obama (who will likely be defeated in this more warlike moment) is as bellicose as his rival. Wars are coming, and the priests split hairs over gay marriage, and the poets tussle over form and content. Civilisation better get thicker, fast. Or it'll be shredded. The animal beneath may be an osprey with a triggered claw.