Mind Fields – Cannabis Can And Sometimes It Can’t

Posted: February 4, 2022 | Author: artrosch | Filed under: Commentary, Mind Fields, Opinion | Tags: Arthur Rosch, Cannabis, Commentary, Mind Fields, Social Commentary, Writing to be Read | Leave a comment

I started smoking marijuana at fifteen. At that time, marijuana was simply Pot. Weed. It was Reefer, Dope, Ganja. Sometimes it was just Shit. It was so hard to obtain that we went to dangerous housing projects like Jefferson Barracks or East St. Louis.. These are rough ghetto neighborhoods. Here’s the classic scenario: drive to East St. Louis, to a certain intersection. A man will be there at nine p.m. taking orders. Give the man your money. Pull around the corner and wait in the car. Half hour goes by and everyone who passes gives you the skank eye. Wait in the car. Another twenty minutes pass. Shit, did the fucker burn us and bail? There’s more skank eye from the locals. A nondescript Ford rounds the corner, driven by a white man in a fedora. “Get down, that’s a narc!” We hunch down over the drive shaft. The man could be anybody. Probably not an officer of the law. We laugh nervously: maybe he’s scoring weed, too. Haha.

I’m about to call it a night, write it off to misery when the connection shows up, rapping quietly on the steamed-up window. He’s palming a baggie. Whew, Groovy. Thanks, man. There are more side-eye looks than a herd of horses as the connection sneaks off.

Now it’s called Cannabis. From old habit when I talk to myself I call it Weed. But…hey… It’s the majestic Cannabis. It’s not a weed. I won’t call it that any more.

I could write about cannabis all day. One thing that stuns me (aside from the THC) is the post-legalization culture that has arisen in a few short years. The explosion of new ways to consume cannabis is one aspect of this cultural eruption. Would you have dreamed, twenty years ago, that you would go to the “pot store” to get your cannabis? THAT IS CORRECT! I go to the POT STORE! WARNING: it can get expensive. Some of the marketing is clever and ‘scammy’. The research for this article has cost me a couple hundred bucks. Pot is getting the late-capitalist treatment and is being commodified in ways inventive beyond the craziest dreams of any baby boomer. There are vape pens full of THC. There are Resins, waxes, elixirs, inhalers, collectors, nectar tubes, dab nails, glass in a thousand exotic shapes: this stuff Is appearing at breakneck speed, overwhelming in its complexity if not hilarity.

Oh…cannabis…wonderful cannabis, the jazz musician’s vitamin. I have smoked in many cars of vintage breed. They were not, at the time, vintage. Back in the day we called our vehicles “shorts” i.e. Where’s your short, man? I parked it around the corner: Continentals. Thunderbirds. Gran Prix, Impalas. Our shorts loom large in our fantasies of past reefer madness because they were often the only places we could smoke pot. My dopey memories of the 60s occur in some car or other, some parking lot or street in some disreputable part of town.

I never thought I would be able to light up on the street in broad daylight. Now we have cannabis named for every kind of wacky idea that marketers can devise. Here are a few brand names: OG Skunk Cult, Canna Candy, Fumero, Caldera, Purple Phase, Errl’s Oil. Here’s one: Guava Fig X Face Mintz Extract.

In 1965 ten bucks got me a matchbox of Mexican grass. The name brands were Michoacan and Panama Red. There were Thai Sticks. Sometimes I could get hash from Nepal. An ounce of grass was called a “lid”. Three and a half lids are an eight ball. Back in the matchbox days it was either a nickel bag or dime bag. This is sixties stuff, I’m jamming with Jimi, not Fats Waller.

Legal weed is a fucking explosion! The pot store looks like a bank! Maybe it was a bank before it became the Pot Store. Yeah, that’s it. The packaging for the inventory is on display in cases against two walls while the cashiers occupy windows at waist-high counters around the other two walls. The merchandise is offered in all its colorful boxes, jars, droppers, cartridges and spliffs. Twenty-five-year-old cannabis experts talk to customers about the products. This strain of cannabis, the cashier explains, has such and such a percentage of THC ratio to CBD. This one has 88.5% THCV. This one’s good for pain, this one’s good for sleep, this one won’t increase your appetite, this one will. We get new terpenes every six months.

Now we have designer dope for the elite. Ninety bucks for a one gram jar about the size of a quarter. Shee-it! Weed should not be expensive! Never never. Stop it!

I get my dope from a dude named Steve who lives in an RV at the corner of Colegio and Runyon. It comes in baggies. No boxes no jars. Ten bucks for a big bag of buds. That’s more than a lid.

That’s Old School.

_____________________________

Arthur Rosch is a novelist, musician, photographer and poet. His works are funny, memorable and often compelling. One reviewer said “He’s wicked and feisty, but when he gets you by the guts, he never lets go.” Listeners to his music have compared him to Frank Zappa, Tom Waits, Randy Newman or Mose Allison. These comparisons are flattering but deceptive. Rosch is a stylist, a complete original. His material ranges from sly wit to gripping political commentary.

Arthur was born in the heart of Illinois and grew up in the western suburbs of St. Louis. In his teens he discovered his creative potential while hoping to please a girl. Though she left the scene, Arthur’s creativity stayed behind. In his early twenties he moved to San Francisco and took part in the thriving arts scene. His first literary sale was to Playboy Magazine. The piece went on to receive Playboy’s “Best Story of the Year” award. Arthur also has writing credits in Exquisite Corpse, Shutterbug, eDigital, and Cat Fancy Magazine. He has written five novels, a memoir and a large collection of poetry. His autobiographical novel, Confessions Of An Honest Man won the Honorable Mention award from Writer’s Digest in 2016.

More of his work can be found at www.artrosch.com

Photos at https://500px.com/p/artsdigiphoto?view=photos

______________________________________

Want to be sure not to miss any of Arthur’s “Mind Fields” segments? Subscribe to Writing to be Read for e-mail notifications whenever new content is posted or follow WtbR on WordPress. If you find it interesting or just entertaining, please share.

Mind Fields – The Ideas of A Morning

Posted: January 28, 2022 | Author: artrosch | Filed under: Commentary, Mind Fields, Opinion, Reflections, Uncategorized | Tags: Arthur Rosch, Life Reflections, Mind Fields, Writing to be Read | 1 Comment

I value originality. It requires a level of commitment and a sense of one’s self as being unique and talented. At some base level NO ONE is truly original but in the world of human expression, of artistic and technical feats that are part of our culture, there are individuals who stand out as being special. They have hewn materials out of the core of their selves, and the results are striking and unprecedented. It is the unprecedented nature of the creations that forms the matrix of originality.

The Primacy Of Memory

There is a moment in life as one grows older that the memory recreates all the life’s experiences as if for the first time. Re-living my life from the sheltered glade of memory has been a rich meditation. What did I do and why did I do it? Observing behavior that was inexplicable at the time but contemplation later reveals why something happened. At no time have I lost a firm conviction that higher powers are always at play in the Self and that these powers design with great wisdom all that shall befall the sole witness to this life and that is one’s Self. The events in a life are far from pointless: they are signboards on a journey of profound discovery. Having a deep faith in that idea has enabled me to survive otherwise insane events that boiled up from within myself. When the psyche accepts full responsibility for the unfolding life it gains a power that shows itself in acts of compassion. Some of the work of compassion is restraint from judging people and events without consulting the context in which their behavior forms. Sometimes it is needful to discern and this discernment is a form of placing a context over the specific acts and ideas that carry the consequences of thinking. ALL thinking is consequential. Thinking is the most important thing one does and the skill brought to thinking shows development of the soul’s concept of itself. If you are going to think, it is wise to learn HOW to think and WHAT to think about.

Watching The Domino

We ordered a pizza for delivery. In twenty years, we’ve never ordered food to be delivered so this was a special birthday gift. What set this apart was the experience of tracking the delivery driver’s trajectory as he wound his way through the complicated streets of our neighborhood. We sat watching the phone in fascination as the vehicle’s icon reflected the driver’s turns and twists as he negotiated the neighborhood looking for the right place. This went on for ten minutes and we became like cheerleaders hoping for our team to score. We were thrilled when he came onto our driveway and broke out in cheers as this ordinary experience of modern tech showed us that it worked and that it was, indeed, completely ridiculous.

Mind Fields – People Are Crazy

Posted: January 7, 2022 | Author: artrosch | Filed under: Commentary, Mind Fields, Opinion | Tags: Arthur Rosch, Mind Fields, Social Commentary, Writing to be Read | 3 Comments

People are crazy. Many people who are crazy don’t know they’re crazy. They think that they are right, and that their form of crazy should be everyone’s crazy.

That’s crazy. Right? NO! We’re all wrong, most of the time! It would be nice if people could admit this fact. If we examine the history of human beings it looks like a traffic jam of midget cars where everyone jumps from the cars as if they got caught stealing them. They shout “That’s not my car! I’ve never seen that car before.”

This is not my planet! I’ve never seen this planet before! The very nature of life on this world is that humans get the wrong ideas about things that should be easy to understand. Those who don’t recognize their instability are dangerous. People who don’t recognize their craziness have few brakes. At some time or place such people can do terrible harm. They harm people who are crazy in a different way. We can inquire about Germany in the 30s and 40s. In today’s world Germany is known as a refuge for the dispossessed, a humanitarian engine of liberal democracy. Eighty years ago Germany was in the throes of a mass psychosis that turned the state into a killing machine.

This form of psychosis is always available to cultures. It’s there, waiting for the right conditions. It will burst forth and flourish for a while as it does its murderous business. Then it vanishes, only to revive in another time and place. Cultural psychosis is part of the human condition; it’s an undercurrent that feeds on poverty and distress. It thrives on income inequality, builds on the resentment of disenfranchised classes.

We’re ripe for another one. God forbid, as my grandma used to say. God forbid we should replay genocidal brutality like Nazi Germany, or Cambodia, Rwanda, Armenia, Bosnia. The United States with its native Americans, The Turks against the Greeks. God forbid. I pray that I’m wrong but I feel that looming presence, that evil spirit that is like a parasite fattening on its millions of aggrieved Americans who have not a single clue that they are insane. They have nothing to complain about. They are housed and fed, they have health plans, the very poorest of them are better off than anyone was a hundred years ago. You can’t convince them that they’ve got a good deal going. They’re certain that they’re being screwed. We sit atop a festering insanity that has been in America since before its founding, when vast crimes by white Europeans were enacted on the whole population of the western hemisphere.

God forbid. It’s a comfort to think that things have changed, that maybe a threshold has been crossed by human nature itself, that we’ve learned from our past sins, that we have EVOLVED. Isn’t that possible?

I don’t know. I won’t pronounce this salvation as a done deal. Something IS different. Our children are different; they do things that were impossible. They move their bodies in new ways, they think in new ways. I don’t regard myself as a cynic but I am jaded. I’ve seen too much horror.

It isn’t one thing or another. We’re neither saved nor doomed. We are continuing the story of life on earth. The planet keeps turning and it will turn for another several billion years. The drama of human life unfolds in its many chapters. Yes, we are crazy. History is a book of insanity, a review of the irrational.
Good judgment and reason break out in little pockets. They seldom last long.

The United States Of America is ripe for deep horrible craziness. I tremble for my children.

__________________________________________________________________

More of his work can be found at www.artrosch.com

Photos at https://500px.com/p/artsdigiphoto?view=photos

_____________________________________________

Mind Fields – Overdose!

Posted: December 17, 2021 | Author: artrosch | Filed under: Commentary, Mind Fields, Opinion | Tags: Arthur Rosch, Drug Use, Mind Fields, THC, Writing to be Read | Leave a comment

I didn’t think one could overdose on cannabis.

I was wrong. You can. I did.

I use tincture that I buy from a local grower. It wasn’t the tincture’s fault. I made a mistake. The bottle comes with an eye dropper for dosage measurements and this particular bottle was so low on tincture that I couldn’t fill an eyedropper. So I simply up-ended the thing and poured it down my gullet. That’s not even a dose’s worth, I thought, and proceeded to add another half dropper from a new bottle.

Uh oh.

I’ve been a hard core doper for much of my life and cannabis didn’t scare me one little bit. The most egregious overdose I ever had was with pharmaceutical Ketamine. Oh lord, that was dangerous. I made a perilous mistake and measured out a decimal point one too many after reading the Physician’s Desk Manual. I guess I wasn’t tracking too well even before taking the drug. That decimal point represented a ten times overdose.

After taking that stuff, I became completely dissociated. I was alone in the house. I sat in front of a candle, too terrified to move, while the candle burned down from its top to a mere stub. It was dark when I took the ketamine. It was light by the time I recovered enough to take stock and shake myself out of the trance.

That was my most profound and wretched experience in a lifetime of drug abuse. Until yesterday. I didn’t have enough awe for the cannabis tincture. I should have known better.

I proceeded with my normal day of chores and piano practice until I was pretty bone tired. I retreated to the bedroom, where I joined my wife for some late afternoon TV watching.

I began to roll around inside my body. That was very strange. I felt VERY STRANGE and somewhat close to a state of panic. My cognitive ability retreated to a little corner of mind. About ten percent of me was still present. In that corner I recognized that I had taken too much THC tincture. I could use that ten percent to get out my tool box for the treatment of anxiety. Deep breathing. Yoga. Everything. The alternative was simply panic.

My wife recognized that I was in an odd state. She is forbearing and reluctant to interfere in my escapades. I had to slide the words out of my mouth. “I am feeling very dissociated.”

I was confused. Where am I? I had to ask of myself. What is that? I was referring not so much to the TV but the programming that was on it. I recognized one of our favorite shows, a veterinary adventure, but I couldn’t connect with the content. I wanted to. It seemed petty and ridiculous in light of my emergency. I tried to explain it to Fox.

“Too much THC”. I struggled to form the words. Fox got the message.

“Can I help?” I didn’t know what to tell her. The idea of food crossed my mind. It might dilute further enhancement. It might bring me down. I wanted to come down. “Can you…banana dr…drink?”

“Don’t move from there,” she cautioned wisely. I didn’t move. I felt the urge to get up, but I listened to what my astute partner said.

It’s easy to say, “I was sooo fucked up!” What does that mean? There are a billion versions of “fucked up” and some of them are not great. I was so fucked up that my very consciousness was tied in a knot. I didn’t know where “here” was. I didn’t know whether or not I was “here”.

For further reference, it’s a good idea to know that you are “here”. Not knowing is a weak place, it’s ghostly and things can knock you over. I don’t want to ever get knocked over by anything.

I am HERE.

The Many Faces of Poetry: 74

Posted: December 10, 2021 | Author: artrosch | Filed under: Poetry, The Many Faces of Poetry | Tags: Arthur Rosch, Poetry, The Many Faces of Poetry, Writing to be Read | 3 Comments

November 13, 2021

Old.

I am old.

Why is that so good?

I have a lot of experience.

That’s part of it. Experience

gives perspective. The mature mind

knows how swiftly things change,

how needless is the stress we impose

upon ourselves.

Old

means closer to death. Thoughts of death

sometimes visit. I have no problem with

death. Once, I would have raged at the prospect

of dying invisibly, and all my creations vanished. Never mind applause.

I don’t need that. It would be embarrassing.

The universe is vast and varied. My bit of it,

my earth landscape, has been just as varied and strange.

Every person is a universe; we live in a universe of universes that never end.

Old? If I could live another hundred years

I wouldn’t want to. These times are terrible. Humans

have multiplied without limit, till the earth groans. Why is it that only humans fuck up?

Whales don’t fuck up. Elephants don’t fuck up.

It must have to do with free will. Nah! It’s just stupidity.

It takes a lot of work to be smart. And even more work to be wise.

To be smart and wise, it helps to be

old. Whales and elephants: they’re old.

They’re old enough

and smart enough

to die off before the world becomes so miserable

that it’s no longer a wise place to live.

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

More of his work can be found at www.artrosch.com

Photos at https://500px.com/p/artsdigiphoto?view=photos

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________

Want to be sure not to miss any of Arthur’s “The Many Faces of Poetry” segments? Subscribe to Writing to be Read for e-mail notifications whenever new content is posted or follow WtbR on WordPress. If you find it interesting or just entertaining, please share.

The Many Faces of Poetry: November Poems

Posted: November 26, 2021 | Author: artrosch | Filed under: Poetry, The Many Faces of Poetry | Tags: Arthur Rosch, Poetry, The Many Faces of Poetry, Words, Writing to be Read | 1 Comment

Volcano

October 2021

If words can be so beautiful that they

whoosh you from your body

into a place celestial

a paradise that’s not a myth

but a living world inside which

we dwell as though we have forgotten our own

eyes and our stomachs rumble

waiting for a meal that nurtures souls

by the trillions,

by the trillions, and what we call souls or spirits

can be called ghosts or intelligences

or French fries

no telling what they’re calling them ten billion light years from here.

It’s the same damned thing

so bright that it lights the stars

as if from the eternal birthday candle

or the scattering of cinders from a cooling volcano

filling a lake bed with red light and heat light

and heat

sustenance light. That’s how beautiful

words can be.

Late Stage Capitalism

Oct 20, 2021

Is this late stage capitalism?

People watching endless commercials disguised

as content, watching hypnotized

as the reasons to stay home multiply Covid

the madhouse of freedom, that’s America

where Freedom is ridiculous

and everyone’s opinion

matters, such a big deal, (your opinion)

I can give you a break, (I can I can), I can let you

go on about nothing, walk the streets with a sign

saying nothing, late stage capitalism

manipulated and focused greed,

through the screens, on the devices

helpless to disengage (what am I doing?)

late stage

helpless to engage (I’m doing this is what I’m doing)

capitalism, schism, minimism, monism

monetism, hypnotism, religionism

late stage catechism

I’ve run out of ism, run out of my ism, don’t even say it

cuz I’m old and getting older at the same speed as

everyone else.

This is late stage capitalism.

_____________________________________________________________________________________________

More of his work can be found at www.artrosch.com

Photos at https://500px.com/p/artsdigiphoto?view=photos

_________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Mind Fields: The Dollar Store

Posted: November 19, 2021 | Author: artrosch | Filed under: Commentary, Humor, Opinion | Tags: Arthur Rosch, Mind Fields, Stoned, THC, Writing to be Read | 2 Comments

Last week I ordered a case of Nutri-bars from The Dollar Store. You know, it’s the candy bar that doesn’t want to identify itself as a candy bar so it hangs out in the hypocritical Health Food energy bar section. I ordered a whole case, that is, twelve little boxes of six bars each, because I like these bars and they’re healthier than my go- to candy of choice, which is White Reese’s Pieces. Nuh uh. I can’t eat White Reeses’ Pieces. I love them but they’re poison!

God damn. Now I want one. I got an email from The Dollar Store requesting that I review my last purchase of their nutrition bars. How many stars, from one to ten? The Oat Nut Bar is a ten for sure; but to be asked to leave a review of the oat nut bar on The Dollar Store website…? Well… it was just a bit much. I know there is a universe of reviews online, reviews of everything from sex toys to nose plugs to laxatives.

What am I doing? I asked myself. Am I actually going to take five or six minutes out of my life and do a review of an itty bitty candy bar in an itty bitty store in an itty bitty suburban American shopping plaza? We all know these plazas so well. America IS itty bitty shopping plazas separated by hundred mile stretches of Nothing. Except in Texas, where a three hundred mile stretch of Nothing is just that: Nothing. Between Walmarts. Nothing.

Here are some dumb ass things I do.

I spend the entire day watching Youtube videos of towns that I’ve lived in. I get on Google Earth and look at the current state of the houses in which I grew up. One house hasn’t changed at all. One has been torn down. And one has been upgraded with new construction. The trees are fifty years bigger. They were saplings when I lived there. Now they are mighty oaks.

I sometimes drink five large cups of coffee for breakfast.

Frequently, I forget I’ve taken a laxative and take another dose before the first dose hits.

Indulge in THC- saturated tincture so that in an hour my mind feels like it has spawned a trillion other minds which are active and full of neuron tendrils and contacts with unspecified regions of Buddhist utopias. Uh oh. See what I mean about THC?

Eat a whole bag of monukka raisins and THEN eat a bunch of white Reeses Pieces. I thought the raisins would quell the sweet tooth. They didn’t. Blame the THC.

What else did I do?

Back out of the Safeway parking lot and forget to look in the rear view mirrors. Thank god no one was behind me. Sometimes the universe protects its holy idiots. Again, blame the THC plus a large dose of poor judgment.

If I think of more ridiculous/foolish/dangerous/wacko things that I do you will be the first to know.

________________________________________________________________________________________________________

More of his work can be found at www.artrosch.com

Photos at https://500px.com/p/artsdigiphoto?view=photos

___________________________________________________________________________________

Mind Fields: Human Times

Posted: November 5, 2021 | Author: artrosch | Filed under: Commentary, Mind Fields, Opinion | Tags: Arthur Rosch, Mind Fields, Population growth, Social Commentary, Writing to be Read | 1 Comment

Are we living in a creative golden age? Is there an explosion of artistic expression happening, or are there simply more people around who have better tools? I think the answer lies in both directions. I can spend entire days online investigating any subject imaginable. I can revisit my childhood, walk the same streets. I can go to the same school again, throw baseballs from the outfield. I explore my memory without needing to go to those places that are thousands of miles away.

It’s a truism that the Arts thrive during troubled times. Of course they do! Nothing drives us to greater self inquiry than social turbulence. Art is built out of the bricks of self-inquiry. There is nothing more comforting than making beauty when there is wreckage all around. Human beings are talented at making messes, at leaving and repairing wreckage.

During my lifetime the world’s population has doubled. Now there are seven billion people to make messes and I can feel it in my guts that things are getting more and more strange. There’s an antic quality to the upheavals of our time. The world is populated by failed standup comics, obscure book writers, cowboys, aging ballerinas and kids. Lots of kids.

When I was young there was more room. Today there is a squeezing quality, as if the entire world is a photo of that numbing rocket block of apartments in Hong Kong, with their laundry drying on thousands of railings and TV discs perched like gargoyles at every angle and corner. I’m tempted to call them Living Legos containing numberless thousands of other humans. But I won’t call them that: Living Legos. I’ll call them miserable sub-par toxic environment overpriced low cost housing. This stuff wouldn’t exist so massively in a world with half the current population.

What are we going to do? I think “we” won’t do anything at all. I think the spirit called Gaia, in which I believe, will take care of this problem by killing off a few billion people before the end of the 21^st Century. This is going to be a lethal century. It will recall The Black Death of the 14^th Century.

Gaia has a contingency plan. You may ask “What if I don’t believe in a thing called Gaia? What if there is no Gaia?

It doesn’t matter what you believe. We will lose three or four billion people regardless. Earthquakes, volcanos, floods, hurricanes, plagues: no fun at all. If I were twenty and not seventy I would be pissing my pants.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

More of his work can be found at www.artrosch.com

Photos at https://500px.com/p/artsdigiphoto?view=photos

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

The Many Faces of Poetry: More Poetry From 21 Jumping Off Street

Posted: October 22, 2021 | Author: artrosch | Filed under: Poetry, The Many Faces of Poetry | Tags: Arthur Rosch, Poetry, The Many Faces of Poetry, Writing to be Read | 2 Comments

Fleas

There is a flea that alights on me;

former citizen of dog land

it got lost and is attracted

to my hairy arms.

My first instinct is to crush it

but some fleas are crush resistant and

it is futile to try, so just brush

don’t crush and allow the flea

its tiny attempt at life. I’m indifferent to some

creatures

unless they irritate or distract

and that is the flea

whose brotherhood is apparently immortal.

The host, too, is immortal, so

there is no way to be rid

of fleas.

Forgetting

“We haven’t earned the right to forget”. Guy Le Cuerrec – photographer

IF you think the gate is in front of you

look to the side.

If you think the gate is behind you

look ahead.

If you think a window is closed

in your room, it may be open but

hidden inside the closet.

If you think there is a closet

think again

there is a closet.

___________________________________________________________________________________

More of his work can be found at www.artrosch.com

Photos at https://500px.com/p/artsdigiphoto?view=photos

___________________________________________________________________________________________

Mind Fields: People Are Crazy

Posted: October 15, 2021 | Author: artrosch | Filed under: Commentary, Mind Fields, Opinion | Tags: Arthur Rosch, Mind Fields, Social Commentary, Writing to be Read | 4 Comments

People are crazy. Many people who are crazy don’t know they’re crazy. They think that they are right, and that their form of crazy should be everyone’s crazy.

That’s crazy. Right? No one is right all the time; not even some of the time. Everyone is wrong most of the time. We should assume that immediately. If we examine the history of human beings it looks like a traffic jam of midget cars where everyone jumps from the cars as if they got caught stealing them. They shout “That’s not my car! I’ve never seen that car before.”

This is not my planet! I’ve never seen this planet before! The very nature of life on this world is that humans get the wrong ideas about things that should be easy to understand. Those who don’t recognize their instability are dangerous. People who don’t recognize their craziness have few brakes. There are not enough forces to slow them down. At some time or place such people can do terrible harm. They harm people who are crazy in a different way. We can inquire about Germany. In today’s world Germany is known as a refuge for the dispossessed, a humanitarian engine of liberal democracy. Eighty years ago Germany was in the throes of a mass psychosis that turned the state into a killing machine.

This form of psychosis is always available to cultures. It’s there, waiting for the right conditions . It will burst forth and flourish for a while as it does its murderous business. Then it vanishes, only to revive in another time and place. Cultural psychosis is part of the human condition; it’s an under current that feeds on poverty and distress. It thrives on income inequality, builds on the resentment of disenfranchised classes.

We’re ripe for another one. God forbid, as my granma used to say. God forbid we should replay genocidal brutality like Nazi Germany, or Cambodia, Rwanda, Armenia, Bosnia… The United States with its native Americans, The Turks against the Greeks. God forbid. I pray that I’m wrong but I feel that looming presence, that evil spirit that is like a parasite fattening on its millions of aggrieved Americans who have not a single clue that they are insane. They have nothing to complain about. They are housed and fed, they have health plans, the very poorest of them are better off than anyone was a hundred years ago. You can’t convince them that they’ve got a good deal going. They’re certain that they’re being screwed. We sit atop a festering insanity that has been in America since before its founding, when vast crimes by white Europeans were enacted on the whole population of the western hemisphere.

God forbid. It’s a comfort to think that things have changed, that maybe a threshold has been crossed by human nature itself, that we’ve learned from our past sins, that we have EVOLVED.

Isn’t that possible?

_________________________________________________________________________________________