Body Personal & Politic

Body Personal and Politic

We think we are in charge of ourselves, but we are not, that’s the brain putting itself subtly in command. For most of life, my bosses have been tongue and stomach. Nine years ago the prostate took command and everybody else stood up and saluted. Three years ago it was a coup of the heart, deciding everything I could and could not do, and the heart continues to hold a position of influence, holding tongue and stomach hostage. But commander in chief these days is bladder, arrogantly controlling sleep and wake up time, logically none of its business.

Arab Spring has changed from dream to nightmare, becoming the political tool of murderous militant extremists whose objective is chaos and anarchy leading to brutal tyranny and personal cruelty of the sort seen in Afghanistan under the Taliban. Their process, if they are thinking at all, is no different from other violent revolutions that produced totalitarian despotism, including in communist Russia a hundred years ago, and Nazi Germany. The process -- and for a human wanting to live a simple, peaceful life, religious reign of terror is no different from political tyranny -- is from authoritarian government to agitation to violence to chaos and anarchy to new and even more horrendous authoritarianism. People, those who are left still alive, end up being horrified that what they have produced is even worse than what they originally wanted to topple. In Syria the process is still at its most violent, but the worst is yet to come. The popular revolution in Egypt produced an ineffective “democracy” that was being undercut by extremists who, even now during Egypt’s resumed nightmare, are establishing fortress regions for ongoing violence. Democracy as we think of it doesn’t seem to be natural for humans, we demand that everyone be like us, and if not willingly then by legalized oppression. Less clear to those who are watching the march of religious extremism at home, this is evident in the Arab world and across the Middle East where, like a terminal cancer in the body, internal hatred of each other is even more intense than external hatred of the West. Strife and violence in Syria and Egypt taking command of the functioning of the rest of the world should surprise no one whose bladder has taken charge of one’s peace.

What’s the answer?

At least in this life on this earth in this body, maybe the answer is to appreciate Psalm 90, which gives us seventy years, eighty if we are strong, and then soon passeth it away and we are gone.

"Candorville" by Darrin Bell, August 13, 2013