Month: November 2018

international relations, nationalism, satire

The aesthetics of being bombed

A White House advisor told President Trump that nobody wanted to hear an American president threaten to launch nuclear missiles. Trump replied: “Then why do we make them?” (2016)

The aesthetics of being bombed: a timely review of a favourite human pastime.

When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

Ode on a Grecian Urn, by John Keats

There is a beautiful truth in being bombed that evades those who are unbombed. There is a clarity of mind that jettisons a lifetime of clutter. In that moment and in the debris afterwards truth is unambiguous. It is like sitting on the edge of the singularity, your one-way ticket to ‘event horizon’, a home-run slide to Nirvana, a slow dance with Shiva. Putting aside for a moment the usual human suffering, bomb sites are fascinating places with much to offer the aesthetically trained eye. One simply needs to learn how to look. Thankfully, there is no shortage of places to practice the art of observing the effects of bombing. A large number of states have progressive governments who routinely practice bombing. A huge number of bombs are built (maybe constructed is a better word), purchased and dropped every year (‘dropped’ is idiomatic since they can be launched, placed, left, lopped, stashed or thrown). Indeed, bombing is an important part of every modern state’s budget. The ripple effects are far reaching. Bombs require aeroplanes, submarines, specialist vehicles or missiles to carry them and these are expensive items requiring specific skills to manufacture them. It’s all very specific, it really is rocket science. Like all consumables, bombs also have expiry dates so governments generally make use of them so as to avoid unnecessary waste. The contribution that bombs and their auxiliary technology make to a state’s GDP is significant. Bombs employ people, bombs need people to deploy them, in short – bombs are people too. Bombs are beautiful cultural items. These sleek and ergonomic babies  present design elements that are sculptural, maybe even artistic, one might even describe them as … aesthetically pleasing. Bombs have emotional appeal too. Generally, most people live miserable and monotonous lives punctuated by mundane life events such as birth, marriage and death. For a time television provided a pleasant respite from this urban tedium but people are easily bored and, even in the twenty first century, war is spectacular entertainment. Everyone knows this. People feign disgust and horror but can’t stop watching. Historically, public executions have always drawn a crowd, people like observing death. Suffering has an aesthetic appeal. People are grateful for the distraction of bombs. Watching other people suffer diminishes one’s own suffering, it’s not rocket science – well actually it is … .

Furthermore, there is the objective beauty of scientific truth. According to the first law of thermodynamics (the Law of Conservation of Energy) energy cannot be created or destroyed within an isolated system. Bombs, operating within specific isolated systems only displace energy. They do not destroy. Destroy is such a dated term, so 20th century. What are human beings but pockets of energy constantly reassembling themselves. We’re not so different from bombs after all. They have gotten a bad press, probably because of the increase of fake news. Bombs are just ‘super effective re-locaters’ (or S.E.R.’s as we call them). They are able to relocate entire buildings, towns or cities with the greatest ease and the minimal expenditure of human labour. Bombs bring people together like nothing else. The sense of community that emerges in the wake of a bombing is heart-warming. Nothing warms the heart like an explosion. Above all, bombs develop gratitude. Nothing makes you more grateful for your own miserable existence than seeing someone else’s blown to smithereens. Our universe was born of violent explosions, explosions are a part of who we are, of where we come from. Only wimps go out with a whimper, heroes go out with a bang. Bombs make people better people, bombs are people too!

  • Countries that have been bombed by the USA sinceWorld War II

China 1945-46

Korea 1950-53

China 1950-53

Guatemala 1954

Indonesia 1958

Cuba 1959-60

Guatemala 1960

Belgian Congo 1964

Guatemala 1964

Dominican Republic 1965-66

Peru 1965

Laos 1964-73

Vietnam 1961-73

Cambodia 1969-70

Guatemala 1967-69

Lebanon 1982-84

Grenada 1983-84

Libya 1986

El Salvador 1981-92

Nicaragua 1981-90

Iran 1987-88

Libya 1989

Panama 1989-90

Iraq 1991

Kuwait 1991

Somalia 1992-94

Bosnia 1995

Iran 1998

Sudan 1998

Afghanistan 1998

Yugoslavia – Serbia 1999

Afghanistan 2001

Libya 2011

Syria 2014

Source: Global Research Organisation, global research.org 

existentialism, philosophy, Uncategorized

The naming of ducks: the philosophy of ducks

Mother died just before they first arrived. An arrival in return for a departure. I’d rather have had mother than the ducks but we take what we get. Besides, one does not really have anyone. Language anchors us to people in this way. Verbs, in the present tense at least, allow us to believe that we have ownership, that we belong. But we own little and seldom belong. I had a mother. I had a father. How much life that word ‘had’ contains. The illusion is that words speak us. Translate us into the world, for we are in our essence beyond language. Like ducks we are migratory souls and words are not our first language. A puddle catching the reflection of a few stars does not reflect the cosmos. There is such space within us and we pin it to a word here and there and believe we have spoken. It is maddening. So we have craftsmen and women who work to release the interior world. But, they must make do with words. They take what they can get.

My son once let go of a helium balloon and it lifted quickly into the sky. We are like the air in that balloon. Air in air, little and incomprehensibly vast, waiting to burst. Frantically naming the world before we do. What are words but air compressed through pipes, over chords, nudged with a tongue through a cavity? But they signify the world.

The last words mother spoke were garbled. The tubes distorted her. The words travelled 6000km. One expects clarity to be compromised. The conversation haunts you still. It was to be the last. And you, her son, did not hear her. Is it worse not to hear or not to see? How deaf, how blind have you been to everything else? Now you overcompensate. Listening too hard and hearing what is not there. Seeing what is not there. Looking, the way a blind man looks for Braille. Cautiously, fumbling but determined. Like the day the ducks came (oh you make me smile). You were looking at the rain pock-pattern the pool. You were staring right at them but not seeing them until one moved and you saw it was not a shadow. The world was all shadows then. It still is. We had never had ducks land in our pool. Mother had never died before either, not physically, not as quietly. There it was. Death, then ducks in the rain. Your Braille. But you could not read it.

So, they weren’t just ducks after all, were they? We find ways to pull the dead back. So it is with the ducks. There were three of them. The following year they arrived again, stayed a short while and left. The year after that there was another death and they arrived. This year they arrived early, and stayed. No one has died yet. There are two of them. The first became Columbus. He must have taken a wrong turn. There are other, better bodies of water than our swimming pool. We fed them their daily bread but discovered even low carb bread is bad for them. Of the poultry feed (duck feed is unobtainable) they eat the corn, oats and barley but left the field peas (brown marbles that are now everywhere) and wheat. Though cautious, they would eat from my hand. The second one is Lady Godiva, though I suspect she is the he. Nevertheless, they are a pair, whatever they are. The dogs and cat accepted them, they paid little attention to them, except when they were fed and then hovered close by hoping to catch something they could eat.

Then, just as suddenly as they arrived, they are gone. Columbus and Lady Godiva, flown away with their names and everything. They were (do I say were or are?) Pacific Black Ducks, their proper name. As I say their names, Columbus and Lady Godiva, there is a sense of a relationship, a cosy illusion. Strange things ducks. They took to the air like mother and that balloon. Maybe that’s why I look up so much, there’s a history up there.