Dogmatic Slumbers

 

Immanuel Kant (twice- he must have been a heavy sleeper) wrote of being awoken from his dogmatic slumber. The other day it happened to me.

 

I was in a room full of liberals debating the recent results in the referendum and US election. The age range was from the early 20s to 60s (maybe older) and listening to them talk I realised how the liberals had lost.

 

 

The first topic of discussion was should the system be changed. It was categorically decided that it should be although no alternative was presented. Some people even thought that the best response to Britain leaving the EU was to break up the country into little self-governing counties- entirely independent (including the raising of funds for the likes of MRI machines etc)

 

This would, apparently, ‘benefit humanity’, as that is the purpose of government. Gone also were the banks, capitalism, the World Trade Organisation, essentially everything that exists that involves money.

 

Ok, so who is to blame for the current state of global politics?

 

1) ‘The people’ for being stupid

2) ‘They’ for being the establishment

3) ‘The System’ for being corrupted

 

The third one I have already looked at, point one ‘The People’ confused me as who ‘The People’ are was never defined. If the American constitution is anything to go by then we are the people but we are not stupid as we are the liberal elite, right?

 

The liberal elite so smart that we think that we can call people ‘stupid’ and get their vote… yeah…point one where liberals lost- demeaning people, being condescending (apparently I come across that way most times!) is not going to inspire good feelings. Shouting from the pulpit ‘I value you, I am just like you’, will, no matter how insidious (just look at past and present and future history).

 

As for point two, ‘They’, if by they it is meant the politicians then the answer is easy- get involve, write to your MP and say ‘you are here to serve the people so serve us…or don’t think of running for re-election…’- I have had many interactions with my local politicians and, coincidently or partly because of, things changed.

 

Another reason given was people feeling disenfranchised with the system, that there was no personal connection. The Leavers and the Trumps attempted to interact on a very bas(e)ic level, speaking to people’s fears. Would it not have been just as simple to knock on doors and say ‘I am interested in your opinion, tell me what you think’ to make people feel involved? It is that simple and with volunteers it can be free.

 

David Rimnick, editor of the New Yorker, said that the trouble was his pro-Hillary pieces were going, mostly, to people who already agreed with him.

One question that kept getting raised was what is democracy? Yet no one in the room spoke of true democracy. Democracy is personal responsibility. Every notion I heard thrown forth was reactionary and involved the dissolution of the current political and economic world. The answer as to why ‘we’ (I include myself in this) lost was because we did not follow the principles of democracy. We were smug and arrogant and elitist. We were stuck in dogmatic dreams which turned into a nightmare. The fact is: we lost. Suck it up, wake up, and make sure it doesn’t happen next time, and hope that the racist, bigoted sexual predators manage to impeach themselves otherwise we might as well conclude that John Adams was right and let democracy commit suicide whilst we stand by and watch too busy blaming everything and everyone else and never once looking into the mirror.

 

 

 

Wake Up!

 

 

 

 

‘till next time

 

‘Though His Death Was Published Round The World The Heart Did Not Believe

 

In 1956 Leonard Cohen published his debut book of poetry, Let Us Compare Mythologies, and for the next sixty years this is what he did. The title poem included the lines

 

Then let us compare mythologies,

I have learned my elaborate lie

Of soaring crosses and poisoned thorns

 

And his last album contained the lines

 

 

As he died to make things holy

Let us die to make things cheap

 

After his initial success, with a Canadian government grant, Leonard moved to England to work on his debut novel Beauty at Close Quarters, rewritten as The Favourite Game, a coming of age novel, but found the grey skies and drizzle inhospitable (he bought his famous blue rain coat) so moved to Hydra where he lay on the rocks for a few months to thaw out his bones from Montreal and then lived on Hydra, returning to Montreal only to replenish his bank account and neurosis. It was here where he met his ‘muse’ Marianne Ilhen.

 

However, Leonard could not escape the modern world for long. He was sitting looking at newly installed telephone wires, depressed, when Marianne handed him his guitar and seeing a bird sitting on the wire wrote his raison d’etre

 

Like a bird on the wire

…

I have tried in my way to be free

 

Restless, Leonard went to Cuba as the revolution was starting and was quickly summoned to the ambassador’s office where the exasperated ambassador informed him that Leonard’s mother had called him, worried, and he was to send Leonard home.

 

Leonard then set off to Nashville via New York (aged 31 his mother said ‘be careful Leonard these people are not like us) and promptly signed away the rights to some of his songs. However the good fortune to meet Judy Collins led to a meeting with John Hammond (who signed Dylan) and the start of a pop music career at 32.

 

Mr Cohen’s career was initially a moderate success (one gets the impression that was all he ever really wanted), so much so that Columbia stopped returning his calls and refused to release Various Positions (which has a little song called Hallelujah on it) saying ‘Leonard, we know you’re great but we don’t know if you are any good’.

 

Leonard’s response was to have a complete image overhaul. Gone, mostly, were the songs that Dylan called prayers and in its place was a man in a designer suit and designer glasses holding a banana (Leonard chose the photo saying that the person (himself) thinks he is cool but everyone walking past thinks ‘there’s a guy with a mouthful of banana’)

 

They sentenced me to twenty years

Of boredom for trying to change the system

From within

I’m coming now, I’m coming to reward them

First we take Manhattan then we take Berlin

 

The next album featured tracks with lyrics such as

 

From the wars against disorder

From the sirens night and day

From the fires of the homeless

From the ashes of the gay

Democracy is coming to the USA

 

And

 

Give me back the Berlin wall

Give me Stalin and St Paul

Give me Christ

Or give me Hiroshima

Destroy another foetus now

We don’t like children anyhow

I’ve seen the future, baby:

It is murder

 

(The later is darkly hilarious)

 

And, when it all feels too much

 

There is a crack in everything

That’s how the light gets in

 

Then Leonard went back up the mountain and became ordained as a Buddhist monk, not converting or being interested in the faith, per se, but because he had found a leader whom he could follow.

 

The next few albums reflected a new Buddhist way of thinking, a serenity of mind, and it seemed that his career as a musician was over with the occasional album or book of poetry but then his former lover and manager stole his retirement funds and he was forced to tour again

 

 Last time I stood on this stage…I was 60 years old, just a kid with a crazy dream

 

And when touring he thought, hey why not record some new songs as well and with three albums in four years and the fourth in the works (the last released on the 21^st of October 2016) Leonard defied the conventional wisdom of life not having a third act.

 

 

And as for forth act? Seems King David has some competition and as Leonard said on the last album

 

I was fighting with temptation

But I didn’t want to win

A man like me don’t like to see

Temptation caving in

 

 

The world is truly an emptier place without Leonard Cohen in it.

 

‘till next time

 

 

The Death of Democracy

 

The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter

 

. Winston Churchill

 

 

I am growing more and more disillusioned with democracy. Whilst I applaud the notion the way that it is being used is being more and more, in my opinion, corrupted.

 

To me democracy, solely in terms of politics, is about electing the person whom one believes will offer the country the most. Once the person is elected they then start to work for the betterment of the country, not always popular, however, any danger of overstepping boundaries is hindered by the respective political bodies (i.e. congress, parliament et al). However, nowadays it seems that the system has become corrupted.

 

Here you may expect a measured rant about democracy being done away with, but you may be surprised to know that I think the over use of democracy is killing democracy.

 

What do I mean? Well, just look at the current state of British politics.

 

The absurd notion that we the people who cannot begin to understand the complexities of global trade, scientific discovery, economics and so forth are able to make an objective, reasoned decision as to the state of Europe is preposterous.

 

Democracy cannot succeed unless those who express their choice are prepared to choose wisely. The real safeguard of democracy, therefore, is education.

 

Franklin D. Roosevelt

 

Did the people of Britain really want a referendum? Given the apathy during the lead up I would suggest not. So why was there one? Weak leadership desperate to appease their party and the voters, but hey ‘we are all in it together’.

 

With such a disastrous piece of leadership did the governing body leap in to save the day? Nope, they were too busy pulling themselves apart, each strand another level of their integrity severed. But it is ok because for a small fee the public could choose the leader of the party! Huzzah for Democracy! Given how the people in the party know each other intimately and we the people (oh sweet irony) see them on TV and on the news, it stands to reason that we should be the ones to choose the one who we personally know to have what it takes to save the UK! How right we have been proven thus far!

 

Whilst the words of JFK still echo in the ears of those not even born at the time “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country”, John Adams mutters in the ears of us who stand, aghast, watching the thing we love, democracy, die in self-righteous convulsions

 

Democracy… while it lasts is more bloody than either aristocracy or monarchy. Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide.

 

John Adams

 

 

 

 

‘till next time!

 

I can be reached any time for your questions and comments at thegreaterfool2016@yahoo.com

 

 

Hallelujah, You Want It Darker

 

If you are the dealer

I’m out of the game

…

If thine is the glory

Then mine must be the shame

You want it darker

We kill the flame

 

 

Still a young man at eighty-two, Mr Cohen is much older than that, indeed it is possible that the mysterious dark matter that holds the universe together is simply his spirit. In his early albums (the debut released when he was a spry thirty-two year old) and the novels and poetry that preceded it, the mix of God (in all its forms), love (in all its forms) and politics (in all its forms) was there but over the years the shift has gone from love-politics-God. One of the most striking things about the new album is Mr Cohen’s seeming return to Judaism. The last few albums showed the influence of his Buddhism (ordained he never converted from the religion of his fathers) but this album, from the use of cantor and violins, seems that Mr Cohen is coming back, or deeper into, what was always his true faith

 

I’ve taken a lot of Prozac, Paxil, Wellbutrin, Effexor, Ritalin, Focalin, … I’ve also studied deeply in the philosophies and religions, but cheerfulness kept breaking through.

 

But back to the album. As you may expect from a Leonard Cohen album the lyrics are beyond sublime- challenging preconceptions

 

I heard the snake was baffled by his sin

He shed his scales to find the snake within

But born again is born without a skin

The poison enters into everything

 

And even holding up his hand and saying, maybe my truths were never true

 

It sounded like the truth

It seemed the better way

It sounded like the truth

But it’s not the truth today

 

…

 

Steer your heart past the Truth

You believed in yesterday

Such as Fundamental Goodness

And the Wisdom of the Way

 

 

Yet there is also an element of maybe not only were the truths untrue but also maybe one was failed by God, the image of

 

A million candles burning

For the help that never came

 

Strikes one’s core.

 

However, the album is completely devoid of any kind of bitterness or remorse or even pain. The album is, seemingly, by one who has accepted that one can never know the truth (maybe that is the truth we all seek?)

 

They’re dancing in the street – it’s Jubilee

We sold ourselves for love but now we’re free

I’m sorry for the ghost I made you be

Only one of us was real – and that was me.

 

 

And he even, with his usual brilliant humour, mocks his own revelations

 

Now I’m living in this temple

Where they tell you what to do

I’m old and I’ve had to settle

On a different point of view

 

And his own condition

 

I struggled with some demons

They were middle-class and tame

 

And indeed he may simply be

 

I’m just a fool

A dreamer who

Forgot to dream

 

This is an album written by a person who has gone far beyond the existence of many of us, of many who have been. It would not be absurd to say that maybe Leonard Cohen is one of the great religious teachers of our age and to live in the age of Leonard Cohen who, God willing, will out live all of the human race, is a great privilege

 

But if it is not to be and Mr Cohen returns to grace then the last words of the album will be a fitting epitaph for a spirit, for a soul who has touched me, for one, so deeply that my inner wine has been returned to the purity of water.

 

I wish there was a treaty we could sign

It’s over now, the water and the wine

We were broken then, but now we’re borderline

And I wish there was a treaty

I wish there was a treaty

Between your love and mine

 

 

‘till next time!

 

——

 

Feel free to drop me a line, anytime at

 

thegreaterfool2016@yahoo.com