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On "The Issue of Character" and Empire
Late last month, poet, musician, and self-termed "bluesologist," Gil Scott-Heron exited the hologram and returned to the source…to begin chanting, eternity will not be televised.
In an earlier era, Stephen Spender feted the following tribute to those who fell resisting Francisco Franco's fascist forces during the Spanish Civil War. His lines of verse serve as an apt epitaph to all those souls who devoted their art and labor to the ceaseless struggle against the perennially risen, death-besotted forces of coercive power: "The names of those who in their lives fought for life,/Who wore at their hearts the fire's center./Born of the sun, they traveled a short while towards the sun,/And left the vivid air signed with their honor."
At present, in contrast, the dismal air is signed with the scandalous tweets of a congressman's undergarments and the concomitant, predictable howling from the hectoring ghosts of U.S. Puritanism, conjured from their graves by the contrived spectacle and its promise of anonymous arousal intermingled with the blood sport of public shaming.
By finger wagging and sneering, carnal desires can be lived out vicariously in the Puritan/Calvinist imagination. In this way, petty moralists can ogle what they claim to condemn.
To Puritans, all the problems of life can be traced to the genitals...true, but only their own problems.
How many times do the prigs, ninnies, and scolds of the U.S. have to repeat this sort of inanity before they grow up and realize that human beings have strong libidos? Libido propels both creativity and contretemps, and it is wise to aver that "the issue of character" should best be evoked and debated, as a general rule, when the situation involves hypocrisy.
Moreover, those claiming that their own sexual desires have never rendered them vulnerable to silly misjudgments evince a more noxious form of hypocrisy. Yet, if, in fact, their lives have been absent such propitious misfortune, then one should withhold the scorn reserved for hypocrites, and, instead, grant these poor souls pity, for they have been afflicted with the awful circumstance of having passed through their lives without ever being seduced by life.
A more profound "character issue" here would seem to involve that of the representatives of mass media news gathering organizations, in particular -- their greed for ratings. And what is one to make of the character of the individuals who comprise the general public and their seemingly endless avidity for these stories -- their insatiable craving to revel in the tawdry -- but remain engaged in the delusional worship of their own toxic innocence?
Although, it is futile to struggle against the symptoms not the source. As banal as the dreams of witless bullies, the architecture and artifice of U.S. militarist/corporate imperium not only surrounds us but has colonized our thoughts and desires. Ergo, the elite of the corporate media and the U.S. public remain untroubled by Bradley Manning's forced nudity, yet a couple a snaps of a congressmen's crotch sends their imagination reeling.
Since U.S. Empire is maintained by militarism -- a de facto strong-arm racket shaking down the people of the world to sustain the endless cupidity of its elite and proffer just enough bribes to keep its populace overweight, arrogant, and oblivious -- what "character issues" come into play involving an individual's complicity in the maintenance of blood-fueled imperium? Perhaps as a reminder, fleets of U.S. aircraft carriers should be christened with names such as, the USS Entitlement, the USS Displaced Resentment and the USS Willful Ignorance -- all armed and ready to patrol the oceans of the world, poised to attack and subdue those who would deny us our birthright to consume the world like a bag of Cheetos.
Because facing folly is difficult, both powerful and pawn have embraced the most airless of aspirations…that greed run riot is a viable means to move in the world, even the sole means of establishing a social order.
As was the case with any imperium throughout history, the present order is maintained by state-sanctified homicide. To exist in empire, one is induced to deaden one's heart. The act of having internalized (albeit inadvertently) the propaganda of the militaristic/corporate state and thereby cling to its provisional comforts…is to clutch a handful of dust. And what is the mode of being to which so many cling:
Shuffling the floors of some suburban turdbox…within a gated "community" where one rarely sees, much less speaks to one’s neighbors; spending hours at a time, anxious and irritated (if not outright enraged) in soul-grinding commuter traffic, listening to the observations and pronouncements of inspired souls such as Morning Zoo Crews and deep thinkers like Rush Limbaugh and other right-wing talk-radio, hate merchants; then languishing all day in a cubicle...just to turn around and do it all again.
Is it any wonder so many in the U.S. consider "our way of life" non-negotiable? What kind of a miserable, bitter malcontent would wish to challenge and change such a life-enhancing, soul-vivifying mode of being? There is just no pleasing some people.
A loss of empathetic imagination is endemic to the consumerist mindset of the mechanized era. This form of pathology began, years ago, when our ancestors offered up their life's blood to the early corporatists of the Industrial Age.
"I attack all those persons/ who know nothing of the other half,/ the half who cannot be saved,/ who raise their cement mountains/ in which the hearts of the small/ animals no ones thinks of are beating." -- Federico García Lorca,
excerpt: New York (Office and Attack)
Henry Ford and the rest of the Industrial Age's klavern of gray ghouls measured our flesh, muscle and bone with a productivity-measuring stopwatch. Cunning practitioners of the dark art of convincing human beings they were mere cogs in a soulless machine, it was only a short trudge from that blood-bartering viewpoint of existence through history's slaughterhouse to Adolf Eichmann's cold, corpse-rendering, mathematical constructs.
Insulated, as he was, within his fortified tower of mortared casuistry, Eichmann proved adept at emotionally shielding himself from the horrific implications of the system of mechanized extermination he helped devised. From individual alienation to planet-wide ecocide, Hannah Arendt's insights, regarding Eichmann's psyche in her seminal work, Eichmann in Jerusalem, applies to our present condition: “The longer one listened to him, the more obvious it became that his inability to speak was closely connected with an inability to think, namely, to think from the standpoint of somebody else."
Accordingly, to lose the green fuse of transformation, implicit in interpersonal relationships, is to be driven by dehumanizing engines of annihilation.
In regard to the consumerist-colonized psyches of the populace of the U.S., an inner architecture is in place -- an internalized shopping mall (complete with sub-cretinous security crews trained to shut down political speechifying and pamphleteering -- but who seem unwilling or unable to subdue the impulse to buy, on credit, unnecessary items).
Conversely, for a culture to thrive, a vital agora and public square is required. Given the agora has been replaced by mall and social media's weightless pixels of narrowed apprehension (an almost all-encompassing, amateur improvisational theatre for those with short attentions spans) can there be any chance of an awaking, even an uprising, against such life-negating forces?
Using any metric, the present system, based upon a zombie-like proliferation of exponential growth is unsustainable. By the destruction leveled on nature and public space, in combination with, the usurpation of time and identity (individual and collective) -- the very structure of the present system creates alienation and anomie.
Moreover, the root of Puritan panic (including the constant upwelling of sexually related scandal) is caused by its compulsion to winnow down the human psyche and its attendant drives, actions, and enterprises to only what is deemed pure and practical; hence, panic ensues when the musk and fury of the larger world (even one’s own thoughts and desires) rudely breaches the life-denuded contours of its cordon sanitaire.
The anecdote: Don't tiptoe through your life like a ninny nor become a finger-wagging scold, so mortified by your appetites and desires you would scour the messiness of the world into a sterile prison of self-deprivation. Like Emerson, we must insist: we have a life to live -- not a perpetual apology.
Poetry and music can awaken imagination and induce empathy, therefore are potent provisions that sustain one while carrying the darkness. However, first one must engage the struggle, to face the everyday monster whose name is, "That is just the way it is and must remain" -- even to risk having one's concept of self devoured by the task. To paraphrase Lorca: to know oneself by drawing near to the beating heart of the monster of the world.
"But the Duende--where is the Duende? Through the empty arch enters a mental air blowing insistently over the heads of the dead, seeking new landscapes and unfamiliar accents; an air bearing the odor of child's spittle, crushed grass, and the veil of Medusa announcing the unending baptism of all newly-created things." --Federico García Lorca, excerpt: The Duende: Theory and Divertissement (1930)
One cannot kill nor banish personal demons but one can give them supervised work to do (that way one can keep an eye on them).
(Knowing one’s demons also provides insight when dealing with adversaries and can prevent one from being drawn into the self-serving ploys of mass media vampires of mind and spirit who retail sexually related scandals that bring glee to the bloodless.)
Personally, it could trouble me less if the sky shook, thick as seething locust, with a pixel-borne pestilence of suggestive photos of political sorts. Funny, the same crowd of fundamentalist, petty moralists who believe that global warming is the result of natural forces insist the heat of human libido is what will bring on man's doom i.e., greenhouse gasses aren't melting the polar regions; instead, Climate Change is caused by the hot breath of Satan himself tweeting pictures of his lust-scorched undergarments.
In times such as these, one is advised to embrace both mystery and logic -- both élan vital and logos. Be both apprehensive and comforted by the unknowable, ineffable quality of existence; thereby, one comes to be moved by a poetic approach to mystery, and the realization arrives…that one is vividly alive even amid dismal, alienating circumstance, and, as a result, that the ennui engendered by the illusion of atomization is, to a degree, mitigated.
Although one's suffering is uniquely one's own, one remains part and parcel of the implicate order of a living planet. This is how Wallace Stevens delivers, in verse, the case for acquiring and maintaining a view of the world by means of empathetic imagination (that can serve as a panacea to the preening narcissism inherit in toxic innocence). I'll give him the final word:
We feel the obscurity of an order, a whole,
A knowledge, that which arranged the rendezvous.
Within its vital boundary, in the mind.
We say God and the imagination are one ...
How high that highest candle lights the dark.
Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.
--Excerpt: Final Soliloquy Of The Interior Paramour
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60 Comments so far
Show AllI thouroughly enjoy reading Phil's pieces. What a wonderful and refreshing change of pace to read such use of language and metaphor to great purpose. These are pieces worth reading more than twice.
I have watched a few talking heads prattle about Mr Weiner and his photos and ask in concerned terms some OTHER talking head why there is such a consuming interest in this bit of nonsense in the media while not realising that they themselves, merely by asking the question, perpetuate the very behavior they claim to not understand.
ok testing log on
Lipstick on a pig. Sending sexually explicit photos to unsuspecting women and underage high school girls is not cool. Cheating on your wife is your own business, but when you shame her in front of the entire world, that's indefensible. The US Congress is full of liars and crooks, but can we at least try to keep out the sexual predators?
Are you talking about Weiner? Have any of the women complained yet? Or even said much of anything? The only article I've seen by any of the women invovled, Gennette Cordova, did not say much of anything, other than criticising people prying into her life. Admittedly, I've not exactly been paying all that much attention to the Weiner stuff. And underage HS school girls? Which ones?
It isn't just Weiner getting the attenion. At least his wife is busy doing her job, and she has a very well-versed friend and mentor to help her get through the media hell and all the rest. I don't imagine what she's going through will be as unimaginably humiliating and lengthy as what her boss Hillary experienced. As painful? No doubt, especially so because of the baby she carries. She says she's staying with him. Of course if the feeding frenzy continues, who knows. If they do manage to keep the marriage intact, they should do a name change at the very least.
"i probably have no business commenting on this stuff, i'm so out of touch with what's currently acceptable behavior.
"
Different people have different ideas of what is acceptable behaviour. Some peopel care a lot about such stuff. Some do not.
"but i think the old fashioned values about families and clans and bands and tribes will reappear because they'll be useful for suvival.
"
No they aren't.
I don't expect anyone to feed me and house me once I get old.
What will happen to the cat? I mean you're eating all her food. I'm retired and having the same thoughts. I'm 68 and the first person in my family EVER to collect SS. My father died at 65, my mother at 40, my sister at 58, my brother at 21. They all paid in. I'm not sure but I think i'm being ripped off.
Or maybe she doesn't consider it a big deal.
Gil Scott-Heron was correct when he said that it's "Winter in America".
What passes for culture in the US Empire has long been befogged, occasionally punctuated by a brief ray of sunshine.
Culture in the US Empire? Yogurt has more culture than the us empire has...
is this guy's weiner a nuke?
does his underwear melt the ice caps?
is his wife's embarrassment worse than a million dead brown people?
did he tweet from a torture chamber?
did his abs cause a recession?
new freaking topic then!
exactly!
What an important message which can mean the difference between a life of contentment--or misery. If our human needs are met, it's a matter of choice. Strength of character and self-respect are intimately related. "...we must insist: we have a life to live -- not a perpetual apology."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULE8WVDbYSo&feature=related
Phil Rockstroh and Lewis Lapham's insightful prose together in a single CD lineup.
What a great way to start another brutal week.
Bill from Saginaw
Bill: I was thinking the same thing! Both are luminous in what their writing reveals, and each takes in a perspective wider than 98% of what can be read from any other sources. Meanwhile, thus far the petty minds posting on this thread want to make the conversation about the very thing that Rockstroh mocks: the latest underwear guy! Sad. So few seem able to take flight with the angels, and thereby come to witness their world, our world, from an enlightened distance (where new insights and perspectives are revealed).
Contests of morality presented as who's right and who's wrong, are the favored intellectual venues. It once more appears that the programming from sports, added to a variety of hierarchical orders, makes this type of intellectualism the only one comfortable, or familiar, to those who might otherwise actually learn to expand their wingspans.Frightening prospect, that!
Rockstroh's metaphors are SO profound, that as the first poster indicated, one must read the work more than once. That's the beauty and power of poetry, after all. Like a Zen Koan it reflects back the consciousness brought to it.
Mirrors of Is Are Us.
Could I beg everyone to distinguish between "wEIner" for which the root is "wein" (wine, and pronounced vine) and "wIEner" for which the root is "Wien" (Vienna, and pronounced veen).
A wEIner is some person or thing involved with wine. A wIEner is some person or thing associated with Vienna. Even in English they're not the same word.
No offense, Mairead, but a "Poet's Corner" is the worst (not "wurst") place to beg for a less sophomoric and more adult, circumspect, and literal reading of "Weiner".
You might as well point out that "Boehner" is actually an occupational name derived from Middle Low German bönen "to board", i.e. "lay a (wooden) floor"-- and is euphemistically pronounced BAY-ner in Amerika.
The vulgar quasi-homophony is just too striking to forgo, methinks.
I feel your pain, but one might as well try to elevate the discussion in a high-school cafeteria on Cock-a-Leekie Soup Day.
Nicely stated OS. Still, one can have fun with words like "Ausfahrt". Keeping a couple of kids in the back seat of a car on the Autobahn distracted with words that sound silly to them has some merit and using it in a didactic way by challenging them to guess when they were in France could have even greater merit.
I am quite impressed by your mastery of the idiom.
Nevertheless, phonetically having the name Boehner rhyme with loner is fun. It's always refreshing to follow you and Siouxrose cut through the BS.
I get your point, but it is too late. The jokes are inevitable.
Yet, the pornography of war is constantly ignored, as the author relates with his inclusion of Arendt's observations on Eichmann--and by extension the USA. One could posit that the US government and its corporations are peopled mostly by Eichmann-like clones, which is to say that their loss would not be missed by civilized people.
Wonderful piece again, Phil.
Good writers shine their mirror in all angles to give us views we may not have ourselves.
Would that you were writing it solely in the abstract......as applied to a fictional reality.
You aren't. And we're it.
Weltschmerz on a planetary plane.
"Reality is like a face reflected in the blade of a knife; its properties depend on the angle from which we view it."
Prince wrote a song, "Controversy" that sums up most of this tempest in a teapot distraction from the issues that are grinding our people into the dirt. As usual, the artists lead the way. I got jaded fast about press, growing up in DC. Example: Mayor Marion Barry. Did hair in DC salons in the early 80's. Got regular "movers and shakers" party reports. Most indicated that Marion was doing blow in the corners of Sally's, Sondra's, Sheila's, Gertie's, Lolo's and many other places where Peter Jennings and other "newsmen" were witnessing said acts. Not a peep until Barry kept treading on other's toes by continuing to press for DC statehood, a full decade later. My take on DSK? Probably been raping maids for years, nobody gave a shit about it until it was a convenient push from power with good timing. It's not that I don't care about people's morals, I do. But this Weiner controversy doesn't have a bearing on the meat and potatoes issues before Congress right now. I don't really get this "asking for a leave of absence" crap. WTF? Lots of Congress misses votes here and there, for whatever reason. What matters is the question all along, "Who's going to represent the voters of his district and take their interests to heart and vote in alignment to those values?"
I appreciate this article because I'm glad I'm not alone in finding something nefarious and insidious in the trend of "sexual misconduct" political scandals in the past few decades-- and, like Rockstroh, seeing them as red herrings and pathological distractions from the real crimes and sins of Empire.
I'm not overlooking the fact that sex scandals have been around since Adam and Eve raised Cain. But I'm referring to the Amerikan mass-media-- and now social-media-- hyped variety, roughly dating back to Bill Clinton's escapades.
As I recently commented, I've always thought that, for better or worse, Amerika has become more sexually effed-up than ever since the so-called "sexual revolution" of the Sixties.
Like those "super-bacteria" strains that come back all the stronger after being almost wiped out, sexual repression, inhibition, and hysteria have mutated and proliferated throughout politics, including political and social activism-- even while popular culture has increasingly reveled in prurient, shallow, hedonistic sexuality.
The neo-Puritanical component of the Weiner contretemps and the neo-Victorian melodrama in the Strauss-Kahn story are undeniable. "Puritan Panic" is a good term for it.
And the sexual reactionaries aren't limited to social conservatives, e.g. strait-laced "Church Lady"-type prudes, who are presumably offended by any type of raunchy, libidinous, lewd, or lascivious conduct.
Unfortunately, just as conservative critics are quick to say "it 'goes to' character" or "it 'goes to' probity and integrity"-- a disingenous way of saying "we're TAKING it there", so to are liberals and progressives inclined to reflexively claim that "it 'goes to' correctness".
In some cases, moral indignation is rationalized or displaced by converting it to pragmatic, political, or psychological condemnation. So the charge is made that the wrongdoing isn't a matter of the offender having sexual impulses, but the inappropriate manner, and the negative practical implications and consequences, of expressing it.
Once one buys in to the threshold notion that once a story is "out there", it necessarily becomes everybody's business, one is ripe for every variety of witch hunt. And one can readily find a fatal flaw that "sticks": he's exposed himself as uncool, as mentally unbalanced, as unacceptably indiscreet, even as a "negative role model".
I shudder when coming across reactions like the archetypal liberal-lite ninny Joan Walsh at Salon, for whom Weiner's wife's pregnancy was the "last straw" that caused her to clutch her pearls in apoplexy and shriek that surely Weiner must jump or be pushed from the political ledge.
I'm reminded, of all things, of a scene from a "Curb Your Enthusiasm" episode, where Larry David's manager is panicking because his wife is threatening divorce, and the manager is afraid that she'll vindictively publicize his (unspecified) unorthodox sexual habits.
David responds smugly and sanctimoniously that this is why HE never does anything weird with HIS wife-- if their marriage breaks up, he can rest assured that she won't have any dirty little sexual secrets to spread about him.
As a minor aside: if we validate Puritan Panic and the devastating distractions of manufactured sexual scandals, we'll end up making saints and heroes of just such smug, uptight, sexually repressed souls. Will Amerika be better off with a political elite of sexual eunuchs and whited sepulchers?
And, as the Weinerama amply proves, once one is indicted in the mass-media stoked court of public opinion, the condemnation becomes a self-confirming position: since "more and more information is coming out", and/or the offender is forced to spend more and more time dealing with the scandal, which obviously renders him incapable of discharging professional responsibilities, he's simply GOT to go!
Please understand that I can't personally relate to the narcissistic fetish of broadcasting one's naughty bits over social media-- and I've always been skeptical of supposed progressive rising stars, including Weiner. So I find his transgressions pathetic at best, and don't find him personally sympathetic.
But, as Rockstroh and previous commenters have suggested, if one somehow manages to avoid getting caught up in the lemming-like rush to judgement endemic to sex-based political scandal, one can see that there's something far more wrong with the scandal dynamic itself than the sexual peccadilloes of its victims.
I presume this will sound counter-intuitive, or be contested as a form of ostrich-like denial, but there really is no way to counter Puritan Panic unless one simply refuses to buy into it, and resists the seductive impulse to weigh in with the media-maddened mob.
I strongly disagree.
for instance: "are families likely to be the last resort survival mechanism for old farts like you and me?"
--------------------------------------
Yes. No. It depends.
Is that succinct enough?
The reality is that _community_ of some sort, maybe "family" maybe "friends" maybe just "people" will, as always and everywhere, be everyone's lifeline. People trying to survive alone are at the mercy of any germ, any injury, any predator. It's good to avoid getting into such a position, and the only way to do that is through community of some nature.
You've lost me. I'm not following at all. Perhaps you could be less cryptic?
You're trying to get banned aren't you?
No.
*I* spend 50-60 years destroying families? I'd like you to support that, please, or identify the person to whom you intended to respond.
Please excuse me Mairead-I should have put my reply below your post....
I feel/think him A "gifted" writer and enjoy his deep thinking, soul searching posts.
Anyone who shares their innermost feelings so eloquently does not deserve your shallow critisism...
Otherwise and also, this was A Great Article....
Your mind might be "infested with fuzz", Wadosy, but I am certain that your fuzzy condition has nothing to do with Obedient Servant's comments.
I, along with numerous other regular readers of CD, enjoy the prolific, erudite, and often humorous contributions Obedient Servant brings to the comment threads and have absolutely no problem comprehending him. As pointed out by Stubones49, he is obviously a gifted writer and person of depth, which are much appreciated rarities these days.
Coincidentally, Obedient Servant wrote a comment yesterday following the Lewis Lapham essay, which was directed at another regular commenter who was critical of Lapham's expressive writing style. Obedient Servant's comment seems remarkably appropriate here, too, so I hope he doesn't mind if I borrow a few excerpts and quote him directly:
"FWIW, what pushes me over the edge despite the better angels of my nature is your smug complacency that the fault surely lies with the writer, not the reader.
As a brevity-challenged writer, I admit to a bias against those with limited patience and attention spans who are always ready to pronounce sentence upon anything that wouldn't fit on an average old-fashioned Western Union telegram. Or in modern parlance, a "sound bite".
[W]hen you come across a seemingly over-long, pointless screed you really need to ask yourself if it just might be going over your head. Because too often, that's exactly the case." **
Indeed!
**http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/06/13
I just had to say that I actively seek out your comments, Obedient Servant, for being interesting and thoughtful, for turning things over and looking at them from different angles, something completely absent from most commentary.
Very well done!
He was saying stuff I've felt, but was never able to put into words.
"Using any metric, the present system, based upon a zombie-like proliferation of exponential growth is unsustainable."
Brilliant
Beautiful article!
America needs to move beyond its chorus of Quaker Oatmen & women always ready at the judgement. It is crippling. Divisive. A Nation divided...falls. No offense to the Quaker religion. Catholics are guiltier than anyone of this. -And a few others!
Modesty has its place, like for keeping warm. Victorianism left lovely architecture, but shame filled bodies.
"Hippies" had some things right. These bodies are intelligent, beautiful and each one a reflection of the Creator/ Creation and worthy of worship! Pretty soon one realizes the ground we walk upon and the air we are breathing and life all around us is alive and sacred.
What Weiner did was NOT cool. Cheating on your wife, even if virtually, sending pictures to strangers that you thought was a "joke" and then panicking and lying about it when it was revealed shows a definite lack of character and I think that he ought to resign his Congressional seat. I'm sick to tears of these powerful men thinking they can take advantage of women as sex toys, knock them up, leave them pregnant with a "love child" and then work like hell to cover it up from the wife and kids or do some other stupid thing is just beyond the pale. When you say, "I do", and "Forsaking all others" and "till death do us part" while putting a ring on her finger, you'd BETTER damn well mean it. It's an oath, for chrissakes! If you can't keep your pants zipped after you say "I DO" then you'd better have your head examined and rethink marriage. Stupid, stupid men. I hope that Weiner's wife leaves him in an angry huff. It would serve him right, especially given that she's pregnant with his child. I'd take the kid and run as far away from that creep as distance could get me. He sounds as if he has the potential to become a sexual predator and that's not the kind of man I'd want to stay married to. I wouldn't want my child anywhere NEAR anyone that creepy. Huma, run, dear, run, and don't look back. You deserve better.
"can there be any chance of an awaking, even an uprising, against such life-negating forces?"
nicely written article. and he partially answers his own query with the phrase
"to know oneself by drawing near to the beating heart of the monster of the world."
this requires a "monstrous" commitment, of course, but is doable.
it is certainly a legitimate question as to whether contemporary ignorance/arrogance is excessive enough compared to previous eras to make any meaningful action by individual or group essentially worthless. imho, it has ever been the same challenge. if by "awaking," rockstroh refers to that phenomenon of spirit which has been present in every age, there is no doubt it can and will continue. as to whether there may ever be something like a critical mass, with sufficient numbers of humanity engaged in this process to bring about greater cultural transformation, it is extremely doubtful, but still possible.
considering the possible alternatives at the moment, giving energy to even those with the most doubtful liklihood of coming to pass are better than giving up.