A Highly Stoic Unpreparedness

This essay was begun, and far the better part of it completed, on January 4 of this year - with most of the rest, l believe, being finished by no later than the 14th of that month. A lot has happened in the world since then, obviously: some of it giving rise to speculation as to whether, at last, Heaven's mandate is being withdrawn from a certain East Asian regime - not to mention those of its enablers, cronies, erstwhile "partners," etc. But whether or not this (even more than usually) bizarre little post has any real relevance, however indirect, to currently accelerating events coming out of mainland China, l thought it best to leave it substantially as l first put it to paper, with only more or less minimal and technical kinds of editing. Rather than try and shoehorn it into some kind of strained, hindsighted relevance visible only to the one who wrote it. And even he likely needs to have his eyes rechecked.


At times I think I must  be someone who's easily disturbed and overwhelmed. Because I can't get over the sheer number of people I meet nowadays (even comfortable retirees!) - as well as read, and read about - who make it a sort of policy to be what I call jadedly stoic. Who give every convincing appearance of being - well, surprised by nothing; paused by nothing; impressed and awed by nothing; moved and touched - and even disturbed - by NOTHING. Other than perhaps themselves and each other. And even that very tentatively. After all, being truly awesome is a result one not only has to earn without ceasing, and often by the most irksome toil, but endlessly polish and brush up on. Like any resume. Again, even if you're retired. Awesome is almost never anything that happens to you: it is rather what YOU - by your indomitable will, drive and corporatized initiative - MAKE to happen. (Just ask Comcast, etc.) And still more so a century from now. Remember, we're only just getting started.

For me, it's as if these good people - including a neighbor couple I just visited -  have taken the fullest possible measure of all those things our Great World most demands and respects. And that, in a very comprehensive nutshell, is just about all one needs to know about Life. In particular, they seem to make it a point to understand what does awe and impress the predominant world of today - be it that world as orchestrated from Washington, Brussels, Berlin or Beijing. What moves our hypermodern, globally-connected human world is power and confidence, swagger and self-assurance. Along with, of course, the ability to get quick, decisive, and even violent results by the use of these traits. Whatever else there is, that doesn't possess these qualities, or doesn't admire them, or isn't all that amenable to or manipulable by them, simply doesn't matter. Not really. All that matters is a (humanly-constructed) universe in which stoic unfazeability, coupled with a smooth, measured arrogance and a well-grounded, well-recognized sense of accomplishment, is what opens every door, and removes every obstacle.

Now I can appreciate what makes all sorts of decent people, of every age, taste and walk of life, feel maybe now more than ever pressured to get with the Program. One can scarce fault even more traditionally religious Americans of this century for being persuaded of a thought an earlier generation would have deemed mildly blasphemous: i.e., that there's NO CHALLENGE - not from god or man, demon or Donald Trump - that our godlike, politically-connected* Global Business isn't, in the final count, more than equal to. And not just able to conquer, but to reduce utterly to its own wise, rational and profitable ends. 

* To say nothing of politically correct.

And yet I can't help thinking of certain doors that haven't been opened by these Modern Virtues. Or hurdles that haven't yet been cleared. Or even of certain other doors, that we may never want to see opened at all? And yet may still, in some strange fashion, find we have to pass through.

I'd like you to permit me what may be, to some tastes, a rather extravagant example. Consider for a moment today's various worlds of story and entertainment. Imagine if devils and horrors, nightmares, zombies and apocalypses - and all the other fun things that routinely populate our TV, movies, games and other media - imagine if these creatures were all of a sudden to become really, stubbornly, uncomfortably real. How prepared do you suppose our Great World's most commended people, its most applauded talents would be, in the event that their precious, ever-so-tightly interlocked global routines were ever to start getting seriously disrupted? And not by mere rumors of trade war, or rumblings of populist anger and discontent, but by nothing certifiably human?

But to return to earth, I can't help remembering what else continues to be missed by these great Door-Openers (end of Par. 2), that is nonetheless real, and that really impinges on all of us, regardless of our degree of power, talent, confidence or prestige. I'm especially reminded - and not least by the escalating tensions and volatilities of today's geopolitical scene - of what our highly credentialed smugness, arrogance and indifference have blinded us to. Not the ever-loved plasticity and predictability of the world, of course, but its pain and beauty; its mystery and strangeness (or even weirdness); its madness and fanaticism. Or even its sheer unpredictableness. In short, all those things that seemingly no surplus of technology or rationality, no amount of contempt or arrogance or indifference can quite get us a good handle on these days. And which we may have even less firmly in our grip than we did at the start of this grand century. And which therefore we feel we have no choice but to ignore - as, say, a place on a map, and where it really is, because our GPS will find it. Or else to mow down, and drive and pave over. Or even (try to) bludgeon, or burn, or drone to death. Mysteries like Syria and Persia, and Yemen. Or what used to be called - in a less madly Sinocentric age - Sinkiang. Or even (no doubt a duly chastened and cleansed) Russia. Because any other response would be grossly unstoic, unjaded, undignified. Any other response would be to give these other, rather more mysterious, less manipulable factors - and even places and peoples - a dignity they don't deserve. One can never be too confidently rational in subduing the irrational.

But of course - you know me - I still have my inevitable question. Again, one can never be too confidently rational in subduing the irrational. But what happens, I wonder, when all our vaunted Sino-Western rationality, confidence, technophilia over-reach themselves? You know how that can happen, right? - in the course of our mostly noble efforts to subdue and constrain the world's madmen and fanatics - its Putins, Assads, Khameneis, miscellaneous Uighurs, Tibetans, Houthis, etc. So what happens when our Sino-Western modernity itself ceases to be rational? When it seems to lose all sense of measure, restraint, proportion? And what happens when our, if I may so, proudly secular modernity takes on a momentum, madness and fanaticism - indeed, a religiosity all its own?