Living in Cloud Cuckoo Land

The Cloud Cuckoo Land I refer to in this post is that of Aristophanes, as depicted in his play The Birds.

It's not the one referred to in the recent novel bearing that title, nor is it the one referred to by assorted German philosophers.  The Germans once thought themselves the successors to the ancient Greeks, for reasons I don't understand, and perhaps still do, but I do not. 

Cloud Cuckoo Land as it has been referred to in more modern times is a place where absurdity reigns, or a fantasy land.  As pictured in Aristophanes' play, it is a kind of kingdom of birds, made by birds who are thought to be the real or original gods.  It's built by birds on the recommendation of a couple of men, who tell them (the birds) of their divinity.  

As might be expected, the play has been interpreted as intended to communicate this or that profound insight, and may well have been intended to do so.  The most obvious interpretation--that it is a comedy written by a great writer of comedies, intended to make people laugh--is thought too vulgar.  But Aristophanes could be quite vulgar when he wanted to be, and the ancients were, in fact, quite vulgar in various respects according to modern sensibilities.  

But Cloud Cuckoo Land may be an appropriate description of the world in which we live, at least as a synonym for absurdity.  The mid-term elections didn't pan out as it was supposed to according to  our ubiquitous media, pundits and politicians, and that may be because of a rejection of the lunatic rantings of Stercus Magnus (as I'll call him for purposes of this post) and his cohort of brown-nosing (if not yet brown-shirted) imbeciles.  That of course would not in itself be absurd, and may even be encouraging.  But, the world in which we live remains one in which people who have no business governing anything run for and even obtain public office; one in which money is deemed speech; one in which it's easier to obtain a deadly weapon than it is to obtain accurate information.  So the dismal failure to predict the outcome of the elections may merely be the result of stupidity instead of a sign of sensibility.  

All part of the Cloud Cuckoo Land we've built, not the birds.

We humans built our Cloud Cuckoo Land believing ourselves to be gods or to be made in God's image, or at least to be the most intelligent creature living on this woefully small and insignificant planet.  We needed nobody to tell us that's what we should do.  Perhaps that's what gods do.  Alas, our Cloud Cuckoo Land is a disaster.

But here's another interpretation of Aristophanes' play.  Perhaps the obvious was, or is, the message of the play.  Perhaps Aristophanes was quite serious. The birds' Cloud Cuckoo Land would be better than any city of humans.  Birds are worthier gods than we are.  In fact, any animal would be.  There is wisdom in the worship of animals engaged in by our ancestors.  Unlike us, animals aren't selfish, greedy, stupid or malicious.  They subsist, they merely are, and live according to nature--that's all they can do, in fact.  They have no pretensions, no dreams or nightmares to confound or confuse them.  They don't make war.  They're what we strive to be and cannot be, perfectly in mesh with the world (at least until we've remake it).

 

The Only Thing That Will Make You See Sense

The bigoted, elitist, but nonetheless incisive Sage of Baltimore comes to mind more and more as the horror of the mid-term elections looms larger and larger before us.  If I wanted merely to comment on the preposterous hypocrisy and venality of the election process, I'd be content to quote his assertion that elections are an advance auction sale of stolen goods.  But these are dark times, and dark times engender dark thoughts.  And so the quote which graces this post, above.

Was Mott the Hoople right when it sang all too long ago that Violence is the only thing that will make us see sense?  Yes, I mean Violence with a capital "V."  If it is, it's likely that it will only make us see sense in the short term, but that may suffice to resuscitate our dwindling civilization until the next time it's required to jolt us into remediative action.  Our history repeats itself in certain respects.  Think of the statement heard in movies featuring the Mafia, that a war is good for business now and then. Human society may not be significantly different from that of organized crime.  Fascists were destroyed in the Second World War but arise once more, in Europe and even here.  Read Sinclair Lewis; read George Orwell.

We've had many wars, but the war being spoken of by some now is war of a particular kind.  Political war within a political unit; that is to say, a civil war.  We've flirted with the idea of one lately, it seems. It may be that the thought of a civil war pleases some of us.  Those it pleases most are probably lovers of fantasies in which they figure heroically, brandishing weapons in defense of whatever they find important.

We had a real civil war during the 1860s, of course, but our capacity to forget is such that it's more or less a romantic memory now, even another fantasy, perhaps.  Some of us dress up and pretend to  be soldiers in that war (and other wars as well, unfortunately).  One of the memories of that war we should hold is that it was remarkably bloody; another is that we fight our best (that is to say, do the most harm) when we fight among ourselves.  And it seems clear to me, at least, that we're eager to fight among ourselves once more.

The internal war we may face is different from that civil war, though.  No great casus belli is available.  What causes there are seem mean, petty things taken in themselves--whether we think of sex the same way, or certain people the same way, or agree that certain books shouldn't be read, certain things shouldn't be said, or certain people shouldn't be here or whose love for our Great Republic is seemingly inadequate, or certain religions shouldn't be allowed or followed.  Most important, though, is the fear that others may have what we have or take what we have, especially if those others are different than we are.  

I suspect that if there is such a war it will be more similar to the internal wars of the French Revolution.  There's a kind of regime running this country, a regime born of and sustained by money.  Those who have the money despise or are at best indifferent to those who don't, and take great pains to appear as though they have the interests of those they despise or are indifferent to in mind when those of the regime act to foster their own interests.  Why it's thought that the regime seeks to benefit anyone but its own members is beyond me.  It should be obvious it does not, but suckers must indeed be born every minute.

Still, I can't help but feel that this enchantment will wear off, eventually.  And when it does, mere anarchy will be loosed upon the world in a way far more real than the aristocratic Yeats thought it had been all those years ago.  Every normal person will not only want to hoist the black flag and start cutting throats (some already do, I think) but will begin the work of slashing. If the kind of hate we see displayed in our society is any indication, many long for a new guillontine already, and there are wannabe Marats and Robespierres standing ready.

There's only so much hypocrisy, venality, sanctimony, arrogance, fraud and contempt one can take.  Some day, someone or many someones will notice that things don't change, no matter what is said or done by those with power.  They don't change because those in power won't gain, but will rather lose, if change takes place.  What will the reaction be when we realize, collectively, that we've been bamboozled?