Apology

There comes a time when we must face that our time has come. At 58 I have no marriage, no country, no health, and no career. My beloved wife died on the 31st of July, in what has been the worst year I could ever imagine. She died at home with me, which was where she wanted to be, and I will always be grateful that's where she wanted to be.

Goodbye my love, I'm coming.

When I was 10 years old and America was being shredded by the war in Vietnam I knew that our disregard for life, human and otherwise, had to change. So in my young and flailing way I set out like Don Quixote, to challenge those values. My failure therefore was predictable. Had it been only a material failure, I would have been all right with that, but there have been so many failures, on so many levels.

My life has been a bit like a movie I saw once (or actually saw once twice in a row, a mistake I assure you!) with Bill Murray called Groundhog Day. I, like the central character in the movie felt just as painfully aware of the outcome at the beginning as at the end of the day, yet was unable to change anything! It's been like watching a slow motion train wreck.

I’m done here. My wife's death shattered my spiritual dreams in this life, and this election my earthly dreams, while I've watched my family of origin and my wife's family of origin tear themselves apart, through nothing but base impulses, bad character, and lack of introspection.

I’ve seen human nature clearly now. Half of humanity, beset by demons, are viciously determined to tear down any progress the other half can make. That is true on the level of nations, communities and families. Those of us who try to create a better world must watch these fear-frozen millions, frothing at the mouth with racism, hatred, envy, greed, lechery, suppressed violence and God knows what, to destroy any good we might accrue to humanity through centuries of self-sacrifice. They long for a return to the dark ages and the ethics of the abattoir, where their souls are at home.

If that is not a joke of cosmic proportions, I don’t know what conceivably could be! So I’m done here.

To all the beautiful people - those who go on trying (you know who you are!) - I would say I’m sorry but of course you don’t need me. We go on as long as we can because that’s how we’re made. The good cannot live without hope any more than the evil can live without tearing it down. That is the tragic nature of the world.

May you all go on as long as there is room for you to have your own, hopeful life!

Goodbye to the good people, to my friends! You know who you are!

Brent Hightower

The Way Forward

Okay, it's simple. We elected Biden. So far so good.
Now what we need to do, without fail, is get these ballot initiatives on the 2022 ballot.

1. Campaign finance reform,
2. Universal health care.
3. A conversion from fosile fuels.
4. A 100 miilion dollar limit on aggragate wealth.
4. An $18 dollar minimum wage, automatically adjusted for inflation.
5. The repair of America's aging infrastucture.

They keep telling us Americans don't want these things, so let's get them on the 2022 ballet, and find out!

If young people really want to put their youthful energy into a direction that will get results. This is it. If we can't create a national ballot initiative, we should get them on every state ballot we can. That would create enormous pressure on national government.

Brent Hightower

Election 2020

Well, the election is over. I voted for Biden, and I’m relieved that Trump will not be actively destroying America for the next four years, but I don’t see much to celebrate. We live in a dangerously divided country, with little prospect of healing that divide, and those who just want to reestablish an un-corrupted democracy that doesn’t poison our planet until it's destroyed are blasted by politicians and media as dangerous radicals.

Meanwhile the working classes, having been cast off by their corporate owned government, have become more angry and disillusioned year by year, until at last they are courting Fascism.

For democracy to survive we need, first and foremost, absolute campaign finance reform. Without it, we have no real democracy and no hope of reversing the damage already done to our political system and our planet, through the appeasement of every private interest, no matter how destructive.

And now into this mix sallies our unlikely hero, Joe Biden, who has made a very long political career out of satisfying every corporate interest that ever held out to him a dollar, saying he will be a leader for "all Americans." God help us if that’s just a signal to every corrupt private-interest that his presidency will be business as usual, because if it is than his will probably be the last democratic presidency od the United States.

Brent Hightower
Copyright 2020 Brent Hightower
21stcenturyperceptions.blogspot.com

The Takeaway form the Election

I know people are sick of the subject of politics right now. God knows I am! But there’s one takeaway from the election of 2020 that is essential. There are those already saying that this election shows the Democrats cannot push an aggressive program of reform. That is exactly wrong!

The enormous enthusiasm for Trump and on the other side of the isle for Sanders, both show the utter disaffection of the great majority with the stats-quo! Americans (and particularly the vast American working class, though many of them are too unsophisticated to recognize their real antagonist) are fed up with the business as usual!

If the Democrats don’t provide Serious Relief to the majority from generations of oppression and exploitation, from corporatism and Wall Street, the next time around we will most likely end up with Fascism! And though the over-privileged may think they would prefer that to social justice, if they get it, they will find they are were wrong.

Brent Hightower
Copyright Brent Hightower
21stcenturyperceptions.blogspot.com

The Danger To Democracy

Due to the great importance of this election, I'm going to post about it today, rather than about literature. I'm posting the below essay from 2016, from my book," Inner Demons and other Essays," because it so clearly forshadows the issues in hte current election. I believe it's worth reading, in that it shows the Democrats can no longer afford to uphold the interests of Wall Street and corporate power, over those of the American working class. The enthusiasm for Bernie Sanders arose from the same frustrations as those that have led to the right-wing enthusiasm for Donald Trump. If the Democrats ignore this massive dissafection, and merely continue to serve corporate interests and Wall Street, they will be dangerously courting the rise of fascism in America.

May, 2016

An Open Letter to the Democratic National Committe

I have voted for the Democratic candidate in every presidential election since 1980, as well as in most of the midterm elections during those years, but, during this last election, the election of 2016, at age 54, I caucused for a candidate for the first time. That candidate was Bernie Sanders. Because of his long established progressive voting record as one of the very few Independents in Congress, I had faith in his integrity, and I was immediately attracted by his agenda, centered around the working class, and the middle class, against monu-mental corporate wealth.

For the first time since 1969 I felt the thrill of an energized reform movement with a viable leader and a groundswell of voter enthusiasm. It was clear that a vote for Sanders would be a strong repu-diation of the "democratic leadership council" and their center right candidates who have sprung from it: candi-dates who are less and less distinguishable from Republicans as time goes by. Like so many other people, I saw Sanders as a genuine representative of the people, - someone who could reverse the decline of our democracy which has been further corrupted every year by the power of vested interest. More than anything, it was that last concern that brought out the public in unprecedented numbers in the current primary season.

What I saw at my local caucus this year was unique in my memory in American politics. In contrast to the lack-luster turnout in most caucuses, there was not just a high turnout, there was a feeling of vibrancy, of electricity in the air. In our town of about 40,000, there were literally thousands of people standing in long lines to participate. The result was that Bernie Sanders won over Hillary Clinton seven to one. For the first time I remember since the candidacy of Bobby Kennedy, real passion was ex-pressed for the candidate and for the potential of our de-mocracy.

Sanders was clearly bringing in people who haven't voted in years, many who have, perhaps, never voted before at all. Of course, there were also the same old party hacks as well, who were not in the least happy about that tremendous turnout – their looks said so as plain as day. They seemed to be saying "I don't know who these people are, but the sooner they get out of here the better."

The party machine was not happy about this surge of ex-citement, except to the degree they could co-opt it in the next election for establishment candidates. They would then discard or ignore these excited voters as quickly as possible afterwards so they could get on with business as usual, as it has been in America for over fifty years now.

The machine would indeed like these pesky Sanders supporters to vote for Clinton, the business as usual can-didate, and then go away. But, from what I saw at the caucus I attended, they are not going to go away this time, and if the party tries to shove the status quo down people’s throats once again, all they will do is cause the party damage, perhaps irrevocable damage. The Repub-lican Party has already been damaged by its unwilling-ness to see the vast disillusionment in America, and Democrats are on the verge of making the same mistake. A significant percentage of those who voted for Sanders in the primaries simply will not vote for Clinton in the election, ever. It's that simple.

I've voted Democratic for over 40 years and I have yet to see my political beliefs actually represented in American politics, and I am not the only one. There is a tremendous level of resentment built up over the decades that the actual people of this country have been frozen out of the political equation. The party establishment must recognize that there is now a serious risk in not acknowledging the reality of people's bitterness.

Those center-right Democrats who have benefited from voter complacency will tell us that those who voted for Sanders will yet again get in line and vote for the establishment candidate, simply in order to thwart Donald Trump. In most elections, that equation would probably be true, but they may be wrong. A simple measure of that deep disaffection can be seen in the percentage of Republicans who voted for Jeb Bush in this election. Considering his family’s status in the party, his defeat was epic, and whether the Democratic party wants to acknowledge it or not, there are a lot of people out there who would actually vote for Trump as opposed to Clinton in this election simply to see somebody, anybody, other than a candidate of the establishment.

Brent Hightower
Copyright Brent Hightower
21stcenturyperceptions.blogspot.com

My Books Finally Arrive!

I finally got the print copies of all of my books today (the cover image of "Ode to Belladonna" is above), and aside from the small glitches that seem inevitable in a first print run when self-publishing online, I am very happy with them. They are beautiful!

Unbelieveably, in working with Microsoft to produce a book, page numbering is often the hardest thing to get right! The copy of "Ode" has no pagenation, and in "Heir" I don't like the way the page numbers look on the page. One of the title pages is also set incorrectly. When you self-publish you have to wear too many hats! But these are monor issues that I can readily address. The missing page-numbers in "Ode" are okay, for now I think, because the book has short chapters that are innumerated.

I love the overall look and feel of all of these books!

How odd that they arrived on election day! I don't know what to make of that! Is there some great cosmic sense of humor in the universe? If so, it's a slightly twisted one in my experience.

When all is said and done though, having these books before me, even imperfectly published as they still are, makes me very happy. 20 years of work all but done, anyway Yeah!

02, November, 2020. A Personal Perspective

I got up again in the afternoon the day my wife had died in the morning, and I said to myself, “I wonder what the world looks like now that she's gone?” I looked out the window and it was overcast. The sun that had shown so brightly at dawn was then eclipsed by gray. The sunrise, that perfect red disk that had flamed out of a blue sea had vanished, overcome by the scudding mists of a threatening storm, and I said to myself, “I knew it would be worse when she was gone.”

I’ve never felt such strong feelings as in these last few months. Desperation, dark humor, wistfulness, rage, tragic absurdity, horror and a kind of awe, as each new day tolls the crooked bell of our cracking history.

This is a turning point in time, for me, for humanity, for life itself. It’s like the fall of the Roman Empire, or the start of the Second World War, only more momentous in its implications.

For myself, I've lost my wife, finished the books I’ve been working on for 20 years, suffered the worsening collapse of my health, all while Western Democracy hangs by the barest of threads, and earth’s ecosystems.

The collective beliefs that have held together civilization and sanity are fracturing, and every day the bell tolls louder the chiming of some omniscient, diabolic clock.

The lunatic on the corner predicting our doom is sane, while the passing masses bustling on their responsible ways, are mad as hatters!

No, there's never been a time like this in its sense of living out some outlandish prophesy! Pity all the living things on earth who, lacking any better savior, must look to us for their survival. Pity the unborn generations and what this moment means to them.

I have no clear vision of the future, just this view of an ever gathering storm. May God, or Justice, or Happenstance will that this storm will break! I am weary unto death of this dark vision, while somewhere inside against all reason still resides that vision of the dawn.

Brent Hightower
Copyright Brent Hightower
21stcenturyperceptions.blogspot.com

A Loveless House

From my recent collection of poems, A Loveless House and Other Poems:

A loveless house is filled with ghosts,
Of what might have been, and what will never be;
Some vital force is absent here, withdrawn into itself,
Retreating into empty corners, and lurid shadows.
This slanting sun, this pale evening light,
Cannot dispel the all-pervasive darkness.
Here, where life begins, and also where it ends.

Outside I hear children, distant laughter,
Voices that echo through the closing year.
Yet now there are no children here -
But just this litany, this faint murmuring
From long ago, passing through cracks in time -
These children, for fifty years forgotten here,
In this house, still waiting for their mother.

There are no ghosts in joyous houses,
No brooding reflections of bygone days,
Nor heavy shadows like these beside the bed,
Falling more darkly now than even memory.
Where love has been the spirit needn’t linger.
A loveless house is filled with ghosts,
Regrets resounding through eternity.

Brent Hightower
Copyright 2020 Brent Hightower
21stcenturyperceptions.blogspot.com

On Human Dissociation

One very interesting thing about the internet is that you get to see a profound aspect of human behavior in action. Often, people who are not in many ways stupid, simply cannot be made to consider questions in the light of (even very simplistic) reason! We see this literally all the time, and I believe it is a kind of mental dissociation. I also believe that it may be THE PROBLEM!

Clearly a lot of people dissociate when confronted with facts that don't fit their pre-conditioned pre-conceptions, and when you think about the full ramifications of this it could well explain the entire mess we are in as human beings.

I believe that this is the case, and I've been trying to communicate it for years. (But when I do, I find that people generally dissociate!) Their eyes glaze over. They just won't go there.

Nevertheless, when one thinks about it this just explains so much in terms of why so many people cannot be brought to reason! I believe our psyches (that is to say most of us) are fractured through the trauma of what we optimistically call socialization. When you look at the way (particularly boys) are socialized, it is clearly a process designed either consciously or subconsciously, and I believe the latter, to break their psyches - to separate them from their more empathetic, creative, and intuitive selves - to break them, to render them un-whole. And there are strong reasons for this embedded in Darwinian survival.

Our almost universally accepted patterns of socialization in modern society are actually very primitive, rooted in survival of the fittest, and they are traumatizing. This is the proverbial elephant in the living room. It is simply amazing that we have evolved to both participate in this process, and at the same time blind ourselves to its paramount importance, generally speaking even to its very existence. This is mass dissociation. Though we may see the terrible results, in situations such as those at Columbine, we stil block out their meaning and implications.

We are acting-out ancient patterns of behavior that have become largely instinctive. So to many, reason and critical thinking are a direct challenge to both their instinctual and conditioned behavior - in short to their entire understanding and means of dealing with the world. Is it any wonder then that they react violently and fearfully when challenged to change?

Aside from all the unnecessary cruelty and suffering this process produces, these ancient behaviors (exemplified most clearly by what is allowed or even condoned to go on, on our playgrounds) aren't up to the challenge of producing people sufficiently evolved to handle modern technological society.

The great struggle we now see taking place isn't one of the left-wing against the right-wing. It can be seen more clearly as growing pains - as our struggle to rise to the occasion where advanced society is concerned - of whether we can evolve into the role that our tremendous technological capability demands we evolve to fill.

Whether it was a good idea to promote technology to the point that only an advanced consciousness can wield it is an open question. But our future (if we are have one) will be determined by whether (as many people see, or can can sense) we are able to rapidly evolve in our essential beings. That cannot be done unless we examine this hidden question of our socialization. Our future must be determined by a renewed understanding of what Socrates told us us 2,500 years ago. "Know thyself!"

Every major forward thrust in Western civilization and thought has been derived from a renewed examination of the remarkable realizations of the ancient Greeks, and we have gone too far to turn back now. It was Socratic realization of the supreme importance of self-knowledge that lay at the heart of Greek understanding, and of those subsequent advances in civilization. In our era, if we are so inclined we could travel farther, faster down this road of self-understanding, due to advances in modern science. Yet it is self-knowledge itself, not science or technology severed from it, that is our only means to salvation.

A growing understanding of the ways our primitive patterns of socialization are preventing us from entering our own as a species truly capable of stewarding life on earth, is the first step on that journey. In this new, conflicted era, we must strive in every way to understand, with all possible honesty and objectivity, what we are as human beings in all our complexity - in order to avoid a self-fulfilling prophesy of destruction.

Brent Hightower
Copyright 2020 Brent Hightower
21stcenturyperceptions.blogspot.com

Mental Restorations Foundation

This is a rare post unrelated to writing. Rather, it is a personal appeal:

We are all experiencing stress in this time of COVID, but the people charged with helping us, and protecting us - our veterans, first responders, health care professionals, and others – are now coping with truly harrowing circumstances. The suicide rate and the rate of mental crisis in these professions has risen to staggering proportions.

But there are now people in our communities rising to the occasion to help.

One such organization is being formed here on the Island of Hawaii. It’s called Mental Restorations Foundation, and it was founded recently by Micah Gauthier. Mental Restorations Foundation provides community and peer-support for those in crisis, through shared outdoor activities. These activities will include deep sea fishing, scuba diving, farming and more - as well as a supportive community of friends who can connect in person, and on the web, for both social interaction and peer-counseling.

Outdoor exercise and group interaction are among the most essential factors for the preservation of mental health. Other factors are a sense of purpose, a sense of being appreciated, and of having a recognized place in the community. MRF hopes to provide all these things where they are needed most, regardless of the individual’s economic circumstances. Will you help by becoming a member today?

Sincerely,
Brent Hightower
Mental Restorations Foundation

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/308092300087980/
Website: https://mentalrestorations.com/
Blog: https://mentalrestorations.com/
Phone: 1(808) 315-5594