The Future

I don’t know at the moment how much I’ll be contributing to this blog in the future. One reason is that if Biden loses the upcoming election, I won’t see a point in contributing essays, or social commentary, anymore. When I was young there were a lot of us who thought we could change the world for the better. Now the question is whether we can hang on to some sort of recognizable civilization at all. If Trump wins we are done for, and there will be no reason to chronicle the inevitable decline and fall.

A storm of feeling is coming over me these days. I’m struggling to comprehend those feelings and get honest with them, in order to put them down. That’s always the difficult thing about writing, but at the moment it’s more so, through the sheer intensity of them all.

I am going through one of those moments that are life changing. My beloved wife died not two months ago, and right now, today, I’m completing the last of five books I’ve been working on for twenty years. The sign posts could not be more obvious.

Not only do I not know if I’ll be contributing to this blog in the future, I don’t know if I even have a future. The loss of Lauren is devastating, and I’ve put my remaining strength into these books, while writing, as an occupation, seems to now belong to a handful of corporate owned products, like Michael Creighton, and Danielle Steele.

Meanwhile, I struggle with a serious auto immune disease and other health problems, planetary extinction is off the charts, the ecosystem nears collapse. The world I’ve known and cared about seems to be dying. Whether there is a purpose for me in it, I don’t yet know.

Thanks,

Brent

My collection of poems, published digitally on Kindle

I published my collection of poems today, digitally, through Amazon Kindle. I don't particularly like publishing poems digitally, because I care about the whole esthetic experience of reading poetry. Yet it seems people read more books digitally now, because the price is right. In this case just $2.99. They should be available on Amazon within a few days. I can't link to Amazon here, so please go to Amazon.com and enter "Brent Hightower." These are not your grandmother's poems. If you don't want to read work that comes from the current world they may not be for you.

Thanks.

P.S. Along with my poems I finally managed to reedit my novel, Ode To Belladonna, which I now feel as proud of as The Broken World. Mali Dahl also helped me tremendously by reediting my collection of essays, Inner Demons. Both are also available on Amazon. My new novel, The Heir Apparent, will be coming out this autumn.

Goodbye, My Love

My wife, Lauren, died on the 31st of July. I’m going through our house, rearranging things, throwing things out and putting things away, partly because whenever I see something of hers it brings up a host of memories that are overwealmingly painful . Of course I want to save many of her things. I’m putting many of them away in boxes, for a time I’ll be strong enough to endure seeing them again, and maybe even enjoy those memories.

As I look at each thing it takes me on a journey back down the years. And now, it makes me more than want to cry. It makes me want to crawl into a hole and die. I feel myself falling into a hole that goes down forever into darkness, and I’m too weary to even feel.
I don’t know why I feel the need to say these things. Everyone knows, everyone can imagine death and what it means. Why this need to unburden myself, by laying some part of this burden on someone else. It seems another cruel thing about death, this way that misery has of wanting company.

I have no answers for any of this, but only look forward to a time when every nuance of the past doesn’t bring with it some subtly different shade of pain.
Yet I also feel her spirit here, in this room, and I feel her benevolence, her kind energy, and that she doesn’t want me to grieve. Goodbye my Lauren, my wife, my life.

Brent Hightower

The Future of the Democratic Party

Before I post this I'll preface it by saying, "Yes, I'm voting for Biden!" Even though I strongly backed Sanders in the primary, I'm voting for Biden!

Assuming Democrats win the election, there will be two ways of thinking about how to go forward. One will be for Democrats to take the political center, and in so doing marginalize the Republican party as a fringe group, thus becoming the party of the majority.

The alternative will be to combat the radical right-wing agenda of the modern Republicans with an alternative vision, one that actively seeks to heal the deep inequities in American society through activist policies.

On the surface the first vision seems logical, but upon further scrutiny it falls apart altogether. The election of Trump itself is an indication of how profoundly disaffected Americans are with the status quo! If the Democrats become, by placing themselves in the center, apologists for the way things are, they will face swift political annihilation.

Our situation is very similar to that which Roosevelt faced in 1932. We should take his actions as the perfect model for how we face the current situation. Democrats must do nothing less then completely reverse the prevailing attitudes of the last 40 years. Only if Americans see a significant change in their personal fortunes, and the conditions of their communities, will Democrats prevail, even in the short run. If Democrats don't prevail we will likely face some new form of fascism.

The Sea in Storm

In the indefinite light of evening,
Signals flash from out along the bay,
Seemingly as distant as a waking dream,
And the long, low, face of the sea
Reaches for aye into the ebbing gleam,
As if this sea were time itself, and life,
And the waning sun their sheer uncertainty.

These beacons telegraph in short bursts,
Green, then red, then green again,
And are so emblematic of life itself to me,
The two colors dispersed in oncoming night
Communicate their lack of all conviction.
As if in life's storm they are uncertain,
And I, likewise, cannot find my way.

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

The Meaning Of It All

I’m with my wife, Lauren, tonight, and she’s slowly dying. She had cancer and the result of the radiation treatment was that it killed too much tissue, so she’s dying. She’s delirious most of the time, and in great pain, although I’m able now to treat that pretty effectively. But I’m not going to talk about that, at least not directly. I’m going to talk (probably in a somewhat rambling fashion) about some of the thoughts that have gone through my mind tonight.

You might think that mortality would bring people together, through its very finality. Because we're here only a short time, you’d think we'd learn to appreciate one another (and certainly there is an element of that in death and dying.) Many people selflessly dedicate their lives to easing pain and providing comfort, and people certainly do offer sympathy when there’s death and dying in a family.

But in the larger sense, even mortality isn’t enough to get us to let our guards down, to allow us to trust our fellow man, and this is something we should ponder very seriously, for its implications.

It has to do with the nature of this existence. Every creature on earth (and we are not exceptions), is forced to the struggle to survive, and this inevitably makes us all natural antagonists. That is the reason we don’t let our guards down.

Love leaves us vulnerable to those who do not feel love, and there are many who, for various reasons, mainly genetic, do not feel love. The rest of us know this, but mostly on a subliminal level, because to allow ourselves the conscious knowledge of it is simply too psychically damaging.

These are the predators among us, and those capable of feeling love spend much of their lives, much of their psychic energy, on fabricating excuses for them, while those who don’t feel love become the dominators.

My wife's life has been defined by her struggle to understand, and attempt to articulate, this seemingly simple and yet terribly complex and hidden aspect of human nature. It is the aspect of our natures that leaves humanity so hopelessly incapable of establishing lasting harmony, in either families or society itself.

These predators often rule over others, and do so ruthlessly, because they generally have the most drive to attain power, and the descent, loving, caring human beings, who suffer at their hands often spend their life's energy making excuses for them, because the full realization that someone close to us is such a being, is often too terrible to endure.

Many of humanities seemingly endless problems stem from this one failing, not so much of our making (not even the predators, who generally didn't choose to be that way) as that of this existence itself. It's easy to see, in that context, that these people are to be pitied. Yet to do so is dangerous.

Religion, democracy, law and a hundred other human social mechanisms exist, simply as an attempt to mitigate against this human failing.

I write this now simply because of the nature of our times, and out of what I see as the meaning of our lives - those of myself, my wife, and daughter. We have struggled, in our relatively insignificant way, to bring this truth to light.

In historical terms, and in those of larger human society, this dilemma can be grasp maybe most easily in the rise of Hitler, and in the appeasement of him by Neville Chamberlain.

Chamberlain, the ultra-civilized man, simply couldn’t believe that Hitler wanted another war, after the recent, horrible, and pointless bloodletting of World War I. Chamberlain, the ultra-civilized man, simply didn’t understand the nature of people like Hitler.

If humanity is to survive and rediscover a life worth living in modern times, it will only be when the majority (and yes, I do believe the feeling human beings are in the majority!) come to see this clearly, and never let it out of their consciousness again.

Yes, sadly some of us are wolves, nay hyenas, for wolves are social animals; and the rest of us had better learn, no matter how much it goes against our innately peaceable natures, to never again be sheep. . .

Yet I sincerely believe that our spirit’s are pointed towards someplace higher, and so for myself, and my family, and ultimately for us all, I have hope. For reasons we don't understand we live in a violent, transitory world. One in which we're allowed to glimpse the higher reality of love and truth, albeit through a veil of suffering. I don’t believe that glimpse is for nothing.

I write this tonight to honor my wife, Lauren, that most unusual of people in modern times, a philosopher. She has not showed even one hint of fear in the face of death. It’s the living that time and again, her heart goes out to.

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

A Brief Personal Note

I'm going to do something a bit unusual for me here, and that's to just write down some brief thoughts about my life, my work, and the nature of our times.

In the last several years I've become aware that my writing's taken a darker tone. This isn't something I've done consciously. As a writer (or at least as one who does the kind of writing I'm interested in) one can only work with what comes from the spirit. There's simply no point otherwise, because nothing else can illuminate the things that matter.

If then one stays true to the spirit, their work inevitably reflects the times and conditions of their life, and these are dark times for me personally, and for America as a whole.

Yet I don't believe it follows that such writing is negative. What it is, is challenging. In order to overcome dark times, I believe, we must confront them and try to understand why they are what they are, for that's the only process that can free us.

Retreating into fantasies of a happier past, where it's forever 1958 (the approach too many Americans have taken recently to address current problems) is to disarm in the face of danger. Above all, I think, trying times demand courage. So in my new novel and my poetry I've chosen not to retreat, but rather to dive into the wreck and see what may be discovered there, be it skeletons or sunken treasure.

I hope that you, my potential readers, will likewise choose not to shy away from the psychic challenge of our times, and in keeping with that outlook, will be willing to read my work.

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

On Feminism

When the feminist movement started, in the early 1970's, America was completely male dominated and a great many men treated women like not very bright children. The accepted wisdom was that women couldn't make important decisions, hold responsible jobs, or be trusted with any real measure of independence. Worse, many women were routinely abused by their spouses, or other family members: abuse that often took place openly and was considered "a man's prerogative." So there were ample reasons for women to form an equality movement.

Since that time I've always considered myself pro-feminist, but recently I've had growing reservations.

In the current zeal over feminism (sparked in part by the "Me Too Movement"), it's worth considering how feminism might be co-opted to advance a regressive agenda, thus rendering it a tool for social oppression rather than liberation, and creating a backlash against the women's movement. We should examine that possibility and interrelated issues very seriously, because when one considers the key role of women in society, what's at stake is the fate of civilization.

Along with racism, feminism has been constantly in the news for almost a decade now, and in that same decade we've witnessed a culminating effort on the part of a few wealthy, powerful, individuals, to establish oligarchy in the United States. Our democracy is now gravely imperiled. Yet we hear relatively little about that in the media. That story, the story of oligarchy itself, has been relegated to the back pages if it's mentioned at all.

The point here is that feminism and racism are being used by the media as diversions, to cloak the defining story of our times. That is the establishment of a wealthy, ruling-class, in place of our democracy, and if we the people lose our democracy it will no longer matter what we think about racism, or sexism, or any other aspect of American society, because expressing opinions is the privilege of a free people, and we will no longer be free people.

That's why the issue of class trumps that of racism and sexism in America in our era! This is particularly true in an election year, when we desperately need to unite around a candidate who can lead us out of the long nightmare of cutthroat capitalism, that has economically brought the vast majority of Americans to their knees. And that's why the corporate media (the tools of oligarchy) endlessly publish stories about racism and sexism, while saying little to nothing about the uniting and much more dangerous issue of class. They are fostering a lie by omission, the preferred method of doing so in our times.

When all Americans have prospered, tensions between the races and sexes have been greatly improved. Indeed, general prosperity may be the only really effective tool we have to promote social equality. We see this clearly from our own recent history. The widely prosperous era of the 1950's 60's and 70's, saw the greatest social gains for women and minorities in our history, the simple reason being that hate is to a great degree the outcome of fear, and people don't feel as much fear and anxiety in a prosperous era.

So if not for altruistic reasons, then out of simple expediency, those in favor of free society should remember that the numerical majority of poor and oppressed people in America are White. Indeed, it may be said that the majority of Americans are oppressed poor and lower class whites, and their grievances are very legitimate. Yet they are routinely ignored, or worse, laughed at by the supposedly liberal, corporate-owned, media; and also by the New Democrats, who've abandoned a policy to improve the lot of the great majority of Americans, of all races and sexes, thus leaving us effectively, with one pro-corporate political party that goes by two names - Democrats and the Republicans.

I'll cite an example of how feminists are being manipulated by the media, or are simply evolving in ways that may ultimately damage their own cause, taking the case of Senator Al Frankin as a example. Before being brought down by allegations of sexual misconduct, Frankin was the most popular Democrat in the Senate, winning re-election to a second term by a margin of over 60%. This, along with his name recognition as a popular comedian, made him a tremendous potential asset to the Democratic party. Then, in a shameful display of targeted rumor and innuendo he was pressured to resign to atone for vague and unsubstantiated allegations of sexual misconduct, by fellow Democrats! My own Senator, Mazie Hirono, a colleague of Frankin's, spearheaded this effort to pressure him into resigning, without any evidence that would have stood-up in court.

(This point regarding a court of law is very important, because the extra-legal nature of actions like those against Frankin - this sort of trial by rumor and innuendo - leaves feminists open to the accusation of conducting witch hunts.)

If people are to be judged and convicted in the court of public opinion, then every sexually active man, or woman, could be smeared with such allegations and forced to resign in disgrace, if only the establishment wants to get them badly enough! Senator Hirono's excuse for subjecting Frankin to this farcical trial by allegation was that she did so to gain moral credibility, in order to then force the resignation of Brett Cavanaugh from the Supreme Court, in light of the much more serious and more substantiated charges of rape, leveled against Cavanaugh. And whether that argument, on Hirono's part, makes sense on the face of it, or not, she failed to carry it through, for Cavanaugh remained in office. All she, and her associates, managed to do was ruin the career of a colleague - a hugely popular fellow Democrat who was one of the most genuine public servants in Washington!

Along with the Me Too Movement (the motives of which I believe are sound, if not always the methods) there's a more hard-core outlook developing among certain Feminists these days, which is far more suspect in my mind, and this is to see men as the problem in the world; in that men are more aggressive, warlike and violent than women, while women are more nurturing, loving and socially responsible. Therefore women alone should rule society.

We, in America, are the victims of our own myths. Take the myth of the rugged individual who doesn't need anything from anyone, but can get by on his own, by "pulling himself up by his own boot straps." It's a myth, of course, because it's impossible in modern society. Everyone in modern society depends on the efforts of thousands of others to obtain the necessities for survival. The most remote rancher needs thousands of people, to make necessities like clothing, cooking utensils, barbed wire, medicine, transportation, communications, etc., etc. So what is the point of this myth? What is its effect on society? Does it make us stronger and more independent, or weaker by enshrining in our culture a misapprehension, in turn fostering hatred for the dependent and the social safety net? And now, just as we have the dubious myth of the rugged individual, we are developing a feminine myth. The myth of the "Earth Mother," presenting women as all-wise, all-loving and uniquely tied to the cycles of nature; whereas men are, in contrast, comparatively ignorant, violent, and loveless. In this view women are not seeking equality with men, but asserting superior to men, morally and spiritually. We have come full circle.

So, what of the claim that women are more loving, nurturing, and moral than men? First, for the sake of argument, let's assume women really are endowed to be more nurturing. Then, since the world outside the home is inherently competitive, when women enter the workforce this impulse toward self-effacing sacrifice may become counter-productive. The precipitous fall in the American standard of living coincided with women entering the workforce, in large numbers, in the 1970s, largely because the size of the workforce suddenly doubled, lowering everyone's wage earning potential, but it may also be true that women have proved less able to withstand the intimidation targeted towards employees by employers. The fall of the trade union movement (the one remaining social institution that has fairly reliably stood for workers, against management) coincided with women entering the workforce. In my own working experience I've known women who adopted a role of self-sacrifice towards their employers, and were proud of it. They felt that it made them good employees. Whereas (again, in my experience), men tend to be instinctively more adversarial with employers. Which of these stances is more likely to net collective gains for workers?

Yet to what degree is it really true that women are more inherently civilized than men? For at bottom that is the assertion here. The answer is, maybe not as much as might be supposed. What, for example, became of the high hopes for social regeneration promised by women's suffrage? Has it materialized?

As voters, women have proven little more socially conscious than men, if at all. Where is the more compassionate society we were promised as the dividend for woman's suffrage. If you asked a radical feminist that question today, she would likely find a way to blame men! I've had that conversation myself, and been told that their husbands have intimidated them into voting for the usual megalomaniacs and fools of American politics over the last 75 years, right alongside men. Well, do their husbands follow them into the voting booth and twist their arms?

And what of women in politics, here and abroad? Those who have come to prominence have stood behind the reactionary status-quo at least to the same degree as have men in comparative rolls. Indeed, since women got the vote, we've had some of the most socially regressive governments in our history, culminating with those in power right now, including Donald Trump, Mitch McConnoll and Brett Cavanaugh. Clearly something is askew here! Some gulf exists between the rhetoric of the woman's movement and the reality of women's nature.

Another problem with this vision that men are inferior because they are more aggressive, and less civilized, is the law of sexual selection. Just as the peacock gets his plumage from the choices made by the pea hen, so men get their aggression from women's choice of a partner, so if men are overly aggressive it's because women wanted them that way. And here I don't fault women overly much, for it's perfectly understandable. Women have chosen aggressive men as mates because those men have been more effective at carving out a place for themselves and their families in a hostile, competitive world. What is at fault here is the Darwinian nature of survival itself.

If men suddenly disappeared, women would be forced to become more aggressive in order to deal with the inherently dangerous and competitive nature of existence. Nevertheless, it seems a bit self-serving of women to complain about aggressive traits in men that they've fostered themselves, for the sake of their own security. Thus, the myth of the "Earth Mother" is seen to be as deluded as that of the "rugged individual."

That so many feminists are willing to overlook so many aspects of the human condition, including something as fundamental as the law of sexual selection, to promote the idea of their superiority, is a strong indication that they are no different than men when it comes to the desire for power and a willingness to abuse it. We are all human.

The simple truth is we are all very much alike. Our endless desire to push the blame for our collective natures onto some other group merely proves what we all know and won't face, that collectively, as a species, we are pathologically self-deluded and deeply flawed creatures. Human beings share an enormously high proportion of genes in common. Despite our disparate appearances, due to a past die-out that reduced our numbers to a mere 5,000 individuals, we are more closely related then even Cheetahs. Like it or not, we are very similar in our collective behavior as a species, regardless of how different we may appear on the surface, exactly because we are so genetically related. This understanding of our essential similarity is one on which progressive movements have long been based. One must make this distinction here between collective behavior and individual behavior, which among humans is very widely differing and unpredictable. Yet neither aberrant behavior, nor heroic behavior, is limited to a particular race or sex. So when people make the argument that any one group is inherently better or worse than others, they undermine the notion on which all socially progressive movements are based, that of our collective equality.

It's akin to making the argument that all people are equal, but "Some people are more equal than others," as George Orwell put it so succinctly in his novel, Animal Farm. For women and minorities to make the argument is very dangerous for the rights of women and minorities. For if it can be argued that there's a fundamental difference in people's levels of aggression, disinterestedness and evil then that argument will always, ultimately, benefit the strong. The urgent truth is that we need to move beyond this simplistic reasoning, this sort of juvenile, "he said, she said," that plays so neatly into the hands of a self-deluded ruling class who are leading us down a rabbit hole.

The truth is, we're guilty of indulging in many, many, comforting delusions, both in our personal lives and in the larger human society. We may, for example, blame war on fascism, or communism, as if those things existed in the real world, like trees. We project our flaws so routinely on other people and things, one must conclude there's actually something in us effectively blocking out the things we'd prefer not to know. In other words, there's a strong argument to be made for the idea that human beings dissociate in mass, and if one thinks about it that's a very serious problem indeed.

In the end we desperately need to look up from our lives and our own particular troubles to examine what it really is to be human! This world is consumed in misery and the key to our salvation lies within. Socrates said it 2,500 years ago, and his words are still true today. He also said, "The un-examined life is not worth living." We can now one-up that statement by saying that the un-examined life can no longer be lived.
We must stop this endless bickering, own up to the fact that we are deeply flawed, and put together some program to address that fact.

We must henceforward put our primary effort into advancing psychology, philosophy, spirituality and the humanities - into every conceivable endeavor to help us understand ourselves. In order to survive the great challenges of the 21st century we must commit as great a portion of our resources to understanding our own natures as we did, in the 20th, to understanding technology. Above all, we must stop this juvenile shame and blame game. Now is the time to get real! As Willy Lowman said in Death of a Salesman, "The woods are burning!" And if there ever was a time for Willy to get real it was in the last act, before he finally cracks-up from the weight of his own lies, and everything falls apart. But Willy couldn't get real to save his life. Can we?

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

Liliuokalani Gardens

Liliuokalani Park, in Hilo, is named after an Hawaiian queen, but it's a traditional Japanese garden, designed by a master Japanese gardener and the more I go there, the more I like it. A thing unique about the garden in my experience of such spaces in America, and a feature of the traditional Japanese garden, is that though it's a small park it feels very spacious - an effect produced by great attention to detail.

In my small understanding of Japanese culture, I must rely on first impressions and given that, I'm impressed by their architecture - particularly their landscape architecture. Wherever you stand in Liliuokalani Garden you get a number of views, each one quite different. In a particular spot you might see a pond with a bridge over it and a stand of burnished, golden bamboo. Looking another direction from that same spot, you may see a beech with ironwood trees, rock outcroppings and Native Hawaiian ferns. Again, from that same spot, you might see a completely different tableau, all blended seamlessly, so that the effect is never jarring, but quite natural. One encounters it without even being aware of it. As you walk around, you feel you've really been somewhere, in a very small space.

That is the magic of the garden. It fills you with a feeling that's soothing, contemplative and somehow emotionally restorative. Entering consciously into that effect - into that calming, centered, feeling in the mind - gives us some understanding of Zen Buddhism. To me, it's similar to that produced by mild green tea, calming, yet mildly stimulating and restorative.

I've been walking in the garden four or five times a week for exercise and have come to be enchanted by the place.

Last week, on Thursday, I walked there in the morning. It's particularly beautiful just after dawn on a sunny morning, because on the east side of the island, as the sun rises, it strikes clouds that gradually build-up against the slopes of Mauna Loa, producing rainbows and brilliant color-effects, in and around, the Garden. On that morning, as I walked toward the ocean I entered a space where a rainbow was forming in the air around me, and rain dogs (snatches of rainbow hanging freely in the air) were materializing over the bay and against the mountain. It was spectacular!

There was a particularly dazzling luminescent vibration of the air - a kind of glowing light and I was suddenly conscious of feeling really good, physically and mentally, for the first time since childhood. It was that strong a feeling - not just of feeling okay, or feeling pretty good - but of feeling an exaltation I haven't experienced in 50 years! It was as if for a few hours I were in Heaven!

If only I knew why? Why, for two hours there, did I feel so good? In adulthood, we turn to alcohol, or marijuana, because we long for that feeling we had as children. How wonderful it was to feel that again, and to know that it wasn't produced by some substance, but was real - that it was produced by just whatever was going on inside me and around me at the time! I know the Garden had everything to do with it.

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

A Letter to the Hilo Herald Tribune

2 July 2019

I'm writing in regard to the opioid crisis and its effects on our medical system. My wife was diagnosed last July with cancer and underwent radiation and chemo-therapy. Subsequently, due to tissue damage from the radiation, she developed a fistula, an infection that went un-diagnosed for six weeks, was nearly fatal and has left her in excruciating pain for three months now. It is acknowledged to be one of the most painful conditions known to medicine. Yet, due to hysterical and irrational pressure on doctors from insurance companies and government we have had a terrible time trying to get effective pain medication.

Opiate drugs have been around for thousands of years. Every educated adult is aware of their drawbacks and yet still there are no more effective medicines for the worst kind of pain. Now, due to opiate hysteria, responsible adults with cancer are treated like drug fiends out trolling the streets for a fix . We are in the ludicrous position of highly trained doctors being dictated to by ignorant bureaucrats what pain medication they can prescribe, and how much.

If we can't trust doctors to administer medication who can we trust. ignorant bureaucrats with nothing better to do to justify their parasitical salaries? This is all just more evidence, if any was needed, that America under Donald Trump is descending into previously undreamed of depths of corruption, stupidity and evil. All of this must end, all of it, or it will be the end of us all.

Brent Hightower