Black Mass

Ad Reinhardt ~1975

A book I have been grazing on over the past few months is Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia by John Gray, published in 2007 in the midst of the Iraq occupation. I always find John Gray somewhat depressing, but not unlike a good depressing film drama or documentary.

The primary premise of the book is that Utopias of any kind are unachievable. In 2007 the Utopia was that Iraq would flourish as a democracy and was holding its first elections. Now we can't have elections in this country without immediate claims of fraud. An yet we spent trillions of dollars on nation building to support elections but can't maintain our own democracy. Democracy itself is a Utopian idea.

"History is a nightmare from which we must awake, and when we do we will find that human possibilities are limitless. To assess utopian projects as merely flawed exercises in rational policy-making is to miss the point. Such adventures are products of a view of the world once found only in religious cults and revolutionary sects but for a time firmly established in western governments that believes political action can bring about an alteration in the human condition." (21)

The Declaration for Human Rights was perhaps Utopian but most of the wars waged post WWII were only marginally supported by those ideas. Then it got commingled with all kinds of seemingly righteous political or religious ideas, and still there can be no Utopia.

It's also interesting to think about 1973 culture post-Roe. The fuel of rock 'n' roll has always been the rebellion against staid values, even though American music also has Gospel roots. The hits on the radio in the summer of 1973 included Lou Reed's Walk on the Wild Side, and Lynyrd Skynrd's Free Bird, perhaps two songs that now bookend American music as a regional phenomenon--Reed's connection with Europe and Lynyrd Skynrd's disconnection with it.

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[10/29/1998: It’s interesting to hear public opinion preceding an election. The main cause of apathy is confusion on the issues, and/or mistrust of the whole system. By and large people vote on charisma, like Jesse Ventura the former wrestler running for governor of Minnesota. He has good ideas without all the stereotypical politician posturing and doesn’t have to cover up common foibles (affairs, pot-smoking, etc.). We know this upfront and it’s out of the way and we can focus on the issues. This is the future of the democratic process.]

[10/29/2024: In retrospect it is the vague mistrust and cynicism that no one seems to really define. It’s like a typical protest, particularly the Occupy movement in 2011, that had a laundry list of grievances, many of which persist today (transformed in some way by younger generations), and so the solution is to tear it all down–and do what? That future of the democratic process has arrived indeed.]