Don't Attract Attention!

For the lawyers--and even the least important of them has at least a partial overview of the circumstances--are far from wishing to introduce or carry out any sort of improvement in the court system, while--and this is quite characteristic--almost every defendant, even the most simple-minded among them, starts thinking up suggestions for improvement from the moment the trial starts, and in doing so often wastes time and energy that would be better spent in other ways. The only proper approach is to learn to accept existing conditions. Even if it were possible to improve specific details--which, however, is merely an absurd superstition--one would have at best achieved something for future cases, while in the process damaging oneself immeasurably by having attracted the attention of an always vengeful bureaucracy. Just don't attract attention! Keep calm, no matter how much it seems counter to good sense. Try to realize that this vast judicial organism remains, so to speak, in a state of eternal equilibrium, and that if you change something on your own where you are, you can cut the ground out from under your own feet and fall, while the vast organism easily compensates for the minor disturbance at some other spot--after all, everything is interconnected--and remains unchanged, if not, which is likely, even more resolute, more vigilant, more severe, more malicious.

--Franz Kafka, The Trial, 119-120

Last night I watched The Chicago 10, a partially rotoscoped documentary about the rally for peace at the 1968 DNC in Chicago and the subsequent trial. Citizens were charged with inciting the Chicago police and the Illinois National Guard to such infamous acts of violence against the unarmed crowd.

Walter Cronkite said on national television that the 1968 Democratic National Convention was taking place in a police state.

(Half a world away, during the very same week, residents of Prague were having a similar experience as Soviet forces moved in to crush the Prague Spring and its calls for government reform. Czechoslovakia would afterward descend into the "normalization", during which the government became even more repressive and authoritarian. America would afterward descend into the Nixonian Reaction.)

Forty years later, America is mired in another unpopular and unnecessary war, disregarding that other war. A state of eternal equilibrium? The total lack of visible public protest (despite the seemingly greater lack of public support) would seem to indicate that the peace movement not only failed to pacify the American war machine, but they have also lost their ability to make the message of peace heard on a national scale. On the other hand, the war machine wouldn't dare to even consider reinstituting the military draft. We've lost our voice, but they've lost conscription. Hardly a stalemate, but possibly an equilibrium.

Should we accept Leni's advice to Joseph K. about his trial, quoted above, and learn to accept existing conditions?

Can we even learn to understand existing conditions? Or, does acceptance not require understanding?

A Conditional Aspect of the Actual

My previous entry was about a dream I had that reminds me of Kafka. Today I started to reread The Trial. Out of a daydream, the phrase came to me: I dream in Kafka but without his firm sense of the impossible.

In Kafka, the impossible is always explicit and without justification. The actual is only justified by its concrete, physical presence. The possible is defined within the actual not by reason or imagination or natural law, but by occult procedures that cannot be defied and are without justification of any sort. The consequences of disobedience, or transgression of these occult procedures, are not considered, for violation is simply not possible.

The actual is incomprehensible, the possible is irrational, and sense exists merely as a conditional aspect of the impossible.

20/20 Vision Dream

I'm riding the subway, and the man in a suit next to me tells me I have to take off my glasses. He's law enforcement of some sort. They've passed new regulations, and no one can wear glasses on the subway due to terrorism concerns. I say that's stupid and refuse to take off my glasses. Off the train, I'm detained and escorted down a hall by the official. I ask how many people file complaints about the eyeglass regulation. He says a few people a day complain but most accept it--nothing for him to worry about. I take his information and turn its force against him: If several people file complaints every day, then he is in trouble. This makes him think of his supervisor, and suddenly fear for his job comes into his eyes: official complaints look awful on performance reports. His career will be ruined for enforcing a law he never wrote.

In Our Normal Speech

Dudley Wundersprocket likes to read history for pleasure, especially medieval history. He had an idea that Soviet communism was essentially a reformation of the feudalism that proceeded it, and all ideological debate of capitalism v. communism missed the point. He read about the Politboro and how the Soviet (Stalinist) bureaucracy was organized, which confirmed his suspicion about the link to feudalism. Vassals, patrons, clients, etc. One advanced within the Soviet structure by promising allegiance to patrons, and by developing as many patron/client relationships as possible. One advanced according to the recommendations of one's patrons, and one's power resided in the number of clients one had developed.

Wundersprocket began to see his own position within the corporate structure as little different from that of a Stalinist apparatchik. The corporate structure mirrors the Stalinist structure, which mirrors the feudal structure. One networks and calls upon contacts. One gains favors from some contacts and offers favors to others; we simply do not differentiate between patron contacts and client contacts. America is an unrecognized battleground between the feudal structure (Stalinist, or corporate) and the democratic structure. In America, the feudal structure has gained ascendency over the democratic, though victory is by no means complete. Nevertheless, the feudal structure is already so powerful that we cannot imagine the democratic structure contesting for primacy. Indeed, the feudal victory is so near complete that we don't recognize, in our normal speech, that a natural antagonism should exist between corporate and democratic principles. Democratic principles are too weak to challenge the entrenched feudal structure.

Dudley Wundersprocket, as a contemporary Don Quixote, quit his corporate career and began his own business, Loud Ties Inc., so he might conduct an experiment with democratic principles in the workplace.

Manifesto

In the commonwealth I would by contraries
Execute all things; for no kind of traffic
Would I admit; no name of magistrate;
Letters should not be known; riches, poverty,
And use of service, none; contract, succession,
Bourn, bound of land, tilth, vineyard, none;
No use of metal, corn, or wine, or oil;
No occupation; all men idle, all,
And women too, but innocent and pure;
No sovereignty--
. . .
All things in common nature should produce
Without sweat or endeavor. Treason, felony,
Sword, pike, knife, gun, or need of any engine
Would I not have; but nature should bring forth,
Of its own kind, all foison, all abundance,
To feed my innocent people.
. . .
I would with such perfection govern, sir,
T' excel the Golden Age.

--Gonzalo, The Tempest, II i, 150-170

In the voice of his final wise counselor, Shakespeare--and recall all those Rosicrucian rumors, if only for the fun--gives his clearest statement of political philosophy.

I'm not sure why, but I've mellowed over the past few months, and today when two library patrons in a row handed back materials about our government's involvement in 9/11, I could only look at the returned books as curios from my past breaking against my present. A very Stephen Dedalus moment. I've lost my edge. Anyway, it was a sharp edge that accomplished little, so far as I can tell. It's no more cynical to accept that all government terrifies than it is to accept that life ends. I'm starting to think of government as a contextual condition hardly worth our attention. I'm lucky to have my novel to think of, and my efforts in that direction have born much brighter fruit.

When I think of politics nowadays, I think of this shining passage and enter its anarchic vision of paradise. Bailouts, corruption, gay rights, mechanized murder for profit, institutional bigotry, every complaint against the people we chose to rule over us convinces me that the sole working function of government is to piss people off. Maybe we revel in the anger generated by our outraged sense of righteousness. Maybe the purpose of government is to fulfill that sick need. I don't know. It's become an abstract mystery for me, a pinhead full of angels, a weird diversion.

I watched Dead Man twice last week. While Christmas shopping, I found a t-shirt that said, Handbook for the Recently Deceased, and I would've bought it except the back said Beetle Juice. I thought, that'd be an awesome subtitle for my novel. If you can accept that you've died, you can enter a new life; you allow yourself that possibility. I think back on my life, certain charged moments, and think, It seems like I should've died right then and there. And to wonder, Maybe I did.

Who can judge the quick from the dead?

Not me, said the subject in the Land of the Blind.