I watched The Matrix Revolutions last night. In doing so I paid particular attention to the look of The Architect who offered Neo a choice of doors - one of certainty and The Source to save Zion and one of Hope to save Trinity. The Architect wore a three piece suit. Why?
It also just so happens that Dick Meyer responded to something I wrote about the baloney factor of American culture and his response sent me in a direction I haven't been in some time, which is towards organicism and Marshall Blonsky. I am, of course in no position to judge what Meyer wants or wanted, but I used his 
comments as a jumping off point for accusing myself and other Americans of standing by idly with our jaws dropped. And where I have found insight and perception is in the company of Blonsky, and where I have found admonition and instruction is through Stephen L. Carter. As a younger man, I headed towards the organic and away from most of the marketed-to mainstream. And today as I hear bits and parts of the Iraq Study Group, I find myself doing a little of what I accused Meyer of doing - which is backing away in disgust, closing the door and cursing under my breath about the gullibility of the public.
Meyer writes in his column today:
Modern man, Kierkegaard theorized, was making the world vague, vacuous and homogenized. "In order that everything should be reduced to the same level, it is first necessary to procure a phantom … a monstrous abstraction, an all-embracing something which is nothing, a mirage — and that phantom is the public… such a phantom can develop itself with the help of the Press."
I've been thinking about royalty lately, specifically in regards to Marriage and the constraints imposed upon those possessed of royal blood. What I am starting to believe is that I should behave as if there is no Public, or at least that there is no such *thing* as the public. As the Anchoress says, sin can be defined as treating a person like a thing. And so perhaps we should never abstract the public again. It makes sense to me. We are all people and we thus must comport ourselves as best we can at all times.
But if we are to treat ourselves as royalty in the classical sense of doing our best to preserve our morality and to subject ourselves to the high discipline of kings, how should we express it in a democracy? This is a subject which has always been a focus of leadership, not just leadership in the context of American institutions or best practices in management or motivational skills, but of the very bearing and integrity of those who take responsibility. And this is rather what I'm interested in these days.
An excerpt from what I wrote to Meyer:
We are constantly engaged in evaluations of character; we must. And we must develop a vocabulary of sacraments, of outward manifestations of inward commitments, that assist us in making the crucial assessments of our world.
If we as a society remain incapable of the critical thinking required to maintain our civilization, than others will do it for us. I happen to be reading 'Strong Fathers, Strong Daughters' and you know if you have a daughter what signs and symbols all of our media send to girls that can destroy them. There is something we writers can do about all this, and we ought to be about doing it. It is not just our children, but it is us in all of our entertainments, in our very culture - in the lifestyles we strive for. We must not be false in our deportment, and I believe there are many good ways to do it.
Which is all part of a way of saying, if we are to have those among us who 'walk with kings, nor lose the common touch' how can we know them? How can we meet and address them? And if we were to take upon such responsibilities ourselves, how can we let others know of our intent and purposes?
I ask such fundamental questions because I fear that in some important ways, we are losing a sense of ourselves in our public demeanor. When Al Gore feels he has to change his image when he campaigns for the office of the President, it means that one of the two Al Gores was disingenuous. And we all pick up on that. American Digest picks up on precisely that as Bette Midler suggests that somebody ought to sit some of our pop stars and given them a lesson in dignity.
Blonsky, like Umberto Eco, studies such signs in modern society. But we have not recently heard much from him. Blonsky was in his book 'American Mythologies' a great deconstructionist, but not a post-modernist. It is precisely because he believes that there are things of enduring value and truth that he seeks to disembowel those which evoke value without embodying value. In American Mythologies he is almost glib to a fault; it is a rare moment when something is expressed briefly, but in this short passage we find exact synchronicity:
S: Sunglasses Death of the soul. Sunglasses hide the windows of the self, the wet, viscous pool of intimacy. The dark discs wipe out the fluid, restless, vulnerable, revealing core of our identity. They turn the head into an absolute surface where the only movable part is the devouring mouth. The empty discs can be filled with anything or everything. Sunglasses turn the face into an empty vessel to be filled with your own makeup or someone else's imagination. Sunglasses are no longer to protect you against he harmful rays of the sun, but to protect your eyes from the voyeurism of the world.
The eyes, for so long the exhibitionist element in your face, the revealer of desire, tenderness, and fear, are concealed as safely as your inner thoughts. The glasses are no longer a practical, functional object tied to a specific hour of the day or season of the year. Polarized, placed within fashion frames, they have become an arbitrary, universal waring sign ("noli me tangere") you can wear at night, indoors. They are a facial garment. It is better to have two black holes where other people can place their fantasies than be a blue-eyed boy or girl. In the words of e.e. cummings, "What do you think of your blue-eyed boy, Mr. Death?"
If you think that's good, you should read what he wrote about Eddie Murphy and Tom Cruise back in 1992.
How many times have you heard the joke? "The key to success is honesty & authenticity. If you can fake that, you've got it made." Such snarky sentiments are dressed up in clothes we have been misled to respect. Underneath there is nothing but a shotgun approach to civility, a fashion parade with attending demiurges broadcasting a false change of heart as genuine. But you've heard this
complaint before, it is the one that protests against the shallow mind of the average American. But that is the public, and remember, we are not to treat people like things. There is somebody behind all of that, somebody who is the powerful liar, somebody who is the mastermind behind the
deception. The joke is not funny, and if it makes you laugh then you are killing the royalty in yourself. You are making yourself vulnerable to that hot chick on TV wearing sunglasses, that false whore who wants to get into your genes.
Neo, when in the Matrix, wears sunglasses. He's not sure which way he's going half the time because he doesn't believe in his reality and he doesn't understand the choices he makes. The Oracle and the Architect never wear sunglasses, they are clear. I've noticed that sunglasses are getting larger and thicker on the sides these days. Hmm.
I continue to look for the sacraments, and they needn't be religious, ordained of any church. But I think people will invoke absolutes when they find them for the truths of integrity are central to the nature of man. Let us work towards discernment and try to look everyone squarely in the eye.
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