What Weapons will be used at the Battle of Armageddon?

In my mother's garden in the state of Virginia is a Rose arbor. The arbor is framed by wooden four by fours and was constructed by the carpenter. Helping the rose to grow gracefully through the arbor is not the task of the carpenter, it is the task of the gardener. There are different sorts of gardeners. Some prune with steel blades, to shape the plant, and make the blooms fewer but more vigorous—others use chemical sprays and pellets, to fight "infestations." But black spot and aphids are part of a natural system which chemicals may throw further out of balance. Aphids may also be fought by restoring the balance—and one way to do that is to make sure that there are predators for the aphids, instead of using chemical compounds which destroy the entire predator-prey interaction. In the wake of the Great War, Radclyffe Hall wrote "the pruning knife has been laid to the tree and the urge to grow throbs through its mutilated branches."

The Hindus saw humanity as made up of various castes. Mahatma Gandhi, for instance, was a member of the brahman, or priestly caste. Many priests work their rituals undisturbed, in the sacrosanct areas of their temples, the way scientists work in their laboratories. Physicists like Einstein, and chemists like Louis Feiser draw on similar parts of the brain as a brahman priest. There are other castes: for instance Vaisyas, businessmen, who make money from cafes and hotels. And there are those who imagine an ideal society composed of only these two castes: who believe having the right attitude towards others can solve everything: an attitude which could be called the doctrine of justification by sentiment. But the wisdom of the sub-continent recognized another caste, which people who revere the brahman often disparage—the Ksatriyas, the warriors.

Warriors can do many things. Here in China the army was sent to Sichuan in the wake of the earthquake, to aid in clean-up and rescue operations. I saw TV footage of men wearing the uniform of the People's Liberation Army climbing through a rockslide to remove obstructions the tremor left in its wake. Their training for fighting an enemy in battle prepared them to respond to a hostile act by the Earth's crust. Warriors have existed in almost all cultures, and historically have met their enemies face to face, with wooden taiahas, or blades of bronze or steel. The twentieth century saw a technological pandora's box of new weapons: machine guns, bomber planes, atomic missles, depleted uranium, and napalm. These were designed in a laboratory, through the priestly rituals of science. And many were used by people who, like Skyhawk pilots, in the normal scheme of things, would never see their enemies face-to-face. These weapons made no attempt to account for combat status, killing not just non-combatant humans, but the subjects of the animal and plant kingdoms as well.

It is simplistic to say killing is disorder. Death is a part of nature, and a part of the cycle of life. Wolves eat caribou for instance. But the number of caribou they kill is usually limited by the hunger of their stomach. When the men in black helicopters show up to kill the wolves, the death they inflict is not limited by any natural appetite. And the men in black helicopters represent a group with its own plans for the lives of the caribou. A shepherd and a wolf both kill and eat sheep. But to say a shepherd's knife is the moral equivalent of a wolf's tooth is an insult to the perspective of both the wolf and the shepherd. The shepherd's killing of an individual sheep is part of a system which ideally insures the long-term health of the flock. Pruning an individual branch from the rose can redirect the vitality of the bush as a wholeAnd because it has different objectives, a wolf may notice things about a flock which a shepherd would never realize. Some analysis concentrates on numbers: during the Vietnam conflict, both the Pentagon and its domestic enemies focused on body counts: numbers of dead. But sometimes things are most effectively described not with numbers, but patterns. Sheep may die from disease, or because chemicals have poisoned the well. They may be killed by a wolf, or to feed a traveller enjoying the shepherd's hospitality. All these deaths resonate differently within the community—or rather resonate differently within the different communities concerned. Some interpreters find one type of death most offensive, others recoil from another.

I have just finished reading John Keegan's book the Face of Battle. He talks about how machine-guns, like so many twentieth-century machines, have rendered human beings clumsy. Soldiers are no longer told to conserve their lead, but to use as much of it as possible. Writing in the 1970s, he noted that only the British army operating in Northern Ireland still valued marksmanship. The presence of civilians in the religious conflict in that province of the former British empire forced the soldiers to regulate their weapons with human consciousness, rather than using their gun as automatically as a machine drill. Fighting in that environment also forced their captains to think harder about rules of engagement. Teaching a course about the English speaking world, I had to do some research on the plantation of Ireland. Most people describe the conflict as being Catholic versus Protestant. But the other side in the Northern Ireland conflict was also a particular version of the worldview which was brought into being by the man who made the Christian holy book part of German literature. Taking advantage of the space opened up by Martin Luther, John Knox and his followers from still-tribal Scotland did not content themselves with studying their scriptures, they remade the culture of those rugged mountains, and smashed the images of the faith worshipped in those mountains previously.

For people like John Knox, whose words are backed by enforcers, a word triggers a system which makes certain actions impossible, just as mass could no longer be celebrated where his followers had desecrated the altars. Orwell also compared words to weapons, talking about people responding in conversation as automatically as a machine gun spraying bullets. And there are those who attempt to use their words like napalm, to defoliate entire fields of human experience. Phrases like sneers about military intelligence. Ksatriyas in military uniforms may be able to offer advice about rechanneling the forces of iconoclasm. Iconoclasm destroys life and community for potentially limitless ideological goals rather than quantifiable personal advantage like natural hunger. There are many acts which fracture good order, and many voices needed to channel the awakening consciousness onto a fruitful path.

It is better for the rest of my mother's garden, especially the insect kingdom, if the gardener uses steel than if he uses chemical sprays. It will be better for the rest of Creation if the battle of armageddon is fought with assault rifles, than if it is fought with atom bombs or napalm.

Image: the Buddhas of Bamyan, dynamited by the students

Postcard from the Mystic

I follow my old landlady to the edge of the culvert. She points down to the murky water below. "Several years ago this was a dump. Plastic bags and shopping submerged in a water covered with oil slicks. Then the city came and tried to clean it up. They pumped the water out, planted reeds along the stream and put up a fence to keep people out. It looked really good for a few months. Now after all that work, the water is as dark and murky as it was before."


When I lived at her house, I used to come jogging through the Mystic River Reservation—seeing the reeds, the vista of the river, the graffiti carved into the wooden observation tower, the cracks on the asphalt path. But, as we walk through the park she points out elements and changes which I, at a jogger's pace, never had time or reason to notice. Just as at a jogger's pace I notice things about the city which are invisible to driver of an automobile. At a curve on the asphalt path, we follow a trace where the grass has been worn down—into the brush where we come upon the thickets of blackberries, the objective which was brought her, as it has for years, to walk slowly along the edge of the Mystic River, watching how its banks have changed through the years.


I was a transportation planner, I designed traffic intersections based on a bunch of numbers from a single days observation, and occasionally got shouted at by people who had to wait at the stop light every day. And it is sad to think that the professionals brought in to reclaim the stream in a manic burst, may not understand the factors affecting it. And of course so much of our system is designed from the perspective of the automobile, not the bicyclist or the walker, let alone the blackberry forager.


This is a good year for blackberries, and we easily fill our containers—discussing, as we have before, whether money is a fundamentally corrosive influence on society, and parting ways on the issue of whether it is a compliment to say of some one that they can run a business at a profit.


Years ago in Los Angeles, I was walking with a friend from college who works for the Long Beach Fire Department. As we walk through the city, he points out the roofs, what they imply for the way fire will spread through a building. He talks about how he was trained to analyze them, through books, and instruction, and the way his colleagues sometimes hide on the roof of the fire station, pouring water on recruits who haven't learned to Always look up, before entering a building. Later, at home, he shows me snapshots from fighting a wildfire. All of these objectives: fighting fires, picking blackberries, driving motorcars shape what we do notice about our surroundings, and what we should notice about them. A deer hunter walking through the woods will be attuned to different elements among the tree bark, or the trail floor than a forester or a fire fighter


In 1984 Winston Smith encounters an old workingman in a bar, and attempts to find out the definitive reality the propaganda people like himself are employed to write. "Has the Revolution made your life better...yes or no?" The old man, quite sensibly for some one talking to a stranger in a police state, never gives a straight answer to any of his questions—though he does offer an unsolicited opinion on the difficulties of drinking litres instead of pints (and then forgoes his principles for the sake of free beer).


Years ago I stayed with a family in a shantytown in Managua: plastic sheeting for walls, but lots of stuffed animals, and a TV where they could watch the wrestling. The father had fought for the Sandinista Government against US proxies. But now his comment was "You know, Somoza, the Sandinistas, Aleman—the price of tomatoes just keeps going up." As some one who grew up with a reverence for the Sandinistas and their revolution, it was a disheartening comment to hear.


"All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind." Maybe there is no objective perspective, no universally apparent conditions of life, just the comments about the metric system we can make based on years of working at our trade, or picking blackberries along the Mystic.

Reflections on the Counter-Revolution in China

Having lived in both Guatemala and China one thing which interests me is comparing the prices. The Guatemalan Quetzal fluctuates between 7 and 8 to the dollar, which is also the range of the Renminbi. So the value of the currency internationally is somewhat similar. A Quetzal (Q) and the Renminbi are very close to equivalent value. On the other wages are somewhat different. Median income in Canton province is much higher than Guatemala. But base wages for a security guard in Guatemala city are about 2,000 Quetzals, whereas baseline wages for say a housecleaner are 1,000 RMB. I don't know the situation for equal types of employment.


What is interesting in light of this is how much less expensive things are here than in Guatemala. Taxis here start at 7 RMB. In Guatemala City a taxi ride is minimum 3 times as much 25Q, 40 after dark. You can eat a meal with variety off of stainless steel plates in a restaurant for 5 RMB, and off styrofoam in the street for 1-2. A restaurant meal in Guatemala starts at twice as much (10-12 Q) and variety, cleanliness, and the attitude of the staff are generally lower. The restaurant I eat at in China offers a buffet including vegetables, mushrooms, fish, chicken, for 5RMB ($0.75) In Guatemala City 10Q restaurants have very little variety, no vegetables, and handmade tortillas are the only culinary artistry. Chinese street food includes dumplings, porridge, stir-fried tofu, sugar cane often sold from the back of three-wheeled bicycles owned by the vendors. And you can eat fairly well for 1-4 RMB. You can eat for 1-4 Q in some Guatemalan villages, but in Guatemala City street food is usually large bulky taco stands where people work on contract and most of the revenue goes to the company which provides the equipment. Consequently prices are higher (10Q), but less of that money ends up in the hand of the person working. Even fried corn, which in Guatemala City costs 3-5 Q is only 1 RMB here. Again prices are lower in Guatemalan villages, but Foshan, and Guatemala City both have about 2 million people, so it is interesting how much more pleasant and affordable things like taxis, restaurants, and beer are here.


Unlike Guatemala I don't speak the language, so with a lot of people here my interaction consists mainly of smiles and laughter. So I don't know much about the economics: rent, supplies, take-home. But the street vendors generally seem happier than those in Guatemala city—and the vibe and friendliness seem to suggest an town much smaller and more intimate.


Another noticeable fact is the absence of guns. In Guatemala City many stores have an armed security guard, and police patrols are a common sight in markets, or on city buses. Buses and taxis are often held up in Guatemala City. My relatives introduced me to a couple who run a successful Chinese restaurant in Guatemala City. They have two armed guards patrolling their parking lot, and usually are driven around by a chauffeur with a gun. My cousin here in China has over the past 8 years built a successful steel business and just finished building a modern 4 story house with antique furniture and flat screen televisions in each room. It isn't as nice as the house in Guatemala City, but he drives by himself and never uses a bodyguard. A student of mine also commented on the lack of guns, saying that while youth gangs exist here, they do their fighting with knives, not guns—which greatly reduces the problem of innocent bystanders dying in drive-by shootings.


Nightlife is variable. Guatemala has a big distillery and beers in restaurants start at 12 Q, though sometimes you may have to pay up to 40Q. Here you can drink on the street for 3 RMB. When I go out with my cousin he may drop 1000s of Renminbi for a fancy karaoke nightclub full of elegantly dressed wait staff and fancy decoration—or I may sit on plastic stools on the sidewalk with my friends and spend 10 RMB. There are lots of people with jobs in fancy nightclubs which would not exist without the disposable income of people like my cousin. In old China probably less than 1% of the people could enjoy the aristocratic pleasures of Chinese cooking in elegant surroundings. In the current economic system perhaps 5-10% of people can enjoy aristocratic pleasures regularly and higher percentage can enjoy them on special occasions. I worked three years in fancy restaurants—it's not a bad job, and more soothing surroundings than a factory—and once the paying customers went home we help sometimes got to pretend like we owned the place.


Compared to Guatemala China seems to be a better place to be on the bottom of the economic ladder: you can eat cheap, sell things from the back of bicycles. It is more conceivable that you will occasionally be able to splurge on a taxi ride or a cellphone. Also being held up, accidentally shot, or dying in a boss crash seems to be less of a problem—though that may also be because there are no tabloid newspapers to drum up those fears. It also seems like a better place to be rich—my cousin doesn't have to pay for bodyguards. In Guatemala City, there are many security guards, and many people from the provinces make a basic living standing around holding a shotgun. But it strikes me that it might be better for the economy if the system demanded jobs which might give them more marketable skills afterward.


Many people forget that the foundation of Bolshevik Communism was contrary to Marx's theory of history. Marx believed that capitalism would first become a world-wide system encompassing all the nations of the world—so that bourgeois management would create the wealth and technology which could be used for the common good after the revolution. "Communist" revolutions have never actually occurred in countries with large proletariats, but rather places like Russia, China, and Cuba, which were agrarian, feudal and pre-capitalist. The Bolshevik idea was that it was possible to bypass capitalism and go from peasants to socialism, whereas Marx did not necessarily see the two as mutually exclusive. Socialism is something which builds on capitalism—not which suppresses capitalism.


Many people now believe that Marxism is a dead end. Neo-Liberals have designed capitalist economies in Russia and Guatemala, and the Chinese Communist party has designed a capitalist economy in China. Asked about the "change" Deng Xiaoping said "It does not matter if the cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice." But it is interesting to compare how the different-colored cats do at catching mice. The capitalism imposed by the neo-Liberals in Russia is dominated by mafiosi, alcoholism, and a fall in life-expectancy of ten years. Crime and violence are also endemic in Guatemala. It strikes me as interesting that in China rich people ride around without bodyguards and poor people can make a living selling things off the back of bicycles. There are many other factors involved—some of the violence in Guatemala is a side-effect of the civil war, and in China most of the new millionaires were on the same level as the poor people 20 years ago, whereas rich people in Guatemala are often the same families who have been ruling the country for centuries. But I think there is some evidence that the Chinese Communist party has designed a better capitalist system for the Chinese people than Neo-Liberals from the US have in Central America and the former Soviet Union.

Happy May Day!

Drinking from a Guacal in Foshan

I am sitting in a movie theater watching a black and white animated girl march around her living room. The theater is in Tacheles, a much-graffiti'd old warehouse that used to be an anarchist hangout in East Berlin. Thanks to the effort of millions of people, the building is no longer in East Berlin, but the little girl is still shouting in German "Weg mit dem Shah!" In the English version of the movie Persepolis which has been redubbed she shouted "Down with the Shah!" The book upon which it was based was written in French. And of course when Marjane Satrapi was marching around a real living room she was shouting in Persian But though the sounds are different in the different language, the cri de coeur is the same. Persepolis is an intense story; mixing revolution and exile and puberty. When the teenage Satrapi plays air guitar to a bootleg Iron Maiden album, what is the "objective" meaning of her actions, is it: ordinary teenage rebellion, a blow for freedom against authority, Western decadence tempting pure Islamic youth? And while I identify with her, there is also a lesson about the limits of my contemporaneous search for an alternative identity in record bins in the 1980s. In Tehran Michael Jackson and Kim Wilde are just as subversive as Black Flag or the Dead Kennedy's—and top-40 hits are much more subversive than anything shaven head anarchists can get up to in a Vienna prep school.


I am drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon discussing Good Will Hunting with an Irishman. We are sitting on plastic stools in a small restaurant off a street where people sell sugar cane and oranges from the back of bicycles. The image on the label is the same, but the rest of the words are in Chinese. The beer costs $0.40 and the Irishman is from Melbourne Australia. He talks about guys he used to weld with before he got a chance to go to University in his mid-twenties, and how much they liked the scene where Matt Damon harangues the Harvard Student for paying tens of thousands of dollars for "an education you could have gotten for a buck fifty in late fees at the local library." It helped them to find more value in the life they lived and take ownership of it in the face of people who might look down on them. Of course Matt and Ben were seeking the goodwill of a different tribe of Irishmen on the other side of the world in South Boston—hoping that the community would be known for something other than riots over busing. Some one else I knew, a working class Italian, saw the story as a sham because Matt and Ben came from educated backgrounds, and contrary to the attitude the janitor has in the movie, the real Matt Damon paid for to go to Harvard (only two years, so he got it for half price). His cynical attitude made his life harder, but the attitude of the Melbourne welders helped them keep their self-respect.


I am in a Karaoke Bar—a medium sized room with a large TV. There are dozens of these rooms in the night club. people like to sing Karaoke here—but each clique of friends has a room to sing to each other, rather than getting on stage for an audience of strangers. I catch a familiar tune and look at the Chinese characters. I read very little Chinese, but I know that 巴比伦 means Babylon. I sing along: Chinese characters, English words, Jamaican tune and rhythm. But the sentiments come from 25 centuries ago. Although China is my ancestral homeland, the language and songs of this land have not been part of my life. Like Marjane or a Melbourne welder my heart stirs to something crafted by people no blood kin to me. The ones crying in captivity would find only meaningless babble in my song, even those who translated their words into English would probably find it unrecognizable. Only the Jamaicans who translated their words into song might find what I am doing in the Karaoke bar comprehensible. All of us remember different Zions in contrast to a different Babylons. But it is what happens within our hearts, rather than the sounds from our mouths, which creates the continuity across the centuries.


In the dusty Guatemalan town of Rabinal I like to drink Atol in the marketplace. The hot corn mush is served in a guacal: a hollowed out half gourd painted with red and yellow and black designs. I learned enough of the local Achi language to be able to ask for white atol with Chili: "hooch saq ruuk ik" I brought a guacal with me to China to use as bowls: to store hot peppers and garlic. The guacal is yet another cultural element: handmade, specific, and a centuries old local tradition I have carried across the globe.


Here in Southern China I see so many mechanically reproduced items which are elements of a shared global vocabulary: DVDs, flat screen TVs, jeans, cellphones, cars. I have a visual dictionary listing their names in Spanish, English, and Chinese. Will the circulation of these commodities sweep us into a single engulfing cultural matrix of Franchises and Freeway Exits—will they be repeated elements in millions of local and independent matrices governed by idiosyncratic rules like a neighborhood full of one-way streets?


I am teaching English and think sometimes about what makes a language: vocabulary of course, but also grammar, the system for how we put these elements together. You could make a visual dictionary for all the globalized elements in this essay: "Michael Jackson pin, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Karaoke." But language is more than vocabulary, and culture is more than these elements—there are also the rules which tell you how to put the elements together so that a group of people can find shared meaning in it. Like many of the sentences I grade, the warning "When people aware, the damages has been done," contains meaning. But even without consciously referring to the rules, I want to change it. There is something uncomfortable about the sentence. Where does our sense of grammar come from?


In Rabinal I drank atol from my Guacal—a hot beverage made from corn, with deep resonance for the Maya. Here in Foshan I fill it with tea, a hot beverage with deep cultural significance for the Chinese. I raise the guacal to my lips. The hot liquid passes my lips and warms my heart.