In an earlier post I referred to my interior reality, a phrase that Jami took off with. Yes, I have an interior reality, we all do, and I have an exterior reality, as do we all. I was thinking though, regardless of my own interior reality, as a nation, we need a "department of interior reality". This "department of interior reality game show" would cultivate a feeling of "department of interior reality game show scandal sheets to the wind less is more" that would lift our country out of its frightening brush with reality (which is really limitation: un-reality is a belief that there are no limitations), which threatens to deliver us to sanity (wherein we learned to live with our limitations rather than deny them). The frontiers are closed; our limits are set. For a country that is in denial about the closing of the frontier we are absolutely certain that we need to tighten and enforce our borders. This concretizing of borders is an odd attitude to take, if indeed the frontiers are still open to us. But what our nation might be afraid of is that others now see our land as our ancestors once saw it: a place to move into. We are now on the other side of the frontier-we-are-in-denial-about's closing. We fear the intrusion of others because we know what the intrusion of others means: we are afraid that we're the new Indians. An absurdity! But our country's narrative is about manifest destiny, the intrusion into the land of our laws and religion, and whoever's here, and whatever they hold dear and believe - the hell with them and theirs. And because we are the children of these people who did this, we have internalized this action, this polemic of intrusion and conquering as god-given right, and it has brought to the surface of public discussion our bad conscience. And so voices are raised against the influx of the immigrant (has they have been since the 1820s) because we project onto them our desires: they want what we have just as we wanted what was had before us. Girard's myth of the scapegoat plays out in our current debates about insider and outsider. And our interior reality (which believes that there are no limits) doesn't match the exterior reality (where limits abound).
Thursday, May 31, 2007
The Danube at night
In an earlier post I referred to my interior reality, a phrase that Jami took off with. Yes, I have an interior reality, we all do, and I have an exterior reality, as do we all. I was thinking though, regardless of my own interior reality, as a nation, we need a "department of interior reality". This "department of interior reality game show" would cultivate a feeling of "department of interior reality game show scandal sheets to the wind less is more" that would lift our country out of its frightening brush with reality (which is really limitation: un-reality is a belief that there are no limitations), which threatens to deliver us to sanity (wherein we learned to live with our limitations rather than deny them). The frontiers are closed; our limits are set. For a country that is in denial about the closing of the frontier we are absolutely certain that we need to tighten and enforce our borders. This concretizing of borders is an odd attitude to take, if indeed the frontiers are still open to us. But what our nation might be afraid of is that others now see our land as our ancestors once saw it: a place to move into. We are now on the other side of the frontier-we-are-in-denial-about's closing. We fear the intrusion of others because we know what the intrusion of others means: we are afraid that we're the new Indians. An absurdity! But our country's narrative is about manifest destiny, the intrusion into the land of our laws and religion, and whoever's here, and whatever they hold dear and believe - the hell with them and theirs. And because we are the children of these people who did this, we have internalized this action, this polemic of intrusion and conquering as god-given right, and it has brought to the surface of public discussion our bad conscience. And so voices are raised against the influx of the immigrant (has they have been since the 1820s) because we project onto them our desires: they want what we have just as we wanted what was had before us. Girard's myth of the scapegoat plays out in our current debates about insider and outsider. And our interior reality (which believes that there are no limits) doesn't match the exterior reality (where limits abound).
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