CITIZEN or CIVILIAN? Make Your Choice.

There has been much said, even in the national press, concerning the presence of Iran's President at the CU World Leaders Forum. The controversy aside, when you see that it's called the "World Leaders Forum," I find it hard to understand what it is people expect... we invite world leaders, whoever they are... to speak.

I think the most significant element of what President Bollinger did sort of gets lost in the controversy surrounding Iran's silly leader. What is so much more impressive to me, and quite so much revolutionary, is that there have been many dictators, fools, and uneducated leaders of the world, from all its corners, in the past 4000 years, many of whom might have done well to have been called out and, yes, simply insulted by those in the academic community, directly challenged and directly accused. Indeed the power of our global leaders is rarely checked, even by each other, and their ability to dominate the conversation, by media or otherwise, is something I believe the world's citizenry has the right to challenge and disparage.

To my knowledge few world leaders in human history have been called a "dictator" in person, particularly by a civilian with no particular qualification, though the overwhelming number of leaders have certainly been despots, even in countries bandied about as "democracies," I'd say ours included.

The idea of a professor chastizing a national leader was at the same time refreshing and inspiring. People forget the tremendous hegemonic power posessed by those, elected or not, who run the machinery of the world. It is only by outrageous and often vehement attack from individual citizens that we might get the attention of those who command the fate of the world, our world.

We must never forget that despite any individual's power, no one commands any title of authority that should outrank the power of a citizen. What a world it would be, no, if the powerful stood trial by fire in the "courtroom of world opinion" that Adlai Stevenson so famously invoked in pursuit of peace with the USSR in 1962. And yet the realists have their say - Bollinger said in closing, that he was merely a Professor, without power or policy control, and so his speech, though free, would be powerless.

And yet the primary case for democratic speech does not ensure it is backed by power or by force. It can only be said, and the power of words to move nations and history is left to the will of the many. Still it seems that words are not powerless in the end. Perhaps it is our perception that a Professor's word carries less weight than a dictator, a prime minister, a religious leader, perhaps it is this refusal to attach an equal importance to the voice of the CITIZEN, and not the LEADER, that inevitably devalues the power of criticism and challenge from below.

Nevertheless, I love it when the powerful feel the least bit insulted or accused. Contrary to William Kristol's usually hot-headed criticism, I think President Bollinger did send a historically powerful message. At the world's centers of learning anyway, we abosolutely insist on challenging the empowered and criticizing their aims and their objectives, for they lead a world that we have not choice but to live in.

As a globe we demand that those with power be called to account, and that though often these trials return no enforceable verdict, the judgement of history rests upon them. Maybe that's not good enough for some, I personally think it's not, but it is something. And barring a major shift in the leadership of the world, the CITIZEN remains ever repressed, with little power or ability to challenge those who possess it.

The machinery of the state, as many political theorists have claimed, simply grinds on, regardless of the flowers it might tread, irresponsible of the individuals that might stand in the way of history, requesting a new direction. Power ultimately, does emanate from the violence of a gun, but at the same time, power and force are what we make of it. Power does end where we do not fear the consequence of force, where we care enough that no barrel of any weapon deters what we believe to be the rightful path.

And so the powerful stand trial before the citizenry. Ultimately powerless to stop them, but nevertheless eager to challenge them, we make our stand. For some, it might well be their last, but it is ultimately a requirement of participation in the human condition, a central element to Human Honor. And excolo mei, fas mei vita, if you believe that this human honor, is worth your life, that the stand you take against the powerful and the strong is worth everything for which you exist, then it is a duty, not an option, to stand against the weight of the world, even with no possibility of success.

The last stand is a feature of romantic ideology whereby an individual confronts their ultimate fears in the face of certain defeat. Overmatched and overpowered, they nonetheless refuse to surrender. I look upon the world's citizens as such a people. Ruled from above, and never from below, they choose to go quietly into the night of history.

It is for those who, however blithely, make a stand against the machinery of power that constitutes our human institutions of governance, that I reserve the most lofty praise. It is history, I believe, that judges them the most favorably. In that regard, our University President chose to become a CITIZEN, NOT a CIVILIAN, and to ensure that the powerless had their say.


If nothing else, at least an alien visitor to our humble world eons and eons hence, might one day in the post-human future have cause to believe that the citizens of this tiny spot found the honor and the courage as a race, to challenge the conditions of their existence, and though without power, they went down in history with the honor as having fought a war they could never win.

At least I'd like to have my name in that lexicon, that I might have the honor to become a CITIZEN and to be remembered as a champion of the oppressed, and as a proponent of a human progress that the powerful often restrained.

For now though, President Bollinger laid claim to the title of Citizen, and I was happy to watch history being made.

Libertas Ad Vox Populi, Usque Ad Mortem!

"The worth of a State, in the long run, is the worth of the individuals composing it; and a state which postpones the interests of their mental expansion and elevation, to a little more of administrative skill, or of that semblance of it which practice gives, in the details of business; a State which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes – will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished; and that the perfection of machinery to which it has sacrificed everything, will in the end avail it nothing, for want of the vital power which, in order that the Machine might work more smoothly, it has preferred to banish.”~ John Stuart Mill


The pictures below are images I love - images of Law Enforcement carrying out what is inarguably a necessary function - protestors cannot jump the police barricade, if you do it's very obvious you want to get arrested, a common goal of many protestors (something less inspired individuals really never understand I suppose).

These images don't try to make the US look like a police state, or something fanciful and stupid like that. It's quite clear that's not what's going on. In fact in my personal opinion a police state is far less insidious, is far less manipulative than the Republic in which we currently live.

These images remind you that in the simple geometry of governance, there is but one variable which is constant - power. These images show you where the real power is, and where the illusory power is. JS Mill called the state "a machine."

Indeed, Rarely do we see its gears and cogs, its size is so vast it goes unnoticed by the myopic majority. Remember that not only does political power grow from the barrel of a gun, or the restraint of plastic zip-tie handcuffs. It grows as a fungi in darkness, hidden from view except when we choose to shine ever so discordent a beam of light upon it.

Remember the machinery of the state, and remember it is not controlled by any individual or group.

Everyone is fascinated by magical illusions, but knowing the gimmick, as magicians refer to their secret, tends to ruin the effect.

The state indeed "dwarfs its men." But is this a magic trick whose secret is unknown?

I think not.

Libertas Ad Vox Populi, Usque Ad Mortem.

30 Years of Star Wars - Why is it still a Saga with Force?

It has been 30 years since "Star Wars: A New Hope" first entered into the world lexicon as a profound comment on our popular culture. (25 May 1977 to be exact).

Having seen the film first at the age of 8, it forever changed the way I look at the world, and everyone from scientists to critics to comedians have attempted to explain its phenomenal legend. But nothing specific to the film has ever become synonymous with Star Wars' grand success, and I believe this constitutes the exact reason it became such a widespread cultural icon. It means many things to many different people, and ultimately, I believe, gains its popularity because of the realistic assertion that there can often be little to base our lives upon that is concrete and unchanging. You find a similar paradigm in those of faith. And indeed, my argument for the brilliance of Star Wars is that, unlike "The Passion of the Christ," which chronicles perhaps the salient points of the Christian faith, Star Wars is about the human religion, the human faith. But in what you might ask? What is the human faith?

Undoubtedly, I would say the title of the 1977 epic is quite clear on this point. The human religion, is Hope.

Empires rise and fall, dreams begotten become lost, or fade. Love, brilliant as all the stars might seem, and eternal as all the gems might claim, is a personal object. But hope, our perhaps foolish assumption, as a species, that tomorrow will bring better skies, even that tomorrow will come at all, still brighten with twin suns even the darkest hours, even the deepest sorrows of eternal night. That hope is this fundamental to the human condition speaks volumes, I believe, about who "the humans," if we could be tertiary and clinical in our view, really are. Star Wars possesses all of these touchstone human foibles, and becomes a work about human belief, set so symbollically in a world where humans are not the only species.

We have been called "walking shadows," "brief candles," by Shakespeare, "gamblers with others' lives" by H.G. Wells, and Emerson called man "A god in ruins." And yet of all the myriad and infinite words that have been pinned to the ephemeral nature of our impemenant constructs, Hope cannot be removed. Hope that we perhaps are one thing, and not another, hope that we can become what we may never be, hope that we might see truth that doesn't exist, hope that we might rise to the sun one day, and know who it was that we were - hope then, that we might see the grand vista of our own lives and how they wove inextricably with those around us, and with the universe, on whose gracious and profound hospitality we exist at all.

I believe the most iconic scene in all of cinema, and the graphic answer to the question of the Saga's power is seen in the 30-year celebration poster of Star Wars - the famous "binary sunset." Clearly the artist agreed.

Looking out at a horizon has some powerfully human element to it that I don't believe I will ever forget, since that first time I saw a young man look off into the sky, wondering if indeed, something more lay beyond just what he could see - that perhaps out there there was some great destiny which he could only hope to envision. Indeed, the story tells us that he would find his family, he would help save a galaxy, he would save his father from eternal damnation, and along the way, he would learn to believe.

John Williams' classic score "Binary Sunset," during that scene is one of my favorites. It is recognizable the world over as one of the iconic pieces of music from the saga.

I believe this cinematic representation of hope is a faith no lesser than all the canon and all the religious wars and all the prayer could ever foster. Is there a greater faith than believing our destiny lies out somewhere amongst the stars? The human religions I know, and the science I know, both tell us - there, those heavens, that is from whence we came. Master of that realm, Galileo, believed we could not be taught anything about the stars, but that we could be shown what they were within ourselves. Quaint as that might be, perhaps that is the ultimate faith to which our race should ascribe.

I think the picture of an alien sunset on a distant world somewhere in our human imagination, is the epitome of hope. A Hope that neither dies, nor was ever born; simply the physics of our minds, the chemistry of our progression, the biology of our faith, forever forged and rediscovered anew.

Star Wars, for 30 years, has created generation after generation of those who seek a human faith, no matter the actual reason they believed Star Wars was important to them. Yes there are countless motifs and mythical elements strewn throughout the Star Wars Universe. There are heroes, tragic and flawed, there is evil, there is religion, there is love, there is genocide, there are politics and humor, war and peace, science and science-fiction.

But besides relating to the human experience, this wrapper of agreeably entertaining cinema is not Star Wars. A small rebellion could only fight an empire if it believed in something. Outnumbered and outgunned, a new hope was needed, a new belief. The symbolism of that hope - THAT is George Lucas' Star Wars.

That question which is asked by that sunset, that ephemeral wonder which only flights upon the briefest and most unconcious of thoughts: What is out there beyond that sun, those stars... What's out there beyond that endless sea on whose winds we will never sail?

We may always hope, it seems to me, it is one of the few things we can always, always do. Hope then, is our faith, and I think it so fitting that a complete story whose ultimate points revolve around the full spectrum of human hopes, the fate of a galaxy, freedom from slavery, the love of a parent, should enjoy such global and historical acclaim.

We watch "A New Hope" with a different view every single day. The fact that the film and its message is so omnipresent in our conciousness and to some has become a religion unto itself, is not at all inconsistent.

30 years of Hope. Perhaps there are some in the world who would do well to watch Star Wars who have not had the pleasure of experiencing it. World leaders, visionaries, the old, the young, the pessimist, I cannot imagine a person who would not benefit from that profound immersion in the belief, the Hope, that is uniquely the Human Religion.

May The Force Be With You.
25 May 2007