Beautifully Broken Issue #18: Welcoming Dictators To Avoid Discomfort

IDEAS, ART & WISDOM TO REPAIR OUR BEAUTIFUL WORLD

Happy Saturday! Welcome to the new, compact format of Beautifully Broken.

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IDEAS:  Welcoming Dictators To Avoid Discomfort

There's a cost of living crisis, rents are unaffordable, food is expensive, fuel too. These conditions create stress, anxiety, depression, and raise the level of fear in the air. Looking around, both sides of politics seem useless and unable to address the problem that not only is everything expensive, but systems are failing and don't seem to work effectively. Based on my current experiences between the UK and Australia, it seems that call centers epitomize the current state of things: 

You call, you wait in a call queue, you finally get through to someone who can't help you, you complain and get put through to someone who promises to help you, the next day you still have the same problem. You call back, no one has a record of your prior call, you start from the beginning again. 

It's like a Monty Python comedy skit. The closest parallel I can think of is Soviet Russia and Eastern Europe in the late 20th century. Nothing can be done, nothing works, you have to have a special connection, to know someone on the inside who can help you actually accomplish anything. This is why Eastern European comedy in this period is based on absurdism. Since the system is bigger than you and you have little power, and since there is no viable representative political solution, all you can do is laugh and throw your arms up in the air. 

Well, there is one other thing you can do if you live in a democracy—vote in a dictator. Poor conditions are fertile soil for the big boss who swaggers into the spotlight promising to sweep away all the inconvenience, the irritations, the lack of functionality. 

We know from the pandemic that people will suffer shortages and restriction if it's perceived to be for the greater good, but I believe that the tipping point where the populace will vote to do away with democracy is when the day-to-day functionality of the system fails. 

If we collectively manage to resist the popular urge to vote in the strongman (or woman) who promises to fix everything with a wave of the magic wand, how do we effect positive change? 

While there's still a working democracy there's a small window to lobby for change. What change? In the short term: effective systems. Lobby to put laws in place to improve governmental and corporate services so that even if there are shortages and life is expensive, people can still get things done. 

In the long term, vote for representatives that are the least owned by the worst broader interests (corrupt corporate interests and unions, which is not to say that all corporations and unions are bad of course, but that those that are wreck the system for others by placing their own immediate self-interest over the common good of the society they existing within and profit from). There can never be a permanent, lasting ideal state, life is change, but we can maintain freedom and sit out difficulty if we continue to choose the least worst option. Aim for mediocrity, the balance point between extremes.

Now we also have to contend with the danger that the next dictator we are tempted to surrender our power to may not even be human. In a very short time, algorithms and those who control them will offer to solve all our problems for us. Perhaps something similar to the promise of the following 1967 Richard Brautigan poem:

All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace by Richard Brautigan

I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.

I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.

I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.

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HEADLINE FICTION #5: Family's Railroad Car House Falls To Pieces

Here's a new format for short fiction that I've invented. It's a 70-word story in three panels with a pattern of 7-16-47 words, where the first 7 words form a headline style title, the 16 serve to fill out the headline information a little more and the final 47 contain the meat of the story and resolution. I think I'll call it "headline fiction". These micro stories of mine are based on dreams (and nightmares!) :)

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ART TO MEDITATE UPON

Fascist Architecture

Berthold Konrad Hermann Albert Speer (19 March 1905 – 1 September 1981) was a German architect who served as the Minister of Armaments and War Production in Nazi Germany during most of World War II. A close ally of Adolf Hitler, he was convicted at the Nuremberg trials and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

The Cathedral of Light

What's not to like? Strong lines, drama, grandeur, vast scale, bold ideas. When I visited the train station in Milan (Milano Centrale) that was built during Mussolini's rule I was struck with the same sense of drama. It's not unimpressive, certainly.

Milano Centrale, photo by Dan Soderberg.

All art transmits a signal, sends a message. So what is the message of fascist art? 

It's a reassurance that under the will of the despot, there will be confidence, solidity, continuance. That we as a people, a tribe, will be big, important, significant. It's designed to radiate power. 

Here's the description of Milano Centrale on the internet:

Opened in July 1931, Milan's magnificent Centrale station is a major Milan attraction in its own right with vast steel trainsheds and awe-inspiring station building which Benito Mussolini intended to convey the power and bravado of the fascist regime.

Power radiates from the leader and his generosity, to envelop the people, so everyone basks in a kind of collective power. 

We all like to feel important and a collective importance, when we look at one another in the street and know amongst ourselves, as countrymen, that we are powerful and successful, surely that's the best kind of feeling? 

Do I believe that? No, it's a lot of nonsense. Am I prone to falling into the trap of believing that? Absolutely. Because it doesn't arrive as a kind of conscious deduction, but rather as a collective feeling that arises from the unconscious mind. We're just in it and looking around, we feel good, important. And logically, the leader must be responsible for my feeling of strength and confidence that's in the air—all the more reason to support him. These are powerful, tribal, pack animal forms of consciousness that should not be underestimated. In Germany it's the "volk", the power of the collective. 

The concept of Volk (people, nation, or race) has been an underlying idea in German history since the early nineteenth century. Inherent in the name was a feeling of superiority of German culture and the idea of a universal mission for the German people.

Belonging is the most powerful of all instincts and we are easily swept up in its allure, especially when we are feeling lonely, isolated, weak and disenfranchised. Addressing these negatives thoughts and feelings, and in turn empowering the recipient (so that they are tempted to give up their personal agency) is the goal of fascist art. 

Here's some more drawings, plans and architecture by Speer.

Speer's model plan for Berlin

Albert Speer recanted his beliefs when put on trial in Nuremberg:

“At headquarters, where everyone lived under the tremendous pressure of responsibility, probably nothing was more welcome than a dictate from above. That meant being freed of a decision and simultaneously being provided with an excuse for failure.”

"I grow dizzy when I recall that the number of manufactured tanks seems to have been more important to me than the vanished victims of racism. One seldom recognizes the devil when he is putting his hand on your shoulder."

I suppose that's exactly what you would say to avoid execution but I don't know how you create this kind of architecture, sentiment in stone, and not have a sense of what you're consciously involved in. 

Should we preserve these buildings if they are of architectural significance? Only if we simultaneously use them as a teaching tool to communicate what they stand for and the intention behind them. Otherwise, tear them down. They're no different from a Nazi flag flying in the air. They're a symbol in stone, transmitting a message, loud and clear to the primitive part of our brain that we are better, stronger, more deserving, if only we join in and take what's ours from those that are weaker, lesser, less deserving.

Two Nazi guards stand in front of the New German Reich Chancellery, designed for Hitler by Speer and built during 1938-1939.

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WISDOM OF OTHERS: Excerpt from The Rise And Fall of the Third Reich, A History of Nazi Germany by William L. Shirer

William Lawrence Shirer (February 23, 1904 – December 28, 1993) was an American journalist and war correspondent. He wrote The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, a history of Nazi Germany that has been read by many and cited in scholarly works for more than 50 years. Originally a foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune and the International News Service, Shirer was the first reporter hired by Edward R. Murrow for what became a CBS radio team of journalists known as "Murrow's Boys". He became known for his broadcasts from Berlin, from the rise of the Nazi dictatorship through the first year of World War II (1939–1940). Along with Murrow, he organized the first broadcast world news roundup, a format still followed by news broadcasts.

"Adolf Hitler was the third son of the third marriage of a minor Austrian customs official who had been born an illegitimate child and who for the first thirty-nine years of his life bore his mother's name, Schicklgruber. The name Hitler appears in the maternal as well as the paternal line. Both Hitler's grandmother on his mother's side and his grandfather on his father's side were named Hitler, or rather variants of it, tor the family name was variously written as Hiedler, Huetler, Huettler and Hitler…Five years before the marriage, on June 7, 1837, Maria had had an illegitimate son whom she named Alois and who became Adolf Hitler's father. It is most probable that the father of Alois was Johann Hiedler, though conclusive evidence is lacking. At any rate Johann eventually married the woman, but contrary to the usual custom in such cases he did not trouble himself with legitimizing the son after the marriage. The child grew up as Alois Schicklgruber…Johann Hiedler vanished for thirty years, only to reappear at the age of eighty-four in the town of Weitra in the Waldviertel, the spelling of his name now changed to Hitler, to testify before a notary in the presence of three witnesses that he was the father of Alois Schicklgruber. Why the old man waited so long to take this step, or why he finally took it, is not known from the available records. According to Heiden, Alois later confided to a friend that it was done to help him obtain a share of an inheritance from an uncle, a brother of the miller, who had raised the youth in his own household…From that time on Adolf's father was legally known as Alois Hitler, and the name passed on naturally to his son. It was only during the 1930s that enterprising journalists in Vienna, delving into the parish archives, discovered the facts about Hitler's ancestry and, disregarding old Johann Georg Hiedler's belated attempt to do right by a bastard son, tried to fasten on the Nazi leader the name of Adolf Schicklgruber.

There are many weird twists of fate in the strange life of Adolf Hitler, but none more odd than this one which took place thirteen years before his birth. Had the eighty-four-year-old wandering miller not made his unexpected reappearance to recognize the paternity of his thirty-nine-year-old son nearly thirty years after the death of the mother, Adolf Hitler would have been born Adolf Schicklgruber. 

There may not be much or anything in a name, but I have heard Germans speculate whether Hitler could have become the master of Germany had he been known to the world as Schicklgruber. It has a slightly comic sound as it rolls off the tongue of a South German. Can one imagine the frenzied German masses acclaiming a Schicklgruber with their thunderous "Heils"? "Heil Schicklgruber!"? Not only was "Heil Hitler!" used as a Wagnerian, paganlike chant by the multitude in the mystic pageantry of the massive Nazi rallies, but it became the obligatory form of greeting between Germans during the Third Reich, even on the telephone, where it replaced the conventional "Hello." "Heil Schicklgruber!"? It is a little difficult to imagine.”

Commentary: One powerful tool in the arsenal of fascism and the cult of the dictator is marketing (also known as brainwashing). The author's point should not easily be dismissed. The power that symbols and slogans have over us is considerable. Otherwise, why waste so much time and effort promoting corporate brands?

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PHOTO HAIKU: Releasing Fear

No leader says this:

“No one is lost if we are

all lost together.”

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Ideas To Live By In The Coming Week:

• Recognize how easy it is to be swept up in popular dissatisfaction and become aware of the leaders that try to use this sentiment to their advantage.

• The difference between art and propaganda is that art is trying to speak to your deep self, the soul, in its own language. Propaganda is trying to sell you something and the price you pay is always greater than advertised. 

• Daily meditation helps still the mind so we can see and think clearly outside of external influences and pressure.

Peace Now,

Morgan ,

29th June, 2024