Obligatory Hunger Games Post

Disclaimer - I have not read the Hunger Games; I only know the very basics of the plot.  Unless you are living in a mine, you know the gist of the story as well:  kids forced to kill kids in a game or sport run by the government.  The child participants are chosen by lottery.  The citizens of the country in the book are generally entertained by all this, almost American Idol style.

I recently quoted blogger Joy Miladin on my Facebook page:

“The Hunger Games is not an alarming prospect of what our nation could become; it is a piercing reflection of the current state of our society.”

Some people “liked” my status, even though a few of them would not agree with all of my reasons for seeing the parallel between the HG world and our own.  Regardless of why anyone sees truth in Miladin’s statement, I think all of us who “like” the quote agree acknowledging we are the same people as those in the Hunger Games is important.  We are not so much more educated and evolved than the people who make up the society in that story, and the country we inhabit is not a gaping chasm away from the one they inhabit.  In fact, currently, the two worlds are juxtaposed one on top of the other.  Someday in the future, near or far, if the light switch is flicked and we ARE literally killing each other in government-sponsored games for sport it will be obvious that was the case.

One person did respond incredulously to Miladin’s quote in my Facebook status, though.  What in the world did I mean by posting that statement?  I am sure there were also others on FB who shared the incredulity but did not comment, so the following is my answer to anyone who is interested.  It turned out to be a little too long for a Facebook comment, so here I am blogging about the Hunger Games instead of what I had planned (fish tanks of all things):

Whenever I read a fictional work about a dystopian future, I always ponder how this happens.  How do these societies get there.  More importantly, how have things like these happened in reality, in our world’s history?  How dystopian was rich and educated Rome before it fell?  Ask the babies they would throw off cliffs for being the wrong sex or too disabled or too inconvenient.  Ask the gladiators who were killed surrounded by cheering crowds.  Wasn’t Nazi Germany –not even a mere 80 years ago-- a dystopia if ever there was one?  Could many Germans a few decades before the ovens and gas chambers have possibly imagined themselves and their country taking part in something so monstrous as the extermination of millions of innocent people?  The type of dystopia depicted in the Hunger Games would not be so horrifying if it were not possible, if it did not in fact happen over and over again in reality.  It’s horrifying because it rings true.

It seems to me in most if not all cases these historical dystopias do not simply appear like a thief in the night; they are gradually ushered in –welcomed, even—by almost everyone without us truly being aware of the consequences of starting our society along a certain path.  The process speeds up rapidly at some point and becomes obvious, but only after much has been willingly given up by a complacent citizenry:  acknowledgement of various natural, unchangeable human rights; belief in universal truths; empathy; personal responsibility, etc.  The relinquishment of these things happens over time either out of a decadent and misguided desire for yet more license (i.e. false freedom) or out of the desperation that can be generated by hard economic times which can spur people to give up rights and power to a central government in hopes of being saved.  Often, I think, it’s a combination of those reasons, not just one or the other.  Those on the top want to do whatever feels right to them at any time (please note:  “on the top” in America is just about everybody –certainly all of us reading a blog!-- considering even those at America’s poverty level have far more material wealth than those at poverty level in any other country); meanwhile, those on the bottom of the financial rungs want simply to give whoever is in power more power in hopes that powerful people will rid them of their financial nightmares so their struggles can end.  (Note, too:  struggling never ends.)  Whichever reason for society’s steps in that direction, they all lead to the same destination.  And, here we are.

I recently read an article by Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal that sheds yet more light on where we are as a nation in our dystopia.  It takes many small, willing steps over time on the part of a society to get to a place where it is acceptable to a segment of the citizenry to watch a person get beaten, stripped and robbed as we stand around laughing and recording it rather than helping, as in this article.  Yet, that is a fairly regular type of occurrence and a more common attitude now.  Scenarios like the ones mentioned in the article are not simply more and more reported these days; they are more frequent.  Our pop culture revels in it, in fact, all the way down to something as “benign” as reality TV.  We even enjoy doling out ridicule at the stars of those shows; it’s what we do.  It’s “harmless.”  Does anyone really think Snooki is cool?  No, everyone is simply laughing at her.  And she is laughing at us, too, all the way to the bank, all the while living the new American dream of unlimited license.  A 19-year-old shoots and kills nine people (including himself) at the Westroads Mall while people are Christmas shopping.  Instead of a mournful song about it, we get a peppy little ditty called "Pumped Up Kicks" that some middle school kids can’t get enough of at their school functions where they pornfully dance as chaperones look the other way.  The responsibilities we give up, the heart we give up, are a void passed down to the next generation and the next.  The members of those generations are left with empty space where virtue and love should have been, Lewis's "men without chests."

You may say to yourself, “Well, in Hunger Games, the government is forcing the kids to take part in this carnage.  At least we are not at that point.”  To which I would say:  isn’t that just about the scariest prospect?  You have kids shooting other kids in school of their own volition.  Isn’t that worse than being forced into it?  “Well, at least the government hasn’t made a game show where people laugh at and mock those who are being beaten and robbed.”  No, we’re choosing to do that all on our own on YouTube!  “Well, at least the government isn’t sanctioning looting of American businesses.”  No, we’re choosing to flash mob all on our own!  “Well, at least the government isn’t drugging us to make us docile.”  No, we’re choosing to do that all on our own with one of the most popular college majors being Getting As Close As Possible to Alcohol Poisoning Each Week Without Quite Dying.  “Well, at least this isn’t like China, where women are forced to abort their babies because of the one child rule.”  No, we’re choosing to abort them all on our own!  We, the people!

Simultaneously with individual and societal declines and shallowings, there is of course a slow and seemingly inexorable march towards a totalitarian state, like the world of the Hunger Games.  As we continue to march, we will simply be passing more and more of the “burden” of some of these choices to central government officials.  But to me that’s far less of a big deal than the fact that we’re making those choices at all in the first place, calling evil actions tolerable or even good.  In large part, we get the government we ask for; an actual totalitarian government forcing its choices on us would not be a newsflash.  This is:

The Hunger Games are here and now.  And we’re too proud and sophisticated to care.

Terri Shiavo and the Unborn: Medical Care Denied

Denial of Truly Basic Healthcare
(note: not birth control, but actual healthcare)
Today is the International Day of Prayer and Remembrance for Terri Schindler Shiavo and All the Vulnerable. It marks the anniversary of the day she succumbed to death not through being allowed to pass away at the natural end of her life but by being actively starved and dehydrated to death in a “healthcare” facility with the permission of our courts. Hopefully her story and others like it will fan the flames of love and protective instinct in all of us for the most vulnerable in our midst: the disabled, those in the womb, the enslaved and trafficked.

In her memory, here is a link to an excellent lecture on at least 10 reasons why persecuting these vulnerable groups is immoral, illogical, and at minimum lacking in compassion, empathy and inclusiveness. The first part of the talk masterfully juxtaposes the Dred Scott and Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decisions to illustrate the faulty reasoning of slavery, abortion, genocide, and other forms of oppression. The rest goes over in detail several universal principles that are violated by abortion and related acts and why those of us who have been proponents or participants in any of those acts must open our hearts and minds to allow in truth. The talk is 1 hour and 20 minutes long, but I recommend starting at 12:17 of the recording because that is when the lecture begins. (Up to that point it is simply introductions to the audio, to the presenter, to the presenter’s book, method, etc.) http://instituteofcatholicculture.org/media/10_Universal_Principles_Fr_Robert_Spitzer.mp3

For those who have experienced oppression of the vulnerable, whether as victim, spectator or participant, my heart goes out to you. I have been in all of those positions as well. All I can offer is: be hopeful. Truth burns as it heals.

Viva la Verdad

Heartbreak is the eye of your heart snapping open after long disuse.

Someone commented on Facebook about my last blog post and said an argument, no matter how rational or logical, will not on its own alter anyone’s belief found in experience (“nor perhaps should it”).  While I do not believe this discredits the importance of reason and its capacity for helping us find truth or bring it more clearly into focus, I do agree with the statement.  It takes an openness of heart, requiring a near complete break for the particularly obstinate, before any truths can penetrate the defenses one has been using previously to block them.  This was and is certainly the case for me.  A heartbreak embraced can lead to a more accurate perspective and understanding of the lessons to be found in one’s experiences, past and future.  Once the most abused eye is open --often the heart’s, so willing to be misled in search of peace-- it can begin to see the reflections shining in the other two, the lenses of the mind and body.

Even in that scenario, it is almost dizzying to think how, with three eyes wide open --heart/faith, mind/reason, body/physical senses-- we are still incapable of knowing the full truth and wholly holding it with our human faculties.  It is both frustratingly overwhelming and oddly comforting how little I know and how little I will know over my lifetime.  In addition to poor choices I make, my ignorance is also made manifest to me even by something as simple and concrete as how many books there are to read and the impossibility of reading and contemplating them all in one lifetime, or how many questions I would like to ask people I admire and will never have the chance.  It is also obvious in how inadequately I may have understood a universal truth yesterday --like for example that compassion is better for us than its opposite, or that money does not buy happiness, or that we should “love our neighbors as ourselves”-- compared to after having an epiphany building upon it today.  And, that must demonstrate how rudimentarily I may understand a truth still, further epiphanies being possible if the past is any indication, and how much more there is to learn about it.  We are most definitely limited in our search for knowledge.  However, a person honestly trying to see is more joyful than one who is willfully blind: to that I can attest.

Over the years I have reflected on Viva La Vida by Coldplay whenever it is on the radio, harkening back to the devastation of my own false kingdom, years in the building upon carefully selected half-truths, the ruins of which I suddenly found my maimed self and family crawling over on a summer’s night in 2006.  Despite the French-revolutionesque beliefs expressed by the songwriters in interviews, what resonates in the lyrics for me is not that there is no authority but that man is not it; it is a turning away not simply from authoritarianism but also away from its mirror mistake, permissiveness.  For me the song unveils the decay that takes place when man –whether he be a literal king, a pope, a clerk or a housekeeper-- sets himself up as the ruler of his own pestilent, petty, dark inner kingdom, one inevitably centralized on deceit of self and others.  This in order to collect whatever baubles he sees as treasure, ever rusting and needing to be renewed in mockery of his satisfaction; we all have our preferred poisons, each seeming to we, the seductees, like a chalice of exotic wine untasted by lesser men.  I never want to rule such a world again.  I am not the Ruler.  Instead, I can only strive to be a good steward.  That is what my heart destruction left me with, the reality of this bare truth told to me over my lifetime in great novels, in the words of wise ancestors, and by my elders, this truth which until the wall of my heart gave way I had thought did not apply to me.  Man is not fit to rule himself and to be his own judge and jury.  He is not fit to warp and direct even his own conscience but rather to allow it to be set straight and true by God alone, and to follow it.

Centering one’s life on one’s own inner "culture of death" is not just an oxymoronic phrase but a plain-moronic philosophy when it comes down to it.  Love –infinite fulfillment-- is about living outside oneself for others: being a steward, not a tyrant.  Many moments of many days I lean towards tyrant; but I know now in my happiest moments I am in my proper role of steward.  When I give to others sacrifices of time and talent rather than horde them for my own gain until they rot; when I give and receive with a grateful heart, rather than selfishly take what I think I want; when I thank rather than self-congratulate; when I put myself last; these, paradoxically, are the times I feel most fulfilled and natural, like a bird taking to the sky.  And, that's the truth.

Down with the culture of death!  Viva la vida!

Viva La Vida
Songwriters: Guy Rupert Berryman; Jonathan Mark Buckland; Will Champion; Christopher A J Martin

I used to rule the world
Seas would rise when I gave the word
Now in the morning I sleep alone
Sweep the streets I used to own

I used to roll the dice
Feel the fear in my enemy's eyes
Listen as the crowd would sing
"Now the old king is dead!  Long live the king!"


One minute I held the key
Next the walls were closed on me
And I discovered that my castles stand
Upon pillars of salt and pillars of sand

I hear Jerusalem bells a ringing
Roman Cavalry choirs are singing
Be my mirror, my sword and shield
My missionaries in a foreign field

For some reason I can't explain
Once, you know, there was never
Never an honest word
And that was when I ruled the world

It was the wicked and wild wind
Blew down the doors to let me in
Shattered windows and the sound of drums
People couldn't believe what I'd become

Revolutionaries wait
For my head on a silver plate
Just a puppet on a lonely string
Oh who would ever want to be king?

I hear Jerusalem bells a ringing
Roman Cavalry choirs are singing
Be my mirror, my sword and shield
My missionaries in a foreign field

For some reason I can't explain
I know Saint Peter won't call my name
Never an honest word
But that was when I ruled the world

I hear Jerusalem bells a ringing
Roman Cavalry choirs are singing
Be my mirror, my sword and shield
My missionaries in a foreign field

For some reason I can't explain
I know Saint Peter won't call my name
Never an honest word
But that was when I ruled the world