Deception, Desire and Small Acts of Defiance

"Immanuel Kant once wrote that to will an end was equivalent to willing at least some means thereto, wheras merely to wish for an end was only to dream the length of one's desire while leaving the means alone. In our society, where the murder of the mind is as common and everyday as the comics, in which the lie sets the standard for the truth, in which falsifying ameliorations are epidemic; one thing at least ought to be clear, as the pattern of our public acts betrays it: among us, war is willed, while peace is only wished."
William Gass, The Origin of Extermination in the Imagination

I pulled this quote from my 24 year old, beaten up copy of the late literary journal Antaeus, a relic of a great small journal founded by Daniel Halpern and Paul Bowles. I have quoted these lines so often I should know them by heart. And every time something happens in the world to remind me the truth of these words I go back to them and reread parts of this essay and remind myself how simply and quietly, every single day, we delude ourselves about this world of ours. Delusion is everywhere and the will that shatters that delusion is present as well. We can delude ourselves that something like a world war will never happen again, that history has come to an end, that only small wars or economic wars will be the conflicts of the present, that we are different than generations of the past. And yet... Russia invades Georgia on a pretext (oh how World War I, how World War II) and China puts banners up on Tiananmen Square declaring "Beijing 2008", placing potted flowers and having dance and sports performances in the very square where thousands were massacred on June 4, 1989. I wonder if the flowers add up to the number killed that day?

Delusions. Deceptions. Deft hands? Not really. How many people really believe that Medvedev is the President of Russia? What would the percentages be? In Russia itself I would say zero percent. Outside I am sure there are a few who, blissfully ignorant, believe it when the read the words "president" and "Medvedev" in the same sentence. Ignorant or deluded - choose your poison. And the reason for invasion? Provocation, defending the liberties of another small nation, protecting "Russians" who live in Ossetia - all of these usual suspects were trotted out in the press. How many people also believe that China will find its way to democracy through a kind of socialist capitalism? Or that, if not provoked themselves, if left to find their own way, the Chinese government will allow more freedoms to enter the country until China is a democracy in all but how their leaders are elected - a sort of tyrannical democracy, the government will give you freedom if you promise to leave the government alone? Why not? After all Russia proves daily that such a dichotomy not only is not mutually exclusive but actually mutually beneficial. As long as you don't have what the government wants or thinks you shouldn't have.

History. Delusions. In today's Washington Post an Irish woman in China for the Olympics says: "Obviously, it was the first thing I thought about, that this was where the massacre occurred. I got here and just felt, wow, wow, it's all about the Olympics. There's nothing here about history." In the same article Wang Dang, one of the student leaders in 1989 who was imprisoned for seven years, says "If people do not understand their history, they will become shallow, rootless,... when country is emerging, like China, the passion of nationalism will head in a direction that's more and more aggressive. Only if people understand history -- especially the bad memories of history -- will the nation become more modest."

The bad memories. A friend in Germany tells me how everywhere she goes she sees reminders of what the Germans did in World War II, signs of the war, of the Holocaust. The world won't let Germany forget but, more importantly, the Germans themselves have truly worked at cultivating a remembrance of the horror they created. In Russia their are monuments to poets who were persecuted, there are individual shrines on the very killing grounds where victims were shot, but there has never been a drive by the government to make the public more aware, to atone for what happened, to remember the bad memories and, perhaps, become more modest. Better to not think of these things, better to not remind people of such nastiness, after all what is the likelihood of this happening again?

It is a very difficult thing to remind yourself of the shameful things that you, yourself, have done in life because to remind yourself of these things is to open yourself to the doubts and humiliation you feel about such acts. Yet such remembrance is necessary to keep ourselves from repeating the same acts over and over again and proving that Albert Einsteins definition of insanity still holds very much true("Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."). So much history seems to be haunting the edges of current events - Hitler becoming president and eventually calling the presidency "dormant" as he consolidated power and became a dictator - Putin "stepping down" and becoming the prime minister; the 1936 Olympics, the 2008 Olympics; military pushes into small helpless countries - pick your year and insert here.

"The search for truth is not the search for desire." I've used this quote by Albert Camus before but it is always useful. Are we deluded by our desires? I fear so. Putin desires a Russian map similar to the ones of his youth; China desires respectability and dominance in world commerce; Bush desires historical vindication for the destructive choices of his administration. Delusions or truth. Willful ignorance or wishful thinking? I guess we are all deluded in our own, sometimes not so sweet, individual way. I am deluded into believing that one man can stop a line of tanks. I remember that picture, that day vividly. I remember watching the dance that the "Tank Man" did in front of that line of tanks. I wondered at the time what was stopping them from simply running over this man and crushing him. How foolish of me. They were simply waiting for the moment when they would crush everyone else. Still I hold that moment in my heart. I keep it as a memory that as foolish as such defiance can be it can also be inspiring. That such acts of madness, of Quixotic insanity, are not always in vain. Sometimes we must tilt at the windmills. We certainly must not delude ourselves. One man cannot stop a tank. But the spirit of such an act remembered can, perhaps, arm us with a small aura of protection against the delusions others try to foist upon us.

In Tiananmen of Games, No Trace of Massacre by Jill Drew Washingtonpost.com article/2008/08/11