The Way Forward in a Poem by Muhammed Ali

An earlier version of this essay appeared at pilsenportal.com.

As we conclude the first month of 2014 and we contemplate the myriad issues that weigh and pressure upon us as a nation, I recall a comment made by George Plimpton. When asked to reflect upon the character and genius of Muhammad Ali, the legendary writer and editor of The Paris Review recalled a two-word poem by heavyweight champion and improvisatory poet from Louisville, Kentucky. Plimpton heard the champ recite the poem to a large crowd sometime in the 1970’s. Ali proclaimed simply: “Me: We.” Plimpton and those in attendance were moved; Plimpton never forgot the distillation of wisdom.

Me: We. It is that movement in thought and action that can act upon and transform every issue confronting our country and our world. Carbon emissions causing an increase in global temperature?Me: We. Brutalizing inequality between the rich and the poor? Me: We. Tensions rising over questions of immigration? Me: We. Ethnic and religious tensions rising and manifesting in acts within society? Me: We.
We is not a radical concept to Homo sapiens:  95% of human history was spent in hunter-gatherer groups of 75 to 150 people who, in order to survive and flourish across those many millennia, had to have an attitude of sharing. Those tribe members who attempted to hoard resources individually could be exiled from the tribe, a state which would likely lead to their death. In reality, a Herculean effort has been required to convince humans to act against their deepest nature and to seek fulfillment in a purely individualistic way -- most often through the amassing of consumer goods and in the quest for the social status that wealth accumulation affords.

As is detailed brilliantly, humorously, and at times terrifyingly in BBC documentary filmmaker Adam Curtis’ work, The Century of the Self, Sigmund Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays - known as the creator of modern marketing - used the manipulation of the deepest irrational impulses of the human psyche to create desires where once there were none. As Paul Mazer, a Wall Street banker working for Lehman Brothers in the 1930’s declared, "We must shift America from a needs to a desires culture. People must be trained to desire, to want new things, even before the old have been entirely consumed. ... Man's desires must overshadow his needs."

Our true needs are met through the leap in consciousness suggested by the poem, Me: We. As for our desires, let us indulge them and celebrate them when they do not deprive others of their needs and when we are sure they are, in fact, our desires. Our true desires are realized through human connection, connection to nature, and a connection to something greater than us. Me: We. If, upon our deathbed, we recall a diamond broach, it will be because the broach arrived to us from our mother or grandmother or acquired meaning through our sharing it with a sister who longed to wear it one moonlit night in April. Me: We.

The Spanish Teacher and the Radical, 2013

This essay originally appeared on counterpunch.org

The bracing moment when you realize the university where you work is the training ground for Empire. Students write of their goals of working for Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman – the goliath defense contractors who are bankrupting the nation and manufacturing technologies of terror – and the NSA – the Ever-expanding Eye on the global 99%. These entities send reps to the campus to vet (interview) students.

If you are the instructor, earning a non-living wage, what does that make you? Are you a patsy? The butt of a joke?

You try to escape the tentacles of the corporate state and find its grip virtually omnipresent. The trail of slime emitting from its suction cups reeks in remote and unsuspected corners of existence: grocery store food, the asphalt streets you bike upon, the fetid river struggling to flow beneath the turnpike, the classroom where you engage students in simple Spanish exchanges (Dónde está el perro?/ Where is the dog? A qué horas es la reunión?/What time is the meeting?). These diverse realms, all forged by the influential glances and handshakes exchanged between the state and the obsequious & cloying corporate lobbyists- more often than not with the actors playing roles on both sides, at different times. (In 1999, Mr. Smith works for the SEC. In 2001, Mr. Smith works for Goldman Sachs. Or vice-versa).

Rather than making me into the patsy (stammering goggle-eyed at the unknowable machinations) or the fool (red-faced with a bowl of noodles plopped onto his his head), this knowledge is making me into a Radical, in the true, original sense of the word. Radical: “… relating to, or proceeding from a root: as a (1) :  of or growing from the root of a plant…”  Radical: from the root. The Radical of 2013 therefore values above all the four elements of earth, air, fire and water. She values the perfection of the relationships of interdependence that she observes in the biosphere: Tree needs soil needs worm needs water needs sun needs bacteria needs fallen leaves need fruit needs seed needs bird needs twigs needs wind and on into the infinite it goes.

It is to this understanding of existence, of the human, of life that the bracing moment ultimately leads. And it is to a wolf-fierce dedication to right the unbalance and vanquish the nightmare toxic beast seeking to destroy all that the bracing moment ultimately leads.

Rumsfeld Refracted through Milton, Melville and Eliot

Of whom Melville might say, “… he only drinks the tepid tears of orphans.”

Or, “… he… lives like a Czar in an ice palace made of frozen sighs.”

Of whom Milton might say, “The seat of desolation, voyd of light.”

The blood mercenary of the oak table and the flat, dead nickel eyes.

Of whom Eliot might say, 
“A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,

And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,

And the dry stone no sound of water.”

The figure who approaches on the backcountry road at the wrong time of night who tells you,

“And I will show you something different from either

Your shadow at morning striding behind you

Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”

He is the half-man who says that there are unknown knowns. The thought bursts into a thousand fine particles of light - this he can pursue, as Ahab would, across “wild and distant seas … through the undeliverable nameless perils.”

An Open Letter to President Obama on Climate Change

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This letter first appeared at realitysandwich.com

23 December, 2013

Dear President Obama,

 You stand as the most powerful man on the planet at the most pivotal and crucial moment in the history of humanity and in the history of many of our fellow species on Earth. The level of atmospheric carbon was recently measured at 400 parts per million, up a staggering 47% from its sustained 10,000-year, pre-industrial level of 270 ppm. The last time atmospheric carbon levels were this high was three million years ago - 2.8 million years before modern humans' appearance on the planet. At this time, the Earth "… had much higher sea levels, forests extended all the way to the Arctic Ocean... Today, sea ice is melting rapidly, and in the last decades we have seen the tree line moving north into the Arctic tundra." (1) We know that carbon is a heat-holding gas, that it acts to reflect the heat coming off off of the Earth back downward, blocking its passage out of the atmosphere. The effects of this trapped heat and carbon are manifesting with growing regularity: in the form of a possibly dangerously disrupted Jet Stream (2), in an increase of atmospheric humidity by 5%, in a rise in the acidity of the Earth's oceans by an alarming 30% over just fifty years ago, in a warming of the oceans - a phenomenon which allows for swifter movement of tropical storms, in a higher incidence of droughts and heat waves, and in an increase in the range and presence of crop-eating pests as warmer climactic zones expand - phenomena which threaten the global food supply. The previous decade was the hottest on record. And then there is what many shocked and confused people are referring to simply as "weird weather." I recently found myself in the basement of a building on the campus of the University of Maryland waiting out a tornado warning. The lifelong Marylanders in the room with me all remarked that until very recently tornadoes were unheard of in the state. Of course, this is just one of many, many thousands of such anecdotes accumulating daily in this unprecedented and frightening historical moment.

 However, the most disturbing aspects of the the changes currently engulfing the planet are certainly the "feedback loops" which have been triggered by the increased temperatures. Arctic permafrost is melting, releasing plumes of methane - a greenhouse gas many times more potent than carbon; Arctic sea ice is at 29% of its previous density, causing oceans to absorb more heat and sea levels to rise; drought conditions in the forests of the Amazon and Siberia are causing these traditional carbon sinks to release more carbon than they absorb. Some scientists have referred to these feedback phenomena as a "death spiral."

 Despite the extremely dire nature of the problem we face as a species, there does remain a brief window of time for us act to contain the spiraling chaos. As a student of history, you are of course aware that upon the entry of the United States into World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt announced to the nation that we would have to begin to produce domestically tanks and other heavy artillery of war within six months. At the time of President Roosevelt's announcement, the US possessed no such capacity and most of the public thought him mad. Within six months, the automobile plants of the nation had been converted to tank-producing facilities and the US became capable of acting to prevent the spread of fascism. President John F. Kennedy's proclamation that we would put a man on the moon by decade's close was met with similar derision and incredulity. In both cases, "the impossible" became manifest.

 What is at stake now is literally everything. To take just one example among many, if the rising oceanic acidity deprives phytoplankton of their ability to survive, we lose an organism which produces 50% of the oxygen we breathe (3). The list of such threats that seem to be conjured from a dystopian science fiction novel is, unfortunately, voluminous. And so, as a citizen of this republic, I ask you, President Barack Hussein Obama, to chart for us a new and radical course that may transform our nation to a carbon neutral land - the "impossible" made manifest. Through a fierce and radical commitment to transitioning to local-based communities and economies that depend on a tiny fraction of the energy currently consumed, through a transformation of American manufacturing to serve exclusively the production of sustainable energy technology and retro fitting for low energy use dwellings, through the establishment of a new Civilian Conservation Corps, whose mission would be the planting of trees and forests to grow our carbon sinks exponentially, and finally through the acknowledgement that the age of global industrial markets has brought our planet to the breaking point and has run its course. This letter focuses on the cataclysms faced as a result of global warming and climate change; however, suffice to say that the leaking at the Fukushima reactor, the collapse of fisheries to 5 or 10% of their pre-Industrial Revolution levels, and the fact that 200 species a day are going extinct all point to the need for urgent and radical systemic change. An American culture and economy that is local and land-based and that does not poison our home is now the only available choice if we are to survive as a species.

 Strangely, we find ourselves at the Zero Hour. Why now? Why is it you, President Obama, who finds himself in the position of power at this moment? I believe it is because your life has prepared you to be the one who can face this challenge with clarity, force, vision and leadership, just as President Roosevelt was the right man at that previous dark, dark hour. I ask you to marshall all of your considerable strength to this calling. 

 Sincerely,

 Dan Hanrahan

Baltimore, MD

(1) Brahic, Catherine. "Climate Change's Psychological Milestone." http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/new_scientist/2013/06/carbon_dioxide_at_400_parts_per_million_the_keeling_curve_milestone_measurement.html

(2) Borestein, Seth. "Weather Extremes Tied to Jet Stream Changes." http://www.wunderground.com/news/heat-wave-alaska-jet-stream-may-be-blame-20130625

(3) Roach, John. "Source of Half of Earth's Oxygen Gets Little Credit." 
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/06/0607_040607_phytoplankton.html