Never Follow: Losing faith in leaders

There's been a strange negativity in the air lately, at least in the bubble of activity that surrounds me. Maybe it's following me around, infecting those around me like a spreading virus, contaminating each of us with a tense vibe, injecting hostility in the meekest among us. I'm overtaken with the compulsion to challenge every opinion, every thought, every single word thrust at me.

It could be the holiday season, which is already in full swing propagandizing the need for continual conspicuous consumption. It could be the impending election year, which is being forced upon us before the calendar even flips to 2008. Whatever the cause, I have an overwhelming urge to unleash a Edvard Munch-like scream (as depicted in the artist's painting on the left) .

I won't deny the fact that I've always felt an outsider in this society. As a child I imagined myself from another world, dropped on this Earth to observe the strange behavior of the locals before being airlifted out to report back my findings. The fact that the values and ideals held up to me as models for personal behavior never jived with the operating principles of the government and businesses that control our lives certainly contributed to that alienation.

I've been searching my whole life for someone to trust. I want to give myself to a cause or an organization that will put me to work for real change, but I inevitably find myself forced to choose between corruption and marginalization. This system of ours has an indefatigable capacity to absorb and transform all resistance to serve its own purposes.

I'm stupid and stubborn enough to keep butting my head up against society's well fortified walls. One day, the collective impacts may weaken them enough to cause it all to come tumbling down on me. Until then, I'll remain an isolated voice shouting into the gale-force winds, cupping my ears to catch the faintest peep of a response, hoping to find those equally lost in the maelstrom who also refuse to go along just to get along.

Never Follow
by Naked Raygun

Follow me
I'll take you there
You needn't think
You needn't care
On the way
We'll find some others
Baptize with lies
And make them brothers

No I will never follow
I will never follow
Your truth diseased and hollow
No I will never follow

Forget your thoughts
Forget your will
Tell that voice inside
To just keep still
If it gets to be too much
Just turn your eyes away
The free individual
Is from a bygone day

No I will never follow
I will never follow
Your truth diseased and hollow
No I will never follow
I'll be your destroyer
Your world's great annoyer
I'll be your destroyer
No worn propaganda for me

Follow me
I'll take you there
You needn't think
You needn't care
We all go gentle
Into that good night
There'll be no more raging
Against the dying of the light

No I will never follow
I will never follow
Your truth diseased and hollow
No I will never follow
I'll be your destroyer
Your world's great annoyer
I'll be your destroyer
No guns, knives nor lawyers
No I will never follow
You can't take my will away
My dreams will never say die

Peace, a meditation in 4 parts: Two, Dispensing with Doublethink

Many times in our society, things become their opposite. In George Orwell's 1984 the omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent authority of Big Brother limited the oppressed citizenry's aspirations by sowing mental confusion through turns of phrase that the author dubbed doublethink. It's a wicked little practice embraced bawdily by the allegedly democratic leaders who mask well their closeted desires for autocracy.

The naming of the Peacekeeper missile was one recent American incarnation of this rhetorical bit of twisted logic, and in this Renaissance period for Ronald Reagan Think we're often told that we must wage war in order to win the peace. I can't argue with the efficacy of armed conflict to dispatch many to that state of physical peace we call death. War's ability to lay the foundation for mental, emotional and spiritual transcendence is much less reliable.

Those youth we enlist to do our bloody handiwork across borders usually come back irreparably scarred by the experience. The residents of those countries to which our soldiers are sent as ambassadors of the missile and bullet, are left with bitter hearts and vengeful minds. Back here at home, where the "enemy" culture has been cast in the role of two-dimensional, brutish villains by the best Hollywood and Madison Avenue image crafters, the domestic gross product is dominated by hate and racism.

Too often we're taught that peace has to come on our own terms or not at all. The concepts of right and wrong become deceptively simple when we throw up divisive walls, but they don't mirror reality. Navigating through the ambiguity of conflicting perspectives is much more difficult, but it's the only way to win a fuller comprehension of our own place in this world and universe.

I've enthusiastically endeavored to participate in and promote this new phenomenon of social networking we see dominating the Internet, and I think that an answer lies within that nebula of interactions. The more we know and understand about each other, across the many artificial divides politicians and clerics like to erect as obstacles in our path, the less likely it is we'll make unrealistic demands of our new found neighbors, and ourselves.

Chicago Punk pioneers Naked Raygun wrote the below paean to the Reagan-era bravado that we need to jettison if we're ever going to break through the barriers keeping us from Peace.

To be continued ...

Peacemaker
by Naked Raygun

I am the peacemaker
I'll pound sand right up your ass
Our moral codes differ
You're scum ... that is all

A trail of sh*t follows you around
On the edge, it's a hell of a drop
Your number's up
We've got your name and your middle name

I am the peacemaker
I'm right and you are wrong
I am the peacemaker
You are wrong that is all

A trail of filth follows you around
On the edge
It's a hell of a drop

Peacemaker
Peacemaker

Bastille Day: I've got new dreams ...

On this date in 1789, Parisians stormed the Bastille kick-starting the French Revolution that would give bloody birth to the modern republic. The prison held a store of arms that the people wanted for self-defense, fearing an impending crack down by the royal troops. Because of its history as a place of internment for political writers and intelectuals, the destruction of the Bastille became a rallying point of the revolution, and to this day the event is celebrated by Francophiles around the world. Painter Jean-Pierre Houël famously captured the storming in his work Prise de la Bastille, at left.

The power of the moment lay not in the actual significance of the prison when it was seized, as it only held 7 inmates of no particular political importance, but in the symbolism of the structure. The Bastille had become representative of the oppressive rule of the old aristocracy, and tearing it down was a metaphorical act of defiance against their power. It stood as an abstraction for the old social structures that kept the new, blossoming political ideas of the age from seeing the light of day.

Prisons are very powerful symbols for the inhibition of both social and personal development. When political States form, they erect an entire apparatus of social control meant to preserve the power of the status quo. Societies are living things, however, and they continue to evolve until the old laws become restrictive, holding back the full potential for growth. That's when a society is ripe for revolution.

People are much the same; we can become trapped in old ideas. A mental system we've created to survive a certain age or period of life becomes rigid and confining as we continue to grow into new circumstances. We can either keep those old systems in place and make ourselves misearable, or try to break free of them and embrace change in all its scary beauty.

These threshold moments can be messy and intimidating, as we stand in the doorway to our future deliberating whether to step forward. We just need to recognize them for what they are, screw our courage to the sticking place, and take that first step into the next phase of our lives. Once we do, the trepidation will fall away and we'll feel the exhiliration of new possibilities.

Local Chicago punkers Naked Raygun penned a deceptively simple song about these life-changing moments. Repeating the mantra-like lyrics will help steel us to do what's necessary to achieve our true potential, individually and as a society.

New Dreams by Naked Raygun

I got new dreams
I say I got new dreams
I got new dreams and I'm gonna make 'em real
I got new dreams and I'm gonna make 'em real
I got new dreams and I'm gonna make 'em real
I got new dreams and I'm gonna make 'em
Woh-ay-oh, Way-oh-ay

[repeat]