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Every era has its share of tragedies and events deemed insurmountable at the time. But apocalypses have come and gone, death cults have inevitably drowned in their own hubris, and systems, however evil, eventually slip into the dark halls of history. The machinery of mankind has a way of rebooting itself and clearing out major bugs. But man…we’re in the middle of one serious mother of a clusterf#$k, dire to the point of almost being laughable. I mean… You know something’s gone awfully wrong when B-movies are poised to become prophecy. What’s most troubling to me, however, is our collective response to these unprecedented challenges. Too many of us are now locked inside of ourselves, unable or unwilling to even look at reality. I came across an article this morning, discussing the work of French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, about hyperreality and simulacra. I’ve set it aside in Craft because I want to research the topic (and original 1981 book) further. Namely, the author’s assertion that “mass media leads to the inability to perceive what is real”. I have a feeling Beaudrillard didn’t even begin to envision the extent to which that concept would eventually engulf our everyday lives. But why do multitudes so easily lose themselves within myths and lies? I believe escapism is part of it, with conspiracies used as a new, deeply vicious form of self-aggrandizing entertainment. They’re the ultimate You Are The Hero books. And I also think it’s about control: for those who weave the lies and profit from them, but for their followers as well, duped but desperate to write their own narrative. … In Canada, we learned this week of a book “purge” that took place in Ontario, in 2019. The details are too long for this newsletter, but here’s the gist of it: in the name of reconciliation with First Nations, a school board decided to not only remove, but destroy books that were deemed offensive, because of images, because of terms no longer considered acceptable; in some cases because the authors were white, making the books guilty of cultural appropriation; but even First Nations authors weren’t spared. Books of all eras and genres, judged through today’s increasingly narrow lens of intolerance. Books that were also burned, in some cases, as offerings—a purification ritual. The word is autodafé. When our kids were younger, I read to them every night. And I remember how uncomfortable it felt to read Tintin en Amérique or Tintin au Congo—classic works dating back to the early 20th century. The very same copies I had read as a child. But every single time, I would use those stories as an opportunity to educate them, to tell them how wrong this was and place the books in their proper cultural context. And I believe our kids benefited from this, from knowing about racist depictions and the history of colonialism. Unlike statues—which are erected in public spaces as tributes that are meant to be conclusive—books are arguments, open-ended. Arguments that invite counter-arguments. Debates need a starting point, not silence. It’s obviously a complex issue, and while we’re all allowed opinions on the matter, as a white man, I don’t believe I have the right to final say on this; we’ve done enough of that throughout our history. But here’s where the story, interestingly, ties back into myth and simulacra: the woman behind the purge, someone identifying as a “Keeper of Knowledge” no less, whose heritage landed her a job as part of a First Nations commission for the Liberal Party of Canada, is apparently a fraud. Her father is from Luxembourg, her mother is French and her lineage, going back seven generations, is purely European, according to an investigation by SRC. She rode her self-made myth all the way to the bank, erasing herself in the process…but more importantly, erasing others as well. She essentially acted unilaterally, a cultural usurper without a shred of legitimate authority—the very model of the white colonialist she was claiming to fight. I’m sure entire psych books could be written about a somewhat disturbing identity crisis at the root of that crusade. Blindness to the truth, in all of its forms, from top to bottom, is the crisis of our times. But climate-deniers, anti-vaxers, cattle-drug slurping Q-Anon militants and power-hungry politicians…in the end, none of it will matter. Reality will prevail—with or without us.
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