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A Man without a Country
By Kurt Vonnegut
Seven Stories Press, 2005. 146 pages.
Even a secular humanist could be forgiven for thanking God for Kurt Vonnegut.
Vonnegut famously announced several years ago that he was through with publishing. Thankfully, however, he continued writing, and pieces that appeared in In These Times have now been collected in A Man without a Country.
For this, we should be grateful.
Vonnegut brings his trademark wit and incorrigibility to the many disturbing issues that face the world today. “I grew up at a time when comedy in this country was superb — it was the Great Depression. There were large numbers of absolutely top comedians on radio. And without intending to, I really studied them.” Humor, for Vonnegut, is a “response to fear.” Only the most superficial humor exists apart from the context of tragedy. “I used to laugh my head off at Laurel and Hardy. There is terrible tragedy there somewhere. These men are too sweet to survive in this world.”
And so he discusses myriad aspects of life, especially American life at the start of the twenty-first century. A satirist in the line that goes back to, say, Mark Twain, and continues today in the work of the likes of Garrison Keillor and Jon Stewart, Vonnegut’s concerns cover a wide swath of ground. But his deep concern is with the heart of the human being, and his key beef is with anything — technology, ideology, theology — that stands in the way of human becoming. Vonnegut writes, “Bill Gates says, ‘Wait till you can see what your computer can become.’ But it’s you who should be doing the becoming, not the damn fool computer. What you can become is the miracle you were born to be through the work that you do.”
Unapologetically humanistic, Vonnegut respectfully asks, “Do you know what a humanist is?”
“We humanists,” he answers his own question, “try to behave as decently, as fairly, and as honorably as we can without any expectation of rewards or punishments in an afterlife.” (I remember a Lord Buckley story, set in the 1800s, in which a man makes virtually that same statement and is lynched for his trouble. So at least we have made progress.) Speaking for humanists, Vonnegut also answers the inevitable question about the merits of Jesus. “If what he said is good, and so much of it is absolutely beautiful, what does it matter if he was God or not?” Then he goes a step further:
But if Christ hadn’t delivered the Sermon on the Mount, with its message of mercy and pity, I wouldn’t want to be a human being.
I’d just as soon be a rattlesnake.
And further:
[W]hat made being alive almost worthwhile for me, besides music, was all the saints I met, who could be anywhere. By saints I meant people who behaved decently in a strikingly indecent society.
I can’t imagine Jerry Falwell or Pat Roberston making such confessions.
Eloquence is the province of the true prophets, and Vonnegut has been among that crowd for more than half a century. That he can make you laugh so hard that you’ll fall off your barstool just adds to his value. A Man without a Country is a wise book and a wise-ass book, one that might just help you stay sane in a crazy-making world. Don’t let it pass you by, and do share it with your friends.
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America, Fascism, and God
Sermons from a Heretical Preacher
By Davidson Loehr
Chelsea Green Publishing Company,
2005. 160 pages.
I bought a t-shirt several years ago at the annual conference of the progressive Catholic group Call To Action. “Heretic,” it proclaims, “in good company,” and then goes on to list many heretics, celebrated and obscure, past and present. Galileo, Joan of Arc, Kepler, Eckhart, Copernicus, Ivone Gebara, Hans Kung, Teilhard de Chardin, and on and on. So it was with some feeling of kinship that I picked up this book by a self-proclaimed heretic and dove right in. What I found was an intellectually rigorous, historically informed, passionate cry for religion, government, and economic systems to be honest, to put people before profits, to respect the environment, and to be faithful to the highest human ideals.
“I’m a heretic, through and through,” Davidson Loehr says, right up front. “People think heresy is a bad thing, but it’s not. It comes from a Greek word meaning ‘to choose.’ Why is it seen as wrong to choose? Because some arrogant little groups declared that the choices were closed, because they had this ‘God’ business all figured out. Those who aren’t through choosing are then, by definition, heretics.”
Just your basic liberal firebrand? Hardly. Loehr, who was born in 1942, chose to enlist in the U.S. Army shortly after John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Eventually sent to Vietnam, he traded in a cushy job escorting visiting entertainers to become a combat photographer. He says of his time on the front lines,
I was shot at, mortared, and have as a souvenir the live bullet that was aimed at my head when the North Vietnamese army officer squatting fifteen feet in front of me was killed by the two men beside me. I was not wounded, sometimes scared, and never heroic, though I did my job for my country and tried to do it well. As a result, my time in Vietnam — especially the last seven months — is sacred time for me. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Loehr learned that “courage mostly consists in showing up for a war, rather than trying to avoid it through special entitlement or the bribes of privilege.” But nearly twenty years after his time in Vietnam, Loehr acknowledged that “we had absolutely no business in Vietnam.” His studies and career path eventually brought him the University of Chicago, where he earned an M.A. and a Ph.D. in philosophy and religion. He is now the senior minister of the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Austin, Texas.
The sermons in America, Fascism, and God were delivered to the 640-member congregation of that church in the years from 2000 through 2005. Loehr consistently calls on his listeners to develop a faith that is mature. “How often have you even thought of reconsidering the concept of God?” he asks at the start of “God as a Hand Puppet.”
I want to convince you that all gods are more like hand puppets than they are like puppeteers. Everyone who tells you what God is like or what God wants or says is using the concept like a hand puppet, creating or choosing which words his or her God can and cannot say. So whether it’s a decent God or not usually depends on whose hands he’s in.
This is vital to grasp today, when so much public policy is being driven by godly hand puppets that seem to have less and less of a connection to the scriptures and traditions to which they are ostensibly related. Loehr boldly takes on the issues of fundamentalism (“It is terribly important for us to realize that the fact that ‘our’ Christian fundamentalists have the same hate list as ‘their’ Muslim fundamentalists is not a coincidence!”); capitalism and theology (“When we exalt capitalism as we have . . . I can see, and feel, that our problems aren’t about money. They’re theological. We are worshiping idols. . .”); the “Frankenstein monster” that is the American corporation (“It is un-American. It is ungodly. It is inhuman, and it is disgusting. And it is continuing”); fascism and American governance (“I don’t mean it as name-calling at all. I mean to persuade you that the style of governing into which America has slid is most accurately described as fascism, and that the necessary implications of this fact are rightly regarded as terrifying”).
Loehr’s sermons are well-informed, from both the spiritual and empirical sides. He is well-versed in spiritual writings and traditions and well-read in economics, history, and social issues. His approach is unabashedly progressive and respectful of the ability of individuals to study, think, and choose for themselves. With clarity and passion he rings a bell of warning that is neither panicked nor self-righteous. He is an honest preacher who does not hide his motives behind slick production and pietistic pomposity. Reading America, Fascism, and God makes it abundantly clear (if it is not already) that we have some serious choosing to do if life on Earth is to remain viable beyond the foreseeable future.
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The Last Harbinger
An Elegy for Shadows in Fleeting Twilight
By Roger Gregg
A Presentation of Crazy Dog Audio Theatre, Dublin, Ireland. 2.5 hours on 2 CDs. Downloadable at Audioville.
[Note: As of November 2005: The Last Harbinger will reportedly air in December 2005 on XM Satellite Radio’s “Sonic Theatre.” It will also air on the “Sonic Society” program in Canada.]
Crazy Dog Audio Theatre founder Roger Gregg told me in an email, “For the past six years our company has been producing light and zany radio comedies, but with events in the world and certain twisted ideologies exploiting these events, we felt compelled, as artists, to address these subjects in satire. The story of The Last Harbinger began with the question ‘What would the world be like if it openly worshiped Mammon?’” The answer: “Not very different from our own.”
The resulting radio play, written by Gregg and performed by a crack collection of actors, musicians, and technicians, is the darkly comic The Last Harbinger. Drawing inspiration from such diverse sources as Thomas Merton’s Cables to the Ace, Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, Dickens, Steinbeck, and Dostoyevsky, Gregg and company have created a work that is futuristic in the way that Kurt Vonnegut’s novels are futuristic: It addresses not just the future but the state of society today and the consequences of lifestyle choices that are poisoning the planet and sucking out our very souls.
The world of The Last Harbinger is the planet Moloch, a civilization (term loosely applied) on the brink of a self-inflicted apocalyptic disaster brought about by over-consumption, pollution, plague, and a severe division between rich and poor. Throw in a dimwit figurehead of a leader (commonly known as “the Big Coach”) whose chief skill is reading a teleprompter, explicit worship of Lord Mammon, a compliant media (more about that later), and a massive population, living in the midst of mutation-causing toxic sludge, that has been oppressed to the point where it is easily manipulated, and the parallels to the contemporary world become apparent.
Into this world comes the Harbinger, a visitor from another dimension who has been sent to warn the people of Moloch about their imminent destruction. His straightforward message, “You are doomed to self-destruction unless you change,” is not welcomed by Dr. Malphas, the actual leader of Moloch, who conspires to capture the Harbinger and steal his superior technology. The messianic Harbinger is forced to go on the run and deliver his “message of hope” directly to the people of Moloch, who are apparently no more ready to hear it than are Malphas and his ilk.
Much of the story transpires through the lens of the aforementioned compliant news media. News “journalists” Durissa Nergal and Chax Sybacco are charged with the job of talking Moloch’s television viewers through the scripted events of the day. When something spontaneous happens, they report it in a way that follows the official line. Durissa expertly and enthusiastically toes the company line, always staying close to the surface, while her male colleague, “the lovely Chax Sybacco,” grows increasingly frustrated with being a mouthpiece for the Molochian ruling class. Actors Karen Ardiff and Dave Murray are very funny and “Fox-newsian” as Durissa and Chax, the depth-free reporters who grow apart as Chax develops a conscience and grows a backbone to go with his “lovely nodules” (you’ll have to listen to the play to get an explanation of that).
As the official story is reported by Moloch’s media, we listen as the Harbinger tries to take his message to the people, accompanied by a blind busker named Beng Dagon. Eventually hunted down and placed on trial, the Harbinger then faces his nemesis, Dr. Malphas. Theirs is not so much a battle of wits as a clash of concepts: Just what is the nature of love, of compassion? Just how is it that we are saved, via external or internal resources? How is it that one should lead, and how follow? Though the dialogue merely hints at questions such as these, listeners ought not be surprised to find themselves, hours later, still contemplating them.
Such is the effectiveness of The Last Harbinger. It is a haunting piece of work. Its relevance continually pokes through the drama and comedy, so much so that it may even provoke action in the direction of the sort of change the Harbinger asks of the people of Moloch.
In addition to actors Ardiff and Murray, Phil Proctor is quite funny as Andras Cresil, the dunderhead who poses as Moloch’s leader. Cresil’s wife, Gadreel, played by Melinda Peterson, is a grotesquely tragic figure obsessed with appearance. Morgan Jones as Dr. Malphas stops wisely short of playing the role as a stereotypical personification of evil. Malphas has nuance and is at times even sympathetic, especially in his final encounter with the Harbinger. In Simon O’Gorman’s hands the Harbinger is earnest and dedicated and decidedly, on Moloch, way out of his element (no pun intended; but you’ll have to hear the play to get it). As the street musician and drug addict Beng Dagon, Dermot Magennis represents Moloch’s least fortunate denizens with an edgy presence, a Tom Waits-ian sound, and a painful vulnerability born of oppression and fear.
It is good to know that radio drama is so alive and well. The Last Harbinger is exquisitely written, produced, and acted, and Crazy Dog Audio Theatre is to be commended for this effort. It offers insight into contemporary human condition and, with its dark comedy and sure trajectory, may incite action that could change the course of history for the better.
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