R No. I
like what you're saying. I think you're
saying something very important; it is nebulous, it is hard get one's head
around, and there are no simple answers to it, but I think it's really
important that you put it out there.
Andrew Schmookler: People who don't need to put their head
around it can sort of just provisionally imagine that I know what I'm talking
about given what I've been doing for the last half-century, and given that this
is building upon a bunch of ideas that I'm putting out as a foundation. So people that want to wrap their head around
it can follow me. I'm posting things on
Opednews and a couple of other websites, including my own, which is Nonesoblind.org . I know it's hard to wrap your head around,
because, I tell ya, I've been working on it for eight years, and it is still
hard for me to wrap my head around it all the time.
Rob Kall: What you're saying is that there is evil, and
you call it the destructiveness, or evil
- it's almost like you're describing what movies characterize as the
kinds of monsters that need to be exorcised.
Demons! Demonic entities.
Andrew Schmookler: Well I see these as naturalistic phenomena,
meaning patterns. Like the thing I
described is part of a pattern, like the thing Rove did, that the Jim Crow
South did, and that those are patterns.
I think that something that moves like that, you can talk about the
spirit behind it. The spirit behind the
Republicans' eagerness to cut food stamps, and kids are not getting enough to
eat. That spirit we can see someplace
else, and you can say, "That is something which grows out of the same
soil. Maybe it's the same kind of plant,
just in a different place." And then you
start thinking, "Well, what is the Genome of that?" And the genome is this destructive thing that
moves through the - repeating its patterns.
It
is mind-blowing to see it, and then in some respects it is important to
imagine, that we human beings have emerged into this unprecedented situation of
a species like us, and we have unleashed circumstances that we by no means
fully comprehend, much less control.
Rob Kall: Well I would put to you that what you're
characterizing is a demonic archetype.
Andrew Schmookler: Well, the archetype could be used -- when you
see cruelty in action for example -- here's another one. I posted something called The Sick and
Broken Spirit. I think I posted it
on your site, and I posted it on a few others, and I think on your site I
couldn't use an image at that time, but I used an image of Death. I used the image of a skeleton wielding a
scythe. Then I connected it with
something that wee see - there is a beginning of an Erich Fromm book about
destructiveness, I believe, that talks about the Fascist who had a toast, "Vive
la muerte"; "Long live death." There
is something in Fascism that turns to death, that serves death, that creates
death, and so the archetype helps to convey, in a sense, the spirit of the
thing.
Even
though I don't think there is a being, it is a way of visualizing; whether it's
torture, or the willingness to sacrifice the planet or vulnerable people in
order to get more power, we can see that spirit, and it has an ugly face. The dungeons in the Middle Ages and the
waterboarding in an American Rendition Center have something in common, and
when we see that, we could see a demonic image that gives expression to how it
acts in the world.
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