Thus I Heard Zarathustra Tonight

The following are a few brief excerpts from Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra. The passages are especially poignant at the current moment in time. I add my commentary afterward, which is intended to challenge you to think about your choices and put Nietzsche's words into the perspective of the contemporary world.

First, allow me to quote from the chapter titled "The New Idol."

"Somewhere there are still peoples and herds, but not with us, my brethren: here there are states."

"A state, is called the coldest of all cold monsters. Coldly lieth it also; and this lie creepeth from its mouth: 'I, the state, am the people.' But the state lieth in all languages of good and evil; and whatever it saith it lieth; and whatever it hath it hath stolen."

"The state, I call it, where all are poison-drinkers, the good and the bad: the state, where all lose themselves, the good and the bad: the state, where the slow suicide of all - is called 'life.'"

"Culture, they call their theft - and everything becometh sickness and trouble unto them!"

"Just see these superfluous ones! Sick are they always; they vomit their bile and call it a newspaper. Wealth they acquire and become poorer thereby. Power they seek for, and above all, the lever of power, much money - these impotent ones!"

"Madmen they all seem to me, and clambering apes, and too eager. Badly smelleth their idol to me, the cold monster: badly they all smell to me, these idolaters."

And now, let me share some lines from the chapter titled "The Flies in the Marketplace."

"Little do people understand what is great - that is to say, the creating agency. But they have a taste for all representers and actors of great things. Around the devisers of new values revolveth the world: - invisibly it revolveth. But around the actors revolveth the people and the glory: such is the course of things."

"To upset - that meaneth with him [the actor] to prove. To drive mad - that meaneth with him to convince. And blood is counted by him the best of all arguments."

"Full of clattering buffoons is the market-place, - and the people glory in their great men! These are for them the masters of the hour. But the hour presseth them; so they press thee. And also from thee they want Yea or Nay. Only in the marketplace is one assailed by Yea? or Nay?"

But -

"Away from the market-place and from fame taketh place all that is great: away from the market-Place and from fame have ever dwelt the devisers of new values. But take care lest it be thy fate to suffer all their [the rich and powerful] poisonous injustice! They flattereth thee, as one flattereth a God or devil. Often, also, do they show themselves to thee as amiable ones. They think much about thee with their circumscribed souls - thou art always suspected by them! They rejoice if once thou be humble enough to be frivolous."

Yes, indeed, "Thus spake Zarathustra."

Nietzsche wrote these thoughts in a different age, in a different world. The world of the marketplace was only just beginning to develop into what we have today. He knew not of the cajoling of advertising or the subtle, yet insidious, seduction of television and movies and the planned obsolescence of high-tech toys. He had not seen newscasters molding public opinion even as they fabricated news, slanted to make you believe in the necessity of the state and the necessity of its laws, its wars, its tax codes, its destruction of the environment for profit, and its erosion of individuality.

Our ancestors were herded off their private farms into cities. Humanity cannot subsist any longer without big agriculture and the multinational corporations that ship their packaged food to the supermarkets of the world. There is no land left to subsist upon. Your lives are those of serfs, selling away the precious hours of your so-short lives to earn a few dollars to feed and house and clothe your families. Those hours of your lives are stolen and can never be regained. Meanwhile, your toil further enriches the wealthy, while today, in the current marketplace, you are lucky if you can find a job. And if you cannot, some smug Repugnican says you are lazy and really just don't want to work.

This is bigotry in action my friends. These are the same bigoted epithets once used against African-Americans, still hurled at Latinos, and now hung about your necks. Today, the bigotry is against everyone who is not among the wealthiest or who does not, will not or cannot conform to social norms, as well as anyone and everyone who is willing to stand up and complain about the current situation. Yes, those who Nietzsche called idolaters, and seekers of wealth and power are the one's who mold the opinions of the sheep, who are then taught to direct their bigoted epithets at you for them.

The wealthy want all the money and all the property. They want you to keep doing their bidding. And if you cease to be of use to them, they don't want you to be around. They don't want to educate you, because you might wake up and see what is going on. Without education, you will not want anything more for yourself, and you will not question their pre-eminence. When you reach your mid-forties to early fifties, you are undesirable as a worker because your most productive years, your most malleable years, and your cheapest years are all behind you. If you are old or infirm, you are useless, so you may be discarded. They do not want to pay for you to be made well again, there is no profit in that for them. They do not want to pay to ease your health concerns when you are old and they have used you up, there is no profit in the for them. They do not want you to have a Social Security pension, there is no profit in that for them, either.

The state will not protect you, it is owned by those idolaters. They pay for politicians' campaigns, and advertising. They keep the elected in their pockets with perks from lobbyists. The state is here, not to serve you, but to serve the wealthy, that is why the wealthy are not asked to pay taxes. The wars that the state fights in the name of some platitude are really only fought to advance some economic advantage craved by the wealthiest within the state whose money buys the politicians, the judges, and the newscasters. The wealthy own the media, and then they create the myth of a left-wing media bias, but only to convince you to shut your mind, stop thinking for yourself, avoid listening to anything contrary to their official point of view, and buy into their programs, their wars, and the favored status for the wealthy in the courts and tax codes.

They placate you with gadgets. They give you Play Stations, and iPods, and iPads, and Social Networking, and cell phones with digital cameras that are also mp3 players that also offer a constant stream of apps, and hundreds of channels on television, and designer clothing. Then, they charge you exorbitant prices for these items, and plan them to be obsolete in 2 or 3 years so you'll buy the products all over again. Most of these items are made of plastic, so when one becomes obsolete, it will sit in a dump for thousands of years since it won't biodegrade. And all this plastic is made from petroleum. Every product is shipped across the world to local marketplaces, and that shipping uses more petroleum.

To assure an endless supply of petroleum, these multinational corporations demand states go to war in the Middle and Near East. So your sons die, not to free people from oppression, but to further enrich the already wealthy by securing the oil needed for the companies to make their products and ship them to you.

Meanwhile, the state tells you it is your use of the automobile that destroys the climate. No one can legitimately argue that individuals using the combustion engine do contribute to climate change. But the greatest damage to our climate through petroleum use arises from military engagement in wars, the shipping of products around the world, air travel, and industry as it makes the useless toys and products that sap future generations of natural resources and which brainwash you into thinking this is such a marvelous life which it is anything but. The state takes special care not to regulate those uses of petroleum, only yours.

And yet, you have come to believe, you have no way out. Your children must have the latest gadgets, latest clothing, most desirable designer labels, and hippest new games if they are to be popular at school, have the right friends, and properly be indoctrinated into conformity. You have to pay for the petroleum which heats your home and your bath water, and which powers your automobile. You must put food on the table and shelter your family. You must provide abundant Christmases and the funds for an endless stream of mind-numbing entertainment - movies, restaurants, vacations, and parties, not to mention whatever your drugs of choice may be, including alcohol.

To further numb your mind, your culture creates stars out of the most attractive people. You become obsessed with them because the media tells you to be and bombards you with their pictures, their movies and TV shows, advertising with them as spokespeople, magazine articles, gossip shows on television, and on and on. So, you give yourself over to fascination with them and join in the cult dedicated to celebrity worship.

To buy all these products, provide a comfortable life for your family, and enrapture yourself with the fascination of shiny toys and beautiful celebrities, you must sell your life, hour by hour, week by week, and still you must go into debt. You must also live with stress, and a constant fear that if you lose your job, you could lose everything. So, you shut your mouth, take whatever shit your employer decides to shove up your ass, and you go to work everyday, for the rest of your life. In so doing, you have so few hours left over to spend with your loved ones that you forget what love is, lose your connection to them, and end up divorced or find your kids arrested or overdosed. Why? So you can keep paying the interest on the debt you have accumulated. And then, you will die far too young because of the accumulation of stress and the toxic conditions corporations have wrecked upon the environment.

This is not freedom, my friends. This is a form of slavery, indentured servitude, which you cannot opt out of. This is the future for as long as can be imagined.

Is this the life you want to give your children? Is this the world you want to endow upon future generations? Is consuming, amassing debt, selling the hours of your life, and creating piles of non-biodegradable refuse while you idolize beautiful celebrities the future you would choose for yourself if you had a choice? Is this servitude to the marketplace really fulfilling enough to bequeath to all future generations?

Or -

Are you brave enough to be an individual, think for yourself, take your balls out of your bosses' wallets, and demand a better world?

An Analytical Introduction to the Poetry of Jim Morrison

“Is everybody in? The celebration is about to begin.” Jim Morrison.

James Douglas Morrison emerged from the womb on December 8, 1943 in Melbourne, Florida. His father, an authoritarian, from whom Jim would completely estrange himself, worked as a career officer in the US Navy and eventually attained the rank of Admiral. Jim’s family included a younger brother and a younger sister. Among other colleges and universities, he attended UCLA film school, graduating in 1965. At UCLA, Morrison first met Ray Manzarek.

While Morrison lived in Venice Beach after graduation, he ran into Manzarek. Soon, they formed the rock band, THE doors, along with Robbie Krieger and John Densmore. The band name they chose, THE doors, comes from something William Blake once wrote, “If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.” On their album covers, the band did not capitalize the word doors, an homage to the poet, e.e. cummings.

On January 4, 1967, Electra Records released the band’s first LP, the self-titled “THE doors.” “The End,” one of the songs on that album, incorporated many themes, among them a controversial reference to an Oedipus complex. Their initial performance of it at the Whiskey-A-Go-Go club on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles led to them being banned from the club.

During the years of THE door’s existence, Morrison wrote most of the lyrics to the songs they recorded. However, Robbie Krieger wrote a few of their songs, including the breakthrough single, “Light My Fire.” The albums “Strange Days” and “The Soft Parade” also contain long cuts (“When the Music’s Over” and “The Soft Parade,” respectively) which, like “The End,” took up nearly an entire side of the LP. Morrison wrote a very long piece (it varies in length on different live recordings but seems to always end up in the area of 17 minutes, meaning it would have taken up one side of a vinyl LP) titled “Celebration of the Lizard” which may have been intended for the “Waiting for the Sun” album since its lyrics appeared on the inside cover.

Reflecting Morrison’s anti-authoritarian and iconoclastic individualism, THE doors exhibited the traits of a pre-punk era, punk band. When they appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show for the first time and performed “Light My Fire,” Morrison refused to comply with Ed’s request to use a different word for “higher” in the line, “Girl we couldn’t get much higher.” As a result, Ed banned them from his show. However, only a couple of years later, Ed asked them back and they took his stage again in support of “The Soft Parade,” performing “Touch Me.”

“I am the Lizard King; I can do anything,” Jim Morrison.

Of his early life, Jim circulated a story which bears a semi-mystical/mythological nature. He claimed that as a young boy, prior to the birth of his siblings, on a family vacation while driving through the southwest, he witnessed the scene of an accident. As the story goes, he saw Native Americans milling around by the highway. On the ground lay an old man, one of the Native Americans. Jim held that the soul of that man entered his body and joined with him, cohabitating his body with his own soul thereafter. The scene impressed Jim for life. He included many references to it in his lyrics and poetry. Jim saw himself as a shaman as a result. He also believed himself as the reincarnated spirit of the Greek god, Dionysis.

Thematically, Morrison’s writing (both music lyrics and poetry) cover a wide range of subjects. He penned material containing topics, among others, that dealt with antiwar sentiments, the futility and waste of violence, love, sex, drugs, reflections on cinema as an art form, freedom, liberation, psychedelic transcendentalism, death, regeneration, and the politics of late 1960s. He wrote in as unrestrained a manner as he lived.

Morrison never married. However, Jim shared two significant love relationships, one with Patricia Kennealy and the other with Pamela Courson. Jim never lived with Kennealy, but did live with Courson. However, Morrison and Kennealy participated in a “handfasting” ceremony (a pagan marriage ritual not recognized as legal and binding by any state government), so she considered herself married to Morrison (and today goes by Kennealy-Morrison). He quit THE doors in 1971 and moved to Paris where he and Pam resided together. He died in Paris on July 3, 1971. How he died remains a mystery since no autopsy was performed. Patricia still lives. However, Pamela died in 1974. Jim’s Last Will and Testament bequeathed everything to Pam.

Jim’s musical legacy with THE doors includes the studio albums: “THE doors,” “Strange Days,” “Waiting for the Sun,” “The Soft Parade,” “Morrison Hotel,” and “L.A. Woman.” He also recorded some of his poetry which the other members of THE doors later turned into an album after they added music to it. They titled the record “An American Prayer.” This album was released posthumously, in 1978.

Morrison self-published two books of his poetry in 1969, titled “The Lords/Notes on Vision” and “The New Creatures.” I purchased a collection in 1971 which had both books and many of his song lyrics combined in one, thick, paperback volume. However, I am unable to find any record of that book having been published. I gave it to a friend that summer (still before Jim had passed away), so I remain at a loss to provide any additional information regarding that book. Omnibus Press re-released some of that poetry as “The Lords, The New Creatures, The original published poetry of Jim Morrison” in 1985.

The rights to Morrison’s writings went to Pam Courson’s parents after Pam’s passing. With the assistance of Frank and Kathy Lisciandro, old friends of Jim and Pam, the Courson’s released two additional books of Morrison’s poetry. The product of that collaboration resulted in the publication of “Wilderness, The Lost Writings of Jim Morrison, Volume 1” in 1988 and “The American Night, The Writings of Jim Morrison, Volume 2” in 1990, both from Villard Books.

Longtime hanger on and low level assistant to THE doors during their heyday, and manager of THE doors after Morrison’s death, Danny Sugarman (with Jerry Hopkins’ as co-author) wrote perhaps the best biography of Jim Morrison, “No One Here Gets Out Alive,” published in 1980. Danny also collaborated with Oliver Stone on his 1991 movie, “The Doors.”

“No eternal reward will ever forgive us for wasting the dawn,” Jim Morrison.

Despite the 1994 publication of the book, “Rimbaud and Jim Morrison: The Rebel as Poet” by Wallace Fowlie, Professor of French Literature at Duke University, Morrison’s published poetry, for the most part, remains uncriticized and unanalyzed by the mainstream poetry community. Most of the attention given to Morrison’s poetry in print revolves around the Morrison myth and perpetuates the lurid tales surrounding his life. Failing to actually spend any real energy on a discussion of Morrison’s poetry and its literary value, about as deep as Fowlie goes into the material finds him offering a brief guide to the influences of Antonin Artaud, Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud, the Beat poets, and Friedrich Nietzsche upon Morrison’s writing.

Allow me to begin a discussion of Morrison’s place in the historical community of poets with the influence of Rimbaud upon him. We must first acknowledge a kindredness of spirits between the two men. Arthur, it is said, was a Libertine with a restless soul. He died young, barely living 37 years. He wrote his most important poetry while in his late teens and quit pursuing creative writing at about the age of 21. The myth of Morrison leads us to acknowledge that he, too, lived the life of a Libertine who died young (27) and wrote most of his material by an early age. Jim's writings and life stories reveal him as also having been a tortured soul, especially from his personal point of view. He felt his looks, lifestyle and rock star career overshadowed the value and message of his creative legacy. He maintained a lifetime of unrequited longing to be taken seriously. Rimbaud enjoyed a fascination for absinthe and hashish while Morrison is known for his alcohol, marijuana and psychedelics consumption. Both Rimbaud and Morrison exhibited a kind of pre-punk attitude. Rimbaud has been classified with the symbolist movement of French poetry, though his writing is also considered decadent. Morrison’s writing is also highly steeped with symbolism and a decadent mindset. Even the scatological poetry of Rimbaud can be compared to Morrison’s blatant sexual writing which is evidenced by the Oedipal references in “The End” and poems such as “Lament for the Death of My Cock” from “An American Prayer,” published in “The American Night,” as two examples.

Next, let me offer a comparison between Morrison and Artaud. Antonin was born in 1896, 5 years after Rimbaud died. He was diagnosed with clinical depression and spent long stays in sanatoria. His physician prescribed laudanum for his psychological afflictions, thus leading to a lifelong addiction to that drug and other opiates. Consequently, we see the exhibition of drug influences and the personality trait of the tortured soul expressed in Artaud just as with Morrison and Rimbaud. He loved Baudelaire and Poe, both of whom were symbolists and influenced Antonin's poetry. Artaud’s writing reflected his passion for surrealism, a movement which grew out of the symbolist school and which can be closely affiliated with Morrison’s brand of surreal poetry which I call psychedelicism. The early cinema fascinated Artaud, and as we know, Morrison was a student filmmaker at UCLA who later devoted a great deal of poetry (“Notes on Vision”) to his views on cinema. Artaud traveled to Mexico and experimented with peyote, so his mind, perception and outlook received an influence by what would later be known as the psychedelic mindset. Late in his life, during the Nazi occupation of France, The Germans locked Artaud in a sanatorium where he received electroshock treatments. However, one of the significant points arises from the doctors’ disapproval of his practice of creating astrological charts and crafting magical spells. Thus we can see the kinship with Morrison as shaman/magician as well.

The Beats, of course, greatly influenced nearly everyone with a remotely bohemian mindset from Morrison’s generation. Their writings and lifestyles, like those of the poets already mentioned, expressed predilections for Libertine experiences, for anti-authoritarianism, for experimentation with drugs, and even for non-mainstream spirituality. The Beats, especially men like Gary Snyder and Allan Ginsberg, wrote poetry heavily influenced by their fascination for Buddhism. Ginsberg, in particular, can be seen as a tortured soul, like those poets discussed in the paragraphs above, who spent time in a psychiatric hospital. He also experimented with LSD and marijuana among other mind altering substances. The vernacular which appears in the poetry of Beats like Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti influenced Morrison’s own poetic language, each being infused with heavy doses of street slang and hipster lingo from the eras in which they lived. Of course The Beats also incorporated impressionistic symbolism and occasional surrealism in their poetry, and as the years passed, some, like Ginsberg, acquired the psychedelic mindset and included the psychedelic style in their poetry.

Of course, from a philosophical point of view, every one of the influences mentioned, along with Morrison, can find affinities in their points of view with the writings of Nietzsche. He promoted a movement away from cultural stereotypes, from herd mentality as he called it, and toward a brash individualism which at the same time expressed itself with anti-authoritarianism. Nietzsche believed the only life worth living was that which expressed the individual’s true nature and sought out both experience and meaning consistent with the will to power. These same themes can be discovered not only in the writings of Morrison, Artaud, Rimbaud and Ginsberg, but also in the lives they led.

“(did you have a good world when you died?) – enough to base a movie on?” Jim Morrison.

Another influence on Morrison’s writing (and by his writing I incorporate by reference both his published poetry and his recorded song lyrics) can be found in William Blake. Blake wrote poems of an ecstatic, prophetic and visionary nature. His style, though pre-dating the symbolists and surrealists, offers an early approach to both. One can even say there is a family line of poets leading to the symbolist and surrealist camps which extends from Dante (“Inferno”) through Milton (“Paradise Lost”) to Blake (“The Marriage of Heaven and Hell”). Blake was another anti-authoritarian, and took part in the Gordon Riots in London. He did not believe in the authority of any church, preferring his own individual spirituality. His style remains highly unique, often combining poetry and art in the same work. Blake can be seen as the spiritual forerunner of Morrison’s writing, bringing a magically spiritual ecstasy to his poetry which is also evident in Morrison's writing. Blake advocated cleansing the doors of perception. Morrison took him seriously as he dropped acid and ate peyote.

Allow me to offer a few examples from Morrison’s writing which present his mind, philosophy and style.

“Cinema is most totalitarian of the arts. All
energy and sensation is sucked up into the skull,
a cerebral erection, skull bloated with blood.
Caligula wished a single neck for all his subjects
that he could behead his kingdom with one blow.
Cinema is this transforming agent. The body
exists for the sake of the eyes; becomes a
dry stalk to support these two soft insatiable
jewels.”

This excerpt (actually from “Notes on Vision”) can be found in “The Lords.” It records Jim’s view of cinema as being a peepshow, a voyeuristic entertainment. It also provides his point of view that movies are a means by which the public mind is controlled and molded by society into a single cultural mindset, that which Nietzsche called herd mentality. At the same time, he winds the thread of these ideas through the spool of his surreal/psychedelic imagery, presenting the theme through symbols. The eroticism is vulgar, determined to impart a decadent view of cinema as mass media influencing the public into a cultural blob, sapped of individual thought, devoted to conform to a social-collective mindset serving only one master, corporate greed.

Next, allow me to offer a bit of Morrison’s surreal symbolism from “The New Creatures.”

“Lizard woman
w / your insect eyes
w / your wild surprise.
Warm daughter of silence.
Venom.
Turn your back w / a slither of moaning wisdom.
The unblinking blind eyes
behind walls new histories rise
and wake growling and whining
the weird dawn of dreams.
Dogs lie sleeping.
The wolf howls.
A creature lives out the war.
A forest.
A rustle of cut words, choking
river.”

Morrison interjects here a glimpse into his view of the new creatures, the symbol of the new society, the society and culture of 1968/9 America. Lizard woman represents the divine, the sacred, tied to ancient cults devoted to earth, land, fertility and mystery. He utters a magical incantation, calling on the sacred woman to turn her back on the glutinous, avaricious, materialist culture coming into being as it creates new histories from behind walls. The walls represent both the city (a human creation) and the new culture into which the minds and desires of the people (the new creatures) are walled up, forcing them to participate in this new and profane reality. These new creatures are the dogs, domesticated animals that lie sleeping (people who sleepwalk their way through life, are taught obedience and servitude to their masters, and who are anesthetized by finding their desires sated with products made by men). The wolf represents the sacred, too, because it lives wild and free, untamed and unchained by human contamination. The new creatures live out the war, he says. The war (besides being a reference to Vietnam) symbolizes the struggle between man and nature for dominance over the planet. Then, he interjects the entirely unexpected juxtaposition of a forest (an image he calls up often in his poetry) – nature as harmonious and beautiful. But he quickly drowns the optimism of that image by choking a river with words – humanity, again, is shown as cutting itself off from the sacred, thereby destroying nature, beauty and harmony.

Morrison presents a completely different approach in his poem “The Connectors” from “Wilderness.”

“- What is connection?

- When 2 motions, thought

to be infinite and mutually

exclusive, meet in a

moment.

- Of Time?

- Yes.

- Time does not exist.

There is no time.

- Time is a straight plantation.”

Morrison shared a fascinating view into how he saw the world in this poem. He titled the poem “The Connectors.” The poem speaks about those things which make connections. The poem appears in a unique form, a conversation. A conversation occurs between two people making a connection, so the poem contains “the connectors” in the two voices carrying on the conversation. Morrison provides his definition of connection as being something which occurs at an intersection. These connectors, he explains, are thought of as infinite and mutually exclusive (separate individuals with eternal souls or who will reincarnate eternally until becoming perfected beings when they can exist in perpetuity in another realm). Yet, they meet, or intersect. An intersection can only occur at a specific place and in a specific instant. That comment leads Morrison to reveal his definition of time, “a straight plantation.” Here, he incorporates hipster lingo of the era. Straight means that which is non-hip. Straight infers that which does not get high and thus not of the counterculture. Straight represents the mainstream, the Establishment. The word, plantation, provides a reference to the old cotton plantations of the South run by masters and worked by slaves. Hence, Morrison explains that connections have commonly (in the era he lived - and since) become dreams woven into our psyches by our masters, who have enslaved us, and who require us to toil for them so we can purchase their products. Morrison wants us to see the absurd circle in our dual enslavement. We are slaves to the shiny things corporations make, advertise and create hype around so we will buy them. In order to fulfill our desire (which has been instilled within us by the advertising) by buying them, we must work (our second slavery, to the machine and masters who create these largely useless and unnecessary things humans lust after). Thus, humanity gives up individual and collective freedom to enrich the already wealthy in a cycle of endeavor that can never be fulfilling since something new to buy will always be created causing a constant stream of reasons to enslave ourselves to the illusion our corporate masters instill within us.

Morrison meant a great deal to me. When THE doors first album was released, I had lived to the ripe old age of 14; fourteen years… impressionable, looking for a voice of rebellion, a youth wanting to be a man and independent, and in 1966, also looking for a way into the secret cabal, the hip, the cool, that which united the teenagers of my day against the Establishment, against the War, against everything “plastic” (the word we used to denote phony and unreal). There was Morrison singing about killing his father and fucking his mother (symbolically destroying the old world and its enforced conformism) in "The End," lamenting about cruelty to animals and the destruction and desecration of sacred nature in “Horse Latitudes,” offering a way into another world, a mystical and magical world in “Break on Through to the Other Side.” Morrison sang about lighting fires, about sexuality, about crystal ships with surreal and psychedelic imagery. He seduced me and an entire generation.

In the years to follow, he sang lines intended to stoke revolution like, “They got the guns / But we got the numbers / Gonna win yeah were / Takin’ over come on!” He also sang about the insanity of the war in Vietnam, “Unborn living, living dead / bullet strikes the helmet’s head.” He always gave us glimpses of the world through strange eyes, the eyes of the drug crazed shaman, chanting, urging us to see the absurdity in the world, urging us to dynamite the plastic and straight fantasy so we might replace it with a natural, sacred and free world which offered to unleash the potential of the individual by deconstructing and destroying the collective. I wanted to be part of that. I wanted to unleash my manhood and my creative instincts. I wanted to find a balance between sacred and culture. Hell, I wanted a sacred culture!

Morrison filled me with these dreams and desires. I wanted to be a sexual animal and primal at the same time as I wanted to run through the forest singing and dancing. I wanted to find my will to power, which is what Morrison extolled without ever calling it that. I wanted to end the reign of enforced conformity and cut the reins of slavery to the consumerist nightmare. I wanted out of the herd mentality that promoted the credo of "my country, right or wrong." I wanted a real freedom, not the plastic freedom of capitalism’s forced slavery to the market, to products, to corporate profits, and to keeping up with the Joneses. Morrison epitomized all these ideas and feelings. I saw him as a revolutionary and a satyr, and damn, that seemed not only romantic, but incredibly macho, too. But his macho was an anti-macho – not Marlboro Man macho with a gun and the audacity to slap a woman into her place. No, he honored women and their essence, he abhorred and denounced guns, and he decried the plastic, decadent lifestyle of consumerist, TV America. Where could I sign up?

I’d written poetry before he came along. I’d been writing poetry since I was 11, having read “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey” at the age of ten. But once Morrison infused me with his animal spirit, with his shamanistic vision of the sacred, with his rebelpoet dream of revolution, and with his lunatic psychedelicism and surreal interpretation of reality, nothing I wrote would ever be the same. I waited 5 years to drop acid. But his ecstatic incantations made it a foregone conclusion that I one day would. When I did, my perception was forever thereafter altered. Psychedelics melted the plastic veneer, cleansing my doors of perception, and, true to Blake’s promise, the world did appear as it truly is, infinite.

Let me offer a stanza from the poem “The Crossroads” which was published in “The American Night" and which reveals Morrison's essential philosophy.

“Leave the rotten towns
of your father
Leave the poisoned wells
and bloodstained streets
Enter now the sweet forest.”

Yes, give up the profanity of destroying nature while creating monstrous edifices only intended to glorify the ego of men and the collective ego of humanity. Return to what is natural, your true nature, your true self, find mystery again, and walk back out into the sacred groves where life is truly lived and meaning actually unfolds.

“Cancel my subscription to the resurrection / Send my credentials to the house of detention / I got some friends inside,” Jim Morrison.

On Dignity, Rights, and Balancing the Individual with Society in Ethical Considerations for the 21st Century

The ideas of ethics and morality are as old as human consciousness. They stem from the interactions of individuals with one another and grow out of social and cultural pressures to balance individual desires with the rights other individuals possess to pursue their own needs and desires. Out of these pressures, societies formed laws (whether religious or secular) to legislate and enforce a standard of acceptable behavior on individuals which would not only consider the rights and expectations of other individuals, but also the needs and concerns of the entire society.

Eventually, social and cultural ethical concerns grew into social standards of group conduct ensuring enforced codes of conduct requiring acquiescence to societal and cultural conformity. Nietzsche would later see that kind of overwhelming control over the individual human spirit as erasing individuality by superimposing upon it what he called herd mentality. The current relationships of individuals with one another and the societies in which they live, as well as the relationships between and among societies, seem to be dominated by many slippery approaches toward what constitutes right action. Out of the environment of indisputable power which permeated western culture during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, Machiavelli recorded in his book, The Prince, the evolution of dominance exercised by authority. Among the evolutionary encroachments of ruling class' authority over the rest of society included the idea that ends can justify any means used to obtain those ends. Studies into the aggrandizement, application and spread of power reveal the notions that power corrupts, and the more absolutely power is held, the more absolute will be the corruption of those in power. Hence, the question of what constitutes individual and societal right action is one which needs to be investigated by every individual and each culture.

As one begins to study the development of ethics, one is drawn first to the ethical systems discussed by Plato and Aristotle. These two giants of philosophical thought are two of the first philosophers to consider and record their insights into right action yielding approaches to ethics.

Both Plato and Aristotle begin their approach to ethics out of an appreciation for arête. In the region we call Greece today and which was their homeland, the word arête was applied to excellence. However, the sense of excellence meant by arête refers to a very high ideal or level of attainment in any sphere of activity as well as with regard to an individual’s character traits.

In Plato’s “Phaedo,” included in From Plato to Derrida, 5^th Ed., edited by Forrest E. Baird and Walter Kaufmann, Plato defined virtue as being achieved when the soul is in a state of well being (Eudemonia). “A man should be of good cheer about his soul if in his life he has renounced the pleasures and adornments of the body… and adorned his soul with the adornment of temperance, and justice, and courage, and freedom, and truth… (Plato 56).”

Plato conceived what is called the tripartite division of the soul (what we call mind): rational, emotive and appetitive. For the soul (or mind) to be virtuous, it must be regulated into a harmonious state. He felt such a harmonious state exists when the rational mind is ruled by wisdom, the emotions are governed by courage and the appetites are regulated by temperance (Plato 54-55). When this kind of harmonious state is reached, the individual may be said to be one who strives solely for the Knowledge of Forms, Wisdom, Truth, and the Highest Form of the Good (Plato 55). To Plato, that individual’s soul is virtuous.

Aristotle looked at virtue similarly, given he also extolled arête driven ethics. He believed all people actively seek to be good and strive for goodness. His admonition was to find it by seeking out the middle or mean virtue (arête) between two extreme vices: deficiency and excess.

Aristotle explained that souls are not substances, but are the animating force of the body. Aristotle, like Plato, arrived at three divisions for the soul. Those divisions were nutritive (found in plants, animals and humans), sensitive (found in animals and humans, but not in plants) and rational (only found in humans). The nutritive part of the soul seeks self-sustenance by acquiring the necessary nutrients. The sensitive portion of the soul possesses senses to perceive the world and interact with it. The rational part of the soul thinks and reasons (Aristotle 158-59).

All of this is similar to Plato in general terms though differs in some specific details. One can find more similarities between Plato’s appetitive soul and Aristotle’s nutritive soul, than Plato’s emotive soul and Aristotle’s sensitive soul. However, both men speak of a rational soul in very similar terms and with very similar ramifications. Aristotle delves deeper into this area.

In Book I of “Nicomachean Ethics,” also found in From Plato to Derrida, Aristotle defines virtue as happiness, but not a banal happiness in the sense of having a good time and sating one’s appetites. Aristotle’s teleology dominates his philosophy. Ends define value and meaning for him (Aristotle 163). The happiness to which Aristotle refers is arête based. He explained that it is found in the accumulation and culmination of a lifetime of deeds, actions, thoughts, aspirations and relationships (Aristotle 168-70).

Aristotle spoke of two kinds of virtue, moral and intellectual. In Book II of “Nicomachean Ethics” Aristotle explains that intellectual virtue is an arête which is acquired by applying one’s mind and full effort to one’s studies, having a good teacher, and being willing to listen to and learn from that teacher. Moral virtue, however, can only be developed by nurturing the proper habits of living, constantly practicing those habits and acting morally in all situations because of a conscious decision to do so. Those constant decisions become easier by vigilantly practicing the habits of morality and right action (Aristotle 177).

Aristotle broke the soul down into three expressions to determine where in the soul one would find virtue: emotions, capacities and characteristics. He concluded that the emotions were not virtuous by themselves, nor were an individual’s capacity to feel emotion. Virtue lay in the character of the emotion as it unfolds in a given situation. The character of the emotion is defined by the degree to which one expresses an emotion, and when combined with the intensity of the emotion and the choice of the emotional response will be a more or less appropriate expression depending on the circumstances of the situation (Aristotle 180). Moderate anger may be appropriate in one instance, whereas a violent reaction may be more appropriate in another depending on the circumstances and whether or not one’s life is in danger.

What Aristotle recommended was to find the mean between extremes (Aristotle 183-84) and a lifetime of habit forming practice for determining what constitutes right action in any given set of circumstances (Aristotle 185-86). As a general rule, Aristotle said that vices lay in the extremes of excess and deficiency, and between any two extremes of deficiency and excess a mean or arête of proper response is always present. The individual is always called upon to make a choice as to what action to take (Aristotle 182). In Book IV of "Nicomachean Ethics," Aristotle provided illustrative examples into ethical concerns and his insight into what constitutes the virtuous mean between the extremes of vices (the extremes being excess and deficiency). For instance, vanity is self-esteem carried to excess while pettiness results from too little self-esteem. He taught that the mean between these extremes, what he called high-mindedness, offered the path to virtue between those two vices. (Aristotle 186-89). As Aristotle explained in Book II, the pathway to living a virtuous life is found by cultivating an awareness of these principles, spending a lifetime nurturing the right response as a habitual reaction and choosing right action as a way of life because it is the correct thing to do and not for any reward or other gain (real or perceived) that might come from acting correctly (Aristotle 183-84).

It is valuable for one to consider the concerns of ethics as expressed by Plato and Aristotle with those espoused centuries later by Immanuel Kant. In his Preface to “Foundation for the Metaphysics of Morals,” which appears in From Plato to Derrida, 5^th Ed., edited by Forrest E. Baird and Walter Kauffmann, Kant said he felt it self-evident that there must be “… a pure moral philosophy which is completely freed from everything which may be only empirical …” and thus an anthropology of human affairs (854). Kant sought a system of morality founded on laws, like everything else in nature. He wanted morality grounded in obligation, containing an absolute necessity that the law be followed (854). Kant stated his supreme principle of morality as the categorical imperative (868-870).

Kant believed morality is not subjective and is not open to interpretation from moment to moment based on specific circumstances existing only in that moment. Morality had to be universal, he believed. He explained that only from universal laws can one ascertain right action in any situation (866). Kant said, “The conception of an objective principle, so far as it constrains a will, is a command (of reason), and the formula of this command is called an ‘imperative’” (868). Imperatives command hypothetically or categorically (868).

A hypothetical imperative arises when one sees practical necessity in an action: it is a means to achieve something else due to individual inclinations (868). A need for money may make one seek a loan. To allow a need for money to override one’s honesty in promises concerning repaying the funds is a moral determination made out of what Kant calls a hypothetical imperative. The inclination to acquire funds creates a hypothetical imperative to obtain the loan.

A categorical imperative exists when one’s choice in any given situation is objectively necessary, without any regard to incentives or individual inclinations (868). Acting consistent with this ethic is emblematic of the “GOOD WILL” (856-7). The will reveals a person’s nature and a good will reveals a moral person. Action must be based on morality, never on an outcome of personal preference. To remove personal motivations (inclinations and desires) from moral choices yields universality for determining right action. Universality, or universal law, for choices in moral decision-making is what Kant valued as an objective morality applicable to everyone instead of different subjective moralities for each individual and in each unique moment.

Kant formulated a single categorical imperative as the moral system for determining right action. It is formulated through three principles. The imperative arises out of deontological ethics, meaning it is duty based. He explained, “… willing from duty the renunciation of all interest is the specific mark of the categorical imperative …” (878).

The first principle for formulating the categorical imperative is: one ought to act according to maxims which can at the same time be universal law (872 and 881). Every moral decision must be equally applicable to everyone. My action is only moral if the action is something that everyone could do. For me to borrow funds based on a lie (I know I will not be able to pay the money back) is not an act everyone could do because it would lead to a complete breakdown in everyone’s ability to trust as well as wreaking havoc on the economy.

The second principle for formulating the categorical imperative requires one to always act according to that universal law from one’s intention (one’s will) and to do what is right solely because it is right (876-7 and 881). It is not enough to do what is right if the reason for one’s actions is to derive a benefit (whether karma, heaven, good favor among one’s peers, friends or associates, or the accumulation of gold stars, salary increases or perks). Moral justification for acting rightly only arises from one’s intent or will; that is, when one legislates one’s actions based on the universality of their moral applicability. When one’s actions arise from the intent of a good will, the actions will not be empirical (based on experience) or subjective (individually motivated by inclination or inducement), but will arise from pure reason.

The third principle for formulating the categorical imperative is to act toward every rational being (others and oneself) so the maxim is an end – it involves its own universal validity for every rational being (878 and 881). Kant admonishes respect for all other rational beings and to treat them as ends in themselves. One should never make another a means to one’s own ends. Respecting all other rational beings preserves and embraces dignity (881). If one uses others for one’s ends, one demeans and disrespects the others and strips them of their dignity. Each person embodies their own ends. I have no more right to make you a means to my ends than you do to make me a means to your ends. To use others as a means is to reduce them to relative worth (a price, like a commodity). Respecting others as ends acknowledges their intrinsic worth (dignity).

The individual loses autonomy when used as a means to someone else’s ends. Without autonomy, one is stripped of free will. This is what Kant called the realm of ends (879). The realm of ends honors the concept that every rational being must regard itself as giving universal law through all the maxims of its will. Consequently, one judges oneself and one’s actions solely from the standpoint of universal law. All rational beings stand under the law: each should treat himself and all others as ends, never as means. The result of the realm of ends approach is the emergence of a systematic union of all rational beings through the acknowledgement of common objective moral laws.

This ideal, the realm of ends, was Kant’s most fervent hope for humanity. Out from this ideal, considerations of ends justifying the means and motives which place individual gain over consideration to and for the rights of others are purged. Only from such an approach can we avoid the slippery slopes of moral and ethical considerations which put the needs, wants or desires of an individual or some particular society over other individuals or societies. In Kant’s system, each individual is not only answerable for their actions and motives, but each also justifies their very existence through the manner in which they not only act but by acting rightly for the sake of righteousness.

Out of Kant’s approach, in the 20^th century, existentialists, like Jean-Paul Sartre, suggested we must each be our own saint. Certainly, we are all human, and consequently, both fallible and far from perfect. However, we can aspire to be the best we can and to uphold our highest ethics.

The only way to come close to that aspiration lies in being utterly conscious in each moment. The more awake and aware one is in each moment of life, the more one will make conscious decisions based on conformity with individual conscience – not herd mentality, which can lead one astray as it did all of Germany in the 1930s and 40s.

A conscious, awake, aware and fully activated individual mind centered in the morality and ethics of a conscience rooted in the deontology of Kant’s categorical imperative is required to build a better world as well as to justify one’s own existence. This is how we learn not to blithely invade other nations with suggestions that the ends any war might try to force might justify the means used to obtain those supposed ends. Such means involve killing, destruction, maiming, despoiling and aggrandizement. There are no ends which can ever justify these kinds of means. Likewise, the idea that anyone may lie to another or cheat another, or use another in any way contrary to the other's free personal choice to obtain something of individual interest, inclination or desire also fails to yield morality. If I use you or lie to you, I strip you of your dignity at the same time as I strip myself of both dignity and honor. Once again, no end is sufficient to allow me the right to place my needs, wants or desires above anyone else's.

Besides, there are no ends. All that exists is one moment oozing into another in a long river of life. What may appear as an end today arises tomorrow as some other individual's or culture's reason to pursue some other act of personal or societal desire, perhaps even revenge. As Kant called them, all such perceived ends are no more than incentives. Incentives cause individuals and collectives of individuals to act in ways which they perceive as their own best interest without respect for ethical morality.

By avoiding incentives and personal or societal desires for specific ends or outcomes, individuals and cultures create redemption in every moment of life, thus establishing worth, value and dignity out of meaninglessness. This is the task of the future: the only way to a viable future for so large a population.

When we love instead of fear, include instead of restrict, share instead of hoard, cooperate instead of demean, and respect instead of degrade, then the world can become a place of hope. That hope is for a future of joy and peace.