Charles Hayes, a multiple Pushcart Prize Nominee, is an American who lives part time in the Philippines and part time in Seattle with his wife. A product of the Appalachian Mountains, his writing has appeared in Ky Story’s Anthology Collection, Wilderness House Literary Review, The Fable Online, Unbroken Journal, CC&D Magazine, Random Sample Review, The Zodiac Review, eFiction Magazine, Saturday Night Reader, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, Scarlet Leaf Publishing House, Burning Word Journal, eFiction India, and others. The KillMuch has been sung about the land of opportunity, this America that seemingly infinite choruses herald up as the God blessed one. I don’t know whether these songsters really believe that or whether they just enjoy hearing themselves sing. Either way there is a lot of it that goes on and it takes only a drop of the hat to get it started. I suppose it all depends on where you are coming from. If you are coming from somewhere over there, out there, or almost anywhere beyond the hallelujahs and amens, you kind of wonder how can they honestly do that. If you are coming from among the songs and waving flags then I expect it’s just your special kind of opiate and it just feels too good to matter whether it is true or not. Bring it on for you are ready, you think. Hell you’ve always been ready. This is America. But even here the clock of existence has changed. No clock remains set in place.
I know it has been with great confidence that this America was built with a devil may care brand. The things that were read and seen were served up especially designed to compliment that confidence and thereby easily tweak a little piece of the action. But suppose we were to bring together where we have been and where we are going. Not in the sense of a history which they say can be rewritten at any time. Nor in the sense of the experts for they are almost always fixed. But in the sense of the marginal, the less blessed, those outside of the fix and unlike us. It is a consideration that all good patriots of the hunt must do in their search for the truth. The fixed promises of the hunt which we must lay aside in order to do this will resist this temporary retirement, for these promises are built upon the rule that they must always figure in when it comes to the perceptions that are necessary to really see. Our songs are always quick to demonstrate this principle with their anthems of moving heroism, where the hero, who diligently adheres to the principles of the promises, performs glorious things. To abandon these promises and travel awry will raise voices of Gregorian admonition and emergency instructions to return to that well trod trail and it‘s accompanying muzak. Many are the institutions built to house these structured forests of provision. Laws are handed down, in the name of civilization, to avoid the unsightly bypaths that we might lightly reconnoiter. But laws of structured promise can not contain the truth of the unsightly real if we deign to look. In an honest and necessary hunt, to see all that can be seen is required. We must see the eyes cloud and the being fade as well as the bullet strike. We must feel the melancholy hollow in our breast as we stand at the abyss. We must know what we have done, without the tutor of singing voices and structured promises. We must see the kill as it is and allow no further insult to visit it. We must be.
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CHARLES HAYES - HEGEL’S MASTER-SLAVE DIALECTIC WITH A MARXIST FLAIR APPLIED TO OUR WAR ON TERROR4/25/2019 Charles Hayes, a multiple Pushcart Prize Nominee, is an American who lives part time in the Philippines and part time in Seattle with his wife. A product of the Appalachian Mountains, his writing has appeared in Ky Story’s Anthology Collection, Wilderness House Literary Review, The Fable Online, Unbroken Journal, CC&D Magazine, Random Sample Review, The Zodiac Review, eFiction Magazine, Saturday Night Reader, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, Scarlet Leaf Publishing House, Burning Word Journal, eFiction India, and others. HEGEL’S MASTER-SLAVE DIALECTIC WITH A MARXIST FLAIR APPLIED TO OUR WAR ON TERRORIt is through self consciousness that the master-slave dialectic is born. This birth is the result of a struggle by one party to survive under the domination of a stronger party. When relationships and their interactions are at least fair and respectful, if not equal, little if any struggle will take place for they are simply interactions between humans who happen to inhabit the same planet. In a word, life, au naturel, in its static sense. But when a stronger party injects a struggle into the relationship by allowing their strength and lack of self consciousness to disadvantage the other party the master-slave dialectic via the other party’s self consciousness, or struggle, is established. Consequently, the stronger group, lacking the degree of self consciousness and struggle that the weaker group has, will over time become weaker. And the weaker group will develop more strength through their struggle until they become superior and the former master-slave dialectic is reversed. It is here where true change can take place. Mandela’s South Africa comes to mind.
Upon becoming superior, the former oppressed created a fair and respectful relationship in its static sense, by not using their newfound power to disadvantage others. By doing this the birth of nations or peoples can come with their own destiny, new life. Until one or the other parties of that life tries to fix something that isn’t broke. In the beginning the war on terror developed between the United States and parts of the Middle East. And it did not occur in a vacuum. It took place because the more self conscious wanted to establish, for all to see and respond to, a pronounced master-slave dialectic. The dominant United States, although with as much power for insight and correction as power for dominance, chose to “turn the screw” of dominance and pay back. In a sense our response to the attack on the twin towers of the World Trade Center was so extreme that the screw became set. Some would say that this was a natural requirement for perpetual war. And that it was done with full knowledge of this because decline was imminent for our society. And the best way to deny this, but secretly acquiesce, was to show our power and say that we will go down swinging, an American concept that has been wielded about like no other. Perhaps, more simply, it was our time and the grace necessary to do it any other way did not exist. Every attempt to turn a screw that is already set is ultimately a waste of time and resources and does nothing more than shorten the time of the dialectic. Rome wasn't built in a day, for sure, but once the dialectic took place, as Paul Harvey used to say, “you know the rest of the story.” And it was not a long one. History is replete with such examples from the colonial powers on down to almost any power. “There is a time and a purpose to everything unto heaven.” Those that say that what we do is for the sake of our children, while those same children have to overcome their natural instincts to live and let live in order to honor their parents, seem to believe that history will respect them, where it did not the Romans and all others. When the screw is set to advantage, or compensate, one party or another, only the opposite can occur. There were those in power that knew, but dared not say, these things. They tried to mitigate some of what is. Surely, only by sleight of hand could this be done, for a people scared to acknowledge the obvious screamed and hollered that they were being deceived at every turn. But that is part of the dialectic as well. It would be too much of a struggle to do otherwise. May the journals that can, unblemished, make it through this, acknowledge those magicians who knew the score and still tended their kind. They were not defeatist. But they were not heifers that would follow a hay wagon into a slaughterhouse or a hovering mini-gun either. Enough struggle still lies there to get some of them through each day. So far. |