Endless Night and Sweet Delight

Carla and I made the trek down to the Chopin theatre last night to see Collaboraction's play, "Guinea Pig Solo." It is a play about a soldier back from Iraq and how the senseless reality of war has completely brutalized him. It is a dark, bleak, hopeless vision. A powerful work; beautifully written, acted, and staged; a really superior production. But, ultimately, I must say, (reluctantly) I absolutely hated it because it left no door open to the light.

There's a saying that "the truth will set you free," I also think there are some truth's that can destroy us (see the story of Oedipus - see Darwin's Dangerous Idea). I do think we need to be able to look at the brutalizing violence, the dark "survival of the fittest," ethic taken from nature and applied to society. I think we can look at what looks to be the dark side of humanity and society with clear eyes, but we can't let the darkness, the brutality, the violence, the hard rain, blind us to beauty, poetry, the resiliance of life and love.

The play makes words like love and hope ring hollow. There's a refrain: "It's a Louis Armstrong world," which is used as a club to beat us over the head, making the point that it's not such a wonderful world after all. Maybe, sometimes (absolutely) it isn't,(and it's important to know/see this) but at the same time, impossibly, incredibly, it is!. I think the world encompasses the bleak and the wonderful. I think it's important to look into the abyss but not to be totally blinded by it.

We need to be able to see clearly: the violence, poverty, ignorance, injustice, inequality, prejudice, racism, sexism, and brutishness of man's inhumanity to man. (Man's greatest problem: man). We need to see clearly, that we as individuals have choices; as societies, we have choices. We can choose to live in a better world together. We can't banish the darkness, but we can choose to lean to the light. (Man's best solution: man). "Some are born to endless night, some are born to sweet delight." - Wm. Blake. We need to see with two eyes always.