I hardly ever read fiction so it's all good. And another thing, I don't have to go online constantly to back check like I feel I have to do with non-fiction.
Anyway, here are some snips from Fallen Nation, it's not all philosophy speak so don't get the wrong impression.
Snips:
Agent 139 leaned back and crossed his arms as he sighed. “There is nothing ‘real’ which we don’t first re-present, re-signify, re-interpret. Invent. This is the realm of ethics, of meaning, of value. Every time two people have different opinions, they’re vying for the same mental territory. Lines on maps and dollars in banks are also mental territory. People in conflict can go their separate ways and live in different worlds. But most people, most cultures, aren’t satisfied with that. They want to be right. They want the Promised Land to be theirs, and they want their belief to become indelible, natural law. God’s chosen are victorious, you see. It’s war.”
Agent 139 ...continued unabated. “Maybe it is accomplished with a smile, or a show of leg...a convincing argument or a bullet. It comes down to whose culture, whose beliefs, live on and become Fact. The Nazi’s final solution was no different in efthe Natives who lived in these lands.”
Now spreading grape colored lipstick evenly between her lips, Jesus asked, “Yeah but...Is a war of ideas the same as a war with weapons?”
Agent 139 crunched his cigarette out in an ashtray, smoke billowing from his nostrils. “In effect, yes. Most people don’t think of it as war. Their refusal to acknowledge this makes them that much more susceptible to wiles of those who do. Memes are how the evolved wage war. That’s why this,” he said, tapped his recording device, “is a weapon.
Listening in on the conversation from the front, Agent 506 snorted. “Things still fall down, reality doesn’t give a shit about any of our ideas.”
Agent 139 shook his head forcefully. “You’re talking about natural law. I’m talking about point of view. Point of view determines meaning, and thus behavior. We are how we represent ourselves in the world. We’re not trying to plumb the dark recesses of Plato’s cave. We’re trying to unchain Prometheus.”
“What would you suggest is the ‘right’ meme, then?” Agent 506 asked, after a moment. Agent 139 knew it was an entrapment move; 506 was trying to get him to expose himself so he could use his own words against him. He decided to forge a tangential path.
“Let me give you an example. There is truth, ok? And there is honesty. Most people think that the two are the same thing, but they’re not. The truth is the correlation of two or more things in a specific way, in a specific context. It is what you are talking about when you say ‘reality doesn’t give a shit about our ideas.’ There’s nothing ethical about it. There’s no value judgment in it. Honesty on the other hand is also about congruence, but it’s an ethical term. A lie is often unethical, yet something that is not true is simply false.”
Agent 506 opened his mouth to speak but Agent 139, on a roll, guessed the move he was going to make and countered. “A particular ethic itself may or may not be a ‘true’ in terms of reality, in a specific context. See? ‘Right’ is ethical. But we mix it up, and think if something is morally right then it is true, even the illogical converse, if something is true then it is right...We make reality into an endless merry-go-round of opinion. I know, cultural relativism isn’t what ethicists want to end up with, sensible people can’t stand the thought that ‘bad’ acts may go rewarded, and ‘good’ ones punished, but it’s still plain fact, which only the flawed utilitarian back-door machinations of a categorical imperative can free you from, and where the only enforcement to the contrary is through the faulty justice of man... which itself, incidentally, is an act of war, based on cultural aesthetics...” His need to take a breath finally knocked the train off the rails.
Jesus groaned. “You’re making my head hurt. I can’t even tell if you’re making sense or not.”
Agent 139 grinned sadistically and continued, “I’m setting up a dialectic here between utility and aesthetic. The fact that ‘gravity glues you to the Earth’ is not the same kind of fact as ‘sex with children is wrong.’ Nature is merely what happens; what is natural is what is. I think that many Native American cultures were far superior to the Western cultures at the time in an ethical and aesthetic sense. But guns and a bunch of disease-ridden blankets proved that the natural truth did not agree with me. Our historic spin on what happened, and what was right, and what was wrong, these are all in the field of wishful thinking. The Europeans won, end of story.”
“Sounds to me like you’re justifying genocide,” Jesus said.
“No, I’m saying reality doesn’t give a damn.”
Agent 506 laughed. “So you agree with me after all.” “To that point, yeah. But I’m trying to be specific. You’re forgetting that no matter how large the universe, it only comes to be in the mind of a perceiver. What I’m saying is: in the sense of reality you speak of, it doesn’t matter whether something should be one way or the other, so long as it is. There is no arbitrator but what wins out. It continues to exist, while the alternatives die a quiet death. So it is ‘good’ for us to think a certain way, maybe, but unless we can make it work, then we’re nowhere. It’s just a thought, but here’s the kicker – people wage war, of all kinds, over these ideas. It’s not about their actual efficacy, it’s about what kind of munitions they make in the reality war, the culture war. You get forced to fight for what you believe in, and thus...there we are. The culture war. The reality war. Call it what you will. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: economics, religion, and politics are forms of warfare. Take a look at the religious right swarming. They’re on the warpath.”
“Since when did you become a Darwinist mah man?” Jesus asked, tossing a cigarette butt out the window beside her.
“No. I’m talking about cultural evolution, about ideological genocide – not morphological evolution. I’m saying, what’s our path? We have to make it work or be overrun by something else that works better. ‘Better’ could turn out to be a tribe of hirsute, wheezing pachyderms with chainsaws. Exploring what is meant by ‘evolution’ in a personal sense – what are the possibilities? How much and how quickly can we stretch those boundaries? We aren’t lemmings, but every experiment does have its risks. Now, what I’ve yet to puzzle out, myself, is if there is any connection between ethics and reality at all...”
Chuckling, Agent 506 shook his head. “You’re the loon talking ethics. I’m just driving.”
“Yeah well, like I said, I’m trying to puzzle this out. Reality, as they say, is a consensual contract. Ethics is much the same, in a cultural sense. You find demons in that which you reject. We may choose to retain some demons in lieu of the unknown...That’s the nature of our freedom.”
Instead of replying, Agent 506 exerted his freedom by applying the breaks as quickly as he could without hydroplaning.
“What, are you going to come back here and knock some sense into me?” Agent 139 asked, smirking.
“No,” he said. “I’m picking up a hitchhiker.”
================================
He was waiting for a free round, after having just finished his first acoustic performance for the evening. Playing solo at small venues was a no-brainer. He could conjure undiscovered Bach pieces or Port-stained Madrigals for hours. The guitar played itself, he just came along for the ride.
He had matched gazes with Margarite’s chocolate brown eyes after he started his second set. It was like looking down the double barrel of a shotgun. His hands fumbled, the notes came out all wrong. That was a first.
Then he ripped loose with an intensity that riveted and disturbed the audience. He turned himself inside out on that stage. Nothing remained hidden. It was a tender, unadulterated message for only one set of ears. He was asking – are you her? The tears in her eyes said yes. The awkward sensation felt by the rest of the audience was the result of their unwitting voyeurism.
The two of them spent that night drinking margaritas, salty as sweat, first in a nearby bar, then in a hotel room. It could’ve been tawdry, but it was their Eden.
The next month in Vegas was painfully sweet, mostly spent looking into her eyes as the two of them lay moistly entwined. They never spoke about anything important. To this day he didn’t know where she grew up, or who she was, really. Whenever he asked her about her past, she’d work the conversation quickly to something else.
Maybe that’s where the trouble had started. Or maybe she was up to a game that he had yet to fathom. What she got from it in the end, he’d never know.
As the days marched on, it was hard to tell where he ended, and she began. As he gently guided himself into her for the third time that proverbial day, he felt her slipping away. Her eyes and mouth widened simultaneously, both in pleasure and in horror. She reached out desperately to hold him but the current was just too strong.
She let out a faint gasp, and then suddenly, she wasn’t there at all. Her softness was still all around him, forever. Rose petals, everywhere, drifting away coyly in the spring breeze.
Well, that’s how he liked to remember it, like a scene from a Kurosawa film.
Sometimes it’s easier to doubt yourself than your lover.
He should have known when he’d wake up in the morning and she hadn’t come back from the night before. When her eyes drifted away, her body distant, and he knew she was already lost to him, no matter how many times he’d claim her in bed. So many should-have’s, but the water was so warm, so inviting. Beneath it all, unspoken rage accumulated.
The real end to this story was Patron bottles bursting clear blue spume out of ruptured plaster walls; bloody footprints on tiled floors; throat shredding screeching that blended fight and fuck. It was her daring stare as she dropped down on all fours on the broken glass, makeup a dripping mess, leather boots laced to her pared knees, begging for more.
There did come a day when he woke up and she wasn’t there. In the real story, the now dried rose she had given him was lost in the splintered ruins he turned their home into.
Since then, it was one long walk.
