My Theme

J.R. Nyquist

What if all our concerns of the moment, personal and national, were reconsidered in the light of a future destructive war? 

Last year I stumbled upon a passage in a book by Stephen Hoeller. It is from the epilogue of Hoeller’s Jung and the Lost Gospels. It is titled “From Hiroshima to the Secret Gospels: The Alternative Future of Human History.” It refers to the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, and reads as follows: “Not long before his death in 1961, C.G. Jung had a series of visions of a future great catastrophe. According to Marie-Louise von Franz, who remained the custodian of the notes and charts concerning these utterances, Jung saw a worldwide catastrophe, possibly in the nature of a fiery holocaust, occurring in about fifty years (i.e., about 2010)….”

In 1987 I used a similar “vision” of the future as the point of departure for a book, which I titled Origins of the Fourth World War. The book is shattering in its pessimism, harsh in its judgment of present-day hedonism and withering in its critique of American culture. My columns, letters and notes logically follow from the book’s perspective. Most readers never grasp this perspective, which is based on the idea that civilization is fragile. They have no point of contact with Michel Montaigne’s notion, expressed in two essays: “That men are not to judge of our happiness till after death”; and “That to study philosophy is to learn to die.” 

Given my perspective, which tenderly regards the happiness of the moment because of its fragility, I bear great hostility to that recklessness that takes civilization for granted. Consequently, I despise modern journalism. 

Take the president’s press conference of 13 April 2004, as an example. What I saw on television that day was a smug adversarial press. I have no idea if the president was or is correct in his grand strategy, but I am certain that the assembled journalists were irredeemably stupid. I wrote in my journal that the April 13 press conference was “a bizarre snapshot of the elite media, one that – if it survives to be reviewed in another century – is sure to reinforce arguments limiting the freedom of the press.” I further noted: “The insulting, arrogant, yet stupid tone of the questioning was met with polite, tolerant, stumbling honesty.”

Almost twenty years ago Neil Postman wrote: “the epistemology created by television not only is inferior to a print-based epistemology but is dangerous and absurdist.” In his book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, Postman also wrote: “the content of much of our public discourse has become dangerous nonsense.” I agree with his assessment because I deal with so many people whose "ideas" are almost entirely mediated by television. The immediacy of television makes the future inaccessible. Instead of communicating the fragility of civilization, television communicates vivid images that overwhelm the senses, assuring the viewer that all is well if they buy a new car or use the right product.

My theme is a far cry from this one.