The invention of the internet is something as profound for humanity as Prometheus’ discovery of fire, and over time will be just as transformative. It’s a worldwide neural network, a communal brain for the globe, and more importantly a psyche for the entire globe.

What is that? what exactly is a “psyche” and how could it be one for the entire globe?

In medical school we learn Neuroanatomy, and learn that the lumpy brain (see above) (https://www.neurosurgicalatlas.com/neuroanatomy/lateral-view-of-the-lateral-cerebral-surface-showing-the-sulci-and-gyri) has dedicated areas for every last neural function we creatures have got. There’s a dedicated area for every function except one: the psyche. There’s no anatomic place for it. That thing exists in a neural cloud spreading across the surface of the brain: it’s everywhere and nowhere at once.

One could argue that the psyche is sourced out of the amygdala (a limbic system structure deep in the central brain mediating emotion and memory), but others might argue it’s somewhere in the frontal lobes (that moderate and govern mood, behavior, and social judgment). But no one –unless I am much mistaken and please comment if I am– has ever identified or proven the psyche has an actual, discreet, single locus within the human brain. Yet, metaphysical as it is, the psyche undeniably exists and exerts tremendous influence –or, rather than merely influence, it may be the deep source of who we really are… (whatever that means, “who we are”) and perhaps all that we ever do is really an expression of that psyche.

Anatomic events, such as strokes, dementia, tumors, and trauma (bifrontal hematomas, for example, after a bike crash with no helmet) can change a person’s psyche. Life events, such as loneliness, bereavement, changes in wealth (for better or worse) do the same. The psyche can be built up, and the psyche can break. But it’s not something you can physically touch. Nor can you view or image the psyche directly, not with CT, MRI, or even SPECT scanners. You cannot operate on a psyche the way you can with a rupturing appendix or a meningioma. But it’s there and it matters, nevertheless.

And if all the world is one collective organism, and if the universities and theaters and city halls and financial institutions, for example, constitute its neural network, then the internet is its psyche.

(1) Individual psyche: If you’re religious you might refer to a “psyche” as a manifestation of your “soul;” if you’re secular, you might say it’s your “mind.” If you look up the definition it will refer you first to Sigmund Freud (Id, Ego, and Superego) and next to ancient Greece (Psyche marries Eros). In other words, for something as central to our existences as whatever it is that constitutes the essence of our very selves, there’s not a whole hell of a lot to either localize or define it, clinically speaking.

Personally, I don’t go with the religious or the secular definitions. As for the religious, I believe a soul is more than a psyche: it existed before “me” and will exist after my body is dead, and if I develop schizophrenia for example and my psyche becomes deranged, does that similarly impugn my soul? Of course not. And as for the secular, I think the psyche is more than a clearing-house for the collective impulses of the human mind and body; it’s not some higher-level algorithm who’s function it is to assimilate dis-cohesive data and produce survival benefit for the species. It’s not simply a computer.

I take a more mystical view. The psyche is some magical thing: it’s an entity, all right, but not one like the others. Maybe it’s the interface between soul and mind? It’s fluid, and its boundaries are not distinct (my wife’s psyche and my own, for example, intersect like two colors in a rainbow), but it’s got a center and it’s got a periphery, it exerts influence in everything I do, and it’s likewise affected by everything i do. I have some element of control regarding what goes into it, but not complete.

(2) Collective psyche: We as individuals are separate creatures than we are in groups; so separate, it seems, as to be completely different organisms (ref: Lives of a Cell, by Lewis Thomas). A single bacterium will operate and behave along a completely different set of rules and objectives than it will follow when in a group or colony; a domesticated dog will be equally different than the same dog in a pack; humans in one-on-one can be unrecognizable in comparison to their public manifestations or mob mentalities. The group “psyche” is a different psyche. The internet psyche is a different psyche.

So here’s my final point, and there main point of the whole post: just as a individual brain has a gyri, sulci and corpus callosum (the corpus callosum is a large bundle of more than 200 million myelinated nerve fibers that connect the two brain hemispheres, permitting communication between the right and left sides of the brain), and these impact and govern the human being, and just as the human brain has this metaphysical “psyche” existing above and beyond all that, which, you might say, comprises “the real me”… collectively we’ve got the same thing: a metaphysical psyche spanning across all the members of the human species; and now that nearly every human on the planet is connected more or less directly to every other human on the planet through the internet, we’ve got a collective psyche like it or not, and that point is critically important to understand if we’re to make sense of its influence upon us, and if we’re to influence it back.

What just happened? How did it happen so fast? What did we do wrong? I’ll tell you what we did wrong, we didn’t think it through: You don’t get to leave; unless you lose. That should have been obvious from the start.

Post WW-II we’re still in Italy, Germany, Japan; post Korea we’re still in Korea; post Viet Nam we are out from there, but we’ll have to categorize that one as a “loss;” post Iraq we had to rush right back in, in 2016, to counter ISIS, and we’re still in Iraq today. And that, I suppose, is how it should be.

Afghanistan is and was important geopolitically, in terms of it existing in the center of Asia and as it happens in-between Iran and Pakistan; and culturally, in terms of bringing that group of 30+ million people into the modern family; not to mention the explicit reason for being there which was to prevent it being a privileged site for the harboring and nurturing of terrorist groups (now that we’re leaving, it will go right back to doing just that, I am quite sure).

But the instantaneous failure of our 20-year Afghan investment and the nightmare of its president skulking off before the war was even lost with truckloads of stolen cash in tow, this has given the whole world pause…

…so it should probably give every American pause, too… and we all together are asking the same question: “Is the USA the dominant influence across the globe any longer? If not, who is?”

Maybe we in the USA are too busy to think deeply about what just happened because we’re so mired in distracting, fatuous internal debates over whether vaccines actually work; or if the election, of which over the 245 years of our history we’ve done a bunch of times, was done right; or if the Earth is flat or not? This country of ours has become indulgent and foolish beyond description, we’ve lost our way, and it appears very likely that we are incapable of leadership maybe as the USA’s detractors allege… maybe we are too soft and weak and selfish to lead the world any longer?

We need to mature-up enough to stop our un-disciplined haggling in order to take-in what just happened. The catastrophe in Afghanistan isn’t just another news story in the 24/7/365 cycle of news stories. This is a national failure of epic proportion.

Afghanistan, my friends, was much more than a war. It wasn’t as if we just went there to blow up an enemy. This was a “Pygmalion” on a massive scale. We did take on enemies there and we did that part more or less brilliantly, but above and beyond that we also made a lot of promises to the 14 separate tribes comprising the Afghan people. Remember COIN (Counter-insurgency) Strategy? Clear, Hold, and Build? We built them a representative government. We built a lot of schools. We established a free press. We convinced them –some of them, at least– to believe in Western democracy and the institutions that make it viable. We built an Army and Air Force over there, one in our own image in fact, one that couldn’t function even for a single day without us or our contractors, in fact. What were we doing? We lost a lot of men and women over there and injured ten times more, and psychologically impacted even more than that. And that’s just on our side. We had many coalition partners. We had Afghan partners. We spent $2 trillion dollars. And then it lasted ten, eleven days after we pulled out? And we didn’t see that coming? How could that be? What did we do wrong?

Group think.

Was the plan to stay there forever? It might have been. It only makes sense that way. Hey, what WAS the plan, by the way. Oh yes, the Neo-cons: Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, and the lot. A quick victory in Afghanistan, to be followed by a quick victory in Iraq, and at that point we’ve got both sides of Iran covered, and we can control the Middle East. Or it was something other than that?

What is the plan now?

The fact is, somebody has to be the leading culture and force on this planet; for a little while it was us. World War II was very much about that –who would it be? The Axis or the Allied powers?– as were the wars in Korea and Viet Nam: Communism versus Capitalism. The duel is playing out still, but in a more civilized way, with respect to China’s ascendent-power “Belt and Road” initiative. And like it or hate it, our “War on Terrorism” was an attempt to bring the stickiest places on the globe a step forward.

Marx had famously predicted with the rise of Industrialization that economic development would follow that logic and move from undeveloped country to undeveloped country until all of the cheap labor sites on the planet had been exhausted, and only then would the workers of the world have more of a say in their conditions and circumstances. You gotta hand it to the guy, he had that part correct.

The terrorist phenomenon introduced the same kind of logic, which was that troubled places, like the unindustrialized ones before them, needed to be brought up to date in order for the rest of the world to be able to live in a truly modern era. Failure or not in Afghanistan (and although we’ve pulled out, the final chapter on that place is definitely not written, just yet) the job continues on. And who is going to lead it, if not US?

When Lilacs Bloom

If Death does come it will be too soon.

“Wait! Until the lilacs bloom!

And those flowers in the vase beside the door

For whom I had not time enough, before.”

If Death does come it will be too fast

Opportunities all gone past

Like toddlers grown, or children gone,

Or laughter’s echo across the lawn

Catch it all.  Make it whole.

Search, run, from pole to pole.

Sand will sift through every grip.

Sing your song. Take your trip.

–PBR, 2021

I suppose it’s because it was the backdrop of my youth, born in 1967, that the war was a tunnel from which I exited. Mom, Dad, and my six older brothers and sisters were, of course, more close to it than I. Dad served in Korea; not in Viet Nam. But my oldest brothers had to register for the draft when they turned 18 and the political winds that had blown so strongly before, they were still around when I was a kid. I was only at the back end of the hurricane, something lightly felt, as the bulk of the storm had already passed me by and calmer, brighter skies were assuredly ahead.

The Viet Nam War became personally relevant when I joined the military in my young adulthood. I came into the uniform in 1990, long before the September 11, 2001 wave that opened up the new era of military service. So I naturally read about Viet Nam war to try to gain a sense of the group I was joining.

Working where I do now at a combined Veterans Administration – Department of Defense hospital, meeting and getting to know so many Viet Nam vets, that has re-kindled a fascination with the problems and intent of the Viet Nam war. These men (mostly men, some women) paid the real price for our then-opposition to Communist ideology. Looking at the entirety of it from a U.S.-centric point of view, as we “Americans” often do, I never realized the war and its aftermath was ten, a hundred times worse for the Vietnamese people than it was for us. I also never heard how bad the Communism we had fought turned out to be for the Vietnamese people, after the war was lost. I still don’t really know; I’ve read books on the subject as an amateur with an interest, and that’s about it.

I didn’t realize I was back into another phase of reading about the war until I recently finished, “The Sympathizer,” by Viet Thanh Nguyen. That novel dovetailed nicely with a history of Viet Nam that I finished maybe a year ago, entitled appropriately enough, “Viet Nam, A History.” This was by Stanley Karnow, and was a historian’s work that began well before our engagement there.

The Sympathizer was about a South Vietnamese Army double-agent (a Communist agent). It’s all I’ll say about it other than it deserves to be as lauded and it deserved its Pulitzer Prize. Karnow’s book – a must read to understand the backdrop, the history of the country.

“Matterhorn,” by Karl Marlantes is an incredible read. If Karnow’s history gives a basic outline of epochs, places, historical movements, and moments of great importance to the country’s history, concentrating the most upon the recent epochs of the French colonialism and war, followed by the Capitalism versus Communism epochal battle which the country hosted in the 1950’s, 1960’s, and 1970’s, then Marlantes’ story of a “fictitious” Marine Corps Captain, fighting in the in the jungle and on the mountains, gives an up front, blood in your eyes / slugs on your skin view of the experience. I did it as a book on tape, and the actor(s) doing the reading – magnificent. It’s a five-star, must read. Marlantes’ personal story is interesting, too.

“Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies that Led to Vietnam” is really important for anyone to read if you want to know how we screwed up our part so badly – meaning, we screwed it up from the top. My only criticism of it is that if I recall it left General Westmorland (’64-’68 / Gulf of Tonkin / “war of attrition”) off the hook somewhat; I’ve no personal knowledge of these things myself, but books that I’ve read and people I’ve spoken to (occasional Vets in my VA) convey the distinct impression that he’d fought one war too many.

And then there was “A Great Place to have a War: America in Laos and the birth of a Military CIA.” If you’ve an interest this is a fascinating read insofar as I had NO idea of the Communist reality there, despite one of my good childhood friends being a refugee from Laos and the communist takeover.

No Viet Nam War book discussion would be complete without either Graham Greene’s “The Quiet American,” or Eugene Burdick + William Lederer’s “The Ugly American.” Despite the similarities of the titles, they’re two COMPLETELY different books. Yet both of them are iconic and deservedly classics in the field. Greene, a British author and former MI6 agent, deftly depicts our pre-war CIA efforts as earnest and heartfelt but misguided, insufficiently informed and… arrogant. Burdick & Lederer’s book meanwhile, characterizes that SE Asian effort so completely that it apparently became standard reading for all Peace Corps volunteers for decades. Both are in the “must read” category.

And there should be no skipping Ken Burns, “The Vietnam War.” This I think you should go to this one last because it’s so extremely powerful and gripping, and also because it’s so engrossing that if you go to it first you might believe you know all you need to about it, however impossible that may be.

My last point on this is that contemporary society has probably largely forgotten about the Communist problem, that bugaboo that was our existential threat / mortal enemy one generation ago, as had been the fascism of the Nazi war machine one generation prior to that. (As a side note: without this external existential threat, we seem to have taken to tearing one another apart within our country.) Just how bad is Communism? It seems to be a question we’ve forgotten to ask.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/china-surveillance-camera-big-brother_n_5a2ff4dfe4b01598ac484acc

If you listen you can also hear about China video-surveilling mosques and other sights and using AI to identify Uighers and placing 1,000,000 of them into “reeducation camps,” and such.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/26/uighur-concentration-camps-surveillance-spies-china-control/

Is that bad? It’s probably very bad but it’s on the other end of the world, for now. But probably not for very long.

It’s been ages since I’ve posted, and that’s for a variety of reasons. One, I had nothing to say.

This, my friends, is definitely worth your time: Angela’s Ashes, by Frank McCourt is a new (~25 yrs ago) book that absolutely blows your mind with its magnificence.

The genius of it is in how it absolutely brings you in and makes you care so very much. While you’re reading it (I listened to it on audio: Mr. McCourt read it aloud) you are deep inside this profoundly difficult, soul-challenging world of his childhood. And as soon as you park the car and leave for work you’re stuck inside yours; but at the end of your workday you get to climb back in your car and while your hands and feet are fighting your way through traffic, your mind and soul are back with young Frankie McCourt, starving, wet, with chronic bacterial conjunctivitis and an unbreakable resiliency. And the book engenders the queerest phenomenon: you want to be there.

And that’s saying a lot, because the 1930’s & 40’s Limerick of Frank McCourt’s childhood was brutally poor, rain-soaked, cold, diseased, and hard. To make matters worse Frankie’s Dad had that peculiar affliction in which he could love his family dearly and at the same time desert them completely for the drinking. How did they come out okay? Well first of all, plenty of them died: Of starvation, disease, hard times. But the survivors, what was their magic? One of Frank’s teachers summarized it by explaining to his students that they may be shoeless and poor on the outside but in their minds, it’s a palace. Their families, and their neighbors, and their storekeepers who gave them food on credit, and their schoolmasters who refused to quit despite the poverty, and their culture together somehow pulled them through. And their inner resilience.

Their humanity. This book is an exploration of it. Despite the most difficult circumstances one could suffer they didn’t collapse, they didn’t embitter, they took care of one another. That’s the most amazing part.

His father, “like the holy trinity,” had three parts: his father in the morning was caring and doting and story-telling and intimate, and in the afternoon a husband and family man a great father, and then Friday nights with the paycheck he became the guy who went out drinking, missing work next /getting fired / family back on the dole or begging. How could he abandon the family to destitution and starvation…? a sort of “Mr. Hyde” kind of regular transformation.

A priest, FINALLY, as most of them were worthless, came through in the end (actually the second-to-last priest in the book was the one who came through; the last wasn’t bad, he was only looking after Frank’s eternal soul, but was not as good as the second to last, anyway), redeeming at least in part the enormous investment all the families of Limerick and of Ireland had made into the church by granting Frank forgiveness. He did it with the authority that only someone of his stature can do. It was forgiveness for the sorrows he’d suffered, for his human condition.

Frank’s resiliency seemed inborn and prodigious. You almost envy his endless sorrows because you definitely respect his ability to rise above them. But it’s the farthest thing in the world from a self-congratulatory book. Survival constitutes the climax.

Personally, half my own family relates back to Limerick (of just 30 yrs prior to McCourt’s; and the other half to County Cork next door); the promise of “America” rings through and helps me understand what my forefathers must have been suffering in order to make them leave when they did. And I suspect they had circumstances about as desperate. We’re lucky to be in America.

The damn book makes me feel incredibly rich even though by contemporary American standards we’re not. But compared to 1930s Limerick, Ireland, we’re magnates.

Incredible book. Five stars. I hope everyone reads it. Or even better listens to it on audio, because then you get Frank McCourt’s voice as well.

Okay so we’ve been here several weeks now and it’s time I set about trying to start describing things. When we first arrived I got a pit in my stomach like, “oh crap,” but you have to look around and remind yourself that it’s going to be all right. We landed on that airstrip and loaded our gear into a truck, and climbed on some dusty busses and trucked over to our barracks.  It was maybe midnight.  

I was ready for another tour living out of tents, but lo! When we pulled up, it was to dormitories!  Brick-walled, college-type dormitories!  Last time it was tents and a dozen of us per; this time it’s lovely rooms with just two roommates per room.  That is living in style! Rather than having to use a portapotty for 7 months, we get actual bathrooms (two per wing). Same with the showers.  I thought, this is going to be a different tour entirely.  

The following morning we got up early to do our “intake,” do orientation, meet the people were replacing, learn some of the “must-know’s,” and explore the base a little bit. The rotation of people we were relieving were great; super friendly, excited to see us (of course!), excited to get the heck out.

My first impression was that this base is so big and evolved over these past 13 years, it was like a boom town of the Wild West.  The airstrip is its dominant feature, but that building we went into initially (last picture, last entry) was the Taliban’s last stand here in 2001 before it got defeated by the US Marines plus one big USAF bomb through its roof. 

Nothing like the proper application of explosive ordinance to solve a dispute.  Anyhow, the base is as I said very large, and like the other bases I’ve been at out here before, covered entirely in gravel. But bigger gravel stones than normal. The gravel is to keep the dust down because this whole province of Kandahar is a desert (same desert, I think, as Helmand’s).  There are huge concrete barriers all over the place, in some areas like 14-foot tall curbs, in others they make these littler ones which you can sit in to get out of the sun, or the rain if it’s raining, or you’d just like a roof over your head for any immediate reason…

…There used to be a dozen a day in the past but those days are behind us and there haven’t been any of them since we’ve been here – yay! Fingers crossed.  We can walk most-wherever we’d like to go; some people have bikes just to get there a little faster.  I have found my dream-car. I absolutely don’t need one but it’s not about need, it’s about want, right?

Lastly, there have been some social events, and if it weren’t for things like that you’d go crazy. We can take the time to hang out after dinner, or watch the aircraft take off and land, or have a cigar night.  

 

The base has dozens of nationalities represented as it’s an entire coalition contributing here, and the other night the Australians had us over for chow in their outdoor area, and then the Belgian Air Force had a great party in theirs. Music, dancing, near-beers, all outdoor on the gravel bordered by the blast walls… it was like we were here, but we weren’t here at all.  

Good times.  Miss you! Thanks for caring and Happy St. Patty’s Day!