My loony forum, "Macbeth" and power...

I can hear you guys already...

"How is she going to manage to tie all THIS together ??"

It's a good question, but I AM going to tie all this together.

Yesterday my loony forum blew up. Somebody pressed a button and it went "pffft". (By the way, dinky, can YOU press a button and the BLOG goes "pffft" ? That's not very.. DEMOCRATIC if you can, right ?)

So, while I suggested that we refound this forum on a healthier base than its original foundation, it just got scrapped, and has already been magically resurrected, in a NEWER and BETTER form (dixit the NEW founders, of course...)

The problem is : WE, as a group constructed my loony forum over a period of two years. Together. With our ups, and our downs. Inching our way along the precipice of catastrophes, and crises, we managed to keep it going AS AN INSTITUTION for over two years.

What has been recreated is NOT the forum that we constructed.

I'll get back to this.

Sidestep to "Macbeth".

"Macbeth" is one of those plays that makes the current financial situation look like cat's piss in comparison. Really, our modern "democratic", hopelessly bourgeois world is just not big enough, and is way too tame for the life and death issues that are present in "Macbeth". (It's not that those issues have really gone away ; it's just that... we don't see them, busy as we all are in our cost/benefit analyses or our accountant sheets in our little bourgeois world.

"Macbeth" presents a world vision that could almost make you succumb to despair.

The plays opens as Macbeth and Banquo, two generals steeped to their eyes in blood and gore, the sounds of the battleground in the distance meet up with some strange figures on their way home. The asexual crones salute Macbeth with his current title, a future title, finishing in a flourishing "hail, Macbeth that shall be King".

Macbeth and his companion are wary of such pronouncements, especially as neither knows just WHO is making them, and for what reason.

But when Macbeth learns from the mouth of the old King that he has been given the title and the property of the man he has vanquished in battle during this CIVIL war, his reason wavers.

Lots of stuff has been written about Macbeth's ambition, etc etc.

A lot of analysis has really not known what to do with the fact that... the old king, Duncan sticks Macbeth into a... TRAITOR'S place, and whoops, Macbeth becomes a.. TRAITOR ?

HOW COULD THAT HAPPEN ?? (Incidentally, if you think that Macbeth is a monster WHEN he kills the old king while the latter is sleeping, when he orders the murder of Banquo, and puts Macduff's little family to the sword, wife AND child, you are NOT READING WELL, because Macbeth is NOT a monster in this play. He does monstrous things, but at no time do we lose empathy with him...)

You can look for tons of psychological explanations that make much of the individual's responsibility and free will in ALL situations in life but...

A more attentive look at the way things work will show you that...

Sometimes we get sucked into things that we have no control over.

Macbeth gets sucked into this situation.

Because what the play is really about is how we don't speak our language.

IT SPEAKS US.

And our language itself is one big.. LIE (if you like the word lie. Shall I say, that our language is deceptive.)

Do people willfully and consciously LIE (or manipulate) MORE than our language itself lies ?

Think about it.

The hags tell Macbeth that he will remain king until Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane.

And he exults, because he BELIEVES that this will never happen.

Until... the soldiers in Macduff's army break off the branch of a tree and hold it in front of them as they approach his castle fortress to do battle.

A... lie ? Were the hags LYING ? Na.

Macbeth is undone by LANGUAGE.

And when the play finishes the whole process is revving up to repeat itself, and this is evident.

How do we get out of these ruts ? Sometimes you just want to lie down and despair.

Back to my loony forum and power.

The WORD that sent Birnam Wood to Dunsinane was "perversion".

And after that, the wind, the full moon, the natural elements just got the better of us all.

Nobody standing on the battlefield.

The new forum has been created by new founders who say...

No sense in talking about all of this any more.

We have to go forward as if it hadn't happened.

Sound familiar ?

But then... the new founders don't know what power can do to destroy democracy.

Their power.

Not yet...