Fear of the Dark

“I have two sons in America, and all they care about in Chinese culture is Jackie Chan and Jet Li. Those films present probably the worst, most raucous part of Chinese culture. I want to straighten that out. So my parental affection comes into the project.”

―Ang Lee, two-times Best Director Oscar winner

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“Sports is to war as pornography is to sex.”

― Jonathan Haidt, American social psychologist, Professor of Ethical Leadership

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Dear Kate,

Two quotes today, both making some serious accusation, angry protest.

I am not angry enough and no longer protest about the right things, recently I reflected on the state of my growing old.

"Parental affection," Lee said, passionate about a vision of human flourishing, for oneself and the generations to come, being a father, a forerunner to persist and resist, in angry protest against a world hellbent on desecrating everything, undoing God's creative acts anyway we can.

If a young person is to ask me today whether s/he should have kids, my answer would be Why?  What kind of moral fiber are you so illusioned to possess to think you can keep a family together in a cult that practices child-sacrifice?  Fancy a vision of yourself burning at stake for going against the culture?  I think not.  Cult leader you will be, leading the way to bow down to false idols.  The world will eat your children alive and you will watch it for sports, cheering from the bench.

It's been 20 years since I first watched Ang Lee's "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon," didn't get it back then.  I heard he set out to make the "best ever" wuxia movie, and, even as a cinephile back then, I wasn't quite sure what he meant by that, what he was aspiring to accomplish.  Certainly I have seen better fight scenes.  The plot I've visited many times before, thumbing through big thick dime-a-dozen wuxia novels from old smelly school libraries of my youth.  Nothing special, I pronounced back then.

Boy, was I ever wrong...and, man, have I ever grown.  It took me 20 years to see--whether it is the "best ever" wuxia no one can tell--that it is one of the most full-blooded realizations of a human consciousness (a Chinese one, in this case) that is meant for a lower register, as sports is to war and pornography to sex, the prosaic, pedestrian elevated to the poetic, poignant and finally plunges (do you remember the ending?) into a depth where angels fear to tread.

"Visionary," that's what we call people who are successful in the cult of our day, tech giants, business moguls, the most powerful owners of the most useable stuffs.  Have you ever examined the "vision" of these "visionaries," seen how they see the world?  Here's a vision from probably the most prominent "visionary" of our time:

"When I was a little kid, I was really scared of the dark. But then I came to understand, dark just means the absence of photons in the visible wavelength--400 to 700 nanometers. Then I thought, well, it's really silly to be afraid of a lack of photons. Then I wasn't afraid of the dark anymore after that."  But the same visionary also confessed, "I don't seem to remember the good dreams. The ones I remember are the nightmares."  I am sure all his nightmares unveiled themselves in the mise-en-scène of broad daylight.

A very little boy trying to talk himself out of death after his first kindergarten science class, reducing his human experience and everything else to keep the demons at bay.  What does he see in his nightmares?  How do people like him shape the world, humanity's future, to subdue their visions of demons?  What are cult leaders going to do when they are running out of photons?

That we see them as visionaries is a horrific vision to behold.

Yours, Alex