The world unknowable [ op-ed Cape Cod Times 26 nov 2013 ]

The really big story getting so much attention on this 50th anniversary of the assassination of JFK is not the assassination itself but the fact that there is no story. At least not one story. It’s one of the great and tragic events of our history, and those of a certain age all remember it so clearly. But there’s no “it” to it. Beyond the sheer fact of the death of the president–that wound to the soul of the nation– we don’t know what happened.

There are so many interesting stories to choose from: LBJ did it. The CIA did it. The mafia did it. All of the above did it. By comparison the Warren Commission version does seem a drab little thing.

 

The one thing we do know about the events of 50 years ago is that we—a strong majority of us in polls over the years– don’t trust the official version. In fact, we don’t trust the official version of that other watershed event, 911. These definitive tragedies in our history and we don’t agree on what they define.

 

In the computer era, in which surely we know more about everything than ever before, we seem, paradoxically to be losing our grip on reality. The story told in such widely seen and acclaimed movies and TV series as “The Ides of March,” “Homeland” and “House of Cards” is that we don’t, we can’t, know what’s really going on.

 

You may think you know who and what you’re voting for in presidential elections, but in fact you haven’t a clue. As for any sense that we the people are in charge, forget about it.

 

And how about the idea that a bi-polar young CIA agent has more power than the president? Really? How would I know? But given the series’ popularity and critical acclaim, we seem ready to believe that.

 

Such stories purport to explain about what’s really going on, but the implication is that the world is largely unknowable by the likes of you and me.

 

In our Cape Cod towns, where you have the right to vote on most things in town meeting (and find out firsthand just who the fools are voting the other way) and are likely to know one or more of the selectmen you elected, we have the feeling we know most of what’s going on. But much beyond the bridges, not so much.

 

And we’re not supposed to know. It’s dangerous, against our interests, we’re told, to find out what’s going on, and those like Snowden and Manning who try to include us in the greater reality—at least to let you know that you haven’t known what’s going on– are traitors.

 

Not knowing most of what’s going on is not a new story, of course. In the old days (when news travelled by horseback or at the speed of a slow boat to China) there was no question of knowing what was going on beyond your backyard. Lacking the means of timely reportage we lacked even the ambition. We didn’t bother our little heads about it.

 

But it worked both ways: if you were remote from Europe, what happened there wasn’t about to change your life. Local reality felt less vulnerable to larger forces. You were isolated for worse but also for better.

 

It was compared to such times that we more recently learned to say, “isn’t it a small world.” It turns out that despite Google and wikipedia it still is a small world, at least the part we can know about. We live, most of us, in small circle of intimate reality we can trust. Family, neighborhood, towns, perhaps region (except for incursions of non-local franchises and chains) are a small clearing in the woods haunted by goblins and vampires. Think Tolkien’s innocent Shire in its ironic relationship to the rest of Middle-earth and the rumors of Mordor.

 

The difference between now and then is that now, like the Shire, we know that what we don’t know can definitely hurt us.

 

 

 

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