The Darkness All Around Us

It is uncanny, surprising, and nauseating how unseen forces negatively can influence your life.  If one is religious and acknowledges some form of higher spiritual power such as God or Allah, the devil is this force.  Spirituality is required and necessary largely because Satan has been ascribed by medieval ecclesiasticism to be able to change forms.  In modern American cinematic scope this could be called "shape shifting" or "tuning."  Kiefer Sutherland, the son of actor Donald Sutherland, has played many effective  and influential roles in American films.  As I watch DVD movies in the evening for entertainment, because cable television has become mediocre, often an particular actor emerges as a thread.  It becomes gratifying to watch a series of an actor's films, because their personality becomes familiar and comforting like a friend.  Perhaps camaraderie once was part of the fabric of Hollywood film-making, but not anymore.  On a lucky day the strains of Hollywood film characters echo in my head, and their monologues enrich my own sheltered life.  There is no question "Nature versus Nurture" is the most operant process in my life living in my childhood home absent of both parents.  There are no disciplinary senior voices guiding me.  What is there is Nurture, and today that equates to homelessness, pollution, oppression, and violence.  In the film "Dark City" Kiefer Sutherland plays a doctor tasked with helping a population of energy beings wreak havoc on the world.  Could they be the devil?  To me it has become indisputable that evil is everywhere, and often it is invisible.  This invisibility has become potent force in the social and political message of the GOP.  They contend because you cannot see it it does not exist.  We cannot see sound, but we know it exists.  Almost it would be unimaginable to consider human life without sound, not just because music would be excluded, but because the sounds of nature would be absent and communication would be excruciatingly cumbersome.  Our lives would be a shell of themselves without sound, and yet modern society has forsaken sound as an enriching and artistic medium.  As the enraged protests of the 60's and 70's amplified through Leo Fender's new inventions are reduced to the quiet church like incantations of ear buds, so are our lives.  Sometimes it is necessary to yell, because the power that drives that sonic message also fuels other social and political processes.  Modern American society seeks to quell our dissent, herd us into a corral, and march us to the edge of the abyss.  Our American freedom is what allows us to survive.  Without it we will perish.