Almost always when reading the news - if one isn't simply skimming a headline or quickly digesting a sound bite - the longer one sits and analyzes world affairs, the more one sees a particularly alarming pattern worth getting into.
I suppose there are no shortage of alarming patterns to pick up on these days, so by golly, which one am I referring to?
Here I mean to highlight that pattern in which some blatant wrong or dysfunction flashes upon the surface of the collective consciousness, and is momentarily held in view. But as it is held in view, and as one analytically penetrates the circumstances and context of the wrong, one finds many other connected wrongs, so many in fact that the original wrong begins to appear inevitable and irreversible as a result.
One immediate example I can think of is the ongoing set of scandals surrounding the current administration in the US. Take just one: the paying off of porn stars with hush money. These revelations on their own are already troubling in terms of gendered power differentials, relationships between sex and power, a host of social and political attitudes, legal issues surrounding campaign finance, and the like, but it does seem a stretch to make the claim that they should be seen as existential threats to an advanced civilization.
But once one starts tracing all of the threads connected to this state of affairs, the emerging patterns become more ominous. Where is the hush money coming from, when and how is it being utilized, and what are the legal implications of this? What of the immunity granted to the National Enquirer CEO, and the endless threads of influence and hush money sloshing around in that sphere, the buying of social preservation and the selling of social ruin? And who can afford such luxuries and why?
Why are prosecutors focusing so intently on these limited issues, and why are the prosecutors given so much credence and deference as a formative social force, and as an element of collective governance? Why is the media so focused on such things to the detriment of others, and how did the media become so concentrated in the first place? Well, I could go on. The one implies the all.
This level of functionality must also be referenced against what must happen: what is it that our social systems have to accomplish to perpetuate themselves, and is this happening? The familiar interconnected problems of climate change, environmental destruction, social inequality and disintegration, global conflict, and etc. appear to progress further and relatively unopposed - things outside the scope of this post - and so is this society functioning at the level required to deal with these issues? My short answer is no.
As cliche as it has become to draw the comparison, various forms of rot are the most readily comparable phenomena that I can think of. The weakness or dysfunction of wood that is structurally intended to support, or the visual tell of rusted or corroded metal are the immediately recognizable surface flaws, which upon further investigation - and to the dismay of the investigator - peel away to reveal whole landscapes of multi-level decay.
In the same way, the smell of rotting flesh or the appearance of a few maggots serve to draw one in, revealing some horrific panorama of catastrophic decay. Left alone, living processes antagonistic to the living systems they feed off of necessarily follow a path of development of their own, drawing vitality from the openings in potentiality set off by the disintegration that they further.
This is part of what makes the appearance of rot so frightful. Instinctively, it is not experienced as some sort of error or flaw to be repaired with one's existing faculties, but an invading force with a will of its own, a will set counter to everything implied by what's threatened. Rot in wood and metal threaten the entire integrity of the structure, and they imply the ongoing growth of things destructive to not only that structure, but destructive to the things making use of those structures.
Wood rot often accompanies moisture and the growth of mold, which can be harmful to living things. Metal rot implies rust, which can be harmful to living things as well. Rot in organic matter is fairly self-explanatory, and things like infectious disease are even worse: the rot jumps organic vessels, and at greater scales, affects continuous social structures and arrangements.
When one peers into the latest public scandal, which has suddenly flashed into public consciousness like a burning flake of magnesium, one sees a social order which is already corrupt and corrupting, in which individuals are regularly buying and trading the social powers to self-servingly smash the very laws and taboos that they've been benefiting from.
That flashing, that instant recognition and resonance, is the response of a public already intimately acquainted with those processes for some time, and who believe, that upon exercising the most blatant and visible manifestations of the process, can banish and purge some sort of corporeal evil and be done with it.
Which isn't always an inappropriate measure to take. Medical professionals can isolate all sorts of rotting and degenerating materials, treat the causes at their sources, and cut away the damaged tissue to save the rest of the body. But what happens when the hand and the scalpel themselves are rotting as well?
If horror at its base addresses the fear of total disintegration and/or destruction, then this is closer to the true spirit of that stuff that makes up horror. This isn't just broken bones, hurt feelings, temporarily dysfunctional infrastructure, or in general, temporary trauma that heals. This is something that signals the end of something else.
But what these revelations do indeed lead to, when they don't lead to complete devastation at least, is an enlarged consciousness of the whole, and an amplified sensitization to possibility and alternative.
When one thing goes wrong, it takes less energy to stick with what works and make the necessary piecemeal adjustments to keep things running, which is all too appropriate in many situations. But when everything goes wrong?
