The Horrors of the Soviet GULAG prison-camps and the humanity that survived

A World Apart – Gustav Herling (1951)

            Horror can come in so many ways.  It could be the sudden arrival of an incomprehensible terror.  It could also be the slowly dawning realization that hope is a feeling best left dead.  In many ways, the horrors experienced by Mr. Gustav Herling while serving in a Soviet GULAG hard-labor prison run the full gamut.  For several years, the author, a Polish native who had left for the Soviet Union after Poland had been annexed by the Third Reich, experienced horrors both physical and mental, and in sharing his story he helps us understand the true evil that totalitarian government inflicts upon the entire population.

            Reading Mr. Herling’s account of his time as a prisoner brought back memories of my youth reading Animal Farm and 1984, and of wondering in indignant rage why people tolerated the obviously absurd and illogical pronouncements of the ruling parties.  As a young teen, those books filled me with a deep hate for mindless subservience and for blind allegiance to any political system, especially those of a totalitarian state.  Mr. Herling’s life in this forced-labor camp shared so much of the idiocy and stupidity that the animals on Animal Farm or the citizens in 1984 had to accept or else be destroyed by the state.

            Mr. Herling meets prisoners from all walks of life.  One is a former diva of Soviet theater who was sentenced to ten years hard labor.  Her stated crime was being a traitor to the Soviet State.  What was her actual crime?  She danced for too long with the Japanese ambassador at a gala event in Moscow.  That was it.  Several of the inmates were there merely because they were not Russian.  These were Poles who got stuck in Russia avoiding the Nazi takeover of Poland.  There were people whose jobs pre-revolution were in education and intelligentsia, and of course a totalitarian state cannot abide having anyone else be an authority on anything.  The state must the ultimate authority on anything!  How fucking horrible.  With the Soviet Union officially banning all organized religious activities, priests and nuns were also laced in these ruthless work-to-death camps.  All kinds, even those that believed themselves deeply committed to the Communist Party, found out they were worthless pieces of a machine in which they had no control.

            The life in the camp is terrible, with surreal and illogical precision running everything.  The prisoners were fed according to their crimes, and according to how much they worked daily.  Those that worked heavy labor were lucky to receive a few grams of bread and a thin barley “soup” at the end of the day.  Those that were unfit for heavy labor received solely a thin warm liquid with no meat and no vegetables.  If you were sill or injured you spent some time in an unheated “infirmary” where you received the bare minimum food portion, and minimal medical care.  If you were unable to get better enough to work, they would send you to the Mortuary, where the dying waited to die in relative peace.  Mr. Herling spent time in the Mortuary and describes the twisted sense of calm and rest combined with the foreknowledge of your impending death.  There is no comfort anywhere. The paranoia, the pain, the SMELL of countless rotting, sickly, and dying men and women, awash in their own feces, ever-seeping sores, malnutrition, night-blindness from lack of vitamins, and eventually the complete loss of their conscious ability to think all wash over the narrator, as he slides into this horror himself.  Throughout all this, Mr. Herling manages to share any and all wisdom he gained, most of it bleak, and brutally honest about what a man has to deal with when hope is gone yet life continues interminably.  It is a brutal story, and the fact that we know he managed to survive and publish this a few years later does nothing to diminish the trauma of his and all of the other prisoner’s experiences.

            Prison for actual criminals is bad enough.  When the state sets up prisons for those who do no crime other than political opposition?  Evil.  When the state punishes people pre-emptively, trying to weed out supposed traitors before they even have a chance to act?  Evil.  When the state’s own reasoning is so twisted and flawed and fucking pointless that they have to retroactively invent methods to protect their own lies?  Evil.  Under Stalin, Soviet/Russian history was turned into a pathetic joke, with whole secret government entities erasing people’s entire lives from the historical record, solely to appease the whims of the mustachioed madman controlling everything. Whole families disappeared.  Whole generations of educated people were sent to Siberia to die in labor camps.  This same shit happens in all totalitarian states, and is happening right now in Saudi Arabia (religious rule by an autocratic family of assholes), North Korea (totalitarian rule by a fat man-boy with a tiny pecker and total control of his starving population), etc.  It could happen anywhere.  It could happen in the USA.  The only thing that prevents dictators is the willingness of brave people to stand up to them, to the death.  Never expect a despot to “make sense.”

            During WWII the Germans, the Russians, and the Americans all had forced-relocation camps.  The Germans used theirs to attempt a mass genocide of European Jews, as well as anyone deemed undesirable by the Reich.  This included the homosexuals, religious leaders, Romany, mentally and physically handicapped people, and anyone else deemed as “the Other.”  Russian forced labor camps were barely any better.  Their goal was not to solely exterminate enemies.  It was to suck out as much forced labor as possible with the bare minimum of food and support, thereby killing the state’s enemies while also benefiting the state’s GDP.  In the USA, our forced-relocation camps consisted of thousands and thousands of Japanese-Americans, many of them full citizens of the nation, including children and the elderly.  They were treated as if just because they were of Japanese ancestry, they were a treasonous threat to the nation.  While they were not treated as inhumanely as those in German or Russian camps, the very existence of such places in the supposed “Land of the Free” should be enough to strike terror in the hearts of free-thinking humans anywhere.  Who knows how bad it could have gotten for the Japanese-American prisoners if the war had raged on, or if the Japanese had managed a full on attack of the USA mainland?  Totalitarianism is a slippery slope indeed.  We must be ever-vigilant against it, even if it is an unpopular stance to take.

(This book is available for download as a PDF here: https://archive.org/download/worldapart007324mbp/worldapart007324mbp.pdf )

(This book can also be purchased here:  A World Apart  )

Buckminster Fuller's ideas are more relevant than ever

Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth – R. Buckminster Fuller (1968)

            There are, in the history of humanity, certain people that come along whose minds have the ability to absorb and analyze information in a way that helps them create a vision of what our collective future could and should be, but which, due to the fearful and conservative nature of mankind, only end up accepted and affecting the world at large after some time has passed.  R. Buckminster Fuller was such a person.  His life was focused for the most part on the fields of engineering, cartography, architecture, geometry and philosophy.  The combination of these intellectual pursuits fermented in the man a deep and overwhelming need to correct the prevalent thinking of humanity, and gave him the means to explain to the rest of us just how amazing our world could be.

            Mr. Fuller was around 70 years old when this book was published.  That is a lot of life-experience and knowledge brought to bear on a very critical topic.  This topic, how best to utilize the amazing world we find ourselves in to improve the existence of every human, animal, and plant on the planet, would drive him to the last days of his life.  Ideas, once created, do not die.  They sometimes must wait for receptive minds.  Buckminster Fuller’s ideas found in this short book have the power to propel humanity onward to a far more noble path than just the aggregation of power and money, or the control and subjugation of each other and the world around us.

            One of the first things I felt in reading this book was the truly infectious joy and love for the inventiveness of humanity that Mr. Fuller had.  As he describes us, we humans are the masters of generalization.  We have the ability to understand and utilize wildly divergent information and experience to create whole new worlds, thoughts, capabilities, and successes.  It is only through our ability to be generalists that we have survived and grown and developed our worldwide complexity of experience. 

Fuller gives the single most “simple” yet profound description of human society’s development I have ever read.  He describes how in the early days of humanity, everyone understood and knew just the tiny bit of Earth (sometimes just a few square miles) that they experienced in their short lives.  Through the development of sea travel and other means, certain humans began to understand that the world was much larger and much more varied than what they originally accepted.  The humans that could aggregate the most information, that understood the significance of wide ranging knowledge, became the leaders of the world.  Eventually, these “Great Pirates” as Buckminster Fuller calls them, controlled the entire world, utilizing resources in one area to make riches in another and to use those riches to control the populations of yet other areas of our Earth.  They placed kings and barons as titular heads of state, when in fact these rulers only did the bidding of the Great Pirates.  Because information was never readily available, and because the Great Pirates used their kings and leaders to forment nationalism and jingoism and fear of the unknown, they were able to control ever greater parts of the Earth, all the while leaving regular people to believe that their kings were valid rulers, that their laws were divinely inspired, and that they would do well to stay in their place, where they “belonged,” and never upset the status quo. 

These Great Pirates made sure to retain control by forcing the rest of the world into ever more specialized and niche positions.  The men who built their ships did not know what the men who sailed the ships knew, and they in turn did not know what the captains who controlled the ships knew, and they in turn did not know what the business men who financed these expeditions knew.  This was the first trick the Great Pirates understood to maintain their control, and it is still used to this day. 

Fuller describes how the fields of science had become ever-more specialized, until scientists began to realize the inter-connectivity of what they were doing.  Once you get small enough, all botany is biology, all biology is chemistry, and all chemistry is physics.  We are all atoms.  We are all energy.  Everything is interacting with everything else.  Nothing exists in vacuum, not even vacuums.  Einstein put the final nail in the coffin of scientific specialization with his simple equation describing the interchangeable relationship of matter to energy.  Because of this, Fuller states, the Old Great Pirates were fought and broken in the first World War.  After that, governments, the puppets that the Great Pirates had created to run their desires, assumed that they were in charge, and proceeded to try and gather up the power left behind by the demise of the Great Pirates.  This led directly to the second World War.  Specialization is the bane of human existence.  Those who focus on one thing, are blind to the other things that need attention.

Fuller describes how all the specialization ideas coalesced to fool mankind into thinking that not only are resources and wealth limited, but that they were inexorably running out.  This has helped create a mindset among human cultures that “we” must get what is coming to us, at the expense of “them,” that there is no way to share what there is to go around.  This is bullshit.  As an example, Fuller states how politicians and the powerful always claim that universal health care is too expensive, that there is too much cost involved in fixing the environment, that funding a truly capable universal education system is just too damned expensive.  However, a month later, when some tragic or terrible “threat” to a vague concept such as our “safety” or “freedom” arises, those same politicians will somehow find plenty of money to throw at the military, usually in amounts far more vast than what is needed to address the true problems.  It is horrible.

Fuller describes our current state.  He shows the lie that there is not enough to go around.  He understood that only by thinking BIG, but attempting to achieve a vast generalized knowledge, can humans keep from self-destructing.  We are all passengers upon Spaceship Earth.  We are al travelling through the cosmos, fed by the energy of our wonderful star, Sol.  In 1810, when the GDP of the USA was estimated to be 4 billion dollars, the idea that government should pay to fund inter-state roadways, universal schooling, or massive infrastructure changes was ludicrous.  However, since then, humans invented the means to converse through electricity, to fly at supersonic speeds, to travel through space, to see into the farthest reaches of our Universe, and a million other amazing things unthinkable back in 1810.  This shows us that what we deem unthinkable or undoable today is but an illusion.  This illusion must be destroyed if humanity is to continue on this wonderful planet. There is plenty of everything to go around.  It is all or nothing for humanity.  Either we thrive together, or we all die.  There is no need for 1 billion people to live in poverty, for 500 million to be nearly starving every day.  There may not be any more Great Pirates controlling the whole world, but the wanna-be Little Pirates continue to exert their undue influence. 

It is truly the sign of a great mind to be able to include all this and so much more in a book of barely 140 pages.  R. Buckminster Fuller is someone whose ideas need to be shared and spread to the world.  This small volume needs to be required reading for those that are entering a University-level education, to show them the need for generalized knowledge, and for responsible use of that knowledge.  Mind blowing stuff.  Like Buckminster Fuller, we must all be enthusiastic about mankind's "extraordinary and timely ingenuities."  They will save us all.

(This book can be downloaded in PDF format here :
designsciencelab.com/resources/OperatingManual_BF.pdf )

(This book can be purchased here:  AMAZON  )

Let us hope that the Avengers: Civil War film is better than its source material!

The Avengers: Civil War – Mark Millar, Steve McNiven (2007)

            As a life-long reader, I try to avoid watching films adapted from novels or books I have already read, for I am always left disappointed.  Sometimes it is a minor disappointment, such as my small quibbles with the film adaptation of Alan Moore’s Watchmen masterpiece, and other times it is a full-blown disaster where I leave the theater wondering how someone could get the plot of a novel so wrong in adapting it to a movie.  There are a few films that I felt have done true justice to their source material.  One of them is the film version of Vonnegut’s Mother Night, which is as brutal and engrossing as the novel, and Terry Gilliam’s version of Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, which captured perfectly the sick highs and debauched lows of the book.

            I have never differentiated between high literature and low literature.  Words and stories are all on equal ground to me.  A wonderful comic book can move me and inspire me as much as the most lauded literary classic.  Comic books actually helped introduce me to a wide world of literature that I otherwise would have never explored, from Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories, to Philip K. Dick, to classics such as Robinson Crusoe and Moby Dick, which I first read in their Classics Illustrated form.  Knowing that the upcoming film Captain America Civil War was an adaptation of the Marvel Civil War story-line I read the comic in advance. I would rather experience the original and then compare it to the film than to do that in reverse with the film coloring my view of the comic.

            Having done that, I soon realized that perhaps my thinking was off.  The Avengers: Civil War story-line does not only take place over the course of the 7 titular issues, but is spread out over nearly 80 different Marvel comic titles!  It is an unholy mess that does not live up to expectations, and actually drove me to anger and resentment at having to read superfluous material (Marvel Girl, Young Avengers, etc.) just to gleam that one little bit of information actually relevant to the Civil War story-line.  Because this was essentially a cash grab by Marvel Comics, they planned it so that if one does not read all the peripheral titles the main story-line is damn near incomprehensible.  What a blatant greed-head move.  It does not help that the actual story-line is weak and could have been handled in 3 or 4 issues.  This story was instead spread out over ten months of tedious tie-ins.  (To see the full list of issues included in the Civil War story-line, click here: http://projectfandom.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Civil-War-Checklist.png )

            Brutal!  I have not even gone into the actual story-line.  It is so weak.  Here goes.  A group of superfluous superheroes films themselves fighting crime for a TV reality show.  In the course of this, the enemy they seek blows himself up, along with 800-900 people in a small town subdivision.  Several hundred of them are children.  This causes uproar nationally and the US government works with Iron Man Tony Stark to create a super-powered beings registration act.  Essentially, the government wants all super beings to register with them and only use their powers and skills at the request of the Federal Government.  Captain America, who has fought for Life, Liberty, and the American Way since World War II, finds this to be fascistic and gathers up superheroes to fight against those who take Iron Man’s side.  Lots and lots of extraneous discussions and random battles take place as all the Marvel heroes take sides in this conflict.  In the end Captain America gives up, not wanting to fight his fellow heroes anymore (after beating the crap out of Iron Man), and is assassinated as he turns himself in.  IT IS FUCKING POINTLESS.  I do not think they kill off Cap in the film. 

            I wrote that story in less than a paragraph, and Marvel stretched it out to over 85 separate issues!  I hope that the movie does a massive edit and removes all this fluff baggage.  I hear it is very well done, and very exciting, so I look forward to seeing it.  However, I cannot recommend this comic series.  If you only read the seven “official” Civil War titles, you will make very little sense of it as a whole.  Trying to dig through 80+ extra titles to find that little bit of info that helps the Civil War story-line continue?  I can’t believe I did it, and I hope you do not.

When the Fake is treated as the Real, we lose the Real forever.

Simulacra & Simulation – Jean Baudrillard (1981)

            This book by the French intellectual Jean Baudrillard was on my radar for a few years, as it was regularly referenced by other authors and in books I have been reading.  It was always described as the source for postmodern thought and I can see why.  This book, basically a collection of essays, sets out to describe how the last decades of our society are unprecedented in our history, for the main cultural and societal issues are no longer about how to deal with reality, or the real issues of our world, but instead have become strictly about how to deal with what Baudrillard names as Simulacra and Simulation.

            Simulacra are defined by Baudrillard as a representation of a real thing, but which contains no actual reality.  An example of this is when a film is made detailing an actual historical event. By virtue of its own artificiality it is most definitely not a true representation of the history presented.  It goes even further in that, once a movie about war is made and seen, any subsequent movies about war will not use real war as their base, but the fictional simulacra of war created in our collective minds.  Not too long ago, most literate people read two or three newspapers a day, absorbing the raw data of everyday life, and creating their worldview on that information.  For the past 50 years or so however, the focus of people’s inquiries into the world around them is drawn from fictional media, and the supposedly non-fictional media (newspapers, magazines, TV news, etc.) are in fact drawn directly from the same fictions that everyone takes as fact.  Basically, people know that fake is not real, but when you ingest mainly fakery, you will lose the ability to judge the real, or even lose the knowledge that the “real” is actually there.  That makes for an easily controlled populace whose fear is that their simulacra existence will be shattered by the intruding real world around them, and who readily attack and blame whatever they are told is causing their worldview to change. 

            This applies to all aspects of our world today.  Baudrillard describes how wars are no longer fought to gain an objective, but instead to create a simulacrum that fools the masses into accepting it as reality.  For example, he describes the Vietnam War as a fake war whose true purpose was to draw China into an agreement to work with the powerful nations of the west.  That is why, after 15 years of supposedly intractable warfare, and once the Chinese support of the North Vietnamese forces was exposed fully, the United States was able and willing to end the war in a lightning quick manner.  Forces were evacuated, the embassy left behind, and the people of Vietnam were left to fend for themselves once again.  China became a more open relation (Nixon went to China just before the Vietnam War ended), and the true goals of the war were achieved. 

In essence, history is now our central Myth, to be shaped and recreated to suit whatever needs the powerful may have.  History used to be our source for the core of humanity, but when history is learned solely through simulacra and simulations, every possible nuance is lost in favor of the one thread that those who force these myths upon us wish us to focus on.

            Baudrillard gives a great example toward the beginning of this book.  He details how the very study of remote tribal cultures by anthropologists essentially destroys that culture the moment they meet.  Having the scientists and film crews and equipment around is a world-changing event for these tribes, ruining what the very anthropologists are there to study.  In the late 1970’s a resolution was passed by the United Nations to stop studying a very remote , isolated, and recently “discovered” tribe in the Philippines, for fear that their culture would be ruined and that the world at large would “lose” this culture.  Basically, after having destroyed countless hundreds of indigenous tribes and groups, they decided to specifically choose one tribe to “save.”  This creates the illusion that the Philippine tribe will be safe and sound and left alone.  It creates the lie that states that a society can be interrupted and then left to go on with its business as if nothing had happened.  It also betrays itself, for how can we check to see if the tribe is indeed doing well if we do not intervene yet again to verify this data?

            I can see why this book is so important to people who care about the internal state of our collective culture.  It shows the damage that has been forced upon our human society by those who wish to control it and benefit from it.  It speaks to the harsh rigor that must be maintained when trying to actively understand reality and what the truth of any situation or event may be.  It places great value on the ability to understand when we are being fed a simulacrum, and when that simulacrum is doing us a disservice.  In a world where everyone is fed fake versions of every truth, there can be no feeling of a collective humanity, no trust that the lessons of the past apply to today.  This is what is referred to as the postmodern.  The blame for mistakes and errors is no longer shifted to a leader, or a god, but instead is aimed right back at ourselves.  If our leaders commit horrors, it is our fault for letting them, for giving them “permission” to do so, even though we actually have no say in what they choose to do.  If industry ruins the natural world, it is not their fault, nor their leaders, but our collective fault for allowing it to happen, for wanting the products created by industry, even though we are deluded into wanting those products, and forced to live lives of consumption to prop up these industries.  These are the lies fed to us by those that control us. How does one stop a simulation?  How does one step away and live in the real when everything around you is dependent on the fake?  How do we decide what truly matters?

(To download of read this book in .pdf format, click here: 

http://www.bconradwilliams.com/index.php/download_file/view/299/421/ )

(This book can be purchased here:  SIMULACRA & SIMULATION  )