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By Root 1086 0

own executioners. They may be few in number but their voices ripple outward over time. The mediocrities who mask their feelings of worthlessness and emptiness behind the façade of power and illusion, who seek to make us serve their perverse ideologies, fear most those who speak in the language of love. They seek, as others have sought throughout human history, to silence these lonely voices, and yet these voices always rise in magnificent defiance. All ages, all cultures, and all religions produce those who challenge the oppressor and fight for the oppressed. Ours is no exception. The ability to stand as “an ironic point of light” that “flashes out wherever the just exchange their messages,” is the ability to sustain a life of meaning. It is to understand, as Cyrano said at the end of his life, “I know, you will leave me with nothing—neither the laurel nor the rose. Take it all then! There is one possession I take with me from this place. Tonight when I stand before God—and bow low to him, so that my forehead brushes his footstool, the firmament—I will stand again and proudly show Him that one pure possession—which I have never ceased to cherish or to share with all—”

Our culture of illusion is, at its core, a culture of death. It will die and leave little of value behind. It was Sparta that celebrated raw militarism, discipline, obedience, and power, but it was Athenian art and philosophy that echoed down the ages to enlighten new worlds, including our own. Hope exists. It will always exist. It will not come through structures or institutions, nor will it come through nation-states, but it will prevail, even if we as distinct individuals and civilizations vanish. The power of love is greater than the power of death. It cannot be controlled. It is about sacrifice for the other—something nearly every parent understands—rather than exploitation. It is about honoring the sacred. And power elites have for millennia tried and failed to crush the force of love. Blind and dumb, indifferent to the siren calls of celebrity, unable to bow before illusions, defying the lust for power, love constantly rises up to remind a wayward society of what is real and what is illusion. Love will endure, even if it appears darkness has swallowed us all, to triumph over the wreckage that remains.

Notes

CHAPTER 1: THE ILLUSION OF LITERACY

1 John Ralston Saul, Voltaire’s Bastards (New York: Vintage, 1992), 460.

2 The World Wrestling Entertainment phenomenon is immense, both internationally and within the United States. WWE is consistently in the top ten daily searches globally on Yahoo’s Buzz Index and other search engines. The official site of World Wrestling Entertainment, http://www.wwe.com, receives within the United States alone a monthly average of 7.7 million unique visitors and a daily average of 517,000 unique visitors, according to a six-month survey done by Omniture SiteCatalyst from October 2006 to March 2007. Within the United States it had a monthly average of 214.4 million page views, a daily average of 7 million page views, a monthly average of 16.2 million video streams, and an average of 524,000 video streams per day. The WWE audience, according to a study conducted in May 2006 by Forrester Consulting, is 86 percent male, with an average age of twenty-four. Thirty-six percent are ages twelve to seventeen, and 40 percent are ages eighteen to thirty-four. Forty-one percent are students. Sixty-two percent of the males eighteen to thirty-four are employed full time. According to http://www.quantcast.com, 81 percent access wwe.com daily or several times a week. Fifty-seven percent have no college education. Twenty-six percent have an annual income of $30,000 or less, and another 30 percent make between $30,000 and $60,000. Fifty-one percent have children aged six to seventeen. Sixty-four percent are Caucasian, 14 percent African American, and 16 percent Hispanic.

3 Neal Gabler, Life: The Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality (New York Vintage, 2000), 238.

4 Paul A. Cantor, “Pro Wrestling and the End of History,