Illusion, Fantasy, Religion, And The Allure Of The Impossible–Why We Fall For Progressive Idealism

Branford Pease had always considered himself a rational, objective, and thoroughly dispassionate man.  He had grown up with a a father who preached Leibniz, a mother who was a confirmed Cartesian, and an uncle who, despite a long tutelage with the Jesuits, was a freethinker in the style of Thoreau.  With this background and genetic heritage, it would seem impossible for the young Branford to have veered off the epistemological rails, but veer he did, and by the time he was thirty, he had fallen into the deep crevasse of progressive idealism. 

There was not a reformist cause that he did not embrace.  He passionately fought for the rights of women and minorities; stood at the barricades to denounce Trumpism, the One Percent, Monsanto, and corporate cronyism.  He was convinced that a climate Armageddon would happen in our lifetime, that nuclear war was only a second away on the Doomsday Clock; that rape, sexual aggression, and abuse were endemic; and that the gender spectrum, right and just in its re-ordering of human sexuality, was still far from realization.

When challenged by less idealistic colleagues, Branford reiterated a familiar litany.  Science was settled in matters of climatology and sexual disposition.  Social science was as settled in matters of wealth and its concentration; power and its abuse; and political science clear and irrefutable concerning the abrogation of the rights of man, infectious nationalism, and ignorance of popular will.  When pressed, he resorted to tautology.  Sexism was an evil because so much of it existed.  Climate change was an inescapable reality because the oceans and air were warming.  Circuitous logic was his only logic; subjectivity when associated with a higher good was a necessary armament; and petitio principii was neither fallacious nor illogical.

It all made good sense to Bradford who, because of his Kantian upbringing, had become the poster boy for the progressive movement in his suburban community of Washington DC, but close-in enough to have been influenced by the nation’s most influential political leaders.  Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi, and Charles Schumer were as good as their neighbors; and even if they lived inside the Beltway in the most prestigious neighborhoods of Washington; and even if their multi-million dollar homes beggared the simple split-levels of Rockville and Gaithersburg where Bradford and his colleagues lived, the irony was either lost or dismissed.  The progressive movement welcomed all comers, wealthy, nouveau riche, modest, and poor.

The progressive perimeter was tightly drawn.  No sappers had ever breached the wire, and the defense of the ramparts was inviolable. 

Heresies were common in the early centuries of the Christian era.  Arianism denied the true divinity of Jesus Christ taking various specific forms, but all agreed that Jesus Christ was created by the Father, that he had a beginning in time.  Docetism argued that Jesus' physical body was an illusion, as was his crucifixion; that is, Jesus only seemed to have a physical body and to physically die, but in reality he was incorporeal, a pure spirit, and hence could not physically die.  Nestorianism stated that Jesus Christ was a natural union between the Flesh and the Word, thus not identical, to the divine Son of God; and Tritheism postulated that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three independent and distinct divine beings as opposed to three persons of one being and one essence. 

All of these were discredited and disavowed at the Council of Nicaea when the Emperor Constantine put an end to the internecine and inter-faith squabbling that was preventing the consolidation of his empire.  Of course it took decades if not centuries for these heresies to disappear, and some, like Gnosticism, remain today.

Modern-day progressivism is not unlike the Early Church, battling as it did against religious heresy.  It was not enough for traditional theologians of the time to affirm their conception of Christ, his divinity, and the nature of the Trinity; but to fight heresy and to defeat it.  in fact, the first two centuries of the new church were spent in doctrinal fights.  The same holds true for secular progressivism.  It is not enough to state a doctrine, core principles, a liturgy, and a prayer book.  It can only survive and prosper if it is protected from those who wish to discredit and destroy it and therefore have a clear avenue of righteousness.

Little did it matter to the prophets and apostles of the new, secular religion if received wisdom was based on assumption and presumed belief.  What was Christianity after all but hearsay and supposed parables of a holy man written down nearly a century after he was supposed to have said them?  What did accuracy, fact, and confirmation mean when the message of redemption and salvation were existential?  There are only one or two contemporary, oblique references to the historical Christ – a man who might or might not have actually lived in Palestine in Roman times – but such historical grounding has never been necessary when the Word – His word – was so transformational.   Progressives need not worry about veracity since their message is abundantly clear and evident. Men, descended from male apes, would always be as brutal, aggressive, and domineering as their animal ancestors.  It was all coded in their DNA.  The same human nature – acquisitive and territorial – would rule modern man just as it did his Paleolithic forbears.  Just as tribal warfare was de rigeur 50,000 years ago, it remains the go-to option for the aggrieved and put-upon as well as the well-to-do expansionists.

So progressives have always thought themselves to be on solid intellectual grounds.  There could be no denying obvious truths recorded by history and no criticizing their logical applications to current events.  it does not take a logician like Descartes to see that the world needs repair, reform, and rehabilitation.

One would have thought, however, that some ray of reason would have peeked through the Bradford’s curtains, even as tightly drawn as they were.  Some logical exegesis or a simple If…Then sequence.  No science has ever been settled.  Ask Ptolemy or the blood-letters of the Middle Ages.  No political system, Churchill notwithstanding, has ever prevailed for long.  Even democracy – "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time” will have its day.  Even now nationalism and imperialism are waiting impatiently in the wings.

Not so.  Bradford remained committed, hellaciously activist, and optimistic to the core.  As a young man he spent months worrying the nature of God, Christ, and the universe, and spent endless hours with the Catholic chaplain at Yale hoping for resolution.  Just like Tolstoy who wrote of his exasperating and fruitless decades-long search for meaning in A Confession, Bradford finally gave up and concluded like the Russian, “If billions of people believe and billions more have believed, why shouldn’t I?”.  Progressive beliefs and ideals were unquestionable, absolute, and true.  They always had been and always would be.  End of story.

Bradford’s father, despite his long career in academia – and East Coast academia to boot – was a lifelong conservative, a climate skeptic, a firm believer in Hamiltonian governance by the elite, a committed free enterprise advocate, and dismissive of ‘snowflakes’, affirmative action bolstering, helpless women, and corrosive liberalism.  He challenged his son time and time again but to no avail.  Facts, data, objective observation, logical analysis, and proven hypotheses were of no use and no interest to his son.  The boy simply took matters on faith.

Of course the son stood his ground and quoted ‘statistics’ on sea level temperature gradients, genetic ‘imperatives’ for a multi-gender human nature, the destructive nature of capitalistic concentrations of wealth, and the absolute value of ‘diversity’; but his father could only shake his head in surprise and disappointment.  What had he done wrong?  How had this level-headed, sensible, intelligent boy turned out so intellectually flaccid and undisciplined?

Had Bradford’s father been a religious man, he would have understood.  True belief comes in many forms; and had he set foot in an evangelical church where the Word of God as written in the Bible is taken as undisputed, absolute truth, he would have gotten the picture.  He would have accepted his son as a wild prophet, but a serious, responsible, and faithful one nevertheless.

Since the father had never set foot in a fundamentalist church or any church for that matter, the question was moot and irrelevant.  His son had simply gone off the rails so carefully laid by him. 

And so it is for many young people who start off with the right education and direction.  Some way or how, they veer off into murky bogs and never emerge.  Religion, that’s what does it, reflected Bradford’s father after many perplexed years.  Those damn priests.

The Saga Of Henry Marker–Finding Identity, Meaning, And Purpose And Then Losing Them

Henry Marker had impeccable progressive credentials.  He had cut his teeth as a freedom rider in the Sixties, won plaudits from internationalists thanks to his tireless efforts to promote world peace through nuclear disarmament, and evolved into a secular evangelist for many liberal causes.  He wrote  extensively on the dangers of climate change, the unbreakable glass ceiling, the corrosive, predatory nature of Wall Street and the One Percent, male privilege and female servitude, and restitution for people of color and for all Native Americans.

His most recent book was entitled The Put-Upon – Female Chattels In A Harem Of Rogue Males.  Men, Henry wrote, were innately misogynist – retrograde, barely evolved throwbacks from the Paleolithic.  Irremediable, hormone-driven, hopeless tied to failed notions of patriarchy and male superiority.  It made no sense, Henry wrote, to differentiate ‘good’ men and ‘bad’ men.  Men were all bad, prisoners of their genetic destiny, and perpetrators of aggression, hostility, war, and brutality.  The world would be better off without them, and sooner rather than later, genetic engineering will make them redundant.  Women will finally have their due and men their comeuppance.

Now, Henry’s case is unusual not because of his harsh, uncompromising views of men – these had been said as eloquently and with as least as much passion by many women since the 70s – but because he was a man himself.  After all he, a happy child of happy parents, had spent his younger years untroubled by such contentious issues.  He was an easy-going C student, congenial fraternity brother, and as eager to make weekend trips to women’s colleges as any undergraduate.  Then, as abruptly as a change in the weather, Henry became political.  He had found religion – and make no mistake about it, the social causes of the 60s and beyond were no less than religious crusades.  He felt a certain divinity in his actions.  Marching for social justice in Twentieth Century America was no different than Paul’s mission of salvation to Ephesus and Galatia.  His reversal of intent – from diffidence to engaged passion – was indeed an epiphany, a turning point from which he could never go back.



From a more practical, realistic perspective, Henry’s epiphany was nothing of the sort.  There are no such things, said his less sanguine and idealistic colleagues.  People are infallibly conditioned by nature and nurture; and while it takes some years to finally listen to their own musical score, for others it takes no time at all.

In Henry’s case his father’s words from the pulpit had finally sunk in.  Sunday after Sunday Pastor Marker had preached the Word of God and the gospels of Jesus Christ from a compassionate, human, and social point of view, all of which had passed over the head of his young son who had other things on his mind and no interest in his father’s insufferable droning.  Had the culture of the Fifties continued for another decade or two, Henry might never have awakened to the scherzo within him; but they did not.  The Sixties took American by surprise so revolutionary were they.  What had been a settled, peaceful, respectful, orderly, and pious world was transformed into ugliness and dispute.  Henry’s orchestra played allegro con brio, and even after four movements just kept on playing with more percussion, thunder, brass, and chorus.



Looked at from another, even more personal perspective, Henry's sexual timidity might well have provoked his anti-male anger.  If he couldn’t be like the campus jocks whose sexual confidence, prowess, and insistence were the standard, then harsh criticism of their uber-macho behavior would provide the perfect cover for his immaturity.  As a convinced feminist, one committed not only to gender rights but to exposing the empty theatrics of male posturing and braggadocio, he could remain sexually neuter, neither challenged by conflicts of sexual will nor seduced by feminine allure.  His political stance inoculated him against sexism, misogyny, and abuse.  Some collateral damage was inevitable.  Henry was a virgin far longer than any young man should be, and only when a young activist from Radcliffe had seduced him one late night in Harvard Yard, did he become ‘whole’.  To keep sexuality and politics in perfect equilibrium, he left all initiative to Martha who quickly grew tired of Henry’s sexual prostration and moved on to a more normal relationship.

Being left on the curb by Martha Vibbers was a further damaging blow to Henry’s already low self-esteem, and he compensated for his sexual inadequacy by ever more impassioned demands for women’s rights and the overthrow of male dominion.

It wasn’t much of a reach for Henry to graduate from feminism to civil rights, to environmentalism, to world peace.  There was very little difference in righting a civil wrong whether it be the ill treatment of women by a hereditary, patriarchal society, the de facto servitude of African Americans, or the marginalization of gays and lesbians.

By the time he was in his late forties, he had hit his stride.  The orchestra was in better fiddle than ever before, playing with passion, perfect harmony, and balance.  He felt as complete and satisfied as he ever had.  Life had purpose, meaning, and intent. He was surrounded by like-minded, sympathetic, and equally engaged colleagues – the big tent was filled with eagerness, optimism, and collective faith.  Nothing could be better.

Most importantly, his persona – his personal identity –  was finally complete.  There were no irritating conflicts between the inner Henry and the outer.  What he felt inside was exactly what he projected to those around him.  Everyone should be so lucky.

Yet, disappointingly, epiphanies come and epiphanies go – there is no such thing as permanent or perfect equilibrium.  Balance is a temporal state, always in a state of adjustment, and more often than not thrown off kilter by surprising, unexpected, and usually unknown factors.

What made Henry Marker start doubting himself at age 57 was perplexing and troubling, and kept him awake nights.  It started as simple lassitude.  Staying in bed a bit longer, holding on to a nice dream, reminiscing about his college days; but it got progressively worse.  His flagging spirits became stale and worn.  He had trouble making his way to the office and his speeches before enthusiastic audiences became flat, emotionless, and perfunctory.  Gone was that old Marker wit and charm, that ability to rouse even the most reluctant student. 

Yet that was not the worst of it.  At the bottom of his insipid, still, and increasingly stagnant pool, was existential doubt.  Perhaps there really was no point to activism.  After all, history if nothing else was boringly repetitious – been there, done that – but still, despite history’s perennial wars, territorialism, ethnic strife, corporate and public greed, antagonisms, and self-centered interests wasn't change possible? Why could there not be a new utopian millennium.  Who was so presumptuous to assume that just because history had shown itself to be predictable, it could not be fundamentally altered?  That men could be better if not good.



Unfortunately, the black dog depression of futility came over him completely and he felt irreversibly hopeless.  Human nature was a given, he reasoned – petty, venal, aggressive, self-protective, and violent – so what was the point in trying to corral it, neuter it, or spray it with some kind of Monsanto insecticide?

The struggle for sexual dominance hadn’t changed one iota.  The canny observations of D.H.Lawrence, Strindberg, and Ibsen, let alone the Old Testament were never more true.  Sex was the defining factor of human intercourse, and equilibrium did not happen by itself but only as a consequence of winners and losers in battles of sexual will.

The climate may or not be changing; but regardless, human societies for 100,000 years have been adaptable, flexible, and innovative.  There was nothing like environmental threat to hasten adaptation.  The hope for world peace is nothing more than a chimera.  If there were any hope at all, there would be some signs of social evolution; but the 21st century was as bloody and brutal as any before it.  The very idea of progress – progress itself – is a chimera, an illusion, an ill-considered hope.



Henry had absolutely no idea what provoked the change in him, what hastened his final epiphany.  Perhaps it was the gradual disappearance of logic within the holy roller community of the big tent.  Current believers thought that all thinking about serious issues had preceded them.  Now all that was required was passion, engagement, commitment and solidarity.  Perhaps it was how camaraderie and good times had replaced anything more serious.  The progressive movement had become like a summer camp – archery and badminton in the morning, boating and canoeing in the afternoon, so predictable that one did not have to prepare or bone up.  Everything was too easy, too received.  The avant-garde esprit de corps had long gone. 

Or perhaps it was because he had simply become tired of being and doing good.  Being a model citizen, attentive and faithful to the canon, the liturgy, and the theology, never off-script; being a model of rectitude, a perfectly ordered and orchestrated man of leadership and idealism was exhausting.  Maybe that was it.

In any case, the more his energy and interest flagged, the more relieved he felt.  Goodness is hard, he thought, but it was too late to reverse his ways.  He didn’t have it in him to be bad, so all that was left for this last, final phase of his life, was a happy nihilism.  He had given his life to helping others, trying to make the world a better place; realized too late that while not wasted effort, there were a lot of years when he could have been doing something else a lot less demanding -   Dissolute men have no image to keep up.  Nevertheless, ‘Phase 3’ was an enjoyable coda.  He never looked back with regret on his professional life.  It was what it was, conditioned, predictable, and no more or no less important or significant as any other.  These were the thoughts that one was supposed to have later in life – a kind of settled resolution if not wisdom.

Yet there was still the niggling thought that he had been conned.  How could he have been so…stupid? Why were the insights that age and distance provided not there when it mattered, when it was time to do something with his life not so good and far more enjoyable?  Too soon old, too late schmart was the old, tried and true, perennially wise adage.  More importantly, what difference did it make?

Life As A Cliché–Why Allusion And Aphorism Suit Us Far Better Than Accuracy And Precision

“Beauty is as beauty does’, said Flannery’s mother, one of a string of clichés she used every day. ‘An apple doesn’t fall far from the tree’, ‘Actions speak louder than words’, and ‘All that glitters is not gold’ were just a few and all perplexing to the young girl, looking up to her mother for love, support, and advice but getting only illegible aphorisms. 

“What does that mean, Mommy”, Flannery would ask.

“Why, it’s obvious”, replied her mother. “It means just what it says.”

Mrs. Booker had used clichés all her life as her mother had, so many in fact that her language had become a strange American Creole.  “The pot calling the kettle black”, she told her husband when he had made a comment about her driving, a comment that had nothing to do with his driving, but a reference to some other minor flaw.  Within this family lexicon, it was up to him to decipher her meaning and intent. 

It was not as though Mabel Booker could not think more precisely or clearly.  It was just that she preferred ellipses rather than rectangles.  Precision left no room for reflection.    It was better to let her husband wonder a bit what he had done wrong than to confront him with it.  Lord knows he had a lot to answer for, so let him chew on it for a while.

Mabel carried her clichés with her wherever she went – to the country club, afternoon tea, or the Women’s Auxiliary.  There was always room for an allusive comment.  No matter what the gossip, Mabel was ready to comment.  When the ladies suggested that Pastor James had interests in a certain young lady in the West End, Mable said, “He’s already got one paw on the chicken coop”.  The image of a cunning fox about to sneak in to Lily Thomas’ bedroom was more apt than any more direct and presumptuous allegation.  To comments about Harry Abel’s unseemly doings and unsure health she said, “Before the Devil knows you’re dead”, a favorite of her Irish uncle who, the drunker he got, the more he recited, “Ah, Mick”, he said, raising a glass to his dear departed friend, “May your glass be ever full, may the roof over your head be always strong, and may you be in heaven half an hour before the devil knows you're dead.”

The ladies looked up from their tea sandwiches, smiled, had no real idea what Mabel had meant, but as was Mabel’s intention, they began to wonder. She knew that Harry Abel had many more skeletons in his closet than most, and he would be lucky if he escaped the law let alone God’s divine justice; but rather than add to the already murky mix, she let things and Harry Abel lie.  Let them think what they may, she thought, smiling back at Laura Dugan in her lovely flowery sundress, and taking a bite of a delicious cucumber and chutney canapes the hostess had prepared.

Mabel was particularly fond of Biblical clichés which added import to her observations.   ‘A soft answer turns away wrath’, ‘A prudent man conceals knowledge’, ‘Your enemy shall distress you at all your gates’ were some which seemed to have particular salience in these troubled times.

Jesus himself spoke in parables when he could have just come right out and said what he had to say plainly and clearly.  He wanted to make people stretch their belief and force them, by solving his parabolic puzzles, to realize the profound meaning behind them. Anything important, Jesus implied, was not black and white.

So Mabel, encouraged by Jesus and the Bible, but as an indirect and imprecise person from birth found clichés to be her go-to manner of speaking.  She knew that many found her endless, Hallmark card, predictable, and treacly aphorisms unbearable, a sign of an unfinished education, flaccid thinking, and hopeless idealism.  At the end of the day, what were they worth? When toted, they didn’t amount to a hill of beans.  A collection of worthless, childish sayings that, Biblical reference or not, adding nothing to discourse.

Yet had the ladies at tea stopped to consider themselves and their equally imprecise, subjective, and speculative comments, they might have been more forgiving of Mabel’s childish verse.  What was the difference, after all, from drawing conclusions from Pastor James repeated visits to Harriet Goodman’s house while her husband was at work?  He could certainly be spending long afternoons in bed with her; but he could just as easily have been ministering to a woman at the end of her rope.  Why indeed did the ladies make more of Harry Abel’s supposed delinquencies when he could well have been in a legitimate although marginal business?

The ladies, like most people, found it much easier to come to facile conclusions than more cogently argued ones; and if truth be known, it was more fun to speculate than to know.  Innuendo was no different than allusion.  Both suggested but never claimed.  Mabel was only more obvious.   She contributed as much to the gossip by her well-timed clichés as the ladies did by their catty innuendos.  Both were in the same boat.

And, when one considered most clichés, they were not stupid or irrelevant.  An apple does indeed not fall far from the tree.  Children are like their parents and no sooner can avoid their influence than an apple can fall upward.  The bigger they are, the harder they fall has been true forever.  Ambitious, arrogant men will always become overconfident, incautious, and reckless; and will inevitably be removed.  Blood is indeed thicker than water, shown time and time again, the stuff of O’Neill, Faulkner, and the Old Testament.

A film critic recently wrote that he saw no difference between Turkish soap operas and so-called ‘great’ literature.

If it is at all true that great drama should be judged in part by its evocative, emotive power; then why should popular dramas not be classed in the same category as Williams, O’Neill, and Miller and judged as such?  Turkish soap operas – most notably Winter Sun, The End, Black Money Love, and Love is in the Air – are perceptive in their understanding of human nature; the inevitable crises, ambitions, frustrations, enmities, and selfishness of families; jealousy, sexual competition, and conflicts between family and individual loyalties; the nature and satisfying pursuit of revenge; and the disruptive, painful experiences of disease, disadvantage, and death.

Turkish dramas are as focused on human nature, foibles, desires, and disappointments as the plays of Tennessee Williams.  The characters are memorable, and while they are often formulaic they are never dry, sterile, or academic.  What more is there to learn about human nature than we already know? We turn to both drama and soap operas to see it played out in a thousand entertaining forms.  What makes them so popular? They are good, true to life, relevant, and compelling.

Anything that has broad appeal is automatically suspect in the eyes of traditional reviewers.  If tens of millions of viewers could be watching and enjoying Turkish soap operas, how could they possibly be?  How could anything mass produced, predictable, and simple be considered anything but popular entertainment? Even Graham Greene, author of some of the most morally complex yet compelling dramas of recent decades felt obliged to divide his work into ‘Entertainments’ and serious works.

Without a doubt Turkish soap operas are theatrical clichés.  Everyone expects infidelity, deceit, jealousy, unwanted pregnancy, fatal disease, crime, and power; and viewers are never disappointed.  Like verbal clichés, those on the Turkish ‘dizis’ are familiar, predictable, and obvious.  While they may not have the more profound insights of more respected playwrights, they accomplish the same purpose.  They illuminate human nature, encourage viewers to reflect on it, and even move them off the couch.

Is not the purpose of art to enlighten? To educate? To move?  A case can be made that the best Turkish television serials do all three.  Winter Sun is enlightening because of its personal insights into the most common human sentiments – jealousy, envy, revenge, and ambition.  The subject may not be new, but the way the series’ producers and staff have configured it to display a range of moral, emotional, social, and family reactions to provocative events is compelling and fascinating. 

Clichés are really social code.  They need no explanation but are open to interpretation.  Which apple? Whose blood? Whose chicken coop?  In an increasingly complex world, they are needed shorthand; a way of commenting on familiar, endlessly repetitious human actions without exegesis.  Human nature has not changed in a hundred thousand years and is unlikely to; so why not rely on a proven lexicon to allude to what is already known but unendingly surprising?  The cliché not only has its place, but is part and parcel of human observation.