for
6/9/2001
Writer's Note: Due to problems connecting to Internettrash.com, the Space Toast Page could not be updated this previous week. I guess you get what you pay for.
Yes, this week's article has two titles, a Space Toast first. Either one works, really; take your pick.
We've all seen them. Some of us own them.
I of course refer to those "Free Tibet" bumper stickers, that express an opinion I've come to regard as increasingly repugnant. Yes, China, last communist superpower of the world, obsessed with face, terrified of internal instability, struggling to survive under the status quo, kindly, immediately, grant a small piece of territory on your southern border that your ideological leader, Chairman Mao, worked hard to rein in, its unconditional independence.
Or perhaps the imperative is being directed elsewhere: Please, leaders of the free world, especially the United States, (once you're done freeing Mumia) please cut off the flow of money to a large and complex communist country as it gets its first tasty bites of the capitalism that brought Europe out of despotism, letting its factories shut down and its peasants starve until its government agrees to let the international community meddle in its internal affairs and free a small religious country, being willing, necessarily, to get into a conflict that could turn nuclear, over this issue, if they don't relent, which they won't.
Forgive the situation's scope my failure to explain it, if you must, but understand that Tibet will not be freed, especially not because you displayed a bumper sticker. You may accuse me of being a cynic. I would respond, if so, that you should blow me, because I'm not a cynic. In a world of cynics, I'm something far less popular; I'm a pragmatist.
It's a curious thing. We've made a celebrity out of Tibet's holy leader, the Dhali Lama; people read books about ethics by him, and watch him interviewed on Larry King Live. He's that funny little guy with the eternal smile, preaching peace and love, and living in exile. The ultimate underdog. Is it a wonder that those who would once have been called "Hippies" or wish they had been, and their children who've inherited the dream, support his cause so?
This is not a man who speaks about how things can be, only about how they should be--the antipragmatist--like, I might add, all religious leaders. In the end, his Holiness is interested in only one thing: promoting the Buddhist ideals. Keeping them from being eradicated by China's is obviously necessary, but he can do little more than he already is: writing books, going on Larry King Live, and pushing bumper stickers.
The fact is that the Dhali Lama is not the accused here. His supporters are--or rather, the brand of supporters that put slogans on their cars, or appreciate those who do. Because they--or you--are NOT DOING ANYTHING.
Once again we're faced with the phenomenon of the Joint Caring Company. I can, in today's modern society, care a little bit about a large number of things, thus increasing my effectiveness (and peace of mind) geometrically, in spite of the fact that I need do very little, or nothing at all.
It compartmentalizes the world. I can go on a one year mission with the Peace Corps, and then come home and start college. I can send money to Greenpeace. I can help a child for only one dollar a day--about the price of a cup of coffee. I can rally my love for Mumia or Puff Daddy. I can support public television, and get a handy tote bag and the Pretty Good Joke Book...
...as a bonus gift. Tibet has only become another underdog, of the sort that weekend supporters flock to, i.e. "Free Tibet! take all you want."
While citing books in this essay, I might as well mention Joe Queenan's peace-crimes tribunal of the Baby Boomer generation, Balsamic Dreams...
...for providing a guide to other cultural phenomena that make "Free Tibet" look so catchy, chief among them the attraction to a moral easy target. Note here that China, directly, isn't that target, although by either mainstream American or far-left standards, it's a terrible place. The fact is that every last one of those Free Tibet bumper stickers is directed at the fellow Americans of the owner, who refuse to wear the I'm-doing-something-about-Tibet mask. No one's going to go to war over this, and by being so in check, No One loses the moral high ground to the Tibetan supporters, which is what this is really about.
And here we uncover the ultimate sin, at the heart of this particular Joint Caring Company.
No one sheds a tear over the eradication of Odin worship, or that of Inanna, or Moloch, for that matter. The Greek and Roman gods are mere intellectual curiosities. The human-sacrificing cultures of Central and South America get some pity, but most of the revisionist rage is directed against the Conquistadors who conquered them for money. Does anyone who's opened a book seriously believe that if these cultures had had the technology, they would not have conquered the Old World before it conquered them?
The truth is that the very concept of "preservation," as it would be defined by many of us, is contrary to the flow of nature. Nothing is unchanging.
What I'm trying to say is that we don't want Tibet preserved to go on its merry way; we want it preserved as it used to be. We want an amusement park, frozen in time. This is all we ever want, by applying preservation to changing systems.
We were all raised on the pictures and the words in those books, where the pictures and the words were always the same, no matter how many times we opened the book. This is the world we understand. The almanac world. The ideal world. We want indians to keep dying of pancreatitis, and think of it as the next Colonial Williamsburg. We want a weekend retreat, with Monday's schedule waiting at the office. We seek the ultimate ideal: the pool we go into, and come out of, without becoming wet. We seek the ultimate impossibility: our compartmentalized world.
Touch the Toast