While Re­pub­li­cans de­sire to set clocks back to the Bronze Age — De­moc­rats now run on Re­pub­li­can Stan­dard Time, as col­lec­tively, the na­tion’s cit­i­zenry con­tin­ues to roll over and hit the snooze but­ton.

On an in­di­vid­ual basis, if a siz­able num­ber of the na­tion’s cit­i­zenry’s con­cept of free­dom of ex­pres­sion trans­lates into lit­tle more than the act of cast­ing a vote by iPhone in­volv­ing a choice be­tween a gag­gle of cloy­ing, long­ing-to-be-com mod­i­fied croon­ers on Amer­i­can Idol — it fol­lows that the egre­gious as­sault on civil lib­er­ties posed by H.R. 347 (the so-call Anti Oc­cupy Wall Street Bill…that has now made many acts of free speech and free­dom of as­sem­bly a fed­eral crime) will mean lit­tle within such a dim cos­mol­ogy of di­min­ished per­cep­tion and even more dis­mal mu­si­cal sen­si­bil­ity.

Re­flect­ing how dire the as­sault on civil lib­er­ties has be­come: The afore­men­tioned bill passed The House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives by a 388 to 3 mar­gin (and was signed, shortly there­after, by Pres­i­dent Obama, on Fri­day March 9, 2012).

Just what por­tion of the fol­low­ing ad­mo­ni­tions con­tained within The Bill of Rights re­mains am­bigu­ous to these leg­is­la­tors: “Con­gress shall make no law re­spect­ing an es­tab­lish­ment of re­li­gion, or pro­hibit­ing the free ex­er­cise thereof; or abridg­ing the free­dom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the peo­ple peace­ably to as­sem­ble, and to pe­ti­tion the Gov­ern­ment for a re­dress of griev­ances.”

No­tice: The open­ing sen­tence: “Con­gress shall make no law…” No­tice as well: The right to “peace­ably as­sem­ble” is guar­an­teed as promi­nently as any other right on the list.

The in­tent of this bill is clear: Despots and their op­er­a­tives se­cure and re­tain power by ren­der­ing op­po­si­tion to their rule un­pleas­ant for dis­senters. Sys­tems of re­ward and pun­ish­ment are main­tained. For ex­am­ple, a right-wing radio dem­a­gogue will reap vast for­tunes for his ser­vice, while truth tellers will be mar­gin­al­ized, or if they start to grow ef­fec­tive…be crushed by po­lice state tac­tics and leg­isla­tive caprice (e.g., the man­ner that en­forcers of the cur­rent order have at­tempted to sys­tem­i­cally re­press the Oc­cupy Wall Street Move­ment).

Make no mis­take re­gard­ing the times we have been given. This strug­gle will be long and dif­fi­cult. Despotic per­son­al­ity types, as a rule, are not struck by life-al­ter­ing epipha­nies re­gard­ing the empti­ness of a life at­ten­dant to au­to­crat­i­cally im­pos­ing re­pres­sive mea­sures upon the pow­er­less to en­sure the con­tin­u­ance of their priv­i­leged sta­tus. Do not ex­pect to hear the lamen­ta­tion of the greedy as they awaken to how their ad­dic­tion to wealth has iso­lated them Mi­das-style in a mode of mind wherein their souls exist in a state of star­va­tion, be­cause the soul is not nour­ished by hoarded gold (or fun­nel­ing for­ma­tions of elec­tronic pix­els rep­re­sent­ing com­mod­ity trans­ac­tions).

On a per­sonal basis, if you in­sist on stand­ing op­posed to despo­tism, ex­pect trou­ble. In that case, one loses all cer­tain­ties…save one: The re­ten­tion of a vi­able sense of self.

“So lit­tle pains do the shal­low take in the in­ves­ti­ga­tion of truth, ac­cept­ing read­ily the first story that comes to hand.”—Thucy­dides, from The His­tory of the Pelo­pon­nesian War

When one at­tempts to stand against surg­ing so­cial and po­lit­i­cal tides, feel­ings of pow­er­less­ness can flood one with anx­i­ety. Ac­cord­ingly, a sin­gle in­di­vid­ual can be­come in­un­dated with feel­ings of un­ease and un­cer­tainty. As a re­sult, the so­cial pres­sure to drown angst-cre­at­ing in­di­vid­ual doubt within the mind­less cer­tain­ties of a mob can be­come over­whelm­ing. Often, brick by brick, in an at­tempt to with­stand these pow­er­ful inner feel­ings and out­ward pres­sures, we build a struc­ture of false con­scious­ness…that we, often, mis­take for our con­vic­tions, and trag­i­cally mis­take this dis­mal dwelling for the whole of ex­is­tence.

How then is it pos­si­ble to with­stand feel­ings of pow­er­less­ness?

Put one foot in front of the other. Write one word after the next on your protest sign. Make your life a flam­ing arrow aimed at the dry and rot­ted heart of the sys­tem or make your own heart a warm hearth of com­pas­sion for its vic­tims, as you ne­go­ti­ate its cold re­al­i­ties. Thus, hope be­comes a process of en­gage­ment, not a com­fort­ing lie; not the stuff of pub­lic re­la­tions hus­tlers and po­lit­i­cal hacks but a qual­ity of hon­est con­vic­tion and per­sis­tent labor; and not a cyn­i­cal mar­ket­ing tool.

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Re­lent­lessly, from early child­hood on, our hopes and long­ings are sub­ject to com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion by the dream-usurpers of the cor­po­rate state. The process of men­tal col­o­niza­tion by the com­mer­cial holo­gram is as per­va­sive within us as was the dog­matic in­flu­ence of The Church within the psy­ches of Dark Age peas­ants.

The pre­sent order’s litany of eco­nomic in­equity af­fords few the op­tion of com­mit­ting the heresy of ques­tion­ing (or even ap­pre­hend­ing) the ex­ploita­tive and de­struc­tive na­ture of the sys­tem. As an ex­am­ple, cit­i­zen­ship as de­fined by con­sumerism has cre­ated a land­scape de­void of pub­lic space. (The at­tempt to re­de­fine what con­sti­tutes pub­lic space is one of the many threat­en­ing as­pects of the Oc­cupy Wall Street move­ment to the cur­rent power struc­ture.)

There­fore, the in­her­ent human need for a sense of place and be­long­ing can be eas­ily warped into a bel­liger­ent na­tion­al­ism that dead­ens the heart as it warps an in­di­vid­ual’s li­bidi­nous drive for com­mu­nal en­gage­ment into dis­placed rage, con­ve­niently ap­pro­pri­ated by po­lit­i­cal dem­a­gogues into a lust for per­pet­ual war.

Under such con­di­tions, one’s life is not one’s own. A dis­as­so­ci­a­tion oc­curs, an at­tempt to dis­tance one­self from the de­mean­ing de­mands of ex­ploita­tive so­cial arrange­ments. Under these cir­cum­stances, a kind of cul­tural am­ne­sia can occur. Per­haps, this re­lates to the U.S. pop­u­lace’s dif­fi­culty in­volv­ing col­lec­tive mem­ory, ex­pressed in the well-known wit­ti­cism that U.S. cit­i­zens in­habit: “The United States of Am­ne­sia”.

When one’s au­then­tic iden­tity is not en­gaged in cre­at­ing the cri­te­ria of one’s life, even one’s mem­o­ries seem the dis­mal, evanes­cent dream of a stranger; it is dif­fi­cult to store and re­call un­fold­ing events when one is in a trance of false con­scious­ness.

Hence, one must in­sist upon re­gain­ing pos­ses­sion of one’s life…to re­gain mem­ory and en­gage imag­i­na­tion.

Dis­tinct from self-in­dul­gent navel-gaz­ing, this is a call to ac­tion. At this crit­i­cal point, the sit­u­a­tion in­volves more than a search for mean­ing and res­o­nance (al­though those things ar­rive as byprod­ucts of the ef­fort) — for we have been pre­sented with a world­wide cri­sis in­volv­ing not only the na­ture of our lives as in­di­vid­u­als — but also a rad­i­cally wors­en­ing cri­sis in­volv­ing the health of our en­vi­ron­men­tally be­sieged planet.

“Psy­cho­log­i­cal aware­ness rises from er­rors, co­in­ci­dences, in­def­i­nite­ness, from the chaos deeper than in­tel­li­gent con­trol.”–James Hill­man

There­fore, par­don this writer’s brief di­gres­sion into per­sonal mem­ory.

I buried a tur­tle in the sky.

While ex­plor­ing a creek near my home in Geor­gia, one spring af­ter­noon, when I was ten, I hap­pened upon a group of boys de­fil­ing the corpse of a mas­sive–eas­ily five feet in cir­cum­fer­ence–snap­ping tur­tle, by det­o­nat­ing fire­crack­ers, cherry bombs, andM-80s that they had placed in the crea­ture’s pu­tres­cent flesh.

Over­whelmed with mor­ti­fi­ca­tion, I turned and stag­gered from the scene, be­fore the boys, en­tranced in vi­cious rev­elry, no­ticed my pres­ence. I re­treated to the cover of a swath of scrub brush and pine saplings and vom­ited.

At that time, I lacked the lex­i­con, both ver­bal and emo­tive, to come to grips with what I had wit­nessed.

Years later, I had this enig­matic dream. I’m as­cend­ing in an el­e­va­tor into a high tower, a mod­ernist struc­ture that serves as “a col­lege dorm room in the sky”.

I pro­ceed to the top floor. Upon en­ter­ing the room, after pass­ing two pretty, brunette, fe­male twins in their mid-twen­ties, who dis­miss me as “a poor prospect in a ma­te­r­ial re­gard”, I came upon an in­di­vid­ual, who, in the wak­ing world, in the years to come, I would men­tor and I would come to write the bulk of a spo­ken word act he still tours with to this day.

Out­side the win­dow of this dorm in the sky, earth­bound trans­porta­tion ve­hi­cles, such as pas­sen­ger, freight, and sub­way trains, made a path through the heav­ens.

Then, de­scend­ing from above, with in­creas­ing ve­loc­ity, an ob­ject ap­peared that was on a col­li­sion course with our perch. Be­fore we had time to react, it crashed through the ceil­ing of the room…re­veal­ing it­self to be the corpse of a mas­sive tor­toise, its shell af­fixed with wings con­structed of pa­pier-mâché.

Ap­par­ently, dur­ing child­hood, to para­phrase the poet, the world was too much with me. Its ca­sual cru­elty and in­her­ent bru­tal­ity caused me to re­treat sky­ward…I was a poor prospect in the “ma­te­r­ial” realm, with its at­ten­dant rot­ting flesh and vi­cious laugh­ter. I chose to en­sconce my­self in a psy­chic uni­ver­sity above the stu­pid and bru­tal…to find a means to bury the corpse of that poor tur­tle in heaven.

The temp­ta­tion is still great…to stay above it all. But, un­like a child, I now have the lex­i­con to re­main on earth…to hold my ground when I am mor­ti­fied and give voice to my sor­rows and out­rage.

There­fore, to be true to my­self, I must give wings to the liv­ing and dead. I must ad­dress mat­ters that are hard to stom­ach.

It is a hard slog…I pro­ceed along, at times, at a tur­tle’s pace…but there are mo­ments when a ter­rapin brings me im­ages from the brack­ish depths, and, on oc­ca­sion, I can make mun­dane thoughts fly.

But this is not only about me. On an en­vi­ron­men­tal level, as a global-wide busi­ness model and a per­sonal mode of being in the world, we, in our de­mented rev­elry, are treat­ing the earth as if it is a dead thing, a corpse we hap­pened upon, and, like those cruel, ig­no­rant boys of my child­hood mem­ory, we are blast­ing our world to bits (e.g., bomb­ing, min­ing, frack­ing, de­fo­li­at­ing…and the hideous list goes on and on) with­out re­flec­tion or re­gret.

Given, the rapidly de­clin­ing eco­log­i­cal bal­ance of our planet, a bal­ance of di­verse, in­ter­re­lated sys­tems that are es­sen­tial for the con­tin­u­ance of con­di­tions fa­vor­able for our species to thrive, an in­di­vid­ual can no longer af­ford to bury one’s out­rage in heaven or vault it in the depths of one­self. It is self­ish to be­lieve that one’s angst and alien­ation are ex­clu­sively one’s own.

One of the pow­er­ful at­trac­tions of the OWS move­ment has been its em­pha­sis on re­claim­ing the pub­lic com­mons from the cor­po­rate state, and the dire need for cul­tural com­mu­nion be­yond the com­mer­cial sphere. Thus, for an at­om­ized, alien­ated pop­u­lace, the move­ment has pro­vided a re­fresher course in the act of sim­ply being human, on ex­ist­ing to­gether in com­mu­nal space.

OWS is not about “win­ning” po­lit­i­cal ad­van­tage…that ap­proach plays into the fal­lacy of the win­ner/loser di­chotomy of the cap­i­tal­ist super state. Con­versely, by act­ing in the world in a man­ner that is unique to one’s char­ac­ter, one awak­ens mem­ory and re­an­i­mates imag­i­na­tion, thereby al­low­ing an in­di­vid­ual to oc­cupy his own life and times, and serv­ing to help ame­lio­rate the nox­ious ef­fects of the in­ter­nal­ized false con­scious­ness of cor­po­rate state au­thor­i­tar­i­an­ism.

Un­less we start to see the world and our role in it with new eyes, we will be un­able to alter the struc­ture of the pre­sent sys­tem. Withal, it is im­per­a­tive to being full pos­ses­sion of one’s hu­man­ity when fac­ing the des­per­ate, de­hu­man­iz­ing forces of an order that has grown ever more bru­tal in di­rect pro­por­tion to its rapidly de­clin­ing pur­pose and le­git­i­macy.