I don’t remember which episode it occurred in, but my favorite line in the whole Television run of Angel was delivered by the title character,  Angel.

     Angel is a vampire who was cursed with a soul.  He lives every day with a conscience tortured by the memories of atrocities he committed while he was nothing but a soulless monster.  He also still has the demon inside him, which gives him his special powers, but which he must fight a continuous daily battle against.

     For a while, he was lured with the idea that he had some hope of redemption, or salvation…but eventually, he lost that hope…but still kept up the good fight.

     When asked why, he said something along the lines of:  If nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do.

     It was a beautiful way of turning nihilism into a positive thing.

     In other words, if there is no heaven or hell, if there is no beyond, if all we have is the here and now…then we should make the here and now the best it can be.  Also, if there is nothing to govern us, it becomes even more important to govern ourselves…and it makes our self-governance that much more precious and valuable to do it for it’s own sake.

     I think that the stoic philosophy says more or less the same thing, although they believed in an ultimate creative intelligence in the universe, from which all things came, and to which all things returned.

     Yet, their most immediate concern was not being right with that force, but more with being right with what they saw as their inherent human nature.  They believed that through pursuit of their best and highest nature, they would be more closely aligned with the creative force that had made them.

     They saw themselves as social creatures, with purpose, dignity and reason.  Their goal was to discern what was right for themselves, their families, their society, and humanity…and then to do it.  And they believed that reason was the best tool for attaining that goal.

     I’ve been reading the writings of the stoic philosopher and emperor of Rome, Marcus Aurelius.  I’ve taken a break to loan the book to a friend because I had frankly absorbed and processed as much as I was going to for a while, and because she seemed to need it more than I…but I was struck by how heavily his burden lay on him.

     Many of the notes he wrote himself were chiding little bits of self-correction, regarding not letting the politics of underlings bother him, not buying into lies and falsehoods…even if they are flattering of him…not to lose patience with others for behaving badly, and to always, always, keep his composure in the face of frustration.

     Personally, I think he was a little hard on himself, but then again, he had great responsibility, and he was ruling in the beginning of the decline of his empire.  Everything was coming apart, and it was probably of some comfort to him that he was only one man with one lifetime, and doing the right thing was all that was required of him.

     If he’d bought into all of the irrational BS that usually came with being a ruler, he probably would not have held the empire together any longer, and he probably would have been a monster.

     He was constantly reminding himself of the things he needed to remember to be a good person:  Don’t give in to the temptation of flattery.  Don’t give in to the expediency of just exercising your power when there is a better way to get people to do what is right.  Don’t buy your own hype.  Don’t fool yourself into thinking that things are the way you want them to be, instead, see them as they are.  Use your reason and decide for yourself what must be done.  Take the high ground in a confrontation.  But above all, don’t let things from outside you harm your soul, whether it be flattery or vilification, the blind faith of your subjects, or betrayal.

     It occurs to me that Marcus Aurelius wouldn’t do very well in American politics.

     In the end, it’s all about the hype and the substance doesn’t matter much at all.

     Our current administration is a good example.  They decided what they wanted to do, and then they pulled together all sorts of “information” to prove that they should do it.  The search for information happened after the decision had been made, and influenced what information was looked at.  Then, they ran through a series of attempts to sell the idea to the American people, and instead of approaching it in a linear, logical, rational way, they just bounced a number of reasons for their decision off the public until one got traction, and then they ran with it…and they are still running with it in spite of the fact that much of their “evidence” has been disproved or at least had credible challenges to it’s veracity, and they have not even tried to answer them with anything other than characterizing the questioner’s patriotism, intelligence, or sanity.

     Instead of answering questions, they assassinate character.  Instead of addressing concerns, they cut uncooperative officials out of the loop.  Instead of dealing with things as they are, they cling to an ideological version of reality.

     And it’s working.  If you happen to know a “Fox bot” (thanks, Rick, for introducing me to the term), and I’m guessing you know at least one, try talking to them about any current events, and it will boil down to them repeating some variation and combination of the following.

     “George W. Bush is a Godly man, and God is guiding his hand.”

     “George W. Bush is a strong leader, and we need a strong leader because we’re in a war.  We’re in this war because George W. Bush is a strong leader.”

     “John Kerry is Anti-American and Anti-military because he is Anti- (this) war.”

     “John Kerry is weak, flip-floppy and a big whiner.”

      We live in a society where heedlessness is being sold as decisiveness; belligerence as strength; stubbornness as integrity; thoughtlessness as spirituality; etc.

     More than that, if someone disagrees with you, their reflection is sold as indecisiveness; diplomacy as weakness; flexibility as moral turpitude; and rationality as Godlessness, etc.

     So, how’d we get here?

     Well, I guess we got lazy.  We figured that the newspaper and T.V. reporters would do their leg-work like they were supposed to, and we figured if we just listened to them, we’d find out what we needed to know, and we took all the extra time and spent it watching half-nekked, half-starving people eat raw leeches in the hopes of winning a million dollars.

     We figured that it would be better to teach our kids things that were practical and would make them good workers and wage earners and consumers, rather than giving them a grounding in a good classical education that would teach them clear and ordered thought, and make them responsible citizens. (And somehow, we came to the conclusion that we had to choose between these two things.)

     We got to a place where more people voted for who would get a professional recording deal than who would be the president.

     We became more connoisseurs of what makes an “iron chef” than what makes a good leader.

     Do I blame Television?  No, not really.  I mean, T.V. just gives us what we want…or what we think we want when we come home from a hard day of work to face a hard evening of making dinner, cleaning, and helping kids with homework that we really don’t remember being so hard when we were their age.

     I mean, come 9:00PM, we’re not exactly up to reading the 9/11 Commission Report are we?

     We want a little bit of brain-candy, a snuggle and a good laugh with our Significant Other, and then bed.

     And who can blame us?  Really, it’s not that horrible to want a little repose after all that is expected of us.

     But in the end, that is what has made us vulnerable to the current state of things.  We are in danger of letting indoctrination take the place of education, science become the pawn of political expediency, and reason be replaced by circular, self-supporting inventions of fantasy and false assumptions.

     And the ideological left is as guilty as the ideological right.  It’s just that the ideological right is what’s running things now…but there are such parties on both sides of any issue.

     We don’t have to listen to them, though.  As satisfying as their siren call can be sometimes, as comforting as it can be to just give in and be part of the crowd, we don’t have to.  We can pick up a book or two and read them.  We can talk and think  and write about them.  We can discuss amongst ourselves, and whatever we believe, whatever makes sense to us, we can question it, and follow it deeper, challenge it and see how it holds up to scrutiny.

     We can set aside out ideologies, and try to view things objectively and admit that we may have been wrong about some things.

     And if anyone calls us to task for thinking for ourselves, we can stand up to them and politely but firmly assert our rights as Americans to independent thought and opinions.

     Don’t let anyone tell you that it is un-American to disagree, or be unhappy with the way things are.  Don’t let anyone intimidate you with the implied threat contained in “Well, you should be grateful to live in a country where you can talk like that.”

     Actually, if anyone says that to you, you can tell them “It doesn’t matter.  If I lived in a country where I couldn’t talk like that.  I’d do it anyway.  There’s nothing wrong with what I said, and the consequences of not saying what I believe are much worse than anything you could think up.”

     See, they think they’re giving you the right to be wrong.  They think they’ve granted you some favor.  They are putting themselves above you, and expecting you to be grateful to them for allowing you to disagree.

     But we know the truth, which is that a person has to be true to the highest callings of their nature.  They have to follow the dictates of their conscience, and they have an obligation to honestly and humbly try to discern what is right and then do it, speak it, write it.

     We know that it is not a failing to say “I have been wrong” when we find out that we have been wrong.  It’s not a sin to fine-tune your opinions when you learn something new.  It’s not a “flip-flop” to change your position with a developing situation.  We know that just because a fact doesn’t line up with our ideology, that doesn’t make it wrong.

     And we know that people of good conscience can change their mind, the strong can seek diplomatic options first, and that the decisive can see the complexities of a situation and can wait to get all of the facts before making a decision.

     And we know that ultimately, here on the planet earth, we are the best judges of our own actions and beliefs.  For whatever reason, it is in our nature to be able to decide what is best and right and true.  It’s an affront to that nature to not do so.