Death to Dogma! - When Falls the Coliseum

Published 2001
When Falls the Coliseum

Death to Dogma!

Human beings are dangerously predictable creatures. An ingrained fear of the unknown compels us into ourideological retreats, where we wrap ourselves in scripts of dogmatic blather and regurgitate slogans like children chanting the Lord's prayer at bedtime, not because they understand the import of the words, but because they have dutifully encoded it into their brains.

When debating issues such as abortion, the death penalty, euthanasia, the existence of god, and yes, even war, humans will tap into their mental reference libraries (often not very extensive in the brains of Democrats or Republicans), pull out the volume that suits their argument, and mechanically recite passages from it. Human beings cleave to ideology like a kitten clings to its mother's warm teat.

Well, I'm here to tell you that ideology sucks.

The discourse surrounding the war on terrorism epitomizes how human beings allow the dull forces of dogma to stomp outthe vibrant anarchy of imagination.

Broadly speaking, there are two camps in this and every recent American
war: the Jingos, and the Pinkos.

Now the Jingos are scary, rabid nationalists who attempt to shove an American flag straight down your throat when you timidly mention that maybe, just maybe we shouldn't be too rash or excessive in our militaristic campaigns. Jingos appear during times of national crisis and are usually armed and quite dangerous.

The Pinkos, on the other hand, are bizarrely dichotomous creatures, pyromaniacally scorching American flags while praying for peaceful resolution to the conflict du jour. When not waging a war against war, Pinkos can usually be seen slurping on pacifiers.

In between the Jingos and the Pinkos are the majority of citizens, those who are partial to either side in varying shades of conviction. These in-between types espouse more domesticated versions of the Jingo and Pinko ideologies; they're more restrained in their responses, thankfully, but they're still chained to their credos. The point is, they dig dogma.

Of course, we need warriors to fight our inevitable battles, and we need pacifists to temper the militaristic mantra to "Kill 'em all." In other words, we need war to ensure the perpetuation of pacifism, and we need pacifists to protest war.

But what about those of us who are neither peacenicks nor warnicks nor in-between-niks? What about those of us who stand outside the rigid boundaries of all this ideological claptrap, who appreciate the merits of both the pro-war and anti-war arguments but also ascertain the suffocating limitations of each? We who, in a yin-yang kind of fervor, embrace both sides while embracing neither side, and in so doing embrace duality and nothingness, all at the same time?

What kind of privileges are we afforded? While the Jingos and the Pinkos enjoy widespread acceptance and get to have marches and rallies and all that fun stuff, we who employ our imaginations when confronted with intricate problems and forge novel (if ambiguous) solutions are shunted to the shadows of oblivion.

So to counter this shameless disregard, I proclaim a new anti-ideology, the Dissolution of Dogma. In the Dissolution of Dogma anti-movement, our anti-purpose will be to dissolve all doctrine, our anti-slogan will be "Death to Dogma!" and our banner will be a "no flags" symbol. We will lead anti-marches in Washington protesting the pervasiveness of prescribed philosophies, and we will teach our children to despise dogma in all its disguises.

Yes, that's it: we will kill all dogma and replace it with more...dogma.

It's sort of like combatting war with war: sometimes it has to be done, but there's never a clear victory, and the process always repeats itself, ad nauseum.