Memories

I read a book the other day – Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Jarring challenge to reality it is. It was written in 1985 and published in the US in 1986. A dystopian novel by Canadian Atwood, the story hearkens to Orwell’s 1984 and provides the reader with as much mind bending – and more – as Orwell. Hard to imagine that, but it is just the same.

The narrator tells her tale in her present tense with a parallel memory of past experiences. The joys of the past when she was free to explore her own body, life and mind, constantly reminded her of what she had lost.

Her present is a heavily enforced enslavement to someone else’s conception of a woman’s role in society. A major war has occurred among nations and within nations. The war was for control over the minds of others rather than power over other nations. The struggle focused much on the purpose of women – not just the role.

Women, you see, were seen as God’s chalice for reproducing the human race. The ideology of the day imposed on everyone was to produce the purest form of humans as possible. Women were valued mainly for their reproductive ability followed by nurture of youth. Female babies were seen as creating the next generation of women to do the same. Women cooked by labor class; others cleaned the homes and offices by another labor class; other women were enlisted and trained to control the disciplined approach to each women’s class of worker. One class was just used to reproduce a fresh supply of babies.

Men, of course, were the ruling force of the social order. Strict military discipline and hierarchy were maintained. We don’t see much of men other than their power and labor role – commander, chauffeur, guardian-soldier, spy master-enforcer – and so on. This is a novel of and by and for women; but only for the benefit of the male population. Hideous.

Cracks appear in this harsh society. It seems men still recalled their gender thirsts and secretly created a hidden culture of sex and debauchery. Of course women were needed for this sideline purpose; they were cultivated in secret and maintained in secret as long as they were able to entice and please men however the men wished.

This crack in the social order proves more than a mere interest. The novel suggests a cataclysmic change coming but we don’t see it in the book’s chronology. What we do see are the dehumanizing forces at work attacking the humanness of all women.

Rejects of women are openly categorized. Culling occurs. Each woman found wanting of purpose is relegated to the outer edges of society and finally to the dustbin of existence. Each tier of labor is of lower and more dangerous status until death gives them final relief.

The dystopian force throughout the novel is not the obvious dehumanizing of women. Rather it is the political ideology that created the hideous distortion of social order.

The ideology is that of conservatism taken to the extreme. Purity of thought. Purity of purpose. God’s order. Religious order. Logical extensions of order. Soon love is lost but lust is not erased; evidently Atwood feels this is the lasting human remain of culture.

Lust uncovers the dimensions of humanness that defies man made order.

This reminds me of the three dimensions of social discourse. We do not speak or think in two dimensions. Rather we speak in three dimensions. Ideas flow east and west, north and south, and also front and back. Three dimensions. But what of northeast and southwest? Are those dimensions or directions?

Imagining a globe helps me with this thought. An equator runs around the globe; starting at one point and labeling it the ‘center’ gives only a starting point; at that it is arbitrary. Now argue a rightist or leftist ideology and watch where the ideas go. If the argument is heated they repel one another farther from the center point. If allowed in the continuum, the ideas flow rapidly around the equator until they meet up on the opposite side of the globe. Only now they have reversed their polarity: rightist dogma has become fascist and represents the worst of the leftist extreme. The leftist has become authoritarian to the extreme and has demanded purity of thought to survive. The argument impels them ‘forward’ until they are back at the center point once again. Only the rightist is now the leftist and vice versa.

The Handmaid’s Tale demonstrates the results of such folly.

Mind boggling to the reader. Unthinkable to the social scientist, but really? Think about it. And then realize that we don’t live in a three dimensional world but actually a multidimensional one. We have four, no five, no six or more dimensions happening all at the same time. There is no right or left. There is only right and wrong and gray areas in between; while at the same time another ideology is fighting for existence in yet another dimension.

We experience it all in the same moment; and then add passage of time to make matters more complex.

Isn’t it about time we simplified some of our political discussion? I suggest that we are over-complicating things a bit. It is time to make the best of our situation, respect others and move on toward a more inclusive, caring society in which we take care of each other in addition to ourselves.

Love is difficult. But oh so necessary.

July 10, 2017