The Wandering Mind ...

I started thinking about something early this morning. I finally gave into my obsession and looked it up. I thought I remembered reading it in 1968 when I was in the United States Navy. The Navy, no matter where one was moored, always had a small library, else I never would have read Ditmars’ Snakes of the World, Joyce’s Ulysses, or William Manchester’s The Arms of Krupp, among others. In those days, people in power preferred underlings who read to keep busy while off-duty rather than join in less productive endeavors.

Anyway, somewhere about that time I read the little masterpiece by Franz Kafka called The Great Wall of China (Beim Bau der ChinesischenMauer). What amazes me the most was that he wrote this in 1917. He could have written it this morning without losing a shred of its insight. Like the Chinese of old, we have, in America today, an absentee ruler who would like to be Emperor for Life. Another great wall figures into his plans, plans guided by feints and distractions. The ancient Chinese would have found it fascinating. And so it goes.

I don’t know if the account by Kafka is accurate. After all, we are talking about an odd sort of a man who lived out of wedlock with his lover during his adult life, wrote at night, and died young of TB. His complex and mystifying writings gave birth to the term “Kafkaesque” to describe the nightmarish struggles between humankind and faceless organizations. He dwelt upon, among other things, the concept of original sin, the sudden transformation of one’s person, the horrors of struggling with faceless beings inside a bureaucratic castle, and a mystical place he called “Amerika.” I won’t go into these further, for any educated person has probably read them and formed opinions.

The work here today, The Great Wall of China, deals with a project he compares with the Tower of Babel in its poor conception, poor planning, and poor technical expertise. In his account, each segment of the great wall was built in a somewhat autonomous manner so that, in the end, many sections failed to connect, obviating the future failure of the structure to achieve its stated purpose: keeping out the enemy hordes to the north.

Thus we observe the journeys of the plans of dictators through the perpetual comedy stage that we call history.

Most likely, like the great pyramids of Egypt, the true purpose leading to the construction of the wall was to keep warring and independent tribes, fiefdoms, and clans occupied with actions other than war. Yes, it may have just been a great public works project designed to keep the poor folks distracted. It didn’t matter if the individual works, like the books I read in my youth, had no apparent connection.

At any rate, it created a cult, according to Kafka, consisting of those who were sure the Emperor acted in good faith and for the betterment of society. My favorite passage follows.

“There was a great deal of mental confusion at the time … perhaps simply because so many people were trying as hard as they could to join together for a single purpose. Human nature, which is fundamentally careless and by nature like the whirling dust, endures no restraint. If it restricts itself, it will soon begin to shake the restraints madly and tear up walls, chains, and even itself all over the place.”

Yes. He wrote that in 1917.

Ain’t that something? Perhaps that is why are now so many, working so hard, and spending so much money tying to destroy any concept of public education for the common folks in America. An educated society is a dangerous society for the Emperor and his followers. Let us now mourn for the American who will wake up, as did Kafka’s famous hero, surprised and dumbfounded. Kafka described this way: “When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.”

At that moment, the existence or non-existence of another great wall will be as meaningless as that of the original.

I've read that it is the only
human-made structure that
is visible from our moon.