Everything that rises must converge

Sunshine.Dubtribe.com

Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O'Connor

This phrase has been in and out of my subconscious for years. In 1985 it appeared as a song title by Shriekback from their Oil and Gold Album. It also made an appearance in the animated series Aeon Flux. For a band and an animated series, they both had a habit of dropping profound references at well-timed moments so without the source of the phrase I remained mystified for years; speculating on the various possible intentions and meanings it could be carrying. As often happens it returned to me this evening out of the blue and fortunately I was still awake enough to punch it into google and see what surfaced.

Ms. Flannery's short story is not what I expected... not at first. Southern Gothic is not a genre of literature I spend much time with. The short story, which I believe was written in the mid 60s, tells of a young man taking his mother to the Y on a public bus. The story uses very basic mother-son dynamics. Stripped of the time-specific material in the story, we see every boy on the verge of independence dealing with the mother that is firmly rooted in the role of the mother/martyr who knows best. The phrase "everything that rises must converge" is derived from a scrap of imagined dialogue and the ensuing irony. In his mind, Julian's mother says, “It's ridiculous. It's simply not realistic. They should rise, yes, but on their own side of the fence.” She implies a separation... the "separate but equal" concept. Two different cultures rising separately to their own goals. The mother has unshakable concepts about the Old South which lead her inevitably to what we now call racism. Her good nature wants to see negros rise, but her concept of self wants them to do so outside of her world. When a negro woman gets on the bus wearing the exact same ridiculous hat that she was so sure would give her individuality, the two worlds begin to converge... .or we might reason that even with a fence between their feet, at some height the fence is essentially meaningless.

I included a link to Sunshine's musings on the idea for contrast. His text is pretty long so I admit, I perused it with much less vigor than I read Ms. Flannery's story. But he makes some interesting statements about the mainstream and underground that synched up with a thought I had either yesterday or today while driving. And now that I'm thinking clearly about it, I realize now why this phrase came back to me tonight. Let me quickly explain...

I was watching Ghost in the Shell - Stand Alone Complex and a particular section of dialogue jogged my brain. There was a discussion about the Stand Alone Complex originating with a desire to express originality. Individuals operating under the pretext of acting in an individual fashion end up surrendering their individuality to a conformity. The controlling ideas and concepts masquerade as individuality, but individuals quickly rise to a new type of conformity only. Earlier I was thinking about Viral Marketting and the power of anonymous ideas to influence large groups. I was thinking that there are lots of followers in this world. If we suppose that there is one person who intitiates an idea and shares it with a small group then we have the original generation of an idea. Lets say that is 4 people. The idea spreads exponentially to 16 and then 64 and so on until you have something that is recognizable as a sub-culture or a phenomenon. The numbers are small enough that patterns do not emerge. At some point in the growth of an idea a critical mass is reached and patterns appear. The idea merges with what is commonly refered to as mass culture. Sunshine blames Capitalism for this. But he's wrong. I believe it is human nature... or at least the nature of a part of humanity. My basic revelation was that there are probably only a handfull of people in the world who initiate ideas. I'm certain that they are never the ones who get the credit, however. Never the ones who make the big bucks. Never the ones who complain about the way things have changed...

These initiators simply continue to come up with new ideas and move on. And we simply grab what we can and try to make something of it. Like trying to read the oracle. Piecing together the fragments of some glimpse of God that we didn't actually share in.

Sunshine blames capitalism for fueling the frenzy to conform. That's a popular notion; and if you look at the financial inequality in the world, it is easy to want to believe. I'm much more quick to blame the media however. They do too much of the dirty work of the anti-capitalists. I don't mean the socialists or some other political movement... I mean a group I refer to as anti-capitalists. You could call them monopolies or trusts maybe. Let me put it this way: Sunshine talks about music, so I'll use his metaphor to explain... In it's pure form, Capitalism gathers all the musical offerings together into one giant market and people wander around listening to everything and deciding what is good. Then they pay for what they enjoy. There is no one at work ringleading the process. In Anti-Capitalism, someone in a position of control makes a decision about what to offer listeners, and then eliminates the clutter... streamlines the market for his own benefit. The consumer is offered limited choices and any money spent is funnelled to a small number of musicians and the people who make sure there is only a small number of musicians. There is no freedom in the system... for the consumer or the musicians. Anti-Capitalism and Anti-Markets as Manuel De Landa dubs them in A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History.

So back to Flannery's story... its moral? Well, the moral is apparently from a certain distance the petty things that separate us disolve. Bitter enemies at some point find themselves comrads... or lovers... or mirror images... no, not mirror images, more alike than that. Perhaps photocopies of the same original? It is hard to tell good from evil in the world because they are both presented to us in high definition. The media (particularly the visual media, i.e. television and print) is an accelerant or booster sending concepts to great heights where they do converge quickly and the differences are hard to discern. I blame visual media because it has the capacity to move faster than thought for most people. The spoken word has limits at the ear which are far below the speed at which the sounds are processed. You have a fighting chance with spoken words. Julian's mother ultimately fails to deal with the convergence. She sees herself as different from others... not necessarily better, but she sees herself as a distinct person. This is a major theme for her throughout the story. She knows who she is... her son continually tries to explain that it doesn't matter, but he is ignored. She says, "I know!" But she doesn't really know. She sees the world only at the height of the fence. At the place where the differences lie. When she rises high enough to see over that fence, she finds herself staring back at her. This idea crops up a lot actually. Usually with a motive riding inside it like some Trojan Horse. The idea that everything that rises must converge is much abused and seldom truly fathomed.

I've said a hundred times that there is no where on this planet that is any more intune with the universe than any other. Once you are used to the differences on the surface, you understand that everywhere is pretty much the same... you just have to rise high enough to realize it.