On May 28, WBUR’s program “Here and Now” aired a segment about Wagner’s opera “The Ring” and its influence on comic books. (I’d embed it here, but they don’t let you download the MP3. You can listen at the link. Just scroll down the page when you get there.) Apparently many characters from graphic novels of the 20th century were shaped by Wagner’s four-part work.
This seemed relevant to me for a variety of reasons. I’m currently obsessed with Wonder Showzen, a heady spoof of Sesame Street that came from the Brooklyn group PFFR before they made Xavier: Renegade Angel. In one episode of Wonder Showzen, a child journalist goes around asking people, “What’s a hero?” The goal was to point out that we may be tricked (by movies, news and other media) into thinking that Superman or Iron Man or 9/11 firefighters are going to “save us.”
I’ll try not to wander too much here. It’ll suffice to say that I’ve become very interested in the topic of “heroes.” I wanted to write about this “Here and Now” show because I just finished the book Prometheus Rising by Robert Anton Wilson. Wilson first published the revised version of his psychology PhD dissertation in 1983. Chapter 17 in the book — entitled “Quantum Evolution — contains a discussion about the modern symphony orchestra interpreted through the book The Third Wave by Alvin Toffler.
The coincidence of the radio show and my reading the book seemed to be a synchronicity (also mentioned in Wilson’s book), a Jungian concept meaning “an acausal and/or holistic principle in nature that acts outside the linear past-present-future of Newtonian time” (p. 152). But I’m straying again…
Wilson brings up Toffler to explain the quickening pace of “domesticated primate evolution” — that is, the ongoing development of human beings. According to Toffler’s model, the “First Wave” was a shift from tribal to “feudal-agricultural” societies. The Second Wave came in the mid to late 19th century, and was a shift from a feudal-agricultural system to an “industrial-urban-market economy.” That can also be described as the “Age of Reason” or the “Industrial Age.”
Now we’re in a sort of transitional period as the Third Wave passes through and creates the Information Age (many other potential titles have been proposed). As Wilson explains, “Each wave is faster, by a factor of 10, than the previous wave. And each wave is more total in that it changes more people…and in the process transforms our concept of human nature and human society” (p. 255).
This section turns out to be highly prophetic in what it says about the effect of computers on society.
Toffler does not claim that the computer is the whole of the Third Wave, but merely that it is the synecdoche or paradigm of what is happening. In this sense, the factory was the synecdoche of the Second Wave. It was not merely the agent by which ‘indust-reality’ spread across the world and multiplied our collective wealth (and illth); it also became the model for everything else (p. 256).
You might be wondering about Toffler’s term “indust-reality.” Essentially it means the mass reality tunnel that has been prevalent during the Industrial Age. In effect, “…’indust-reailty,’ the reality of the industrial age, moved everybody into the robot lockstep of the factory system” (p. 256).
This brings us back to the idea of the symphony orchestra:
‘Indust-reality’ is still so pervasive that it is…mostly invisible. For instance, the feudal age never progressed beyond chamber music—trios, quartets, etc. The modern symphony, with its huge orchestra, its Promethean themes, its god-like conductor (‘capitalist’), its concert-master (foreman), its string section moving in harmony with its brass section, etc. is a beautiful artistic expression of modes of mass human organization appearing usually in less beautiful forms in the factory assembly-line. (The factory also demanded cities—massive concentrations of labor in one place—which made the symphony economically possible…) (pp. 256-257).
Now to synthesize this information. The music of Wagner is wholly representative of the Second Wave, the Industrial Age, the Age of Reason — the military-industrial-capitalist complex that has dominated our civilization for the last 150 years. This point needs no further proof than the scene in Apocalypse Now when Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore (played by Robert Duvall) blasts Wagner as his fleet of helicopters takes a Vietnamese town by storm.
As I said before, Wagner’s music also contributed to superhero characters and their stories. And we are likely duped into thinking that the problems facing mankind will be resolved by some benevolent source of power. But the most powerful role in “indust-reality” is the capitalist — i.e., whoever has the most money. Wilson recognized this as well, and he thought “it was inevitable in a domesticated primate species”:
Neither capitalist indust-reality nor socialist indust-reality have been able to give humanity what most of us really want: liberty and justice, freedom and the abolition of poverty, continued growth and continued security. [...] The Third Wave can, and will, transcend this problem within industrialism. [...] It will demand a whole new economy… (p. 257).
So as you can see, I think it’s a little humorous that “Here and Now” is celebrating the performance of Wagner’s opera. “Indust-reality” is becoming more irrelevant by the day, as computers and related technology help us bridge into the next phase of our evolution.
