chaos

Sun 8.8.21

      A murderous weekend.  Friday night I watched a movie someone recommended,  "Battle of Algiers.  I knew a bit about the Algiers/French war through reading Frantz Fanon's "The Wretched of the Earth," his book on the effects of torture suffered by the Algerians at the hands of their French colonizers. 

      The French are getting rich and having a good time from the resources they are taking from Algiers, a Muslim city where the line is clearly drawn between the Muslim Arabs and their colonizers the French.  The Algerians rebel, and since they are going to fight a much richer power, with armies, navies, and air power, they devise a plan of attack,  There are 5 or 6 men up top who come up with the philosophy, the plan of attack, and goals.  The organization is a pyramid.  Those 5 or 6 men each go out and recruit two soldiers which comprises their cell.  The 2 soldiers, who will go on to recruit their own two soldiers, only know their recruiter, and recruiters do not know their comrades recruits.  What you have are independent 3 men units that know very little about the organization.

      Algerians passing themselves off as European, bomb the saloons, discos, an airport terminal.  And French police bomb some of their homes in the Casbah for revenge.  The war has begun, and the army rolls in parading down main street to the cheering of French residents.  The army general is not a bad guy.  The Algerians have outmaneuvered him.  So torture becomes the way to uncover the chain of command. 

      At a press conference where reporters ask hard questions of him, the general says that there is no torture.  But they keep pushing about his integrity and he points to his men and himself, and says, "We are not bad guys, some of us come from Auschwitz and Buchenwald.  We are soldiers involved in a war in which we aim to win.  It seems to me the question you need to ask is, what price is France willing to pay for colonizing Algeria?

      The next film I watched is "Swoon" the true story of how two rich young men, in the roaring twenties, Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb killed a boy for the experience of it.  Nathan was a prodigy; by the age of 18 he already knew 5 languages, was a notable ornithologist, a fan of Nietzsche, and emulated his theory of the superman.  Richard was a fuck-up, also smart and cool.  These handsome supermen were having an affair, a warped relationship in which they were continually raising the bar on their criminal behavior, until they ultimately focused on a neighborhood boy they would kill.  Richard was the murderer. 

      They had a sensational trial with Clarence Darrow as their lawyer who saved them from the electric chair.  Richard was killed in jail by his cellmate 10 years later, but Nathan was eventually released after 30 years and settled in Mexico.  He also married.

      What's really scary in the Leopold/Loeb story is the deliberateness of their act, the cold hearted execution of the murder.  One is given a glimpse of chaos, a world of meaninglessness, of war unmasked.  I once met a man who showed me the heart of chaos.  I was working as a psychiatric social worker at Franklin Memorial Hospital when I got a call from the police department.  They were holding a man who needed an evaluation. 

      I was lead to his cell, a big room bare of any furnishings except his chair which was about 12 feet from my own seat.  He had a history of hospitalization at the state mental hospital.  Fortiesh, just him and mom; he is skinny, barechested and barefooted, unkempt, with greasy, disheveled hair.  He tells me he gets this tension within himself that needs release at times.  He has on a number of occasions captured women, tied them up and tortured them.  But that's no longer enough.  He figures that he needs to kill someone to relieve his tension.  A dark personage, a devil,  advises him of this.  It wouldn't be right to kill a young woman in her prime, he figures. better an older woman whose no longer any use to the world.

      Crazy people have quite a bit of psychic energy and it isn't hard for him to intuit an older woman living in a building he walks by.

      At this point in our conversation, I begin to feel apprehensive about being alone with him in the cell with a solid iron door closed on us.  Shortly a police officer comes and opens the door commenting about leaving it open; he is just down the hall.

      The man enters the unlocked door and starts roughing up the woman, ties her to a chair and he shoves a number of things in her vagina one of which is a knife, but it isn't working for him; he is not getting off.

      "Let's go for a ride," he says.

      She is only too glad to oblige because her family is due to arrive shortly and she is afraid he will kill them all.  They get in the car; it is late at night, small town, America.  He wants to go to the lake, a perfect place to finish her off.  They drive down a deserted main street; out of nowhere a police car comes behind and stops them.  She had purposely left the lights on high beam.

      I wrote up my evaluation, called the state hospital and alerted them about the patient that I was starting commitment papers on who would be transported to their care in a few hours.  Then I phoned the psychiatrist on call and asked him to come down, take a look and sign the papers.  They are brought to a judge, also on call, who reads our evaluations and signs the decree allowing the police to transport him to the state mental hospital.

      I always like to sit in on the psychiatrist's interview with the patient to see what he picks up, and to make sure I haven't missed anything.  The prisoner, by now has been moved to another cell in preparation for his upcoming journey.  We enter the new cell which has a couple of bunks devoid of bedding and some chairs for us.  I listen to the first few words, then I see him, like a repellent long-legged bug, scurry on all fours across the floor to pick up a cigarette butt.

      I get up and leave.  My work is done; the police will take it from here and get over to the judge.  When I get back to the hospital I go up to the nurses' quarter with its lockers and showers and want to say to every woman I meet, "Lock your door at night, " but I don't.  After my shower, I call my colleague and unload for the next half hour.

The favorite post this month has been Simulation Theory