Is there really anything wrong with the Wallflower Order?

            Mumbo Jumbo, by Ishmael Reed, takes a very unique and critical view of western civilization, and claims that as we move away from our roots and focus on the advancement of technology and so-called “progress,” we lose some of our human spirit. It suggests that we live in an almost “Brave New World-esque” culture, devoid of passion, in which any sort of spontaneity or excitement, such as that embodied by Jes Grew, is not only frowned upon, but feared. This opposition to Jes Grew is led by the Wallflower Order, an organization that seeks to keep Jes Grew in check and maintain order in society. In the book, Reed portrays this Wallflower Order as the villain, and those who welcome Jes Grew, such as PaPa LaBas, as heroes. In my opinion, however, Reed’s argument goes a little too far.

Consider, for example, his description of the headquarters of the Wallflower Order in Chapter 17. “You have nothing real up here. Everything is polyurethane, Polystyrene, Lucite, Plexiglas, acrylate, Mylar, Teflon, phenolic, polycarbonate. A gallimaufry of synthetic materials. Wood you hate. Nothing to remind you of the Human Seed” (62). To begin, this idea of the “Human Seed” has the same problem as the slogan “Make America Great Again” – during the time of the Human Seed, we were hunter-gatherers who had to fight tooth and nail for survival, and we never had time to develop the culture of music, dance, and art that Jes Grew represents. It was only through technology and developments in agriculture that we were able to amass a surplus of food, giving us enough free time away from the fields to start the wave of Jes Grew. Secondly, the “gallimaufry of synthetic materials” Reed lists deserves praise rather than criticism. Just as the ancients used the resources they had to build buildings out of wood, we are using our resources to build buildings out of the most effective materials possible. Indeed, there is nothing natural about living in a wooden house – hypothetically, if we told some aliens that we sheltered under a plant cut into a bunch of pieces and stuck together with mud, they would laugh. We built wooden houses for millennia, however, simply because they were the most prudent and effective form of shelter. Similarly, our current buildings are made out of the best materials we have at our disposal. Whether these are synthetic or not is a non-issue, and while we don’t hate wood, it would be unwise to use it, given that we have better materials at hand.

The end of this description, from my point of view, is just as shortsighted. Reed says that “the Atonists got rid of their spirit 1000s of years ago with Him (…). Death will have taken over. Why is it Death you like? Because then no 1 will keep you up all night with all that racket dancing and singing. The next morning you can get up and build, drill, progress putting up skyscrapers and … and … and … working and stuff. You know? Keeping busy” (62 – 63). First of all, the idea that we work just to “keep busy” is ridiculous. I’m sure that Reed enjoyed his work as an author, and that he didn’t write Mumbo Jumbo just to keep busy. Indeed, many people are truly passionate about their work, and they get the same surge of excitement from reading a thought-provoking article or making a surprising discovery as one might get from catching Jes Grew. I find it extremely naïve to say that just because someone doesn’t show their excitement on the outside by singing or dancing, they have no spirit and are essentially dead. The second half of Reed’s statement, where he criticizes “progress” as being pointless, and says that doing things like building skyscrapers is progress solely for the sake of progress, is just as bad, but perhaps excusable. Reed wasn’t to know when he wrote the book in 1972 that the modern analog of Jes Grew is a result of technology, and that the discoveries of those soulless Atonist scientists he just adores would lead to something called the internet, to YouTube, to iTunes, and so on. Indeed, in hindsight, we see that it was actually the “progress” so loathed by those who got caught up in Jes Grew that led to music being so widespread in this day and age, and that opened up the western world to cultures all across the globe.            Mumbo Jumbo, by Ishmael Reed, takes a very unique and critical view of western civilization, and claims that as we move away from our roots and focus on the advancement of technology and so-called “progress,” we lose some of our human spirit. It suggests that we live in an almost “Brave New World-esque” culture, devoid of passion, in which any sort of spontaneity or excitement, such as that embodied by Jes Grew, is not only frowned upon, but feared. This opposition to Jes Grew is led by the Wallflower Order, an organization that seeks to keep Jes Grew in check and maintain order in society. In the book, Reed portrays this Wallflower Order as the villain, and those who welcome Jes Grew, such as PaPa LaBas, as heroes. In my opinion, however, Reed’s argument goes a little too far.

Consider, for example, his description of the headquarters of the Wallflower Order in Chapter 17. “You have nothing real up here. Everything is polyurethane, Polystyrene, Lucite, Plexiglas, acrylate, Mylar, Teflon, phenolic, polycarbonate. A gallimaufry of synthetic materials. Wood you hate. Nothing to remind you of the Human Seed” (62). To begin, this idea of the “Human Seed” has the same problem as the slogan “Make America Great Again” – during the time of the Human Seed, we were hunter-gatherers who had to fight tooth and nail for survival, and we never had time to develop the culture of music, dance, and art that Jes Grew represents. It was only through technology and developments in agriculture that we were able to amass a surplus of food, giving us enough free time away from the fields to start the wave of Jes Grew. Secondly, the “gallimaufry of synthetic materials” Reed lists deserves praise rather than criticism. Just as the ancients used the resources they had to build buildings out of wood, we are using our resources to build buildings out of the most effective materials possible. Indeed, there is nothing natural about living in a wooden house – hypothetically, if we told some aliens that we sheltered under a plant cut into a bunch of pieces and stuck together with mud, they would laugh. We built wooden houses for millennia, however, simply because they were the most prudent and effective form of shelter. Similarly, our current buildings are made out of the best materials we have at our disposal. Whether these are synthetic or not is a non-issue, and while we don’t hate wood, it would be unwise to use it, given that we have better materials at hand.

The end of this description, from my point of view, is just as shortsighted. Reed says that “the Atonists got rid of their spirit 1000s of years ago with Him (…). Death will have taken over. Why is it Death you like? Because then no 1 will keep you up all night with all that racket dancing and singing. The next morning you can get up and build, drill, progress putting up skyscrapers and … and … and … working and stuff. You know? Keeping busy” (62 – 63). First of all, the idea that we work just to “keep busy” is ridiculous. I’m sure that Reed enjoyed his work as an author, and that he didn’t write Mumbo Jumbo just to keep busy. Indeed, many people are truly passionate about their work, and they get the same surge of excitement from reading a thought-provoking article or making a surprising discovery as one might get from catching Jes Grew. I find it extremely naïve to say that just because someone doesn’t show their excitement on the outside by singing or dancing, they have no spirit and are essentially dead. The second half of Reed’s statement, where he criticizes “progress” as being pointless, and says that doing things like building skyscrapers is progress solely for the sake of progress, is just as bad, but perhaps excusable. Reed wasn’t to know when he wrote the book in 1972 that the modern analog of Jes Grew is a result of technology, and that the discoveries of those soulless Atonist scientists he just adores would lead to something called the internet, to YouTube, to iTunes, and so on. Indeed, in hindsight, we see that it was actually the “progress” so loathed by those who got caught up in Jes Grew that led to music being so widespread in this day and age, and that opened up the western world to cultures all across the globe.

WHAT IS HISTORY (according to one of the most widely respected dictionaries in the world)?

            According to the Oxford English Dictionary, “a history is a work in which each movement, action, or chain of events is dealt with as a whole and pursued to its natural termination or to a convenient stopping place, as distinct from annals, in which events are simply recorded in divisions of a year or other limited period, or a chronicle, in which events are presented as a straightforward continuous narrative.” This is clearly a good description of how one goes about writing a history; in order to understand and learn from history, one has to group together and analyze a long series of events, determine some sort of general link between them, and formulate an argument from a certain perspective. If we were simply to treat our history as a set of disjoint events without any causal link, we would learn nothing of significance or practicality. Indeed, one of the main reasons we study history is to understand what led to success and what led to failure, and to try to apply that to our current situation. If we are completely objective and consider only historical “facts” (ignoring that it can be argued whether such historical facts exist in the first place), we can’t apply anything we learn to our present.

            In light of our recent class discussions, however, it seems that as soon as we leave the realm of fact and impose our own narrative upon the data we are attempting to understand, we are taking our first step away from true history and toward fiction. Because of the inescapable bias inherent in human nature, as well as the daunting volume of historical events that one must sift through, our understanding becomes flawed, and our arguments do not take into account the full picture. If we look back at the OED’s definition of history from a post-modernist perspective, for instance, we see that it is surprisingly vague and subjective. “Each (…) chain of events is (…) pursued to its natural termination or to a convenient stopping place.” This notion of a chain of events having a natural, inherent termination or stopping place seems ridiculous. I don’t go about my life until I decide I have reached a convenient stopping place and then lie down and die. Leaving this aside, who decides where this stopping place is? Is it the people living at the time? This seems crazy as well; consider the 2016 election – we have been talking about it non-stop, it’s inconceivable that we will just stop as soon as 2017 rolls around. Is it the historian, then, who decides when to stop? Possibly, but even this seems odd. If the consequences of some event continue on for a long time, a historian can’t simply ignore any consequence that occurs after a certain moment in time – this would lead to a biased and incomplete history. On the other hand, the amount of history one must analyze to understand every perspective is far too vast for any one person to fully absorb, so one must stop somewhere. Is it really the case, then, as the OED claims, that there exists some “natural stopping point?” Is there some moment inherent and pre-defined in our history that we can point to, where the chain of causation ends, and man simply moves on from the series of events we are studying? To me, this seems like the most ridiculous claim of all.

            The problem, in my opinion, with the OED’s definition of a history is that it narrows it down to a single argument from a single person. Our understanding of history is not limited to this person’s perspective; it is the conglomeration of everyone’s understanding with each time period, perspective, and bias represented. One can only glean a true picture of our history by understanding how all the arguments fit together, and how each perspective compliments each other.